 June 28, 2010 - 11:45am | An email from Darren got me thinking about jump calculation times and other stuff. A typical jump is 3.5 days of acceleration, 3.5 days of decceleration, and somewhere between 10 - 200 hours of preperatory calculations at 10 hours per light year. This led me down several different trains of thought that I'm wondering if other people have input about. 1) Can a large team of astrogators distribute the workload. I.E. a 20LY jump requires 200 man hours, on my large and well staffed ship I have 5 astrogators, can I have them each do 40 hours of work and thereby reduce the time required? You can't do this if the work has to progress in a linear way, like the result of step A is needed for step B and so forth, but I'm curious if anyone has allowed it. 2) Should it really take that long to begin with? I know computers weren't as impressive in 1983, but I'm imagining the computer doing most of the work. The computer MUST have a database with all the relevant information about every body in the Frontier large enough and close enough to affect a jump along any of the charted jump routes....that information is required regardless of whether the man does the calculation or the machine does, so it MUST be there. Given that....why does a person need to do the calculating? I'd bet the vast majority of the work would be done by the computer and it would be done in a matter of minutes or a few hours at most. 3) How long in advance can you pre-calculate a jump? I assume eventually objects will move enough to make you have to redo your calculations, but how long does that take? If it takes 200 hours to plot a 20LY jump, then apparently you can start at least 200 hours ahead of time. If the players want to be able to make a quick getaway, can they calculate their escape jump before beginning their planetside mission for example? 4) Can you calculate your next jump without decelerating from your first one? I.E. can I stay coasting near jump speed while calculating another jump so that we can save 7 days of the accel/deccel cycle? 5) My gut feeling is that the jump calculations should be faster, and that you could calculate the next jump without decelerating. However that has two drastic implications. One is that you could jump from one side of the Frontier to the other in a little over a week. The other is that provided the jump routes are charted, a fleet could jump from system to system and not stay in each one long enough to be detected...meaning that the Sathar Fleet could attack in force anywhere at any time. So question 5 is should I just leave everything the same even if it doesn't make sense to me? Such a seemingly small rules change seems to have a lot of ramifications. |
 July 13, 2010 - 4:01pm | That would be a pricy endeavor. Upkeep for a HS:20 ship in every system at every jump point? They'd surely have to pass those "savings" on to anyone wishing to use that service. |
July 13, 2010 - 6:05pm | True, but the jump point calculator station ship thing could also be very small. Other than a bunch of standard equipment, it just needs enough astrogators and computer power to keep updating the jump calculation 24/7. It could probably be hull size 3 or 4. The bigger versions would provide extra (paid) services. That would be a pricy endeavor. Upkeep for a HS:20 ship in every system at every jump point? They'd surely have to pass those "savings" on to anyone wishing to use that service.
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 July 14, 2010 - 4:42am | Yes, upkeep would cost, but then people these days are willing to pay to save time so I don't think it is that much of a stretch to assume that ships would spend some coin to get where they are going days faster. Especially if they get bonuses for shorter delivery time. But my intent would be that it the transition between current void travel and a faster means, so it would only be at one or two systems (the most travelled) at first. More would come, then a faster means of travel can be discovered. The ship itself would be space worthy in order to get where it is going, it could even be a military only vessel for fast fleet deployment. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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July 14, 2010 - 2:03pm | Take a basic HS:3 scout ship (civilian guise). |
July 15, 2010 - 11:28am | I would call for 3 lvl1 astrogators to keep the jump calculations updated constantly and allow for break times. That increases the upkeep to around 40,000cr / month. If you charged 2000cr and more than 20 ships/month use the service then it could be a good business. IIRC, a ship with atomic engines is using a 10,000cr fuel pellet for each engine every time they jump. So adding 2000 or even 5000 to their expense shouldn't be out of the question...especially if it gets them to their destination several days sooner. But why would there be any line or delay for the service regardless of how big the ship is or how many other ships are trying to use it? It seems to me like the transaction would only take a few minutes. "Thank you for your payment sir, we are uploading the latest jump calculations to your astrogation computer. Have a nice day." I am basing my assumption on the notion that you could do the jump calculation based on a certain origin and destination point, and then just keep updating the result as parameters change over time. That isn't stated in the book anywhere, but they also don't go into any detail about what exactly is being calculated in the first place or what the variables are. So if you don't use that assumption, and you figure the jump calculation has to be redone for every ship that comes through, then yes this method is stupid. I personally love the idea and think it adds a lot of flavor. |
