Travel Times in the Third Imperium

[Reynard]

"That being said, I don't think this particular monarchy (the Third Imperium) would work very well. Communication speeds are too slow. There aren't enough aristocrats to perform all the functions both Mongoose and GURPS describe. It's weird to layer feudal vassal obligations on top of representative governments (something that the books go out of their way to say happens)."

The thing is the Imperium is an odd duck as a government type and only vaguely wears a veneer of a monarchy. It's not truly hereditary because ascension by assassination is a historical viable option plus there's a Moot for making decisions on ascension.

From reading in the various editions especially Milieu 0 the original emperor saw this was going to someday be BIG again and history showed the last couple empires were too monolithic to handle the task. His layers of nobility was a system of rule by proxy and allegiance to the whole. It only looks like a national monarchy in the simplest way. It is a government by network with command nodes at size stages on the galactic designation. It's so much greater and different than any of the world government types it becomes it's own designation. This also goes for travel and communications in the Imperium. Again, it's not about the Emperor, it's about the many parts handling those function in their locality and passing along that which has priority to higher levels.

I'm sure there are J6 X-boats at very important junctions all but Dukes and Archdukes never see or know about. These would exist for the most important communication and maybe very special parcel delivery across vast distances. Norris knew relatively quickly and he's, I believe the most distant of the domains. Same for other distant domains and sectors giving tome to brace for when war arrived. If I remember, the fighting spread out from the capital like a bomb with lessening intensity the farther from the core rather than battles everywhere as if the various side planned simultaneous war.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

"That being said, I don't think this particular monarchy (the Third Imperium) would work very well. Communication speeds are too slow. There aren't enough aristocrats to perform all the functions both Mongoose and GURPS describe. It's weird to layer feudal vassal obligations on top of representative governments (something that the books go out of their way to say happens)."

The thing is the Imperium is an odd duck as a government type and only vaguely wears a veneer of a monarchy. It's not truly hereditary because ascension by assassination is a historical viable option plus there's a Moot for making decisions on ascension.

The Roman Empire wasn't hereditary either, each Emperor chose his successor by adoption, later on it became hereditary, but it didn't start that way

From reading in the various editions especially Milieu 0 the original emperor saw this was going to someday be BIG again and history showed the last couple empires were too monolithic to handle the task. His layers of nobility was a system of rule by proxy and allegiance to the whole. It only looks like a national monarchy in the simplest way. It is a government by network with command nodes at size stages on the galactic designation. It's so much greater and different than any of the world government types it becomes it's own designation. This also goes for travel and communications in the Imperium. Again, it's not about the Emperor, it's about the many parts handling those function in their locality and passing along that which has priority to higher levels.

I'm sure there are J6 X-boats at very important junctions all but Dukes and Archdukes never see or know about. These would exist for the most important communication and maybe very special parcel delivery across vast distances. Norris knew relatively quickly and he's, I believe the most distant of the domains. Same for other distant domains and sectors giving tome to brace for when war arrived. If I remember, the fighting spread out from the capital like a bomb with lessening intensity the farther from the core rather than battles everywhere as if the various side planned simultaneous war.

 

[Reynard]

"The Roman Empire wasn't hereditary either, each Emperor chose his successor by adoption, later on it became hereditary, but it didn't start that way"

Soooo, what? The Roman Empire is the model of the Imperium? To that I say no. The Imperial model the creators Of Traveller envision is its own dog.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

"The Roman Empire wasn't hereditary either, each Emperor chose his successor by adoption, later on it became hereditary, but it didn't start that way"

Soooo, what? The Roman Empire is the model of the Imperium? To that I say no. The Imperial model the creators Of Traveller envision is its own dog.

Maybe the Holy Roman Empire, it has an Emperor and a hierarchy of feudal lords underneath him.

 

[dragoner]

I'm sure there are J6 X-boats at very important junctions all but Dukes and Archdukes never see or know about. These would exist for the most important communication and maybe very special parcel delivery across vast distances. Norris knew relatively quickly and he's, I believe the most distant of the domains. Same for other distant domains and sectors giving tome to brace for when war arrived. If I remember, the fighting spread out from the capital like a bomb with lessening intensity the farther from the core rather than battles everywhere as if the various side planned simultaneous war.

