The Pirate in the Traveller Universe

[phavoc]

All depends on how you want traffic control to work. We have traffic control for air, sea, roads and rails today. Industrialized societies tend to like things neat. For mine I designed a system to control traffic arriving/departing a local planet. For non-busy ships it's not a big deal, but for a planet that has 100's or thousands of arrivals per day the risk of collisions increases with the rate of arrivals.

So each planet within jump range is allocated a 50k x 50k arrival box that gets allotted to them from the departure planet's traffic control. If no traffic control exists then a box is assigned based on the departure time. Planets that generate more traffic are given more slots, in excess of the amount of traffic they generate during a peak period. And whenever necessary slots are re-allocated depending on need and situation. After arrival in their slots the ships move to reserved travel corridors and then make their way planetside. Sort of like taxiways in space.

Ships departing the planet are given departure slots in the same fashion. This allows them to stay away from other ships when preparing for jump.

The military and/or local forces have their own reserved areas that civilians are prohibited from using. This allows for military forces to more or less jump without worrying about some silly free trader cutting through their space.

Since space is pretty vast at 100D there's more than enough to accommodate everyone's jump needs and still keep things nice and neat for traffic control, customs, anti-piracy, etc. Also keeps piracy down somewhat by letting all traffic know anyone not following procedure is suspect, and this also allows for local patrols to do an intercept of rule breakers. Could be accidental, could be more.

Or maybe you just let ships jump/arrive where you want. Really however you want to play works best for each group.

 

[GypsyComet]

Or maybe you just let ships jump/arrive where you want. Really however you want to play works best for each group.

Use Population, Port Rating, and Law Level as a composite indicator. The more traffic the world gets and more authoritarian it wants to be, the stricter the traffic control will be by necessity and inclination.

Worlds with 50000 total population and a D port probably don't see enough traffic to worry about it. You probably won't see a lot of orbital sensory presence until the port is a C.

 

[Sigtrygg]

My take on piracy IMTU:
In the original Library Data the first/lowest tier of Imperial government is the sub-sector Duke.
They are tasked with seeing to the economic well being of the worlds within their sub-sectors, overseeing the deployment of Imperial resources, and ensuring that worlds pay their taxes

Rivalry exists between sub-sector Dukes, they are competing for limited Naval assets, they are trying to encourage megacorp involvement within their sector, and they are constantly striving to exploit the resources the sub-sector offers.
A sub-sector Duke who can encourage the development of a couple of high pop worlds, or a nice mix of industrial, rich and agricultural worlds, will have considerably more influence at the sector level - and may even aspire one day to that lofty position.

How to stop your neighbours doing the same? What if a world just over the sub-sector border offers great trade potential?


Megacorportions are the power behind the throne of the Imperium. They exploit the resources, operate the refineries and factories, transport the goods to market.
They conduct exploration - to find new markets and resources - they conduct research and development - to stay ahead of the competition, they found colonies, buy and sell whole worlds, and pay their taxes...

So what if a rival company is making inroads into your market share? What if a world that used to provide the raw materiels for your factories decides to trade with someone else? What if an upstart transport company starts to undercut your transport monopoly? What if another megacorporation perceives your foothold in a particular region to be weak and ripe for takeover... hostile takeover.

Individual planets are free to govern themselves as they see fit. They are free to build their own naval ships, to subsidise trade, develop their own economies, exploit their own resources...

So what if a rival world has ambitions to claim an uninhabited part of your system, or you want to develop the potential in another worlds system because they lack the resources?

The Imperial Government ENCOURAGES this kind of infighting, in order to keep the locals too busy with each other to seriously consider rising against the imperium.

So basically I can see how each of the above groups would sponsor raiders within the territory of their rivals.

By claiming "Trade War" you have partial immunity from the IN blowing you out of space because of your activities. The letter of marque is a natural extension of this IMHO.

This helps me to explain three things:

1- how the pirate career can have such a well defined structure

2- where Corsair class "speculative traders" come from (and why it is a standard design )

3- how pirates can find a ready market for their booty.

 

[alex_greene]

My take on piracy IMTU:

This helps me to explain three things:

1- how the pirate career can have such a well defined structure

2- where Corsair class "speculative traders" come from (and why it is a standard design )

3- how pirates can find a ready market for their booty.

