Jump Space:Run Silent-Run Deep

[Silverhawk]

That sort of thing could increase a vessel's crew requiremtns - wouldn't you want to have a pilot and navigator on deck at all times to navigate through jumpspace?

It does. On the other hand, for a typical adventuring party it is a good chance to cross train. If I was GM I would say that a character who was cross trained this way might have a 0 level as pilot or navigator. Allows them to cover a watch with the caveat that something happens they need to hit the alarm and get the qualified personnel on deck.

Just my thought

 

[Enoki]

It does. On the other hand, for a typical adventuring party it is a good chance to cross train. If I was GM I would say that a character who was cross trained this way might have a 0 level as pilot or navigator. Allows them to cover a watch with the caveat that something happens they need to hit the alarm and get the qualified personnel on deck.

Just my thought

That's the way I like to use jumps. It is a time for the players to do stuff they want to do, interact a bit and recover so they can be thrashed within an inch of their lives a week later...

 

[epicenter00]

So, the gamemaster introduces an apparently not uncommon random event, the players burst into extended laughter, and the gamemaster promises never to introduce that event again. Hmmm - that tells me more about the dynamic of that group than about the entertainment value of that event.

It's similar to a GM fiat misjump, having little to do with the standard rules for misjump (ie; using unrefined fuel and so on). More along the lines of the GM just declares: "You misjump" without any die rolls.

The adventure was to take place on world Y, using a warp storm to blow us there felt like an overused MacGuffin, especially since we had spent about an hour preparing and buying equipment to go do something completely different on world X. Now of course, our ship was wrecked and we'd lost all of our supplies.

That we end up on Y is fine, the part that got the rancor is that we spent all this time preparing for something that has nothing to do with the story that is going to be told. Since we are all playing characters who are the Traveller equivalent of having reserve commissions (deliberately so we could be MacGuffin'd easily), it'd have saved time if we had just been told at the beginning, "Your commissions are activated and you're ordered to go to world Y."

I understand that there are players out there who prefer the narrative flow of a "warp storm" (or a misjump) in the Gang-a-Gley tradition.

However, as I said, "in my experience..." is not a universal rule, but ... my experience.

 

[Ulsyus]

It does. On the other hand, for a typical adventuring party it is a good chance to cross train. If I was GM I would say that a character who was cross trained this way might have a 0 level as pilot or navigator. Allows them to cover a watch with the caveat that something happens they need to hit the alarm and get the qualified personnel on deck.

Just my thought

That's a good idea, though this whole thing is redundant to a certain extent. I was reading that in the Eurofighter Typhoon (which is going to be a ways behind the Raptor and Lightning II) that there's no traditional instrument panels. The computer monitoring of systems brings issues to the pilot's attention, otherwise the pilot just rolls through systems check as per training while undertaking the mission.

Well, if that's were we are now, wouldn't they have something a little more complicated than that by TL12? If so I've argued myself down with my earlier comments about needing more crew. Plus, the watch would need more crisis management skills than simply Pilot or Astrogation or Engineering at 0. What do you think?

 

[Silverhawk]

Plus, the watch would need more crisis management skills than simply Pilot or Astrogation or Engineering at 0. What do you think?

Ulsyus - your right of course. But I see this also a an opening for character development. In a game (run in a non-traveller system but the point is clear), my character was a doctor. The rest of the party knowing we had a doctor had decided not to have any other character know anything of first aid. Sadly in one encounter my character was stabbed and died because of this.

Needless to say none of those players wanted to admit that they had made a mistake in not having even basic first aid skill. But the next time new characters were made there was a run on having first aid. And had any of the characters before the death incident asked they could have gotten at least a familiarity with first aid. Oh well.

So as I see it there are a number of possibilities in handling jump time. One is skip ahead. Nothing happens in between. Second is the possibility of a remote something happening. This is definitely when the GM has a plot in mind and needs to divert the characters to another spot. Finally is all the possibilities of hazardous jump space that have been discussed.

Since this is all dependent on a particular GM, it is as I see it a take your pick as to how you want to do it.

 

[Enoki]

Where piloting, navigation, and engineering skills come into play the way I do things is when the crew decides to do something like jump without stopping (ie., they have lots of momentum and therefore artificial gravity of a sort on) to do something like drift in (using conservation of momentum) at the system they are jumping to with say everything turned off to avoid being easily detected.
Or jumping at under 100 diameters.

Then those skills help avoid a misjump. I will often put them out of position at the arrival point instead even if no misjump occurs. "You are two point five million kilometers out from orbit five... The primary is in orbit 4. It's going to take you over a week to get there..."

Annoying yes. The chance of detection, higher. The possibility of doing it powered down? Zero. Kind of blew their plan. Forces them to come up with a "plan B."

 

[Ulsyus]

How do micro-jumps work in Traveller? I've never worked that one out. If jumping within the system, even if not within the 100 diameter distance, is it a matter of just doing calculations and taking another week of time out for the travel?

 

[Silverhawk]

That was always my understanding.

 

[Patron Zero]

I'm thinking if ships operating in j-space as generally so described that crews, as well as passengers, would be somewhat more active in preparations prior to jump and equally so once underway.

Aside from a previously mentioned exterior 'walk-around' to inspect the hull for damage to any j-space related hardware or other potential issues, an internal walk-through of the ship's compartments would also be warranted before leaving 'normal' space also.

Any crew so journeying through j-space would have some accreditation as to having receiving 'x' number of hours training in 'pre-flight' tasks and 'x' number of hours regarding j-space protocols, respectively.

