Jump Into Empty Hexes, Y/N?

[Ran Targas]

IMTU, empty hexes aren't necessarily empty; there's normally lots of primordial debris kicking around, from planetoids to brown dwarfs. That said, most empty hexes don't contain convenient gravity wells able to accurately precipitate starships into N-space. Often times, precipitation is unpredictable. Most jumps into empty hexes end where ever the hydrogen runs out; so two ships, of similar mass and design, could end up almost a light year apart despite leaving from the same starting point.

This is clearly an advantage if you're trying to ditch a pursuer but a big hassle if you're trying to rendevous with fellow opportunists. Could be a long wait while the space between is traversed.

Now, if your navigator knows of a planetoid or other stellar phenomenon usable as a guide post, then maybe they can figure a way to calculate a safe and accurate jump. Sort of makes that skill a little more useful.

 

[jawillroy]

Well, grump grump grump. ^_^

Well, that's for shelving, I'll have to say.

Thanks for the OTU help, folks.

I'd generally say something to the effect of "well goldernit, it IS MTU, after all" and just bluster ahead.

But the thing is, my current project is developing a Proto-Traveller setting; I'm trying to stay as pure LBB123 as I can, trying to let the environment as expressed by those core books develop as naturally as possible. Where I have to refer to other sources, (including myself) I'm trying to keep as much to the spirit of that ruleset as possible. Sometimes I'll go to canon, especially the older stuff, to guide me. So in this case, while I thought making it much harder to mess around in the open hexes might make things more interesting in some respects, I really don't think I can justify it in terms of my project.

Though the discovery of a starless planetoid in the inky deep is still a really nifty seed for an adventure, even so. That, I'll keep.

 

[rancke]

One of the reasons I'm seeing a problem that needs solving is this: Say you've got a one-parsec gap separating two jump-one mains, all of which has been traveled by human spacefarers for centuries, millenniums. Everybody knows that there's this gap that prevents the most common class of merchant ships - Jump 1 vessels - from getting from one main to the other. If it's a trivial matter to jump into empty hexes, why hasn't anyone taken the initiative to set up some sort of deep-space installation there? A fusion plant, a habitat area, a fuel storage facility and a freetrader or two to keep it resupplied, and BAMMO, you've got a hub for interstellar commerce that would grow from a lousy D-port to an A or B facility in no time.

But I don't think I've heard of anyone doing this in ANY TU.

The fallacy is in the notion that jump 1 ships are the most common form of merchant ships. They may be the most common form of PC-suitable ships written up. There may even be canonical statements about them being the most common form of merchant ships, but if so, they're wrong. The moment jump-2 is invented, jump-1 ships get relegated to jumping back and forth between adjacent worlds one parsec apart. On any distance greater than one parsec, jump-2 (and jump-3 if that's been invented) is cheaper per parsec than jump-1. Note that I'm saying per parsec. A jump-2 ship is more expensive than a jump-1 ship, and its cargo/passenger capacity is less. But it can cross a two-parsec distance twice as often as a jump-1 ship and thus carry more much cargo over the same period of time.


Hans

 

[jawillroy]

Now, Monsignors, I have a question about historical OTU fleet maneuvers. It seems that with ships free to jump into the open hexes (provided sufficient fuel and supply) a fleet on maneuvers has considerably more freedom of movement than if they're pinned to star systems. Do you see evidence of that being taken advantage of?

Naval warfare on a large scale seems to have a very flexible "front" even if you assume the need to tie jump to the star systems. Erase that, and there's almost no front at all - you're limited by supply lines, but I imagine in a pinch you could project a fleet two, maybe three jumps along without needing a base world. Depending on how thickly one's navy gets spread IYTU, the possibility of having a key world smashed by a fleet from upwards of nine parsecs away gives a fleet admiral good reason to concentrate his forces on one place, and not fritter the fleet away on patrol duty on less essential worlds. No?

Now, My Proto-Traveller Universe is dinky, and so are its pocket empires, and so are their naval budgets and so are their ships, so it's ever so important for fleets to be concentrated on capital worlds and a few key systems. Draw your own conclusions regarding such chestnuts as piracy, smuggling, etcetera.

 

[jawillroy]

"The fallacy is in the notion that jump 1 ships are the most common form of merchant ships. They may be the most common form of PC-suitable ships written up..."

I expect that's so, especially in a large-empire OTU model. I would agree that longer-jump ships would certainly be the logical choice for shipping companies/governments/corporations that could afford them, and that the short-jump ships are the realm of the tramp hauler, one-two-three ship companies.

It's stuff like that which drives me to a Proto-Traveller approach, and away from the OTU as it developed. Keep the fleets smaller, the Empire smaller, and the ships smaller, and even the cruddy little tramp freighters get to be more important.