The Navy has J6 couriers and then there are the Imperiallines TJ's, also J6; I seem to recall that the x-boats really only moved at J2, due to the way their routes worked. But the news of the Emperor dying and civil war starting would move pretty fast on it's own, it would be a hard secret to keep.

 

[Reynard]

It's a secret until the news reached your part of space.

 

[dragoner]

I'm thinking of Norris being able to keep it a secret for long, esp with all those pesky Zho mind readers about. :mrgreen:

 

[Condottiere]

That's why line of succession, and a smooth one, tends to be important when actual power resides in the head of state.

 

[Epicenter]

I'm sure there are J6 X-boats at very important junctions all but Dukes and Archdukes never see or know about. These would exist for the most important communication and maybe very special parcel delivery across vast distances. Norris knew relatively quickly and he's, I believe the most distant of the domains. Same for other distant domains and sectors giving tome to brace for when war arrived. If I remember, the fighting spread out from the capital like a bomb with lessening intensity the farther from the core rather than battles everywhere as if the various side planned simultaneous war.

I'm not sure about that. The Naval courier system operates at J6 and carry messages for the Imperial Bureaucracy as well as fleet orders and so on because there's more of them than strictly necessary. It's the Imperial Navy operating it, so it's very secure as far as nobles are concerned. This is probably how most people (including the nobles and common people) think that really high-speed communications are carried, if they think about it at all.

The TJ network is probably something very very hush-hush. Archdukes and Dukes know about it (maybe not even all Dukes) but commoners and most nobles don't. Some parts of the Navy probably know about it.

Now for various reasons, I'm sure that there's powerful nobles with wealth who might have one (usually) or a few yachts (maybe) which have been adapted from their usual Jump drives to Jump-6 operation so a noble can get news and information around within a subsector quickly forming their own courier system, but these don't even cover a sector most likely.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

11,000 worlds, that means 22,000 hexes on average, the square root of 22,000 is 148 parsecs. Divide this number by Jump-6 and we have 25 jumps to cross the Imperium about 12 jumps to get to the center of the Imperium from the frontier. It takes 12 weeks to get a message from the frontier to the capital, that is 3 months. So any information that the Emperor gets from the borders of his Imperium is 3 months out of date! Technically you can have a Republic, an election would take 6 months to carry out just to tally all the votes and see who won, and make that information well known So out of a 4 year term 6 months are spend tabulating data and counting votes to see who won. All the elected Senators would have to take Jump-6 relays to get toe the core so they can begin serving their terms.

 

[simonh]

11,000 worlds, that means 22,000 hexes on average, the square root of 22,000 is 148 parsecs. Divide this number by Jump-6 and we have 25 jumps to cross the Imperium about 12 jumps to get to the center of the Imperium from the frontier. It takes 12 weeks to get a message from the frontier to the capital, that is 3 months. ...

That's in a highly idealised version of the Imperium with a perfectly regular and efficient X-Boat route system. I know you like to think in terms of perfect, idealised, flawless systems but practical issues once again raise their ugly head. The problem is that, if you look at the actual X-Boat route system, it's far from perfect. It's highly circuitous, with loops around min-voids with few systems and regions with systems that are under-developed.

Check out the route from Glisten to Regina within the Spinward Marches. It's 27 parsecs in a direct line, but the X-Boat route follows 44 parsecs, and not all those are 6-parsec jumps. In fact there are 18 jumps in the route (I'm not perfect, that's just my count). So instead of taking 5 weeks, a message takes 18 weeks to traverse the network.

The route from ATADL to Regina, the most likely route from the Domain of Deneb for any message coming from core, is 46 parsecs direct. It's about 22 X-Boat jumps though. If you bypass as many nodes as possible and try for 6-hex jumps between nodes on the x-boat route as often as you can, I think you can get that down to 11 jumps, but that's still about 40% (3/8) less efficient than a perfect system of routes. I'm not sure if the X-Boat route works like that though. Are there ultra-express boats that take long jumps along the network? Anyway, that 11 jumps doesn't even get you half way from Regina to Core.

That's also assuming that the orrigin and destination of your message are actually themselves both on the X-Boat network. If they're not, you can add a few weeks on at either end.

