 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. |
October 14, 2010 - 10:15pm | The lanes on the map may not look like they make sense, but that could have to do with considerations unseen. The systems may not align for a "simple" jump calculation, or there could be an unknown anomaly that is creating a gravity well, making direct jumps unfeasible. That doesn't mean it can't be done, just the risk outweighs the reward for a economical travel route. |
 October 15, 2010 - 5:19am | The problem with a Boy system is that a planet's location is not a fixed point like a waterborne harbor. Planets orbit their star and can be many millions of km away from a buoy. For example, Earth's orbit is roughly 300 million km in diameter. You would need to place thousands, or maybe millions, of buoys all around a planet's orbital path in order for a ship to reach it in a reasonable amount of time. Sure, you could develop some sort of solar-stationary buoy but it would have to be constantly updating its position and communicating that with other systems' buoys. Not to mention the incredible amount of redundancy and security you would have to build into such a buoy. Want to cut off a system from the rest of the Frontier? Blow up its buoy! My point is that the canon rules already take the time constraints of plotted vs. unplotted routes into consideration. This isn't saying you should follow the canon rules blindly, but if you don't like the time constraints then change them! It's really as simple as that. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
October 15, 2010 - 11:04am | In a Buoy system I don't think you'd aim for the planet, more point in the star system, that would get you in to a position with a trade off between distance and safety. Similar to a highway system. For me they buoys would be entrance points, with triangulated exit points. You don't want to hit another ship trying to jump out while your coming in, after all. (collisions with a speed at impact point of 2%C!!!) It's been so long since I've played I don't really remember what the big deal is. |
October 15, 2010 - 9:20pm | The whole point of jumping into a star system for the vast majority of ships will be to get to the populated planet. For that purpose, it would make sense for the target buoy to be within deceleration range of the planet. Otherwise you could end up in the system but still months away from the target planet that is now on the other side of the solar system! Collisions are avoided primarily because space is HUGE, and where individual ships pop out of the void depends on their route into the system, eventual end point, and time. Remember, each jump is hitting a moving target. In order to collide, two or more ships would have to have the exact same void exit point (within a few dozen k) and void exit time (within a few seconds). It's not impossible, but highly unlikely. Space travel is more like sea going ship travel, collisions don't often occur out in the ocean, they occur near the harbors (i.e. space stations). If you insist on having buoys, that's certainly an option. But you still have buoy security to worry about. If I'm a pirate, it reduces the amount of space I have to cover in order to intercept targets. I know that you're going to pop out of the void in one of a dozen places. Also, if I'm looking to cause trouble in the system and need to buy time to prevent UPF interference, I trash the buoys and make the reaction fleet calculate their jump the long way. A few hours can make all of the difference. All I'm saying is to think things through. IMO, there are other, better ways to reduce jump calc time for known routes. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
 October 16, 2010 - 8:43am | here is a fact that has not been covered. The difference between the skills of Plot Interstellar Jumps and Risk Jumping. I will break it down for you using max a min distance to jump as a comparison from page 25 canon rules. First Plotting an interstellar jump: distance 15 ly 150 hours of calculations. distance 1 ly 10 hours of calculations. Straight forward and the astrogator's level has nothing to add to it. Risk jumping: distance 15 ly. If a level 1 astrogator spends 9 hours per ly, he only need 135 hours to get step 1: 135 divided by distance 15 ly gives 9 step 2: add astrogator's level give 10 step 3: multiply the results by 10% to get the success rate of the risk jump that gives 100%. Now a sixth level astrogator. He only needs to spend 60 hours to get a good jump rate. step 1: 60 hours divided by 15 gives 4 step 2: add the astrogator's level 6 and get 10 step 3: multiply by 10% getting the results of 100%. Why do the plot interstellar jumps when risk jumping takes less time to calculate for all levels. 15 ly risk jump for 1st level only needs only 135 hours as apposed to 150 for plot interstellar jump. 15 ly risk jump for 6th level only needs only 60 hours as apposed to 150 for plot interstellar jump. The results are interesting to say the least. Gives you something to think about without having to develop a new system to do this. One thing to think about is the use of the Subspace Radio used as a navigation beacon seeing that it only takes 1 hour for a message to get 1 ly. The bouy system has its disadvantages but a different concept can be made to make things much easier with the Subspace Radio. More on this later, I only had a little time to place this. |
October 18, 2010 - 9:18am | That's kinda silly that risk jumping takes less time to calculate than established lanes. |
 October 18, 2010 - 10:01am | But with risk jumping, there is always a 5% chance that you miss jump, regardless of what your calculated success rate is. 96-100 always lands you somewhere you didn't expect to go. That means that one in twenty times you're going to get lost on average. That would be totally unacceptable for anyone except adventurers. 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 |
