 December 20, 2007 - 9:17am | Refer to Content of The House Rules Wiki project Multiple AstrogatorsUsing the standard plot time rule, a single astrogator can only work ten hours and take ten hours off between shifts (rest etc). Incorporating a second astrogator will allow the plot time to be cut nearly in half, as one works while the other rests. A third astrogator can cut this time down even further. T is total plot time in GST hours L is the number of light years to be travelled A is the number of astrogators working together Thus, an 8LY jump that would normally require 80 hours of time (not including downtime) for a single astrogator could be plotted by three astrogators in only 43 hours total time. What is the background in STAR FRONTIERS that it takes so long to calc a jump? Is it to provide suspense? Extra time for adventure? The other extreme is the Nav Computer on the Falcon that took seconds to minutes. -w00ty minds want to know. |
 January 8, 2008 - 12:33pm | That's what every jump is like. I figured that with the well-charted routes you could plug in to the hyper-complex model in the space-station's brain to get all the known objects velocity and mass, which made all that easier. Since the rules say that ships are pulled in to a system even when they misjump, I figure that in the physical reality of the void, the effect of gravity well is more like mass^3 or mass^4 or mass^5. Gravity wells are very steep, so you're plotting a way through that skips from one to the next without being pulled off course by other gravity wells. Good way to f up a mapped route in an attack would be to roll some new asteroid down the middle of it. :) roymeo |
 January 10, 2008 - 1:25pm | Been lurking and not posting in this topic - mostly because I generally don't have a real solid opinion on KH system of travel. I owned AD and nothing else for so many years that my starships all travelled at 1LY/Day all the time as a matter of fact. I didn't have "Void Space" or anything remotely similar in my games. To me, starship travel was more heavily influenced by Star Wars, Star Trek, the Buck Rogers TV series, Flash Gordan, and others. It *was* fairly routine, as long as you were staying on the established routes. In my games, you and your ship would pull up to a System Beacon and upload current data in minutes, updating your ship for the relative positioning and speeds of stellar objects that might fall in your path. Then you strapped in and engaged powerful engines that took you to 1LY/Day almost instantly, the seats protecting you with technology similar to inertia screens helping to fight the kinetic force generated by the hard acceleration. After a few moments, you're on your way and can unstrap and move about. Ditto on the deceleration. To me, it was a lot like taking a long airplane ride... strap in and endure take-off... then a fairly comfortable ride... then strap in and endure landing. Same idea. Was it realistic? Probably not. Was it simple? You betcha. I even surmised that the speed of 1LY/Day produced a gravity effect of exactly 1G, a phenomena only understood once faster-than-light speeds became possible. 3. We wear sungoggles during the day. Not because the sun affects our
vision, but when you're cool like us the sun shines all the time. |
 January 10, 2008 - 3:59pm | Realistic bah, who needs that. As players evolve, they may want a more sciencey explanation for some of the actions they take but then again they may not. Nothing wrong with simple. In my universe, there is no "void" to jump through, my ships travel in real space, real fast. So far in this thread I have only posted about my ideas of calculations but real quick, here is my take on FTL travel. Ships must accelerate at a rate of 1 ADF, which is 1G, for 8 days. The reason is that the engines "leak" energy into a "capacitor" and it has to be done at a constant rate and no faster than 1 (disaster has befallen all ships that have tried to speed things up or do it from a stop). When charged, the energy is sent through the "motivator" that fires the engines at FTL speeds, this sudden explosive speed change is why engines and hulls need to be overhauled (lest they crack and destroy themselves), better quality means a longer lifespan. This also knocks all occupants out (even in comfy chairs/webbing/fields) prompting an auto Stimdose shot* (if available, cost may be too high for a passenger liner and offered only to the crew and first-class people) to revive after the few seconds at FTL so they can control the deceleration at the end as it could take hours to wake naturally. *It was found that pirates were taking advantage of unconscious crew, popping the airlocks and taking the unharmed ship (they employed the Stimdose technique to wake before the crew). Sound familiar Bill? I think the first time I wrote all of this it took a few pages. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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January 10, 2008 - 8:13pm | My FLT goes like this... no wait that's my BLT.  OK.... how about this. Only once source in any known or unknown universe travels faster than light. wait for it. wait for it..... BAD NEWS !!! Douglas Adams proved that.  |
 January 10, 2008 - 11:34pm | I worked out a way to reconcile the travel time of 1 day per light year with the Void transit. I use a variable speed for the jump. Rather than automatically jumping at 1% of c, the ship uses "jump engines" to actually enter the Void. The speed of the ship determines the distance traveled. I worked out a table to figure the acceleration time for jumps of one to twenty light years so that the acceleration time and an equal deceleration time works out to a rate of 1 light year per day. It seems to be a nice compromise. The thing I haven't settled on is the calcualtion time. 10 hours per light year seems excessive. With one astrogator, allowing him to work right up until the actual Void transit, and accounting for rest periods, he has to start working five days before the ship leaves to calculate a 10 light year trip. No one goes anywhere fast, I guess. "Rome didn't build an empire by having meetings. They did it by killing those who stood in their way." |