July 15, 2010 - 3:33pm | Been thinking on the cost aspect a bit and some of the other comments in general. AFAIK there is no difference in an individual ship making calculations based on current observations (it is mentioned that telescopes are used during claculations somewhere yes?) and charts of drift, debris etc and one that stays and just updates every couple of minutes. Since most of the calculations are done or anticipated, one would just need to add the change over time for drift and debris etc. But you definately have to be where you are going to leave from in order to account for gravitaional influences (and so on) and be able to see where you are going to be able to do them. To use Stargate if I can to emphasize, you need 6 points to locate where you are in 3D space and a 7th for where you are going. I made the assumption that there were "jump lanes" around the busier planets just to keep order. These ships would create an "express lane", just like in large cities that have toll expressways, pay to get on and pay on how far you go. You don't have to use it, but it can also serve to assist ships that have inexperienced 'gators or allow ships to travel with lower experienced 'gators allowing them to save money. Again, there may only be 3 or 4 of these in the entire Frontier. As to the cost being too much, I am sure PGC can afford it, but it is also possible for a conglomorate to "own" the ships, call it Gator Ship Industries (for example) comprised of nothing more than a CEO, a Board and have companies like PGC and Streel and CFM own the shares that actually gives the funds. The GSI itself minimizes its costs by selling shares to companies, the more companies, the less each is paying so that individual overhead is less and yet they benefit from the total income earned. Just an option at any rate, definately not a must. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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July 15, 2010 - 10:29pm | But why would there be any line or delay for the service regardless of how big the ship is or how many other ships are trying to use it? It seems to me like the transaction would only take a few minutes. For starters, the jump calcs would eventually need updating. It takes 40 hours to plot the shortest jump (Cassidine to Dramune), 140 for the longest (Prenglar to Gruna Garu). In terms of 20 hour GST days, that's four days minimum for a single 'gator and 14 maximum (assuming ten hour shifts). No idea how long it takes for the stars to change position, thus mandating new calculations, but it's probably safe to say that for one astrogator he/she would be overloaded. Even two would struggle, considering they take 10 hours shifts back and forth to halve the time. You would need larger teams of astrogators to keep it updated as the stars align differently (I would say a minimum of four astrogators). I suppose it all depends on just how long a calculation is good, it's safe to say it takes more than fourteen 20-hour days for stars to realign considering there's no rule against a single astrogator making the Prenglar-Gruna Garu jump. So while the actual trasnaction ius brief, sooner or later the calculations expire (and that's where the line begins, ships that could have been crunching numbers get halted with no calculations available). The question becomes how long would that 40-140 hour bit of labor be good for before you have to start over? ___________________ Another consideration: those teams would need relief, they're not going to spend their entire lives at the fringes of a system (for starters, Life Support equipment only carries you so far). Either a new ship comes to relieve them, or a transport shuffles new crews & supplies back and forth. An actual replacement ship is more feasible to keep traffic flowing, as sooner or later the first ship will need to put into port. With nothing to replace it, there's nothing being done. No available service, no income. So realistically you're looking at a minimum of 80 ships for the AD Frontier map, better equipped --- deluxe astrogation equipment, ion or atomic drives to get them to the edge of the system more efficiently (in measurements of days rather than months that chemical drives will take), much larger crews --- hence quadruple the cost over my most minimal example to make things flow better, you're easily looking at close to 5 million Cr/month in overhead now. Remember, my ship estimates were for the absolute minimum to make this happen...a chem drive system ship spends the bulk of its travel time coasting at zero-G at low velocities, hence the months of travel time at low speeds instead of days (ion/atomic ships accelerate far more than they coast, thus achieving much higher velocities) to get to the edge of the system where jump activity would be taking place. That alone causes double to quadrupling the drive costs, the highest or second-highest expensive feature of any ship.