 October 18, 2010 - 2:33pm | That means that one in twenty times you're going to get lost on average. That would be totally unacceptable for anyone except adventurers with enough fuel reserves to get un-lost. Fixed that for ya!  When you only have one fuel pellet/drive remaining, you really don't want to go risk jumping. |
October 18, 2010 - 4:32pm | Somewhere in the book it has that as the automatic failure for all skill rolls. |
October 19, 2010 - 2:18am | Right, the 96-00 resolution is always automatic miss/failure. But...the "plot interstellar jumps" astrogator skill specifies that as long as the astrogator is travelling along one of the established routes and the 10 hours/light year plotting time rule is adhered to, there is absolutely no risk that the ship will exit the void anywhere save for the intended destination. So it's a "non-resolution" resolution per se, much like the Medical skill "administer drugs": the medic will always successfully inject a stimdose etc into the patient (assuming the patient is cooperative). |
 October 19, 2010 - 8:22pm | I think the intended point of the risk jump was that you are willing to shave time off in exchange for a chance of failure. It is sort of like aiming a rifle. A marksman/sniper can hit a target at 500m even if he shoots in haste due to skill, a first time shooter can do that at 25m but put him back at 500m and he has to take the most time possible to hit the same target. Even then he will most likely only hit the area, vice the point of aim. Jump calculations are the same in that an experienced astrogator can hit a system from farther away in less time even when taking his time. But yes, the 100% possibilities for such a short amount of time difference is something that can be played with. But I think this should be largely applicable only to known routes with "known" gravitational influences. You can use last obeservations as the basis sort of thing instead of waiting for the correct readings on where everything is between you and your point. With a new plot or something the 'gator has never plotted before he has no reference for "known" influences so his risk should be higher. One can almost say that the 'gator skill can be sliding, a level 6 may only be as effective as a level 3 at a route he has not travelled often where a level 1 could be as effective as a level 3 because he flies the same route to the same destination over and over as a supply runner or something. "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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 October 23, 2010 - 5:28am | Been a while since I visited this thread Georgie makes a point about pirates and bouys but conversely the local militia also knows that ships are coming in at those bouys- and it simplifies they're patrol assignments. However- I would move away from bouys and simply make it that the general area for a void transit from system x is fairly standard +/- a certain number of hexes (100, 200, 500?). the reason the area of transit is fairly standard is that since ships are using a MAPPED route they pretty much mimic the original jump of the mapping vessel with allounces for a host of variables that cause them to appear within an area of hexes say 500 hexes in diameter. This opens up the way for secret jump routes known and used by pirates or corporations that bring ships to different areas of a system which aleviates the problem of a pirate coming out in the area of a system that is heavily patrolled. Also the problem for a pirate stooging around a transit point is that ships coming out of void are travelling at 1% C and he's travelling at what speed ? so that he can stay in that area? At near void speeds an Ion ship can easily run away from any suspicious ship that didn't have a comparable speed and easily be outside of radar range in 1 turn. Even a pirate travelling at .9% of C will be hard pressed to be on the proper heading to run down a freighter. He'll have to travel in a wide circle around a transit point at that speed- but then any ship doing that would be awful suspicious and draw militia attention. I like the idea of just shortening the jump calculations- after all 2+2=4 and once you've made that calculation and if nothing changes then its real easy to do that calculation again with out doing it by hand on paper- gross simplification- for a particular ship its first jump on a route is saved in the computer and if none of the various variables change for that ship its a snap to do that jump again. if that ship was a freighter and it off loaded one cargo and loaded another and thus has a change in mass then the astrogator would need to do some calculations but by and large most of his work is done. Freighters would take lots of short cuts this way but passenger liners would not (requirements imposed by the insurance carrier require fresh calculations for void jumps by passenger liners- thus making shipping items in the cargo hold of a liner cheaper since there can be a time delay imposed by astro calculation, layovers, and etc.) for a house rule if its the first time a ship does a route- then standard rules but if that particular ship has done the route before then 1 hour/1yr for calculations Also the age of the original calculation for a particular jump can influence a mis jump- if the ship is using the saved calculations from a jump done 12 years ago then there is an additional 12% of a mis jump. a UPF ship would accrue saved jumps for the whole frontier but a captain who was a stickler would require fresh calculations while a lax captain would not- the implication could be drastic for PCs who are new members of a slack crew and the frigate misjumps to parts unkown. