What a difference a day makes....

[PoppySeed45]

Captain, I think we are not really far apart in our opinions on this.

I am just trying to find a way to reconcile a "regional time lag" of the
kind you describe and consider useful (as I do) with shorter travel ti-
mes over long distances (which my setting requires - otherwise the
characters would never be able to represent their colony in Terra's
diplomatic circles).

Actually, I sorta like this idea WITH the slow travel involved. It would be the situation of the ambassadors going to another country and having to act on their own in their country's best interest.

I'm reading a novel now by Dumas (The Last Cavalier) where a character is sent as France's representative to the Holy See during Napoleon's reign. What's interesting is the tension that communication lag causes - one of the ambassadors is bored, but since France proper isn't watching over his shoulder, he does a few things on his own, while the mission itself goes on.

Also, there's a corsair who does all sorts of crazy stuff with his ship and crew since they've got very bare orders at all - they're out for months at a time, upholding France's "commercial interests" out in the Indian Ocean.

Personally, I'd LOVE to run that campaign you mentioned - they're the reps from their colony, which is, say, three months away or something at Jump 3 (I don't know the sizes you need or want here). So, they run the mission, with instructions arriving with couriers or through the x-boat network every few months, and reports sent back the same way. It would make player decisions crucial...whereas, nowadays, ambassadors, while important, are little more than mouthpieces. Anything happens at all, they wait for word from their government. In the Age of Sail, a diplomat/ambassador was negotiator/spy/soldier/businessman wrapped all into one. Much more interesting, in my view.

YMMV and all that.

 

[Gee4orce]

how about this instead?

jump 1 goes 1 parsec in one week
jump 2 goes 2 parsecs in a week OR 1 parsec in 1/2 week
jump 3 goes 3 parsecs in a week OR 1 parsec in 1/3 week ( a little over 2 days )
jump 4 goes 4 parsecs in a week OR 1 parsec in 1/4 week ( a little under 2 days )
etc.
jump 6 can go a parsec in a little over a day

It's always been a staple of Traveller canon that a jump takes a week - no matter how far you go. That said, I do like the idea of faster ships taking less time to do short jumps.

What effect does this have on in-system jumping though ? At most, a jump to the outer system will take an hour or less even in a J1 vessel - in a faster vessel you'll be there in minutes ! Do you still use a parsec's worth for fuel for this kind of jump, or less ? How do you even calculate that ?

A modification could be this: the fuel use is some function of speed and distance travelled in relation to jump rating. A fast ship could jump a sort distance faster, or travel slower at reduced fuel usage, or some combination of these parameters. I'm trying to work out exactly how this would hang together. I think i'd rule that the minimum jump is J1 equivalent, no matter how short the jump, just to simplify things though.

It's a nice idea, but I think it will change significantly the feel of a typical star system, making the worlds feel more interconnected, and making it harder to create a feeling of isolation in any system that has an inhabited world and starport. I kind of like the way that deep outer system worlds in Traveller are hard to get to and feel very cut off and remote. It makes them a great place for those pirate bases, Ancient's sites, and secret research facilities !

Also, I realised something else about the 1day/jump suggestion: it would likely homogenise star systems more than is apparent in the OTU. If you look at a subsector generated with the standard rules you'll see oddities like high population worlds with non-breathable atmosphere's right next to uninhabited garden planets. If it takes at least a week to get to another world you can at least use that as part of the explanation why nobody has emigrated, but when it only takes a day to get there...well, it's a lot harder to come up with a reasonable explanation.

Think about the real world: before cheap commercial flights it was a big thing to emigrate. People still did it, but it tended to be a one-way trip, because it could take weeks of sailing to get from Europe to Australia for example. Nowadays, you can be anywhere on the planet in a day, and relatively cheaply. I know people who've emigrated to opposite sides of the planet who still travel back to see their families every Christmas !

Edit: (Further thoughts)

So you could assume that the as-listed jump ratings for ships and their fuel use is for their maximum range and performance. Lets assume that a ship can jump at lower than it's nominal rating, call this the 'effective jump rating' eg. a J4 ship can make a J3 jump, and that's an effective jump rating of J3

Say that fuel use is (effective jump rating / nominal jump rating), and time taken is (actual distance / effective jump rating) x weeks. Minimum jump distance is J1, even micro-jumps in-system take as long as a J1 jump

So, a J1 ship can only ever jump 1 parsec a week. Simple.

