Greetings Sir Dameon;
My last campaign (and several others before that) used a jump variant. I have used several others as well, which I will share.
Jump Variant 1. Jump fuel is used at the rate of 1% of ship tonnage per jump number, not 10%. Example: A Type S Scout/Courier has Jump 2, which in the normal Traveller rules would require 20 tons of fuel to do it's maximum jump of 2. Under these rules it would require only 2 tons.
The big advantage of this variant is not only that it makes jumps more economical by decreasing the fuel requirements, it also allows you to use canon ships as is, since it gives them 10 jumps worth of fuel, incidentally giving them longer Jump "legs".
Jump Variant 2. No fuel. The Jump Drive does not require any fuel to operate, as long as it's hooked up to an operational power plant of sufficient power, it will jump the ship. The advantages of this variant are obvious, but care has to be taken to change the economic rules to account for this variant, as the huge holds that result on cargo vessels will make Merchant players rich if they're able to charge the same price for haulage.
Jump Variant 3. Jump Number is speed of drive, not distance. In this variant, the jump number isn't the distance of the jump, it is the relative speed of the drive.
Example: Type A Free Trader Harper's Folly wants to jump 5 parsecs away, he calculates that the jump would take 5 weeks (or whatever amount of time you would pick for a Jump 1 in your universe). A Type S Scout/Courier, having a J-2 drive, would make the same jump in half the time, or 2.5 weeks.
Advantages of this system are that higher jump number ships are much faster than slow, low jump number merchants. The other advantage is that you can get any starship anywhere, provided that you are willing to spend the time in jump space.
Jump Variant 4. Jump takes Less/More time. The other way to change the speed of communication is to change the amount of time you spend in Jumpspace. I have used a variant that effectively halved the time (from 160+ to a little more than 80 hours per jump), but you could use any change, either longer or shorter, and dramatically change the universe. Or, use any number of jump duration changes, to reflect different capabilities of other races.
Example: The Darrian jump drives access a different level of jumpspace, and so is relatively more efficient timewise, their jumps only take 50 hours, plus or minus 10%. OTOH, Old Vilani drives were actually LESS efficient than modern ones, and took 200+ per jump.
Advantages of this variant are that you can tailor it to exactly the speed that you want people, information, and goods to get around your TU. If you like rapid movement, make jump almost instantaneous, or if you want to slow your TU down even more than the OTU, make jumps last for a month or more.
In my last campaign, I used variants 1 and 4, jump was half the time, and took only 1% of the hull per jump number in fuel. Along with all the other ideas in this topic, you could change yor TU drastically from the OTU.