In the end, it boils down to how long a set of calcualtions is good for before you can accurately determine costs. If a set of calculations is good for 10 days, you're looking at 3125Cr for a single jump per day per system based on the 5M/month estimate above just to break even during that week, and you may need to begin new calcluations during that period to stay on top of things (with a second team of at least two astrogators who began plotting before the last set of coordinates were completed by the first team of two...there may be overlap depending on how this can be defined). |
July 15, 2010 - 11:16pm | ...and just for grins, something more realistic for a jump-calc ship: 150K for the HS:3 hull Computer = 104 function points = 104K +200 for a control panel for each crew station (3 total - bridge, computer, and engineering) 7 spacesuits for the crew = 7K assuming no vruskan crew |
 July 16, 2010 - 9:16am | Okay, here by 2 centicredits worth. I think the length of time a jump calculation stays valid for depends on a lot of factors. This includes the starting point, how close you want to be to your ending planet, and how important the variations in the curvature of spacetime are to the jump calculations. I think for the Star Frontiers rules, since they imply a lot of calculation for a jump, that the effect of the positions of even small objects along the path are important. The calculations take so long becuase you have to calculate ephemeri for all of these objects of short timescales for the duration of your jump period (at least that's one explaination you could use  ) I would argue that based on this, the calculations are good for a day at most maybe only five to ten hours. This is beause in that time everything will have moved slightly and the answer will be different.(Personally, I think that actually lining up the ship is really what takes all the time (i.e. see my Void Jumping page) but the rules are written that it is the calculations. Therefore, since the calculations are long I would assume that they are very location dependent and only last for a short period of time before they are no longer valid.) Most importantly, your starting and ending points are constantly changing. The star systems themselves are moving something on the order of 250 km/sec in their orbits around the galactic center. Their velocities relative to each other are much lower (factor of 10 or more) but even that would have an effect. The planets are moving from 5 to 50 kilometers per second in their orbits around the stars and so things are constantly in motion. And this applies to both end of the jump although the effect on the starting side will be much greater. I also subscribe to the idea that the ship has to be traveling along the direct vector connecting your starting point to the ending point and the calculations apply to that specific vector. So if you had a ship on station sitting there calculating the jump for other ships, it would actually preferentially want to be at the start of the jump run and not out in the farther solar system at the point just before the jump. You could do it that way but then this would have two effects. First, the ship would have to be constantly moving and not just orbiting the star at that particular distance. It would need to stay at a point such that leaving the origin planet and traveling out to the ship puts you on almost the exact vector you need to make the jump. This means instead of orbiting the star it would have to move back and forth over the course of the origin planet's year to keep the vector correct. This is actually probably a good thing as it means that the ship might be under thrust more and have some gravity on the ship instead of just floating there in free fall. Second, you would not want the ship at exactly the jump point but somewhat further in. This is because the outbound ships are almost guaranteed not to be on exactly the correct heading and they'll need time (and distance) to make the necessary adjustments. The time will be needed to apply the thrust in the correct direction to fix their velocity vector and the distance will be needed to measure the exact effects of their thrust and verify that everything is correct. If you place the jump calculation ship back at the origin planet then the departing ships are just fed the coordinates and vectors and off they go. Then they have the entire acceleration period to make the adjustments needed. Of course if you have jump calculation ship back at the planet of origin, you don't need a ship at all, it could just be an office on the station orbiting the planet. Because the mechanics of orbital motion are fairly straightforward, I think that once calculations have been done it should be fairly straightforward to keep them updated on a continuous basis. You always have to start over if your own astrogator is doing it because things have shifted significantly since the last time you were there and starting over is faster than trying to update a calculations made weeks or months ago. However these precaluclation jump data will only apply for starting at that specified point and jumping straight out. If you have to deviate by much it will take you some time to get back on track. If it takes too long (or you deviate too far of the path) your initial set of calculations will no longer apply and you'd have to return to the planet of origin, get a new set and start over or have you're own astrogator redo the calculations. This is a possilbe reason for having the ship further out. As long as you've come generally outward from the planet to the calculation ship, you'd be on