MGT Only: Travelling from the bar in starbase to jump point

[LtBennett]

Here's another simple concept....but I'm not great at grasping the simple rules sometimes in the Rulebook...

Ok...we're all standing around the bar in the space port.....
(1) We get called into action and run to our ship
(2) HOW EXACTLY by what what steps to lift off for our "jump point"
What task roll does our PILOT roll?
Do we just assume he is fully fueled?
(3) To get to the "jump point" the ship must travel to 100 x diameter???
right?
(a) what does that "diameter" mean?
(b) let's say we have a 20 ton ship....how fast does it travel...?
and how long does it take to reach "jump point"?
MANY MANY THANKS to whoever will answer this for me.

 

[Spinward Scout]

"Ok...we're all standing around the bar in the space port..." Carouse pg. 53

(1) Athletics pg. 52
(2) Spacecraft Operations pg.137
(a) Pilot pg. 57
(b) That's up to the Referee if it's the start of a game. Otherwise... Fuel pg. 140
(3) Jump Travel pg. 141
(a) Diameter is how big around a world is.
(b) Travel Times pg. 145

I think that will answer everything. Or raise more questions.

 

[mike wightman]

First rule of refereeing:

only have the player roll the dice if the situation is important

remember that every roll of the dice makes failure more likely.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

Here's another simple concept....but I'm not great at grasping the simple rules sometimes in the Rulebook...

Ok...we're all standing around the bar in the space port.....
(1) We get called into action and run to our ship
(2) HOW EXACTLY by what what steps to lift off for our "jump point"
What task roll does our PILOT roll?
Do we just assume he is fully fueled?
(3) To get to the "jump point" the ship must travel to 100 x diameter???
right?
(a) what does that "diameter" mean?
(b) let's say we have a 20 ton ship....how fast does it travel...?
and how long does it take to reach "jump point"?
MANY MANY THANKS to whoever will answer this for me.

Like mike said, unless its dramatically important, i'd assume a routine task goes routinely. But, to answer your questions
2) A)it would be pilot (small craft or spacecraft, depending on ship type)
b) is their a reason to assume he is not fully fuelled? if he and his ship are being held ready for action, I would think he was kept topped up. bear in mind that most traveller ships have an endurance measured in weeks, so having fuel to reach the jump point is normal.

3. yes, the jump "point" is more of a "limit", within which it is a Bad Idea to jump. the limit is within 100 diameters of a large, gravity producing body (like a planet, moon or star). a Diameter is just that, the diameter of the planet (which is on the planets UWP data). for example, earth is 12,800KM "wide", so 100D is 128,000Km, or less than the distance form Earth to the Moon (~400,000Km)

for ship speed, you need to look up the ships stats. the one you need in this case is the M-drive (Manoeuvre drive ), which is rated in G's of acceleration. since your in space, thiers no friction and the only "top speed" is light speed, so what matters is how fast you can accelerate and decelerate. if you want a exact figure, you;ll need to do the maths using the 100D limit and the ships accel, but going for a rough answer off the reference tables, 100,000Km at !G is 105 minutes, assuming you accelerate to the half way point and then break the other half (the fastest way to make such a trip). due to the nature of continuous accel trips, increasing your accel shortens the trip time in a non linear manner (100,000km at 2g is only 74mins, 3g is 61m, 4g is 53m).

if you have the 2nd editon rulebook, the travel times, and the formula to work out a specific trip, are on page 152/153.


does all that make sense to you?

 

[whulorigan]

. . .
3. yes, the jump "point" is more of a "limit", within which it is a Bad Idea to jump. the limit is within 100 diameters of a large, gravity producing body (like a planet, moon or star). a Diameter is just that, the diameter of the planet (which is on the planets UWP data). for example, earth is 12,800KM "wide", so 100D is 128,000Km, or less than the distance form Earth to the Moon (~400,000Km) . . .

Actually, 100D = 1,280,000 km, or about 3 times the earth-moon distance.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

Actually, 100D = 1,280,000 km, or about 3 times the earth-moon distance.

*checks again*


balls


what he said.

 

[LtBennett]

Damn...this is getting scary... I got the first math error!

Thanks Xerxeskingofking and Whurlorigan and (from yesterday) Spinward Scout...all extremely helpful...and its is most scary but I am beginning to get it cause I caught the math error that Whurlorigan pointed out here...

