BetterThanLife
January 23rd, 2004, 12:08 PM
Just a thread to explore to possibility and profitablity of being a Pirate.
After all anyone that has run a Merchant in Traveller has found a Pirate or two. smile.gif
I figure there is plenty of place to hid in a system. Especially one with alot of traffic. Others disagree. I personally don't think a "Corsair Class" of ship is a smart idea. You can't hide in plain sight in the normal traffic patterns. Though a Purpose built ship does have certain advantages. Building in surprises is an interesting concept but once the surprise isout of the bag usually it becomes useless. Given the rules, I figure you have to be on par with typical Patrol Cruisers (At worst) firepower wise and have to be able to run. I recommend at least Jump 3 capability so you can jump in, hit a target and have Jump 2 in reserve so you can geometrically expand your choices when you are running away. Obviously the "Corsair Class" concept of being able to alter your IFF becon is important so is Military grade sensors. I would also think that Pirates would need more than a ship but also a decent intelligence base.
Now if you can alter your becon that would imply that if you capture a ship once you get it to base you can replace the becon. You would definitely need a base of operations, preferably with many Class A starport facilities. That isthe real weakness to the Pirate proposition. There are only so many places to put a base. That is your choke point. It is also what the Navy will be looking for. Not the individual Pirate. If you hold all the repair facilities, all the starship parts, missile resupply and round up all the fences then you will have no piracy. (Of course if you could do all that you could also eliminate Crime as well. smile.gif
If you have no where to dispose of the loot, no place to repair and re-becon the prizes then Piracy is just a mental exercise.
I believe the actual jumping of a Merchant is the easy part. (Not that it is by any means an assured thing.)
After all anyone that has run a Merchant in Traveller has found a Pirate or two. smile.gif
I figure there is plenty of place to hid in a system. Especially one with alot of traffic. Others disagree. I personally don't think a "Corsair Class" of ship is a smart idea. You can't hide in plain sight in the normal traffic patterns. Though a Purpose built ship does have certain advantages. Building in surprises is an interesting concept but once the surprise isout of the bag usually it becomes useless. Given the rules, I figure you have to be on par with typical Patrol Cruisers (At worst) firepower wise and have to be able to run. I recommend at least Jump 3 capability so you can jump in, hit a target and have Jump 2 in reserve so you can geometrically expand your choices when you are running away. Obviously the "Corsair Class" concept of being able to alter your IFF becon is important so is Military grade sensors. I would also think that Pirates would need more than a ship but also a decent intelligence base.
Now if you can alter your becon that would imply that if you capture a ship once you get it to base you can replace the becon. You would definitely need a base of operations, preferably with many Class A starport facilities. That isthe real weakness to the Pirate proposition. There are only so many places to put a base. That is your choke point. It is also what the Navy will be looking for. Not the individual Pirate. If you hold all the repair facilities, all the starship parts, missile resupply and round up all the fences then you will have no piracy. (Of course if you could do all that you could also eliminate Crime as well. smile.gif
If you have no where to dispose of the loot, no place to repair and re-becon the prizes then Piracy is just a mental exercise.
I believe the actual jumping of a Merchant is the easy part. (Not that it is by any means an assured thing.)
savage
January 23rd, 2004, 01:20 PM
I've always thought a pirate ship would need to stand up too or outrun to a couple 400t patrol ships/SDBs, or a small squad of fighters.
There are 2 ways to approach this...
1. blend in, hide in plain sight
2. be noticeably aggressive and outrun/gun everyone
Probably the safest places are the C and below starport systems. Ships that could mix in with Belter traffic (refinery ships for example) slide into a birth at the local port and do not appear different.
To this end, I came up with 2 variations (out of 11) for the 1,000t Purcell tender. A fine pirate
capable vessel that could use fighters or other ships to wound a victim and then engulf them.
http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/savage/1WorldOrder/tenders/Blood_class_Corsairs.html
http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/savage/1WorldOrder/tenders/Blood_Fast_Corsairs.html
Where and when is the question. Solar, asteriod, and ion storms surely are a few things that make a mess of active sensors.
Pirate bases would need to be very hidden. Asteroids in the belt is a common example. Probably appearing to be freelance mining colonies or manufucturing colonies. Only the worst pirates would have a base that's known to exist, Port Royale(?).
