Jon,
I see from your last post you might be hiding in the bush on this
topic. (days/weeks/months were mentioned...)
But I'm curious about FTL travel speed and distance. It changes a lot of
things if you can hop from Earth to the Frontier in one jump of 15 minutes or
if it takes you 20 jumps each a week long. This makes a big difference to
government structure and policy, to media, to military tactics and choices and
undoubtedly to other things as well.
Have you ever thought (notionally, with all the usual caveats) as to how you
envisioned jump?
Myself, I envirioned something that lets you cover something on the
order of 1 ly/day. This would mean Earth to Alpha Centauri is 4 days.
Maybe somewhat faster with a good navigator or military grade gear or
a bit slower if you're on an ill-maintained tramp freighter. Getting
out to the Rim might take you six weeks.
So, what had you in mind, Sr.Tuffley?
And bonus points for anyone who can point out existing canonical
references (citations!) that state what speed/time is involved in Jump
or strongly imply an answer.
Fuzzy max 1 yr round trip to Barnard's Star, just under six light years, from
FTII.
'2063 The first trans-solar probe is launched to (and returns from)
Barnard's Star.'
The Lafayette campaign rules from the same book have six light years of FTL
movement per week.
Did I win?
The_Beast?
TomB wrote on 05/13/2008 09:20:40 AM:
***
snippage
***
> And bonus points for anyone who can point out existing canonical
I think the ftl jumps were to be instantaneous, but you had dispertion issues
and you had recharge times on the ftl jump drives. Military units being faster
to recharge and smaller exploration craft and scoutships having longer legs.
Gravity wells were also an issue requiring that a
craft jump out/into of system beyond a certain distance from a star and
that transit time also being a factor in the game.
I seem to recall that the psb had the context of jumps between star systems
being hard to coordinate, with fleets prefering to jump to preset coordinates
in 3d space to adjust the gaggle of ships with formations for combat adjusted
once you go to a proximate distance to a given system. Transit time into such
a system being an issue again of warning for the system defenders.
--
Ryan Gill sent from my treo
[quoted original message omitted]
Another place you might want to go for further thoughts is the work David
Manley has done for SFSFW's Ragnarok magazine. I'm pretty sure it's all
pre-fleet book design, but worthy of another look.
An article called Tripping the Light Fantastic...
http://www.sfsfw.org/a/21/light.php
Haulin' Gas tries to inject a use for those transports...
http://www.sfsfw.org/a/18/gas.php
Complicating things further are the problems of maint that long series of
trips might entail
http://www.sfsfw.org/a/29/dockyard.php
Funny, I was just thinking I should re-up my membership to the Society.
Expensive from the US, but some of the discounts can reduce the sting.
The_Beast
TomB wrote on 05/13/2008 09:20:40 AM:
***bound by snippage***
> But I'm curious about FTL travel speed and distance. It changes a lot
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> Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu> wrote:
> Fuzzy max 1 yr round trip to Barnard's Star, just under six light
Gotta be careful with those year cited events. Many, if not most, take place
in less than a year's time. Example from history:
1927: Charles Lindbergh makes first successful transatlantic flight
The naive might interpret that it takes a year to fly across the Atlantic.
:-D
> The Lafayette campaign rules from the same book have six light years
Which is almost a lightyear a day.
> Did I win?
Probably, since no one else came up with these yet. ;-) I don't know
what Tomb has for you for a prize, though.
> The_Beast?
You're not certain? ;-)
Mk
> TomB wrote on 05/13/2008 09:20:40 AM:
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> B wrote:
I refer you to p44 of FB1, which contains the following two statements which
set a current upper limit for human ships in the GZGverse:
/"The fastest cycle possible is around one jump per six hours [...] On
average, naval vessels on most missions will make no more than one jump per
day."
"The longest verified controlled jump to date was [...] a realspace
displacement of 7.328 light-years"
/So the upper limit, requiring a superb ship and crew, anti-Jump-shock
drugs, and a lot of luck, is about 29 ly/day. More usual would be about
6 ly/day (1 jump of roughly Sol-Barnard's Star distance IIRC.
Phil
Indy wrote on 05/13/2008 10:49:35 AM:
> On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 11:00 AM, Doug Evans <devans@nebraska.edu>
wrote:
> Fuzzy max 1 yr round trip to Barnard's Star, just under six light
Ok, that was done a bit tongue-in-cheek, but no one here could be called
'naive'... *cough*
> The Lafayette campaign rules from the same book have six light years
Yep, though I wasn't going to say 'now we know where you got your
estimation...' ;->=
> Did I win?
Having seen the humor he can show at an ECC, I can only live in dread.
> The_Beast?
Weird! There's no '?' there in my copy in my out-box. No uncertainty at
all!
