Where are the interplanetary laser comms? CSC64

The issue with relay stations is station keeping. With a radio based one it can be omni directional and it can pick up and relay any signal in range. If it is laser based, you need to know exactly where that rely station is. Coordinates are easy enough when you have plenty of trig points and/or a feature rich environment that is stationary. In free space, objects can self report their position but either party can have positional inaccuracy (and usually both). The point of lasers is their precision. For them to be useful your position information has to be equally precise.

A clever pirate will place their ship between you and the star port and being closer they can block a huge area of space (relatively). If you move so they can they and they are on the inner end of the line between you and the port.

Jamming is a massive subject and anything realistic probably won't be playable. These aren't the droids you are looking for.

The highest effect on opposed check determines who wins. The effect of the winning check determines the level of success. By forcing a raised difficulty you reduce the level of success for the winner. So they only just manage to defeat your jamming and they only manage to get a garbled signal through, or you succeed with such a high positive effect that you manage to jam them without swamping their band and therefore don't tip off third parties that jamming is even going on.
Location info: At TL higher than us, I think that ought to be super simple, especially when you look at all the other advanced stuff done at spacefaring TL. Also, wouldn't the previously mentioned problem of the beam being so big on the reception end now become an advantage to help the receiver receive?

Blocking the beam: Said pirate would need to have piggy backed on that locational info to find the right place to block such a beam, also they would have to have help because if they close range with the target, they will not be blocking the beam as much and the beam will spill around them since it is so wide at that point.

Opposed checks with raised difficulty: I take your point and I realized that as I saw it with the opposed roll for a grapple. You have your effect, they have theirs and the one that has the best effect not only will win the grapple to do a grapple action but they can also add the effect of their roll to any damage they might cause based on what grapple action they chose.
Jamming RAW does not state any special benefit of a higher effect other than you beat your opponent or you don't. Same with Target Lock and sensors. You either lock your target or you don't. You don't get a "extra special target lock" because you won with a 6+. It's fine if you are a referee who adds colorful narrative or likes to give special benefits based on the different degree of effect, but that is house rules for these rolls as a descriptive result due to effect level is not specified beyond win/lose.
So where effect does not matter beyond did you beat the other guy, Difficulty is meaningless. If you want to make it harder on one of them, then you need to assign asymmetric difficulties. Moreover, if you did go with Laser or Maser jamming, which is in core, then why oh why would you say it is difficult or formidable for the defending player who has these comms to roll against? Shouldn't the only extra difficulty really be for the ship that is up against this tech?
 
Of course, which indicates a possibility for interception. btw, what TL was that laser? Probably not high enough to be relevant in the year 1105 of the Third Imperium. I am posting about TL10+ laser comms with a typical 12-13.
Check out the laser dispersion formulas. If they are using lasers in 1105 the physics is the same.
 
Location info: At TL higher than us, I think that ought to be super simple, especially when you look at all the other advanced stuff done at spacefaring TL. Also, wouldn't the previously mentioned problem of the beam being so big on the reception end now become an advantage to help the receiver receive?
Not in my opinion, but we have no idea what the future means so fill yer boots :)
Blocking the beam: Said pirate would need to have piggy backed on that locational info to find the right place to block such a beam, also they would have to have help because if they close range with the target, they will not be blocking the beam as much and the beam will spill around them since it is so wide at that point.
I was assuming they are between you and the main world star port. Those locations are easily determined. At close range the beam will not be as diverged as it would be at the planet. It doesn't matter if the beam spreads around the blocker if the intended target is in the shadow cast by the blocker.
Opposed checks with raised difficulty: I take your point and I realized that as I saw it with the opposed roll for a grapple. You have your effect, they have theirs and the one that has the best effect not only will win the grapple to do a grapple action but they can also add the effect of their roll to any damage they might cause based on what grapple action they chose.
Jamming RAW does not state any special benefit of a higher effect other than you beat your opponent or you don't. Same with Target Lock and sensors. You either lock your target or you don't. You don't get a "extra special target lock" because you won with a 6+. It's fine if you are a referee who adds colorful narrative or likes to give special benefits based on the different degree of effect, but that is house rules for these rolls as a descriptive result due to effect level is not specified beyond win/lose.
So where effect does not matter beyond did you beat the other guy, Difficulty is meaningless. If you want to make it harder on one of them, then you need to assign asymmetric difficulties. Moreover, if you did go with Laser or Maser jamming, which is in core, then why oh why would you say it is difficult or formidable for the defending player who has these comms to roll against? Shouldn't the only extra difficulty really be for the ship that is up against this tech?
Traveller was always rules lite. The referee was supposed to put nuance on everything. There simply isn't enough space to cover every eventuality players come up with. If the rules say enough for your purposes then follow the rules, but you will need to only use the RAW. You were extrapolating from ground based laser communications so you are in the realm of house rules already.

