Familygrams

[maitrejeanth]

Would the IN operate some kind of familygram sytem to allow families to keep in touch with ship crews ?
Since there are no FTL comms, how would it operate ? Send copies to every naval and scout base along the planned oparea of the ship ?
Is this feasable or even economically viable ?
And even if this seems a naff question, how does the navy send its operational stuff to its ships ? Things like changes to opsorders and all the admin stuff we've grown to love ?

 

[marginaleye]

I don't see why it wouldn't be economically viable to send duplicate messages to every navy and/or scout base within "x" parsecs of the recipient's likely position. Data (esp. plain text files) isn't particularly bulky, and duplication is essentially free.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

The Navy knows where their ships are (or at least where they should be), so it's a simple job to send a courier to meet them (it could even be planned in advance).

 

[Despasian]

The Navy knows where their ships are (or at least where they should be),

...and regularly sends them information & orders.

It's a minor thing to attach a file of personal messages along with the IN routine correspondence to its ships.

 

[Drakon]

And as standard family grams are limited to something like 40 words (at least in my day) putting an entire ship's familygrams on a single floppy is no big deal.

 

[Homer Woody]

Another option is that when charicters make port they routinly check the port messgae boatds. This is a good way to send basic info such as "Return home{" or the likes.

 

[aramis]

I figure that the IN routinely has "Orders Caches" in a given ship/ron/fleet's ops zone, and familygrams cost about Cr 10 to send to a specific "Ops Area E-post."

I have limited familygrams to 1000 characters in any standard syllabary/fonetic/alphabetic character-set on the standard "Imperial Virtual Machine" list. Pictographic fonts not permitted. Adressing to Ship/Fleet/HomeSector. Travel limitations are due to low priority.

Return x-mail of same length limit, one per recieved, free to recipients. Batched and TXd to next X-Mail "Point of Entry", carried lowest priority, space available, as a courtesy of the IISS to serving naval personell.

Of course, all correspondence is subject to being read.

If you knopw the ops zone, you can send X-mail, IMTU, to "General Delivery" at a starport. such X-mails are held for a limited duration (Based upon priority and fees paid), but a "Standard" is for 3 months for general persons unknown, 6 months for a person or ship known to work a given route, and 1 year minimum for persons who've established a drop point (Cr 500, + Cr 100 per additional year. All messages deleted when the cash runs out!).

 

[dutch schantz]

Probably be similar to a imperial server that members could log into and check "e-mails". Digital info could be SAL (same as light) and only within system. Imperial ships could carry data into system then download into system server. messages over a x-amount of time would be deleated to save server space.

 

[jatay3]

The Imperial Navy doesn't necessarily know where it's ships are. It knows where it ordered them to go.
However there is always a communications lag. Moreover when an admiral is on campaign I don't think he puts where he is "supposed to be" on the highest priority. If the fleet is blockading a planet the Navy can know. However if it is manuevering that is harder. For instance remember in the 5th Frontier War(Behind the Claw, p.11-12, where the Imperium did "Norris' gamble", to get into the Zho lines,and follwed up by smashing the blockades of the various worlds one-by-one. The Regina could never keep up with that. Indeed they would not want to for the Zhos could "keep up" to if Regina could(messages can be intercepted).
Given that, mail delivery is not impossible. They would have to have the mail sent to the farthest base forward and wait for the fleet to fall back for supplys. Or they can send it forward if the fleet is standing still(blockade duty,supporting planetary invasion, etc.) or moving in a fairly predictable direction. Or they can send a courier in the general direction and hope it makes it. Mail delivery is possible but, it would be irregular and not all messages would get through. One of the hardships of the Emperor's service.
Campaign: the PCs are hired to run mail to the fleet. When they arrive the fleet is gone. So out of charity toward the Emperor's faithful servants and/or desire for reward the PC's set out to deliver their precious cargo.