I figured out thru some research how to find the UWP of Terra...and the SIZE of 12,800 km (already in metric luckily) x 160,000 (found in a formula) and I ended up with a Safe Jump Distance of 2,048 million km.

So....somewhat confused...but I get the basic idea...Is the newbie right about the Terra diameter being 12,800 km...
so by your formula of 100D... would equal 1,280,000km... BUT

Yet I saw another formula as I referenced above of D(km) x 160,000 that yields a result for me of 2,048,000,000 km to safe jump distance....which is closer to Whulorigan's result but different significantly still...JUST WONDERING :devil:

 

[Whipsnade]

Seeing as you might not be trolling, I'll have a go at answering some of your "questions":

(2) HOW EXACTLY by what what steps to lift off for our "jump point"

That depends entirely on the referee and the situation at hand. People tend to roll far too often in role playing sessions. Is the group taking off in a well-maintained ship, in good weather, after all the proper checks, etc., etc., etc.? Then there's no need to roll at all.

Is the group taking off with other ships, tanks, and whatnot shooting at them, aboard an old clapped out wreck of a ship, with little or no preparation, etc., etc.? Then there are going to be a few die rolls involved. Just what those rolls are will depend entirely on the referee.

What task roll does our PILOT roll?

Whatever the referee deems is necessary and he may say no roll is needed at all.

Look at die rolls this way. Let's say a task has a 95% chance of success. Pretty good odds right? Sure, for one roll. Let's say you have 5 rolls to make each with a 95% chance of success. Still good odds? Nope. The odds of making all of those five rolls is now are 77.3% See the problem?

Think role playing and not roll playing.

Do we just assume he is fully fueled?

Completely situational There will be cases when the ship is and isn't. You supposed to make this stuff up and not blindly follow some checklist.

To get to the "jump point" the ship must travel to 100 x diameter??? right?

Correct. There's no specific jump "point". That is there's no specific point where jump must occur. Instead there's a huge region in which ships can jump from.

(a) what does that "diameter" mean?

:blink: Really?

Diameter - noun: a straight line passing through the center of a circle or sphere and meeting the circumference

You need to clear a planet's 100 DIAMETER limit in order to jump safely. Earth's diameter is 12,800km and 100 times that is 1,280,000km.

(b) let's say we have a 20 ton ship....how fast does it travel...? and how long does it take to reach "jump point"?

Okay... you've several gross conceptual errors going on here.

First, it's not tons. It's not a unit of weight. It's displacement tons or dTons. It's a measure of volume.

Second, Traveller ships don't have "speeds", they have acceleration ratings. They don't move at 60 mile an hour, they accelerate instead and that acceleration is usually measured in gees.

Third, ships under 100 dTons cannot jump in Traveller.

Getting back the "how long does it take to reach the jump limit" question, CT's LLB:2 has a nice chart on page 10 which can partially answer that. It lists various distances along with the time needed to cover those distances at 1 gee, 2 gees, 3 gees, etc. Looking at the one million km line, it would take 333 minutes at 1 gee, 236 minutes at 2 gees, and 192 minutes at 3 gees.

 

[whulorigan]

Getting back the "how long does it take to reach the jump limit" question, CT's LLB:2 has a nice chart on page 10 which can partially answer that. It lists various distances along with the time needed to cover those distances at 1 gee, 2 gees, 3 gees, etc. Looking at the one million km line, it would take 333 minutes at 1 gee, 236 minutes at 2 gees, and 192 minutes at 3 gees.

And to follow-up Whipsnade's comment above, that chart is operating under the assumption that the ship is accelerating from world-orbit all the way to the midpoint of the jump limit (~ first 50 diameters), and then "rolling-over" and decelerating all the way from the midpoint to the actual jump limit at 100 diameters.

 

[Whipsnade]

Yet I saw another formula as I referenced above of D(km) x 160,000 that yields a result for me of 2,048,000,000 km to safe jump distance....which is closer to Whulorigan's result but different significantly still...JUST WONDERING :devil:

I missed this bit the first time through the thread.

Could you tell us just where you're supposedly seeing that D(km) X 160,000 formula? Which version, book, page number, etc.?

