Re: [TML]Tracking spaceships in Jump TU, was: Instant city Phil Pugliese 13 Feb 2016 11:04 UTC
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Well for those who mind playing 'kick the can(on)' there's always the jump torps found in CT Adv4 'Leviathan'. And those were, at that time, actually canon! I've even been informed that MM himself actually refereed it, back in the old days at GDW. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Fri, 2/12/16, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Subject: Re: [TML]Tracking spaceships in Jump TU, was: Instant city To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com Date: Friday, February 12, 2016, 8:26 PM It's well established by canon that 100dt is the lower boundary on what can enter Jump. Less clear is whether you need a sentient on board; if not, automated "jump torpedoes" become a great way to carry messages around. But if they're possible, the crewed XBoat network makes no sense, and that's pretty deeply embedded in canon. I don't think anything in canon attempts to explain why you need a sentient on board. On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 7:15 PM, Greg Chalik <mrg3105@gmail.com> wrote: I'm curious. Exactly why can't Jump drives be miniaturised? And, if they can be, to what scale? The reason is, it would be an automated procedure to release a message pod with a miniature Jump drive that would replicate in reverse the Jump the ship just made, i.e. returning to the ship's point-of-origin to transmit "All OK" Failure for such a pod to materialise would sound alarm immediatelly. Greg On 13 February 2016 at 13:24, Craig Berry <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote: Yep. The Age of Sail provides the only reasonable model for Traveller interstellar warfare. Fleet commanders have tremendous autonomy, because they need it; once away from bases, their information will be at least a week fresher than HQ's, and that number increases the farther the fleet moves from the nearest base. I once had fun trying to imagine what tactical and strategic planning maps might look like in Traveller. You'd have to label every asset with the time at which it was known to be at that location, and then have secondary versions of that asset spread across all the places it could be now, weighted by probability. I was picturing color coding -- yellow/orange/red for increasingly old intel about the enemy, violet/blue/green for increasingly old intel about friendlies. Add on notations for where friendlies are supposed to be headed in the future, where enemies are predicted to be going, and your own alternatives, and you get a map that's trying to display about nine dimensions of data in two or three dimensions of display. :) I'm sure that learning to read and use such displays takes up a fair amount of time in Naval officer training. On Fri, Feb 12, 2016 at 6:06 PM, Bruce Johnson <xxxxxx@pharmacy.arizona.edu> wrote: > 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 ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com -- Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry) "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://archives.simplelists.com -- Craig Berry (http://google.com/+CraigBerry) "Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake ----- The Traveller Mailing List Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com To unsubscribe from this list please goto http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=EwREIRgLK8vaUEhNlnoNdSGKwnjoID8a