Hop Culture - Implications

[robject]

There was a lot of chatter on the Jump-7 discussion about Hop drives, so I thought we could put those thoughts here instead of cluttering up the other thread.

The Hop drive is an order-of-magnitude improvement over the Jump drive. Ratings are in tens of parsecs instead of single parsecs; aside from that, their characteristics -- volume, cost, and power requirements -- are the same as that of jump drives, and it still takes one week in transit. Hop-1 is a TL17 technology, and the TL progression mimics that of the jump drive: TL18 has no increase, while Hop-2 is TL19, Hop-3 is TL20, and so on.

Some of these thoughts come from Cryton (Richard Ricker) and WHULorigan (Wayne).


Marginalizing Unimportant Worlds

You now can bypass less optimal worlds and effectively colonize only the one that are the most habitable, or the most profitable, and can ignore the rest.

The metaphor Marc used was that of the Interstate highway system, connecting major population centers while bypassing all of the nothing-towns that used to thrive on the state highways. Route 66 is dotted with now-unvisited towns, since I-40 is a much more convenient way to get around.

So, there will be more significant backwaters in a Hop culture, and clusters of better-off worlds around Strong center worlds. In some ways, Hop routes might be seen to bypass "flyover" parts of a subsector (the Hop-1 drive could be seen as a convenient way to hop from one subsector to the next).

Unimportant worlds may not only become isolated, but might be abandoned (or never colonized to begin with when new territory is opened up). More likely though, is an "outback/village" effect. Worlds that would normally be bypassed being settled by people who don't want to be bugged by interstellar tourism, but are still part of the local hop polity. Far-flung, but not out of contact unless they choose to be. After all, that world that's a week away is still only a week away.


Exploration, including the Zhodani Core Route

On the other hand, exploration will experience a boom. More or less, Charted Space grows, if only because you can now travel 10 parsecs in a week on a Jump-1 fuel allowance. This means a Jump-6 courier can be retrofitted with Hop-1 and make six Hops (= up to 60 parsecs) before requiring fuel.

That means exploration distances "grow" by a factor of 100, and Charted Space grows by something less than that. Your Scout/Courier can now cross half a sector in two weeks, and then think about refueling.

You're not bottlenecked by crappy worlds. Heck, even the Great Rift is no longer a barrier.

Only need the way stations (1 or 2 per sub sector at most) and any scout bases would in effect become more useful to chart/explore all those useless non-habitable/profitable worlds that were bypassed and not colonized.


War

A hop equipped fleet (even just hop 1) can out maneuver any Jump fleet, giving such a massive advantage to the first polity to discover hop, that it's not funny. Example: if the Imperium is the first to get hop, it conquers known space in a generation (and grows from appx 320 parsecs in "radius" to, say, 533 parsecs in "radius"). Jump based polities either fold, or join the new Hop polity. That's pretty much all there is to it.

 

[Major B]

Rob, the comparison between interstate highways and normal highways (I40 vs US66) is an apt one to think about what the effects of being bypassed could be unless those in-between polities reinvent some reason to get back on the map.

The military implication are just as huge as you said but there are two more effects to consider:

1. How does Hop change the imperial structure, where local nobles are empowered to make decisions just because it would take too long to ask for permission or guidance. Now they can send messages faster by an order of magnitude so does that imply more centralized decision-making will come along with the technological leap?

2. How does Hop change the imperial focus, where the imperium had reached it's effective limit of control at the 1-year message transit time to Capital. Expansion beyond that point was difficult to sustain in the face of any sort of opposition (my thought - not canon). With the advent of Hop, does the empire have more pent-up potential for expansion to get out of it's system?

And note that the two could counter one another and result in fragmentation - where the Moot and Emperor want more decision-making while those further out want freedom to expand.

 

[Quint]

War

A hop equipped fleet (even just hop 1) can out maneuver any Jump fleet, giving such a massive advantage to the first polity to discover hop, that it's not funny. Example: if the Imperium is the first to get hop, it conquers known space in a generation (and grows from appx 320 parsecs in "radius" to, say, 533 parsecs in "radius"). Jump based polities either fold, or join the new Hop polity. That's pretty much all there is to it.