A J2 ship can jump 2 parsecs a week at full fuel cost, or 1 parsec in a week at 1/2 fuel, or 1 parsec in 1/2 a week at full fuel

A J3 ship can jump 3 parsecs in a week, full fuel. 1 parsec in 1/3 week at full fuel, 1 parsec in a week at 1/3 fuel, or any combination in between.

A J6 vessel can jump 1 parsec or less in just over a day, but it costs it all it's fuel. Or it can take a bit longer to make the same jump and save fuel. If it jumped 1 parsec at J3 it would only use 1/2 of it's fuel (therefore allowing for immediate return trip), and get there in only 1/3 of a week, or about 2.3 days.

It's maximum efficiency being 1 parsec a week at only 1/6 of it's fuel. That means it could make 6 J1s in a row, but it could have done the same distance in one week anyway: the only reason I can see for needing to do this when fuel supplies are not reliable in intermediate systems.

I think this approach gives a lot of strategic flexibility to the operators of faster ships - make a slower jump in order to save fuel and be able to make a hasty second jump if need be, or go full speed and get there in a fraction of the time.

Of course, all of this applies if you choose 'days' as your unit of measure for jump times, instead of 'weeks' (6 divides into 24 a bit easier than it does into 7 as well !)

 

[rust]

Personally, I'd LOVE to run that campaign you mentioned - they're the reps from their colony, which is, say, three months away or something at Jump 3 (I don't know the sizes you need or want here).

This is almost exactly the kind of situation I am trying to create.

The colonists managed to get their hands on a badly damaged explorer
ship and repaired it, its hyperdrive enables the ship to travel 2 parsec
per day.
The sector main world is 14 parsec away, so it takes them one week to
travel there, the right time lag to force the characters not to rely on the
Colonial Office's help too often.
Terra, the capital of the Solar Federation, is 101 parsec away, so the co-
lonists' "Destiny's Call" can reach it in 51 days, a good time lag to ensu-
re that their actions there cannot be based on direct orders by the colo-
ny's council.
And, as mentioned above, the hyperdrive is useless for interplanetary tra-
vel, its minimum travel distance is greater than the size of the average
system - the nearest possible destination would be the outer Oort cloud.

With a typical Traveller jump drive the entire setting would have to be ve-
ry much different.
The Solar Federation would have to be much smaller, or the travel time
from a remote colony on the fringe of it to the capital world would be al-
most a year - too long for meaningful interaction between the colony and
the centre.

 

[AKAramis]

Historically, colonies acted like colonies specifically because of the lack of direct communication.

When you eliminate the comm lag, you also eliminate the independence.

Since the 1930's, comm lag has been less than travel time. In system, it will stay that way for the entirety of the foreseeable future.

extrasolar, however, we can play with...

As comm lags increase, more and more independence of colonial operations and other local governments rises, simply because the inability to react to local needs precludes remote handling.

Take the state of Deseret... it arose in an area with a 3-4 month comm lag, and no official agents-loyal. Founded by religious separatists, it thrived... until the point where the military command was close enough to notice that these folks had (1) annoyed the abo's, (2) declared themselves a state , and (3) established a colonial government sans approval of Congress. The Union eventually broke deseret up; parts of it are in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Colorado, and California.

 

[Ishmael]

What effect does this have on in-system jumping though ? At most, a jump to the outer system will take an hour or less even in a J1 vessel - in a faster vessel you'll be there in minutes ! Do you still use a parsec's worth for fuel for this kind of jump, or less ? How do you even calculate that ?

I don't see too much problem with it...it isn't the OTU after all.
Using the progression I mentioned, in-system jumps might take seconds in j-space, but so what?
Given that coming within 100d ( which should be figured using gravitational stresses as opposed to object diameter ) precipitates a ship out of j-space, any planet inside the star's "100d" cannot be jumped to with micro-jumps. No path for jumping can go through such a jump-shadow, so being very close to a world and on the orbital plane of the system means that some areas cannot be jumped to except during certain parts of the year unless multiple jumps are taken which means considering fuel as if Dreaded EHJ's are possible ( which they are IMTU ). If multiple micro-jumps are taken, the time will be more dependent upon checking the drive system, calibrating the grid sequence, etc, etc. than spending time in j-space.
Thrusting to a location where the jump can begin,free from jump-shadowing, will depend on the type of m-drives a ship has. Only thruster plates will give any real acceleration as grav-thrusters won't work effectively outside gravity wells and the 100d limit. Therefore, below a certain tech level ( 11 iirc ), reaction drives will have to be used and that means limited burns ( perhaps at a fraction of 1g because of the mass of the ships ) and drifting which takes time.

