> On Feb 12, 2016, at 6:39 PM, William Ewing (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:
>
> The USS Indianapolis dropped off the a-bomb, and left for it's classified next port. Noone knew her schedule, noone tracked her. So when she was sunk, noone knew to look for her. Because of that, we now have to file movement reports. We list all waypoints of each transit, and the scheduled arrivals at each. If we are more than 4 hours ahead of or behind our Plan of Intended Movement, then we have to send a new MOVREP. That narrows a missing ship down to an 8-hour window at PIM-speed (typically 15 knots or less, so within 60 nautical miles of where we should have been, if 15 is PIM-speed.

The Imperium CANNOT DO THIS. The most recent information the IN can possibly have of a ship that is not in a particular system is 7 days old. That increases by 7 days for every two parsecs (presuming the use of J2 Scouts/Couriers for comms) farther away the ship is. And they cannot get something *back* to where the ship was supposed to be except in the same time.

The existence of jump lag prevents this kind of close command and control; HQ might be *months* behind the front lines.

The absolute worst case of a misjump is 36 parsecs, which is 107 days away from where a ship is supposed to be at J2.

That’s roughly 4 months.

The IN operates like Admiral Nelson’s Navy, not Admiral Halsey’s.
--
Bruce Johnson
University of Arizona
College of Pharmacy
Information Technology Group

Institutions do not have opinions, merely customs