I'm not sure about this. Yes, Hop-vs.-Jump provides both a huge strategic and tactical advantage, but if we make the semi-reasonable assumption that this tech leaks relatively quickly either through espionage or capture it actually simply becomes a huge destabilizing element. borders become so fluid that Vargr corsairs suddenly have huge range, same with the Aslan. Conquering space requires moving troops and boots on the ground, and Hop provides no advantage for in-system conflict.

Sure the Imperium (or whomever) can get people further and faster, but they still have to fight locals when they get there. Rather than radically changing borders within a generation I'd suggest that defenses are built up radically across entire polities to prevent effective "deep penetration" strikes. Instead of crust strategy, everyone will move towards a shell strategy with as few thin spots as possible.

D.

 

[khadaji2002]

I'm not sure about this. Yes, Hop-vs.-Jump provides both a huge strategic and tactical advantage, but if we make the semi-reasonable assumption that this tech leaks relatively quickly either through espionage or capture it actually simply becomes a huge destabilizing element. borders become so fluid that Vargr corsairs suddenly have huge range, same with the Aslan. Conquering space requires moving troops and boots on the ground, and Hop provides no advantage for in-system conflict.

Sure the Imperium (or whomever) can get people further and faster, but they still have to fight locals when they get there. Rather than radically changing borders within a generation I'd suggest that defenses are built up radically across entire polities to prevent effective "deep penetration" strikes. Instead of crust strategy, everyone will move towards a shell strategy with as few thin spots as possible.

D.

These are interesting points. I agree that the first polity to develop Hop drives will have a huge advantage. How they make use of that advantage is critical. Someone like Ghengis Khan would like immediately start a wave of conquering. Someone like most Chinese emperors would be more likely to send out a wave of ships to show the flag and demand tribute. So there's a lot of room for discussion on how this invention would change the in-game balance.

I agree that an invention of this magnitude would leak faster than a starving cheetah chasing a gnu. Look at the atomic bomb. While most scientists in the West were patting themselves on the back and assuring the politicians that the Soviet Union couldn't duplicate the bomb for a decade or more, the SU was able to set off a bomb of their own four years almost to the day of the bombing of Hiroshima. Between the Soviets own research on the subject and the help of agents in the US they had everything they needed to reach parity in less than five years. The Hop drive is likely going to see a similar time frame. Complete advantage for a few short years, leading edge advantage for a couple more years, then parity.

That leads to how each race would handle the brave new world they'd find themselves in. I personally believe the Imperium would have a hard time adapting to the new paradigm for reasons already mentioned. There'd be a struggle between those wanting to centralize power and reduce the power of the border nobles, and those wanting to increase the power of the border states as springboards to charge out in conquest and exploration. I have not studied enough of the Vargr, Droyne, Aslan, and Hivers to have an idea of how each race would use the new tool. At a guess the Aslan and Vargr would both look to hit developed worlds well inside the Imperial border to gain resources and hurt infrastructure. Would the Zhodani start deep raids to create bases of psions within Imperial space? How would the Hivers react to the disruption of plans laid down decades ago?

I look forward to the discussion of these points and others that come up!

 

[Nathan Brazil]

More mobility implications.

• With an attack from a Hop society to Jump society: even if the Hop fleet loses the battle itself and must retreat, the Jump fleet will take 2 to 3 jumps to get to the system 10 parsecs away (asssuming the Hop fleet came from 10pc away).
• In war Hop society supply lines are difficult, if not impossible to disrupt: If a forward system/base for a Hop society gets its supplies from one Hop away that system could be 20 pc away from the Jump border system.
• A Hop society gets reinforcements faster on a retreat. The Jumpers take minimum 2 weeks to get to you, more likely 3 (assuming 10pc). You can send your Hop couriers out on week 1, send them back with reinforcements on week 2 or at least by week 3. And the defending Hop system also has 2-3 weeks to otherwise prepare.
• On attacks, reverse deal. attack anywhere you want. If response is 2-3 weeks, your fleet can be 10-30pc into the enemy's interior.
• Concentration of forces: :nonono:Speaking of the other Major Races, in the early days of Hop. With all those Naval Bases (not even speaking about the Outposts). The K'kree have, imagine My Little Ponies of Death get Hop first. They might not even need Virus to destroy thr meat eaters...:smirk:
• Regardless of the rule system. spinal kills are still spinal kills for sure, but the smaller fuel tanks for Hop-1 allow for more secondary weapons or fighters or troops per ship, with greater mobility strategically.

