On the bridge in-jump

[rust]

Traveller has always been 1 week* in jump space even if interrupted along the plot.

Well, no. Just one example, from MegaTraveller's Imperial Encyclopedia,
Starship Operations, page 93:

A jump relativity error occurs. The ship remains in jumpspace 1D+4 days
(from 5 to 10 days) before emerging in the destination system, otherwise
unharmed.

The different versions are not consistent concerning the possible variation
caused by a more or less serious jump problem, but there have always
been references to jumps shorter or longer than 1 week.

 

[far-trader]

Traveller has always been 1 week* in jump space even if interrupted along the plot.

Well, no. Just one example, from MegaTraveller's Imperial Encyclopedia,
Starship Operations, page 93:

A jump relativity error occurs. The ship remains in jumpspace 1D+4 days
(from 5 to 10 days) before emerging in the destination system, otherwise
unharmed.

The different versions are not consistent concerning the possible variation
caused by a more or less serious jump problem, but there have always
been references to jumps shorter or longer than 1 week.

About 1 week then. The 5 to 10 days is a simple relativity error and not significantly outside the realm of about 1 week (generally simply called 1 week).

 

[rust]

About 1 week then. The 5 to 10 days is a simple relativity error and not significantly outside the realm of about 1 week (generally simply called 1 week).

In my world a deviation of 30 % is considered significant ... :lol:

 

[DFW]

That's a major change (if it is). At least without a clarification that "prematurely", "early", and "soon" refer to spatially and not chronologically.

Based on all earlier versions, I took it to mean "early" as in distance not, time.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Page 141 MGT MRB "Gravity can cause a Jump bubble to collapse
prematurely, bringing a ship back into normal space early (so if a
ship tried to Jump from Earth to Mars when the Sun was between
the two, the vessel would fall out of Jump space as soon as it came
within one hundred diameters of the Sun."

Ahhh.... good catch. That is a new rule to me, thanks for pointing it out.

 

[locarno24]

Of course. I'll win the Mega Million Lotto jackpot 10 times before I'd accidentally cross the jump shadow of one of these.

True. But then million to one chances happen nine times out of ten 8)

Might be an interesting one to dump on some players once...



The other one - if you're of a mind to involve The Ancients Did It (TM) in your campaign, is something really wierd. Ancient vessels can apparently intercept one another in jump-space (see Secrets of the Ancients) which would lead to a 'what the !££$!%! hell was that?' moment as a silver dart streaks past the ship through the walls of the jump bubble.



In 99.999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999% of jumps, though, yes, the bridge is a dumb and boring place to be. However, it is somewhere you'd have at least one person all the time, because if something explodes/catches fire/whatever, you have all your primary system controls there.

 

[Reynard]

To quote MT Starship Operator's Manual: "While the ship is in transit to its destination, there is little for the crew to do than monitor the jump field bubble and maintain the rest of the ship's equipment...."

The bridge will see routine activity as well as any station in engineering. It's not so much lonliness as the boredom. Consitering the Traveller concept of being coped up in an spartanly enclosed structure for a week at a time I'm amazed there isn't more material about how crews and starship designs address the psych problems. I must say I've seen illustrations of Traveller starship interiors that look more like a klingon ship than Federation. At least on sailing ships you could go on deck to stretch your legs, breath fresh air and feel the sun. Common rooms should be a hub of activity keeping crew and passengers happy and sharp. Entertainment should be king.

Which, of course, can lead to adventuring situations.

 

[DFW]

Consitering the Traveller concept of being coped up in an spartanly enclosed structure for a week at a time I'm amazed there isn't more material about how crews and starship designs address the psych problems.

No need. Sub duty is MUCH worse than Trav's one week in jump.

 

[Subzero001]

So if a pirate gang got a hold of something of like this. While the bridge is unattended or attended. The poor trader would have almost no chance. especially a J1 ship since it would not have the fuel to jump again and if this is done in an empty spot there would be no chance to refuel and would be at the pirates mercy.

http://www.starwars.com/databank/technology/gravitywellprojector/index.html

I can see something of the like being used in the wars pinning down an enemy fleet from re-jumping to escape destruction or a form of it being used by the trade route raiders just to cause mass havoc.

This would be your "rogue planet" scenario but mobile.:twisted:

 

[GypsyComet]

This would be your "rogue planet" scenario but mobile.:twisted:

Also stolen. Larry Niven did it first, in "The Borderland of Sol."
Spoilers: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Borderland_of_Sol

 

[far-trader]

So if a pirate gang got a hold of something of like this...

This would be your "rogue planet" scenario but mobile.:twisted:

Not realistically. Not without a lot of planning ahead and a good degree of luck. At least not in the Traveller universe where jump has any random factor to it.

They would need to know, at least a week in advance, exactly where and when the target ship was jumping. Just to allow the spotter team to jump out to transfer that info to the jump-projector (or whatever you want to call it*) so it can be in the direct line of jump for the plotted course. Miss that window of where of when the ship is jumping by even a very small amount and over the course of half a parsec that adds up to missing the area of denial and the pirates are sitting there wondering where the ship is and why it hasn't dropped out of jump space while in fact is has zipped past well wide of them.

And all of that is in MTU where jump calculations ARE exactingly precise. I the OTU with its jump randomness, forget it. It will never work. Not without a full armada of such equipped ships.

And maybe not even then. Suppose the ship changes it's plans the day after your spotter team leaves? Again you're left wondering why your net is empty and where the catch of the day has gone.

Again, the way Traveller jump works, for a random intersection of a rogue world I think this is a once or twice per millenia event and relies on very heavy traffic and staggering numbers* of uncharted rogue planets. And I'm not even sure that is at all realistic. I'd lean closer to the odds approaching 1 in infinity in the lifetime of the universe.

