X-boat route silliness

[Brandon C]

QFT, part of the standard "Bridge" package imo so it has that at least.

That really depends on the version of Traveller: CT and MT probably, TNE probably not and GT not. No idea about the other editions.

AND, again, the xboats are NOT anywhere near regular shipping. From CT Supp 7:

“The local station… accepts messages, encodes them, and transmits them to the tender at the edges of the stellar system.”

This would have come in handy a couple pages ago

I sold off S7 25 years ago and GT:First In, which probably repeats the info, isn't handy (MT's Imperial Encyclopedia might also repeat the info.

Unless the Navy provides fighters and/or SDBs to defend the base, it seems it would be quite vulnerable to pirate attack (or just some playful vargr), since it's too far from the mainworld to count on any help from them.

The base should probably also be located to a wilderness refueling source.

There is practically ZERO* chance of an accidental collision with an xboat by ANY ship. There is absolutely ZERO chance for an accidental collision with any legally operated ship.

Even for practical reasons, the X-boat should have a maneuver drive, no matter how slow.

 

[BytePro]

Even for practical reasons, the X-boat should have a maneuver drive, no matter how slow.

If at the 'edge' of stellar system, then a maneuver drive, in the sense of those provided by the rules would be quite impractical.

Simple CMG and/or small RCS provides all the 'maneuvering' needed.

As to pirates, 'collision avoidance' and such - even a 6G drive is virtually meaningless given the huge range of velocities one could anticipate. It will always boil down to early enough threat detection for counter measures or superior defenses and weapons - and simply odds.

 

[far-trader]

This would have come in handy a couple pages ago

You mean like this

As for being a navigation hazard without maneuver, nope, not buying it. They jump to the tender in the outer system per the description. An area that is bound to be off limits to general traffic for several reasons.

...of course I was rushed at the time and didn't quote the holy canon

Unless the Navy provides fighters and/or SDBs to defend the base...

I think it would.

The base should probably also be located to a wilderness refueling source.

I agree, and the "edges of the solar system" seems badly worded. I might have said "at 100D from the refuelling source" myself.

Even for practical reasons, the X-boat should have a maneuver drive, no matter how slow.

Originally, there simply wasn't room for it, in the 100ton hull. It was a plot device, pure and simple.

 

[Senjak]

Wild, Wild Spinward Marches

So can I. According to the story, the X-boats were conceived as a means of shortening the information lag between the core and the fringe of the Imperium. I can't see the emperor and the dukes failing to forward orders and reports by the fastest available means and I can't see the Imperial Navy refusing to carry government dispatches. That obviates the need for the Imperium funding the X-boats in addition to the Imperial Navy once the IN gets jump-5 couriers.

Unless you don't trust the Imperial Navy to do your will. You didn't see many (any?) Emperors of the Line seizing the Imperial Throne by right of control of the Scout service now, did you?

The Navy can be trusted to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada, err, the Zhodani, Vagar, and Solomani fleets. The Imperial Navy can also be trusted to decide that their admirals can do a better job running the Imperium. It is a careful balance of secret factions that keep the Imperial wheels running.

I ran what was suppose to be a one shot at a convention where everyone played a character secretly working for a different political faction. And then they decided that the SORAG agent made the best leader. It was fun and ran for every week at least a year.

And that by itself puts the scout service in an entirely new light. The type-S Scout ship is almost the Imperial equivalent of a private railway car. Though I think that James T. West and Artemus Gordon may have had slightly more room in their railway car than is in a type-S Scout ship. If nothing else, you can open the windows to replace the air as needed.

LOL I'm feeling really happy that a couple of my friends strong armed me into starting a Traveler adventure set.

I think I need to put together a 'Throne War' one shot, sort of like how Amber games tend to run. That could be lots of fun with the right group.

Senjak

 

[Senjak]

There must still have been reasons for the twists and turns of the nonsensicval half. No one expends political capital or bribe money for no reason.

Exactly. And as a follow on, just because the players don't know the political reasons doesn't mean that they aren't valid to someone very important. And by important, I mean rich and connected.

