Communications in 2300

[rgrove0172]

Im starting a 2300AD game and am having difficulty invisioning the lack of FTL communications.

Im imagining a continual bizz of little couriers darting about the universe broadcasting the lastest " database update" to each system - including news, financial data, current commodity information, licensing and certifications, heck even a master data base of somekind. Imagine the internet if it only worked locally and required a CD ROM to update it every few days or weeks.

Is this accurate? Am I looking at this right?

And then there is the issue with not being able to communicate directly outside your immediate area.

My main character is a private freighter captain - who cant get pricing information until he gets the system in question, cant find out what the market price of his goods are until her reaches his destination and cant make a business deal unless face to face. Its an odd situation to get used to in a game.

Thoughts?

 

[McPerth]

I think you get it right. Of course, that means may problems arise. You may be a wanted criminal in one world and just pass the custoums in another just because information has not arrived.

Or imagine you get a new film or disk and go to a far planet where you sell it as if you had the rights, no one knowing that you don't...

Of course, none of this will work on the long run, as news will arrive sooner or latter, and ehitehr the autorities in the former case or the true holder in the latter one will catch you sooner or latter...

A worst case would be if you leave a planet carring (to say an example) a latent virus and canot be recalled for quarantine just a cuple days after, when the outbreack occurs. As no ship in the planet can leave to raise alarm (due to the same quarantine), the problem will grow bigger, until some ship arrives to the planet and is able to leave without landing (of course, the extent of not knowing it will depend on the traffic in this planet)...

Just some more examples...

 

[Darkwing]

Im imagining a continual bizz of little couriers darting about the universe broadcasting the lastest " database update" to each system - including news, financial data, current commodity information, licensing and certifications, heck even a master data base of somekind. Imagine the internet if it only worked locally and required a CD ROM to update it every few days or weeks.

Pretty much how I run Traveller. Sounds right for 2300, too.

 

[SpaceBadger]

My only quibble would be the "constant buzz of little couriers" as I don't think that is consistent w the 2300AD universe. My impression is of a lot fewer ships in 2300AD than even the most minimalist view of Traveller, and nothing like the X-boat network. The news updates would wait for the next ship, which may be quite frequent in a high-traffic system, or maybe every few weeks in a backwater.

 

[rgrove0172]

Yes, I imagined the same thing, my comment aside. Some areas such as King might be pretty up to date as new ships arrive from the core almost daily, while more remote areas could be functionally behind by weeks, or longer. Its a nuisance but adds a bit of drama and some interesting plot possibilities.

 

[epicenter00]

One thing to remember about 2300 is that it doesn't have the opposition of "robot starships" that Traveller does.

There's quite a few entries in Ships of the French Arm for courier drones, which are essentially rockets with Stutterwarp that shuttle between worlds bringing data.

While it's never really discussed in detail what these drones do for intercolonial communications, I'd imagine that almost any colony worth mentioning in the Colonial Atlas listing probably has at least one of these rockets launching or arriving per week.

Larger colonies with larger populations probably have more, perhaps on the order of one per day. Courier rockets between Earth and Alpha Centauri may very well number in the dozens per day.

 

[McPerth]

One thing to remember about 2300 is that it doesn't have the opposition of "robot starships" that Traveller does.

There's quite a few entries in Ships of the French Arm for courier drones, which are essentially rockets with Stutterwarp that shuttle between worlds bringing data.

While it's never really discussed in detail what these drones do for intercolonial communications, I'd imagine that almost any colony worth mentioning in the Colonial Atlas listing probably has at least one of these rockets launching or arriving per week.

Larger colonies with larger populations probably have more, perhaps on the order of one per day. Courier rockets between Earth and Alpha Centauri may very well number in the dozens per day.

While I agree about the courrier drones will help to speed the communications in 2300AD universe, I have serious doubts about what information is trusted to those courrier drones.

IMHO, those courrier drones only convey open information (so to say, internet updates), but any sensitive or classified (by anyone) information would not be trusted to them. This kind of information will be left for manned (and probably armed) courriers, either by the government, agency or corporation owning the information, with some courrier sharing among them if they consider the other one trustable enough (e.g. a company may trust its government to the point of asking its courriers to carry company's classified information, or vice versa).

 

[rgrove0172]

That makes good sense, and even better -opens the way for lots of cool plot elements.