 

[tbeard1999]

While I agree that Traveller canon eventually allowed for jumps into empty hexes, it seems pretty clear to me that this is not how things started out. A lot of Traveller background material implies that worlds were not *reachable* until "Jump-X was developed."

And the boardgame "Imperium's" jump lines, which represent allowable Jump-2 destinations, always terminate in occupied hexes.

If jumps into unoccupied hexes are allowed, then this is untenable. Any world within ~8 parsecs can be reached by a Jump-1 ship if it carries enough fuel.

IMTU, which is not canon, jumps into empty hexes are allowed. Indeed, a fairly significant naval battle (The Battle of Saladin) resulted from an elaborate operation that had Commonwealth long range units rendezvouing with tankers in empty hexes and jumping to surprise a Caliphate naval base that was 8 parsecs from the nearest Commonwealth world (and generally considered safe from attack). A large Caliphate battle force was eliminated at little cost to the Commonwealth forces.

The operation used about 1/2 of the available Commonwealth tanker tonnage in the region (the tankers had to carry fuel for the warships and fuel for themselves, etc.) and their absence snarled Commonwealth logistics for 2 months. This prevented the Commonwealth from exploiting its opportunity as much as it might have, but the operation was a strategic success. The result was a quasi-war that was resolved in a short time to the Commonwealth's advantage. (The PC's were at Saladin when the operation commenced and nearly got eliminated in a friendly fire incident).

 

[Supplement Four]

The fallacy is in the notion that jump 1 ships are the most common form of merchant ships. They may be the most common form of PC-suitable ships written up. There may even be canonical statements about them being the most common form of merchant ships, but if so, they're wrong.

I guess we can discuss your thinking on this until the crows come home and die, Hans. If there's cannoical statements to the effect, then why are you absolutely right?

IYTU, sure, you're right. But, you spoke above of the "fallacy" implied in the OTU.

I don't want to get into again, but I can throw up just as much "evidence" that J-1 ships are the most prevalent starship in the OTU as you can against the idea. I think canon is more on my side of the argument, though.

 

[Whipsnade]

And the boardgame "Imperium's" jump lines, which represent allowable Jump-2 destinations, always terminate in occupied hexes.

Tbeard,

The problem begins when people forget that the Imperium wargame predates the Traveller RPG.

The jump lines in Imperium were never meant to model Traveller's jump lines. In the first edition design notes, they're specifically noted as modeling Niven & Pournelle's Alderson Drive from The Mote in God's Eye. Now, when GDW kit-bashed Imperium into Traveller canon by adding labels like "Vilani" and "Terran Confederation" or removing references to the Empire consisting of "seventy stars centered on Capella", they didn't change the game's basic design; which included the movement system.

And that's when the seeds for GT:ISW's "Brown Dwarf Boobery" were planted:

First, Imperium was kit-bashed to fit OTU canon, but not fundmentally changed.

Second, the GT:RoF authors used Imperium to provide the first detailed history of the Interstellar Wars.

Third, because Imperium - a game whose map doesn't match the Solomani Rim and whose movement system uses Alderson Lines - doesn't allow for attacks across the 3 parsec Siruis-Sol gap, the GT:RoF authors assumed no attacks across that gap ever took place.

And, fourth, the GT:ISW authors followed that same mistaken assumption and produced their canon wrecking "Brown Dwarf Solution" in order to explain why you can't attack directly from Sirius to Sol in a wargame that isn't actually part of Traveller.

So, we ended up with a non-existent problem being solved be wholly unnecessary solution. Neat, huh?

Anyway, if you want mass precipitation in YTU, please go ahead and use it. It is completely unnecessary and has always been completely unnecessary in the OTU however.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[tbeard1999]

Tbeard,

The problem begins when people forget that the Imperium wargame predates the Traveller RPG.

...So, we ended up with a non-existent problem being solved be wholly unnecessary solution. Neat, huh?

Be that as it may, Imperium *is* part of the OTU canon. And there are other accounts (such as the settlement of the Spinward Marches IIRC) that make no sense unless you assume that jumps into empty hexes are prohibited.

Anyway, if you want mass precipitation in YTU, please go ahead and use it. It is completely unnecessary and has always been completely unnecessary in the OTU however.

I'll hunt down the quotes, but I think that it *is* required if (for instance) the explanations of how the Spinward Marches were settled are to make sense.

 

[BlackBat242]

In Journal of the Travellers' Aid Society #24, Marc Miller had a 4 1/4 page article on Jump & Jumpspace.

In it he makes 3 observations that are pertinent to this discussion (and several other recent ones).


1. Jump distance is entirely dependent on the energy applied in the formation of the jump field.

A given amount of fuel used to generate the jump field, modified by the mass of the ship, equals a specific jump distance. Period. Unless you mis-jump.