Basically, it's the same situation as the historical Golden Age of Piracy here on Earth. Economically, the opportunities were always there to make good money. Oh, and the cargoes were sometimes not the gold and treasure that people always thought the pirates were after. Sometimes, they were after food that wasn't spoiled, clean water and cargoes of medical supplies.

It could be similar in the 3I, with pirates chasing down ships carrying cargoes of cheap atmo scrubbers, air filters and oxygen separators because Colony 3 on that vacuum moon is in dire need of them and the homeworld is treating them like Detroit in the US.

 

[Reynard]

Yes, the pirate is the deniable asset version of a mercenary ticket. Not everyone have the resources to go independent freebooting. In a universe like Traveller, with its chaotic world mix, there are plenty of opportunities to find patrons willing (often desperate) to employ people to disrupt other space faring rivals with offers of sanctuary and a place to 'trade' the spoils.

 

[alex_greene]

:idea:

As deniable assets, a sufficiently-wealthy megacorp can easily splash out on some obviously piratical Corsairs to go around terrifying the locals. Terror would obviously be the point of those ships.

 

[Bardicheart]

A rather large number of crafts come to mind for this job. From the 600dt Subbie (cargo variant) to the 2000dt Frontier Transport. The former has a canon "Q-Ship" variant that shows what can be done. Any ship with a large, "flat" cargo space and big hatches sounds useful. A "low tech" unit that can be upgraded with more advanced drives/reactors etc. (And the freed space used otherwise) also can help.

And some variants of the salvage crafts from IIRC Traders and Gunboats could be useful, maybe with a second craft doing the initial "catch". Disable, grab, jump. And look somewhat legal while doing so.

Yup, and I've seen some creative variations. One of the more effective ideas was a converted small passenger liner. Lots of room for pirate boarding parties. But in general, one of the top ten rules of piracy has to be "deception is your friend".

The "come to full stop before jump" was always the way we played it. Makes jump arrival safer for the average ship to arrive at a basic standstill instead of with a bad vector and say a non-starting M-Drive. The average "free trader" IMU is a bit "overdue with maintenance", "not current on the map software" and more often than not "crewed by the bottom of the class".

You can jump at speed if

• You have a good navigator, current charts and enough time for calculations
• It is "jump or die"
• You are too stupid to survive to an old age

That's how I'd originally played it but then I ran into groups that didn't. MGT rules don't, so far as I know, actually require a full stop or not, they aren't clear on this point. So some play it you can jump while moving at speed and that's normal, along with discussion about whether your momentum carries over when you exit jump at the other end (which I think is a monumentally bad idea... some how jumping into a system at say 2% the speed of light seems a bit insane to me. If, on that 1 in a million chance something was in your flight path anywhere in say the next 60K km... you'd slam into it before you could react. But that's just me.).

That is how piracy in the "golden age" basically worked. Up to the point where pirats openly sold their loot in some oversea colonies where the locals asked "how cheap" rather than "where did it come from". And one of the (few) long term sucessful pirats was better known for raiding spanish cities than for seamanship (Henry Morgan).

As an alternative you can always go "Barbary coast" and hope that the 3I navy is too busy to visit.

I could imagine some poorer worlds, mining outposts, etc. might be good candidates to find such buyers. There's also stuff outside 3I space, anything in Vargr space is probably worth a shot. I would imagine the Sword Worlds probably have a thriving black market. But even within the 3I there's bound to be thriving black markets run by large organized crime groups.

One thing to consider about piracy is they "why" of it. Pirates don't do what they do just for fun, they're ultimately in it for profit. What they steal and where there steal it will have a lot to do with what kinds of goods are a) valuable, b) portable, c) in demand and d) either isn't legal or the legal supply is too restricted. One of the things I've noted in Traveller is often the ship you attack may itself be worth more than the cargo it may carry. That's left me wondering if there wouldn't a niche for pirate salvagers; capture a ship, eject the crew (in pods or out an airlock depending on how ruthless your pirates may be), use a prize crew to get the ship somewhere it could be stripped down for spare parts to be resold elsewhere. And as you mentioned above, then it becomes a question of what kinds of places want parts and don't ask too many questions. Where exactly did you get that triple beam laser turret for your ship anyway... did you really get all the legal permits, etc. or did you get it at Bob's Used Space Gear and not ask too many questions? Ironically, the very threat of such piracy might be part of the reason otherwise legitimate merchants seek to arm their ships as much as possible... even if that means skirting the law. In some cases the very laws of the 3I might create a reason for piracy to exist. As always, just food for thought.

