Misjump Network

[robject]

That's right, the Misjump Network. Making Probability Work For You.

What would it take to establish a Misjump Network that's at least as timely as a Jump-4 network, and at its best running at Jump-36?

100 Scouts at every node, each misjumping?

I suppose the death rate and equipment replacement cost would be too great. Too bad Xboats can't be fully automated.

 

[Spinward Scout]

You'd have to have calibration nodes in each empty hex within a 36 parsec radius, just so the poor sod that misjumps into an empty hex can refuel and get out again. It would be an interesting experiment.

Dameon

 

[wordserpent]

Originally posted by robject:
Too bad Xboats can't be fully automated.

Why not? They already had Jump Torpedos.

 

[parmasson]

^ Yep a TL 15 robot would do nicely. No life support, it will last for 100+ years in low power mode.

Or just use a robot brain . . . .

 

[robject]

Oh, well, I assume that's just another implication of jump torpedoes which dooms the concept for the TU.

JTs are so cheap (what, a few MCr each?), you can send a gaggle of 'em in all directions from every C starport you've got. Communications could affordably reach Jump-18.

Imagine how that would centralize power in the Imperium.

 

[inexorabletash]

This is probably how the Illuminati maintain control of the Imperium. In addition, they occasionally leak word of a secret J-6 network, just to keep the Imperium too busy quashing those rumors to think about anything more grandiose.

 

[Spinward Scout]

Those Jump Torpedoes also work great when you are looking for the Rebel Allia... Sorry wrong game. You know, when I first read the subject line this morning, all I could think of is the Psionic Friends Network.

Ok, I need sleep,

Dameon

 

[parmasson]

Automated starships yes. Minimum size 100 tons.
IISS Prototype Autoscout
Jump 4
2G Accl
60 tons of fuel
Streamlined
2bis computer
TL-15 40% synaptic robot brain
1 ton to fire control for a triple pulse laser turret
You still get about 1 of cargo space for whatever reason.
If you assume that no life support may save you a ton or two then you can really customize the thing.

 

[Ran Targas]

Originally posted by Sir Dameon Toth:
Those Jump Torpedoes also work great when you are looking for the Rebel Allia... Sorry wrong game.
Dameon

Hmmm, that definitely starts the old gears turning. Think I'll snip this, if you don't mind.

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by robject:
What would it take to establish a Misjump Network that's at least as timely as a Jump-4 network, and at its best running at Jump-36? 100 Scouts at every node, each misjumping?

Robject,

How many x-boats? Hmmm...

Seeing as the deliberately misjumped 'boats will head in every direction, you'd need to cover every possible destination to ensure delivery to any planned destination.

Jump drive has a 3000km parsec accuracy, so you can view a jump drive has making discrete 3000km 'steps' if you squint a little. Covering all those steps within even a single parsec will be too much however.

Pluto is roughly 39 AU 'out' from Sol. Round that to 50 AU and that's the radius of each of our discrete 'steps'. Each misjumped x-boat will (hopefully) arrive at the center of a circle with a 50 AU radius spacing the 'boats 100 AU apart. (Of course, the boats would actually only 6,000 km from each other.)

A parsec is 206,264.8062 AUs long, round it to 206,265. Thirty six parsecs is the radius of our Misjump Network, that's 7,425,540 AUs.

So, using OTU 2D space (mercifully), how many 50 AU radius circles fit within a AU radius circle?

The answer is: 22,055,457,716.64

That's slightly over 22 billion x-boats needed to send (somewhat reliably) one message between Lablon/Aramis/Marches to Ffudn/Glisten/Marches each week.

My vote is for jump torpedos.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[robject]

Pardon me, Joshua, Daemon, come over here for a moment if you will... thank you. Stand here, please, good, now if you'll just look at the little flashy thing there...

There is no Illuminati, there is no Psionic Friends Network, there is no Illuminati...


And Wild Bill, you stand over there. No, a bit further in. Careful... yes, over the threshold, into that little chamber... good, good.


You chose to take the worst-case scenario, but I think I can improve the numbers a bit. Assuming we're willing to wait five days for broadcast data to arrive (the average jump is 3.5D = 11 parsecs or so, isn't it?), then we can widen our holes to a bit over 5 light-days.

Pluto, at 50 AU, is 400 light-minutes away. 5+ light-days would "improve" our "average" spacing to 1000 AU. That shrinks our full load-out to around 175 million. And we don't get full coverage, but can we get good coverage?

(And hey, if you're into bringing back that old heresy about jump precipitation, all this fooling around with AUs could be handwaved conveniently away. But the last thing I want to do is ruffle Wild Bill's feathers yet again...)

But don't forget, every single C+ starport in that 36 parsec area can be firing off misjumpers every however often. So it's not the chance that your boat will arrive in a particular world... it's how current any given data is which arrives next at any given world, given its neighbors and the data they're received. So it could be less than 175 million.

What's the chance that a misjumped torpedo will show up within 1000 AU of a system?

But there could be a brisk business in gathering up wayward torpedos.

See how playing with fake numbers changes things a lot? It's just like Space Macroeconomics!

 

[Pop]

robject, how do you define 'timely'?
Average speed over very large distances (but not requiring delivery to all systems)?
Guaranteed delivery to a particular set of systems (e.g. sector or subsector capitols)?

Bill, where did you discover that "Jump drive has a 3000km parsec accuracy"?

It was my impression that a misjump would deposit you in a random starmap hex, but that if there were a star system in that hex, you would end up in it (rather than in interstellar space). Can anyone confirm this?