Just use a constant fuel use for entering jump times the jump number used. This won't change regardless of time spent in j-space because the energy is to 'rip' open a hole and 'tumble' through to get in and ,again, to come out.

Unless I screwed up the numbers, a jump-1 might spend about 2 seconds in j-space when performing a 1AU micro-jump. Most of the travel time would include thrusting to to a proper jump departure point free from jump-shadow interference and then doing all the run-up procedures. Popping in and out of j-space so quickly will probably be very uncomfortable/painful.
In a laboratory experiment scale, a micro-jump might look an awful lot like quantum electron tunneling. This might make a basis for technobulls**t for background.

hmmmm
jump-drive = 1 long quantum tunnel transit
Stutterwarp = lots and lots of short, tiny quantum tunnel transits.
both in the same universe....
Which tech is better?

 

[Gee4orce]

Something just occurred to me, regarding the original poster's original suggestion of 1day/parsec: why not use the standard Timing table for skill checks ?

The baseline time increment for a jump is 10 hours, but the engineer can use the standard 'going faster or slower' rules on pg.50 to move the time increment one or two rows for a dm to the jump roll. (I think I'd probably limit this to a maximum of 1 row up or down, for Jump travel though).

So the engineer can attempt to reduce the length of a jump, by at the risk of triggering a misjump, or (as most of them probably routinely do) play it safe and make the jump long but safe.

If you combine this with the 'divide time by Jump rating' idea discussed above, you have a lot of options and scope when it comes to Jump travel. I'm reminded of a certain starship pilot who claims to have the fastest ship in the galaxy, and chides his youthful companion that plotting a jump "ain't like dusting crops, boy !"

 

[StephenT]

For instance: there's been a murder on a remote base or outside normal jurisdiction, and the player's boss at HQ calls them in to investigate. Except, by the time they get there, the crime is, at the very least, 2 weeks old...

Why is the boss calling in a gang of PCs, instead of the proper authorities?

In the Traveller OTU, the reason is because the police will take weeks to arrive, and the players are right there so they get the job. If you reject OTU travel times, you have to come up with some other reason why a bunch of skuzzy adventurers are being trusted with something that in our 21st century world would be handled by the government...

 

[rust]

Historically, colonies acted like colonies specifically because of the lack of direct communication.
When you eliminate the comm lag, you also eliminate the independence.

History also moved in the opposite direction: The European countries had
to grant independence to their colonies at a time when the communication
lag was the shortest in their entire history.

So, while the comm lag may be an important factor, it can obviously not
be the decisive one, or the British Empire would now be stronger than
ever before.

 

[captainjack23]

In a laboratory experiment scale, a micro-jump might look an awful lot like quantum electron tunneling. This might make a basis for technobulls**t for background.

While I'm always up for a friendly discussion of technobabble, (no, really ? :shock: ), I like to always remember that while that kind of IRL justifiction is important to traveller, it never has seemed to be more important than setting, and certainly less than the mechanics of the game.

As with comic books, and lots of fiction, continuity and justification is almost always in retrospect. I strongly suspect that the details of the setting mechanics were developed first, and the mechanisms for explaining them afterward. Which in many ways seems to be the crux of why we may never resolve the issue of jump and jumpspace (and yes, EHJs).

Unlike TRW (the real world) explanation has a goal of accurate description, and an ultimate yardstick based on approximations of what is observed; all discussions are aimed towards resolving the question, and your liking for the issue is irrelevent.

In a game world, reality can be an issue, but one which can, I think, always be trumped by playability/enjoyment derived fromb the setting. In many ways playability is a final yardstick: it isn't real, and if you don't like it, you don't like it.

I have yet to see a backstory or technobabble revision that has made an unpalatable game palatable where the story or mechanic is the issue, and this applies to evrything from warp technobabble, starsystem generation, or social models. If you dislike the setting, it is extremely unlikely that any amount of backstory change, IRL revision, explanation or criticism will help.

This is not to buy into the idea that this is a binary choice; simply accepting that the issue is fictional does not automatically mean that one has to accept that everything goes - for one's own game; and , in traveller (as a setting), we do have the situation where we are playing in someone else's game, to a greater or lesser extent. I think it's the engineering/science/historical narrative style of writing that throws people into a mode where they feel compelled to treat it as a real description - which is its strength, really, but with the unfortunate side effect of endless argument about what works and is real.