basically the correct course and you may not have to start over. From a game mechanics persective, it might go something like this: Position the calculation ship so that it is about three quarters of the way out from the planet to the point that ships will be at 1% c when acclerating at 1g. Since it takes 83.3 hours to get up to that speed this means that the out bound ship will pass the calculation ship at about the 70 hour mark and have about 13-14 hours left of accleration. At that point the outbound ship will be traveling at 9 million kilometers per hour (151 hexes per turn on the KH board). The calcuation ship will be almost stationary so it's going to blitz right by it (another reason to have the calcuation ship at the point of origin?). Assuming the data can be transmitted in a few seconds, it is dumped over to the outbound ship as it passes by. At that point you roll 3d10 to determine the number of hours it will take to make the final corrections to the velocity vector. On average you'll get 15-16 hours which is just longer than the time needed to get to 1%c which is fine since you'll be applying thrust perpendicular to your direction of travel that won't affect your speed, just your direction (so you won't accidently go over the limit). If the values come up less than the 13.3 hours left, you still have to go that long to get to the right speed. If it is larger, it just takes you a little longer on this jump. However, if you had to maneuver radically (i.e. combat) or started out from a diffferent location than the main planet in the system or deviated from that course for some other reason the GM would apply an additional time penalty (either more d10 hours, a mulitplier or both) depending on the severity of the deviation. Obviously the larger the variation, the worse the penalty. (And no comments about MR, it defies the laws of physics and I just won't be having it  . It's okay for the board game to make it fun but has no place in the RPG and void travel in my option).Okay maybe that was a full 2cr worth . I have some more thoughts on some of the implications of this but that will have to wait for another post.Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 July 16, 2010 - 11:18am | Okay, I realize this would be more expensive, but a Space station might be better. Perhaps a size 1 station. With several computers available, maybe as many as 50 and teams of astrogators working around the clock to keep traffic flowing more efficiently. I imagine a lot more Traffic than you guys do I imagine that the Prenglar System or the Cassidine System may have a ship come out of the void every few minutes as well as other ship entering the void. Possably as many as 200-300 ships per day going in or out. Not only would the stations have Astrogators but also "Space Traffic Controllers" In and out of the areas. The station is mainly a number crunching Facility. Near the points that most ships enter the void from; there would be a Robot operated set of ships to act as marker buoys to act as a transition point for all the out bound void jumping ships. These "markers" could have all the needed equipment sending the needed telemetry back to the station from the jump points so that calculations are smooth. I think that it would be like this: File a Jump Plan from Prenglar to Cassidine with the space traffic controllers a while my cargo is being loaded. They give me a tracking number. I load my cargo and talk to station control on my way out they tell me the lanes are clear for my rendezvous with the marker bouys. the Station sends my calculations to the bouys, I feed in my tracking number and I "line up" where buoys tell me to; for the jump vector. Then the bouys feed me the jump calculaions and off I go to Cassidine and it only cost me 4000 credits. In the canon rules the astrogator spends a lot of time looking through a telescope taking readings and calculating positions and stellar movement. To me this seems sloppy... if it is a ten light year jump, then the destination star has moved how far in ten years relative to where it looks from my position, it took the light ten years to get to me. Also any info I get from it does not tell me if a navigation hazard of some sort happened in the destination system five years ago would it? Any time you jump its a risk. I think you would come out of the void just on the outside of the destination system to avoid these things. While I say you could jump from well inside the starting system. It would be Dangerous to try to come out of the void close to the planets. I say Aim for the star and coast in so to speak.... so you can navigate around any obstacles when you get there. I would venture to guess that the destination system is more dangerous than the start system. and you would spend the majority of your time moving into the destination system. Opinions? The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 16, 2010 - 11:36am | I love this thread  <snip>, the calculations are good for a day at most maybe only five to ten hours. <snip> your starting and ending points are constantly changing. I would totally agree with that, but I also think they should be able to update an existing calculation, If they can't update the calculation then they have to start a 40-140 hour long calculation process before the 83 hour jump run and they have to base this on a prediction of where all the relevant objects are going to be at a future point in time when the expect to be reaching 1%c....which will be some point 123-223 hours from now. If you're not allowed to make any updates to the calculation then you can't leave early if you