drnuncheon,
Accounting for stellar vectors during jump are part of Traveller too. There are a few canonical adventures that mention accounting for stellar vectors explicitly. The practice is there if the GM wants to use it, but a GM needn't impose stellar vectors if he doesn't want to. It's all part of Traveller's "Buffet Table of Canonical Details".
It's not sensible, in either a metagame or in-game sense, because it's impossible given the setting's assumptions.
We've two canonical statements regarding jump drive's performance. One involves a temporal accuracy and one a physical accuracy. Because both statements are canonical, both statements have to be true, and, if both statements are true, then jump navigation must work as I've repeatedly explained to you.
Our navigator is interested in getting as close to Bendor as he can. He also knows that, given the way jump drive works, he can only plan exiting within a certain region that is in turn within a certain range of distances from Bendor. There's only so much accuracy he can work with. He's interested in Bendor naturally, but he can only measure from Ffudn.
That's not a problem. Instead, that's a gross conceptual error on your part.
Exactly. Because ships could be leaving Ffudn at any given time, the Bendor patrols act as if a ship is leaving Ffudn for Bendor at any given time. After all, do lighthouses only turn on their lights and foghorns when they knew a ship was due? Because, there's only one best-time solution for a Ffudn-to-Bendor jump at any given moment and because those best-time solutions change in a predictable manner, the patrols know how to change their positions accordingly. It doesn't matter whether a ship exits jump each hour or each day or each week. The patrols plan on a ship exiting jump at any given time.
It doesn't matter if a ship from Ffudn doesn't exit on 1200hrs 100-1105 because the Bendor patrols are going to picket the "1200hr 100-1105 Ffudn jump exit region" anyway. As time passes, the patrol will move to allow their weapon/sensor envelope to cover the "1300hr 100-1105 Ffudn jump exit region" then the 1400hr 100-1105 Ffudn jump exit region" and so forth. The shifting of that jump exit region within the Bendor system will normally be gradual. Issues like jump masking in either system will occasionally cause the Ffudn jump exit region to jump itself, however, because those jumps will be predictable, patrols will already be at the new region when it becomes "active".
As I've written already, jump masking, which has been part of the game since CT, is wholly predictable. That predictability will allow patrols to position themselves.
In-system routes will differ with gee ratings, but not enough to make the difference you assume. I posted the differences between 1gee and 6gee travel times for 3 million km, they amount to a few hours. If an in-system route at a certain thrust will require an in-coming ship to use a radically different course, than system traffic control and/or the patrols covering the jump exit region will inform them to only use that thrust which will keep them in a covered transit route.
Suggesting that patrols would somehow allow ships to loiter along in-system transit routes, as pirate would have to do, without at least challenging them by communications is farcical. It would be akin to police outside a post office on one block and police outside a bank on another block ignoring muggers who are plainly visible on a block between them knocking over little old ladies and stealing their pension checks.
LBB:2.
Wrong. It's a rule creating a fictional reality and that fictional reality in turn requires continuity. All other versions of Traveller adhered to CT's weapon and sensor ranges with little variation. TNE which attempted to add more hard science to Traveller had to introduce gravitic focusing in order to give lasers a range more comparable to the ranges used in previous versions of Traveller. Because they vary from this thirty year old norm by so much, MgT's weapon and sensor ranges are just another mistake by Mongoose and their shoddy production practices.
You asked me what I was doing here, so what are you doing here then?
Then leave the thread. Sadly, you'll be losing out on gaining more Traveller geek points just when the new redemption catalog is due out. I'm hoping to get a Sylean samovar with Emperors of the Flag tea cups.
And those assumptions have held true across several versions for over thirty years. It's what the OTU is all about.
MgT weapon and sensor ranges are wrong, but anyone can use them in their TU's. It's when they want their TU to be applicable to the OTU or useful in other TUs that the problems begin. I'm discussing the OTU because when I stick to that standard people can more easily import what I discuss into their own TUs.
Jump masking dates from iCT.
And when they do, they'll make changes that usually work in their TU alone.
It's more like saying "I love piracy, but jump-to-port piracy in the OTU is next to impossible because of all these canonical statements. Piracy still works in the OTU, mostly in different places and in different fashions. That makes OTU piracy more like historical piracy and less like Hollywood/Yo-ho-ho piracy..
No one is arguing against piracy here. What were arguing about is routine port-to-jump piracy with all the OTU assumptions still in place.
How things change will depend on how you change those ranges. Your changes will also effect many other things than the conduct of piracy however. Changes to weapon and sensor ranges will change warship designs for example and any change to weapon and sensor ranges will have to explore all the subsequent effects if it wants to be done with intellectual honesty.
In the OTU it's already taken into account.
You change the OTU to make anything logical or plausible. However, the more you change the OTU the less utility your new TU has for other GMs. The OTU is the standard all other TUs are measured against. The further a TU is from that standard, the tougher it is to import aspects from that TU into another TU. For something to be useful, it has to be used.
There's another aspect of changes too, a very important one. GMs make what seems to be a "tweak" to the OTU to produce an effect their campaign requires. They then usually fail to apply that "tweak" with anything approaching intellectual honesty by failing to explore all the ramifications of the "tweak". As the GM adds more "tweaks" for more effects, the damage builds until their TU exhibits no internal consistency. The players find themselves in a setting ruled wholly by GM fiat, a setting in which they cannot be sure of the consequences of their actions. Once that point is reached, the campaign becomes random "roll-playing" and not roleplaying.
Regards,
Bill
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the biggest threat of piracy is when a ship jumps on what would seem a similar vector, just before they do.