Rather than 'fixing' the maps, I'm going to sit down with them and make up some stuff as to why the maps are drawn that way. And then come up with a bunch of adventure hooks.

Oh, you want to send something to X from Y? Well, by Imperial Xbox that will take at least 4 weeks. It is cheap, but for a whole lot more (insert large value of CR) I can promise delivery in 1 week. And we *promise* not to peek inside...

[Yeah, I know auto-correct changed Xboat to Xbox; however, I'm thinking that makes a fine derogatory slang word. So much more that I'm going to use it in my game ]

Senjak

 

[Senjak]

Who watches the Navy?

Secondly, if such a tradition had developed, see paragraph one. The navy works for the government.

But only so long as the Navy approves of the current government.

The problem with a tradition of 'Emperor by right of Assassination' and 'Emperor by right of Fleet Control' is that once you take one of those options, you need to be wary of others exercising that option. There were a lot of emperors in a very, very short time.

Senjak

 

[inexorabletash]

One of my assumptions is that, in practice, most communication traffic is carried by civilian ships. X-boats represent the low quality, government funded routes with pork-barrel routing. In some locations there may be incentive for efficient routing. In others they are just legacy. I wouldn't put a route between Important worlds only 1-2 parsecs apart, figuring that news would diffuse between them naturally.

 

[rancke]

Unless you don't trust the Imperial Navy to do your will. You didn't see many (any?) Emperors of the Line seizing the Imperial Throne by right of control of the Scout service now, did you?

No, and you didn't see any at all seizing the Imperial throne by right of Fleet Control in the last 500 years. Clearly the Alkhalikois have found a formula that works. What formula? I believe it consists of two points: 1) Keep the Admiralty at Capital satisfied, and 2) don't give any admiral away from Capital control of more than a sector's worth of fleets.

Even when Gavin broke rule #1, the Navy didn't replace him with an admiral, so it seems to work pretty well. Evidently the Emperor can trust the Navy. Certainly far enough to convey routine bureaucratic messages.

The Navy can be trusted to defend the frontier against Xur and the Ko-Dan armada, err, the Zhodani, Vagar, and Solomani fleets. The Imperial Navy can also be trusted to decide that their admirals can do a better job running the Imperium. It is a careful balance of secret factions that keep the Imperial wheels running.

See above. The Navy can be trusted not to decide that their admirals can do a better job of running the Imperium.

And note that the X-boats aren't jump-6. If the Emperors didn't trust the Navy to carry Imperial dispatches, the X-boats would be jump-6.

(And lest someone brings up the Imperallines couriers, they aren't used for routine dispatches. They're supposed to be fairly secret.)

I ran what was suppose to be a one shot at a convention where everyone played a character secretly working for a different political faction. And then they decided that the SORAG agent made the best leader. It was fun and ran for every week at least a year.

And that by itself puts the scout service in an entirely new light.

Unless you're going to suggest that the Scouts have a huge black budget dedicated to maintaining a secret parallel jump-6 network used to convey routine orders and reports, I don't see how the Scouts get into the act.

Exactly. And as a follow on, just because the players don't know the political reasons doesn't mean that they aren't valid to someone very important. And by important, I mean rich and connected.

Rather than 'fixing' the maps, I'm going to sit down with them and make up some stuff as to why the maps are drawn that way. And then come up with a bunch of adventure hooks.

That would be the ideal solution. Unfortunately, it only works if it works. That is to say, you need to be able to come up with explanations that actually works. "I'm sure there must be a rational explanation, but I can't come up with one" just doesn't work for me.

Oh, you want to send something to X from Y? Well, by Imperial Xbox that will take at least 4 weeks. It is cheap, but for a whole lot more (insert large value of CR) I can promise delivery in 1 week. And we *promise* not to peek inside...

Did you read the whole thread? There's no opportunity for that kind of caper because the regular civilian traffic outperforms the X-boats even when they jump straight. If the X-boat route is twisted, they beat them even more.

"X-mail? Why use X-mail when the local postal service has a deal with one of the regular passenger lines that outperform the X-boats to carry the mail?"