> Mk
THE_BEAST
> A wee Beastie wrote:
---------------
Fuzzy max 1 yr round trip to Barnard's Star, just under six light years, from
FTII.
'2063 The first trans-solar probe is launched to (and returns from)
Barnard's Star.'
The Lafayette campaign rules from the same book have six light years of FTL
movement per week.
Did I win?
------------------
I think the probe time must be assumed to be including a lot of scanning, data
processing, etc. and the probe may not have had the
engines we have in-game in the current period - in terms of speed or
technology.
The second bit of information is a bit more useful. 6 light
years/week might well fit with my 1 ly/day (pretty close). I thought I
had picked this figure out of canonical sources, or at least notionally, but
didn't know where. FTII seems to be the answer.
So getting out to the limits of human space should take about
six-seven weeks (if I recall the 3D map Nyratth helped us put
together). So if something happens on a colony world, the shortest period
before someone in another system hears about it would be 3 days
(don't imagine any two stars are closer than 3 ly). More likely, 1-2
weeks if your fleet base is a bit back from the front. That does help to
explain some things about the GZGverse.
TomB
> TomB wrote:
> But I'm curious about FTL travel speed and distance. [...]
Fleet Book 1, pps 44 and 45...
Regards,
I surrender the no-prize, though I think you may be a bit generous with
the totals. Fastest single cycle between jumps and a record jump in a
purpose-built craft doesn't necessarily equate to four such jumps per
day. And even less so for several days in a row, not even trying to decide
operational capability at the end.
Still, sounds like a jump of at least two to three times the travel estimate
from FTII to FB.
Thanks, Phil!
The_Beast
Phil on 05/13/2008 12:01:21 PM:
***snippage***
> I refer you to p44 of FB1, which contains the following two statements
So, 6-7 ly/day standard, 29 ly/day max possible.
That means a priority courier chain could arguably go around 25+
ly/day. That makes frontier to core in about 2 days. News
organizations may well use this for key stories that just have to make it to
Core and the military will. (Outbound might well be a bit
slower....)
Worst case, at 6 ly/day, you're only about ten days from the human
frontier or maybe 7 depending on which edge.
The ability for news to move across human space to the movers and shakers in 2
days (or 4 days if you want to go from one end of human space to another)
isn't really a huge delay. It should allow relatively rapid reaction by
'prepared' forces.
The general public may take longer to hear about stuff, unless it is
critical news being fast-routed. That may take some days.
Thanks for the references, folks. I'll take FB1 as being the most recent and
hence authoritative fluff. (yes, that is oxymoronic I suppose)
TomB
PS - Nods of respect to Doug, Phil, Oerjan and anyone else I've missed.
Thanks.
I don't have my books with me... didn't it also say that most ships
make several mini-jumps at the beginning and end of a journey to enter
and leave the stellar gravity well?
Basically jumps outside the gravity well are still pretty inaccurate if
they're still too close, but short jumps are safer and more accurate. So your
first Jump is to get fully clear of the star, then you make your long jumps.
Then when you get where you're going, you make a few small jumps at the end to
shave it as close as you dare. Military ships make even more jumps at the end
to get into formation.
So even a one-jump flight (say to Alpha Centauri) would take more than
one day due to in-system transit and those minijumps.
Or to rephrase Niven, you could go anywhere in eight weeks, but nowhere in
less than one week. If a campaign system came up, you could
start to see a turn-based rhythm emerge.
> On 5/13/08, Phillip Atcliffe <atcliffe@ntlworld.com> wrote:
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> g Evans wrote:
know it sounds insane, but Marvel used to talk about no-prizes like this
in the mid-to-late 60s... ;-) )
> [...] I think you may be a bit generous with the totals. Fastest
I /said/ it was upper limit! :-) Plus everything you need to get even
close -- souped-up ship, ubercrew zonked to the gills on dope, and a
frakkin' lotta luck. Let's not forget the following sentence after the
description of CNS /Hyacinth/'s record jump -- the ship was lost the
following day in a suspected misjump...!
Actually, it all sounds rather reminiscent of the scenes in the book
/Dorsai/ (aka /The Genetic General/) in which the hero simulates an
attack on a enemy planet by continually "phase-shifting" a small
detachment of ships into an attack position and then popping out again,
over and over again until the crews can't stand it any more -- only more
so, since there's a much greater jump delay and effect on the crew and
AIs in the GZGverse. Or Asimov-style hyperspace jumping with added Jump
shock /a la/ Pournelle. Either way, or just on its own merits, the speed
of Jump-type travel is commonly limited by two things-- or possibly
three if you consider the extra one to be a separate issue: how far a single
jump can take you, how long it takes to recycle the engines and crew, and how
long it takes to work out where you are at the end of each
jump.