 July 22, 2009 - 5:46pm | I thought I'd disengage the freeze field on this excellent topic to post my house rules on Astrogation. Keep in mind that this is for known routes. I have no house rules for uncharted routes and simply use the canon rules. Enjoy!AstrogationSince accelerating to void speed at 1 ADF is a constant and time spent in the void is negligible, travel between any two star systems will take the same amount of time regardless of the number of light years crossed. Instead, the number of light years is an indicator of the base number of hours that the astrogator must spend preparing for the jump before starting the acceleration stage. An additional number of hours must be spent based on the astrogator's level. This is determined by subtracting the level from 6 and multiplying by 3. Thus a 6th level astrogator needs no additional time, a 5th level needs three additional hours, on down to the 1st level astrogator who needs an additional 15 hours. This same amount of time must be devoted by the astrogator during the acceleration to ensure that the ship stays on course. Void acceleration must remain at a constant or risk mis-jumping. If anything should interfere with the speed or course, the astrogator must spend an additional ½ of the calculation time in course correction. This time must be uninterrupted. Always round up in this situation. For example, when jumping from Madderly's Star to White Light, a 3rd level astrogator of the starship Butterfly must spend 15 hours (6 light years +(6 constant – 3 level) * 3 constant) prior to starting the jump acceleration to calculate the proper route. While accelerating, the astrogator must spend another 9 hours checking and correcting the course. If the Butterfly were to be attacked by pirates while accelerating and forced to maneuver, the astrogator would have to spend 8 additional hours recalculating the course. If a ship accelerates at a rate faster then 1 ADF, the astrogator must add another 2 hours for each tenth of a point over 1. Due to crew and passenger fatigue issues, the maximum rate of void acceleration is 1.5 ADF. Any ship equipped with Deluxe Astrogation Equipment gains a bonus of -2 hours per astrogator's level above 2. Now the Butterfly's astrogator needs only 13 hours (15 + (-2 * (3-2))) plotting that course to White Light. Risk JumpingRisk jumping is still possible, but the calculation is different. The new formula is: success = (hours spent pre-calculating / hours required * 100) (round normally) The 'hours required' should include all modifiers due to a faster rate of acceleration or astrogator level. For example, the Butterfly is shipping emergency medical supplies from Prenglar to Athor. The captain orders the 4th level astrogator to be ready to fly in 3 hours at 1.3 ADF. The required hours is
So the success calculation is (3 / 23 * 100) = 13%. I have a feeling that the Butterfly will be lost. If the Butterfly were equipped with deluxe grade gear, the chance would improve to 16%. Deluxe equipment along with a 6th level astrogator would give the Butterfly a 33% chance of success. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
 August 9, 2009 - 6:40pm | I brought this idea up in another thread. You could have a service that would make jump calculations for you. It would be like filing a flight plan. You give them the ship info, departure point, destination, and departure time. They upload the data to you when you call for clearance and you're off. That doesn't help much in an unexplored system, but could save lots of time on runs between known systems. |
 August 9, 2009 - 10:08pm | I brought this idea up in another thread. You could have a service that would make jump calculations for you. It would be like filing a flight plan. You give them the ship info, departure point, destination, and departure time. They upload the data to you when you call for clearance and you're off. That doesn't help much in an unexplored system, but could save lots of time on runs between known systems. I like this idea and thought of it in pretty much the same way but I would do 2 things: 1. increase the chance of a misjump- not as much as a smoked jump but slightly more than a fully qualified astrogator doing it for the the ship. 2. require the ship to navigate to a beacon, gate or whatever and line up exactly on the "rail" they must nail for a good jump at the proper speed and require a navigation program that would allow the ship to utilitize this service. this puts limits on it since it violates cannon rules but also increases danger as pirates know where to look at both end for easy picking if the local militia isn't around (very likely as most militias are fairly small) I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
August 18, 2009 - 7:28am | My setting uses NavBuoy's which are virtual "paved spacelanes" between settled worlds. So that no one individual, corp or military can monopolize, use for harm or fall into the wrong hands - the buoy network is maintained by a group of individuals that never meet as a group and are protected by Sector 6 (SFMAN #6,p 38). The highways are policed by the UPF fleets, local militia and corporate sponsors. On newly opened routes a NavBouy is installed but unlike settled worlds the spacelanes are not protected. An Astrogator is not required, although most ships have a AgBot on board in case of emergencies. |
 August 18, 2009 - 9:56pm | I would probably allow several "quick jump" routes stored in ship's computer (coinciding with nav buoys located past the outer orbits), but no more than one route per Astrogation program level (i.e. 4 routes for a standard program, six for a deluxe equipment program). This would permit chartered routes to be executed more efficiently, but straying from those routes woul require an astrogator to start crunching numbers. But the aforementioned idea of pirates lurking near the buoys or exit points is always a strong possibility. Not to mention some sick and twisted mind that might want to tamper with the NavBuoy or worse yet --- move it closer to the star... |
August 19, 2009 - 4:31pm | In my opinion, solar systems are too large to be effectively buoyed. Due to planetary orbits, you would either have to place thousands of them with in a few hundred thousand km of each inhabited planet's solar orbit, or have a handful that mimic the orbit of each inhabited planet as a 'fixed' point in space that would act as a start point for its route. Using this second option would mean that the buoys would have to keep in almost constant contact with its partner in a neighboring mapped system in order to be constantly updating jump route vectors. Any forced deviation (pirate attack, engine failure, basically anything that forces manuever or acceleration changes) would force the ship to return to the start point or almost certainly be lost. This wastes precious time and fuel. It is simply safer and more cost effective to have an astrogator on board. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
