Nature of Jump Space and Normal Space

[Hal]

Hello Folks,
Because I'm not the all knowing individual (and wouldn't want the job even if offered it!), got a question for the hive mind of the forums regarding Jump Space...

Using ONLY published material for Classic Traveller initially, and perhaps later on, after we can get a consensus of yes/no...

Does TIME pass at the same rate aboard a ship in jump space as it does in Normal space?

Thought Experiment:

A ship leaves Earth's orbit after moving 100 diameters away from Earth. It enters Jump Space at Midnight January 1st. After 168 hours exactly, have passed aboard the ship, it exits jump space and enters normal space. From the people on Earth's point of view, what time and day is it when the Ship entered normal space? Will both clocks - one on Earth, and the other aboard the ship, show the same time, or will they be different?

What prompted me to think along these lines is this:

If a ship is in jump space, are elements in the normal space still moving parallel to elements within jump space. If the answer is yes, then the next question is this:

If a navigator plots a course that had initially depended on the ship exiting after 604,800 seconds (168 hours) and had intended to deliberately exit at a given point at a given time - what happens if the ship exits earlier or later? Will his intended destination point remain the same - and the targeted world be further away from his target point because it hasn't travelled in time to get to the destination point (if early) or has already travelled past the plotted for destination point, and the ship now has to catch up to the world being where it is in normal space (exiting late).

Nothing I've read in any of the material has stuck to my mind to indicate there is any time difference between ships in jump space and objects that remained in normal space the entire time. But if that's the case, variable time spent in jump space means that the targets will have moved in the time that was varied.

If on the other hand, time is independent of each other such that a ship can be in jump space two years before it exits at PRECISELY its original plotted point, but only one week passes by in normal space - that would be interesting in and off itself (not that I've read of such an event in any official Traveller Universe publication). Likewise, I've never read of any incident in which in the space of 1 week's time aboard the ship, 1,000 years have passed in the normal space, and the ship arrives about where it was supposed to be (ie the spatial location).

For me, it boils down to this:

Jump space has a spatial component
Jump space as a Temporal component

Spatial in the sense that it has to be able to exit at the point that the navigator wants the ship to exit jump space at

Temporal in the sense that time passes aboard the ship, time passes in normal space, and jump duration is a function of time as well (ie 604,800 seconds +/- 10%)

Help?

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

theirs a few theories about this, but my take:

A ship leaves Earth's orbit after moving 100 diameters away from Earth. It enters Jump Space at Midnight January 1st. After 168 hours exactly, have passed aboard the ship, it exits jump space and enters normal space. From the people on Earth's point of view, what time and day is it when the Ship entered normal space? Will both clocks - one on Earth, and the other aboard the ship, show the same time, or will they be different?

time in J space passes at the same rate as N space, allowing for the normal variation caused by relativity (so a clock on a ship would show some minor difference to a clock on the ground, but only in the order of exceedingly small fractions of a second).

I say this because, As far as I know, no variance is mentioned in any canon works, and its presence would be a significant, and something that would affect pretty much any adventure plot that was time dependant.

given that such a difference can be easily tested experimentally within the OTU (as hyper accurate atomic clocks have been a thing for as long as Traveller has, as are in system microjumps), I posit that the absence of evidence is evidence of absence in this case.


bear in mind, though, that their isn't really going to be a Imperium wide "reference time", as each system is moving independently to each other, with its own frame of reference for time dilatation. So everyone's clocks at going to be ticking at slightly different rates anyway. ships will have the same problem, and I expect that the clock on two old ships built at the same time in the same yard would be several seconds different after decades spent travelling between stars and different rates of dilatation.

If a ship is in jump space, are elements in the normal space still moving parallel to elements within jump space. If the answer is yes, then the next question is this:

If a navigator plots a course that had initially depended on the ship exiting after 604,800 seconds (168 hours) and had intended to deliberately exit at a given point at a given time - what happens if the ship exits earlier or later? Will his intended destination point remain the same - and the targeted world be further away from his target point because it hasn't travelled in time to get to the destination point (if early) or has already travelled past the plotted for destination point, and the ship now has to catch up to the world being where it is in normal space (exiting late).

Nothing I've read in any of the material has stuck to my mind to indicate there is any time difference between ships in jump space and objects that remained in normal space the entire time. But if that's the case, variable time spent in jump space means that the targets will have moved in the time that was varied.