 

[Bardicheart]

As vast as local space is, ships often follow paths to and from intra-system travel or jump points.

No. There are no "paths" for the 100D limit. There would be a general direction if the local star was masking but, that is about all. Not only that. If pirates are at all a possible concern there will be customs of courtesy amongst Masters to not "crowd" a ship they don't know at 100D limits. Those that do will end up being ostracized...

An illustration: Even IF the star port required ships to follow the same course (relative to the planet) out to the 100D you'd STILL not be near another ship at the far end if you launched 10 minutes apart. The planet is probably moving ~15 km/sec in a curved path. Spaced at 10 minute intervals, you are heading to the different point at a distance of 100D. You are NOT on converging nor, parallel courses.

I agree there wouldn't be "paths" per se but there could be common "jump points" that ships head towards. The reason has to do with speed. Simply put, even at 1G acceleration after about 10 min the ship is already traveling at over 10,000 km per hour or somewhere around 4km per second. Much longer after that and it will be going so fast an intercept becomes impractical if not impossible (at least one where you can close to range, attack and board the vessel; remember, pirates want to capture the target and that means getting on board which means getting very close and docking/grappling). This limits piracy to either close to the planet (say within roughly about 50,000 km or there about), or close to a "jump point" assuming full stop is required for jumps. If the later is the case it would be more practical in a well patrolled system to create designated "jump points", park a monitor there with several squadrons of fast intercept fighters, patrol craft, etc. based off it and viola... piracy just became very risky business (probably more like suicidal business) in that system. Ships traveling between the planet and the jump point are moving too fast to intercept and by the time they slow down enough to be a viable target they're also within quick response range of patrols.

Now in those backwater systems where there are few or no patrols and no handy Monitor at a jump point... well... sometimes things happen out there. An wouldn't ya know it, those just happen to be the kind a systems free traders often get pushed into because the big corps have the trade contracts on the major trade routes pretty much locked up.

Least that's how I've handled it.

Note: Such a "jump point" might be better called a "jump area" as it could easily be a spherical area 50,000 to 100,000km across based on the range and speed of whatever patrol craft are there (and how fast they can respond to attacks, quick response makes piracy impractical and thus discourages it). Such an area is plenty big for lots of ships to jump into and out of without ever risking collision or even getting all that close (say within under 5,000 km of each other).

 

[GypsyComet]

I agree there wouldn't be "paths" per se but there could be common "jump points" that ships head towards. The reason has to do with speed.

His point is that the Earth (for example) has an orbital speed of about 30km/s. Ten minutes difference in departure time puts the Earth 18,000km further along in its orbit. IF you assume that M-Drives are also de-coupling the ship from planetary gravity, then each ship heading straight out from the Sun at ten minute intervals will have that same 18,000km traverse spacing.

IF, on the other hand, you assume that a ship is dragged along in the Earth's gravity well, then ships won't have that spacing; they'll be a lot closer together, but still be ten minutes of their own thrust apart.

Best separation for traffic control agencies that are worried about it, at least on planets outside their Solar jump horizons, is to thrust straight back along the planet's orbital path. This adds the planet's velocity and the ship's acceleration together for the purposes of separation, and gets a ship out to the planet's jump horizon sooner.
Similarly, the ideal incoming destination is slightly in front of the planet, so the planet's velocity is speeding your way to a landing (or orbit).

 

[Reynard]

One of the reasons for having low or no real space vector at jump exit is somewhat similar to entering, at high speed, the on ramp of a major motorway while blinded until the last moment.
What is the turning and braking going to be like compared to other ships doing the same thing in that jump area? Succeeding there, pirates are going to know your speed and when you reach the 50D mark to slow or careen into the endpoint. Ships blasting from the port at full tilt to try outracing any perceived threat and entering jump space are taking serious chances at the other end.

Part of the vast astrogation computations is knowing where the target world(s) will be at exit so you are at or close to the 100D boundary for the most efficient fuel use. That creates those initial 'paths'. Add in knowing where both highports and downports will be at the best exit time and you have both ends of the path at any given moment. That close to a world there will be close traffic even if spread over the orbital or rotational periods of the world. Exit points to asteroid destinations will be far easier as they would orbit far slower and have no jump distance beyond a safe zone dependent on the size of the belt. The unknown factor is other ships in any area. Those honking big ship computers will be great for pirates to calculate all that information and plan. A little easier if they have someone on the ground feeding take offs.

