 August 8, 2016 - 3:06pm | Okay this is a blog site for Traveler regarding Misjumps but it has some fun ideas: http://dismastersden.blogspot.it/2016/08/traveller-interesting-misjumps-table.html?zx=ca8870f3d5be54f6 Some great fun stuff... to spice up the oopsy moment.  "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 August 8, 2016 - 3:37pm | Nice. It would work well if you use the Alpha Dawn idea that you are traveling one day per light year -- kind of like hyperspace in Star Wars -- versus the instantaneous Void jump in Knight Hawks with the awfully long calculations... I'm more partial to the AD version. Joe Cabadas |
August 8, 2016 - 3:54pm | I like to keep it simple... too. I love some of the ideas, just too fun. So many projects... I must have ADD.  "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
August 8, 2016 - 3:59pm | We should come up with some fun additional ones: From Farscape: Ship stuck in the Void between different levels/dimnsions of Void Space creating 3 ships with unique challenges and color (yellowish, redish, blueish) that PC's must negatiatie in amd out of deal with repairing the ship. While trying to figure out how to escape Void Space... naturally there needs to be other threats, void monsters, alien race bent on destroying there ship for some reason or other, weird effects on crew, etc. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 August 8, 2016 - 3:59pm | The thing is that no interstellar jump in KH can take LESS than ~9 days in the first place. Th'at's how long it takes to run up to .01c at 1g accelleration and back down again. |
August 8, 2016 - 4:12pm | True on the KH rules I really need to crunch the data but SP/SE Jump Engine tech improvements means the ships exit closer to the suns, I am wondering about decel from the jump for that... always wondered about that, where a ship would be deceling from the various distances. SP has a misjump chart too but not as fun as this one. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
August 8, 2016 - 4:16pm | The thing is that no interstellar jump in KH can take LESS than ~9 days in the first place. Th'at's how long it takes to run up to .01c at 1g accelleration and back down again. Don't rain on our parade! Well, that's a good observation. Most ships wouldn't perform a hard burn at some point to get to jump speed quicker? Probably the military and express freighters but not passenger liners. Makes we want to see how TerlObar finishes his KH 2.0 version. And, as I've noted before, I used to own KH, but my friends and I tended to play Star Fleet battles for space ship combat... with its endless rules, addendums.... argh! It was fun, mind you, but not when the rules changes with a new issue of Captain's Log. So, instead of a 1 light year jump taking 1 day of calculations and then, boom, off you go, it would be 9 days... same with a 5 light year jump? That definitely provides a perspective I hadn't thought of before. It makes the storage class a more viable thing for interstellar travellers. Joe Cabadas |
August 8, 2016 - 4:38pm | I think what was worked up was it takes 9 to get up to speed smoothly, the calculations would vary but might be able to be done on the fly a bit... but there should be some tech considerations older Jump ships jump shorter distances, or old nav systems take longer to recalculate... it just seems as TSR played with the idea of hyperspace it went through changes, first 1 month, then KH's shorter but still long jump to SD's faster jumps. The actual Jump is quick it's the prep vs tech that seems to slow or speed up the process, from poking through the games and part of that is how the ships are imagined. Huge Miles long ships with massive engines and whole rooms full of computer banks, KH smaller ships but still pretty slow computers, to more up to date thoughts on what a computer can to do I think all is reflected in the space games out of TSR over the years. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 August 8, 2016 - 6:02pm | Yes, assuming 1g = 10m/s/s of acceleration it takes 83.33 hours to get to 0.1c "from rest". That whole "from rest" is loaded as is the measurement of velocity. As for what void jumping will look like in my alternate rules, this short write-up is a pretty close approximation and explanation. I have a distance from the star you need to be to jump, calculations are fairly quick, about 10 hours, and the time is spent getting the ship lined up properly. Shorter jumps take less time but it goes up exponentially rather than linearly (the exact amount is the bit I still want to play with along with the exact distance to the jump limit). BTW, that page was the basis of what would become my book Discovery. 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 |
