The Long Night?

[kilemall]

Originally Posted by Condottiere

1. I didn't think anyone would make a challenge on this, but, okay:

Auto-Plotted Jumps

For unknown reasons, automated jumps are prone to an increased risk of misjump. A jump plotted by the automatic systems without the involvement of a sentient astrogator is subject to the same DM-4 as all other fully automated actions. For this reason, if just one skilled crewmembers is carried it is usually an astrogator. A jump plotted in semi-automatic mode by someone without the Astrogator skill but with a basic understanding of the concepts involved suffers DM-2. It is thought that a machine will produce several apparently equal solutions to the same jump plot and cannot distinguish between them but a sentient mind somehow ‘feels’ which one is slightly better than the others. Even someone who is not a trained astrogator can do this to some extent and if one is available they can oversee the plot. Their Astrogator skill applies in this case and the DM-2 is not suffered.

Attempting to send a ship through jumpspace without people on board enormously increases the risk of misjump, for reasons unknown. In addition to the DM-4 for the autoplot, a vessel suffers an additional DM-4 if there are no conscious minds aboard. Low berth passengers are by definition not conscious and experiments with highly intelligent but non-sentient minds have produced wildly differing results.

pages 236-7 ALIENS OF CHARTED SPACE VOLUME 2

Sounds almost as though Astrogation jump accuracy is a matter of a minor trained psionics talent.


Or that they need Spice....

[kilemall]

Which sort of trivializes jump control programmes computer processing powers, since I'll assume the technological nine model can easily deal with jump control six, though the textual implications are it automatically would know it, or at least, be included in any update.

Fair chance a Jump-6 is exponentially more difficult a calculation then a Jump-1.


The more interesting question is why is so much fuel required for it?

[Condottiere]

1. Latent psionic talent; certainly tones of the Butlerian Jihad where human involvement is a requirement.

2. The primary taste of Coca-Cola is thought to come from vanilla and cinnamon, with trace amounts of essential oils, and spices such as nutmeg.

3. If the bandwidth of jump control six is thirty, Core forty (bis) would have a reserved bandwidth of thirty reserved exclusively for jump control programmes; I'd rather have that thirty for seventy total general utility bandwidth, and buy the jump control programmes as required.

4. Outside of game balance, I've come to the conclusion it's part of an alchemistical process.

[GypsyComet]

Originally Posted by whulorigan

To what are you referring when you say: "Its additional chapter"?

There was a Baen anthology released online a few months ago. Marc submitted an Agent chapter to it that isn't in the book.

https://www.baen.com/free-stories-20...jjWxzXAB9bvRFo

As Marc said on fb, this is best read after the book.

[Baroun Tardis]

Computers "more up to date now" - yeah, laptops on the ISS for example. Or, in a bigger way, compare the UI for the Dragon to the Shuttle.