So, it was you two I can blame for Hop, Skip, etc. being hauled back into the week long travel as opposed to the much cooler and more Fantastic rate of three days? Can I?
I mean since it kills major parts of my ATU it be nice to be mad at external, non-Majestic source.
Uh...Your Graces.
And if so, why? Seriously, why?
Because it means having to go to a gravity/demand trade model, which breaks the trade system's core assumptions.
Historically, speculation remained the dominant mode until communication times dropped below a week round trip (but they dropped to almost nil; there was still largely speculation on the NY-Georgia runs.) Short comm lags, tho' - under a week round trip - had significantly higher demand mode - as in, find out if it's there and how much, then send the money to have it shipped. When com times are a day, most trade (90%) is freight. (The data is from coastal trade in the early 19th C)
Hop at 3.5 days would likely be mostly spec, but have far higher demand numbers. Plus, mathematically, hop 1 would have completely replaced J1 within weeks, and collapsed the jump trade networks simply due to better data. So it would need modifiers to the trade system - far more passengers and freight, far less demand for goods (because the demand is more largely filled by demand mode shipping via freight).
Further, skip completely collapses the lack of knowledge needed for stable speculative flows. It pushes commo times down to about 55 hours round trip... and speculation down to about 10%... so, another, much steeper set of numbers.
And, hop error was low enough that jumping simply wasn't worth the effort; mount 2G instead, save 7% of hull volume, and still be faster than jump by 25%, and for any distance, beat the shipping price by a factor of between 1.25 (J1) and 10000 (J7).... The instant H1 came out, Jump would be abandoned unless the H drive was at least 2x the cost.
So, Marc then attempted a fix by increasing solar exclusion zones. But that rendered H8+ incapable of navigating to full distance ever within the galactic disk in a 3D universe, and H2 in a 2d slice. S1 was totally useless as S1, but fine as H2 in 1/3.5 the time. So....
Robject noted that the Skip would break spec even more...
and I pointed out (because Cryton pointed it out to me) that they do no violence to the setting and trade system if they're simply a week long. H1 does completely replace jump drives as it comes out - but it's still cheaper to ship J1 1 Pc than H1, because the J1 ship does the in system portion in 1/4 day, while the H1 does it in about 3 days.