Many of those pirate sites might have started out as legitimate settlements and fell to economic distress.
Savage
There are 2 ways to approach this...
1. blend in, hide in plain sight
2. be noticeably aggressive and outrun/gun everyone
Probably the safest places are the C and below starport systems. Ships that could mix in with Belter traffic (refinery ships for example) slide into a birth at the local port and do not appear different.
To this end, I came up with 2 variations (out of 11) for the 1,000t Purcell tender. A fine pirate
capable vessel that could use fighters or other ships to wound a victim and then engulf them.
http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/savage/1WorldOrder/tenders/Blood_class_Corsairs.html
http://www.angelfire.com/empire2/savage/1WorldOrder/tenders/Blood_Fast_Corsairs.html
Where and when is the question. Solar, asteriod, and ion storms surely are a few things that make a mess of active sensors.
Pirate bases would need to be very hidden. Asteroids in the belt is a common example. Probably appearing to be freelance mining colonies or manufucturing colonies. Only the worst pirates would have a base that's known to exist, Port Royale(?).
Many of those pirate sites might have started out as legitimate settlements and fell to economic distress.
Savage
mike wightman
January 23rd, 2004, 01:49 PM
Savage, you are dead right to suggest building pirate vessels from existing ship classes. GURPS Starships details the CT Corsair as being based on a common class - the 400t Ocklosh Class salvage ship. There is no way a Corsair manufacturer would last long unless it was sponsored and based in a rival state. Proof of this could lead to war.
Other ship classes that make for good pirate vessels, IMHO, are the 400t Fat Trader and the 600t subsidised liner. Upgrade their drives and weapons and maybe carry a few fighters to chase down merchants (and provide a rear guard if the Navy turn up).
Another problem with piracy is how you dispose of your ill gotten gains.
Other ship classes that make for good pirate vessels, IMHO, are the 400t Fat Trader and the 600t subsidised liner. Upgrade their drives and weapons and maybe carry a few fighters to chase down merchants (and provide a rear guard if the Navy turn up).
Another problem with piracy is how you dispose of your ill gotten gains.
The Oz
January 23rd, 2004, 02:08 PM
Ya'll are quite right that one major concern about pirates is where do they dispose of the loot? They need someplace that has enough money/people to buy what they steal, someplace to get repairs/overhauls/supplies, and someplace for the crews to get shore leave. Those can be separate places or all rolled into one. There was an article in JTAS#19 about the "ecology of piracy" which pointed out that the best planets for pirates to use as markets/bases were A or B class starports with low governments and law levels outside direct Imperial control. If you add in the idea of having a decent population to provide enough market for your stolen goods I think you've got it. The decent population would not have be on the world where the goods are sold, but should be within jump-2 so goods purchased at the pirate fence world can easily be shipped to the purchaser's actual planet.
An important part of this article was that a given area of space can only have so many pirates operating in it or there'll be so many ships taken that other merchants will avoid the area and the Navy will move in.
As for ship types, I agree that modified commercial vessels are the best, allowing a pirate to operate in places with more merchantmen. The Fat Trader is an excellent pirate once fitted with better drives, computers and weapons.
As was also pointed out uptopic, having good intelligence is very important. You don't want to waste time and risk taking damage to capture a subsidized merchant only to find his cargo bay full of grain.
An important part of this article was that a given area of space can only have so many pirates operating in it or there'll be so many ships taken that other merchants will avoid the area and the Navy will move in.
As for ship types, I agree that modified commercial vessels are the best, allowing a pirate to operate in places with more merchantmen. The Fat Trader is an excellent pirate once fitted with better drives, computers and weapons.
As was also pointed out uptopic, having good intelligence is very important. You don't want to waste time and risk taking damage to capture a subsidized merchant only to find his cargo bay full of grain.
savage
January 23rd, 2004, 02:11 PM
Sigg,
The gains can be broken down and sold as parts through parts remanufacturers. Other govt's might
purchase these ships from privateers and replace
the transponder.
This is a good example of my "fallen" colony suggestion. They couldn't pay the bills and
needed alternatives. We already know that manufacturing in space could be extremely effective. No reason to believe that parts could
not be passed off as re-manufactured.
My players are presently using the Vigilante class armed liner. This is a perfect example of a vessel that could be used for piracy. Heck, mercenaries in general are ready to become pirates if the tides turn the wrong direction.
