Who Uses Jump Tapes Anymore?

[Magnus von Thornwood]

Quit crying....

You think that is bad try using the plasitc info disc with diamond interface.....

And, nobody bump the Jump Table or we are screwed!

or

Oh, crap, too much bass, we misjumped!

 

[far-trader]

You think that is bad try using the plasitc info disc with diamond interface.....

Well that beats the wax cylinder model

And no I'm not that old, though it sometimes feels like it.

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

ok, fine you win

Well that beats the wax cylinder model

And no I'm not that old, though it sometimes feels like it.

:rofl: damn and i thought i was clever too.

 

[jawillroy]

One thing I do which others seem to as well, is restrict mortgaged ships to only using plot cassettes, which they have to pick up from the agent of the mortgage when they go to make their payment. No payment no plot cassette, mortgage called and ship lost, unless you can talk them into an extension.

I like this a lot. I've been big on keeping mortgaged ships on a tight leash, and this regulation helps that a lot.

 

[boomslang]

One thing I do which others seem to as well, is restrict mortgaged ships to only using plot cassettes, which they have to pick up from the agent of the mortgage when they go to make their payment. No payment no plot cassette, mortgage called and ship lost, unless you can talk them into an extension.

I can see how this would be desirable from the financial institution's point of view with regards to Subsidized vessels (because no corsair or operator-turning-corsair would ever try to pirate software to facilitate starship theft), but how does it work in the case of a mortgaged Free Trader visiting a Starport-E world to establish trade relations? Looks like they'd pretty much be marooned there upon planetfall, for lack of a piece of software.

The computers are actually hardware locked to only accept verified authentic plot cassettes, and the cassette carries your financial data to the next agent. Just one more reason you don't want to misjump.

Because, of course, although some PCs laugh at Death, the Hortalez et Cie Auditors are truly a force to be reckoned with?

I dunno about this scheme... and surely there's some altruistic coder out there who lost a loved one to a cassette-locked misjump who's hacked up a lifesaving freeware utility to create forged, "valid" cassettes manufactured on a laptop or something...

 

[jawillroy]

how does it work in the case of a mortgaged Free Trader visiting a Starport-E world to establish trade relations? Looks like they'd pretty much be marooned there upon planetfall, for lack of a piece of software.

I'd say that the bank might object strongly to a captain's risking their mulit-million credit vessel on some backwater world when he can make his payments just fine by handling a milk-run between adjacent A/B port worlds. If he wanted to do it anyway, he'd have to shell out for (or program) a generate program on his own, and lie to the bank about his itinerary. I don't know that I'd go with the "locked computer" model myself. I think that between requiring "official" charts and insisting that payments be made at the ship's homeworld, the lender can keep a pretty tight rein on things.

I'd say that a shipowner with a long, good payment record might be able to negotiate with the bank to arrange special trading tours occasionally. For that matter, it might be possible to get the bank to buy an interest in the venture, if it looked profitable enough.

 

[far-trader]

Because, of course, although some PCs laugh at Death, the Hortalez et Cie Auditors are truly a force to be reckoned with?

If the auditors of HEC are on your case you'll wish for death :devil:

I dunno about this scheme... and surely there's some altruistic coder out there who lost a loved one to a cassette-locked misjump who's hacked up a lifesaving freeware utility to create forged, "valid" cassettes manufactured on a laptop or something...

Of course. And the PCs are expected to attempt to hack the computer lock at some point :smirk: I'd even let them succeed after some sweating it out if it were to get out of a jam that were not entirely their own fault See, I'm a nice guy ref :devil: (oops, wrong smiley).

Naturally there are trojan issues with using forged cassettes, It's a great way for a ship-jack to have you come to them at a time and place of their choosing.

But in any case they will never misjump if they stick to the regulations: Refined fuel only. No jumps inside 100d. Required crew (Engineers and Navigator) competency. Annual maintenance.

...and only certified jump plots.

And of course PCs hate regulations, so they'll bend them, break them, make love to them and slip out in the middle of the night. Anything they can do to avoid being sensible (I'm all outta smilies). But they will eventually make that last payment, have the lock removed, buy a generate program, and then, only truly then, will they be real Free-Traders.