But only so long as the Navy approves of the current government.

The Navy is split up into 28 sector fleets. A would-be usurper would have to persuade half a dozen sector admirals -- all of them his peers rather than his subordinates -- into joining him to have just a shot at winning. To have a good shot he'd need the rest of the Imperium to be in turmoil.

The problem with a tradition of 'Emperor by right of Assassination' and 'Emperor by right of Fleet Control' is that once you take one of those options, you need to be wary of others exercising that option. There were a lot of emperors in a very, very short time.

Those traditions are also 500 years old. They're so old that no one takes them remotely serious. That's why an archduke can carry a loaded weapon into the Emperor's presence and still take professional bodyguards by surprise.


Hans

 

[rancke]

One of my assumptions is that, in practice, most communication traffic is carried by civilian ships. X-boats represent the low quality, government funded routes with pork-barrel routing. In some locations there may be incentive for efficient routing. In others they are just legacy. I wouldn't put a route between Important worlds only 1-2 parsecs apart, figuring that news would diffuse between them naturally.

Agreed. A member world's postal service would make deals with reliable regular passenger lines to carry mail to all neighboring worlds within one jump. Or the local duchy has a postal service of its own that the member worlds can join, thus extending the reach. Add links to all neighboring duchy capitals and you can send a message from one end of the Imperium to the next in two thirds the time an efficient jump-4 X-boat network can and half the time the canonical X-boat network can. (Guesstimates).


Hans

 

[DangerousThing]

Unless you don't trust the Imperial Navy to do your will. You didn't see many (any?) Emperors of the Line seizing the Imperial Throne by right of control of the Scout service now, did you?

Not in the OTU, but IMTU that would be the way to go. The scouts control information.

 

[Amber Chancer]

As a civil servant myself, I find it somewhat touching, the faith you all have in the ultimate rationality of government decision making.

Naive ... but touching.

If I want to post a letter in central London, I put a postal sticker on it indicating whether it is to go first or second class, and I put it in my out tray.

A messenger collects it from my out tray and takes it to the post room.

The post room put it together with all the other letters from central London, and they put it in a van.

The van drives it to south Wales, where the contents are sorted into first and second class items, and then take them to the local (to south Wales) post office, where they are finally committed to the Royal Mail.

On average, my first class letters take 5 business days to arrive, and my second class letters take ten.

I regularly have people insinuating that I have put false dates on my letters, because they could not possibly have been written on that date given how long they take to arrive.

Now ... if the people who came up with this wonderful system for dealing with routine mail were in charge of designing the X-boat network, what do you suppose it would look like???

(And we are, I shudder to acknowledge, one of the world's better civil services ... )

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Now ... if the people who came up with this wonderful system for dealing with routine mail were in charge of designing the X-boat network, what do you suppose it would look like???

And, remember, these are Vilani who designed the whole thing. Vilani bureaucrats.

 

[Amber Chancer]

We don't tend to use the b-word to describe ourselves, Fritz

 

[DangerousThing]

Originally, there simply wasn't room for it, in the 100ton hull. It was a plot device, pure and simple.

The X-Boat is the way it is because of the first set of rules. The problem is that the rules change. In T5 people are fighting to use the space so that they can have the old boats back. I'd just redo the OTU. Giving the X-Boat a tiny M-Drive would fix a small error where the boat end up in the wrong place.

 

[far-trader]

Nope, it was a plot device.

There was nothing stopping the designers from inventing a larger xboat even in 1st printing. A J6 xboat even. With maneuver drives, weapons, a full crew, decent cargo, etc. etc. Nothing except a vision of an interstellar pony express postal service where a single rider (lone pilot, hence the required 100ton max hull) carried the mail and it changed hands at regular stops and a fresh horse (fueled and waiting xboat) would gallop (jump) on with it at full speed to the next post (tender).

And that is why people try to make the xboat idea work with the new rules, to maintain that vision. The problem is people wanting to make the xboat something else, imo, and claiming it makes sense because the rules could "fix" it now. It's not really broken

 

[rancke]

As a civil servant myself, I find it somewhat touching, the faith you all have in the ultimate rationality of government decision making.

