Fleet Jumping

[Icosahedron]

Now the question is do the others pop in still in formation or do they pop in strung out?

I think this is a matter for the GM to decide, depending what he wants in his TU. If you want them to arrive in formation, you need to handwave some sort of link by which all the ships combine to form perhaps a single jump bubble or a set of 'resonant' jump bubbles or whatever works best for you.

OTOH, if you don't want ships to arrive in formation, then handwave some sort of 'chaos factor' that prevents co-ordinated arrival.

Decide what you want, then 'make it so'. What's the alternative - play a game that constantly annoys you, just because 'it says so in the rules'? That's just lame.

 

[BlackBat242]

I like the rifle comparison... been there done that and will do it again.

Ships may be made to the same specs but different building yards, battle damage, random spare parts, engineers, and many other factors will not make them all work the same. It is the same with the rifle comparison. Sammi specs may be the same for all rounds but brass thickness, powder variations, projectile weight differences, and even barrel temp and fouling will make sure all is not the same.

Distance is also a factor I think, so not only will they arrive strung out over a roughly 32 hour time span but they will be scattered different distances from the jump point. The 100 dia rule means they will not hit each other IMHO but the fleet should condense as ships come in to reduce the scatter a bit.

The first couple of times the fleet jumps together (remember that little thing navies like to do called training and exercises... just for the purpose of learning to work together), the relative differences between ships' performances will be charted and quantified, then used to adjust the Jump navigation programs of the ships so as to produce better results (by making slight adjustments in the energy outputs of the Jdrives).

Repeat every time the fleet (or a portion thereof) makes a jump. Pretty soon, you will get virtually identical jump performance.

Or are the IN navigators too stupid to do this?

EDIT:

Just went through T5 and found this tidbit.

Squadron Maneuvers. Highly tuned drives in a squadron
of ships, along with highly trained crews, can make their
emergence from jump very close to the same time (within
about a 5 hour window). Normal military is a little less tight but it also stated that 2 ships jumping at the same time will appear the same distance from each other. Wonder how that works with the time lag when some ships move after jumping in?

I would say a lot closer than that... but then I'm not compulsively committed to forcing handicaps on the functionality of ships in my game.

We all are free to do as we please

I would agree, but from the hardened opposition of many in this thread to anyone who chooses to not follow the Holy Writ of Saint Marc and the Doctrines of the Church of Canon, I'd say you and I are in the minority.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

The first couple of times the fleet jumps together (remember that little thing navies like to do called training and exercises... just for the purpose of learning to work together), the relative differences between ships' performances will be charted and quantified, then used to adjust the Jump navigation programs of the ships so as to produce better results (by making slight adjustments in the energy outputs of the Jdrives).

Repeat every time the fleet (or a portion thereof) makes a jump. Pretty soon, you will get virtually identical jump performance.

Or are the IN navigators too stupid to do this?

you assume that the cuases of the time flix are due to the 'tuning' of the drives, rather than, say, an inherit effect of travelling though jumpspace. we live in a universe where strange, and counterintuitive things are a fact of life.

obviously, you can change it in YTU, but in the OTU, as far as we can tell, it's not possible to get two ships to arrive together at or nearly at the same time.





on the other hand:

100D limit for a earth sized planet: 1,280,000 km

100D limit for earths Sun: 139,200,000km

earths closest approach to the sun: 147,098,290 km. (so we don't need to worry about the suns 100D limit).

ergo, a fleet jumping in on the 100D limit of earht would be about 1.3 million km away.

Now, i don't know the sums needed to work out how long it times for a ship to travel that far under constant acceleration, but MgT says 136mins for a 6G ship to travel a million Km and brake to a halt.

so, at a rough guess, a 6G defender could reach the attacks jump point within 2 and a half, 3 hours.

if that is true, either attackers accept that they will be met by defenders at less than full strength, or they must jump much futher out than a civve to give them response time

or, they can sync to better than 6 hours......

