I would say... yes. Your course and velocity remain the same. Your ship facing going in is, somewhat, relative, as the two systems will have different frames of reference, different angular momentums, even different angles on the elliptical planes. And it's space, so it's really all relative.
Vacuum rated cargo haulage
- Thread starter mavikfelna
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MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
No. I am not talking about relative to the new system. I am talking about relative to the ship's vector.
Maybe I am explaining it badly. If so, I apologize. Let Me try again.
If I am flying my ship to the jump point, do not change course or velocity, flip my ship 180 degrees so that the ship is traveling stern-first, will I come out of jump still traveling stern-first or not?
Edit - If I tape a Lego man on top of an arrow, facing backwards and fire the arrow, he will still be facing the same direction in relation to the path of the arrow at the start and at the end of its flight. I am asking if this is the same for a ship, its vector, and traveling through jumpspace.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Sort of depends as to where the spacetime rift is ripped.
The normal assumption is that it appears in front of the nose.
The normal assumption is that it appears in front of the nose.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Books says the bubble forms around the ship, so it doesn't appear to "enter" anything.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Bubble and rift are two different things.
The bubble retains the Einsteinian universe, whereas the rift is a hole in space.
The bubble retains the Einsteinian universe, whereas the rift is a hole in space.
MarcusIII
Cosmic Mongoose
The only place I have seen it described in the MT Ship Operators Manual pg. 12. It isn't nose first. It talks about the Lanthium grid visually energizing and the area around the hull starts glowing blue and a couple of seconds the ship is gone. The the blue patch then shrinks to nothing. Also the direction of the ship doesn't matter. The way the grid is energized determines the "tumble" into jump space and the travel therein. According to this source. But with Traveller there are probably lots of RAW sources that contradict each other. So that's why experienced and long time Refs just house rule lots
Yes. I would not consider the orientation of the ship to be a factor. You could be rotating on your axis (i.e. end over end) or spinning/rotating and it would make do difference for jump calculations.
Assuming your stern is pointed at the planet for 10hrs of acceleration and right before you jump you flip end over end so that the bow is pointing at the planet and THEN jump, you will arrive at your destination system along the same heading travelling stern-first.
What is unknown, or at least I'm unaware, is if a ship can/does make any sort of maneuvers while in jump space. It's been written elsewhere that no one goes EVA during a jump for risk of falling out and appearing somewhere else. The MGT jump-bubble is different than previous devices where you had lanthanum grids, so just how much maneuvering a ship can do before a jump bubble collapses is not defined. I would assume that ships do NOT do anything while in jump space other than wait for the bubble to collapse simply due to risk. Being stranded a parsec away from any system is basically a death sentence for that ship and its crew.
A JTAS article detailing all this is a great idea though. Soooo many questions about all this that's just not covered in the books.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If you have rockets, it's faster.
If it's the manoeuvre drive, it's slower, divide by a thousand.
Unless the jump path does a drive by within a thousand diameters of a gravity well.
If it's the manoeuvre drive, it's slower, divide by a thousand.
Unless the jump path does a drive by within a thousand diameters of a gravity well.
Never been a fan of the rocket afterburner idea that somehow makes ships have massive increases in G-acceleration. the amount of specific energy required in the fuel is crazy high. Some of these ships will have a great deal of mass due to the fact that they have collapsed armor - and that's just going to mass a whole lot. Yet they are still able to float like a butterfly. Traveller rules imply that mass is still there, even though all the jump and maneuver number ratings are volume based. To make that happen you have to have a magical field that negates mass. And physics tells us mass is part of the equation to determine how much energy is required to move the aforementioned mass.
It's a game and that's fine, but such things should be acknowledged and built into the overall rules base.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Nah, not a fan of that either.
I suspect it was altered for simplification, without actually working out the implications.
You don't need to spend much fuel in altering the facing.
I suspect it was altered for simplification, without actually working out the implications.
You don't need to spend much fuel in altering the facing.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Yeah. What is the actual mass of 14.4 dtons of Bonded Superdense on the Gazelle? (are they armored drop tanks as well?) Probably more than the whole rest of the ship combined.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
If they were armoured, it would be a lot harder to destroy them, or be damaged during explosive expulsion.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Not really. Touching the jump bubble destroys everything and the roll doesn't take armor into account, so it must not count versus a jump bubble.
