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General Do you have your Players slow their ship down before Jump?

Spinward Scout

SOC-14 5K
I've been thinking about this:

Your scans of a system a parsec away you are Jumping to are 3.26 years old unless there's an FTL scanner out there. The calculations would be extrapolations of the movements of Worlds and Stars in that next system. There's no way to really determine small asteroids or comets in the next system.

So would you have the Players slow the ship down before Jump so that there's less chance of running into something as soon as they come out of Jump\Space?
 
I've been thinking about this:

Your scans of a system a parsec away you are Jumping to are 3.26 years old unless there's an FTL scanner out there. The calculations would be extrapolations of the movements of Worlds and Stars in that next system. There's no way to really determine small asteroids or comets in the next system.

So would you have the Players slow the ship down before Jump so that there's less chance of running into something as soon as they come out of Jump\Space?
No. Space is big*, and even asteroid belts are extremely low density overall.

The only place where this might make any sort of sense is when literally jumping into an asteroid belt, in which case the ship might want to accelerate pre-Jump to match the vector of objects in that part of the orbital path on arrival.

Anything large enough to affect Jump exit would be charted already.

Beyond that is just referee fiat. If you want them to hit something (or vice versa), they will. Otherwise, it's vanishingly unlikely.


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*something about the distance to the chemist's (i.e. drugstore) being just peanuts to space, goes here.
 
I've been thinking about this:

Your scans of a system a parsec away you are Jumping to are 3.26 years old unless there's an FTL scanner out there. The calculations would be extrapolations of the movements of Worlds and Stars in that next system. There's no way to really determine small asteroids or comets in the next system.

So would you have the Players slow the ship down before Jump so that there's less chance of running into something as soon as they come out of Jump\Space?

Slow relative to... ?
I mean, jumping zero relative to the star you're landing in increases the impact velocity if you run into something in orbit
You could "adjust" (might be speed up, might be slow down) speed to be at stellar orbital velocity for where you're coming out, so you're close to the velocity anything you might run into needs to be at to be in that region of space... and if I were jumping into an unsurveyed system, I'd do some planning on that. That's one reason the Type-S when it's in survery service has that huge passive sensor suite, to get really clean scans on stellar mass and figure out as close as possible what velocity you want to be at on exit.

So if I were coming in on an unsurveyed Sol system, I'd aim for orbit 3 and about 30 km/s in whatever direction the planets are moving, and about 2 degrees leading of the planet in orbit 3. That puts me in a space where the planet's covering my back from anything unexpected (if it's going faster than planetary orbital, it would hit the planet before it hits me)

One of the jobs of the gallant members of the IISS jumping into those systems is to do the survey and look for the 'dirty spots' where there is junk that could be a problem - and mark them so that the follow up visitors don't jump there. On the flip side, they also survey the cleanest spots and generate enough of an ephemeris to predict where those spots will be in the future.
 
So if I were coming in on an unsurveyed Sol system, I'd aim for orbit 3 and about 30 km/s in whatever direction the planets are moving, and about 2 degrees leading of the planet in orbit 3. That puts me in a space where the planet's covering my back from anything unexpected (if it's going faster than planetary orbital, it would hit the planet before it hits me)
Since you "can" do this, you may as well do this. Should be simple astronavigation.

But the actual risk if you did not do this is vanishingly small. Higher chance of dying of food poisoning from the burrito stand you ate at in the highport before you jumped.
 
Since you "can" do this, you may as well do this. Should be simple astronavigation.

But the actual risk if you did not do this is vanishingly small. Higher chance of dying of food poisoning from the burrito stand you ate at in the highport before you jumped.
Well, yeah.
But I try to avoid both starport vendor food and Authentic Vilani Food cooked by a pure blood Solomani

There's only one me, and it's not worth taking avoidable chances without good reason
 
Nah, just get chipped and wafered and enjoy life to 11. When it turns south, just try to make a note to your future restored self. "...and do NOT 'Eat At Joe's'...damhik"
Chipped, Wafered, have a pair of clones in low berths in a modified Type-S hiding in the Oort cloud, with monthly radio updates of the wafer contents. The second clone is if the first fails to come out of cold sleep.
One clone of me and one of my wife in each of two staterooms, just in case there's a meteor impact and we lose pressure in one stateroom.

Still don't take excess chances.
Rule 0: Try to achieve your goals in a way that doesn't involve doing something that might get you killed.
Rule 13: Never underestimate the perversity of the inanimate. Expect and prepare for it. If necessary, emulate it.
Rule 19: Avoid deleting things before backing them up somewhere else.
Rule #33: Number 1 job skill to cultivate: You must be comfortably experienced with things no one has seen yet. (Rule 6 is useful here)
 
My rule is you are stopped, that is the ship has no inertia or velocity on it, to jump or you suffer consequences of having velocity when doing so. The general consequence is you end up with the same velocity at the end of the jump and are a roll x that velocity x modifier off position mitigated by the skills of the crew.
My reasoning for that is that you are now at a fixed point relative to a moving one in space that's a very long way away. That means the ship's computer and crew have a much easier time jumping to a known location that is moving at the other end. If you want to jump to an unknown or listed location in the system at the far end you are back to the having velocity modifier, only larger.

That means jumping at say 50,000 m/s with level 1 and 2 crew skills ends up putting you somewhere around a million km off where you expected to be, so enjoy that extra week plus getting to the starport or whatever. It also means if you end up doing it bad enough you could be looking at running out of fuel, food, or other things trying to get to port.

Oh, if you are with a fleet of ships (eg., more than one) then the highest-level navigator and pilot count for the whole fleet when jumping as they send their data to the other ships...
 
I let be all up to the astrogator. A zero speed jump would be the SOP. A running jump is either for the desperate or your chart jockey is bucking for a raise.

A good astrogator will put the ship where and pretty much when he wants it.

The best of them are like, "100D @ 168hrs or less, or the first round is on me!"
 
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