All that really matters, GC, is that it works in your
TU.
Mass precipitation requirements were never part of jump drive until
GT:IW. It may have been a
IMTU thing, but it was never part of any published materials.
Adding mass precipitation to
GT:IW solved a problem which didn't exist while creating additional problems which then required their own explanations.
Canon is vague on many things, but it's as explicit as it gets when describing how the USSF reached Barnard's Star:
"The range of the jump-1 drives first developed by UNSCA was insufficient to reach the nearest star— Alpha Centauri. It took several years before a US Space Force team based on Luna tried a mission which, in several trips, established an intermediate stopover and refuelling point about one parsec out." (Page 4, AM:6 Solomani)
No brown dwarf and no need for any brown dwarf. Just a deep space fuel depot painstakingly built over repeated jumps.
The
GT:IW writing team, for whatever reason, felt they needed to explain the jump lines in
Imperium - wargame which
predates Traveller, a wargame whose first edition never mentions "Vilani" or "Ziru Sirka", a wargame which was only partially kitbashed to fit the
OTU. They added mass precipitation rules to
GT:IW despite the fact that
GT doesn't have them. They added mass precipitation rules to
GT:IW despite the fact that no other version of
Traveller has them.
The playtest failed. I failed, because I was part of that playtest. There were other ways to tackle the jump lines in
Imperium. There were other ways to explain why neither side launched offensives across the Sirius Gap. Mass precipitation was both unnecessary and a mistake.
A mistake I am partially responsible for.