As to the earlier discussion of transponders.
I believe that they would be vary effective (
per the TNE virus thread) but extremely available from being manufactured in mass quantity.
Savage
The gains can be broken down and sold as parts through parts remanufacturers. Other govt's might
purchase these ships from privateers and replace
the transponder.
This is a good example of my "fallen" colony suggestion. They couldn't pay the bills and
needed alternatives. We already know that manufacturing in space could be extremely effective. No reason to believe that parts could
not be passed off as re-manufactured.
My players are presently using the Vigilante class armed liner. This is a perfect example of a vessel that could be used for piracy. Heck, mercenaries in general are ready to become pirates if the tides turn the wrong direction.
As to the earlier discussion of transponders.
I believe that they would be vary effective (
per the TNE virus thread) but extremely available from being manufactured in mass quantity.
Savage
BetterThanLife
January 23rd, 2004, 06:08 PM
I personally like the 600T Sub-Liner conversion I did as a Q-Ship. Plenty of space and when you downgrade the jump drive to 2 and upgrade the Powerplant to TL15 and increase the size you can do all sorts of things and leave the main parts of the ship unchanged, or virtually unchanged. 3 more hardpoints with pop-up Fusion Turrets can be very nasty, especially to an unsuspecting Type T. (Under High Guard can you say 3 chances for Crits, 1 per hit.) Under T20 a different weapon mix would be better since the range of the Fusion guns is so short. (And the damage rules are so different.) It would be funny to see Type T Patrol Cruisers afraid to approach any Sub Liner they are supposed to inspect. smile.gif Most of the mods you could hide in what used to be fuel tanks. smile.gif You can even put a worthwhile boarding party aboard given the extra staterooms, you have a launch for boarding actions, (Though I would tend to modify it to the stats of the CE's Gig. :)And you have a good sized cargo space for bounty or fighters. (Or both.) I do think the best course for a typical pirate is to look like something that belongs. You can do lots with a 2000T cargo ship, just ask Imperial Lines. smile.gif (Under T20 rules if you are careful you could mount a Meson Bay on it and with a little surprise take down a Capital ship, if you were lucky.) Nasty!!!
Hide in plain sight, absolutely. And like a good pick pocket or any good con man you don't operate alone. Three Card Monte anyone? Or when the heat is on go quiet and make like a hole in space. Depending on which version of the rules you are using Under CT sensors only go to 150,000 KM Or if you are running silent 75,000KM. Since the distance from the center of the system to the habitable zone is around 150,000,000 KM. That is quite a bit of space to hide in without going far from the main world orbit. Under MT Active sensors are limited to 50,000KM Passives are quite a bit further though their accuracy would have to degrade as distance got bigger. Especially since they are all light speed sensors. The typical main sequence star has a 100D limit just inside orbit 3. (The middle of the habitable zone.) If the habitable world happened to be in orbit 2 lots of space to intercept a merchant.
In a busy system, get into the departure pattern
arrange for the locals to be elsewhere, through bribes, a distress call, or just happen to be patrolling in the wrong direction, jump the ships behind and/or ahead of you and jump out of the system all three of them before the locals can respond. It sucks to turn around in space with a nice high vector. smile.gif It is easier to take a ship on the way out instead of in. You have a better chance of knowing what cargo it is carrying, you know when it is leaving and they have a full load of fuel. If you have a reputation of leaving the passengers, the crews and the ship alone after taking the cargo you are also less likely to encounter resistance in taking the cargo. Beside Patrol ships tend to be more worried about what is inbound to the system they know what is leaving.
The Piracy is the easy part. The hard part is the basing. You would have to have the active cooperation of a couple of Class A Starports, (Or build one where nobody is looking and when nobody is looking.) a few good fences and a good high traffic region of space with lots of systems, so you aren't predictable. You would have to have higher than Jump-1 so when they come looking for you you have a lot of places for them to look. The nice thing about a class A starport is that if they build ships they could install transponders. After all they put them in when they build them. Having fall back bases, chop shops, (again the facilities of a Class A starport or in this case probably a class B would be enough) bolt holes for when the heat is on and perhaps a few friends in Non-Extradition territories outside of the governing area you are operating in.
Just a thought or two.
Piracy certainly isn't the one ship independent operation that most people would tend to think it was.
