Factor Drives

[Sir Brad]

since I started playing Trav I've bean asking myself "Why can't a J2 Drive ship cover a parsec in three and a half to four days?" then a wile back I was reading a theoretical piece on Warp Field Dynamics (how IRL Nerds think we will achieve FTL), got me thinking doing the same kind of thing to a Trav Jump Field may be how to do it.

for games sake A ships J-Drive range is it's maximum Factor it goes on the bottom of the Fraction and the parsecs to be traveled goes on the top this is how much of a week it takes to make the jump (Jump Drives & Field Emitters can only safely remain in operation for between 190 & 200 Hours without dramatic technical intervention, but normal operation over 170 hours requires additional maintenance once leaving jump) so a J-2 Drive can cover a Parsec in between 3-4 (Apx.) Days a J-3 Drive could cover that same Parsec in 2-3 (Apx.) days and so on up to a J-6 Drive that can make the 1 parsec jump in between 25 & 31 hours. now pushing a J-Drive to these feats burns more Flue, so making a Factor 2 1 Parsec Jump would use as much flue as a normal Jump-2 and so on.

yes I know my description rambles and is broken in places, but for my own use I have hand written formula and tables that make scene to me for my own use. for game Fluff I say that baring some freak discovery Factor Drives are not discovered till Advanced (late) TL-16, but once you work it out you can make drives as early as TL-12 work as Factor Drives, and Jumpspace Scientists will say "Ok so that's how you do it, How come we couldn't think. of that??"

 

[CosmicGamer]

Go for it IYTU. But make sure you consider all the consequences. The shortened communication times and all it's ramifications. Speculative trade profits should probably go down since both communication of needs and time to acquire goods is reduced. The is balanced out by being able to make more trips. This also will make the "slower" ships less profitable, marketable, and such. Political independence of worlds might not be the norm if communication and imposing fleets travel faster. And so on.

I'm no guru of the canon so this is probably just an IMTU thing. For me, the explanation I came up with was that the majority of the week in jump space is the "entering" and "exiting" phases with the actual "transit" not taking that long. Also jump space is a different dimension/reality not quite as linear as time and space in normal space. It's as if the ship occupies multiple locations at once and hence the reason ships tend to be broken up if you just try to stop the jump drive and force the ship out "early".

 

[Doyle Hunt]

The "one week in jump" rule is an artifact of the game's wargame roots. One week in jump no matter how far you travel would allow strategic-level movement plots on a week-by-week basis for ships and fleets over a wide-area map, rather than day-by-day plots of which ships and fleets are still in Jump Space on any given day.

The origin of Traveller as an offshoot of a wargame also explains why space is flat and there is only one main world at most per one-parsec hex. And why mis-jumps can send you off in any of six different directions, rather than anywhere in a 360-degree circle.

Since jump space does not really exist— or at least cannot be proven to exist by any known physical laws— you can make Jump work any way you like in your Traveller Universe. It's all handwavium anyway.

 

[Whipsnade]

yes I know my description rambles and is broken in places, but for my own use I have hand written formula and tables that make scene to me for my own use.

Whether or not your idea makes sense to you is all that all that matters. Anyway, I firmly suspect people began toying with variable time jump drives about 3.6 seconds after the LBBs came out. I know I did.

CG's reminder of the consequences of your changes is spot on. I cannot stress more strongly that the changes you're making will also the nature of the OTU on the most fundamental level. You won't be able to reuse much of the OTU when crafting your ATU.

FWIW, part of my "explanation" for the one week per jump paradigm has ships moving through jump space, moving but not maneuvering. The distance a ship moves in jump space translates to a distance in normal space. That distance also depends on which jump dimension is in use. A ship moving a distance of X in the jump1 dimension exits a distance of Y from it's entry point in normal space while a ship moving the same distance X in the jump2 dimension exits a distance of 2Y from it's entry point in normal space.

Jump accuracy canonically varies in the same manner and that helped suggest the idea to me.