 

[GypsyComet]

Borders become so fluid that Vargr corsairs suddenly have huge range, same with the Aslan.

Which makes the problem era dependent. As a discovery well after even 1248, Hop is providing mobility in a Charted Space stomped flat. Why would the Vargr or Aslan or K'kree bother with worlds waaaaaay over there when there are literally thousands of closer worlds, and some of those are going to have people on them you will wish you hadn't ignored.

Marginal worlds are only worth ignoring as long as your enemies are also ignoring them...

 

[tjoneslo]

As a counterpoint for short distances the jump drive is better. For worlds four parsecs apart the jump drive takes one week, but the Hop drives take two. This would mean small empires, about a subsector in size can defend itself. The internal travel time is better for the jump drives.

I would imagine the larger empires would arrange their internal defense around a j-3 or J-4 spheres centered on a naval facility. For the Hop empires I would have two sets of overlapping defense stations. One for the jump drives, one for the Hop drive.

The empires that have the most difficult time defending against this are the medium sized ones. Like the Julian Protectorate or the Solomani Sphere. Too big to defend with just Jump but not big enough to have a three Hop defense perimeter.

I would think this would extend to the commercial side as well. There would be a trade station every five or ten parsecs. With a set of jump ships to do the 'local' delivery.

 

[aramis]

I'm not sure about this. Yes, Hop-vs.-Jump provides both a huge strategic and tactical advantage, but if we make the semi-reasonable assumption that this tech leaks relatively quickly either through espionage or capture it actually simply becomes a huge destabilizing element. borders become so fluid that Vargr corsairs suddenly have huge range, same with the Aslan. Conquering space requires moving troops and boots on the ground, and Hop provides no advantage for in-system conflict.

Sure the Imperium (or whomever) can get people further and faster, but they still have to fight locals when they get there. Rather than radically changing borders within a generation I'd suggest that defenses are built up radically across entire polities to prevent effective "deep penetration" strikes. Instead of crust strategy, everyone will move towards a shell strategy with as few thin spots as possible.

D.

Marc has stated that capture of one alone is not enough to replicated it, and that Jump, Hop, Skip, etc each are independent discoveries. Capture of one is a start. The lack of ability to easily clone it despite having the requisite TL indicates it's a fundamental change in understanding that requires both the right tech, and the right mindset, as well as the right conditions.

Marc is crafting a very specific feel for M1900...

Spoiler

Including making Regina into a backwater

 

[Cryton]

A few more thoughts on Hop Culture and its military.

One factor that will greatly influence "Hop Culture" is the fact that it's TL17, and an Anti-Matter culture as well. Let's not even get into the advances TL17 brings to ships weaponry, THOSE are just as impressive. Also, the computers are Self-Aware and Sophonts in their own right (Whoot! I can play a ship as a character!!). In fact, the more I think about Hop Culture, and any TL17+ game, the more I think "The Culture" by Iain M. Banks, and what a great setting THAT is to play in.

Those cultures "acquiring" Hop technology as opposed to inventing it that aren't TL17, they can reproduce proto-types as low as TL14 (IIRC), but most likely will not have the HUGE advantage that Anti-Matter Power provides, or the unmentionable weaponry, computers and other advances.