Hide in plain sight, absolutely. And like a good pick pocket or any good con man you don't operate alone. Three Card Monte anyone? Or when the heat is on go quiet and make like a hole in space. Depending on which version of the rules you are using Under CT sensors only go to 150,000 KM Or if you are running silent 75,000KM. Since the distance from the center of the system to the habitable zone is around 150,000,000 KM. That is quite a bit of space to hide in without going far from the main world orbit. Under MT Active sensors are limited to 50,000KM Passives are quite a bit further though their accuracy would have to degrade as distance got bigger. Especially since they are all light speed sensors. The typical main sequence star has a 100D limit just inside orbit 3. (The middle of the habitable zone.) If the habitable world happened to be in orbit 2 lots of space to intercept a merchant.
In a busy system, get into the departure pattern
arrange for the locals to be elsewhere, through bribes, a distress call, or just happen to be patrolling in the wrong direction, jump the ships behind and/or ahead of you and jump out of the system all three of them before the locals can respond. It sucks to turn around in space with a nice high vector. smile.gif It is easier to take a ship on the way out instead of in. You have a better chance of knowing what cargo it is carrying, you know when it is leaving and they have a full load of fuel. If you have a reputation of leaving the passengers, the crews and the ship alone after taking the cargo you are also less likely to encounter resistance in taking the cargo. Beside Patrol ships tend to be more worried about what is inbound to the system they know what is leaving.
The Piracy is the easy part. The hard part is the basing. You would have to have the active cooperation of a couple of Class A Starports, (Or build one where nobody is looking and when nobody is looking.) a few good fences and a good high traffic region of space with lots of systems, so you aren't predictable. You would have to have higher than Jump-1 so when they come looking for you you have a lot of places for them to look. The nice thing about a class A starport is that if they build ships they could install transponders. After all they put them in when they build them. Having fall back bases, chop shops, (again the facilities of a Class A starport or in this case probably a class B would be enough) bolt holes for when the heat is on and perhaps a few friends in Non-Extradition territories outside of the governing area you are operating in.
Just a thought or two.
Piracy certainly isn't the one ship independent operation that most people would tend to think it was.
Richard Saunders
January 23rd, 2004, 07:34 PM
Hello.
Piracy works in the real world because either the people or one level of government condones it.
How many people on this site have bought something that fell of the back of a truck, or have turned someone in for what they thought was stollen goods.
All pirates down through the ages have had the active help of at least one level of government, As in the English gov against the Spanish and French, Or the wreckers on the south coast of England (cornwall??), the first was at the highest level (the Queen) the second was the lowest (the mayor).
Unless the ship is carrying a very expensive cargo its the ship itself thats the target. No cargo is going to be worth 50% of the worth of a ship.
Lets face it getting real transponder codes would not be hard (100000Cr for each from 10 systems scattered through the sector)
You rebadge the ship, fly it to any system with a market for second hand ships land and sell it (when you sell it you leave a varying amount outstanding on the loan on the ship and this is payed by the buyer back to the bank), this would be the bank with which you have a company set up (Galaxy loan and investment corp) your add is a branch in every system, and because its a legit company the bank has no reason to not pass on the money.
You also now have a front company to launder the other money.
If you dont get greedy and only pirate one or two ships a month from anywhere in four subsectors the merchants probably wont notice, and the navy wont care.
On average you will only make about 1.5 billion creds a year clear.
For the navy to have a fair chance of catching you they need to station ships at all refueling points and check all ships, you could get around that by changing the beacon as soon as you take the ship (during the first jump).
If you become to sucessful someone will turn you in (generaly the competition).
Bye.
Piracy works in the real world because either the people or one level of government condones it.
How many people on this site have bought something that fell of the back of a truck, or have turned someone in for what they thought was stollen goods.
All pirates down through the ages have had the active help of at least one level of government, As in the English gov against the Spanish and French, Or the wreckers on the south coast of England (cornwall??), the first was at the highest level (the Queen) the second was the lowest (the mayor).
Unless the ship is carrying a very expensive cargo its the ship itself thats the target. No cargo is going to be worth 50% of the worth of a ship.