If on the other hand, time is independent of each other such that a ship can be in jump space two years before it exits at PRECISELY its original plotted point, but only one week passes by in normal space - that would be interesting in and off itself (not that I've read of such an event in any official Traveller Universe publication). Likewise, I've never read of any incident in which in the space of 1 week's time aboard the ship, 1,000 years have passed in the normal space, and the ship arrives about where it was supposed to be (ie the spatial location).

given the apparently unpredictable duration of a jump, it is, as you summise, quite hard to aim for a exit right on the 100D limit of a target world. I think what happens really depends on your interpretation of the jump masking question.

if you go with jump masking forcing a precipitation into N-space, then what a navigator is trying to do is, in essence, "hit" the jump shadow and thus precipitate back into N space on the 100D limit. thus, they would "aim" for a spot that would be inside the 100D limit for the whole possible range of exit times.

if you do not, or go with a "ships exiting inside 100D are Going To Have A Bad Time" they would have to "aim off" so that they miss the jump shadow. the easiest way would be to aim either "outside" the orbital path of the target world, or "behind" it in its orbit, to minimise the chance of a "overrun". I'd expect "outside" to be more common, given jumping behind would require fairly accurate data on its orbital path (which might be available for a well travelled trade route, but might not be so easy to get for backwater systems in the boonies).

In short, they just have to take the fact that their jump is an unknown length into account and "fudge" their nav to include the possibility of a early or late jump.

 

[Hal]

As always, prefaced with "IMTU"...

Time passes the same in both the Perceived time aboard the ship in Jump space and the time that passes in Normal space.

As a consequence of this, and the fact that things can be plotted as being on an X,Y,Z,T axis (T = time of course), a given location for anything, be it a star, missile, ship, planetoid, planet, etc) can be determined by those four items.

Problem is - IMTU, the only time the physical universe impacts on the Jump Universe, is at the "entry point" and the "Exit point" of Jump Space. JTAS 24 specifies that the way Jumps work is that an entry is ripped open from Normal Space into Jump Space. Then the ship falls into Jump Space, and the jump drive closes the hole, severing the ties of the ship to the Normal space.

But then comes the oddity. TIME. How can time function as the same in both the Jump Universe and the Normal Space universe? Then the description indicates that outside of the "bubble" - things exist normally. People live, breathe, experience the passage of time, etc. Once you exit the bubble, people die, things cease functioning, etc.

So, it seems that a portion of the universe laws function normally within the bubble, including the time reference.

But if time changes within jump space and is concurrent with the passage of time in the normal universe, then spending longer durations in jump space results in planetary/stellar motion as well.

This is not however, spelled out in the Classic Traveller rules or adventures or anything else that I can recall. Traveller evolved over time such that there were the black books (three) and then subsequent publication of SCOUTS etc.

The original black books didn't have rules on stellar diameters. SCOUTS did. The original comments on what affects a jump prior to jump entry were not spelled out to include suns, but in JTAS24, were (maybe sooner than JTAS24, but you get my point, I'm referencing actual material from CT first before going elsewhere).

As noted: Absence of Evidence may or may not be evidence of absence. In addition, simple rules to play by were the goal, not some sort of complex set of rules for planetary motion! On the third hand, we have GDP rules that took into account some facet of planetary motion when it came to normal space navigation (that were largely left out of subsequent publications). So, the whole thing is a mish-mash of stuff strung together - evolving over time, to where we have NO rules for Jump Shadowing etc, to the current rules espoused in T5.

My aim with this thread is to get people to think about the nature of Jump Space and Normal Space and the implications throughout. Even simply asking about the passage of time has implications not seemingly explored in the rules.

When I run Traveller for my campaign, IMTU - I run it as I see fit, and it won't be the same game that others run. But the OTU and the T5 designs and rules philosophies have implications just the same.

But, let's see how many other people who might remember pieces of published material and remember that odd reference that is obscure somewhere, and see if we can pin down that demonic creature known as "JUMP SPACE" and put a collar on it at the very least, or tame it so that people who run their own Universe, can at least know what implications they're glossing over. Why?