In my case it's faith in the decision making powers of autocrats. I'm making the assumption that when Strephon sends orders to the Duke of Regina, he wants those orders to be delivered in 29 weeks (shortest possible route cutting across some of Deneb's backwaters) and return reports to be delivered just as fast. And when he gets them in 32 weeks instead, he will want to know why. Now, his postmaster-general may be able to persuade him that it's reasonable to take three weeks longer by going through the jump-6 trunk line through the sector capitals of Deneb and Mora and from mora to Regina through Rhylanor, rather than to spend much money on setting up a jump-6 route directly through Deneb Sector to Regina. But I don't see him being able to explain to Strephon's satisfaction why the route is such that it takes three weeks to get the four parsecs from Icetina to Rhylanor or six weeks to get the 11 parsecs from Icetina to Regina.

Duplicate this (albeit to a lesser degree) for every subsector duke who wants his mail to his fellow dukes to get there as fast as possible.

Now, that hurdle is overcome if one assumes that ever since the Navy got jump-5 couriers and the X-boats didn't, the Imperial bureaucracy has sent its dispatches by NavyNet instead of X-Net[*], so that the emperors and their dukes never get to hear about the pretzel-like twists to the X-boat routes. But there remains the problem that Once Upon a Time, back before jump-5 was invented, the emperor and his dukes did get to hear about any such twists.

Consequently, I assume that Once Upon a Time, X-boats did go directly from Icetina to Rhylanor[**]. And unless I can come up with a plausible reason why anyone would change that to going from Icetina to Rhylanor via Ivendo and Equus, I'm going to advocate retconning that route.

[*] Or rather, in addition to. I've no doubt that the bureaucracy ALSO sends dispatches by the X-boats, as it has done since the X-boats were first created. Indeed, the originals probably goes by X-mail with the ones going by Navy-mail officially being copies.

[**] Actually, IMTU I would assume that the routes went directly from Mora to Rhylanor via Somem and Gitosy, as I touched upon in an earlier post, but for the sake of simplifying the argument, I'm sticking to the route through Icetina.​

Hans

 

[rancke]

And that is why people try to make the xboat idea work with the new rules, to maintain that vision. The problem is people wanting to make the xboat something else, imo, and claiming it makes sense because the rules could "fix" it now. It's not really broken

As I see it, it just means the idea was broken from the very start, conceptually if not yet ruleswise.

And even if the concept was sound (as I concede might be argued), the randomly generated X-boat routes never were.


Hans

 

[Gray Pennell]

Hans

When T5 gets into our hands you should submitted a proposal to do an Xboat supplement. It can included ship designs (updated) deck plans, old jump routes and your new jump 6 routs with a history of these changes over the 400 years of the services. Include plots and patrons and it will rock.

 

[far-trader]

As I see it, it just means the idea was broken from the very start, conceptually if not yet ruleswise.

And even if the concept was sound (as I concede might be argued), the randomly generated X-boat routes never were.


Hans

Yeah, I'm not sure I've ever been a huge fan of the concept nor found it that reasonably sound, but I accepted it for what it is.

I agree wholeheartedly with seriously considering ALL non-vetted random generation open to correction, and long overdue at that.

I had been going to post something about the xboat routes a while back, but think I got distracted. Not sure it really helps but there is a reference to them in CT Supp 3:

“…these routes are also the major freight and passenger carrying lines.”

So they might not be ideally sited for best communication times on that basis. Though it just means the randomly generated (and unvetted) trade routes* are the fault (or one might lay the blame at the underlying unvetted random map generation... how many layers are there to this onion?)

* I seem to recall a table in an early CT publication for random generation of trade routes, but not xboat routes, probably leading to (or from) the above quote.

 

[mike wightman]

Original LBB3 had the rules for randomly generating trade routes. These probably became the x-boat routes of the SM and then the rule was dropped from revised edition.

The problem is that the trade routes could be any length, while x-boat routes should be jump 4 every time, the IISS should even build empty hex stations to speed it up.