As for retrofitting older ships, yes, installing a Hop-1 in place of a Jump-6 frees up a LOT of space, BUT, it doesn't make getting around at speeds of less than Hop-1 any easier (There is NO mention anywhere of a "Hop Governor" that lets you travel LESS than 10 parsecs), you can always use the free space from the removed Jump-6 drive to install a Jump-2 or 3 drive as well and not have any real issues at all. Regardless, a Hop Culture is going to have an increase in time for travel to systems less than 10 pc away if they do not. Also, think about how once you install an Anti-Matter drive and Maker (I forget what those are called, but they create the AM plugs the drives use) you can free up all that fuel space for other things. Now add in the TL17 weapons and sentient computers (less crew needed!). I'm positively drooling. LOL

I will bet that a Hop-1 100 ton anti-matter powered scout, armed with a disintegration turret would lay waste to a TL15 ship 10 times its size or more. Especially when you consider the fuel space that used to be allocated to fuel, is now TL17 maneuver drives, agility, ECM/ECCM packages and armor.

Just a few more thoughts.

~Cryton

 

[Cryton]

Oh yeah, if your TL17 Hop capable culture also has jump, they can install a Jump 7 with an AM power plant as a feasible, and usable design.

Just pointing this out. :devil:

 

[Ulsyus]

It's worse than that, he's fast Jim...

(to paraphrase)

The Hop drive is an order-of-magnitude improvement over the Jump drive. Ratings are in tens of parsecs instead of single parsecs; aside from that, their characteristics -- volume, cost, and power requirements -- are the same as that of jump drives, and it still takes one week in transit. Hop-1 is a TL17 technology, and the TL progression mimics that of the jump drive: TL18 has no increase, while Hop-2 is TL19, Hop-3 is TL20, and so on.

T5.09 p375 in the chapter on How Jump Works.

The table at the top of the page lists the time taken for Hop as 24 hours.

Pop that into your strategic naval analysis pipe and smoke it.

Seriously though, assuming I didn't get a bum-CD that's misprinted it, Hop changes much much more than everyone's posted above.

Oh, did I mention fuel? Starship Design and Construction chapter, p321, left column under the heading Hop Drive:

The Hop drive consumes fuel equal to 1% of the hull volume of a ship per Hop number; For example, a 100-ton hull with a Hop Drive-A is capable of Hop-2. To accomplish Hop-2, it requires 2 tons of fuel (= 1% of hull volume times Hop-2).

Again, please correct me if I've got a dodgy copy of the BBB, but this changes all the changes mentioned.

 

[Ulsyus]

War

A hop equipped fleet (even just hop 1) can out maneuver any Jump fleet, giving such a massive advantage to the first polity to discover hop, that it's not funny. Example: if the Imperium is the first to get hop, it conquers known space in a generation (and grows from appx 320 parsecs in "radius" to, say, 533 parsecs in "radius"). Jump based polities either fold, or join the new Hop polity. That's pretty much all there is to it.

They might be able to go as far as they like, but to my way of thinking the thing that would would be the game changer would be the concentration of force that could be achieved in a manner hitherforeto unseen (it's been a while since I've been able to use that word).

I like Khadaji's analogy with Ghengis Kahn in this instance because of how, at least in Russia and a few other places, they didn't occupy the territory conquered but just demanded tribute. Even if the Imperium was able to take vast swathes of Charted Space, they may not be able to reasonably hold the ground after taking the space. Are they going to depopulate whole planets as a warning to the rest (Mongol Empire style!) to force control, or just let them know that they'll turn up annually with the treasure fleet waiting to be filled up?

Would they even need to conquer that vast area? If they had a network of scouts that were Hop equipped they could keep an eye on their foes and have tripwires that enabled them to see anything their Jump-equipped foes could muster that was going to bother them and then go out and swat it pretty nattily.

 

[whulorigan]

T5.09 p375 in the chapter on How Jump Works.

The table at the top of the page lists the time taken for Hop as 24 hours.
.
.
.
Seriously though, assuming I didn't get a bum-CD that's misprinted it, Hop changes much much more than everyone's posted above.

I think you might be looking at T5.00. In the original release T5, Hop did have 24 hour Hop durations, but that was changed for T5.09, where all of the higher order drives have 168 hours as their transit duration. But in T5.09, the table that noted this is found at the top of p.342, not 375.