Phil
> At 9:46 PM +0100 5/13/08, Phillip Atcliffe wrote:
So any system needs to factor in:
Grade of drive Technology level of the force
Skill of the Navigator/computer system/officers
Abilities of the crew to handle the jumps random errors
This seems to work out to portions of the Lt Leary Series (crew skill and
morale help in enduring longer trips through bubble space) as well as bits of
Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series where it
concerns space travel time/distance issues.
FTL communications would work well by having couriers at various spacings able
to jump between known and possible points to transmit and receive bursts of
data that is encrypted. REALLY critical information which cannot be
transmitted must be handed off from ship to ship. Needless to say, this would
be expensive.
Many many games have copied the jump point system invented by
I'm a big fan of the FTL system in Mote. I also like that for the most part
you had to be motionless (with respect to a complex set of axes) to use the
drive (though the Moties did admittedly figure out a way to come out of FTL
with huge initial velocities).
You still get choke points at habitats, planets and other objectives
in the GZG system, but it also opens the door to fly-throughs at
relativistic velocities, which I think would strategically make things like
planetary bombardment almost impossible to defend against.
On Tue, May 13, 2008 at 8:22 PM, Nyrath the nearly wise
> <nyrath@projectrho.com> wrote:
> At 8:22 PM -0400 5/13/08, Nyrath the nearly wise wrote:
Jump points aren't necessary, just easy.
Well, you can have that FTL drives give off a VERY significant pulse that can
be detected. How big and to what sort of information depends on sensors, but
that means you have some approximation of where your opposition is.
Most naval battles occur not in open ocean, but in proximity to strategic
locations that are defended or contested. Planets and orbits would be those
sorts of points in a 3d Environment.
Inside the system where you cannot FTL in/out
would mean that you'd have to arrive far enough outside the system such that
you don't have an accident with your FTL drive and allow enough time to
shepherd (baaah!) your forces into a semblance of a formation then start your
move in system to contest the system.
Orbits into/out of the system would be useful.
You could have elements that are on fast runs through that would literally
come on board at a point and then leave the board a turn later. they're there
long enough either for a look or perhaps to try to get ordnance on a target or
fixed installation.
One would have to have a larger system map and a method of moving targets
round the system map (hexes?) allowing for a system of sensors to allow for
trying to figure out what formations are what and where the real threats are.
I worked up some framework rules for this but never really play tested it out
as it'd be time consuming. 2 tables, 1 for the strategic map of the system and
1 for the individual battles that were as simple as a cutter or system defense
ship getting popped and looked at close by the intruders OR as complicated as
the two main bodies of ships coming into contact.
You could of course have a series of meeting engagements where formations
slashed at each other at high speed and finally came to grips. It'd get
interesting as battles like the Falklands where you had 1 larger engagement
that broke down and spread out into multiple smaller engagements between
different sets of vessels off of each "table".
> At 9:05 PM -0400 5/13/08, Robert Mayberry wrote:
Well there's the barrage balloon concept. Sand casters that spray a large
cluster of "barrage balloon stuff" in front of a slashing attack could be hard
to avoid and hard on your fleet if
you figure on an easy and un-scouted slash
through a given system area. Especially if your guided weapons ranges are
limited. Salvo Missiles and MT missiles being table top range so you have to
get close. System defense ships and mine fields being pretty easy to set out.
Thus, you blitz through at your peril.
Actually what I'm thinking is more along these lines:
1. Accelerate to as high a % of the speed of light as your drive/fuel
make feasible while you're still in your home system.
2. Use your FTL drive to go to the right spot on the outskirts of the target
system. Preferably outside sensor range.
3. Use your system drive to do minor course corrections. Launch all your
kinetic weapons vs ground targets (or stationary space targets like space
stations). Targeting isn't a problem: NASA has nearly that kind of precision
today.
4. Since you're still outside the enemy gravity well, use your FTL drive again
to return to your home system.
5. Several days later, out of nowhere, the colony is bombarded by kinetic
weapons and destroyed. They're far more powerful than normal because most of
their energy comes from the attacking ship's engines rather than the guns).
Like an experienced boxer who uses his waist and leg muscles in a punch to get
maximum force. At that point, on a weapon already going at such a velocity,
any explosive you stick in the weapon is besides the point.
The gravel defense wouldn't really help unless you left that stuff in orbit
all the time (expensive, hazard to navigation), and even then I think the
kinetics would get through.
If such a scenario were possible, then I'm not sure how the Full Thrust style
of warfare could survive. MAD might work, but becomes unstable quickly when
you increase the number of actors and the
diversity of their decision-making processes.
Rob
On Wed, May 14, 2008 at 12:50 AM, Ryan Gill <rmgill@mindspring.com> wrote:
> Well there's the barrage balloon concept. Sand
I did some digging in old email, and I think I found a reference that military
ships could jump 6 parsecs per week, including time for rest and
reorientation.