Simon Hibbs

Edit - I seem to remember some speculation back in the day that Norris operates a secret route through Reft or Corridor sector, employing empty-hex resupply bases, and that's how he got the news of the assassination 'impossibly' fast. However, without something like that, The Claw imposes a steep delay on any news from the core of the Imperium to the Spinward Marches, on top of the usual X-Boat route issues investigated above. - Never mind, I just re-read Epicenter's excellent post on this on page 1. Must have not taken it in first time around.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

11,000 worlds, that means 22,000 hexes on average, the square root of 22,000 is 148 parsecs. Divide this number by Jump-6 and we have 25 jumps to cross the Imperium about 12 jumps to get to the center of the Imperium from the frontier. It takes 12 weeks to get a message from the frontier to the capital, that is 3 months. ...

That's in a highly idealised version of the Imperium with a perfectly regular and efficient X-Boat route system. I know you like to think in terms of perfect, idealised, flawless systems but practical issues once again raise their ugly head. The problem is that, if you look at the actual X-Boat route system, it's far from perfect. It's highly circuitous, with loops around min-voids with few systems and regions with systems that are under-developed.

Check out the route from Glisten to Regina within the Spinward Marches. It's 27 parsecs in a direct line, but the X-Boat route follows 44 parsecs, and not all those are 6-parsec jumps. In fact there are 18 jumps in the route (I'm not perfect, that's just my count). So instead of taking 5 weeks, a message takes 18 weeks to traverse the network.

The route from ATADL to Regina, the most likely route from the Domain of Deneb for any message coming from core, is 46 parsecs direct. It's about 22 X-Boat jumps though. If you bypass as many nodes as possible and try for 6-hex jumps between nodes on the x-boat route as often as you can, I think you can get that down to 11 jumps, but that's still about 40% (3/8) less efficient than a perfect system of routes. I'm not sure if the X-Boat route works like that though. Are there ultra-express boats that take long jumps along the network? Anyway, that 11 jumps doesn't even get you half way from Regina to Core.

That's also assuming that the orrigin and destination of your message are actually themselves both on the X-Boat network. If they're not, you can add a few weeks on at either end.

Simon Hibbs

Edit - I seem to remember some speculation back in the day that Norris operates a secret route through Reft or Corridor sector, employing empty-hex resupply bases, and that's how he got the news of the assassination 'impossibly' fast. However, without something like that, The Claw imposes a steep delay on any news from the core of the Imperium to the Spinward Marches, on top of the usual X-Boat route issues investigated above. - Never mind, I just re-read Epicenter's excellent post on this on page 1. Must have not taken it in first time around.

Don't you think the Imperium could afford something like that? Imagine a radial network of jump-6 route from the core to the periphery in all directions, along these routes priority messages are sent, this works in principle much like those bonfire networks on mountain tops in Lord of the Rings, although X-Boats can carry more information. One node begins on the Imperial border, and lets say the Solomani Navy was invading, the message gets sent to the priority X-boat network. An X-Boat makes a 6 parsec jump to an empty hex, where another fully fueled X-boat awaits, a coded transmission is sent from the arriving X-Boat to the departing X-boat which then makes an immediate jump and so on. A fuel depot exists in the empty hex where the just arriving X-boat can refuel and then jump back to its original position to gather new messages. the X-Boats form a relay, jumping in a straight line towards Capitol to minimize the communication delay. No expense is spared, if there is no star in a hex, there is a fuel depot station and an awaiting X-Boat ready to receive messages and make an immediate Jump. In some cases, you can have staged X-Boats, a larger X-boat with a Jump-6 carries a smaller X-boat fully fueled to make another 6 parsec jump upon arrival, both stages are controlled by the pilot, the Jump Booster stage is discarded in an empty hex with its precise location recorded for a later recovery.

 

[simonh]

Don't you think the Imperium could afford something like that? Imagine a radial network of jump-6 route from the core to the periphery in all directions, along these routes priority messages are sent, this works in principle much like those bonfire networks on mountain tops in Lord of the Rings, although X-Boats can carry more information.

The X-Boat system doesn't work like that, for practical and cost reasons. There are faster networks than the X-Boat system though which operate as you decribe, but not symmetrically Imperium-wide. The cost of such a system would be many orders of magnitude more than the x-boat system, which takes advantage of existing industrial and starfaring infrastructure.