* something exceeding the density of the Oort cloud since that does not present a hazard to jumping, throughout interstellar space... do you begin to see the ridiculousness of the idea of randomly intersecting a rouge world?

Even with the super tech of jump projectors you'd need perfect intelligence and MTU's exacting jump mechanics rather than the random of the OTU to have a good chance. Mess up the intel (even from the prey leaving early) or use the OTU random jump mechanics and I expect you'd miss every time.

Again, it's only something that can be explained as Deus Ex Machina and will only happen through referee fiat. There is no set of reasonable circumstances that can make it happen naturally, and even the unnatural methods are difficult.

* has been in Traveller since MT iirc

 

[rust]

... something exceeding the density of the Oort cloud since that does not present a hazard to jumping ...

There is no evidence that the authors of Classic Traveller were aware of
the existence of the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt when they designed
their jump drive, that it does not influence the jump in any way could be
just another one of their rather high number of astronomical blunders.

 

[GypsyComet]

While Oort and Kuiper zones have a lot of "stuff" in them, each object establishes its own Jump Horizon, and those objects are often very small and very far apart.

One edition of Traveller, I forget which, established that a ship cannot be "grabbed" out of Jumpspace by objects smaller than it is. While I can see making an exception for things like sand-grain black holes and similar, this effectively removes 99.9% of the bodies in the outer zones from affecting jump, and the big stuff, if a given system has much, will be mapped and part of the Astrogation Ephemera.

Five Thousand years in space, remember.

On the off chance there's an unmarked rock in the way, you've established a fine misjump dodge the next time the dice decide to try killing your PCs. Hope they have a Mosquito Rig...

 

[rust]

...and the big stuff, if a given system has much, will be mapped and part of the Astrogation Ephemera.

To quote Wikipedia:

The outer Oort cloud is believed to contain several trillion individual ob-
jects larger than approximately 1 km (0.62 mi) (with many billions with
absolute magnitudes brighter than 11—corresponding to approximately
20 km (12 mi) diameter) ...

I expect both mathematics and computer technology to improve quite a
lot in the future, but I very much doubt that they will ever become able
to deal with the data of trillions of mobile objects which exert gravitatio-
nal influences on each other (occasionally sending one of them into the
inner system as a comet) in any precise and reliable way.

The huge distances between the objects make "hits" of their jump sha-
dows very unlikely, but a similar cloud of objects around one of the sys-
tems with high traffic should at least occasionally cause such an event.

 

[far-trader]

... something exceeding the density of the Oort cloud since that does not present a hazard to jumping ...

There is no evidence that the authors of Classic Traveller were aware of
the existence of the Oort Cloud or the Kuiper Belt...

Nor is there evidence they weren't aware of it. We know it now and have to address it. If you want to realistically worry about rouge planets you need to look closer to home first, at the Oort cloud (and possibly the Kuiper belt too yes, thanks for adding that Gypsy Comet).

FWIW though, it has been theoretically known since the 50s. I think I knew it in school in the 60s or 70s. I'm all but sure it was in SF stories through the 60s or 70s. I find it hard to believe the authors weren't aware at least peripherally of it.

While Oort and Kuiper zones have a lot of "stuff" in them, each object establishes its own Jump Horizon, and those objects are often very small and very far apart.

One edition of Traveller, I forget which, established that a ship cannot be "grabbed" out of Jumpspace by objects smaller than it is.

Not sure it's canon. Might be, I've always done it that way anyway. Might be GURPS. In any case for the Oort cloud, supposed source of comets, we are talking at least some bodies with diameters of kilometers. That beats any ship going. And the density of even those larger bodies is going to be greater than that of supposed rogue worlds in interstellar space.

 

[GypsyComet]

Anything that has caught someone already, and anything on a cometary orbit, will certainly be mapped. The smaller stuff may, as you point out, simply be too numerous.

 

[DFW]

[Not sure it's canon. Might be, I've always done it that way anyway. Might be GURPS.

I've always used =>1km to have a Jump shadow.

Based on the spherical area of the cloud & how much total matter postulated, I'll still probably win the lotto 1st, even if I don't play.

 

[far-trader]

The huge distances between the objects make "hits" of their jump sha-
dows very unlikely...

Yes, thank you, that has been my point all along. That the odds are long for intersection even in a crowded space like the Oort cloud, and vanishingly small for rogue planet intersection. Maybe we aren't as far apart on this as I thought

...but a similar cloud of objects around one of the sys-
tems with high traffic should at least occasionally cause such an event.

Quite. For Oort cloud objects, not for random rogue wanderers. I think we just disagree a little on the degree of "occasionally" for the first and perhaps more so on "rarely" for the second

 

[BFalcon]

rust: Why not? Especially since most starports will have updates as needed (probably as a free service - a bit like a modern shipping weather forecast).

Consider a modern 3Tb hard drive... assuming each item record contains an identifier, a mass, a precise x,y,z co-ordinate, a timestamp (so you know WHEN it was at that position) and an x,y and z velocity vector. Assume that each record takes up 1kb in size... a 3Tb hard drive could hold 3 BILLION such records... and I'm sure that, in the Traveller timeline, 3Tb would be considered small - possibly to the point of being available as a module (think SD card or Memorystick module) or as a disk, similar to a DVD... (a modern Bluray disk holds what... 20Gb?). It wasn't that long ago (20 years? Not that long in terms of history...) a 1Gb hard drive was considered state of the art...

Probably best not to underestimate the storage capacity available to a specialist computer (if nothing else, using modern technology, you could always consider a navigation computer to be a cluster of smaller-capacity computers networked together).

 

[rust]

rust: Why not?

Because the mathematicians have yet to develop a method for precise
solutions of n-body problems, and at the moment they are rather con-
vinced that such a solution is not possible.