want to, and if you miss your window you have to start the process over again. Saying that it can be updated is simply more convenient...and it seems quite plausible to me though I'm not an astronomer. <snip> it would actually preferentially want to be at the start of the jump run and not out in the farther solar system at the point just before the jump. That's how I was picturing it. I was imagining a station or ship orbiting the star at some distance that's relatively convenient for the outbound commerce heading towards another star. Based on some of your other observations about keeping the thing in position and so forth it would probably be better to just do it from the origin planet If you place the jump calculation ship back at the origin planet then the departing ships are just fed the coordinates and vectors and off they go. Then they have the entire acceleration period to make the adjustments needed. Of course if you have jump calculation ship back at the planet of origin, you don't need a ship at all, it could just be an office on the station orbiting the planet. Excellent point. Because the mechanics of orbital motion are fairly straightforward, I think that once calculations have been done it should be fairly straightforward to keep them updated on a continuous basis. Oh good. I'm glad we agree. <snip> If it takes too long (or you deviate too far of the path) your initial set of calculations will no longer apply and you'd have to return to the planet of origin, get a new set and start over or have you're own astrogator redo the calculations. This is a possilbe reason for having the ship further out. As long as you've come generally outward from the planet to the calculation ship, you'd be on basically the correct course and you may not have to start over. Hmmm...the jump calculation service could transmit updated information from the station without having another ship out there I would think. And if you just need a point to steer towards then really all you need is a comsat. The calculation service could be based at the origin planet or a space station orbiting the same. Still, nothing any of us is saying eliminates the possibility of purchasing precalculated navigational data to make a jump. Especially if the same jump can be kept constantly updated without starting over. |
July 16, 2010 - 1:40pm | I think all the telescope observations dmoffit described are not so much to determine the information for the calculations but rather to make sure you are lined up properly in your travel direction. Basically you using parallax to the nearby stars to determine your direction of motion. This also goes back to the last comment that adamm made (I don't think he quite understood what I was trying to say). You need to get lined up just right. If you have to maneuver or go off the track, there is a lot of work that needs to go into getting you back on course. Hence you might need new calculations and since you are no longer on the track that the pregenerated calculations are for, you either have to go back to that track or generate calculations on your own for the track you are on. And they could be sent by radio. Just remember that by then you are 2-3 AU at least out from the planet and radio travel time is 8.5 minutes per AU. So there is a long delay. Although maybe you could use subspace radios. Here are some numbers: On a five light year jump an error of 1 arcsecond in your direction of motion translates to an error in where you end up of 1.53 AU (it scales directly with jump distance so for a 10 ly jump you just double that to 3.06 AU). And an error of one arc seconds corresponds to being off by just less than 5 millimeters after traveling one kilometer. (One arcsecond is the size of the eye of the president on a dime held at arms length, not very big). So you need a lot of time (and distance for the paralax measurements) in order to make sure you've got it all right and are heading in exactly the right direction. In fact, the more I think about this, the more I think that the 10 hours per light year for plotting the jump really should have to be real hours of travel, i.e. they start when you leave your point of origin and represent the increased difficulty of lining up for the longer jumps. I've never played it that way so I'm sure that's not how the rules read but I'm liking that idea more and more. As such they may not need to be actual physical work hours but the amount of time that needs to be spent to make sure you line up properly. It could still be done at normal work hours wtih breaks for sleep in the middle as you have to travel quite a ways to make the parallax measurements. Basically you travel a bit, measure to check your course, adjust as necessary, travel some more, make more refinements, etc. Short bursts of work followed by long lulls as you travel farther to get the baselines needed for the parallax triangulations. That of course would mean that multiple astrogators wouldn't actually help you. All you ever need is one (plus maybe a hot spare in case the primary astrogator is incapacitated for some reason, i.e. shot, hungover, bad fish, etc. )Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