 

[boomslang]

But in any case they will never misjump if they stick to the regulations: Refined fuel only. No jumps inside 100d. Required crew (Engineers and Navigator) competency. Annual maintenance.

...and only certified jump plots.

Speaking of H&C and Subbies, a case could be made for reducing the insurance liability of vessels which follow recognized safe practices such as using only pre-refined fuel, using only pre-certified Jump calculations, using only pre-screened personnel, et cetera...

The "squeaky-clean" Subbie liners and merchants could provide excellent peace of mind to PC Travellers booking passage, and serve as hated rivals to PC ship owners trying to compete in the same markets...

That would be a reasonable justification for the preponderance of otherwise-limiting cassette-based Jump plots... the Subbie underwriters love them..

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

I like and am probably gonna use some of it....crap, I am starting/am in enough post now to start a IMTU thread almost legitimately now.

Remember if you still from two or more sources, it's not plagiarism, it's Research! :devil:

 

[far-trader]

...Remember if you still from two or more sources, it's not plagiarism, it's Research! :devil:

:rofl:

Research away

 

[Magnus von Thornwood]

lol

You asked for it!

COMING SOON TO TRAVELLER RPG:

THE THORNWOOD ARCHIVES-IMTU.

When I get some free time to build it....soon, but I got to go and tell my other friends I still dig them too. *shrugs* I'm bad.

 

[Commander Truestar]

IMTU we still have them and their uses...

Currently, my crew are on an adventure which directly relates to Jump tapes..

1) the owner of the ship the players are currently on is Pilot 2 and Nav 1. As a result, he counts on picking up nav tapes largely to save him time, money and effort as well as protecting the ship and passengers from mishaps due to his lack of in-depth training.

Yes, he always completes his own plot and compares it to the tape's plot... But he does not do the primary plot if not needed and he does not have to pay for a navigator to be on-crew.

2) My players are currently involved in the attempt to salvage a ship in deep space. To prevent the crew from absconding with the ship if they can bring it back to life, the company that has hired them has provided jump tapes for all sorties out to the salvage site and back to the support port.

Jump tapes can easily be the hook that leads adventurers into a thick of the soup..

Imagine the SPA attendant on the hook for a big bet in the last GravBike tour. he gets approached to substitute this tape for a random Rhylanor to Porozlo bound free trader.
Free Trader captains cutting corners buy them instead of having navigators on staff as often as they cut other corners to make money.

So the attendant gets his bill paid off, the ship jumps to the wrong location(Deep space not far from either Porozlo or Rhylanor but not near a sun) and your players and their free trader find themselves in quite the pickle....

As always, this is an item you can use or ignore but it provides more for the imaginary GM. If you can't find a reason for something, it may be your fault and not the item's >

Marc

 

[kafka47]

Jump Tapes could also be re-imagined not only to have the latest astronavigational data (hence making safe jumps possible) but also contain up-to-date data bundles Library Data, priority Flight Plans, etc. In the age of regular commerce, they are commercially downloaded via com link whilst berthing in a Starport C or better. Those with D or worst ratings, they might still be avialable but on the open market (hence quality is an issue, as is the date).

In addition, they might as well have local protocol interfaces to planetary information grids. To stretch the analogy, yes, everyone has access to the Internet but most require some sort of code (eg a library card) to gain access to private/government databases.

I tend to view Jump Tapes, as those annoying updates that one makes to an Operating System (OS) must undertake periodically. The more one jumps, more patches one needs. Naturally, they can be forsaken but eventually one's OS and ships navicomputer starts making errors...

 

[Jame]

MTU has jump tapes available but they're in the form of either discs or software patches (Kafka, I'm adopting your suggestion).

In most of my group's campaigns we don't stop to consider them (though I'm sure they exist).

 

[Tysis]

Why yes, I DO in fact recall entering an enormous string of hexadecimal digits from a magazine (AppleCider? I can't remember) into my Apple //c and ending up with a pretty cool arcade game. I also remembering realizing at some point that I had scotched the data entry at some point and had to re-enter about 600 numbers

There was an Apollo movie recently on some network, there was a great scene where they have to reprogram the navigation computer or something. It involved entering about 6 hex digits into the computer

Ok thats funny? Remember those games that Compute Magazine used to publish free? You had to type in all those hex codes? Some of them where pretty fun.