Because, if you have gamers like mine, sooner or later, some wise guy is going to ask the question and make the observation "ha, you missed a spot" (so to speak). THAT is the one who will make the observation, and you as GM will say "Nice try, but..." and have a ready made answer. Adds to the GM mystique (or means the GM has a better capacity for spewing BS right?!!!!)

So, can anyone else find references to Jump Space and Time and all that? Yes, there will likely be different "clocks" on each ship that measures time differently than all others. There is even in theory (based on MT) an organization that standardizes units of measure across the Imperium that utilizes an old 365 day calendar, 24 hours to an imperial day, etc. So in theory, there is ONE standardized unit of time measure with which to measure things. More importantly - whether one uses hours and minutes etc - or goonts, trubbs, and Snickersnaks to measure time - it will be measurable. And if there is a variance between the two time keeping/measuring devices, and it is quantifiable and predictable, it will have a specific application to the game universe.

Question still remains...

Did Classic Traveller rules even address the issue of the passage of time relative to the ship's time and the external normal space time? If not, so be it. The question having been raised now, is food for thought. How you digest that question and the answers you bring into play, should be fun.

Maybe "DESTROYED" misjump ships, are ships that won't appear for another 4 billion years at the destination they were intended to arrive at. That a 4 billion year old ship arriving at a star system just two weeks after the ship left its point of origination hasn't happened (or the adventures or short stories or JTAS articles or what have you, would have mentioned it).

So, what else can we find that HAS been mentioned?

 

[Carlobrand]

MegaTrav had some interesting details, but I don't recall anything out of CT that implied any difference in temporal flow in the two settings.

Book 2 was, "making any jump takes about one week, regardless of the distance travelled." That speaks to normal space time. Fuel consumption seems to assume a week goes by in jump space. Monthly pay likewise. I can't think of anything else in CT that speaks to what's going on in jump space proper other than some nonspecific references to time spent monitoring controls, entertaining passengers or "passing the time". It was intended to be a pretty simple system, with everything in 1-week blocks, so there doesn't appear to be any fiddling under normal circumstances.

On the other hand, on a misjump you roll 1d6 to determine "the number of weeks spent in jump space before the ship re-emerges at its new location." It doesn't specifically say this time passes in the normal universe too. A strictly literal interpretation would be that you "throw one die to determine the number of weeks spent in jump space before the ship re-emerges at its new location" but "any jump takes about one week, regardless of the distance travelled," so only a week passes in the normal universe no matter how many weeks pass in jump space.

 

[aramis]

MegaTrav had some interesting details, but I don't recall anything out of CT that implied any difference in temporal flow in the two settings.

Book 2 was, "making any jump takes about one week, regardless of the distance travelled." That speaks to normal space time. Fuel consumption seems to assume a week goes by in jump space. Monthly pay likewise. I can't think of anything else in CT that speaks to what's going on in jump space proper other than some nonspecific references to time spent monitoring controls, entertaining passengers or "passing the time". It was intended to be a pretty simple system, with everything in 1-week blocks, so there doesn't appear to be any fiddling under normal circumstances.

On the other hand, on a misjump you roll 1d6 to determine "the number of weeks spent in jump space before the ship re-emerges at its new location." It doesn't specifically say this time passes in the normal universe too. A strictly literal interpretation would be that you "throw one die to determine the number of weeks spent in jump space before the ship re-emerges at its new location" but "any jump takes about one week, regardless of the distance travelled," so only a week passes in the normal universe no matter how many weeks pass in jump space.

CT has two layers of misjump: (1) 1d6d6 parsecs in 1d6 weeks; (2) destroyed

Meanwhile MT specifies 6-8 days, and implies time decouples on minor misjumps... via "Jump Relativity Error"... and has several layers more of misjump.

 

[gruntfire]

I can not remember the book it was in (I want to say one of the Mongoose books), but examples were given for misjumps that included a ship arriving at its destination at the correct time and space in real time but hundreds of years had passed in jump space time, leaving the crue as nuthing but dust. There was another example of a ship that misjumped and arrived years later to its destination, but the crew only experienced a week inside of the jump.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

just re-read the Mgt 2e core book passage on misjumps. it is explicit in that time on a ship that misjumps can pass differently than time else were. I shall quote

many misjumps are lethal, causing the jump bubble to collapse early or for time in the bubble to flow differently, so that trillions of years pass inside the bubble and all that comes out the other end is hard radiation caused by protons exceeding their half life....