Also note that if you go strictly by the rules, there are only six discrete directions and 18 discrete distances the misjump could take you for 108 possible destinations.

And note that a Jump-1 drive will misjump just as readily as a Jump-4 drive. So you needn't use as large a powerplant or drive, and could make possibly 5 jumps before running out of fuel & life support. Given the standard star system density per hex of 1/2 (CT:B3:Worlds and Adventures p.4) odds are very good that you will during one of those jumps end up in a system. (I assume additional life support endurance could be provided, and a plotted Jump-1 will only use 0.1M tons of fuel. I further assume that a misjump can be guaranteed, even if started in deep space.)
A 200-ton X-boat hull would cost only MCr6 more (more than offset by using only a model A Jump drive and power plant), and could possibly make seven Jump-1's before running out of fuel.

If we assume an Xboat tender in each Imperium star system, the loss rate of Xboats would approach 1/128 voyages. With a few judicious operating rules you could minimize the edge effects near rifts and the perimiter beyond which tenders are not available (e.g. If after a number of misjumps, you find yourself with reach of a tender using the number of safe jumps still available - do so.)

If the IISS were to place repeater satellites in all the hexes without tenders, the mail could be dropped by a passing Xboat on speculation that another Xboat might subsequently visit and make a more fortuitous jump then the original.
Such repeaters could also leave messages when an Xboat was in trouble, relying on the network to find the message and send help before the pilot expired. Given a low berth and a backup power plant only sufficient to maintain the berth, the mortality rate could approach the rate at which misjumps result in immediate destruction.

I haven't made an in-depth analysis, but I suspect that with an arbitrarily large number of Xboats, the communication rate will approach the maximum mis-jump speed of 36 pc/week, and will approach 100% coverage. Of course we're talking about on the order of 108 Xboats per hex or ~2.4 million total.
But this does depend heavily on whether a misjump to a hex with a star system places you within that system...

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Pop:
Bill, where did you discover that "Jump drive has a 3000km parsec accuracy"?

Pop,

MWM's Jumpspacearticle in the old GDW JTAS magazine.

As for jump drive 'automatically' depositing you in the nearest system in a hex, that's periously close to the idea of mass precipitation requirements. You do not want to argue about mass precipitation requirements.

As for a misjump only displacing a vessel along the 'splines' of the hexagonal 'roseate', yes an absolutely strict reading of the misjump rules would indicate that. You roll 1D6 and misjump along the indicated 'spline'. However...

... when you jump in a controlled manner, do you only move along those 'splines'? Jump two parsecs between Regina 0310 and Yori 0510, do you move along a 'spline'? We need to differentiate between an artifact designed to aid game play; i.e. on a misjump, roll 1D6 for direction and 6D6 for distance, and the in-game description of jump drive's capabilities.

Restricting jumps to those 'splines' would make for a nifty Alternate Traveller Universe.


Have fun,
Bill

P.S. May I ask how you became a peer?

 

[mike wightman]

Bill,

Peer of the Realm is one of the noble ranks you can get with a moot subscription.

And I agree with you about the artificial nature of the misjump resolution system - 6 possible directions and 36 possible distances along each "spline" (nice word that ).
IMTU I use the d6-6d6 method as a guide and then randomise how far around the pie slice they are (if that makes sense).

 

[aramis]

Hmmm... at that rate, skip the XBoats... go to 2J2 M2 (HG/T5) variants on the Type S... the misjump is still up to 36Pc, but now you just have too end within 2 Pc...

 

[robject]

Exactly. Pretty amusing, eh?

Although, I suppose there's a chance of a ship exploding.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Wasn't there a network design that relied on this concept? All the info would be broadcast (and time-stamped) with the assumption that it would eventually all end up at the destination and be put back together in the right order....

Now, did the misjump rules state the 6d6 as from the destination hex or the origin? It makes a difference if you are aiming a J-6 rather than a J-1 or -2.

Edit: Oh yeah, doesn't a misjump use all your jump fuel, regardless of what your initial jump distance was going to be? end edit

 

[robject]

Yeah, the problem has alreayd been solved. That's Asynchronous Transfer Mode, or ATM for short. This is ATM on a macro scale, to be sure.

Misjump rules state 1d6 for direction on the hex rosette, and 1d6 to determine the number of dice to roll for distance. That distance is counted from the origin.

I suspect misjump uses whatever fuel you used to achieve jump in the first place. By the way, how does one initiate a misjump safely? A highly-trained engineering crew plus a squeaky-clean jump drive just within the 100D limit of a world?

 

[Whipsnade]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Peer of the Realm is one of the noble ranks you can get with a moot subscription.

Sigg,

My abrupt P.S. needs an explanation. It comes across as confrontational and it wasn't meant as such. Pop, you have my apologies.

I read Pop's post, noticed he was a 'Peer', and also noticed that he had exactly one post. I immediately and incorrectly assumed he was a new member, not one who had joined over three years earlier and never posted until now.

Because you have to pay to be a 'Peer' and because I thought Pop was 'new', I thought that the business end of COTI was coming back to life. I thought that perhaps Hunter had been able to get through soem of those terrible family issues and begin processing orders again.

So, based on a faulty assumption, I asked Pop how he became a Peer.


Have fun,
Bill

 

[Greg]

Bear in mind that IMTU, and in the TU of any ref who isn't amused by these shenanigans, the misjump rules apply only to PCs. Joe Anonymous Jumper is much more likely to disappear.