The rules for Jamming in the Electronics(Comms) skill description are an example of the use of Electronics. As a referee you expected to expand on those examples of use. Effect is a meta rule that can apply to any skill. On occasion a specific example of a skill use gives specific results for effect but that doesn't mean if it is not stated that effect is irrelevant. For example Broker is used to find a buyer. The example in the Broker skill description doesn't say anything about effect, but in the rules on effect, the effect table has "He finds a buyer for the goods but the buyer is an untrustworthy criminal." as one of the examples for Marginal Success. The expectation is explicit here that the referee fills in the blanks.

For the Jamming example, the opposed check is to jam communications. It is a very difficult check to jam a laser. If the jammer doesn't succeed in the very difficult check then they don't jam the laser regardless of whether the opposition succeeds or fails. It is not zero sum. Only if the jammer succeeds does it matter if the opposition out-thinks them, but that should not be an easy task for the opposition as now they are having to try to work out how someone would jam a laser (and we already know that Very Difficult) and then come up with a counter measure.

The corollary is that if you made the Jamming check Trivial then the opposition would have to succeed with a higher value than the jammer to prevent the jam as the jammer would be almost certain to succeed every time. Jamming a Laser would be no more difficult than jamming any other sort of communication. Since that is not what the rules say and imply, interpreting the rules that way is clearly incorrect.
 
As a completely unrelated side note, I am endlessly amused that the common sources of skill check bonuses only apply to the skill checks you probably don't need help with. :D
 
Not in my opinion, but we have no idea what the future means so fill yer boots :)

I was assuming they are between you and the main world star port. Those locations are easily determined. At close range the beam will not be as diverged as it would be at the planet. It doesn't matter if the beam spreads around the blocker if the intended target is in the shadow cast by the blocker.

Traveller was always rules lite. The referee was supposed to put nuance on everything. There simply isn't enough space to cover every eventuality players come up with. If the rules say enough for your purposes then follow the rules, but you will need to only use the RAW. You were extrapolating from ground based laser communications so you are in the realm of house rules already.

The rules for Jamming in the Electronics(Comms) skill description are an example of the use of Electronics. As a referee you expected to expand on those examples of use. Effect is a meta rule that can apply to any skill. On occasion a specific example of a skill use gives specific results for effect but that doesn't mean if it is not stated that effect is irrelevant. For example Broker is used to find a buyer. The example in the Broker skill description doesn't say anything about effect, but in the rules on effect, the effect table has "He finds a buyer for the goods but the buyer is an untrustworthy criminal." as one of the examples for Marginal Success. The expectation is explicit here that the referee fills in the blanks.

For the Jamming example, the opposed check is to jam communications. It is a very difficult check to jam a laser. If the jammer doesn't succeed in the very difficult check then they don't jam the laser regardless of whether the opposition succeeds or fails. It is not zero sum. Only if the jammer succeeds does it matter if the opposition out-thinks them, but that should not be an easy task for the opposition as now they are having to try to work out how someone would jam a laser (and we already know that Very Difficult) and then come up with a counter measure.

The corollary is that if you made the Jamming check Trivial then the opposition would have to succeed with a higher value than the jammer to prevent the jam as the jammer would be almost certain to succeed every time. Jamming a Laser would be no more difficult than jamming any other sort of communication. Since that is not what the rules say and imply, interpreting the rules that way is clearly incorrect.
Rules lite and rules half-assed are two different things. Hinting at a rule, half describing a rule and then leaving out the obvious detail one obviously would want to know if they used the rule that was already written, is rules half-assed. It's lazy writing/editing. Don't say in a book, "Electronics(Comms) Difficult 10+ opposed" and just leave it like that. Btw, in your example of where they must first do the check and succeed and then it can be opposed by the defending CommsOp, that is fine, but that's not how opposed checks work. Now if that is still how it should go, then write it as such as either a special single case of an opposed check or change the writing on how opposed checks work. I know I say that as if you wrote the books (did you? I don't now), but please take all this as me venting to the world and not personally.