 

[ben51]

I never really liked the idea that there weren't that many ftl vessels in 2300AD. I know the 2300 Resource (which was cannon) gave a figure of 10,000 spacecraft in human space. Of these only 3,300 are FTL capable. It then goes on to say...

"Of these starships, approximately 20% are military in nature, 20% are government owned transports, liners, and couriers, 50% are owned by corporations and megacorporations, and only about 5% are actually under private or small business ownership."

This gives us 660 military vessels (personally I wouldn't count fighters towards this number).

660 government owned transports and small craft

1,650 are corporate owned vessels.

and a mere 165 are owned by individuals and small businesses

I find these rather low but in the 2300AD universe tantalum is very expensive so the numbers are kept down. What I really don't get is why there are no regular X-boat routes. When I got the original game I thought the thicker dark lines connecting the major colony worlds represented X-boat routes. I assumed the lesser outposts and such were serviced in an irregular fashion.

I can't imagine that France would never bother to set up a reliable and regular method of communication with the colonies. Also, given that King is so important and Ellis is a state it would be vital for America to have good communications along the American Arm.

In my 2300AD I have several competing X-boat companies in the French and American arms while the Chinese arm is much more haphazard.

Benjamin

 

[rgrove0172]

Im already writing up a blurb for my campaign along those lines, only that a vast majority of the "leg work" is automated. I imagine a few companies, as you say, establishing a network of control offices and service stations wherein remote or fully robotic couriers are based.

I can even imagine limited parcel space on these little ships (Fed Ex in 2300)

As far as security I was thinking about that a bit. As a ship in Jerome Drive cant really be interfered with while FTL (at least not by any technology in the canon so far) they would only have to worry during their sublight run when they hit the gravity well. I can imagine therefor some couriers asking additional fees for security, involving an escort of some kind.

Which of course brings up some of the issues in my other posts. If I want to intercept one of these ships, not blow it into scrap from half a million km away, I need to approach it and disable it, something a bit more surgical than a detonation laser.

Lost of possibilities here. Good stuff!

 

[McPerth]

I find these rather low but in the 2300AD universe tantalum is very expensive so the numbers are kept down. What I really don't get is why there are no regular X-boat routes. When I got the original game I thought the thicker dark lines connecting the major colony worlds represented X-boat routes. I assumed the lesser outposts and such were serviced in an irregular fashion.

I can't imagine that France would never bother to set up a reliable and regular method of communication with the colonies. Also, given that King is so important and Ellis is a state it would be vital for America to have good communications along the American Arm.

In my 2300AD I have several competing X-boat companies in the French and American arms while the Chinese arm is much more haphazard.

Benjamin

I agree with most of your post, but I'd expect those communications (you say X-boat) companies to be more nationality dependent than just arm dependent.

In the French arm, the French, German and British colonies would be the best served, while others be dependent on those services for public information (e.g. Nuovoa Kiyev and Tanstaafl in Aurore depending on French services, Lubumbashi in Joi on the British, ones, etc) and on less regular ships for more delicate information. Kafer war may change this, of course, making the courriers more universally used.

On the American arms, situation would be more or less the same, but regular services would be US and Australian.

I agree the Chinese Arm would be the more irregularly served of all, moslty because the many nations (not always friendly to each other) present there.

 

[rgrove0172]

What do you guys think about a still developing, sometimes unreliable, and rediculously expensive Tachyon carrier technology for FTL communications? Would it upset the entire 2300 setting?

Im just wondering if having a mechanism to receive an emergency communication at times would be useful for plot purposes. They would be rare and obviously used only by the government, military or some very well-to-do corporations, and of course your ship would have to be rigged to recieve them but it would sure come in handy.

 

[McPerth]

What do you guys think about a still developing, sometimes unreliable, and rediculously expensive Tachyon carrier technology for FTL communications? Would it upset the entire 2300 setting?

Im just wondering if having a mechanism to receive an emergency communication at times would be useful for plot purposes. They would be rare and obviously used only by the government, military or some very well-to-do corporations, and of course your ship would have to be rigged to recieve them but it would sure come in handy.

As you ask for oppinions, mine is that, as in Traveller, one of the basis of the 2300AD universe is the time lag in communications, and giving FTL (or better said FTS, faster than ships ) communications, no matter how restricted, will alter it. Probably most Invasion Sourcebook would have to be rewritten, as there are too many instances of precisely this lack of coordination decided how campaigns go.