July 16, 2010 - 4:32pm | As such they may not need to be actual physical work hours but the amount of time that needs to be spent to make sure you line up properly. It could still be done at normal work hours wtih breaks for sleep in the middle as you have to travel quite a ways to make the parallax measurements. Basically you travel a bit, measure to check your course, adjust as necessary, travel some more, make more refinements, etc. Short bursts of work followed by long lulls as you travel farther to get the baselines needed for the parallax triangulations. That of course would mean that multiple astrogators wouldn't actually help you. All you ever need is one (plus maybe a hot spare in case the primary astrogator is incapacitated for some reason, i.e. shot, hungover, bad fish, etc. )Yes Sir, Thats why we put the bouys out there. To make sure you are on track. I should have explained that better. For example Prenglar would have Five sets of these things 1 set for for every major outbound transit line. The Bouys do all that work you are speaking about and then when you send them your number saying you paid for the jump calc they tell you left right up down ok now you are on target have a nice day. Then you Jump. These would be set up fvor only the Major trafic lanes. such as Prenglar to Gruna Garu, or Timeon, or Cassidine, or Athor or Dixon's. You want to go elsware... calculate your own jump. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 17, 2010 - 2:39am | So with a ten hour window before the calculations "expire"...it's safe to say that additional astrogators would be needed (with additonal astrogation stations as well?) to start crunching new numbers at ten hour intervals. So for the Cassidine-Dramune route, a 40 hour plotting job (two 'gators working ten hour shifts can crunch the numbers in 40 rather than a single 'gator crunching it in 80/taking ten hour breaks) --- 4 two 'gator teams would be needed, with each team starting up at ten hour intervals so the calculations are always current. The Prenglar-Gruna Garu route would need fourteen such teams, and probably a bigger ship... That, and the ship would eventually have to turn around as it drifts further and further into the fringes of the system at sub-jump velocities. Which brings up another issue: "Somewhere out there in deep deep space, gazillions of kilometers away, is a ship with current jump coordinates. All we gotta do is find it with our 300K range radar and not overtake it by exceeding sub-jump velocity..." Sure, they can acquire vector headings via subspace radio, but the velocities are still in question. So just how fast would this calc ship be travelling? Let's say 100hex/turn is sub-jump, it would have to be travelling fast enough to allow accurate coordinate feeds to parallel craft but slow enough for said craft to acquire them. So 80 hex/turn? 90? |
July 17, 2010 - 7:42am | I'd say the calculating ship would be pretty much stationary. It could easily broadcast a homing signal on standard radio that ships looking for it could track on. The actual transmission of data would only take a few seconds or maybe minutes and that too could be done via standard radio. Modern technology can easily transmit 5 megabytes of data per second via radio (that's what we use to download data from Hubble and Fermi space telescopes) and you can pack a lot of data into a 5 megabyte per second stream in just a few seconds. As the ship making the jump gets close it just sends the coordinate request and the calculating ship fires off a data burst back at it. You'll have some doppler shift of the frequency and time delays due to light travel time but it's not anything you can't easily work with. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
July 18, 2010 - 7:30pm | Yes Sir, Thats why we put the bouys out there. To make sure you are on track. I should have explained that better. For example Prenglar would have Five sets of these things 1 set for for every major outbound transit line. The Bouys do all that work you are speaking about and then when you send them your number saying you paid for the jump calc they tell you left right up down ok now you are on target have a nice day. Sounds like the bouys are basically communication satellites? Little sputniks broadcasting a beacon and I follow the beacon? If you have these bouys and their position is known with a high degree of accuracy that might help, but what he's saying is that your course has to be so precise that you need to make infintessimally small course corrections while you're trying to reach jump velocity. One arc second is about .00028 degrees, and being off even that much could put you in a very different place from what you intended....though you'll be in the right star system at least :) |
July 18, 2010 - 9:18pm | In the earlier post I stated that the buoys should be small ships run by Robots constantly streaming Data back to the astrogators back aboard the space station. But they serve multiple purposes. There should be more than one out thier per transit line, probably several. Here is how I see it: Severel of the marker ships or Buoys are in a semicircle large enough for the ship in transit to fly between them. They take all the readings and keep the astrogators at the station updated. Also when a ship comes to transit they fead the jump data to it from the station and then they make sure the ship is lined up for the jump. They wont transmit the jump data until the ship gives them the code wich shows they paid for the jump calc. Just trying to take as much work out of it as possable for the ship in transit. Otherwise why bother. Why would they pay you anything unless you made sure they had all the data and were safe to use it. Nasa did all the calculaions to get to the moon from the ground. So why not make jump calculations from a space station? + @ / @ / @ / @ / @ / ^ Umm try to think of it in 3d.... Or better yet, get a bracelet, and get a pen. Imagine the pen is the ship and the bracelet is the circle of marker buoys. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 19, 2010 - 3:07am | better yet, get a bracelet, and get a pen. Imagine the pen is the ship and the bracelet is the circle of marker buoys. Sorta like the Buck Rogers stargates? |
