Could use some thought feedback - CE setting

[Diveguy]

Using that mass requirement means brown dwarfs and similar objects are now very important, so important that there's going to be a lot of effort dedicated to detecting and charting them.

You'll have publicly known objects and privately known objects with governments, organizations, corporations, and individuals all busy looking for others and charting shortcuts. The setting's "scouts", government or private, will be in great demand.

Stealing coordinates and other such survey data will be part of the picture too. Before sea-going clocks made fixing longitude simple, navigators used "rutters". Stealing or copying those rutters was a constant occupation for governments, companies, and individuals. Updating "public" rutters was a constant occupation too.

Then there's trade wars angle (along with old fashioned wars too). Imagine a trading company which alone knows the location of the brown dwarf that cuts travel time between two systems by, 50%, 75%, or more. They'll keep the location secret, but their competitors will be able to deduce where to look and eventually located the object. When they try to use it, they discover the first company has warships stationed there.

It would be like the trade war adventure in TTA except around a brown dwarf and with Arekut attacking the interlopers. Portugal did just that for a few centuries while surveying and using the Cape of Good Hope route to India. They developed the rutters, they kept things as secret as possible, and they tried to kill any Europeans they found south of the Gulf of Guinea.



Please do. I know I'm not the only one who would love to read it.

Some good points on the navigational issues - I hadn't even considered the possibility of "secret" jump points, but that is a great idea. Particularly as I can see the government(s) of the region exploiting them as you said. When combined with my other plan of each linkage has a particular point within the origin and target system, those "Star Rudders" would be worth their weight in platinum to the right people...

 

[mike wightman]

Rutter, not rudder
This is from Wikipedia:

Before the advent of nautical charts in the 14th century, navigation at sea relied on the accumulated knowledge of navigators and pilots. Plotting a course at sea required knowing the direction and distance between point A and point B. Knowledge of where places lay relative to each other was acquired by mariners during their long experience at sea...
Handbooks often contained a wealth of information beyond sailing directions. For instance, they frequently had detailed physical descriptions of shorelines, harbors, islands, channels, notes about tides, landmarks, reefs, shoals and difficult entries, instructions on how to use navigational instruments to determine position and plot routes, calendars, astronomical tables, mathematical tables and calculation rules, lists of customs regulations at different ports, medical recipes, instructions on ship repair, etc. As a result, the nautical chart never fully replaced the handbook, but remained supplementary to it

And here is how I use jump-rutters in some of my games:

Before the advent of the jumpspace generate programme in the 34th century, navigation from system to system relied on the accumulated knowledge of navigators. Plotting an interstellar course required knowing the relative velocity and distance between point A and point B, and a host of other factors.
Knowledge of the relative motion of each system with respect to each other and to the galactic core, the gravitational interactions of other bodies within the relative systems, etc. were acquired by navigators during their long experience in space.
Jump-rutters often contain a wealth of information beyond jump navigation. For instance, they frequently have detailed physical descriptions of systems, starports, asteroids, gas giants, notes about gravitational interactions, and difficult entries, instructions on how to use navigational instruments to determine position and plot routes, calendars, astronomical tables, mathematical tables and calculation rules, lists of customs regulations at different ports, etc. As a result, the jump cassette and generate programme never fully replaced the navigator's jump-rutter, but remained supplementary to it.

 

[epicenter00]

- Near Space postulates some conveniently located brown dwarf systems which at least build a few corridors of travel. Has anyone used this bit of handwavium, and any thoughts on it? My only concern is this populates Sol subsector with a large number of systems; which I would then have to extrapolate equally to others as I move out on the map.

I think you if you define how small of a mass your drive can lock onto reliably and safely, it would be pretty simple.

There's (some? many? most? I'm not sure) astronomers out there theorize there is a ninth planet (eg; something larger than Pluto) due to the way that distant Trans-Neptunian Objects orbit in our own system. There's some reasonably sized TNOs we've already discovered out there like Eris. Stuff the size of Sedna or Ceres is not unheard of.

It's been theorized (again, this is scientific theory - as in a basis to make testable predictions as opposed to the way "theory" is used in casual conversation) that "outer space" isn't actually very empty at all and that all solar systems likely have distant stuff orbiting at extreme distances (like 1 LY and even greater) and that solar systems "rub up" against each other and are slowly trading objects with each other as they pass; the most distant of these objects could be thought of as "hangers on" - the gravity effects so far out are so weak they're basically part of one solar system or another based on pretty weak gravity forces. Stuff like this might not be part of our usual thinking of "members of the solar system" with orbital periods measured in tens of thousands of years, but they still are (however tenuously) answering to the gravity of Sol.

If you imagine that a jump drive can lock onto something the size of Ceres reliably, then jump-1 travel between stars isn't going to be too hard; it might require 2-3 jumps between even near neighbors and as others have said, organizations are going to invest large amounts of resources to pick out distant objects out of the clutter for navigational purposes.

 

[Condottiere]

A rutter would be proprietorial knowledge. Copying would be an act of intellectual piracy?

Apparently, if you have onboard your own observatory, your chances of a successful astrogations check go up.

 

[Golan2072]

Perfect. That gives me a good idea of where your thoughts were.

As of my thoughts today, and after looking at the Near Space map and topography, I'm really thinking of just doing the initial write-up for the one subsector only. Just as a "possibile interpretation" with your permission?

Near Future is Open Content and you can use it as you want without needing permission. Feel free to use it as you please

 

[Orr]

A rutter would be proprietorial knowledge. Copying would be an act of intellectual piracy?

Going by history, securing one to copy would require armed robbery up through outright piracy.

 

[mike wightman]

Or as I like to call it - an adventure

Jump-rutters can also serve as treasure maps of sorts...

 

[kilemall]

And if it's small enough, possibly a major strategic target to nuke- to cut off transit through that point by breaking up the mass.

 

[Diveguy]

Rutter, not rudder
This is from Wikipedia:

And here is how I use jump-rutters in some of my games:

Yeah, was typing tired and defaulted to old ways

 

[Diveguy]

Near Future is Open Content and you can use it as you want without needing permission. Feel free to use it as you please

Thanks - just want to make sure I give credit where it's due!

Plan is to have a write-up done and posted next week. Won't be super long - but maybe will give some folks ideas of their own.

 

[Adam Dray]

Any update? ATU stuff is why I'm here!

 

[Diveguy]

Any update? ATU stuff is why I'm here!

Apologies for any waiting - real world got a bit busy and distracting recently, so I haven't had the time to focus on this. I'm about 70% done with my draft - plan is to release at 85% for you all to have. Because, as any writer knows, if you wait to polish that last bit perfectly, you'll never finish the flaming thing!

So, long excuse short, do my best to have it up within the next week. Thanks for the interest.

 

[Gray Lensman]

I use the Cepheus Engine rules and the near space map (minus the HSC stars) myself.

However, I use a different drive system, the distance you can travel is only limited by the fuel you can carry (and consumables). Each parsec traveled takes one week.

Star Lanes are created by the fact that you cannot pass thru a hex containing a star without dropping out of hyperspace.

 

[Diveguy]

So, my uber-post write up is done and up. Feedback welcome. Hope it isn't too horrible.

Thanks to everyone for their thoughts and input.

 

[mike wightman]

That's a lot of work, thank you for sharing it.

Would you like comments in this thread or the other one?

 

[Diveguy]

I'd say the other one, just for anyone who wasn't reading this thread. Thanks.

 

[Adam Dray]

Subscribed!

 

[kilemall]

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