Bad Scouts?

[jatay3]

in MTU, the scouts are a very tiny group of explorers -- but are an effective group of spies, messengers, smugglers, black-market traders -- alll rolled into 1

thus, a scout might be a double agent for 2 minor planetary governments, and feeding the information to a 3rd government -- who holds the mortagage on his ship. While he deals with a black-market trade in psionic drugs under the noses of all 3 governments he supposedly helps ...

scouts are used by criminal families, governments, corporations and a host of other groups to do special tasks that adventurers often do too -- So while a scout might very well be investigating a meteorite crash upon a planet -- his government actually has him there to spy on the plent and tests it's defenses/security measures.

Then too such groups might have their own variations of the Scouts. Probably not as elaborate unless we are talking about megacorperate level organizations.

 

[bozzutoman]

News only need one avenue to get through.

Exactly. In business, reaction time is paramount... and that requires the fastest means of communication possible.

Having access to current information is vital to just about any megacorporation and probably a great many local governments as well. It would behoove any major organization to maintian the fastest means of information retrieval possible, even if that particular service runs at a deficit... because the benefits it would bring to the bulk of their other interests would likely far outweigh the costs of a single branch.

Being aware of a new imperial policy, new markets, wars/rebellions, or even significant shifts in a political or social zeitgeist as they happen could make a universe of difference in success or failure in almost any economic venture.

And for a GNN-style news agency, "hot-off-the-lines" stories would be their very bread and butter...


A shipping line with thousands of ships moving through a sector could easily justify the cost of a maintaining a J-6 network of couriers to inform HQ of regional market trends, hot-spots of piracy/warfare, newly established red zones, etc.

What if a mega-hauler misjumps and a vital contractual violation occurs? How can a company fulfill their clients' needs if they are hearing about such events at the snail-pace of the X-boat network? Multi-trillion-credit contracts could be lost to a competitor that gets it's information faster and can react quicker.

 

[tonyz]

We might note that in The Traveller Adventure, Oberlindes Lines has a network of jump-5 couriers within the Aramis subsector. (Interestingly, Akerut seems to be using jump-2 scout/couriers or jump-3 patrol craft to carry messages. Obviously they've gotten slow and lazy over the years.)

We probably should note that the Aramis subsector has two tight clusters of places that are pretty much all jump-2 from each other, and a loose backwater scattering of unimportant worlds. So maybe there is a local astrographic excuse for using mostly jump-2 couriers...