It also makes it explicit that changing one's vector in jump has no effect upon the jump.
Oh, and it ignores the huge velocity differences between stars.
OTU Only: Tracking A Ship Through Jump Space
- Thread starter Supplement Four
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It also makes it explicit that changing one's vector in jump has no effect upon the jump.
Oh, and it ignores the huge velocity differences between stars.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Almost everywhere. Just look at the proper motions of stars near us (Barnard's Star has one of the biggest, if I recall correctly).
Alpha Centauri 3.5"/year ... or about 29.9 km/s
Barnard's 10.3"/year - 88 km/s - 8800G•Sec to catch, or 2:26:40 at 1G.
And that's just RADIAL... not 3 dimensional. 3-dimensional is higher still.
Oh, and they aren't moving the same directions, either.
http://astronomy.nju.edu.cn/~lixd/GA/AT4/AT417/HTML/AT41702.htm
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
So some stars travelling clockwise around our galaxy and some are travelling anti-clockwise?
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Most are moving generally spinward, but the angular velocities aren't all along the disk-plane. Some, like earth, are on a vertical wobble.
Plus, parts of the local stellar group may in fact be part of an interpenetrated dwarf galaxy, noting that they share the same general angular path, and the same general chemical oddities.
Highorbit_drifter
SOC-12
I've always handwaved that jump somehow negates that velocity difference. MM stated that a ship 'should' be at a zero vector when jumping. I've assumed that is zero relative to the current star. They arrive with the same velocity, say in the case of a military ship going into jump at a high speed relative to the star. So a normal ship exits jump with a zero speed, relative to the current star.
Its just the crazy magic of jump physics. It also makes everyone's life a little easier so you don't have the track the different velocities of various stars. I doubt anyone really got the implication of the 100D limit before GURPS came out with jump shadowing. I doubt even people who thought about differing star vectors factored that into normal jumps.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Popping out of jump space from Terra to Prometheus doing about 3300G relative to the new star might be inconvenient, for instance (given the relative velocities of Sol and Alpha Centauri) especially if you are trying to rendezvous with a fleet from another system. Generating the right vectors before jump might help arrival in the target system to be a better start for any mission. X-boats don't manoeuvre though so would their tenders do the manoeuvring and drop them with a matching vector (near enough) for a more perfect velocity before jump?
X-boats don't land, so the only consideration is the safety of any other ships in the vicinity when they emerge. They can accomplish that by either being brought up to matching speed or by exiting into space a good distance away from the target world. Could be some combination of the two: leaving them with some velocity on arrival could allow them to rendezvous faster with their tender on the other side if everything's planned well, reducing the time they spend vulnerable in space.
Frankymole
SOC-12
Good points: yes, the tender that picks them up might be annoyed if it has to spend extra days/weeks accelerating to match vectors, but one of the tenders at either source or destination system has to do so, I suppose... A "spent" X-boat that has discharged its data wouldn't be a high priority asset to pick up, and presumably there are a fair few going through the cycle in all systems on the route. Do X-boats wipe their data or archive it (in case of the need of re-sending if there is corruption?): a stranded (temporarily) high-velocity X-boat might actually be a target for pirates in a situation where information is money... so the tenders might need to call up escorts for some recoveries.
Crikey, even manning X-boat tenders could be an adventurous life!
Where arrival of an X-boat can be distant from a mainworld or other message relay point (in light-minutes or just a few light-hours with no great chance of radiation corruption - do X-boats use meson packets or some other means to transmit?) then it makes sense to materialise far out, as long as the tenders are available to keep sweeping distant parts of the system for pickups. It's be annoying if traders trying to cut down their overheads (time=money) keep appearing at hazardous vectors close to busy in-system routes though.
On the X-Mail.
I always assumed that the X-Boat sends its packets, but the source is kept in the data cores till the Boat was picked up and serviced when they "ghost a disk image" of the cores into the Tender's archive cores. The Boat's cores are then wiped after the Tender does it verification checks, the Tender's are wiped at the Station when they go in for Resupply and Rearming (again after the cores are archived).