IMHO, part of the fun of those games is the lack of exact knowledge about what is happening just outside your immediate surrundings (your system), and the fact that any information you have beyond them is outdated.

 

[rgrove0172]

Point taken

 

[Darkwing]

The same purpose can be served by having a ship or comm-drone arrive in system and use lightspeed-lag radio to pass the emergency message.

 

[BMonnery]

I never really liked the idea that there weren't that many ftl vessels in 2300AD. I know the 2300 Resource (which was cannon) gave a figure of 10,000 spacecraft in human space. Of these only 3,300 are FTL capable. It then goes on to say...

"Of these starships, approximately 20% are military in nature, 20% are government owned transports, liners, and couriers, 50% are owned by corporations and megacorporations, and only about 5% are actually under private or small business ownership."

This gives us 660 military vessels (personally I wouldn't count fighters towards this number).

It includes fighters. Remember, the French have 60-70 military starships, the British 40-50, the Germans and Americans in the mid-30's each and that's it for substancial fleets. Japan have six military ships, and they're French built and replaced a French squadron at Joi and so can be viewed as extensions of the MSIF. The same for Ukraine with 13 obsolete ex-French ships. There are probably not much more than 200 military starships in human space, with the rest being starfighters.

I find these rather low but in the 2300AD universe tantalum is very expensive so the numbers are kept down. What I really don't get is why there are no regular X-boat routes. When I got the original game I thought the thicker dark lines connecting the major colony worlds represented X-boat routes. I assumed the lesser outposts and such were serviced in an irregular fashion.

I can't imagine that France would never bother to set up a reliable and regular method of communication with the colonies. Also, given that King is so important and Ellis is a state it would be vital for America to have good communications along the American Arm.

In my 2300AD I have several competing X-boat companies in the French and American arms while the Chinese arm is much more haphazard.

Benjamin

See my calculations here: http://web.archive.org/web/20041205...ties.com/littlegreenmen.geo/2300/ShipArr.html

BCV-4 gets about 5 ships arriving from Earth per day just from trade runs. Why run couriers? A pony express/ X-boat route consumes valuable drives that could be doing something else.

King naturally would get about 1 arrival from Earth per day, and that takes about 2% of all the drives in existence....

 

[LemnOc]

What do you guys think about a still developing, sometimes unreliable, and rediculously expensive Tachyon carrier technology for FTL communications? Would it upset the entire 2300 setting?

Like McPerth, I think it kind of undermines an essential quality of Traveller, the need to act on imperfect information and the central role of humans / biological beings carting things around. Obviously, almost all communications can be relayed by stutterwarp missiles, but I think that removes something central and vital. Kinda like auto-pilots removing the need for pilots.

Im just wondering if having a mechanism to receive an emergency communication at times would be useful for plot purposes. They would be rare and obviously used only by the government, military or some very well-to-do corporations, and of course your ship would have to be rigged to recieve them but it would sure come in handy.

IMO, more plots can be generated via "imperfect information" than "perfect information," but there is always some kind of deus ex machina you can sprinkle in as needed. An example would be a coded, pre-recorded message hidden in a subroutine that initiates after a certain event—recall the exposition about the Jupiter mission relayed after Bowman pulls the plug on HAL.

--

BMonnery: Bookmarked!

 

[aramis]

I agree a tacyon ftl system could badly upset the setting... tthough a slower-than-stutterwarp ftl comm ,(say 1/2 ly per day) wouldn't break it badly.

 

[rgrove0172]

Would we want to use some spin off of stutterwarp technology or design some completely separate, physics-sidestepping, gadget?

 

[BytePro]

C. J. Cherryh Alliance-Union series has some interesting takes on the subject.

IIRC, there are a fairly limited number of systems in the 2300 setting - and they are connected in arms with clusters and a max a little over 2 days travel between any two systems? So messages might be delayed, at most, a couple weeks from one end to another of an arm? Even the small number of ships means daily plus transit between major systems?

Why would that break the setting in such a way to make some faster form of interstellar communication necessary? RW empires flourished prior to electronic intercontinental communications, even with financial instruments.

As to security - any sensitive information is going to be encrypted and even use one-way ciphers, so even a non-military 'mail' system (probably gov subsidized) would make sense. Unless the costs for manned ships are very much higher, such 'mail' ships would probably also be couriers and shippers - sensitive material and personnel 'protected' via destruct devices and side-armed guards (as in RL)...