July 20, 2010 - 6:19pm | I never played the Buck Rogers RPG if that is what you are refering to and I dont remember much about the TV Show except that annoying robot character. the Purpose of them is to make sure your ship is on the proper heading for the jump. It is not intended to jump for you or open the void for you or anything of that nature. They are just a relay station to feed you your jump calculations (after you pay the bill of course) and exactly align your ship with the target system for your jump. As you fly through it the ships in the ring will triangulate with you and the target system and give you course corrections for the jump, thus eliminating the need for you astrogator to do it. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 21, 2010 - 2:08pm | I was referring to the TV show, never played the game either...in essence they flew into these "portals" that hypered the ship into the next system. I get what you're doing, just offering a visual of how the ship flies through the ring of buoys/calc ships. |
 July 21, 2010 - 8:23pm | I would lean toward upgrades in computer programing and astrogation technology as well as to the theory behind void jumping would lead to short calculation time over the span of the timeline. You could even have some ships using outdated tech and still doing jump calculations the hard way or the PCs land a "free" ship but it has the outdated tech and they have to break their head doing jump calculations the old school way while the villian they desire to chase whistled up his jump calculations in for a 5 ly jump in as little as 5 hours. When they get to the system he jumped to they're now days behind him and the investigation begins.... I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 22, 2010 - 3:12pm | I think Jedi Is on to something here, It also sounds like a Great adventure hook. Getting the new "old ship" in the first place. Along with using it to build your fortune. Newer ships having newer computers, wich shorten jump calc time sounds like a great answer. Probably would negate the need for the above discussion in the first place, depending on where in time the faster computers come in to the campain. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
July 22, 2010 - 6:22pm | I like jedi's ideas here, to me it could be a parallel technology that begins a Beta/VHS race as it were. The Gator Ships come first and offer a faster means of travel, say produced either by a conglomorate or by CFM or something similar (as I was on to earlier). Sales of astrogation equipment drops off, astrogators are finding themselves in a potential reduction in employment so another consortium or mega-corp makes a breakthrough in the computers and programs and can offer the same speed for the same price. Then the race is on and eventually Gator Ships lose out as no one would be willing to pay lots of credits for something they can do at the same pace for less (potentially). Could lead to several sub-plot ideas of corporate espionage or mercenary attacks on the Gator Ships. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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July 22, 2010 - 8:42pm | Did anyone mention nav-buoys where ships sync up with a buoy and download the necessary calculations, then make final maneuver adjustments before jumping *into* the void? This method saves time but does not allow for deviations along a course and (I would assume) buoys maintain the comings and goings so that ships do not collide along the space-highway (or void-highway if you prefer). Does anyone allow astrogators to use their skill to analyze spatial anomalies, track void signatures or interpret information gained from probes and sensors? Boring job just making jump-calcs. :-) Astrogation Software (optional) The level of software needed to properly calculate jumps is equal to the hull size of the ship. For each level above the ships hull size reduce the amount of time to calc by x, for each level below the hull size add x numbers of hours to the calc. Great stuff everyone. I smell a SFman submission in here somewhere. |
July 23, 2010 - 6:20pm | it could be a parallel technology that begins a Beta/VHS race as it were. Could lead to several sub-plot ideas of corporate espionage or mercenary attacks on the Gator Ships. 2 ideas present from your post & I love the Beta/VHS analogy 1. The "Gator" ships as they were termed would have a cartoonish logo patch of a Astro Gator- an alligator who is doing something with a telescope sort of like the nose art for the Osprey 2. once the Gator ships are obsoleted they'll sell for a song (or pressed into other service) and anyone picking one up will be saddled with tons of computer support all that computer support would make them idea for research vessels though there'd be a size draw back since they were not designed for that sort of work and expected to hang around in system all the time. Would not a Gator ship be strictly a system ship? never needing to void jump but staying on station year round? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
