GT:IW question

[Malenfant]

Can someone who has GT:IW (or who was in on the discussions about it) verify something for me?

I seem to remember that at some point in the discussions when the book was being considered somebody said that the Vilani didn't do Deep Space Jumps (where they jump into empty hexes) because they were so hidebound that they didn't even think of them. But the Solomani did think of it and that gave them an advantage in the IWs.

Did this make it into the IW book? Was it even actually discussed or am I thinking of something unrelated? And if it did make it into the IW book then what does that have to say about it?

Because if they didn't do DSJs during the IWs (and didn't even think of doing them) then by implication the First Imperium couldn't have expanded using DSJs either, which has interesting implications there...

 

[Border Reiver]

I can't recall if that made it into the book, all part of them trying to remain true to the Imperium boardgame (idiocy in my opinion but each to their own) but I do remember your same point came up in the discussion. Someone mentioned that they had in the past but their conservative nature prevented them from utilising the concept later for whatever reason.

What am I blethering about. I'll check the bookwhen I get home from work.

 

[rogermccarthy]

There is a sidebar on page 171 - Deep Space Jumps:

'The mathematics of jump navigation is much simpler when there is a large mass, a star or very very massive planet in normal space close to each end of the jump. During the Interstellar Wars era neither Terran nor Imperial navigators are able to plan a jump that starts or ends in deep interstellar space'

'of course interstellar space is not entirely empty....rogue sunless planets, large comets, brown dwarf stars....Terran navigators call such deep-space objects jump points and are willing to use them as needed...the Imperium has not searched for new jump points in centuries and Imperial navigators rarely use even the ones that are known'

A deeply unsatisfactory solution IMO.

IMTU deep space jumps are just more difficult (i.e. in MT terms a difficult or even formidable rather than routine task) and make it impossible to maintain group cohesion in terms of when and where ships arrive.

One way of doing this might be to increase the chance of a misjump as well as imposing a greater chance of a ship missing its final target destination and arriving say not 100 diameters but 1,000 or 100,000 diameters away.

 

[Space Cadet]

Contrawise, I always thought jump drives worked best in flat space away from gravitational fields.

 

[rancke]

Originally posted by Space Cadet:
Contrawise, I always thought jump drives worked best in flat space away from gravitational fields.

Ships works a lot better on sea than on dry land, but if your navigational skills are limited, islands are very useful for figuring out where you are.


Hans

 

[Anthony]

This issue was the subject of much flamage during the playtest for GT:IW. The basic reason is this:

Canonically, the Jump-3 drive was critical to the Terrans winning the Interstellar Wars, because it let them bypass some astrographic choke points.

If deep space jumps are possible, bypassing such choke points is not difficult with Jump-2; you just need a tanker squadron and a little bit of extra time. However, deep space jumps appear essential to account for the Barnard's Star jump and early Vilani expansion, and thus the brown dwarf variant was added to allow limited deep space jumps without making them a practical general-purpose method of moving about.

 

[TheDS]

I thought it was a decent solution when I read it. Deep Space Jumps seemed to have too much potential to "ruin" the game, allowing invasion fleets relatively easy access past any borders, for the price of a few extra tankers.

I suppose, in a manner of speaking, I've always thought it was better to constrain movement in this way. I recall WAAAAAYY back when the C64 was popular, there was a space fleet game (I think it was called Galactic Conquest or something like that) in which you could go from any world to any other world, and the only downside was how long it would take to get there. I modified the program to restrict travel only to close-by worlds, so it was possible to have battle lines and defense in depth, rather than trying to guess which of ALL your worlds the enemy was going to come after. I can't remember for sure, but I think this was before my introduction to proper wargames and Traveller.