Annic Nova question

[Grav_Moped]

It was designed under CT'77 rules. Annic Nova actually first appears in the very first Article of JTAS (JTAS #1, 1979), before CT'81 had been published. It was later slightly altered and updated for Double Adventure #1, 1980 (Pre-1981, but post High Guard 1979/1980)). Under High Guard 1 (1979), Jump Governors are an option, but not standard. After High Guard 2 and CT'81, they become standard and mention of them is dropped from the text.

Thanks for the confirmation! In retrospect, I'm surprised that the idea of a big and small jump drive to get around the flat-rate-max Jump fuel rule didn't get exploited anywhere else in the first-edition era.

An interesting thing to note is that in the JTAS version, the quote about the drives being J2 and J3, and not able to sum their power is present, but the jump software package for the computer includes only Jump 2 and Jump 4 (?) exclusively.

Weird. Wonder where they thought they were going with that?

That would be my explanation.

Or, alternatively, under CT you need the appropriate Jump Program running in the computer CPU and a minimum computer model number. Would a linked drive set-up need both the Jump-3 and Jump-2 programs running simultaneously, or would it need a Jump-8 or Jump-9 program to control the jump? Perhaps it is a computer-model (Annic Nova's was Model/3) or software problem preventing higher-level jumps (and an interesting thing for a group of adventurers to discover long after they have gained possession of the ship. )

I like that...
(And where do you find someone who can even write a Jump-8 or Jump-9 program in the Imperium in the early 1100s?!)

I believe Marc implied as much in the interview. He mentioned that when they wrote the adventure, they had no idea where it was from or any of its details. It was an enigma, and was left as such. One of Marc's goals for T5, however, has been to bring in everything that went before under "one tent" so to speak, and systematize and detail the loose ends. Annic Nova has been one of those enigmas for a very long time, and explaining the reason for having the second J-Drive has always been a puzzle.

It's kind of awkward to have to explain that one of the key mysteries of one of the first published adventures was merely an artifact of an obsolete rules system. It's not unique in that -- a lot of the published ship designs were broken. But I do have to give Marc credit for his heroic effort to reconcile all of this, even (and especially) the things that they didn't realize or care were inconsistent at the time. After all, it was just a game! I really can't believe that anyone involved could have conceived that almost forty years later, people would still be having fandom-wars over it...

It's a damn impressive testament to their creativity and effort that we still do.

 

[Iracundus]

While "iconoclastic Vilani researcher upends millenia of scientific thought, discovers J-2" might be a good story (Leonardo da Vinci IN SPACE!), it's not a Traveller story.

Why not? Maybe before this researcher can fully pin down the Jump-2 theory, he or she needs some more data and sends people (i.e. players) out to do or gather data from things like strange space phenomena, misjumpt witness reports or jump drive data from past misjump cases. Maybe the researcher prototypes a flawed Jump-2 and the players need to test it and it misjumps so the players have to get back and help researcher work out the bugs to get to a standard working Jump-2.

These story seeds could similarly work for any time there is a new advance in Jump level.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Why not? Maybe before this researcher can fully pin down the Jump-2 theory, he or she needs some more data and sends people (i.e. players) out to do or gather data from things like strange space phenomena, misjumpt witness reports or jump drive data from past misjump cases. Maybe the researcher prototypes a flawed Jump-2 and the players need to test it and it misjumps so the players have to get back and help researcher work out the bugs to get to a standard working Jump-2.

These story seeds could similarly work for any time there is a new advance in Jump level.

I specifically said it could be a good story, and I fully agree you could use it as the basis of a minor campaign. I also agree that it's really the more plausible story.

That said, for the out-of-universe reasons I mentioned, the history of the OTU tends not to happen that way.

On the other hand, you can retcon the retcon... the "shipwrecked starship brings back the secret of J-2" story did in fact happen, but long after the Vilani had already discovered J-2 for themselves and suppressed it as too destabilizing. The reason the legend-like story became the official history was because it turned out that suppressing J-2 technology turned out badly for them a few times over the millennia, and they didn't want to admit to the suppression. Better to seem scientifically incompetent than to be seen as actively crushing innovation for social control...

 

[whulorigan]

Aramis posted the link below on another thread to an interview given by Marc Miller at GameholeCon 2016. At about 34min 20 sec into the interview (thru about 41 min and 30 sec), Marc reveals for the first time his view on the origins of the Annic Nova and its unusual dual-drive set-up.

http://gamingandbs.com/bbs016

Actually, I would love to see Marc bring this up as a discussion topic in the Audience Hall forum of the CotI Imperial Moot.

I don't know if the concept is still in the formative stages in his mind or not, but some of the ramifications (and its relationship to the higher-order "hyperdrives") would make for an interesting discussion based on how Marc sees them all fitting together.

 

[Timerover51]

I have always viewed in as a Droyne ship built with some Ancient technology included. The controllable "black field" for energy absorption for basic ship's power, with the Jump Drives powered from a "pocket universe", which needs ship power to tap into. The Droyne used the pinnaces to supply ship's power as well as the field collector, and the third pinnace supplied maneuver power, also tapping into the "pocket universe". As the ship has no extensive Liquid-H tanks, the Jump Drives operate under a different principle from the drives commonly used on other ships.

 

[mike wightman]

How do you explain the Imperial authorities showing no interest in confiscating it and tearing it apart to learn its secrets?

Hmm, just noticed that the pinnaces use reaction drives...

 

[Grav_Moped]

Going by Mongoose Second, Collector technology can't be reverse engineered, and if it exists in this time line, the Annic Nova is the only starship identified as having it.

It's unlikely any Imperium agency, technology, military and/or intelligence, would allow it to go on it's merry way.

How do you explain the Imperial authorities showing no interest in confiscating it and tearing it apart to learn its secrets?

<waves hand> "These are not the Jump Drives you're looking for." ... wait, wrong universe. I've got nothing.

Hmm, just noticed that the pinnaces use reaction drives...

Reaction drives were explicit in First Edition small craft, and implicit in ships. Didn't they have a rule for weaponizing maneuver drive exhaust as per fusion guns in First Edition HG, or am I misremembering?

Also, the "dry" (no L-Hyd required) Jump Drives are at variance with the rest of canon Jump Drive technology up to TL 15, possibly beyond. At the very least, it could become the basis for a fuel efficiency boost to canon TL<16 Jump Drives (it saves the part of the fuel requirement that would normally be vented to keep the Jump field bubble inflated). The Imperials will definitely want to figure out how that's done.