Originally posted by atpollard:
Does this mean that a J-1 drive could jump 1 parsec with 100% success or 2 parsecs with 90% success, etc.
Or is the multi-parsec jump just for jump-x?
Not as is. A Jump-1 drive can be converted illegally to a Jump-1X drive by a disreputable starship mechanic. Basically its all in the Jump Drive computer. The typical Jump-1 through 6 drive is designed not to allow jumps beyond its maximum range, but an enterprising hacker or starship mechanic might disable that failsafe and allow a given jump beyond its maximum rating, so a Jump-6 can jump 7 parsecs with a 10% chance of failure, you have to disable or work around the built in fail-safe in the jump drive first. The manufacturers of jump drives include a fail safe built-in with all jump drives they make to avoid liability. The Jump-X is an experimental prototype jump drive, typically the first ones were built for huge capital starships, but smaller ones down to scout/courier-size starships can be built. Jump-X drives are often built in disruputable shops, often using parts from other jump drives, often these parts are stolen. The owners of these shops are typically of the rogue class, many of the starship mechanics are also rogues as well. The price on the table is for Jump-X drives built from legitimate sources, but using parts from stolen starship jump drives the price can go down to M$2 or even M$1, depending on how desparate the Rogue Shop owner is to unload his stolen parts, in many cases the customer simply provides the parts that the shop owner specifies, and he puts together a Jump-X drive for about M$1, and buying the parts or the jump drive used to obtain the parts from typically costs M$2, that is assuming the customer didn't outright steal them in the first place. There are 7 types of Jump-X drives, they all use the jump table above starting with the column minus their jump number. They all cost the same amount as the next highest legitimate jump drive minus $1,000,000.
The Jump-6X is a state of the art jump drive often built in laboratories, it costs M$15, and companies often fiddle with these when trying to gain insight on how to build a Jump-7 drive, but no reliable jump-7 drives have been built yet. A probe will typically be launched and
sometimes it will arrive at its destination.
The 'X' of course stands for experimental. Typically all research facilities build a jump-NX drive and through experimentation with that drive learn how to build a Jump-(N+1) drive.
In the early days of jump drive exploration, many parallel Earths independently developed the jump drive and built experimental jump drives before they built the reliable ones.
The earliest Jump-X drives were discovered early in the 21st century, for what we'll call the base timeline around the year 2020 AD, it was an unexpected breakthrough for a group of physicists working in Switzerland on a project that was funded by NASA, among the things learned was the discovery of the Maneuver drive, artificial gravity, and through the manipulation of artificial gravity fields, the Jump-X drive was born. An expedition to Alpha Centauri was organized, and a human colony ship was already found planted there a couple years ago by the Confederate States of America. According to interviews with the Confederate colonists, in their timeline the South Won the Civil War and became a seperate country, later on in the 1920s, the CSA abolished slavery shortly after World War I, in which the CSA sided with the Allies, and the USA sided with Germany and Austria. With the Americans effectively split, they were unable to influence the course of the War and Germany prevailed taking a chunk out of France and a portion of Western Russia along with Poland and the Baltics, the Kaisar remained in power, and no one in Germany had ever heard of a person named Adolf Hitler.
After World War I, the USA became a neutral country along with Canada, while the CSA built up its armed forces and became a superpower to keep the German Reich in check. Later on in the 1950s a Space Race developed between the Reich and the CSA an alliance was formed with the British, Australia and China to keep up with The German's Space endeavours. The CSA was the first to develop the Jump-X Drive and they boldly send a colony ship to Alpha Centauri, unfortunately their jump drive misjumped, and the colonists ended up in the baseline universe. The US/European Explorers examined the Confederate Star Ship and found a similar flaw in their own jump drive. By examining the data from the Confederate Star Ship's data, they were able to fix the flaw and build a reliable Jump-1 drive.
The Confederate colonists were stuck, many were not happy that they couldn't get back to their own universe and no one knew how to navigate the multiverse, so they just got over their new situation and adapted.
Later on with more interstellar exploration further human colonies were discovered from other parallel universes, not all of them friendly of course.
