Mandatory Coldsleep During Jump

[Diveguy]

Pondering a "what-if?" last night - the postulate being that jump space IMTU is so abnormal and disturbing to sentient beings that they must go into coldsleep/stasis/call-it-whatever during the transition and FTL travel in order to retain sanity. This then led to wondering the changes this would impose on an LBB-3 type small-ship setting, much less anything larger scale.

- Low berth/cold sleep would have to be more reliable, obviously. Perhaps make it a triple die roll, with all 1s indicating a critical failure.
- Ships would have an inherent vulnerability period following jump, while the crew was being revived and taking stations. Perhaps ships transit farther than the 100d limit, in order to minimize the increased risk from pirates and such?
- What does this do to aging, and other expectations of travel? Are "regular" travelers physically younger than their chronological age?
- This opens the need for a limited number of robots/synthetics to manage ship systems while the crew is down, as is a frequent movie plot point.
- Similarly, the scenario where a stowaway, berth failure, or other situation leaves someone exposed to the madness of jump space.
- What does this do to things such as "subsidized liners" or other space travel? If your only real "experience" on the ship is the transit to/from a jump point, what makes a high passage stand out over a middle passage and the like?

What other ways would this change the dynamic of things? Just a thought exercise.

 

[casquilho]

Pondering a "what-if?" last night - the postulate being that jump space IMTU is so abnormal and disturbing to sentient beings that they must go into coldsleep/stasis/call-it-whatever during the transition and FTL travel in order to retain sanity. This then led to wondering the changes this would impose on an LBB-3 type small-ship setting, much less anything larger scale.

I believe the Cepheus setting called Hostile by Zozer Games does just that. Their FTL requires that sentients go into stasis or have major bad side effects. It does make for an interesting mental exercise.

One thought, maybe the better passage includes more cargo space and better treatment when out of stasis. Think modern airplane flights. seat size and space, carry on size restrictions, extras provided while the travel where they exited jump and park such a meal quality and/or drinks etcetera.

 

[Krikkitone]

There would also be the down time before jump.

I think High Passage would be better quality cold sleep (more attending physicians for a more comfortable process) and “can’t get bumped”
(also you still have several hours of flight to 100D… First class is still a thing on a 1 hour airplane ride)

Travellers both ship crews and “jump set” would have a sort of natural anagathics.
(Although for character generation you wouldn’t get skills so it would just boost your chronological age without affect aging rolls or skills)

The automation of many things would be necessary
Either
1-Jump ships would be unsafe risky things (send a message don’t go there yourself)
2-Jump ships would be almost entirely computer to allow safe operations
or
3-Automation would be so good that sophont crews aren’t used for non jump ships either (or an engineering/construction

….of course another possibility…jump is instantaneous for ship time but takes a week in universe time (this would avoid the automation issue, and the cold sleep specific limits)

 

[Condottiere]

It's pretty much edition rules dependent.

Induced coma, maybe an eight day sleeping pill.

 

[vegas]

The death rate even at 3 on 3d6 is too high to be viable. That is 1 in 216 or 0.46%. If you jump 24 times a year, you have a 10.5% death rate per year. No one is gonna take that navigator job (or any other).

People will put up with an annual death rate of 1% in the right circumstances, but even that is brutally high. You gotta get the risk of death from low passage ay least 10x lower

 

[Takei]

I've never used the listed cold sleep reliability. Cold berths are 100% reliable unless the plot needs them to be otherwise.

As far as everyone has to be in cold sleep for jumps, why have any passenger facilities on ships? Passengers could go into their pods at the departure starport and get woken up at the destination. (Ground medical facilities are almost always going to be better than anything a ship might have). Cold berths are then treated as cargo, albeit with dedicated power and monitoring onboard. Only the crew need any facilities and those don't need to be as extensive or fancy as for passengers. Passenger ticket prices reflect how personal a medical service you get at both ends and how much baggage you can take.

