[Shipyard] Lurushaar Kilaalum-class Corvette

[rancke]

At which point, they probably make use of the standing navy J6 runs... Or use the same plans the Navy does for the Fleet Courier.

Right, because there's no reason why the Scouts would mind being reliant on the Navy for their long-distance communication.

I'd say that it was entirely plausible -- no, practically inevitable -- that the Scouts would TRY to get their own J6 couriers. How many they would manage to get would depend on how successful they'd be with their budget requests. They might or might not get to design their own version; that would likewise be a political matter.

For the most part, they're going to make do with J1-J2 to/from the X-boat net, and J3-J4 along it.

Why would they use anything other than the X-boats along the X-boat net unless it was faster? Oh, right! A J4 courier would be faster than the X-boat net as we know it.


Hans

 

[Ulsyus]

Why would they use anything other than the X-boats along the X-boat net unless it was faster? Oh, right! A J4 courier would be faster than the X-boat net as we know it.

Hans

Huh?

 

[rancke]

The canonical X-boat net is quite inefficient. It is full of unnecessary doglegs and short links that reduce transmission speed. A message going from Rhylanor to Regina by X-boat would take seven jumps, or 49 days if the X-boats average 7 days per jump. A J4 courier using eight days per jump would take 23 days. A commercial J5 passenger liner using ten days per jump would take 17 days. Granted that's a particularily egregious example, but there are a lot of others that are pretty bad, if not quite that bad. Regina to Efate is four X-boat links, Boughene to Kinorb is two, Glisten to Trin is six.

Mora to Rhylanor is nine!


Hans

 

[robject]

I'd say that it was ... practically inevitable ... that the Scouts would TRY to get their own J6 couriers. [...]

I wonder at what point Imperiallines intersects with, or trumps, the IISS' interests. They could simply be orthogonal, and why would they be at cross purposes? Still...

Externally identical to the type TI frontier transport, the type TJ is never openly identified as such by its owners. The type TJ fulfills Imperiallines' major covert mission: to provide a jump-6 transport system within the lmperium for material, agents, information, and equipment necessary for
various Imperial activities.


lmperiallines equipment is a grimy, dirty assemblage. Under the grime, the ships all look the same; no one gets close enough to see the differences between TI and TJ types, and, as far as the public knows, all the ships are of the TI type.



Imperiallines is a front. It would take a lot of work to see, but through several interlocking companies and holders, ownership finally goes back to an office in the Imperial Household bureaucracy. lmperiallines is a fast-moving secret Imperial courier.

 

[phavoc]

The canonical X-boat net is quite inefficient. It is full of unnecessary doglegs and short links that reduce transmission speed. A message going from Rhylanor to Regina by X-boat would take seven jumps, or 49 days if the X-boats average 7 days per jump. A J4 courier using eight days per jump would take 23 days. A commercial J5 passenger liner using ten days per jump would take 17 days. Granted that's a particularily egregious example, but there are a lot of others that are pretty bad, if not quite that bad. Regina to Efate is four X-boat links, Boughene to Kinorb is two, Glisten to Trin is six.

Mora to Rhylanor is nine!

Hans

Yeah, but the X-boat network is for the standard dissemination of information and mail. Anything critical would be turned over to dispatch boats whose sole mission would be to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible.

None of the books talk about it, but it would make total sense that every fleet would deploy with multiple J6 dispatch boats in order to quickly update headquarters. And there would be dozens or more of them just sitting around major fleet nodes as well as government nodes to deliver messages on an as-needed basis. Which would leave the X-boat alone to do it's thing. Disruption of the primary means of communication would cause economic impacts, and hence would be avoided at all costs. Gotta keep those tax credits flowing!

 

[robject]

Xboat is a Done To Death issue. Explaining or critiquing it based on efficiency, or even its printed original mandate of communication speed, is obviously not its game 'reality'.

This dead horse is not just beaten, it has been reduced to its constituent molecules. Please, let's move on.



...On the other hand, comparing the efficiency of the Xboat route in the Spinward Marches compared to the routes in other sectors might be a fruitful discussion.