Lets face it getting real transponder codes would not be hard (100000Cr for each from 10 systems scattered through the sector)
You rebadge the ship, fly it to any system with a market for second hand ships land and sell it (when you sell it you leave a varying amount outstanding on the loan on the ship and this is payed by the buyer back to the bank), this would be the bank with which you have a company set up (Galaxy loan and investment corp) your add is a branch in every system, and because its a legit company the bank has no reason to not pass on the money.
You also now have a front company to launder the other money.
If you dont get greedy and only pirate one or two ships a month from anywhere in four subsectors the merchants probably wont notice, and the navy wont care.
On average you will only make about 1.5 billion creds a year clear.
For the navy to have a fair chance of catching you they need to station ships at all refueling points and check all ships, you could get around that by changing the beacon as soon as you take the ship (during the first jump).
If you become to sucessful someone will turn you in (generaly the competition).
Bye.
savage
January 23rd, 2004, 10:47 PM
I do think the best course for a typical pirate is to look like something that belongs. You can do lots with a 2000T cargo ship, just ask Imperial Lines. Your an ambitious pirate! Bottom feeders will live longer and be more profitable. What's a couple missing sub merchants the a sector duke...notta.
If you have a reputation of leaving the passengers, the crews and the ship alone after taking the cargo you are also less likely to encounter resistance in taking the cargo. Your more likely to get caught. Its safer to be unknown and sell them into slavery, have a psionic wipe their memories, or get new recruits from the crew.
There is no reason to assume a class A starport is behind it. Actually its unlikely. Smaller starports may have the ability to repair or build vessels on a small scale but don't advertise it because they don't want anyone to know, its unreliable, or they cannot handle the demand.
There are a lot of manufacturers, parts refitters in the imperium to support that much commerce. They could be on asteroid belts, .... anywhere.
Buying, selling, and stealing.
While we're on the topic. Who's to suggest there isn't an active slave trade from the piracy market. graemlins/file_22.gif
Savage
If you have a reputation of leaving the passengers, the crews and the ship alone after taking the cargo you are also less likely to encounter resistance in taking the cargo. Your more likely to get caught. Its safer to be unknown and sell them into slavery, have a psionic wipe their memories, or get new recruits from the crew.
There is no reason to assume a class A starport is behind it. Actually its unlikely. Smaller starports may have the ability to repair or build vessels on a small scale but don't advertise it because they don't want anyone to know, its unreliable, or they cannot handle the demand.
There are a lot of manufacturers, parts refitters in the imperium to support that much commerce. They could be on asteroid belts, .... anywhere.
Buying, selling, and stealing.
While we're on the topic. Who's to suggest there isn't an active slave trade from the piracy market. graemlins/file_22.gif
Savage
BetterThanLife
January 24th, 2004, 01:32 AM
Well a 2000T freighter has several advantages. First you can actually arm it with something that can deal with DE's and still carry cargo. (Especially in T20 where you can fit it with a Meson Bay.) They may not be quite as common as a 200T Free Trader or Fat Trader but there is plenty of evidence that they are fairly common. If you approach a Free Trader Subbie or Liner you are likely to get them to surrender faster. If you damage your target to the point where it can't jump you could always store it aboard. And cut it up for parts while you are in jump.)
What worries me most about the Piracy end of it, as opposed to the disposal end of it, is time. If it takes too long to take your target you will have the locals after you. And a Converted Merchie is likely to get pretty badly shot up by a squadron of FH or even FL for that matter. And you won't out run them without jumping. Arming the Jumpship from Sup 9 is another interesting choice. You can tow the fragger.
As far as a slave trade goes, I doubt there is an active slave trade in the Imperium, but I can't help but think it would increase a Vargr's Charisma. smile.gif
Speed in the capture end is important. You can't give the locals lots of time to react.
What worries me most about the Piracy end of it, as opposed to the disposal end of it, is time. If it takes too long to take your target you will have the locals after you. And a Converted Merchie is likely to get pretty badly shot up by a squadron of FH or even FL for that matter. And you won't out run them without jumping. Arming the Jumpship from Sup 9 is another interesting choice. You can tow the fragger.
As far as a slave trade goes, I doubt there is an active slave trade in the Imperium, but I can't help but think it would increase a Vargr's Charisma. smile.gif
Speed in the capture end is important. You can't give the locals lots of time to react.
mike wightman
January 24th, 2004, 05:57 AM
Piracy could also be a tool for rival shipping lines to diguise the opening moves of a trade war. Come to think of it, if Tukera, say, were to sponsor pirate activity through a third party just outside of Imperial borders then the disposal of goods problem gets a whole lot easier.