Not perfect but still explains why pirates are in the ship encounter tables.

 

[Epicenter]

The weird thing about piracy in Traveller is that you actually don't have to worry about matching vectors or anything else. I know several people have pointed out the difficulty in getting an intercept course and so on, but it's not necessary. The weapons ranges in Traveller space combat are ridiculous. In most editions of Traveller* the TL15 starship lasers have ranges in millions of kilometers (to put this in scale, the distance from the Earth to Luna is about 384,400km). I've never quite understood what the original writers obsession was with massive scale, because that's physics breaking (inverse square law ... just how large are these lasers?) ... as well as making things a bit boring.

For instance 100D (safe jumping distance) from Earth is 1,274,200km. A typical TL15 starship laser has an effective range much, much further 100D, closer to 200D. A pirate can sit around 100D out from a planet and "camp" ... in theory.

And in theory, the target ship jumps in, the pirate simply trains his weapons on the merchant and tells the merchant if he doesn't heave to and zero his vector relative to the planet and prepare to be boarded (or dump his cargo into space more likely), he'll get blasted by the pirate. In space, it's empty, chances are the target doesn't have enough fuel to immediately jump out so there's nowhere to run. The merchant isn't going to make it to the planet before the pirate shoots him to pieces with more and heavier weapons than the merchant has ... it's up to the merchant to decide if the pirate actually has such weaponry. Of course, everyone else (including the local space patrol) has such long-ranged weapons as well.

There's other difficulties with being a pirate that make it unlikely, but intercepting the target isn't one of them: the range of space weapons ensures that.


* In MongTrav, the last range band is simply given as "Distant" and that's "50,000km+" with no real cap on what the real maximum range is as far as I've been able to find (in some other editions of Traveller, the effective range of lasers is listed). I've only been playing with the basic book, so if maximum ranges are listed in some other supplement, I haven't seen it.

 

[Reynard]

Use the encounter rules as they are, use the ship combat rules for the situation, resolve the action and determine the results as per the rules. Have fun. They don't have to be realistic just able to create an interesting and, hopefully, exciting event. Watch almost any of your favorite sci fi shows and movies and tell me they are soooo realistic. No? Tell me you love the action and situations and are willing to forgo some realism for a story. If Star Trek can maneuver and fire weapons and Star Wars can have ships roaring in a vacuum, then Traveller can have a few rules of the universe bent too.

Be a pirate.

 

[Bardicheart]

* In MongTrav, the last range band is simply given as "Distant" and that's "50,000km+" with no real cap on what the real maximum range is as far as I've been able to find (in some other editions of Traveller, the effective range of lasers is listed). I've only been playing with the basic book, so if maximum ranges are listed in some other supplement, I haven't seen it.

Take a look at High Guard space combat which puts Distant at 50-150,000km and Very Distant at 150,000 to 300,000km, IIRC. (Granted you have to look at two tables to figure that out, its something I think needs to be clarified if they ever do a reprint.) Most weapons (particularly those on small pirate ships) don't have the range beyond Distant at best. Also keep in mind that while you can shoot at extreme ranges, there are problems with accuracy.

Weapon range however is a secondary issue. Pirates need to do more than just shoot at something. They need to be able to dock / grapple and board it. Not much point (for a pirate) in shooting up a merchant vessel if you can't steal anything valuable.

Thus the real issue is a) the ability to dock / grapple (which is why speed and intercept vectors get discussed)and b) the response time from patrols or other ships. The further you are away from patrols the more time you have to disable a target, board it and steal stuff. More time is good, given enough time you could steal the whole ship. If you have very little time you could only grab a few valuables, maybe a few valuable looking hostages. If you are close to a planet or other patrol base such that response time is only a few minutes, then piracy becomes impractical. Do you really want to try boarding a vessel while your own ship is being shot at by patrols within a few minutes? Whereas if you target a ship several hours away from the nearest patrol base, then you've got an hour or two to grab stuff, maybe even take over the ship and steal the whole thing (or at least take it somewhere you can strip it completely without worrying about being attacked).

