Aborted Jump

[Kilgs]

Three days ago you leaped into J-Space and everything was going just fine. 11 seconds ago, your drive generator started overheating from a leaky camarin valve that sprayed psotheosis liquid all over the generator floor and is gumming up the innards. The inevitable result is that, in a couple hours, your drive generator is going to shut down. Once that happens, the field around your ship collapses without warning and BOOM (or SQUISH).

So you need to shut it down and abort the jump... what happens? How can you safely exit J-space after only 3 days? Where do you end up?

Any ideas or has this been covered in some other books out there?

 

[far-trader]

As far as I know canonically, you're dead.

There is no way to abort a jump once you're in jump-space. Such a scenario as that would be covered under the "misjump - destroyed" result. If you lose power in the middle of a jump for whatever reason you never come out and nobody really knows what happens. But given the canon reports of the seriously grave effects of direct contact with jump-space it's unlikely you'd live more than seconds.

However...

...there are lots of ways to be inventive in your TU game. Maybe they come out half way between the end points of the jump. Or maybe they are stuck in jump space, a weird other dimension with it's own universe, and they need to find a way to "jump" back into their own dimension. Or maybe they come out of jump-space in one of Grandfather's pocket universes and have a great adventure there. Lot's of ways to play it.

 

[Peter Schutze]

>There is no way to abort a jump once you're in jump-space. Such a scenario as that would be covered under the "misjump - destroyed" result

why 'destroyed' ? I'd expect an orderly shut-down of the drive to lead to a major misjump at worst. I'd save 'destroyed' for catastrophic failures eg jumping after the ship has been shot to swiss cheese and a repair attempt fails.

>Maybe they

About the only thing I wouldnt expect to be allowed is "come out half way between the end points of the jump" unless it was half the jumped distance but in a random direction

If it was in any way predictable, people would have worked out a way to use this deliberately for say a J2 ship to get a J1 over with in half the time

Maybe thats one of the avenues the Imperial research Station covering jumpspace was working on ?

 

[far-trader]

>There is no way to abort a jump once you're in jump-space. Such a scenario as that would be covered under the "misjump - destroyed" result

why 'destroyed' ? I'd expect an orderly shut-down of the drive to lead to a major misjump at worst. I'd save 'destroyed' for catastrophic failures eg jumping after the ship has been shot to swiss cheese and a repair attempt fails.

Because any simple misjump still takes a week in jump space.

Anything that shuts down the jump drive before you come out of jump-space after one week will destroy the ship.

Some of the other misump results are that you are in jump-space longer than a week. Same thing there. No way to shut down sooner. In fact your problem then becomes how to keep the power plant running until you do come out of jump-space, because if it quits while you're in jump-space you are dead. Secondary concerns are life support related.

Unless you take the view that the jump drive is self powered (not since 1st printing of LBB2) and doesn't require a power plant to maintain the jump once engaged. In that case the jump drive will determine the total length of time spent in jump-space. And it could conceivably be a scenario where that time is 3 days. But it will be a misjump event. Not a controlled shut down, for the very reason you note. If it can be controlled there are all kinds of practical and tactical uses that would have been exploited by now.

>Maybe they

About the only thing I wouldnt expect to be allowed is "come out half way between the end points of the jump" unless it was half the jumped distance but in a random direction

It was just an off the cuff idea for a very non-OTU result. Not one I'd use

If it was in any way predictable, people would have worked out a way to use this deliberately for say a J2 ship to get a J1 over with in half the time

Maybe thats one of the avenues the Imperial research Station covering jumpspace was working on ?

Yes Of course just because it's not predictable yet doesn't mean they can't be working on it either. This is an idea I've seen used in some unofficial TUs.

 

[G. Fieendish]

Re:This thread
Another possibility is that you appear to jump successfully, i.e, the crew arrive at the expected jump exit coordinates, but the crew/characters soon realise that they've either gone backwards/forwards in time as a result of the misjump...
(One published Battletech RPG adventure, had the player characters interacting with the crew of a Star League Defence Force vessel, from the year 2785, appearing in the middle of Clan Smoke Jaguar's Occupation Zone, in the year 3055.
They find out that the causal event, which leads the SLDF vessel to appear some 320 years later, was due to a misjump during the Exodus).
As for determing where you land up in a misjump, 1D6 for Direction/exit point, & 1D6x1D6 for distance...?

 

[BlackBat242]

Or you come out in a parallel universe.

 

[aramis]

MegaTraveler has misjumps that range 1d6+4 days in jump; roll separately for the Universe and perceived times if you're perverse...

 

[mike wightman]

What you have just done is provide the narative for what actually happens when your players roll for a misjump. Assuming you want to start an adventure and not a new game then do with them what you will.

Their engineer performs a miracle in the certain knowledge that they are all dead anyway and instead heve them come out of jump - 1d6 days/weeks/months/years in the real world earlier/later and 1d6x1d6 parsecs from where they started in a random direction.

Which coincidentally should put them where you want the next adventure to be.