Semi-legitimate merchants working hand in hand with the pirates give a means to gain intel on shipping and to transport stolen goods. All you need is a corrupt broker to generate the paper work or alternatively rely on forged documents and the stolen goods may well be traded inside the Imperium. There has to be a black marcket for such goods.
Semi-legitimate merchants working hand in hand with the pirates give a means to gain intel on shipping and to transport stolen goods. All you need is a corrupt broker to generate the paper work or alternatively rely on forged documents and the stolen goods may well be traded inside the Imperium. There has to be a black marcket for such goods.
Ran Targas
January 24th, 2004, 08:19 AM
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Piracy could also be a tool for rival shipping lines to diguise the opening moves of a trade war. I have used this one Sigg; a small, but growing, shipping line is sponsoring privateers to attack it's ships (10% of total loss) and it's rivals (90% of loss). The ships and cargo taken from sponsor are exchanged for access to intel, repair facilities, and supplies of fuel and ammo. Plus the shipper gets the insurance money.
This has given him a considerable edge over his larger competitors, especially when his freight gets through to places the others can't. Because of his losses, he can claim himself a victim as well.
As an ex-smuggler turned merchant, it made sense for this NPC to maintain his contacts with the underworld and develop a scam like this. The backstory is he has managed to combine numerous small shipping companies into a mid-sized, sector-wide combine. His apparent ability to avoid the majority of pirate attacks has also "encouraged" more small shippers to partner with him.
Piracy could also be a tool for rival shipping lines to diguise the opening moves of a trade war. I have used this one Sigg; a small, but growing, shipping line is sponsoring privateers to attack it's ships (10% of total loss) and it's rivals (90% of loss). The ships and cargo taken from sponsor are exchanged for access to intel, repair facilities, and supplies of fuel and ammo. Plus the shipper gets the insurance money.
This has given him a considerable edge over his larger competitors, especially when his freight gets through to places the others can't. Because of his losses, he can claim himself a victim as well.
As an ex-smuggler turned merchant, it made sense for this NPC to maintain his contacts with the underworld and develop a scam like this. The backstory is he has managed to combine numerous small shipping companies into a mid-sized, sector-wide combine. His apparent ability to avoid the majority of pirate attacks has also "encouraged" more small shippers to partner with him.
mike wightman
January 24th, 2004, 09:02 AM
What a fiendishly good idea graemlins/file_23.gif
I hope you don't mind if I borrow that one.
I hope you don't mind if I borrow that one.
Maspy
January 24th, 2004, 09:36 AM
I've found some articles on Piracy. (Of the Traveller variety)
http://users.hartwick.edu/smithw/pirate_economics.htm
http://users.hartwick.edu/smithw/piracyIMTU.htm
http://users.hartwick.edu/smithw/pirate_economics.htm
http://users.hartwick.edu/smithw/piracyIMTU.htm
BetterThanLife
January 24th, 2004, 02:10 PM
At least I am not the only one that thinks Piracy is a real threat in the 3rd Imperium. smile.gif You guys have even almost solved the how to get away with fencing the goods. I still worry about disposing with starships. the biggest worry I have in dumping goods is that if you hold them too long then the news will be out as to what is missing. Personally I would rather be long gone before the hot sheet reaches the market.
Ran Targas
January 24th, 2004, 05:53 PM
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
What a fiendishly good idea graemlins/file_23.gif
I hope you don't mind if I borrow that one. I let my PC's uncover the plot over a couple of seemingly unconnected adventures.
First was being approached by a representative of this new shipping co-op where "profits go to the crews not a suit". There was only a small upfront membership fee, which would be waived if a percentage of the ship was signed over instead. They said "no" and were ear marked for a future attack.
For color; they received a bunch of official and word-of-mouth warnings about pirate activity in the sub-sector.
Second was unintentionally rescuing the son of a shipping magnate and his consort who got to close to a pulsar in his yacht. This got them invited to a social event where the upstart made a scene, insulting and threatening the guy they just rescued.
More warnings. A crew they know are murdered and their ship found shot up and gutted.