Not to say that such discussion isn't necessary or shouldn't be attempted; far from it. Just understand that as with any hypothetical discussion, one can never have any final yardstick of correctness, or even a motivation for concensus or resolution. Which is why its crucial that one accepts that the only proper audience is oneself, and ones players, who volunteer to....suspend some aspect of their own worldview to participate. In other words, I guess, "argue nice".


Well. That was self indulgent. Thanks to those who read it this far.

And, to get back on topic, the weirdness of spacetravel in traveller has always appealed insofar as it differentiates it from more common SF tropes -at least these days, it is a remarkably different SF setting.
Plus, I think that violating TRW constant that time required to travel is proportional to speed really goes a long way in letting folks know that this is a different universe...much as (I think) Magic and Dragons do for fantasy games.

Oooh hey ! There's room for a whole discussion of quantum vs inrcemental belief suspension as it relates to the RPG experience -to whit: is a game more effective in terms of immersion if it incrementally differs from the players experience of the real world in lots of ways, or makes one big (but consistent) jump ? I'll shut up now.

 

[captainjack23]

Historically, colonies acted like colonies specifically because of the lack of direct communication.
When you eliminate the comm lag, you also eliminate the independence.

History also moved in the opposite direction: The European countries had
to grant independence to their colonies at a time when the communication
lag was the shortest in their entire history.

So, while the comm lag may be an important factor, it can obviously not
be the decisive one, or the British Empire would now be stronger than
ever before.

Excellent point, but one can argue that the same empire is in existence, and stronger than ever if one ignores the name of the country as a detail, and looks at the authority structure. The same basic groups are still running the empire, they just live in different houses. No, this isn't a NWO/Illuminati tinfoil hat rant -simply noting that western governments have generaly been in charge, while the trappings of authority have changed. In many ways, the colonies are now simply sharecroppers for their original rulers, rather than being indentured. The economic system that has allowed this setup ("Here: you're independent. Congratulations. Our expensive troops are gone. BTW, you have this minor loan payment. Oh no, talk to your government about it, not us. You cut the deal. ") is entirely created by closer and faster communications.

 

[rust]

Excellent point, but one can argue that the same empire is in existence, and stronger than ever if one ignores the name of the country as a detail, and looks at the authority structure.

While I do of course agree that the "economic empire" you describe does
indeed exist, I doubt that is the same empire that ruled the colonies.

Most of the former British (and other) colonies are now far more indebted
to the USA and other countries than to their former colonial powers, while
the USA is rapidly becoming a "financial colony" of China (the government
at Peking currently owns several times the amount of US Dollars that the
government at Washington owns ...), which never was a "colonial power"
in modern history.

 

[Ishmael]

Gosh....
I make a simple suggestion on one possible way to address the original topic with a minor houserule, and then I offer a few thoughts and opinions on how it might affect in-system micro-jumps ( a subject that seems to have been largely ignored by Traveller except to say it happens ), yet there comes a long-winded reply that hinges on a single throwaway sentence that offers a suggested link for the purposes of background story/history....very odd and disappointing. A response discussing the in-system ideas I brought would have been better.

Instead of using 'electron tunnelling' to justify the jump-drive ideas presented, I added that comment as a way to tie those ideas into a background history and even to an alternate tech. THAT is called building sets and props for our story-telling. Such sets and props work best when the audience can recognize what they are, hence the referencing to TRW. This is especially true in 'plays' that exist purely in our collective imaginations and why so many people's perceptions of how the OTU appears is based on the visual. Keith Bro.'s illustrations are 'Traveller' yet Foss is not....(why is that?.. the rules make no hard distinctions as to what the spaceships actually look like... a handful of supplements do, but not the rules themselves.)

so...were there any comments on my in-system micro-jump thoughts?

 

[Ishmael]

is it speed of communication that holds an Empire together?..or speed in responding to events with military or economic power?

I can call up someone on the other side of the world and say " this is a stickup, give me your money or I'll shoot". but unless I can bring sufficient power to bear in a quick manner ( which I couldn't in this case ), I'll be laughed at the cursed then ignored.

Even if you can send a few men across the Imperium quickly, you might not be able to send battalions and fleets as fast. If you station fleets for rapid response, you have to be certain that you can either bring appropriate force to bear on those stations quickly and else be certain that the stations are manned by troops loyal to you.

The same applies to trade. People who are hungry won't be satisfied with a swiftly delivered message that you'll feed them if it takes a long time for the food to get there.