 

[TamsinP]

In CJ Cherryh's novels, most oxygen-breathing sophonts have to tranq themselves before going into jump to avoid insanity, the exception being the Kif who don't need to. However, there are some very rare individuals known as "nightwalkers" who can go through jump without tranqs. It's been a while, but I seem to recall that bridge crew hook into a system that delivers an antidote/stimulant as they come out of jump so that they recover almost immediately.

The nearest equivalent in Traveller would be taking Fast drug.

 

[chipla]

Isn’t cold berth revival partly based on the medic skill of the reviver?

If you had fully cold berthed crews you’d need a damned good autodoc program (and highly trained medics would become essential).

I think one of the major changes would be making attacking star systems even worse than it would be in a regular traveller universe.

There would be a fairly significant delay in getting all the crew up and combat ready. So attackers would have to jump fairly far away from main-worlds. Meaning navies have more time to detect and respond, beyond that - any fleet that jumps into an area that happens to have a deep space defence station, or a squadron of SDBs within decent response time (whether through bad luck or poor planning) is basically screwed without some form of either automated defences or heavy enough armour to tank incoming attacks.

 

[whartung]

There would be a fairly significant delay in getting all the crew up and combat ready. So attackers would have to jump fairly far away from main-worlds.

Arguably, (at least I argue, or advocate is a better term) they have to do that anyways.

The 32 hour jump window is enough of a reason to gather the fleet.

There's always been chatter about how the military fleets can coordinate their jumps to better time their arrival, but I think that's mostly moot. Just because they may be able to synchronize their arrival, doesn't mean they can control when within the 32 hours window that they actually arrive, and you need that kind of precision to make that kind of "time ambush" event actually useful.

Without it, may as well jump farther out, gather, and work your way in.

How long does it take to get out of cold sleep? 1hr? 6hrs? a day? Space is big. Lots of time to do things before things get interesting.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

There could be societal reasons that have nothing to do with "Space Madness".
I saw a summary for a YA sci-fi novel , "Lockstep" by Karl Schroeder on goodreads ( Lockstep review on goodreads ). It posits a galactic civilization that has no FTL, but cryogenics works just fine. Ships go between the stars at NAFAL with everyone in cryo- so they don't die during flight. So society does not deviate, break apart or splinter, a strict schedule is kept where every planet is active for only a few weeks at a time, the same few weeks. Then when the weeks are done, all ships launch with people in Low Berths and EVERY PERSON PLANETSIDE ALSO GOES INTO CRYO- for the years/decades it takes for ships to travel to their destinations.

Before we get into the "why would any society do this?", (Hey it is a YTU). The how is easy with a few minor changes.

• Proper, effective Low Berths with an even lower mortality rate. Three "ones" is still 0.46% death rate.
• Starship changes: Remove all staterooms and accommodations, except what is needed to get the ship in flight in the correct direction, accelerate/decelerate and land (or as Major Don West in Lost in Space (1998) "And then the monkey flips the switch." This would include sophisticated automation and/or computers while "the monkeys" is asleep.
• The "clock" is normally maintained by perhaps atomic clocks and/or distant astronomical phenomena.
• Security protocols as referenced in T4's Milieu 0/Agent of the Imperium's/MgT2e for Fusion+ and makershops. Try to change or cheat the "clock", and the appropriate device or power supply fails forever or even, as Agent Bland stated, explode...

Now WHY?!?!?

