NOTE - in this thread I'm ignoring the difficulty of success in a Hop task.
Over on the Facebook Traveller page, Jeff Hopper noted that the Hop drive will significantly change how battleships and tenders/riders are designed.
A one-two-three punch of TL17 weapons (e.g. Disintegrators) and the low fuel requirements and extended range of the Hop drive means that TL17 battleships might be uncontestable.
This seems to me to be more powerful in effect to Jump-2 with the Ziru Sirka. The difference between a battleship and a battle rider may be the smallest it's been since then.
Another implication is that the military will likely take priority over commercial exploitation. While exploration will certainly be rapid, development takes time. IF the military can equip TL17 battleships before new worlds can be established with a strong infrastructure, then consolidation wars will first surely take place. The result is a military assimilation of a core of loyal worlds -- and that core might be larger than Charted Space itself -- and a large number of scattered, remote, and non-united resisting worlds.
But exploration and development will accelerate as the military struggles calm down, and Charted Space will explode to many times its current size... too big to grok in full, I would suggest.
Assume Hop-1 only doubles the range of control. That means Charted space grows by a factor of four.
Of course, after that is TL18 and Hop-2...
Over on the Facebook Traveller page, Jeff Hopper noted that the Hop drive will significantly change how battleships and tenders/riders are designed.
A one-two-three punch of TL17 weapons (e.g. Disintegrators) and the low fuel requirements and extended range of the Hop drive means that TL17 battleships might be uncontestable.
This seems to me to be more powerful in effect to Jump-2 with the Ziru Sirka. The difference between a battleship and a battle rider may be the smallest it's been since then.
Another implication is that the military will likely take priority over commercial exploitation. While exploration will certainly be rapid, development takes time. IF the military can equip TL17 battleships before new worlds can be established with a strong infrastructure, then consolidation wars will first surely take place. The result is a military assimilation of a core of loyal worlds -- and that core might be larger than Charted Space itself -- and a large number of scattered, remote, and non-united resisting worlds.
But exploration and development will accelerate as the military struggles calm down, and Charted Space will explode to many times its current size... too big to grok in full, I would suggest.
Assume Hop-1 only doubles the range of control. That means Charted space grows by a factor of four.
Of course, after that is TL18 and Hop-2...