There is apparently a secret courier route utilising empty hex jumps across the Great Rift for example, but it's just the one route, not a spider web of empty hex routes criss-crossing the Great Rift in all directions. There are also shortcut routes to bypass the biggest detours in the x-boat network, but they don't completely ignore actual astrography. Maintaining permanent relay bases in uninhabited or low tech systems and empty hexes is going to be incredibly expensive. It makes sense that they'd do it where the payoff is the biggest though.

It's worth looking at the actual map of the Imperium and looking at the astrography say on the route from Regina to Core. Where would you put the relay stations? How many of them are empty hexes? Would you be prepared to make any compromises for significant worlds along the route? Would the relay stations only ever be used for core-Regina traffic, or would they be used for other routes, in which case what would those look like? Where would they go?

Any system built along perfect symmetrical J-6 routes would need to link up to the 'real world' for resupply and to take messages to actual destinations. How would that work? What do you think the cost difference would be between a perfect network and one that aligned to real astrography, and where do you think the ideal balance point is? All interesting questions.

Simon Hibbs

 

[F33D]

It takes 12 weeks to get a message from the frontier to the capital, that is 3 months.

You are COMPLETELY ignoring how Jump star ships have to operate vis-a-vis fuel, equipment, crews, etc.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

It takes 12 weeks to get a message from the frontier to the capital, that is 3 months.

You are COMPLETELY ignoring how Jump star ships have to operate vis-a-vis fuel, equipment, crews, etc.

It doesn't have to be the same starship that makes jump after jump, you have a starship relay instead. One starship is stationed in the middle of interstellar space next to a fuel depot, the location of the fuel depot is kept a state secret by the Imperium because it wants only its x-boats to use it. The fuel depot is a space station that is resupplied by a fuel tanker, and the lonely scout just lives in the space station, bidding his time until another x-boat jumps in with an important message, he receives the message via radio or perhaps a laser, and once transmission is complete and acknowledgement of message received is sent back to the incoming X-boat, the x-boat stationed at the fuel depot makes a jump out, the incoming X-boat then docks with the fuel depot station, refuels his ship and waits 2 weeks for the ship sent out to come back when it has completed its led of the Jump relay, then the incoming scout X-boat then returns to the hex it was stationed at and waits for the next message to be relayed, or is relived by a rotating crew etc.

So what part am I missing?

This is similar to how the Pony Express worked out West, except in that case, a rider would ride his horse a a gallop from station to station and at each station a fresh horse and sometimes a fresh rider would be waiting to take the satchel and continue the journey, but instead of horses, here we use Jump-6 X-boats.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Don't you think the Imperium could afford something like that? Imagine a radial network of jump-6 route from the core to the periphery in all directions, along these routes priority messages are sent, this works in principle much like those bonfire networks on mountain tops in Lord of the Rings, although X-Boats can carry more information.

The X-Boat system doesn't work like that, for practical and cost reasons. There are faster networks than the X-Boat system though which operate as you decribe, but not symmetrically Imperium-wide. The cost of such a system would be many orders of magnitude more than the x-boat system, which takes advantage of existing industrial and starfaring infrastructure.

There is apparently a secret courier route utilising empty hex jumps across the Great Rift for example, but it's just the one route, not a spider web of empty hex routes criss-crossing the Great Rift in all directions. There are also shortcut routes to bypass the biggest detours in the x-boat network, but they don't completely ignore actual astrography. Maintaining permanent relay bases in uninhabited or low tech systems and empty hexes is going to be incredibly expensive. It makes sense that they'd do it where the payoff is the biggest though.

It's worth looking at the actual map of the Imperium and looking at the astrography say on the route from Regina to Core. Where would you put the relay stations? How many of them are empty hexes? Would you be prepared to make any compromises for significant worlds along the route? Would the relay stations only ever be used for core-Regina traffic, or would they be used for other routes, in which case what would those look like? Where would they go?

Any system built along perfect symmetrical J-6 routes would need to link up to the 'real world' for resupply and to take messages to actual destinations. How would that work? What do you think the cost difference would be between a perfect network and one that aligned to real astrography, and where do you think the ideal balance point is? All interesting questions.