Good question! A lot? Lol. I'm assuming condensed matter hull plating is just a few molecules thick plating over regular crystal iron. Otherwise it would be so dense that stuff just wouldn't work. Just how much that would mass I dunno. It certainly couldn't be as dense as neutronium (too dense at any size). Collapsed matter would, I assume, be far heavier than standard crystal iron, but would have to be reasonably massive. Which, in my opinion, is an argument against being able to armor a 50Dton small craft to armor factor 15, or even a 300/400dton small craft like an escort. I'd also say that drop tanks are NOT armored, and thus cannot be factored into hull armor.
If you have read any classic (i.e. 1950s) sci-fi, H.Beam.Piper had a lot of the same elements in Traveller (and he's cited as a source for Traveller) - contragravity ships that used collapsium (collapsed matter plated over nickel steel) for plating. It gave ships armor while still making components in a normal fashion. It makes a lot of sense from a manufacturing process (though exactly how you do the plating is, I suppose, a process best left to industrial engineers).
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
Yeah. It never says how thick the armor is, just how much total volume that it takes up. Also, doesn't Superdense require gravity manipulation or quantum-level manipulation to create something so dense that it doesn't exist naturally on normal planetary bodies? @Geir has said that the TL-19 Fabricator can make superdense since it builds from the quantum-level. Before that though "traditional manufacturing methods" must be used.
Edit - So, if we used Mass, we'd have to redo armor.
One would assume total volume is not much more since we are talking layers of molecules. The thing about armor though is not really just the thickness, but how it's engineered. Even the thickest of armor will buckle without proper support structure to take away the energy (kinetic) from the impact and safely channel it away from the point of impact. We don't really do much armor engineering today, but for about half a century of so the metallurgy as well as the engineering behind the armor plating. And there are concepts such as all-or-nothing, armored citadel, etc, forms of armor (i.e. what parts get heavier armor than others - and starships would have to, potentially, make same choices as ship designers as to where they'd leave less protection in order to minimize mass).
Scanning the rules I see the bonded superdense (TL14) is half the weight of superdense, though the description of it's construction leads me to believe that the size is no different (or thickness I suppose). From CT Striker:
According to CT Striker, Armor Rating 40 = 33.6cm of hard steel.
Taking the above toughness factors into account, you get the following hull thicknesses:
TL=7-9 is Composite Laminates ... 33.6/2 = 16.8cm hull thickness.
TL=10-11 is Crystaliron ... 33.6/4 = 8.4cm hull thickness
TL=12-13 is Superdense ...33.6/7 = 4.8cm hull thickness
TL=14-15 is Bonded Superdense ... 33.6/14 = 2.4cm hull thickness
Personally I think that ships should have more structure requirements for armor - 1% of hull structure for each point of armor. And max armor factors based upon displacement to eliminate the silly idea that small craft can be armored the same level that capital ships can. Just my take on it though. Some people like the idea of that, but not me.
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Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Since hull configuration, and tonnage, adjusts required percentage per armour factor, structural integrity may have been accounted for.
And if molecular density isn't uniform, could be that the surface is hardened, and the softer interior supports it.
And if molecular density isn't uniform, could be that the surface is hardened, and the softer interior supports it.
Hull structure isn't the same as armor structure. Standard hull structure isn't meant to channel massive amounts of energy away from the impact zone and provide reinforcement to the armor plating so it doesn't buckle. It's just there to provide structure and support for the ship under it's normal thrust ratings (and up to the normal engineering specs of failure at say 200% of structural stress factors).
A frequent book I like to cite is Conways Eclipse of the Big Gun. It's got a lot of illustrations and explanations under metallurgy, armor technology and how designers had to armor warships to take hits from large explosive and armor piercing shells. Space combat isn't much different in that hull armor needs to handle kinetic energy strikes, radiation, lasers and plasma.
Technically I'd expect actual starship armor to be a mix of normal plating as well as a sandwich of other materials that would allow for protection from radiation and plasma (i.e. it would need some sort of magnetic shielding to ward off plasma eating into it)
I don't think it's ever really been discussed, but ships in space can change the direction they point in very quickly, so even if a ship needs to align in one direction for Jump Vector reasons (Star Trek or Star Wars style), it can assume any other heading as soon as it exits jump anyway.