 

[rancke]

I would agree, but from the hardened opposition of many in this thread to anyone who chooses to not follow the Holy Writ of Saint Marc and the Doctrines of the Church of Canon, I'd say you and I are in the minority.

Now that I don't understand. I went through every post in this thread and I can't find a single one that expresses opposition to anyone who chooses to not follow the Holy Writ of Saint Marc and the Doctrines of the Church of Canon. There has been disagreement with the opinion that canon doesn't make sense expressed, sure. There has been disagrrement with the implication that canon ought to be different expressed, sure. But nowhere can I find any opposition to the idea that anyone can do whatever they want in their own TU, including not following the Holy Writ of Saint Marc and the Doctrines of the Church of Canon. In fact, the exact opposite opinion has been expressed.

And I so worry that expressing this sort of false and mistaken ideas could scare away impressionable youngsters who browse the CotI boards with a view to embarking on a lifetime of playing Traveller. If they stumble across a post like yours and don't realize that it's untrue, they could be scared away from the hobby completely.

So I really urge you to think twice about expressing such prejudiced opinions and then refrain from doing it. What good can come of it? What good does it do you? What good does it do the Traveller Community? None that I can see.


Hans

 

[dean]

I agree with Ranke (Hans).

The OP wrote:

OK, I have a question has been bothering me for a while and I can not find it in the LBBs anywhere.

What happens when a battle fleet jumps to a system?

Due to the varibles in jump drives, course setting, and fuel differences, how could they all come out anywhere near each other or close to the same time?

As the rules now sit they should pop out all within 100 Dia of somewhere in the system but could be scattered by days and distance. That would make it too easy for the defenders to pick them off piece meal and get lots of advanced warning. It would make battle riders more useful though as large chunks of ships could all arrive at once.

Also if that many ships were close together and jumped all at once it should screw up the jumps of the smaller ships due to mass nearby. So they would have to disperse before jumping then once they got to the target, spend days collecting together the straggelers and refueling before going deeper insystem for the attack.

What are some other takes on this?

Which implies to some he's seeking the official interpretation (whether it makes sense or not), and then he specifically asks what other people think. Since all opinions are valid (maybe some don't make as much sense as the others), it is up to the reader to decide what works for him or her.

We've seen ideas coming from several version of Traveller, and no small number of personal interpretations and house rules. No one has said "This is the way you must do it". Maybe they said "This is how it is in the OTU", but the OTU also explicitly says Do It Your Way If You Don't Like It.

 

[shadowcat20]

Yes, I was looking for feedback and ideas. I only use CT now though I have been looking through T5 lately. I will no longer use T20 on this board for personal reasons. There is a lot in MT, TNE, and T4 that I have not had the chance to look at yet. As for MgT the jury is still out as I have had not looked at anything but book 0 for it.

I value almost all opinions in this matter as there are a lot of you out there better educated than myself. Those I have issues with I tend to ignore rather than start a flame war.

Keep em coming...

 

[TashaG]

Yes, I was looking for feedback and ideas. I only use CT now though I have been looking through T5 lately. I will no longer use T20 on this board for personal reasons. There is a lot in MT, TNE, and T4 that I have not had the chance to look at yet. As for MgT the jury is still out as I have had not looked at anything but book 0 for it.

I value almost all opinions in this matter as there are a lot of you out there better educated than myself. Those I have issues with I tend to ignore rather than start a flame war.

Keep em coming...

The book that I quoted earlier is a newer edition of a book that was originally written to be Era Agnostic and Traveller Version Agnostic, and predates MgT.

The Comstar stuff (Grand Fleet) does seem to be official as the 1248 (and 1200) stuff was part of the TNE CD. I highly recommend both versions of the book, It concentrates a ton of Imperial Naval info in one Volume. The only thing that it doesn't have is what the official Imp Naval Uniform looks like.