Simon Hibbs

There are probably inhabited hexes 1 or two hexes from an empty hex along a straight line, as an alternative, the Imperium could operate staged X-boats with throw away "bottom" stages. The "Bottom" stage would carry the upper stage as cargo and both the Bottom and Upper Stages would have Jump-6 drives, this would enable an x-boat to cross a 12 parsec rift by sacrificing a part of itself.

Looking at the basic rules a 1200 ton starship would need a Jump Drive Z to get a Jump-6, that is 125 tons, it would need Maneuver Drive F for Maneuver-1, that is 11 tons, It would need power plant Z, which is 73 tons, and it would need 48 tons of fuel for 2 weeks power plant operation and 720 tons of fuel for a jump 6. that comes to 977 tons for all the components I mentioned. This leaves 223 tons of cargo. This bottom stage needen't have a bridge, as the bridge is located in the upper stage which detaches to make a second jump after it is delivered. The crew, the staterooms and the life support are all located in the upper stage.

 

[simonh]

There are probably inhabited hexes 1 or two hexes from an empty hex along a straight line, as an alternative, the Imperium could operate staged X-boats with throw away "bottom" stages. The "Bottom" stage would carry the upper stage as cargo and both the Bottom and Upper Stages would have Jump-6 drives, this would enable an x-boat to cross a 12 parsec rift by sacrificing a part of itself.

How often do you think the network would need to carry a message so important it was worth sacrificing large chunks of ships all along every route to carry the message? That would be one very important messaage. Also, all these ships would need to be on perpetual standby never used for any other purpose, because otherwise you couldn't guarantee they'd be ready when needed.

Let's look at one segment of a network like this, and assume this is a functioning communications system in continuous use. You have two nodes in empty hexes equipped with fuel storage, basic maintenance facilities, docks, crew and accomodation for the courier boat crews when they're between jumps.

If you had just one ship and you sent a message to the next node and another urgent message arrived, you'd have to wait 2 weeks to send it. So to guarantee no more than 1 day delay between relays you'd need to operate 14 vessels between each pair of nodes. That's one vessel departing each node, for each day of the week in both directions. Also you're driving these crew and ships really hard, much harder than a typical vessel, so you'd need to regularly rotate ships out for maintenance so your actual need for these courier ships would probably be higher, to allow for ships out for maintenance. Let's say you have 2 ships out for maintenance per node at any given time so that's 16 ships required per node. That's not allowing for any redundancy for ships with system failures or maintenance issues. To allow for redundancy of 1 ship per leg, you'd be looking at around 18 ships total for each inter-station segment of the network.

If these are 100 dton vessels, that's a fuel requirement of 60 * 14 = 840 dtons of fuel per week just for messaging operations, plus fuel for the vessels rotating out for maintenance, so that's around 1000 dtons of jump fuel per week just for the couriers. Power plant fuel is on top of that.

Bear in mind the tankers and any other ship visiting the station needs to have enough fuel available to jump out from the station again. Let's say a station is only J-2 from a major starport. That means a fuel tanker reupplying it needs to carry enough fuel for 2 J-2 jumps for itself (there and back), plus 1000 dtons of jump fuel. So that's 40% of it's own volume plus another 1000 dtons just for jump fuel. These are big ships, and you need at a minimum 2 of them because it takes each one 2 weeks to do a run to the station. In reality you'd probably need 3 of them to allow for refitting, maintenance and redundancy. If you're more than J-2 froma decent starport, you'd need bigger ships and possibly intermediate supply stations to service them.

However you would also need ships to carry messages to nearby systems, to transfer replacement crews to and from the nodes, and to carry other required supplies for the node stations and couriers, including power plant fuel. This is an antire fleet of vessels, some of them huge tankers and supply ships with hundreds of courier crew, station personnel, supply ship crew and service personnel, all operating round the clock. All of this is per node.