So I think its more than communication. It's more about the ability to rapid move goods and materials and people in quantity.

 

[rust]

So I think its more than communication. It's more about the ability to rapid move goods and materials and people in quantity.

A very good point, I think. Unless fast messages can be followed by al-
most equally fast actions, fast communication is not very impressive.

 

[captainjack23]

Gosh....
I make a simple suggestion on one possible way to address the original topic with a minor houserule, and then I offer a few thoughts and opinions on how it might affect in-system micro-jumps ( a subject that seems to have been largely ignored by Traveller except to say it happens ), yet there comes a long-winded reply that hinges on a single throwaway sentence that offers a suggested link for the purposes of background story/history....very odd and disappointing. A response discussing the in-system ideas I brought would have been better.

My sincere apologies. I guess I was in a long winded mood. Having had fairly specific topics of my own derailed by interminable and similalry self indulgent side arguments, I understand how it's annoying. Mainly I just wanted to lobby for the idea that just because a solution is clever, or describes the TRW, it still needs to be assessed for playability; and the best solution for versimilatude isn't always the best one for gaming.

Instead of using 'electron tunnelling' to justify the jump-drive ideas presented, I added that comment as a way to tie those ideas into a background history and even to an alternate tech. THAT is called building sets and props for our story-telling. Such sets and props work best when the audience can recognize what they are, hence the referencing to TRW. This is especially true in 'plays' that exist purely in our collective imaginations and why so many people's perceptions of how the OTU appears is based on the visual. Keith Bro.'s illustrations are 'Traveller' yet Foss is not....(why is that?.. the rules make no hard distinctions as to what the spaceships actually look like... a handful of supplements do, but not the rules themselves.)

so...were there any comments on my in-system micro-jump thoughts?

Yes.

hmmmm
jump-drive = 1 long quantum tunnel transit
Stutterwarp = lots and lots of short, tiny quantum tunnel transits.
both in the same universe....
Which tech is better?

From a gaming perspective, which produces better quality gaming time ? If the week of jump is generally useless for game purposes, then stutterwarp (where, I assume, the down time isn't perceptible) may be better. From a traveller perspective, if both preserve an info delay, then either are good. The main question is, if you run a certain kind of game, which one commits you to things that may break the setting ?

 

[Ishmael]

so...were there any comments on my in-system micro-jump thoughts?

Yes.

I'm sorry to say that I did not see any comments about in-system jumps yet..
I guess I was expecting someone to rip a hole in my idea that in-system jumps might be like navigating a reef, with all the various jump-shadowing and that below tech 11, you have to use reaction drives as grav-thrusters don't work well outside the 100d limit anyways.
The majority of my ideas should apply regardless of jump duration...

I really don't use stutterwarp or shortened duration jumps imtu, so I couldn't say which is better in game terms. Needless to say, mtu is definately not the OTU even though I borrow some elements from it ( mtu is a sandbox tu for me to tinker with stuff in). Either one would have long travel times with the difference being whether you spend that time in j-space, or if you spend it in the void between stars. The main point would be to somehow balance them, even if the had different strengths and weaknesses ( size,mass,fuel use,performance, etc. )
I guess that should be in another thread though...my turn to be quiet.

--------------
mtu<>ytu

 

[Klaus Kipling]

For instance: there's been a murder on a remote base or outside normal jurisdiction, and the player's boss at HQ calls them in to investigate. Except, by the time they get there, the crime is, at the very least, 2 weeks old...

Why is the boss calling in a gang of PCs, instead of the proper authorities?

In the Traveller OTU, the reason is because the police will take weeks to arrive, and the players are right there so they get the job. If you reject OTU travel times, you have to come up with some other reason why a bunch of skuzzy adventurers are being trusted with something that in our 21st century world would be handled by the government...

Well, in this case, the players are the proper authorities, or more accurately, SolSec, hence the conundrum.

In any event, I will probably run with the regular 1 week jump for now, but it's been interesting reading these responses! Lots of good ideas and rationales. Go missing for a week and miss all the fun.

 

[Walker]

From a gaming perspective, which produces better quality gaming time ? If the week of jump is generally useless for game purposes, then stutterwarp (where, I assume, the down time isn't perceptible) may be better. From a traveller perspective, if both preserve an info delay, then either are good. The main question is, if you run a certain kind of game, which one commits you to things that may break the setting ?

