RabidVargr
SOC-13
or 100,000 hoojiggets of energy.
Biiiiiiggg baddaboom
RV
Biiiiiiggg baddaboom
RV
This isn't strictly true. Some ships in B5 have their own jump engines. So sometimes ships will go through a fixed jump gate, and then use their own jump engines to come back out of hyperspace at the destination, or vice versa. A means of opening a portal is required at BOTH ends.Originally posted by Big Tim:
First, there needs to be a correction made -- in B5 there are a number of instances of the Jump Gates showing that while they can be used as an origin and destination gate, they do not need to be.
_________________________________________________Originally posted by CarlP:
Howdy, y'all.
Welcome to the boards! (yes, Far trader beat me, the rascal, I'll live with the coup point).
This here is my first posting, and I thought I'd make it about a topic that I've been thinking about lately. With the release of T20, I've been toying with starting up a Traveller campaign again. And one of the ideas I'm playing with is jumpgates.
The way I was thinking about it was that a ship needs to already have a standard jump drive in order to be able to use a jumpgate. This simplifies the situation immensely, I think. No custom rules, no playing around with changing tonnage, nothing. All of the infrastructure for jumping is already in the ship, so it's ready to go.
To use the jumpgate, the ship enters into the gate, and then goes through the jump procedure. The jumpgate then boosts the jumpfield, burning fuel in the gate, rather than in the ship, and helps to send it on its way. After entering jumpspace, the ship acts normally, reaching its destination, and emerging into normal space just as if it had done the jump on its own.
What's the point of this? Well, it allows a J1 ship to make a J6 jump, if there is a gate available. I would only have a few of these gates around, though. The cost would be a lot less than buying a J6 ship.
I did it so that I could have players with a practical ship (i.e., J2 seems to be the most useful IMTU), but they'd still be able to get places that required longer legs. The idea came to me while reading about misjumps. A J1 ship can conceivably go a lot farther during a misjump than one parsec. So the physics involved is already in place.
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Excellent reasoning, CarlP!
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My jumpgates will be rather rare. And Imperium controlled. You can use them, but you have to let people know where and when you are going.
I don't have this idea fully worked up, yet. This is what I've got so far, and I thought I'd share it, and get some feedback. Thanks.
Carl
_________________________________________________Originally posted by far-trader:
Howdy Carl, and welcome aboard! Hah, beat old Liam to the punch![]()
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Who are YOU callin old?
I cede the point on first contact, though![]()
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A couple points:
The gates will presumably also have to have J-drive, power plant, computer, personnel (and of course lots of fuel and fuel shuttles) to handle all that traffic. So you'd build them to accommodate a certain jump range and d-tonnage?
This addresses your control concern. To use the gate you'd need to file a J-flight plan, pay the fee (maybe use the charter rates, your ship d-tonnage and gate J range used), and then wait your turn (I expect the primary usage would be military and noble, it could be a loooong wait) When you get to the gate they tap your computer and do all the jump configuration. I think the ship computer would still need to be up to the task of the jump involved though.[qb]![]()
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My .000000125 Mcr input: Jump-Station computer can handle the extra work. Charges? the fuel used for the extra parsec consumption, plus tax/ maintenance fee. Or a small ship will find it prohibitive to use!Say a ship uses 100dtns fuel, but the gate uses anothe 500dtns to make the J-6?
Charge em refined fuel fees, plus the rest. YMMV
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[qb]There are a couple places where it would make a big difference in the OTU (rifts and such) but your limited approach should reduce that impact. Perhaps there are reasons not to use gates everywhere? Strategic vulnerability, lack of abundant fuel, sparse traffic, gravimetric anomalies![]()
Perhaps the ability to produce a jump bubble around another body (relatively safely) is a recent development (TL 16?). You might even consider applying the same (small) misjump risk associated with casting off drained drop tanks.
I'll reign in my imagination for a bit now and see what else is suggested.
Yep, I like the way this is going, keep us posted. I may have to have a couple (perhaps experimental and top secret at first) jump gates in my game after all.