Originally posted by jatay3:
Also, the sort of thing that the Kapiten is describeing is caused by the presumed "fact"(presumed by me)that jumping in formation is difficult, one navigation error can lead to great distorion, and cause a tendency to scatter upon reentry. It is not just the navigation problem-every jump causes a slight distortion, several coming close in time and space causes larger distortions.
Jatay,
That is a presumption IYTU then.
The physical accuracy of jump drive is 3000km per parsec jumped. That's from MWM's old JTAS 'Jumpspace' article. It's the
temporal accuracy that is more of a bother.
Going by the 168 hours +/- 10%, your convoy could be scattered over 33.6 hours. FOr close to a day and a half, vessels will be exiting jump space within the 3000km/parsec sphere metnioned above. Merchants could even arrive before their escorts!
That obviously makes both convoying and military operations hard.
MT introduced synchronized jumps as a result. There, the synched vessels arrive over a few hours instead. Of course, getting all those merchies to synchronize their jump calculations is another question!
While IMTY jumps in formation are doable but they have the danger of this scatter effect. There would be minor misjumps occasionally, and there would be ships arriving which are searching about attempting to find each other(like paratroops after a drop)-in so doing it would not be uncommon for ships to fly farther away from the gathering point.
That's a nice IMTU touch and one that would have been nice to know ahead of time. In the OTU, the chances of scatter are much less as I wrote above.
I was really taking the analogy from Terran naval history-that was the normal weakness of convoys historically.
When scattered by weather; mostly in the Age of Sail and WW2 N. Atlantic, or by direct order; i.e. PQ-17, policing stragglers is tough but doable. Seeing as in the OTU ships will arrive within the 3000km/parsec sphere and sensor ranges are measured in multiplelight-seconds, collecting stragglers is even easier.
And yes I baseing that on the assumption that the entry was based on the primary stars limit, not the actual port's limit.
Some, most in fact, worlds orbit outside of their primary's 100D limit. Using the world's limit is usually correct. Tizon is the exception.
I was also assumeing that the entry hazzards are increased the closer to a given mass.
Again, an IMTU assumption that would have been nice to know before reading the Kapiten's lecture.
In the OTU, entry close to a given mass is
impoosible. You cannot exit jump within a 100D limt.
You may ask, "then isn't convoying more dangerous".
I won't ask that. I'm the fellow who wrote the
Convoying and Commerce Raiders essay you'll find on many
Traveller fan sites. Convoying in
Traveller isn't more dangerous. For the most part, convoying in
Traveller is
useless.
Given weapon and sensor ranges in
Traveller, plus the acceleration available to all ships, a world's 100D limit sphere can be patrolled rather easily. A merchant can thrust out to the jump limit, disappear into the safety of jump space for a week, arrive off it's destination's 100D limit, and thrust in to the port. For most if it's journey, the ship is untouchable in jump space.
IMTU the chances of a convoy's entry causeing a "major"- misjump-swallowing a ship, or dropping it on a system on the other side of the galaxy, are very small esp if the routes are well known. But the chance of a ship landing where it isn't supposed to be are pretty good.
Again, IYTU only and unknown to us beofre this.
Unless one also assumes that one jump does not exaust all the fuel in an engine-and so could jump again as soon as the distortion had cleared up without refueling at every single system.
One need not assume that at all as its already in the rules. The jump governor has been with us since the
first edition of
High Guard. All OTU ships designed since 1980 have one and all previously designed ships had one ret-conned into them.
Jumps only consume the amount of fuel the jump requires. Carry twenty dTons of jump fuel aboard a
Suleiman, jump 1 parsec, and you'll have ten dTons of jump fuel left.
J1, J2, J3 would refer to the speed of a single jump considered separately from the number of jumps possible.
Speed as in time? If so, we're definitely in YTU territory here.
... saying that the presence of a large body enables the jump distortion to mend itself. Thus if a j1 jumps into intersteller space it cannot jump again unless it waits for weeks or goes far enough away from the distortion to jump safely.
Mass is not required for either jump entry or jump exit. Canonically, ships can jump again as soon as system checks are made; usually said to take only tens of minutes. Read up on X-boats for example.
Which is an added reason why intersteller outposts are so rare.
Why do you think they are rare?
The Terrans used one to reach Barnard and meet the Vilani. The Vilani used them to cross the many one and two parsec rifts within the Ziru Sirka. The Julians used them to strike the around Antares and force the Imperial into a stalemate in the war.
El Dorado used one to leave the Islands Cluster after repairing her mis-jump damage and the IISS used them to return the Cluster to pass outjump technology. The Regency's Quarantine Service use them to interdict the movement of Vampires. Deep space jumps are a technique used early and often in the OTU.
It's nice to know of the YTU 'tweaks' that color the Kapiten's lectures.
Have fun,
Bill