August 8, 2016 - 7:00pm | Yes, assuming 1g = 10m/s/s of acceleration it takes 83.33 hours to get to 0.1c "from rest". That whole "from rest" is loaded as is the measurement of velocity. As for what void jumping will look like in my alternate rules, this short write-up is a pretty close approximation and explanation. I have a distance from the star you need to be to jump, calculations are fairly quick, about 10 hours, and the time is spent getting the ship lined up properly. Shorter jumps take less time but it goes up exponentially rather than linearly (the exact amount is the bit I still want to play with along with the exact distance to the jump limit). BTW, that page was the basis of what would become my book Discovery. Neat. I've had some sci fi stories that I've wanted to publish some time. But mine are: The American Auto Factory https://www.amazon.com/American-Auto-Factory-Barney-Olsen/dp/0760310599 River Rouge: Ford's Industrial Colossus https://www.amazon.com/River-Rouge-Fords-Industrial-Colossus/dp/0760317089/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1470707987&sr=1-2&keyw... And '40 Ford https://www.amazon.com/40-Ford-Evolution-Design-Rodding/dp/0760337616/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1470708018&sr=1-1&keywords=... Joe Cabadas |
August 8, 2016 - 7:02pm | You might convert me over to the instantaneous jump idea yet. Joe Cabadas |
August 8, 2016 - 7:46pm | So, instead of a 1 light year jump taking 1 day of calculations and
then, boom, off you go, it would be 9 days... same with a 5 light year
jump? Yes, the 9 days are imposed on any trip by the laws of physics for a 1g acceleration. Half speeding up then half slowing down. Since time is all but absent in the void I discard that as an insignificant factor. So I simplified it by ruling that the calculation phase is wrapped into the accelleration phase. Not only is the ship constantly accellerating, but the astrogator is continually updating and plotting minute course corrections en route. Once you have a basic starlock on your target system, the computers should be able to at least maintain a rough fix in any event. As for "hard burn" there's only so fast you can go for more than short periods if you still want to be able to perform normal operations at the same time. I know there was a story in either SF or FE about a special type of suit you could wear that basically hooked you up to an artificial blood pump to allow you to survive ulta high-g for extended periods, but to do it you were basically also locked into your accelleration couch for it to work. |
August 8, 2016 - 7:58pm | I should add again that that is under pure KH rules with the runup to .01c. |
August 8, 2016 - 8:01pm | I should add again that that is under pure KH rules with the runup to .01c. Thank you and TerlObar aka Tom Stephens. Joe Cabadas |
August 8, 2016 - 8:16pm | I just got an "access denied" notice when I tried to edit my post so to recap what I was going to add: The KH rules impose a large time burden on interstellar travel, as much as 7 days for the longest trip on the map (Prenglar>Gruna Garu, 14 ly = 140 hours calculations [7 standard days]). Very long hauls such as Whight Light>Arraks would take 56.5 days (20.5 days calculation time plus 36 days total ac/dc time). |
 August 15, 2016 - 6:55am | I've always considered the 0.01c speed to be the least important part of Knight Hawks travel. For playability and atmosphere, precedence should be given to the fixed number of days each jump takes. To that end, simply assume that 0.01c is simply a ballpark figure that varies depending on the exact course taken out of the star's gravity well, which is calculated to bounce the ship through the Void and toward the destination system. |
 August 15, 2016 - 7:44am | The KH rules impose a large time burden on interstellar travel, as much as 7 days for the longest trip on the map (Prenglar>Gruna Garu, 14 ly = 140 hours calculations [7 standard days]). Assuming the astrogator never sleeps. ;) It certainly makes a good argument for having more than one in the crew. |
August 15, 2016 - 9:34am | I think what was worked up was it takes 9 to get up to speed smoothly Nine days total, actually: ~4.5 to get up to .01c (@ 1g accelleration), jump (virtually no time) and then another 4.5 days deceleration time. |
August 15, 2016 - 9:41am | The KH rules impose a large time burden on interstellar travel, as much as 7 days for the longest trip on the map (Prenglar>Gruna Garu, 14 ly = 140 hours calculations [7 standard days]). Assuming the astrogator never sleeps. ;) It certainly makes a good argument for having more than one in the crew. Makes an even better argument for updating the computers rules. We can do work on desktops and some higher-end laptops that in the mid 80s would have required a mainframe supercomputer. |
August 15, 2016 - 11:04am | Here's an idea, since Satharoids have a segmented body -- could they withstand a more prolonged acceleration speed, say 2 Gs? This would give their big, lumbering ships a wee bit of an advantage, but shouldn't they have a few at least since our favorite wormies are operating so far from home? And if the Sathar use any more robotic ships -- say heavy cruiser size rather than the Juggernaut -- they might be able to get in and out of a system a lot faster. Joe Cabadas |
August 15, 2016 - 9:27pm | Makes an even better argument for updating the computers rules. We can do work on desktops and some higher-end laptops that in the mid 80s would have required a mainframe supercomputer.