Actually, Stutterwarp, as described in GDW's 2300 AD, averages about 3.35 ly/day. This is based on warp efficiency as determined by the following formula:

Drive Eff=square root(MegaWatt of Stutter warp Drive divided by the mass of the ship) X (a constant determined by the technology level of the drive)

Effectively, this works out to close to one parsec per day. once a ship travelled 7.7 ly (a little over two days in most cases) it has to discharge it's drive which takes 40 hours.

So, it takes somewhere around 3 days for every 2 parsecs of travel using 2300 AD stutter warp.

 

[captainjack23]

From a gaming perspective, which produces better quality gaming time ? If the week of jump is generally useless for game purposes, then stutterwarp (where, I assume, the down time isn't perceptible) may be better. From a traveller perspective, if both preserve an info delay, then either are good. The main question is, if you run a certain kind of game, which one commits you to things that may break the setting ?

Actually, Stutterwarp, as described in GDW's 2300 AD, averages about 3.35 ly/day. This is based on warp efficiency as determined by the following formula:

Drive Eff=square root(MegaWatt of Stutter warp Drive divided by the mass of the ship) X (a constant determined by the technology level of the drive)

Effectively, this works out to close to one parsec per day. once a ship travelled 7.7 ly (a little over two days in most cases) it has to discharge it's drive which takes 40 hours.

So, it takes somewhere around 3 days for every 2 parsecs of travel using 2300 AD stutter warp.

Ah, thanks. I somewhat misunderstood what stutterwarp did. I pretty much missed the whole 2300 thing.

 

[captainjack23]

how about this instead?

jump 1 goes 1 parsec in one week
jump 2 goes 2 parsecs in a week OR 1 parsec in 1/2 week
jump 3 goes 3 parsecs in a week OR 1 parsec in 1/3 week ( a little over 2 days )
jump 4 goes 4 parsecs in a week OR 1 parsec in 1/4 week ( a little under 2 days )
etc.
jump 6 can go a parsec in a little over a day

[snip]
Edit: (Further thoughts)
[snip]
Say that fuel use is (effective jump rating / nominal jump rating), and time taken is (actual distance / effective jump rating) x weeks. Minimum jump distance is J1, even micro-jumps in-system take as long as a J1 jump

So, a J1 ship can only ever jump 1 parsec a week. Simple.

A J2 ship can jump 2 parsecs a week at full fuel cost, or 1 parsec in a week at 1/2 fuel, or 1 parsec in 1/2 a week at full fuel

A J3 ship can jump 3 parsecs in a week, full fuel. 1 parsec in 1/3 week at full fuel, 1 parsec in a week at 1/3 fuel, or any combination in between.

A J6 vessel can jump 1 parsec or less in just over a day, but it costs it all it's fuel. Or it can take a bit longer to make the same jump and save fuel. If it jumped 1 parsec at J3 it would only use 1/2 of it's fuel (therefore allowing for immediate return trip), and get there in only 1/3 of a week, or about 2.3 da

The reduced fuel use for reduced jumps is already in place, but the ability to turn it aroundto reduce travel time is interesting.

It seems that it would act to significantly tighten communication time between closer systems - for instance, info could spread from an adjacent system daily (assuming J6 ships/couriers), but would have a three day delay across 3 hexes separation, and not much or no change for 5 and 6 hex gaps. Given that every system has an average of three adjacent systems, are lots of those miniclumps. It might reduce incentive to travel farther somewhat.

Culturally, I'd expect much more homogenization within clumps, and probably greater differentiation between them...there would overall be less incentive to travel further, so culture wouldn't spread as much, or as fast.

It would allow clumps of worlds to be much more efficient in terms of everything that communication delay would effect. Cargo (not data) would be somewhat less effected -there isnt much room for cargo in J6 ships, or even J4 ships; so generally, I'd see information about shipments arriving before the shipments -in many cases with answers being received, too. At least for clusters, speculation would be much less risky, and possibly much more demand driven.

for the same reasons, physical travel to deal with business/politics/issues would be less emphasised compared to the equiv. of telegrams (or, in most high tech situations, virtual agents)

I'd see that on the whole, the setting would have more smallish pocket empires, way more, and they would be likely much harder to conquer or incorporate....speed of information will generally benefit the defender in this situation, and thered be less need to tolerate long delays for instructions from "capital"; at best, it'd be much looser an arrangement than the Imperium -probably a loose confederation at best, mostly based on treaty and mutual agreement.



So, see ? I said I had some thoughts on the subject.. Hopefully not too long-winded.