... at the referees option roll and additional 1d6 - this Is the number of extra days that the ship spends in jump space form the point of view of the crew (the relativity error generated by this misjump causes a difference in perceived time aboard the ship and the rest of the universe)

so, for MgT at least, their is a explicit decoupling in time form the rest of the universe when in J-space.

 

[Hal]

MegaTrav had some interesting details, but I don't recall anything out of CT that implied any difference in temporal flow in the two settings.

Book 2 was, "making any jump takes about one week, regardless of the distance travelled." That speaks to normal space time. Fuel consumption seems to assume a week goes by in jump space. Monthly pay likewise. I can't think of anything else in CT that speaks to what's going on in jump space proper other than some nonspecific references to time spent monitoring controls, entertaining passengers or "passing the time". It was intended to be a pretty simple system, with everything in 1-week blocks, so there doesn't appear to be any fiddling under normal circumstances.

On the other hand, on a misjump you roll 1d6 to determine "the number of weeks spent in jump space before the ship re-emerges at its new location." It doesn't specifically say this time passes in the normal universe too. A strictly literal interpretation would be that you "throw one die to determine the number of weeks spent in jump space before the ship re-emerges at its new location" but "any jump takes about one week, regardless of the distance travelled," so only a week passes in the normal universe no matter how many weeks pass in jump space.

What page did you spot the "several weeks in jump space" quote?

In the original CT rules set, the power plant had only a certain operational duration based on how much fuel was in the fuel tanks. I also seem to recall there was "battery power" - but I don't know if that recollection was a retcon or house rule by the guy ran Traveller for us in College back in the late 70's and early 80's.

Always looking to collect the data where and when possible. MT would have been the successive generation set of rules that seemingly expanded on CT's rules. Any other rules subsequent to that was largely a matter of "taste" in the sense that they didn't seem to be working off of the original rules per se on an evolutionary basis, but more along the lines of creating something useful for that iteration of Traveller.

T4 was a travel back in time to the early days of the Third Imperium. If memory serves me correctly, there were distinct differences between a TL 15 Anagathic, and a TL 12 Anagathic (this is by memory, so I could easily (EASILY) be wrong!).

Mongoose Traveller has some interesting stuff in it, and the ONE thing I wondered was why CT never really had game mechanics for navigation's effects on a ship's exit point during a jump. Why bother to have a skill if it didn't really get used in game play?

In any event, I was hoping to concentrate on CT first, then work through MT, then Traveller the New Era, then T4, then GURPS TRAVELLER, then Mongoose Traveller (Sorry - but I have ZERO experience with T20, having never purchased the basic books for that system - never really liked D20 or D&D game systems).

But what the heck, let's make it all open, where people reference material from ANY game version of Traveller, and list the pages they spot things in. It can be a JTAS article, perhaps a listing in a periodical (Dragon perhaps?) etc. Anything that they feel would be useful to this discussion.

Thank you all for your input.

 

[Hal]

CT has two layers of misjump: (1) 1d6d6 parsecs in 1d6 weeks; (2) destroyed

Meanwhile MT specifies 6-8 days, and implies time decouples on minor misjumps... via "Jump Relativity Error"... and has several layers more of misjump.

I'm going to have to dig up the MT relativity error issue.

To wit: did time pass such that the jump took LONGER, but time remained the same both in the normal universe and in the ship's confines while in Jump space, or did it introduce a temporal shift in the sense that the ship upon exit from Jump space, found that 7 days passed in its confines, but 21 days passed in the normal space universe.

Traveller: The New Era made some major changes such that it wasn't really recognizably the same "Traveller" as the CT stuff. But, be as that may be - we can look at anything and everything in this!

Thanks!

 

[Hal]

I can not remember the book it was in (I want to say one of the Mongoose books), but examples were given for misjumps that included a ship arriving at its destination at the correct time and space in real time but hundreds of years had passed in jump space time, leaving the crue as nuthing but dust. There was another example of a ship that misjumped and arrived years later to its destination, but the crew only experienced a week inside of the jump.

You know I'm going to beg for the cite right? *teasing grin*

 

[Hal]

just re-read the Mgt 2e core book passage on misjumps. it is explicit in that time on a ship that misjumps can pass differently than time else were. I shall quote



so, for MgT at least, their is a explicit decoupling in time form the rest of the universe when in J-space.