"Traveling through the Void ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?" Simple answer: pre-plotted jumps stored in data cubes just like the one from the Port Loren Raiders basic game scenario.  |
 August 16, 2016 - 3:09am | Pre-plotting works on Earth where things mostly stay in the same spot. But planets, stars and other heavenly bodies are in constant motion. If you are making a 7 light year jump you have thousands of objects to plot around. If you are skipping all those with the idea of you only need the entry and exit points I can live with that using hyperspace as a separate place where you avoid all the in between stuff but you still have entry and exit points which are never in the same place twice. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
August 16, 2016 - 6:36am | I get that, the comment was tongue-in-cheek humor about the data cubes being high tech storage devices compared to early 1980s tech. |
August 17, 2016 - 6:15am | Makes an even better argument for updating the computers rules. We can do work on desktops and some higher-end laptops that in the mid 80s would have required a mainframe supercomputer.
"Traveling through the Void ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova, and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?" Simple answer: pre-plotted jumps stored in data cubes just like the one from the Port Loren Raiders basic game scenario. As I pointed out, the computing power of a modern computer is far superior to those of the 80s, and just as precise. There's something to be said nostalgcally for the aesthetic of big, bulky terminals and rooms full of reel-to reel magtape readers, but nostalgia in this case is horribly impractical. |
August 17, 2016 - 6:42am | Again, agreed...hence the wise crack about data cubes. That was their version of baseball-sized flash drives, whose only advantage over the modern counterparts would be the fact that they aren't as easy to misplace. ;) |
August 17, 2016 - 7:16am | Holographic storage is still high tech compared to what we have, if not by much. What I don't get is how we can have 250M smart chips the size of a thumbnail for digital cameras, Iphones, etc but desktop hard drives of similar capacity are still the size of a paperback book. |
 August 17, 2016 - 6:43pm | Holographic storage is still high tech compared to what we have, if not by much. What I don't get is how we can have 250M smart chips the size of a thumbnail for digital cameras, Iphones, etc but desktop hard drives of similar capacity are still the size of a paperback book. The answer is magnetic disk versus flash memory chips. The hard disk industry has not migrated away from magnetic disk because the reliability and lifespan are still much higher than flash memory. Flash memory suffers from limited read write cycles before the memory cells are nonfunctional. Ever notice how easy it is for a thumb drive to become a garbled useless brick and you loose all the data? Eventually flash memory will last as long as magnetic disks in hard drives that is why you now see solid state drives on the market. The bit lifespan is getting long enough that if you organize a bunch of flash chips in a RAID then it approaches the lifespan of a magnetic disk and you get the bonus of much faster read write access. This faster read write access is what is driving the market in solid state drives at the moment. Other than that the more mature magnetic disk still wins out in the reliability realm. Another thing about hard drives is the size was long ago standardized so you will not see any more research money spent to make them smaller. The market demands for smaller hard drives is not there. -iggy |
August 17, 2016 - 7:57pm | I did not know that about flash drives. Is there any way of knowing how long one will last and is there any way to extend the life of one? I keep a lot of irreplaceable stuff on thumbs because my desktop is old and doesn't have a working CD drive. |
August 17, 2016 - 8:09pm | Holographic storage is still high tech compared to what we have, if not by much.
While true, you will note the frequency of 2D CRT screens in various artistic renderings of the game computers etc not to mention the various equipment descriptions as well. The way I figure it, the data cubes can store 3D or 2D data equally, and the data cube readers are akin to BluRay players that can be projected on both hi-def (3D format) and "lo-def" (2D) screens. One could go so far and claim SW-1 era data cube readers were akin to "standard DVD players" only capable of decoding the standard lo-def 2D data and incapable of utilizing the higher def 3D data, suggesting that the 3D technology is somewhat "new" to the Frontier as well (which, in 1980, was somewhat far fetched at the time). |
August 18, 2016 - 5:21am | Holographic doesn't mean data about holograms. It refers to the medium of storage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holographic_data_storage |
