Jump Capable Small Craft

[jhulse]

I hope I'm not getting this wrong... I know of one GM who used "jump gates".
I'm not sure is it was based on a "stargate SG-1" or "Babylon 5" jump gate, or both. But the idea is any ship that could fit into the gate would have a jump bubble created for it, large craft or under 100 ton. Not sure though, we never used one in the game.

 

[mike wightman]

endersig's idea sounds like the way jump works in C.J.Cherryh's Merchanter/Alliance/Chanur novels.
A jump may take a few days to a week of real time , but to the jumping ship only a few moments pass - usually spent drugged up to the gills.

 

[mike wightman]

As to jump gates, I've considered a variant where the ship only needs to mount a jump drive to maintain the jump bubble while in jump.
The jump fuel is provided by the B5-like jump gate, which also includes the machinery to open up the jump tunnel in the first place.

 

[RainOfSteel]

Originally posted by Jak Nazrith:
I hope I'm not getting this wrong... I know of one GM who used "jump gates".
I'm not sure is it was based on a "stargate SG-1" or "Babylon 5" jump gate, or both. But the idea is any ship that could fit into the gate would have a jump bubble created for it, large craft or under 100 ton. Not sure though, we never used one in the game.

Maybe it's: Jump Gate, from the: Traveller: Fire, Fusion, & Steel site.

 

[aramis]

There is cannon material that relativity errors can occur on misjumps. MT, TNE, T4, T20 all have that.

It's not a STANDARD jump effect.

On misjumps, however, time passage inside the bubble is not necessarily in synch with passage of reference time.

 

[endersig]

Originally posted by Kevin_Starwaster:
I think he's confused. There is no such issue with jump drive mentioned in canon that would require dealing with.

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by RainOfSteel:
<shuffles feet />

Ok, I'll bite, what's the "flash forward" of FTL?

</font>[/QUOTE]Actually, it has a little something to do with the Theory of Relativity and a "Thought Expiriment" by Einstein. You take twins, have one live on Earth and one on a rocket travellering faster than light. Then, after x years, bring the rocket ship home, and compare the twins. The one will have aged normally, but the one in the space ship will have aged much less, because he was travelling faster than the speed of light. The Flash-Forward effect is the name I refer to this intruiging side effect of lightspeed travel. Now, this isn't an issue with Traveller Canon, but with physics as we currently know it.

 

[jappel]

Endersig:

It's not an issue in Traveller because jump is a non-relativistic phenomena. Jumpspace is considered to be "outside" the physical universe. Thus, the "Twin Paradox" doesn't apply.

John

 

[endersig]

Thanks Jappel. I liked it though, it made things faster

 

[JAFARR]

Originally posted by Aramis:
There is cannon material that relativity errors can occur on misjumps. MT, TNE, T4, T20 all have that.

It's not a STANDARD jump effect.

On misjumps, however, time passage inside the bubble is not necessarily in synch with passage of reference time.

Yeah! Misjump! I was in a game where we took damage just as we went into jump. We went into jump somewhere in the Regina or Lanth subsector of the Spinward Marches and ended up in the north east guarter of the Solomani Rim and 5 years later. Not only that, we were so damaged that we crashed into the ocean when we attempted to land. The "ref" decided to end the session there so he could think of some reasonable explanion as to why he didn't just kill us outright and start over. Come to think of it that's where the Phantom Brigade was born, but that a tale for another time.

 

[Flynn]

Personally, I've considered sub-100dt jump ships to be hugely experimental, and much more difficult to plot jump routes for (add two or three levels of difficulty, or +10 or +15 DC for T20 purposes), making them much more unreliable below TL16 or TL17. They work, but it's a gamble as to whether or not you'd suffer a misjump, except in the hands of an extremely, extremely talented astrogator.

These issues will be addressed in TNE:1248, though, but game mechanics will be kept to a minimum to make the book more applicable to multiple game systems.

My two creds, anyway,
Flynn

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Sorry for not answering Sigg Oddras question (which is terribly pertinent to my post), but I have been commuting to a new job....

The physics changes such that micro-jump drive only takes several hours to translate to the new location. The missile is not really usable for regular combat, but is very nice for assaulting a star system. The navy that has it uses a micro-jump scout to stealthily plot the system defenses, then provide the data to the fleet. The fleet has numerous ships that are nothing but missile carriers, that blanket space fortifications and identified patrol points with these micro-jump missiles before the fleet in-jumps.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Oh, and the distance (and fuel, approx.) traveled is proportionate to the time reduction. I worked out the math to approximately 1/20th of a normal jump. Micro-jump also allows for a small vector change (about 20 degrees) between jumps, thus allowing non-linear travel. It really helps the high-tech ships avoid capture or revelation of their point of origin.