 

[Reynard]

For anyone with access to the original Journal of the Travellers Aide Society books or the collected version, there's an article in #19 entitled The Ecology of Piracy on the Spinward Marches. Great points given.

 

[Ataraxzy]

The "come to full stop before jump" was always the way we played it. Makes jump arrival safer for the average ship to arrive at a basic standstill instead of with a bad vector and say a non-starting M-Drive. The average "free trader" IMU is a bit "overdue with maintenance", "not current on the map software" and more often than not "crewed by the bottom of the class".

You can jump at speed if

• You have a good navigator, current charts and enough time for calculations
• It is "jump or die"
• You are too stupid to survive to an old age

Since your goal here seems to be to keep conservation of momentum: you want them to be 'stopped' and 'safe', because if you're not, you'll be 'travelling too fast in your out-system and could get hurt banging into something', you actually want to do exactly the opposite: make sure that your velocity is zero with respect to your destination, not your origin.

At first glance, stopping to jump seems like a good solution; but you run into the problem of relative velocities. You're stopped relative to what? the star? Then your speed relative to the planet you just left is in the thousands of m/s (Earth's orbital velocity is 29,800 m/s). The planet? Same problem in reverse. Then there's the real issue: velocity relative to the out-system you're jumping to. If you're stopped relative to the star, the out-system likely to be whizzing by at well over 100,000m/s (e.g. Barnard's Star: 142,000m/s)!

So, you've stopped relative to your local reference frame, and now, you've got to make up 140 thousand meters per second of velocity. It's actually safer to match speeds first, then jump. At least that way, you're only looking at a few tens of thousands of m/s, as opposed to potentially one hundred thousand.

Now, any set of 'charts' will let you know, to within a hundred meters or so, the orbital position and velocity of any body it tracks at any point in time, this stuff doesn't change over time (well, not over the time period of a mere 10,000 years or so ); the epicycle charts used by the Greek astronomers to track Mars are still just as accurate as they were when the Greeks created them (which is not to say you'd want to base your orbital insertion calculations on them...). So, with simple addition, you can match vectors with any tracked body in the system. Now, is the high-port likely to be tracked on a set of maps 200 years old? Probably not, but you have to come in beyond the 100d limit anyways; no big deal.

This actually makes ships easy to track: there's only going to be one system that has velocity characteristics that match the jumping ship's actions. If ships leave a detectable drive trail IYTU, then you can tell where a ship went simply by figuring out the vectors it was trying to match and looking those vectors up on a star chart.

 

[alex_greene]

I have a pack of magic nine inch nails

I think I've got that album.

 

[Reynard]

I'm not sure how my use of the word 'path' came to mean some fixed point in a solar system and I thought I expanded the meaning. It is never a fixed point especially in regard to the primary star. Regular paths taken by starships between jump and port are part of the planet and its 100D boundary though more complex points may include calculating any intervening star or nearby gas giant, more often the destination planet. Known worlds will have extensive data on ship files. Ships will know fairly accurately proper motion of the two star systems involved plus the rotation to the target world and the orbit of any high ports. At the time of jump to a world, the navigation will have the optimal exit point in relation to the final stop.

Most high ports are along the equator so the jump-in point will be in a plane with the equator. Even adding in the fact there's 360 degrees of space around the world it still makes the pathways to and from very limited. Now add in the X factor of unknown traffic. No computer knows what ships will be where, including intra-system vessels, before entering the system and making a sensor sweep. The heavier the traffic the more ships will use On Ramps and Off Ramps that would be on the charts; the Paths. The is also why zero vector during jump is necessary. Stop, look and go.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

This is going to sound like the utmost heresy, but in MTU piracy is on the outs. Cybercrime is the most popular form of thievery going: hack into the cargo manifests, redirect the destinations of the choice cargoes, let them be dropped off at Warehouse 17 rather than Warehouse 4, and the job's done with a minimum of fuss and no Naval ships bearing down upon you.

