On Mon, Mar 28, 2016 at 09:34:38PM -0400, Michael McKinney wrote:
> Anyway, Black Holes, the center of the Milky Way. How does
> travelling by that factor into the safety of a ship.

Those aren't within the bounds of Traveller's charted space.  There
are a few white dwarfs, but gravity isn't the main reason to avoid
getting too close to those either.  Certainly they're not relevant for
refuelling: even in the cases where a white dwarf system is involved
in a trip, the ship isn't going to be going that near to the star
itself.  The same would apply if there were a black hole system.

The Milky Way's central black hole is about eight thousand parsecs
away.  Getting there from the Imperium would take at least a few
decades of dedicated jump 6 travel.  There are nearer black holes, but
the nearest suspect is about a thousand parsecs away.

> So is the Event Horizon still a thing, or does Traveller have a way
> through handwavium science to counter that?

It isn't really relevant to Traveller, for the most part.  Perhaps it
could be the subject of an adventure involving some long-ranged
scientific expedition.

> Just like there are points of space where there isn't a reason for a
> merchant to jump to; those are comparable to deserts and mountain
> ranges, they just make the certain destinations untenable to travel
> to when you don't want to expend your jump fuel.

The closest things to choke points are the inhabited worlds
themselves.  An overwhelming military force might blockade a world,
preventing interstellar traffic in or out.  They might be able to
catch incoming ships by surprise for a couple of weeks, but forewarned
ships passing through will still be able to refuel in the outer
system.

> Space is huge, but if I can jump anywhere from anywhere, then I know
> that tolls are going to show up, meddlesome imperials will be in
> unfortunate locations, and between inspections, and local
> corruption, point to point jumping may be less efficient for my
> money.

There's basically little but point to point jumping in Traveller.
There is no other effective way to travel interstellar distances.
Realspace travel takes on the order of a decade to traverse the
distance that a point-to-point jump can cross in a week.

- Tim