 

[mike wightman]

So do you use the same rules for ships executing microjumps or is it just missiles?

Because if ships can do it as well you have just invented a much faster way of getting around a solar system than using the maneuver drive - even a 6g maneuver drive.

Interesting idea though. Only touching the borders of jump space or some such explanation, ships microjumping from planet to planet in a solar system - a lot like Firefly

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Actually, for playability, I pushed the j-limit a little further out than a normal jump. (I said the physics changed...) It does allow you to jump out of a system in one direction, enticing the enemy to calculate your destination and follow you, only to find (weeks later) that you had circled back to your starting point.

This was actually an idea spawned by a referee who liked my character's origin in this small technocratic "empire", but wasn't ready to let these people have warp drive (available in the LBBs at the right TL!). This was a geek end-run.

These drives are a lot smaller than normal j-drives, but the capacitance system is huge (making them 90% of the size of normal j-drives). Missiles are possible, because they don't have the capacitors.

It would be fun to be allowed to play a "pirate" or Q-ship with one of these micro-jump ships in somebody else's TU - see how it really plays out with somebody else in charge.

 

[Zparkz]

FF&S does not limit the size of the jump vessel other than that minimum size of the jump drive is 2Kl at anny tech level. FF&S p.42

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Zparkz:
FF&S does not limit the size of the jump vessel other than that minimum size of the jump drive is 2Kl at anny tech level. FF&S p.42

Which I've always believed was a typo that should have read "...the smallest jump drive possible is 28 cubic meters in volume."

That way it jives with the smallest sizes available in earlier editions. And you can still monkey around with J-drives in sub 100dT ships this way, just that the smallest drive that can be produced is effectively a 100dT J1 drive. Drop it in a 50dT ship and you could do J2, for example, if you can make the rest of it work. But I also think this was an oversight error on the part of the writers and that they just forgot to inlcude the requisite "minimum hull displacement capable of supporting a jump drive is 1400 cubic meters." Or some such

 

[Antony]

Well since a sub 100dt starship exists in the Regency Source Book it was probably not a typo. But remember unless you are looking at publishing it is YTU.

 

[Zparkz]

Originally posted by far-trader:
That way it jives with the smallest sizes available in earlier editions. And you can still monkey around with J-drives in sub 100dT ships this way, just that the smallest drive that can be produced is effectively a 100dT J1 drive. Drop it in a 50dT ship and you could do J2, for example, if you can make the rest of it work. But I also think this was an oversight error on the part of the writers and that they just forgot to inlcude the requisite "minimum hull displacement capable of supporting a jump drive is 1400 cubic meters." Or some such

[/QB]

You should read it as 2Kl jumpdrive is the smallest possible to get the effect of J1, regardless of how small the ship is.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Zparkz:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by far-trader:
That way it jives with the smallest sizes available in earlier editions. And you can still monkey around with J-drives in sub 100dT ships this way, just that the smallest drive that can be produced is effectively a 100dT J1 drive. Drop it in a 50dT ship and you could do J2, for example, if you can make the rest of it work. But I also think this was an oversight error on the part of the writers and that they just forgot to inlcude the requisite "minimum hull displacement capable of supporting a jump drive is 1400 cubic meters." Or some such

You should read it as 2Kl jumpdrive is the smallest possible to get the effect of J1, regardless of how small the ship is. [/QB]</font>[/QUOTE]Nope, no one will convince me this wasn't an error. You just have to look at the Fusion power plant table (p64) to see it. At TL9 (the earliest you can build a J1 drive) the minimum size for a fusion reactor is 100Kl, 50 times that 2Kl supposed minimum for the much more complicated fusion reaction driven jump drive.

I might be convinced that jump drives could follow the same reduction in scale as the fusion power plants but the initial minimum at TL9 would still be 28Kl. Heck it should be 280Kl by that comparison! But that would upset the OTU even worse.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Antony:
Well since a sub 100dt starship exists in the Regency Source Book it was probably not a typo. But remember unless you are looking at publishing it is YTU.

Even that doesn't convince me. It could be (is likely) the designer was using the system as published. Even the example in FF&S uses a 100ton hull.

And if the minimum size was so important as to justify the bold type "Important Note" heading then why would it only be 2Kl? That is so small as to insignificant, unless you want build wearable jump drives