How do you do Cybercrime in the OTU?
Seems to me with the communications lag, there would be no universal internet throughout Charted Space, Each World would have its own internet, and probably any world with a population of 5 or less would not have any internet worth mentioning. Just imagine a planet with a population of 50,000, about the size of the town I live in, but spread over an entire planet, and lets say, as is often the case the tech level is rather low Our Tech Level according to the definition is Tech Level 8, which pretty much covers the last decade of the 20th century plus the entire 21st century, in which we now reside. So lets say the PCs live on a planet with a low tech level 8 and a population of around 50,000 on a garden world, that is you can go outside and breath the air without any special equipment, and it has a lively ecosystem containing organisms which can eat you and which you can sometimes eat. You suppose those 50,000 people or most of them would live on one settlement clustered around the Starport, Class C. I suspect such a community would not do much manufacturing at any rate, would largely be agricultural, and mostly to feed themselves at that, the surplus would be exported to local space colonies in other parts of the system, using high tech starships and imported system ships to do most of the hauling. A would be hacker would get quite frustrated on such a planet. He would probably live in a farm house or perhaps rent a room in town, he'd boot up his computer and try to hack into another computer in the next system. The town probably barely has an internet, as most people do farming and are not skilled with setting up internet infrastructures. The Computers are imported from off world and don' do much communicating at all, with most of the World beyond the range of a cellphone tower.

 

[alex_greene]

This is going to sound like the utmost heresy, but in MTU piracy is on the outs. Cybercrime is the most popular form of thievery going: hack into the cargo manifests, redirect the destinations of the choice cargoes, let them be dropped off at Warehouse 17 rather than Warehouse 4, and the job's done with a minimum of fuss and no Naval ships bearing down upon you.

How do you do Cybercrime in the OTU?
Seems to me with the communications lag, there would be no universal internet throughout Charted Space, Each World would have its own internet, and probably any world with a population of 5 or less would not have any internet worth mentioning. Just imagine a planet with a population of 50,000, about the size of the town I live in, but spread over an entire planet, and lets say, as is often the case the tech level is rather low Our Tech Level according to the definition is Tech Level 8, which pretty much covers the last decade of the 20th century plus the entire 21st century, in which we now reside. So lets say the PCs live on a planet with a low tech level 8 and a population of around 50,000 on a garden world, that is you can go outside and breath the air without any special equipment, and it has a lively ecosystem containing organisms which can eat you and which you can sometimes eat. You suppose those 50,000 people or most of them would live on one settlement clustered around the Starport, Class C. I suspect such a community would not do much manufacturing at any rate, would largely be agricultural, and mostly to feed themselves at that, the surplus would be exported to local space colonies in other parts of the system, using high tech starships and imported system ships to do most of the hauling. A would be hacker would get quite frustrated on such a planet. He would probably live in a farm house or perhaps rent a room in town, he'd boot up his computer and try to hack into another computer in the next system. The town probably barely has an internet, as most people do farming and are not skilled with setting up internet infrastructures. The Computers are imported from off world and don' do much communicating at all, with most of the World beyond the range of a cellphone tower.

And that is why the Patron did not choose you to go on the mission.

 

[Ataraxzy]

I'm not sure how my use of the word 'path' came to mean some fixed point in a solar system and I thought I expanded the meaning. It is never a fixed point especially in regard to the primary star. Regular paths taken by starships between jump and port are part of the planet and its 100D boundary though more complex points may include calculating any intervening star or nearby gas giant, more often the destination planet. Known worlds will have extensive data on ship files. Ships will know fairly accurately proper motion of the two star systems involved plus the rotation to the target world and the orbit of any high ports. At the time of jump to a world, the navigation will have the optimal exit point in relation to the final stop.

This is good stuff.

Most high ports are along the equator so the jump-in point will be in a plane with the equator. Even adding in the fact there's 360 degrees of space around the world it still makes the pathways to and from very limited. Now add in the X factor of unknown traffic. No computer knows what ships will be where, including intra-system vessels, before entering the system and making a sensor sweep. The heavier the traffic the more ships will use On Ramps and Off Ramps that would be on the charts; the Paths. The is also why zero vector during jump is necessary. Stop, look and go.

So they can arrive at nearly 100km/s relative to the body they're jumping to? As a comparison, a bullet goes around 1km/s, or 100 times slower. Zeroing your speed at your origin tends to increase your speed at your destination. Stars aren't static, they're flying past each other at astronomical speeds.

The stop & go is important where you don't have information: the destination. You have sensors that track the bodies in your vicinity and traffic control for heavily populated systems. Whatever your sensors pick up about the destination is going to be, on average, 1.5 years old for J1.

Your explanations aren't making physical sense to me.