Thanks!

 

[Barrel]

Thanks!

So....jump space is Narnia?

 

[Hal]

just re-read the Mgt 2e core book passage on misjumps. it is explicit in that time on a ship that misjumps can pass differently than time else were. I shall quote



so, for MgT at least, their is a explicit decoupling in time form the rest of the universe when in J-space.

Hmm. There is an implication in that statement.

A) Time normally, when jump space travel is done correctly, correlates in both reference frames (The Ship in Jump space bubble and Normal space).

B) When done incorrectly, time CAN be accelerated for the reference frames and the jump space frames. The question becomes one of...

Are there any situations or circumstances, in which allowing time to accelerate within a jump bubble has any benefit? One thing that would be amusing is this:

Someone finds out how to reliably alter the time flow within the bubble, and jumps so that the ship's internals AGE by 4 centuries. The crew goes into low berth for the bulk of the time in jump bubble space, and then comes out with documents that are legitimately 400 years old. Or wine that has aged a given number of years, etc. Hmmm, pure speculation of course!



When I pulled out my PDF's for Mongoose Traveller and Book 2 from Mongoose, the only reference to a misjump is the main rule book page 141. I didn't see any guidelines for how misjumps are applied, and I'm guessing the throwaway line about trillions of years subjective time passing is strictly for flavor. GM's of course, and interpret that line to allow them to utilize a disparate time flow for jump bubble versus normal space - but those two books don't seem to give much guidance there. I'll keep looking at some of the other Mongoose PDF's that I have, but I don't think I'm going to find much of anything there. I'm going to have to see if I can find the section that details the accuracy of a jump, I know I read it somewhere, just gotta find it again.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

I was quoting form the 2nd edition rulebook, which obviously varies a little in places.

the only reference to jump accuracy in either of the MgT core books I can find is in the paragraph just above misjumps (same paragraph in both editions, wich says that a "inaccurate" jump "dumps the ship somewhere in the inner system, requiring a long space flight." 2nd edition, under misjumps, clarifies this as 100D-600D away form the target

also, jump masking is a thing in MgT, as seen in the paragraphs just after the Jump travel title. just after explaining the 100D limit, they make the point that a ship will precipitate out at the 100D limit of a star if it tried to jump "past" it.

thierfore, a MgT navigator would be trying to "hit" the targets 100D sphere, knowing that he will exit on that 100D line, regardless of how deep into it his aiming point actually is.

 

[aramis]

I'm going to have to dig up the MT relativity error issue.

To wit: did time pass such that the jump took LONGER, but time remained the same both in the normal universe and in the ship's confines while in Jump space, or did it introduce a temporal shift in the sense that the ship upon exit from Jump space, found that 7 days passed in its confines, but 21 days passed in the normal space universe.

Traveller: The New Era made some major changes such that it wasn't really recognizably the same "Traveller" as the CT stuff. But, be as that may be - we can look at anything and everything in this!

Thanks!

Most of TNEs changes to Jump Errors were expounding forth from the MT changes.

Note that MT's relativity Errors are not as clear cut as I would have liked...

Superficial: A jump relativity error occurs. The ship remains in jumpspace 1D+4 days (from 5 to 10 days) before emerging in the destination system, otherwise
unharmed.
Minor: A jump relativity error occurs, but when the ship emerges in the destination system, it is 1D times 8 hours from the destination world.
Major: A jump relativity error occurs. When the ship emerges from jump, it discovers that it has misjumped.
Throw 1D for the number of dice to throw. Then throw that number of dice for the distance (in parsecs or map hexes) the ship travelled. Finally, throw 1D for the direction of the misjump.
Destroyed: The ship is destroyed.
(MT-IE, p.93)​

Doesn't specify whether time is synched or not.

Checking SSOM, it doesn't clear it up - but the wording therein leads me to "Baseline Reference Time is a Shared Constant between N-Space and J-Space" approach by Joe & Gary. (Note that in the real world, there appears to be no Baseline Reference Time. Either time slows or mass increases... but time slowing fits the cesium decay clock results better.)