Passengers would receive a brief 'orientation' before the ship departs port-dock as to what-if any potential unusual conditions might be experienced during travel through j-space and what appropriate responses would be made to insure their comfort and overall well-being.

Any concerns for their personal safety would be addressed and reassurances made that any substantiated hazards are minimized by the crew's certifications as well as the vessel's licensing-charter to operate in said surroundings. Not so much a pep-talk but a matter of form as with pre-flight orientation on modern airliners that frequent flyers sometimes seem to tune-out as from repeated exposure to such.

All said for the moment, definitely an active 'jump watch' on ships plying that weird wondrous and potentially eventful realm.

 

[aramis]

they are just j1 jumps for all rules purposes...

 

[mike wightman]

How do micro-jumps work in Traveller? I've never worked that one out. If jumping within the system, even if not within the 100 diameter distance, is it a matter of just doing calculations and taking another week of time out for the travel?

Pretty much yes.

You use the same amount of fuel as if you had done a jump 1, you spend one week in jump space, and you exit still in the system you supposedly jumped from. You could even jump and return to your original departure point of you wanted to.

 

[Ulsyus]

...Simply said, the passage through jump space being much more hazardous than the 'commonplace' load coordinates-activate J-drive process in a standard game.

I'm viewing jump space as a very hostile and potentially lethal region to navigate, making the a fore-mentioned one week jaunt something other than a 'layover' between destinations.

There was an element of that in Larry Niven's Ringworld setting, and it was replicated in the RPG, where pilots had to steer vessels around gravity wells in order to get to their destination. FTL in that setting was much faster than in Traveller, but you could still introduce that element to it. If a vessel has J2 or higher and wants to by pass a star system, the pilot and astrogator may have to perform tasks in J-space to get past the gravitational shadow of the intervening star(s).

Logically, computers at a high enough tech level (given what we have now, probably starting even at 10) would be able to do it themselves on autopilot. But, even as pilots now still fly aircraft rather than allow the autopilot to do everything when the risk level goes up, in Traveller the pilot and astrogator on military vessels at least would be hands on as they navigated past the intervening obstacle.

With all of that, games could be left with the 168 or so hours in jumpspace as an interlude with the VI computer running everything, or you could have the players decide if they're going to oversight the automated systems (uncertain skill tests to identify if anything's going wrong, and a preceding check by the ref to see if the computer got it right in the first place). Or you could have the players do the above at intervals (officer of the watch checking to make sure everything's on track: duty-officer checklist sort of thing) and go hands-on when they get to the complex J-space terrain.

I might have to try that in my game. Hmmmm.

 

[Ulsyus]

While I like the idea of the Navigator being busy in Hyperspace...
... it does have some issues.

I was having a look at the book while updating some software and noticed that the Jump Occlusion and J-space manoeuvring rules on p374 and 372 respectively could add a fair bit of action to what happens during a jump. This doesn't even take into account the need to spend time taking sensor readings of the outer system to avoid the example of ship interference occlusion given on p374 under "Calculating The Distance To The First Blockage"

 

[Sifu Blackirish]

Sifu drops in...

Fascinating discussion, all. This has given me some delicious food for thought in my fictional TRAVELLER inspired universe.

Reading the various posts, I was reminded of another fictional universe. For the life of me I cannot remember the author. An uplifted race of cat-people, and a strange "jumpspace" that kills people! Passengers must travel in cold sleep and crewmen are technically dead. Occasionally they "cranch" or stimulate their bodies into normal sensation, a dangerous procedure.

Looks like an interesting place to adventure...

 

[sabredog]

Fascinating discussion, all. This has given me some delicious food for thought in my fictional TRAVELLER inspired universe.

Reading the various posts, I was reminded of another fictional universe. For the life of me I cannot remember the author. An uplifted race of cat-people, and a strange "jumpspace" that kills people! Passengers must travel in cold sleep and crewmen are technically dead. Occasionally they "cranch" or stimulate their bodies into normal sensation, a dangerous procedure.

Looks like an interesting place to adventure...

The cranch is from "Scanners Live In Vain" by Cordwainer Smith. The crew is technically dead, having had all their brain disconnected and so are kept alive by this implanted machine. The problem with being alive while travelling through space is something to do with the "Great Pain" and drives you mad, then kills you in short order. So the crews "cranch" (the technique they use to stay alive and function through the machine implants, and wear the machines, monitor each other so they don't overload, and generally hold to this nobility of sacrifice for mankind to travel in space. The crew is frozen.

It's an interesting, if odd, story from way back in the day but there are no uplifted cats in it. Dunno where those might be from.

 

[Timerover51]

T
It's an interesting, if odd, story from way back in the day but there are no uplifted cats in it. Dunno where those might be from.

He is thinking of Cordwainer Smith's Ballad of Lost C'Mell.

 

[sabredog]

He is thinking of Cordwainer Smith's Ballad of Lost C'Mell.

There's only C'Mell in that story and she's half n' half. Maybe he meant "Game of Rat and Dragon"? It has a cat that has been mentally enhanced in it.


Which, by the way, is the inspiration for why my Scouts have enhanced cats that accompany them when they fly on singleship missions. They talk, too, but with a lisp. The Marines get a beast called a Neopard, though, a cyber-enhanced leopard bioanalog.

 

[Silverhawk]

There's only C'Mell in that story and she's half n' half. Maybe he meant "Game of Rat and Dragon"? It has a cat that has been mentally enhanced in it.

It definitely sounds like something that Cordwainer Smith would have written as it reminded me of the short story The Crime and the Glory of Commander Suzdal