 

[Icosahedron]

IMATU, this would probably result in a 'hang-up'. The ship would remain in Jump Space, effectively forming its own pocket universe. If a repair can be made quickly, the journey may be resumed with only minor consequences (maybe the destination world has moved away from the exit point during the interval, or maybe the exit point itself has wandered). However, as time passes, the space-time 'connectivity' between the ship and the Universe begins to dissipate and time and distance errors will proliferate.

 

[Vargas]

Two approaches come to mind:

Let the players unleash their imaginations to kludge something together (run a power feed from the ship's boat for example).

The engineer in me says that any system that important has built in redundant capabilities.

 

[Tysis]

I cannot remember which Traveller version or supplement I saw this in, but there was a "temporal miss jump." I think it was as little as two days.

And who is to say that you cannot exit early? Of course, the result will probably not be pleasant but hey, you cannot have everything.

Assuming that you can exit early, the direction traveled may not be in a straight line. Jump space may twist around. Then again, you may be nowhere near a star when you exit either.

Other odd jump space phenomenons occur around the Abyss Rift. One example was a ship that entered jump space, came out on schedule, but looked like it had been gone 300 years.

 

[far-trader]

Yep, many are the possibilities, and several good ones have been noted, but for the record

And who is to say that you cannot exit early?

Just Marc Miller Which he has said. So officially you can't. Period. But unofficially of course you can. Just know that if you want to stay as close as possible to the spirit of the rules it should be a unique event.

Assuming that you can exit early, the direction traveled may not be in a straight line. Jump space may twist around.

Except again, Marc Miller has specifically said that jump space maps to normal space one-to-one. So there are no twists. IF you could exit early in a normal jump you would come out along a line connecting the entry and intended exit point, proportional to the amount of time spent in jump space. Hence my earlier "half way" to the destination suggestion.

A misjump though may not go the direction intended (which one might interpret as a twist I suppose )

 

[aramis]

Actually, Dan, he said you can't intentionally come out early. (MT and TNE both show it is possible to wind up exiting early.)

 

[ThunderChilde]

I can't see a Jump Drive being so easily disabled. The premise of starship engineering is multiple backups and the capacity to function in a failed state.

In YTU this may not be the case, and ships will fail to arrive at a much higher rate. Making travellers a rare breed of gamblers every time the airlock closes in preparation for a departure. It will also make those who settle on marginal, off world dependent colonies as crazy as those who live on active volcanoes.

My grasp of things here is probably badly flawed, but I was under the impression that the Jump Drive used all its fuel in the moments leading up to a jump. If this is so, then does the drive continue to operate during a jump in more than a capacitor capability? If so, there is much going on except the latinum frame carries its charge, the bubble seems to be stable and the charge dissapates down to the exit level in one weeks time.

If I am mistaken, a few kind words will do.

 

[aramis]

Really, there are about 4 different paradigms, TC...

One theory is that the Jdrive burns it all in a very fast, fairly inefficient burs of energy, all used at once, and you fall through a tunnel. Once in jump, the drive is literally off-line.

One is much as you described; the grid is required, and part of the Jdrive, so technically the drive is operating in part the whole time.

Another paradigm is that the drive has to keep operating to keep the drive charged. This one isn't supported in canon

The last major paradigm is the fuel is used to create a bubble in JSpace, and that some of the fuel is burned for power, while the majority is bubble stuff. Some feel the bubble is established up front, some feel it needs maintenance during jump.

Canon, especially the Gazelle's text, makes it pretty clear: Almost all the jump fuel is used in the process of entering jump... what is done with it isn't so clear.

 

[Gadrin]

Where do you end up?

You know how easy it is to die in Chargen ? So why should this be any different ?

If you survive, I'd say it's an automatic misjump. Of course the trouble with this type of ruling, is that once the players learn they can do it, they may want to try it again and again.

So, as a GM you have little options but to: Kill them. :rofl:



>

 

[RockViper]

I would just call it a standard mis-jump and roll for random direction (1d6 for the Hex direction) and Random Distance (1d6, 1d20 if you really want to screw them up) in parsecs.

 

[mike wightman]

The rule is 1d6x1d6 parsecs for distance of a misjump.

 

[far-trader]

Actually, Dan, he said you can't intentionally come out early. (MT and TNE both show it is possible to wind up exiting early.)

Could be, or it was a later revision. My memory isn't what it used to be but I seem to recall a clear statement that nothing could ever make the time in jump less than 1 week

(probably CT, I thought the "Jump Drive" article but could be mistaken, it's why I never much liked the "revised" jump tables)

 

[Icosahedron]

Except again, Marc Miller has specifically said that jump space maps to normal space one-to-one. So there are no twists. IF you could exit early in a normal jump you would come out along a line connecting the entry and intended exit point, proportional to the amount of time spent in jump space. Hence my earlier "half way" to the destination suggestion.

A misjump though may not go the direction intended (which one might interpret as a twist I suppose )

I'm sure I read somewhere that Jump space maps to realspace like a screwed up ball of paper (explaining the 2D maps of space). In that case, 'halfway' could be just about anywhere and the normal misjump rule may not be a bad approximation. In fact, this theory could explain 2D space and misjumps.