The simplest solution is to keep everything as-is but institute a jump multiplier, as noted earlier. Instead of J-1 allowing you to jump 1 hex, it allows you to jump 3; J-2 allows you to jump 6; etc. The practical effect is that explorers and colonizers can skip over all those marginal, airless, waterless, fuel-less systems that Traveller generates. They'll still be there; they just won't have population numbers above 2 or 3 (that's the one change you'd need to make in system generation; a significant negative DM for inhospitable atmospheres and hydrography).
An alternative, instead of multiplying jump distances, is to add a constant. J-1 becomes J-3; J-2 becomes J-4; etc., so the range is 3-8 instead of 1-6. This reduces the speed discrepancy (the leggiest ships are not quite 3x faster than the slowest instead of 6x). It also has an important (and desirable, IMO) effect on refueling. Fuel requirements remain the same as determined by the jump plant -- that is, a J-1 plant (which allows you to jump 3 parsecs under these rules) still consumes fuel as a J-1 plant. If you jump only 1 parsec, you consume only 1/3 of your fuel tankage. If you have a J-3 jump engine (now capable of jumping 5 parsecs) and you jump 3 parsecs, you have enough fuel remaining to jump 2 more. The great advantages of this are that
a) there are more unpopulated or very-low population, backwater systems for wildcatters to prospect and pirates to hide in (because you still generate systems at the same density, you just don't populate the ones where it makes no sense to live),
b) you're not forced to run on unrefined fuel as often, and
c) because you can economically operate at less than your jump limit, a misjump no longer carries such a high threat of being a death sentence. (Raise your hand if you've ever lost an entire contingent of characters because their ship misjumped into an empty hex ...)
Steve
