Empty-Hex Jumps Redux

[Golan2072]

I'm moving the discussion here from my Re-Imagining the OTU thread to keep that thread on focus.

Just a little note - empty hex jumps are allowed in CT - read Twilight's Peak carefully and you will find references to the convoy having to make empty hex jumps.

Yea, but having no empty-hex jumps (or making them a last resort) makes astrography matter more. Otherwise 2-jump or 3-jump "gaps" are far less prominent on the map.

They're explicitly stated as allowed and required in the chapter "In Search of Longer Legs" in The Traveller Adventure.

A gap is still going to be an economic impediment at jump-1, as it's cheaper to jump from fuel source to fuel source than to bring along fuel for a second jump.

My problem is not with traders (who might prefer cargo capacity over additional jump fuel) but with military starships. No empty-hex jumps (or difficult empty-hex jumps) means that there are choke-points on the starmap, as well as difficult-to-cross areas.

 

[rancke]

My problem is not with traders (who might prefer cargo capacity over additional jump fuel) but with military starships. No empty-hex jumps (or difficult empty-hex jumps) means that there are choke-points on the starmap, as well as difficult-to-cross areas.

Probably fewer than you think, though. A system is really only a choke point if the defender can defend all its fuel sources. Put in three or four gas giants and the defender has a big problem with dispersing his strength. Put in a belt with ice asteroids and the task is probably impossible. Allow the attacker to use Kuiper Belt objects and it is definitely impossible. Here we're back to the minimum size of a gravity anchor again.


Hans

 

[Carlobrand]

While admitting that one stellar system (our own) is not enough to make firm judgments about the universe at large, I'd have to say that the wide variety of bodies containing large quantities of ices of various hydrogen-containing chemicals in our own system gives evidence that it is essentially impossible to stop someone from going where they please and refueling, provided only that they have good information on the system's various bodies and bring along some means of breaking the hydrogen free of whatever chemical it happens to be in.