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 23, 2010 - 7:17am | The difficulty in calculating jumps is that you are jumping from a moving target (i.e. your own orbital location around a planet that itself is orbiting a star) to a moving target. Each of these moving targets is moving at different rates and directions. No two jumps from Inner Reach, Dramune to Triad, Cassidine is going to be exactly the same. The starting points and end points will always be slightly different due to the differences in space and time. Perhaps, then, what we're talking about in regards to mapping is known windows for jumps from one place to another. These windows are constantly being recalculated by system transit authorities for use by commercial traffic. This means that you have to be in a certain point in space at a certain known time to start your acceleration along a predetermined course and rate of acceleration* to complete your jump. This would successfully reduce the time for a ships astrogator to plot the jump (but add time to plot and travel to the known start point) and also serve to reduce the patrol space for militias. As these windows' locations differ all the time and might not repeat for decades or centuries, there are no buoy markers. *Note that these windows are calculated for the standard acceleration rate of 1 gee (1 ADF). Acceleration to jump speed at any other rate will move the window and the astrogator must recalculate. I'll leave it to you to determine how long this will take. Regarding pirates, a subspace radio transmission takes a fraction of the time to travel that same distance. Spies posted at the originating station could transmit to their colleagues whenever a ripe target departs in the direction of a known window. The pirate ship then only has to calculate the probable time of the jump and arrival, and likely course to the destination. From there it can calculate its own intercept course including the when it needs to accelerate from its current location and at what rate in order to be within detection range of its quarry on a path that gives maximum amount of time to detect the target. Of course, this does not always succeed. Sometimes the calculations are off. Sometimes a militia ship is too close. Sometimes the target misses or changes its window. A pirate that successfully intercepts one target in ten is probably doing very well. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
October 23, 2010 - 12:56pm | the standard acceleration rate of 1 gee (1 ADF). You make very good points, but if you do the conversion from hex/turn/turn to m/s/s I think you'll find ADF 1 is 27.77777 m/s/s. Closer to two and three quarter G's. Fighters at ADF5 are pulling 14 or so gees. I figure anybody accelerating at more than 1/2 ADF is probably at battle stations with everybody protected by accelration couches and/or inertia screens. Which I guess brings up another simple way to reduce transit time without changing any canon rules. The normal accel/decel cycle should take 170 hours at 1g acceleration, that's 8.5 of the UPF's 20 hour days. An Ion drive ship who wants to go ADF 1 the whole way (sacrificing crew comfort and saftey in the process) could do the same jump in 100 hours or only 5 days. An atomic drive ship with ADF 3 should be able to accelerate and deccelerate in a mere 32 hours. The tradeoff is that everyone in that ship at ADF 3 (8.5 G!) has to spend the whole trip suited up and heavily protected in ways we probably haven't invented yet. They would probably take their sustenance by sipping pouches of nutrient liquid and they would have to relieve themselves in their suit. I think space suits are made for that, but it would still be uncomfortable and messy.....but also survivable and therefore possible for people in a desparate situation. |
October 24, 2010 - 7:12am | I think a possible answer for the movement of bodies within the Frontier could be in the star charts themselves. The rules do state that observations are required to accurately plot a jump via telescopes mounted on the ships. My opinion is that this is is still required but that original star charts and updates are the basis for the fine tuning by observations. In the age of sail, there were just rough lines where shores, shoals and other navigational hazards were. As the areas became travelled, the lines became more accurate and detailed but if that information was not passed on, the best chart out there still only contained what was released by navigators. So in the Frontier age it stands to reason that the orbits of system bodies, their movement relative to each other and the influence of random phenomena would be "plotted", meaning in an astrogation program capable of displying a "best guess" base. The better the program the more accurate it can simulate current positions based on the most current knowledge, and the higher the cost. Astrogators can update base programs making their own "best guess" base and of course guarding this info until death. The final step is the observation stage to confirm bodies are in fact lining up with calculated drifts and movement. Following all steps will produce a dead on accurate result, where skipping a step, operator error and shoddy programs will create errors that compund themselves. This process is why it is important to recover data from ships that don't reach their destination, did they hit a rogue planet, was the data corrupt, were the charts wrong etc. It also makes adventure plots on stealing an astrogator's charts, recovering data or distruibuting data. It sort of also explains why you have to plot routes when they are travelled, not all of the data is published or sold just so that someone can calculate faster because they have the only knowledge of the gravity effect produced by an asteroid that only travels and area once every 89.6 days (or something). "I reject your reality and substitute my own."