Nothing is said anywhere in the article about needing a mass to "focus on"... in fact, the only mention of large (planetoid & up) bodies is to note that the physics of jump demands that you enter jump far enough away from the object, and that if you try to exit jump inside the 100 diameter radius, you will "naturally precipitate out of jump as you near the 100 diameter limit".

In other words, the only effect a normal-space mass has on jump is a negative one.


2. All of the fuel used by a jump engine is used (and waste products/unused fuel) are ejected before the ship enters jump.


3. "Because a ship's jump destination cannot be predicted, a microjump within a system still leaves an impression that the ship has left; a week later, it emerges from jump in the same system, to the observer's confusion."

In CT, jump field strengths cannot be determined by an observer... thus the distance (or course) of a departing ship is a complete mystery to all remaining behind in normal space. Period.


I can e-mail scans of the article, or the article (in Word document format), to anyone interested.

 

[dean]

Nothing is said anywhere in the article about needing a mass to "focus on"... in fact, the only mention of large (planetoid & up) bodies is to note that the physics of jump demands that you enter jump far enough away from the object, and that if you try to exit jump inside the 100 diameter radius, you will "naturally precipitate out of jump as you near the 100 diameter limit".

In other words, the only effect a normal-space mass has on jump is a negative one.

This thereby means, by extension, that as you approach a target object within 100 diameters, it will also precipitate you out of jump. That does not preclude the fact that your ship should not normally jump further than the distance to that system, just that you'll be pulled out of jump at 100 diameters distance of any reasonably massive object. "Focus" on the mass is not needed, you simply have to point yourself within a few arc-seconds of it.

A given amount of fuel used to generate the jump field, modified by the mass of the ship, equals a specific jump distance. Period. Unless you mis-jump.

Which never made sense to me. Even as jump itself violates a whole lotta "laws" as we perceive them, I have a hard time reconciling that a jump one ship with enough fuel to make a single 1 parsec jump can misjump 6 parsecs.
Especially when it's clearly stated that X fuel used by ship Y results in max jump Z.

Obviously, YMMV IYTU.

All of the fuel used by a jump engine is used (and waste products/unused fuel) are ejected before the ship enters jump.

Which also seems a little wacky. We know that you can carry enough fuel for two jump-1 hops on a jump 1 ship. And, since one might jump at the 100 diameter limit "south" of the star system they're in, but be jumping to the system to the "north", they'd be by logical extension jumping back into and through the 100 diameter limit and thereby be precipitated out of jump space (as indicated by the previous statement about limits and masses).

So again, IMTU, direction matters. Orientation matters. Fuel is conserved, using only the amount expended for a give jump number.

None of which has a lot of bearing on CT-as-CT. These modifications in assumptions make sense to me and detract not one iota from the game itself, and merely exist to ease my personal hang-ups with the canon statements.

Happy Travelling!

 

[hunter]

Please do not offer to copy and distribute copyrighted materials on these forums.

 

[rancke]

I guess we can discuss your thinking on this until the crows come home and die, Hans. If there's canonical statements to the effect, then why are you absolutely right?

I didn't say there were any such statements. I can't remember any, but that doesn't mean there aren't any, so I threw that in in an attempt to avert arguments based on such hypothetical statements. However, I admit that my statement was incomplete. It should have begun "assuming that the various ship-building rules we know how have any reasonably close resemblance to the "truth" of how ships are built in the OTU" and then gone on with what I said.

It's usually accepted in discussions that any statement that is demonstrably false is, you know, wrong. But if you say that it's the ship-building rules that are totally wrong, then I guess I'd have to concede that this is also a possibility.

IYTU, sure, you're right. But, you spoke above of the "fallacy" implied in the OTU.

Taking the ship-building rules as reflecting a rather integral part of the OTU, yes.


Hans

 

[jawillroy]

Unfortunately, the shipbuilding rules - at least for CT - seem to be at odds with the OTU in a lot of ways. The OTU far outstripped LBB2 once High Guard came around, and it's been proven pretty conclusively that taking advantage of the High Guard rules will produce winning fleets with very little resemblance to anything the OTU Navy puts in the field, or indeed anything we'd want to play with. (Remember Eurisko?)

Can't say anything about what happened after High Guard- took one look at MegaTraveller and ran the other way, screaming.

 

[tbeard1999]

Unfortunately, the shipbuilding rules - at least for CT - seem to be at odds with the OTU in a lot of ways. The OTU far outstripped LBB2 once High Guard came around, and it's been proven pretty conclusively that taking advantage of the High Guard rules will produce winning fleets with very little resemblance to anything the OTU Navy puts in the field, or indeed anything we'd want to play with. (Remember Eurisko?)