1. Humanity living in the same time (the nice answer) - In various Japanese anime, most especially Gunbuster OVA (1989) , and the movie Interstellar (2014) and other books like The Forever War bring into question space travel causing travellers and non-travellers to live at different rates of speed, so to speak. All cause heartache and isolation, especially on the traveller. Humanity may go on, but Is there even a point of "interstellar" civilization if travellers can't live in the same time?
   • Coop's Earth was saved, but Earth sped thru 120 years. He is isolated because he did not live with his descendants.
   • Major Willam Mandella after only spending a few years of service came home Earth after 1,000 years to a species of clones called Man. He and his compatriots retire to an isolated colony away from Man's galaxy.
   • After Gunbuster's final trip, the teen heroine aged only aged about a year in space battles, yet 12,000 years elapsed on Earth. Due to being on a different mission, even her best friend is twenty years her senior, though they started high school together.
2. Control (the evil answer)
   • In the Lockstep novel, only the ruling family has access to said security protocols. Like Dune, if you can destroy a thing, you can control a thing. So punishment of systems could be handled by "messing with the clock". Plunge an entire world into collapse by turning off/exploding/erasing all electronic devices. If it sounds like Virus, yea well doom is doom.
   • Expansion of civilization is somewhat controlled. Since not all systems are the same distance, the sleep cycle controls how far you can go and perhaps how long ships have to stay on orbit if they get there early.
   • Piracy and "barbarians", if they even exists, is limited to one system at a time and if you "stole" a ship, it has "the clock" also. Good luck trying to restart an advanced society between the clock cycle when you drop to TL 4 or lower or worse if your planet has been punished.

 

[Diveguy]

I believe the Cepheus setting called Hostile by Zozer Games does just that. Their FTL requires that sentients go into stasis or have major bad side effects. It does make for an interesting mental exercise.

One thought, maybe the better passage includes more cargo space and better treatment when out of stasis. Think modern airplane flights. seat size and space, carry on size restrictions, extras provided while the travel where they exited jump and park such a meal quality and/or drinks etcetera.

I love Hostile's writeup, but obviously missed this. Time to do some digging. Thanks!

 

[Diveguy]

There would also be the down time before jump.

I think High Passage would be better quality cold sleep (more attending physicians for a more comfortable process) and “can’t get bumped”
(also you still have several hours of flight to 100D… First class is still a thing on a 1 hour airplane ride)

Travellers both ship crews and “jump set” would have a sort of natural anagathics.
(Although for character generation you wouldn’t get skills so it would just boost your chronological age without affect aging rolls or skills)

The automation of many things would be necessary
Either
1-Jump ships would be unsafe risky things (send a message don’t go there yourself)
2-Jump ships would be almost entirely computer to allow safe operations
or
3-Automation would be so good that sophont crews aren’t used for non jump ships either (or an engineering/construction

….of course another possibility…jump is instantaneous for ship time but takes a week in universe time (this would avoid the automation issue, and the cold sleep specific limits)

Agreed. THere's a level of butt-kissing before / after cold sleep that people would pay for.

Interesting thought on the automation scale. As well as the "instantaneous" jump option.

Thanks!

 

[Diveguy]

I've never used the listed cold sleep reliability. Cold berths are 100% reliable unless the plot needs them to be otherwise.

As far as everyone has to be in cold sleep for jumps, why have any passenger facilities on ships? Passengers could go into their pods at the departure starport and get woken up at the destination. (Ground medical facilities are almost always going to be better than anything a ship might have). Cold berths are then treated as cargo, albeit with dedicated power and monitoring onboard. Only the crew need any facilities and those don't need to be as extensive or fancy as for passengers. Passenger ticket prices reflect how personal a medical service you get at both ends and how much baggage you can take.

1 - to go off what Vegas said in the prior response, I lean your way.
2 - I think there were a few stories which went this route. You went into your pod prior to boarding and woke at destination. It's an option - but, then, we remove space as an element of play - the interstellar part at least. Not sure how to resolve this (both with your reply and my original post).

 

[Diveguy]

In CJ Cherryh's novels, most oxygen-breathing sophonts have to tranq themselves before going into jump to avoid insanity, the exception being the Kif who don't need to. However, there are some very rare individuals known as "nightwalkers" who can go through jump without tranqs. It's been a while, but I seem to recall that bridge crew hook into a system that delivers an antidote/stimulant as they come out of jump so that they recover almost immediately.