July 26, 2010 - 3:13pm | I would think that the ship could be either/or. If they were going to provide service in one system, then sure, they could be system ships. However, if they were being produced at only one shipyard or were to travel with a fleet, then they would have to be starships. But I don't see why both couldn't be built, one being cheaper than the other and all. There would definately be something the ships could be used for once obsolete. Research would seem to be ideal, providing the ship wasn't stripped of everything. But a dirt cheap has-been ship is better than no ship at all. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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August 2, 2010 - 4:35am | Well, I think the OP Original Post was about Player characters whos Job is number crunching and how much fun is that? It is an Adventure RPG game. While we try to keep it realistic. you have to calculate how much fun the guy who is calculating all that jump info is having if you leave him aboard ship to calculate the next jump while the other players go off to do the adventure. As a Player.... my Character never took astrogation as a skill.... sounded too much like Homework! Rocket Gunnery sounds like fun though. Is 10 hours per light year really realistic? Or is it just a number they came up with just because they had to say something? Its House rule time. Our old house rule was 1 light year per day based on alpha Dawn rules but that had to do with Transit time and not Jump calculation time, like I said in earlier post it can be done faster... But I think that 10 hours per light year is excessive. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
October 14, 2010 - 2:04am | Hello all, my first post here. I was thinking, about this a bit.... 1) I don't think that most systems would want random ships appearing with in "their" space at random places. 2) With the possibility of being off by +/- 2AU or more on a jump, I wouldn't personally want to enter normal space near a planet. 3) While in void space the only objects that you'd need to worry about would be those that have a gravity well. 4) The idea of a "trade lane" indicates (to me anyway) that route is heavily used. With those in mind.... I would think that as far commonly made jumps (trade lanes) that entry and exit areas would established in some way either by treaty (government to government) or contract (gov to corp) where legit travelers would use those established routes. So you could use a navigational marker (buoy) to let the ships know the start and end point of travel. This could simplify the equations some, possibly enough to make the established routes easier and less time consuming to plot. Also if you go the route of a service being provided to do the calculations on a trade route for you, with sub-space communications, why cant the number crunchers be planet side, and send the info either to the ship, or to the buoy. Personally, I would use some sort of buoy system where the start and end points are established and the since it's been around, the hazards are minimal (relatively). From there I would say, if you want to do a non-standard jump then use the canon rules, if your using a trade lane, then the calculation time is 50-75% less. Doing the calculations by hand for a "new" route makes sense, but for a heavy traffic route someone is going to come up with a better way, that just how things happen in real life. I can see no reason why after years of interstellar travel that somebody didn't go have one of these thought " I've done this jump 20 fracking times this year, and the calculation is only off by x% each time. Lemme try something...." just my 2cr worth |
 October 14, 2010 - 6:56pm | This is a fantastic thread. Incidently, when I was 14 I read a short story "The cold Equations." The concept of a smaller vessel being launched from a larger mother ship is breifly discribed. The mother ship only stays in a system long enough to drop off the pod in order to deliver critical supplies, then immediately jumps away to the next system. Could this be one use of dmofett's network? I agree with Tharkun. Any newely colonized system would make it a priority to set up a way of attracting more commerse to thier neck of the woods thus the same people who finance roads in our time would make it thier business to promote stellar "roads." Local (planitary) governments. Perhaps the deep pockets of the Council of Worlds would provide grants for the establishment of such an intrstellar highway. Al in all it makes sense of the routes that are pictured on the SF map. some of them seem to avoid interesting looking systems and the network is not very efficient as drawn. However, if the route are actualy lines connecting where these calculating stations are located they make perfect sense. The end point of the lines would only be located in systems with habitable planets and through areas of space that the calulations could be easily made. Reasonable men adapt to the world around them; unreasonable men make the world adapt to them. The world is changed by unreasonable men. Edwin Louis Cole |
 October 14, 2010 - 10:08pm | tharkun wrote:[From there I would say, if you want to do a non-standard jump then use the canon rules, if your using a trade lane, then the calculation time is 50-75% less.] I like the idea of pre-plotted trade lanes requiring less calc time. I also like the idea of multiple astrogators working together on a single (cold) jump to not only reduce the amount of time plotting a coarse, but also to prevent the depletion of a ship's limited supply of delicious mountain grown coffee. There's nothing like waking up aboard your freighter to a nice robust cup of freshly brewed java before heading off for a grueling 10-hour shift. (gratuitous sipping noise) Mmm...reminds me of my recent trip to the Dramune system! (more gratuitous sipping) Ahh!  btw, welcome to the list tharkun! My SF website izz: http://ragnarr.webs.com |