About "Rules Lite"... I have never been sure exactly what that means beyond "let's play guess-what-the-GM-is-thinking" instead of let's play a game of fiction with shared understanding of how that fictional world works. Even so, that should be a GM's/Party's Table option established at session zero or even before, not a Core Rule book option that writers can use as a cop-out. Else why am I buying a rule book? "Rules Lite" seems to be an excuse used a lot by GM's. Nothing in Traveller canon that I have ever read says Traveller is "Rules Lite", especially if you go back in time and look at previous versions of the game. That said, NO ONE IS SAYING MAKE A RULE FOR EVERYTHING. We can put that strawman away. In fact, I would say it is almost better to not write a rule at all than to write a rule and completely leave out answers to the obvious questions players will have about that rule, especially if these questions would come from players and not just the GM.

Anyway, sorry if this response sounds so argumentative. Personally, I love me some rules and so do my players when I ref because then they know what to expect without having to dowse my brain for answers after they have committed to an action. My players can be as rules lite as they want, but as a GM, and in the background that they do not always see, I try to be as rules heavy as I can be so that they know there is a framework and that if they want to know more about that framework they can. The best thing a rules author/designer can do for me is to write more rules that are consistent with the game mechanics. I can do with less "plot seeds" since I am as good as if not better with my imagination when it comes to narrative. It's weird to me that people have become so rules-phobic.

Here endeth my rant.
 
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Inverse square law dominates interplanetary communication. Signals are weak and you can't communicate in real time anyway.

I take it that the communications gear in CSC is for when you're chatting, so sublunar ranges with message delays of a few seconds at most.

Over.

Otherwise it's weak signals with minutes to hours turnaround... but not the sort of thing you carry in your pocket. Ships and stations can be assumed to have gear good enough to send and receive a signal at planetary distances as part of their usual sensor suites.
 
Inverse square law dominates interplanetary communication. Signals are weak and you can't communicate in real time anyway.

I take it that the communications gear in CSC is for when you're chatting, so sublunar ranges with message delays of a few seconds at most.

Over.

Otherwise it's weak signals with minutes to hours turnaround... but not the sort of thing you carry in your pocket. Ships and stations can be assumed to have gear good enough to send and receive a signal at planetary distances as part of their usual sensor suites.
Agreed, but if your piracy target can still send a one way SOS where it gives full details of you the attacker in the message, even though there is no way they could respond in time physically, your wanted poster is prolly going to go up and a bounty on your head. It's not much but it ain't nuthin.

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What you want is that jamming is only possible at the source, so you spread them out enough to give all around coverage.

In that sense, you allow them to maintain a revolution around the local star.
 
What you want is that jamming is only possible at the source, so you spread them out enough to give all around coverage.

In that sense, you allow them to maintain a revolution around the local star.
I can't see sitting on top of a planetary comm laser to block it...
 
Check out the laser dispersion formulas. If they are using lasers in 1105 the physics is the same.
If you use Newtonian Physics you cannot predict the orbit of Mercury around the Sun. So, in a few hundred years, the physics "changed". Einsteinian Physics did explain the orbit of Mercury.
So, who is to say that the physics thousands of years in the future are the same as they are today?
 
So, in a few hundred years, the physics "changed"
No, the physics didn't change. Our understanding of physics did. Direct observation showed that the planets weren't where they were supposed to be using Newton's method. Which drove further research. Laser dispersion is EXACTLY how it is predicted to be with no variation ever seen. So in a million years the dispersion will be the same.
 
No, the physics didn't change. Our understanding of physics did. Direct observation showed that the planets weren't where they were supposed to be using Newton's method. Which drove further research. Laser dispersion is EXACTLY how it is predicted to be with no variation ever seen. So in a million years the dispersion will be the same.
At every possible wavelength? If you think that We know everything there is to know about lasers, then there is not much room for discussion.

For all we know they could have gravity-focused lasers by then that act as lenses between the laser and the target.

Does that change the physics of it or only our understanding of the physics?
 
Yes. ALWAYS tests as the physics predicts. UNLIKE planetary motion using Newtonian rules. You'll have to look to something other than coherent "light" for a tight "beam"
By "light" do you mean electromagnetic radiation?

Edit - Also, what about things that do not exist in nature? We can create elements that do not exist naturally. Can you not imagine that we may also create EM emissions that also cannot exist naturally?
 
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