Can't say anything about what happened after High Guard- took one look at MegaTraveller and ran the other way, screaming.

I think that the High Guard design system was superior to the CT starship system, because it seems to take no more time, yet allows for more detailed ships (and far larger ones, since it's easily scalable). That said, Book 2 works fine for me.

Unfortunately, High Guard was not really compatible with Book 2. Costs and tonnages for drives differ dramatically between the two systems. High Guard weaponry, screens and armor rules were never retrofitted to Book 2, except on a scattered, ad hoc basis in a few adventures.

I also like the High Guard combat system for resolving many in-game battles. It doesn't require you to stop the game, setup a miniatures wargame (or boardgame if using range bands from The Traveller Book) and run a relatively full blown wargame.

It would have been better, in my opinion, had CT replaced the Book 2 starship rules with a subset of High Guard rules.

 

[Gadrin]

nice...

"Focus" on the mass is not needed, you simply have to point yourself within a few arc-seconds of it.

which means some precise calculations.

Which also seems a little wacky. We know that you can carry enough fuel for two jump-1 hops on a jump 1 ship. And, since one might jump at the 100 diameter limit "south" of the star system they're in, but be jumping to the system to the "north", they'd be by logical extension jumping back into and through the 100 diameter limit and thereby be precipitated out of jump space (as indicated by the previous statement about limits and masses).

yeah, I've always had trouble imagining a logical explanation of that if I read you right. how to explain intervening mass like other stars or unknown rogue planets, etc.

I've usually thought of it as a "precision" process where you have to simply
avoid things like that. I suppose the 2D map makes it easier to overcome and that portion is just too detailed*** to bother with.

So again, IMTU, direction matters. Orientation matters. Fuel is conserved, using only the amount expended for a give jump number.

I think that makes sense.


*** detailed/fraught with all sorts of extras and stuff that ruins a good game.

 

[Whipsnade]

Be that as it may, Imperium *is* part of the OTU canon.

Tbeard,

So is dying in chargen or jump torpedos or that Library snippet that claims Capital sits at the only crossing of the rift for thousands of parsecs.

Anyone still kill charecters in chargen? It's canon per LBB:1, but was superceded, wasn't it? Ditto those jump torps from A:4 or the Capital quote from another early adventure. Not every jot and tittle in every LBB is automatically canon. Some have been overwritten and some just ignored.

Wargames - even when they're specifically designed for Traveller and Imperium wasn't - occupy a certain canonical niche. If eveything in FFW is canon then no warships have jump fuel regulators because every squadron must refuel after every jump regardless of said jump's length.

So, were jump fuel regulators only invented after the 5th Frontier War? Or does FFW's jump model ignore "leftover" fuel issues as a way to lighten the record keeping burden on the players and speed game play?

There's canon and then there's canon, and we must take care not to read too much into rules from a wargame. Those rules are most likely fashioned with many other things in mind than strict canonical accuracy; ease of play being the primary concern.

I'll hunt down the quotes, but I think that it *is* required if (for instance) the explanations of how the Spinward Marches were settled are to make sense.

I'd like to see those quotes and read your thoughts on them. For me, the maps from SMC are pretty clear and I've never had any problems with the way the Marches were settled by the Third Imperium. That's mainly because the Marches were "settled" in the same manner Britain "settled" India! There already were lots of people in the Marches, the Imperium just showed up and said you all belong to us now.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[rust]

In the OTU after the Third Frontier War jumps into empty hexes were quite possible.

An example from Trillion Credit Squadron (p. 41):
"The Clusters, being in the center of the Great Rift, are cut off from the den-
ser, more populated regions beyond its confines. Travel beyond the Clusters
requires jump-6 (or auxiliary tanks and jump-3)..."

This was written before 1981, so at least for the last 27 years the "canon"
did allow such jumps into empty hexes. o:

 

[tbeard1999]

In the OTU after the Third Frontier War jumps into empty hexes were quite possible.

An example from Trillion Credit Squadron (p. 41):
"The Clusters, being in the center of the Great Rift, are cut off from the den-
ser, more populated regions beyond its confines. Travel beyond the Clusters
requires jump-6 (or auxiliary tanks and jump-3)..."

This was written before 1981, so at least for the last 27 years the "canon"
did allow such jumps into empty hexes. o:

Of course, that sentence doesn't really make much sense. A ship with Jump-1 could make it, if it carried enough fuel (it would just take 6 weeks). I guess it implies that ONE jump into an empty hex is allowed, but two consecutive jumps into empty hexes aren't allowed.

 

[aramis]

Under CT Bk 2, it was quite possible that a J1 ship couldn't go six jumps...

That would be 60% JFuel, and 20Td PP Fuel, by the letter of the rules, and thus 100 and 200 Td ships have no remaining space for people, after adding drives.