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October 24, 2010 - 11:40am | Excellent points and well stated Shing. The weak can never forgive. Forgiveness is the attribute of
the strong. * Attributed to Mahatma Gandhi |
 October 27, 2010 - 6:27pm | If I recall there was something in the Cannon books about being able to sell jump routes to the Spacer's guild, or some such thing, but this runs contrary to what I've been reading here. If jump routes must constantly be recalculated, selling them is a useless proposition. In my campaign a jump program once written can be stored in the ship's computer and be reused, eliminating the need to keep recomputing the same jump over and over again unless something drastic happens to change a particular route. which is why there are established jump routes between star systems. Of course even if you punch in the coordinates in the nava computer the ship still needs to accelerate, but prep time for a jump is much less if you're using a tried and true jump route. You still need to spend time of course preping a Jump that has never been done before, but after successfully making a few safe round trips, the new program becomes one more that you can either sell, or use for your own neferious needs. "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
November 6, 2010 - 5:19pm | If I recall there was something in the Cannon books about being able to sell jump routes to the Spacer's guild, or some such thing, but this runs contrary to what I've been reading here. If jump routes must constantly be recalculated, selling them is a useless proposition. True known routes are known routes but the cannon rules stipulate that a known route takes time to properly compute before a jump- an unknown route cant even be computed until its plotted. In my campaign a jump program once written can be stored in the ship's computer and be reused, eliminating the need to keep recomputing the same jump over and over again unless something drastic happens to change a particular route. That certainly is a different and interesting take and one that eliminates the astrogators time sink activity that no one wants their character bogged down with. So why does a ship need a 'gator if it has stored routes? And if you just run the program what chance is there of a misjump? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 6, 2010 - 7:02pm | The Astrogator needs to spend some time going over the navigation computer's route and making any adjustments due to updated data collected from orbital navigation satelites, or transmitted through Subspace radio from other ships, or changes might need to be made due to the ship's energy output, mass due to cargo etc, but wouldn't need more than a few minutes to an hour to calculate a jump if he/she was using a standard jump route he/she has stored in his navigational computer. Besides if the ship does misjump, you're gonna need someone to figure out where you ended up and how to get to where you're going right? "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
November 6, 2010 - 8:04pm | Besides if the ship does misjump, you're gonna need someone to figure out where you ended up and how to get to where you're going right? or you could play Knight Hawk Roullete- "Astrogators! We dont need no stinking astrogators." I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 7, 2010 - 11:10am | Ahhhh...the "Lost in Space" concept rears its ugly head again in a Scifi context. While the idea of the Star craft lost in space concept is always a good one I've been a little put off by how many times that concept has been used in recent sci fi series (Star Trek, Voyager, Stargate Atlantis, and Stargate Universe to name a few). Heck even Battlestar Galactica is a variant on that theme. Personally I think misjumps should be a plot device rather than an accident, unless the Administrator is really good at winging a whole adventure, since having an Astrogator misjump often stalls, or forces him/her to abandon an adventure and all because of a failed die roll. I include the chance of misjumping in my game, but to be honest, in practice very seldom do I allow a ship to misjump unless the astrogator really does something stupid, and most don't because they take the responsibility of the welfare of the entire crew and ship very seriously, and depend on their crewmates to keep those nosy Star Law rangers off their backs, just long enough for them to punch up the coordinates in their navi-computers. "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