 

[Hal]

I was quoting form the 2nd edition rulebook, which obviously varies a little in places.

the only reference to jump accuracy in either of the MgT core books I can find is in the paragraph just above misjumps (same paragraph in both editions, wich says that a "inaccurate" jump "dumps the ship somewhere in the inner system, requiring a long space flight." 2nd edition, under misjumps, clarifies this as 100D-600D away form the target

also, jump masking is a thing in MgT, as seen in the paragraphs just after the Jump travel title. just after explaining the 100D limit, they make the point that a ship will precipitate out at the 100D limit of a star if it tried to jump "past" it.

thierfore, a MgT navigator would be trying to "hit" the targets 100D sphere, knowing that he will exit on that 100D line, regardless of how deep into it his aiming point actually is.

I suspect I have a first edition PDF then.

Thanks for the clarification of second edition saying 1d6 x 100 planetary diameters. In taking a closer look at T5, I thought to myself that the scatter rules are HORRENDOUS.

Distance that you can scatter is range 12 (roughly 3 and a third AU's) plus or minus flux, which in turn can change the distance from .003 AU's to 1006 AU's!

Day yum!

Mind you, that's for a failed navigation scatter. *cough*

In any event, while MgT isn't the same as CT, and has introduced things that are more of a modern evolution from CT days (such as precipitation from jump space if intersecting a line with any object's 100 diameter radius while in jump space (assuming the object is larger than the ship). While that's a T5 thing (or so it seems, re-reading that stuff makes me sigh a LOT), and not necessarily a MgT thing, I find myself amongst those who object to the addition of it in game play. If things are immune from the normal space while in Jump Space, and the Jump bubble is isolated from Jump Space in the sense that it protects the contents within the bubble from Jump Space physics and destruction, then how exactly are we to now reconcile that masses in normal space leave shadows in jump space that precipitate a ship out. If T5 is to be believed, a ship's transit in Jump Space is relatively INSTANT in the sense that you enter jump space, and if a mass moves THROUGH any transit point before the ship exits out of jump space, the ship is precipitated out (again, assuming the mass is larger than the ship).

Elsewhere, it states that if you destroy the jump drive before the ship exits jump space, the ship STILL exits out into normal space after its duration is complete.

So, CT didn't have any of these game mechanics, and the jump initated free from any issues, made it through to the end. Only if at the exit point, did 100 diameters from the nearest object ever come into play. MT had some minor changes if I recall, but in the whole, it seems pretty much the same. I don't remember TNE that much, even having GM'd it for a time, and T4 was largely the same as MT if my recollection is on target. GURPS TRAVELLER when it introduced the issue of objects between the start and exit point could precipitate the ship out, made me think "STAR WARS" and was instantly ignored as GM. This is a JUMP drive, not a WARP drive (in my opinion, and in my traveller universe, that's all that counts *snicker*)

In any event, the "time disparity issue" comes into play. Just as time can slow around massive objects and such, I would expect that microsecond alterations in time can and likely do occur in the game. If a ship spends an extra 4 days in jump space due to a misjump, then it took not 7 days in normal space reference time, but also 11 days. So, it seems to me, that unless we can find something specific that says otherwise, it seems like time matches 1 for 1 with jump space.

My suspicion is this:

If there is even ONE thing out there that says time decouples in Jump Space from Normal Space and has game mechanics to back it up (that 4 Trillion years seems excessive and not backed up by any mechanics it seems) - someone will find it, months from now or even years from now. Just something to start people thinking about for their own campaigns and the implications thereof.

 

[flykiller]

is jump space a place?

 

[Hal]

Most of TNEs changes to Jump Errors were expounding forth from the MT changes.

Note that MT's relativity Errors are not as clear cut as I would have liked...

Superficial: A jump relativity error occurs. The ship remains in jumpspace 1D+4 days (from 5 to 10 days) before emerging in the destination system, otherwise
unharmed.
Minor: A jump relativity error occurs, but when the ship emerges in the destination system, it is 1D times 8 hours from the destination world.
Major: A jump relativity error occurs. When the ship emerges from jump, it discovers that it has misjumped.
Throw 1D for the number of dice to throw. Then throw that number of dice for the distance (in parsecs or map hexes) the ship travelled. Finally, throw 1D for the direction of the misjump.
Destroyed: The ship is destroyed.
(MT-IE, p.93)​

Doesn't specify whether time is synched or not.