The nearest equivalent in Traveller would be taking Fast drug.

FWIW, being a Cherryh fan, the Mri also did not use drugs to transit Jump. But, they were a whole different thing to explore.

 

[Diveguy]

Isn’t cold berth revival partly based on the medic skill of the reviver?

If you had fully cold berthed crews you’d need a damned good autodoc program (and highly trained medics would become essential).

I think one of the major changes would be making attacking star systems even worse than it would be in a regular traveller universe.

There would be a fairly significant delay in getting all the crew up and combat ready. So attackers would have to jump fairly far away from main-worlds. Meaning navies have more time to detect and respond, beyond that - any fleet that jumps into an area that happens to have a deep space defence station, or a squadron of SDBs within decent response time (whether through bad luck or poor planning) is basically screwed without some form of either automated defences or heavy enough armour to tank incoming attacks.

So, in theory, does this eliminate interstellar invasions/combat? Does it then devolve to ground-based merc options?

 

[Diveguy]

Arguably, (at least I argue, or advocate is a better term) they have to do that anyways.

The 32 hour jump window is enough of a reason to gather the fleet.

There's always been chatter about how the military fleets can coordinate their jumps to better time their arrival, but I think that's mostly moot. Just because they may be able to synchronize their arrival, doesn't mean they can control when within the 32 hours window that they actually arrive, and you need that kind of precision to make that kind of "time ambush" event actually useful.

Without it, may as well jump farther out, gather, and work your way in.

How long does it take to get out of cold sleep? 1hr? 6hrs? a day? Space is big. Lots of time to do things before things get interesting.

I still am not sure how I feel about the 32 hour window, even after decades of thought. I don't like instantaneous, but I don't like overly vague, either.

You bring up great points about it though - it's a wide enough gap that truly coordinated actions need more lead time.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

So, in theory, does this eliminate interstellar invasions/combat? Does it then devolve to ground-based merc options?

Not necessarily. In the OTU there is a big example: the Old Islands and New Islands Subsectors of Reft Sector. These are the 3 ESA generation ships that left Terra in 2050 AD (-2462 Imperial) arriving in Reft Sector between 4512 and 4518 AD (-9 to -3) . Between then 5501 AD (980) colonies were established and fought over without Jump. Though there is a lot of time spent accelerating/decelerating one travel example showed one of the generation ships travelling to create a 2nd colony a mere 6 parsecs away in 96 years. (C-Jammer from New Home 4512AD to Serendip Belt 4608AD). This changes when the IN Strike Cruiser Eldorado misjumps into Serendip Belt in 5501....

The Mongoose 1e book Reft Sector describes how interstellar warfare is conducted without Jump. And then mixed Jump and non-Jump fleet operations.

 

[Condottiere]

The solution has always been pretty simple.

Mortality in science fiction stories was usually based on cost (Dumarest) or maintenance breakdown.

 

[Diveguy]

Not necessarily. In the OTU there is a big example: the Old Islands and New Islands Subsectors of Reft Sector. These are the 3 ESA generation ships that left Terra in 2050 AD (-2462 Imperial) arriving in Reft Sector between 4512 and 4518 AD (-9 to -3) . Between then 5501 AD (980) colonies were established and fought over without Jump. Though there is a lot of time spent accelerating/decelerating one travel example showed one of the generation ships travelling to create a 2nd colony a mere 6 parsecs away in 96 years. (C-Jammer from New Home 4512AD to Serendip Belt 4608AD). This changes when the IN Strike Cruiser Eldorado misjumps into Serendip Belt in 5501....

The Mongoose 1e book Reft Sector describes how interstellar warfare is conducted without Jump. And then mixed Jump and non-Jump fleet operations.

Good example. Thanks for sharing it.

 

[willtron3030]

I love this conversation because it brings to mind the phrase, "Jumspace-Induced Violent Psychosis". I want to use that.