Bear in mind some of these nodes are J-6 or more from a decent starport. The logistical cost of supporting one of those is left as an exercise for the reader. Suffice to say, a supply ship carrying fuel and crew to an isolated node J-6 away is a tricky problem. For a start it needs to carry 120% of it's own volume in jump fuel just to get there and back, let alone power plant fuel, cargo, accomodation, etc. You can do creative things with drop tanks of course but the supply ship drop tanks are sacrificed and thrown away on every single journey. Should be fun doing the calculations and totaling up the cumulative costs involved.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

One answer for resupply ships is they are automated and are going slower than light and thus do not need a jump drive, If you launch one after another at even intevals they will also arrive at the depot in an empty hex at even intervals. The Imperium has been around for 1100 years, they had plenty of time to send streams to tanker ships to fuel depots in empty hexes on a regular schedule. So an X-boat with crew arrives there after making a Jump-6 replacing another scout who jumps out, there is a regular supply line of tanker starships which were launched a century ago.

Yes, I know what your thinking, the fuel tankers are expensive, well lets cut them down shall we.
Lets say the fuel tankers consist of nothing but a fuel tank and a maneuver drive. Maneuver drives are cheap and so are fuel tanks, the power plant we leave behind. Instead we used beamed power to accelerate each fuel tanker to 20% of the speed of light, and every 20 years we launch a new one, by 120 years there are 6 such fuel tankers spaced 1 parsec apart. To use the relay, you use the same power beam system to accelerate the X-boat to 20% of the speed of light so it matches the velocities of each of the fuel tankers, then it makes a jump, refuels at a fuel tanker and then it makes another jump, refuels at the next fuel tanker and so on. The ship uses its own power plant to power the refueling. Or we can use the relay system, The X-boat moving at one fifth the speed of light is docked to a fuel tanker, the power plant is running the life support at minimal power and the scout himself is living on stored food., another scout ship shows up, relays the message and the next scout makes the jump, or the scout simply transfers to the next ship which the previous scout made sure was already fueled and ready to go, this minimizes the time spend otherwise transferring fuel. Ones the destination is reach the scout transmits the message, and then begins slowing down from one fifth the speed of light, at 2 gs this takes about a month!

 

[simonh]

Yes, I know what your thinking, the fuel tankers are expensive, well lets cut them down shall we.
Lets say the fuel tankers consist of nothing but a fuel tank and a maneuver drive. Maneuver drives are cheap and so are fuel tanks, the power plant we leave behind. Instead we used beamed power to accelerate each fuel tanker to 20% of the speed of light, and every 20 years we launch a new one, by 120 years there are 6 such fuel tankers spaced 1 parsec apart. To use the relay, you use the same power beam system to accelerate the X-boat to 20% of the speed of light so it matches the velocities of each of the fuel tankers, then it makes a jump, refuels at a fuel tanker and then it makes another jump, refuels at the next fuel tanker and so on. The ship uses its own power plant to power the refueling. Or we can use the relay system, The X-boat moving at one fifth the speed of light is docked to a fuel tanker, the power plant is running the life support at minimal power and the scout himself is living on stored food., another scout ship shows up, relays the message and the next scout makes the jump, or the scout simply transfers to the next ship which the previous scout made sure was already fueled and ready to go, this minimizes the time spend otherwise transferring fuel. Ones the destination is reach the scout transmits the message, and then begins slowing down from one fifth the speed of light, at 2 gs this takes about a month!

So each relay ship spends how long between relay stations? A bit over 2 months? Lets say 10 weeks, or 70 days.

So to send one message ship per day in each direction you need around 140 relay ships continuously operating between each pair of stations. Thats assuming no spare capacity or ships out for maintenance. That would probably push it up to about 160 ships. Er. This is supposed to be better?

Also you need to now consider the extra ppt fuel required to operate the M-drive long enough to get up to 20% C and slow back down again, in addition to the 60% Jump fuel requirement. These relay ships are going to need to be a lot bigger than 100 dtons.

Then lets consider the STL refueling ships. If you have 2 relay ships jumping out from each tanker every day (one in each direction) and each relay ship is 100 dtons that's 120 dtons of fuel consumption per day. With 20 years between fuel ships, thats a total required capacity per fuel ship of 876,000 dtons of jump fuel. Plus ppt fuel for the jump ships as well of course.

But of course these aren't 100 dton message ships. They're now much, much bigger because they need to ppt endurace for 40% C in deta V. That could push the total fuel required for each station up well over a million dtons. That doesn't include the drives and fuel to get to 20% c themselves.

Simon Hibbs

 

[Condottiere]

I'd just do tanker relays, and probably a scheduled daily flight between hubs.