Checking SSOM, it doesn't clear it up - but the wording therein leads me to "Baseline Reference Time is a Shared Constant between N-Space and J-Space" approach by Joe & Gary. (Note that in the real world, there appears to be no Baseline Reference Time. Either time slows or mass increases... but time slowing fits the cesium decay clock results better.)

So it seems we have the following possibilities for misjumps:

Temporal in the sense that the duration of the jump bubble and exit from jump space dimension is not the expected 168 hours (give or take), but can shorten the jump duration by 2 days, or extend it further up to another 3 days longer.

Spatial: the exit point is further away than planned (never closer). The problem with this is that the duration of time travel means what exactly? For a 1 G ship, the miss by 1 hour is a relatively short distance, as compared against a 6G ship's 1 hour.

I DO like Mongoose Traveller's concept that a failure by 2 or more means a failed task, and that a failure by 1 is a partial success. I'm guessing that the rules in Mongoose Traveller is such that a miss by 1 is when the distance is off, but a miss by 2 or more means the task failed and you have to try again.

Now if ONLY the people at Mongoose would commission someone to adapt FANTASY GROUNDS 2 over for use with Mongoose Traveller rules set. FG2 allows for the use of a professional package of Basic Role Playing rules (Call of Cthulhu mostly), D&D, and for those who have been lucky for someone to develop packages for other game systems like GURPS - GURPS. I don't know what is out there for Fantasy Games 2 (FG2), but if they ever get something for MgT, I might be willing to LEARN the game system well enough to run an online game campaign. Hell, I'm working now on incorporating aspects of the Spinward Marches into FG2, for a campaign using GURPS.

Ah well. If I do come up with my own "home brew" rules for scatter, I think I'd do something like this:

Jump Space entry requires at best, three rolls:

Navigator: rolls against skill. Failed roll means a Spatial displacement error. Success by a high margin means a really TIGHT solution that is accurate as best as possible.

Jump Drive Engineer: power fluctuations determine whether one is in the jump space the normal time, longer than, shorter than, or even drastically different than it should be for jump exit.

Piloting roll: a PERFECT approach for what the navigator required, means a perfect spatial solution. Failed piloting roll might indicate a minor spatial displacement, and a really badly failed piloting roll means that you threw the navigation calculations badly off.

Spatial displacements are minor = 1d6/2 AU's. Significant are 1d6 AU's, and really major issues result in 1d10 AU's displacement.

Measure THRICE, hit button once kind of think saves the bacon of the astrogator. Pilots get paid big bucks to be PERFECT when they're required to be. So, make their lives a bit tougher!

Jump Drive engineers get paid decently, so too should they potentially share in the faults involved.

Now, if that had been implemented from the start - I don't think we'd have seen the need to use Jump Masking or Jump Shadowing (which ever the correct term is) to insure a longer normal space journey. Just coming out 2 AU's out of position is going to do the trick!

This area however, is supposed to be reserved for OTU stuff, so I'll end my speculations here. Perhaps I should open up a thread in IMTU area on this?

 

[Hal]

is jump space a place?

Per JTAS 24, it is multiple dimensions where entering a high energy dimension gets you further in the same time than a low energy dimension.

Kinda crazy when you get right down to it.

Why? A jump one ship, that misjumps, and gets a result that requires a 1d6 x 1d6 parsec misjump, could ultimately misjump 36 parsecs using only Jump 1 fuel requirements.

If it can be done by accident, eventually, it can be done by design. That however, seems to violate the basic principle of the Jump drive itself as far as Jump design goes. <shrug>

I'd rather see alternative methods of handling misjumps. Perhaps a spatial distance that is midway between where you wanted to go and where you ended up going. That would NOT violate the general design philosophy of the game, and it would make things dire for the players, and it would also give a smaller scope or area to search should someone try to set up a rescue mission that is searching for the missing ship. Heck, jump to various locations, leave automated radio receivers strewn about, and then have a crew whose job is to check these beacons from time to time to see if they get a hit. If they get a hit, then the search party can try to narrow their sweep area.

Ah well. Not OTU, but ideas for someone else's Traveller Universe.

 

[Ulsyus]

Meanwhile MT specifies 6-8 days, and implies time decouples on minor misjumps... via "Jump Relativity Error"... and has several layers more of misjump.

T5 lists in the BBB p373 a mishap where different amounts of time can pass on-ship to the rest of normal space.