Oh, did I mention fuel? Starship Design and Construction chapter, p321, left column under the heading Hop Drive:

In T5.09, Starship Fuel in the Construction Section is on p.297:

For L-Hyd: Tons = P x H / 10
For Antiomatter: Slugs = P x H / 100

Those formulas are the same for Jump, Hop, and Skip Drives.

 

[Condottiere]

If you can't interdict, intercept or limit hops, any ship with a planetbuster becomes an existential threat.

Regimes can't control borders, nor be able to secure most of their hinterland, unless someone invents planet sized shields.

 

[whartung]

If you can't interdict, intercept or limit hops, any ship with a planetbuster becomes an existential threat.

Regimes can't control borders, nor be able to secure most of their hinterland, unless someone invents planet sized shields.

Ya know, honestly, save for the smallest of regimes, they can't control their borders now. It's simply too expensive to garrison the border systems with enough resources to stop a determined invader. At best, you will get the intelligence that "something" is coming, and, ideally, be able to reinforce with strength key targets.

But, in theory, you're doing that anyway as there's nothing to stop a determined enemy, with LOTs of time and resources, from caching a deep space route and simply jumping in "out of the dark" and surprising anyone.

Sure the speed of battle with a Hop drive is, well, just crazy in contrast to Jump. But the problems remain even with Jump. The borders are naturally porous.

 

[aramis]

Oh yeah, if your TL17 Hop capable culture also has jump, they can install a Jump 7 with an AM power plant as a feasible, and usable design.

Just pointing this out. :devil:

Only if your TL17 Hop Culture actually developed jump first.

 

[Ulsyus]

I think you might be looking at T5.00.

Damn. Thanks for that.

 

[aramis]

It's worse than that, he's fast Jim...

(to paraphrase)



T5.09 p375 in the chapter on How Jump Works.

The table at the top of the page lists the time taken for Hop as 24 hours.

Pop that into your strategic naval analysis pipe and smoke it.

Seriously though, assuming I didn't get a bum-CD that's misprinted it, Hop changes much much more than everyone's posted above.

Oh, did I mention fuel? Starship Design and Construction chapter, p321, left column under the heading Hop Drive:



Again, please correct me if I've got a dodgy copy of the BBB, but this changes all the changes mentioned.

5.09 changes hop, skip, and higher regimes. All now take a full week, just like Jump.

All use 10% * rating for hydrogen or 1 AM fuel slug per 100 tons per drive rating.

The exclusion mask no longer climbs by type - I did the math, and found out Bound drive was incapable of use within the galactic plane for a full B1.
Even Leap 1 was a stretch. 1000 Pc, with 100,000 diameter exclusion, Sol blocks a full 400 AU, a blue giant 2000 AU... No problem, there... but the oort clouds become solid, so each system becomes a 1-4 LY sphere with a probability of transit of ≤0.1, and average separation of 10 LY, trying to go 1000 AU, forget it. It's even worse in 2D.

 

[robject]

As a counterpoint for short distances the jump drive is better. For worlds four parsecs apart the jump drive takes one week, but the Hop drives take two. This would mean small empires, about a subsector in size can defend itself. The internal travel time is better for the jump drives.

I think this would be interesting.

I have also heard that if you aim your ship right, that the 100D limit of an intervening world would precipitate your ship handily. So you could travel fewer than 10pc by "collision astrogation". I think this is also reasonable, and consistent with Traveller.

But I do like the idea of requiring TWO hops ("one out, one back") to travel fewer than ten parsecs. In short, creating a niche that preserves the jump drive and even justifies having one installed right next to the hop.

 

[aramis]

I think this would be interesting.

I have also heard that if you aim your ship right, that the 100D limit of an intervening world would precipitate your ship handily. So you could travel fewer than 10pc by "collision astrogation". I think this is also reasonable, and consistent with Traveller.

But I do like the idea of requiring TWO hops ("one out, one back") to travel fewer than ten parsecs. In short, creating a niche that preserves the jump drive and even justifies having one installed right next to the hop.

You only need to do that if there's something it the way. Otherwise it's just "Aim for the exclusion zone and go direct."