 

[Spinward Scout]

Diameter - noun: a straight line passing through the center of a circle or sphere and meeting the circumference

<Smacks head> He's right. I described Circumference.

 

[LtBennett]

answer to Whipsnade....re where I found formula

In another post...I'm hunting it down....this thread has been useful and I appreciate all the feedback....

So far there seems to be unanimity on this thread that as far as TAURUS is concerned...
100D = 1.2 million km = distance to travel to jump point

and I now understand that I need a ship with more than 100 dton size to "jump"..... otherwise I am somewhat limited in my travel options...

Will get back to you on where I found that other formula for measuring distance...

 

[LtBennett]

Where did I get that magic x 160,000 for distance to jump?

Just wondering if one of you mathematicians might try...

Earth's :CoW: x 160,000 = __________________miles
then convert back to Km = _______km

vs

Earth's diameter in km (12,800) x 100 = 1,280,000 km

it's not my number...but someone else had something like this as
a formula using 160,000 as a multiplier for something

All this to arrive at DISTANCE to SAFE JUMP....

 

[LtBennett]

ok---Just did math and that 160,000 multiplier sort of works

:devilon't know where I got this...but
Terra is size 8 (8,000 miles) x 100 = 800,000 miles or 1,287,475 km

and Planet size of 8 x = 1,280,000
pretty good formula for estimating....

 

[kilemall]

Oh, that's just converting km to miles.

Don't know why you want to do that, much easier to stick with km for space distances due to the accel math

 

[LtBennett]

Using the simple formula for distance....WHY? because simple

Isn't it easier and only one step to take plan:devil:et size 8 and
multiply by 160,000 ONE STEP ONLY gives you total km....
I'm prepared to be told NO...but it looks easier to me...

 

[flykiller]

MANY MANY THANKS to whoever will answer this for me.

did all your questions get answered?

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Some thoughts.

Here's another simple concept....but I'm not great at grasping the simple rules sometimes in the Rulebook...

Ok...we're all standing around the bar in the space port.....
(1) We get called into action and run to our ship
(2) HOW EXACTLY by what what steps to lift off for our "jump point"
What task roll does our PILOT roll?
Do we just assume he is fully fueled?
(3) To get to the "jump point" the ship must travel to 100 x diameter???
right?
(a) what does that "diameter" mean?
(b) let's say we have a 20 ton ship....how fast does it travel...?
and how long does it take to reach "jump point"?
MANY MANY THANKS to whoever will answer this for me.

Well, first there is signing in at the ship so the CO or Captian knows when everyone is present.

Next there is the walk around inspection for problems, as well this is when base/port power is disconnected along with life support/waste.

We assume fueling was done after landing, unloading, connections for the above are made.

If a combat ship armament will checked and loaded.

Then it is final tight checks of externals, then on board and button up.

Once crew are on board and ship is sealed, checks are made to ensure proper fuel, life support, and weapons loaded and stowed as needed. Bridge begins comm/scan and computer checks, while engineering fires the power plant to operational from idle as well as testing drives and power distribution. Gunnery and Vehicle crew check their stations and gear.

Once all stations report ready, comm calls traffic control for outbound vectors, does final aero control checks and once cleared by local traffic control lifts and enters their departure vector.

At orbit they check in with orbital traffic control for final vector to jump point.

Not so much task rolls, but that is the basics of a scramble or just lift-off.

Hope it helps, I mean you did ask...

 

[steventirey1985]

Isn't it easier and only one step to take plan:devil:et size 8 and
multiply by 160,000 ONE STEP ONLY gives you total km....
I'm prepared to be told NO...but it looks easier to me...

Not all worlds with the same size code have the same diameter. Each size code covers a range of diameters. A size 8 world is between 11,201 km to 12,800 km. It isn't like there will be a big difference, but the actual 100 diameter limits would be different. "Size Code x 160000" is a close enough approximation however.

And doing it the normal way is still only a single step. "World diameter x 100". Basically, just adding 2 extra 0's to the end of the diameter. Far easier and faster than multipling a number by 160000.

 

[Ulsyus]

Here's another simple concept....but I'm not great at grasping the simple rules sometimes in the Rulebook...

Try this for the tasks (from T5) related to in-system travel. There's a complete list, then a truncated version at the bottom if you want to test the characters without going through the whole thing.