Third, they hire some merc's and go hunting. During the encounter they manage to repel and counter-board a pirate. They also get to his nav comp before the crew can destroy the database and locate a hidden base on a small moon. On the pirate ship they also notice a lot of new equipment and spare parts still in the box. After penetrating some security measures, they land on the moon and find containers full of supplies labelled with the upstarts logo.
They took the evidence to the shipping magnate they know and he decided to set up an ambush with a convoy of Q-ships (I used Tanuki's). It was a great finale.
What a fiendishly good idea graemlins/file_23.gif
I hope you don't mind if I borrow that one. I let my PC's uncover the plot over a couple of seemingly unconnected adventures.
First was being approached by a representative of this new shipping co-op where "profits go to the crews not a suit". There was only a small upfront membership fee, which would be waived if a percentage of the ship was signed over instead. They said "no" and were ear marked for a future attack.
For color; they received a bunch of official and word-of-mouth warnings about pirate activity in the sub-sector.
Second was unintentionally rescuing the son of a shipping magnate and his consort who got to close to a pulsar in his yacht. This got them invited to a social event where the upstart made a scene, insulting and threatening the guy they just rescued.
More warnings. A crew they know are murdered and their ship found shot up and gutted.
Third, they hire some merc's and go hunting. During the encounter they manage to repel and counter-board a pirate. They also get to his nav comp before the crew can destroy the database and locate a hidden base on a small moon. On the pirate ship they also notice a lot of new equipment and spare parts still in the box. After penetrating some security measures, they land on the moon and find containers full of supplies labelled with the upstarts logo.
They took the evidence to the shipping magnate they know and he decided to set up an ambush with a convoy of Q-ships (I used Tanuki's). It was a great finale.
Ran Targas
January 25th, 2004, 11:50 AM
If you have a large number of pirates IYTU, then I can only assume there's also a healthy number of chop yards waiting for pirated vessels. Making any money off the parts is still all profit when you paid nothing for the spacecraft. Plus, when all the valuables have been stripped from the hull, the evidence disappears in the smelter.
Modern ships are reduced to raw materials in such ways just as hot Cadillacs and Mercedes are.
Modern ships are reduced to raw materials in such ways just as hot Cadillacs and Mercedes are.
rancke
January 26th, 2004, 02:58 PM
Originally posted by Hal:
Take a look at Ianic in hex 1924. It has NO spaceport worth mentioning as well as no space faring technological base. Using GURPS FAR TRADER, I've pegged the weekly traffic at IANIC at roughly 50 ships per week. What makes Ianic so interesting is that it has no on-world wilderness refueling capabilities (only gas giant) and the fact that the mainworld is within 100 diameters of its sun. Those two facts combined mean that the merchant ships *HAVE* to go through a predictable path between the gas giant and the main world - as well as spend a fair amount of time in "normal" space instead of a quick journey in normal space and be able to hop into Jump space.No, it means that someone can make a profit from selling fuel at the starport, even if he has to import it from outside. Alternatively it will be economically sound for a ship to use inflatable fuel tanks to carry an extra load of fuel along. The loss of revenue from having less cargo space is offset by the saving in time from not having to spend days travelling in real space to or from the gas giant.
50 ships per week? That spells regularly scheduled freight lines and it also means that a couple of 'route protectors' would be economic.
Hans
Hans
Take a look at Ianic in hex 1924. It has NO spaceport worth mentioning as well as no space faring technological base. Using GURPS FAR TRADER, I've pegged the weekly traffic at IANIC at roughly 50 ships per week. What makes Ianic so interesting is that it has no on-world wilderness refueling capabilities (only gas giant) and the fact that the mainworld is within 100 diameters of its sun. Those two facts combined mean that the merchant ships *HAVE* to go through a predictable path between the gas giant and the main world - as well as spend a fair amount of time in "normal" space instead of a quick journey in normal space and be able to hop into Jump space.No, it means that someone can make a profit from selling fuel at the starport, even if he has to import it from outside. Alternatively it will be economically sound for a ship to use inflatable fuel tanks to carry an extra load of fuel along. The loss of revenue from having less cargo space is offset by the saving in time from not having to spend days travelling in real space to or from the gas giant.
50 ships per week? That spells regularly scheduled freight lines and it also means that a couple of 'route protectors' would be economic.
Hans
Hans
Anthony
January 26th, 2004, 05:57 PM
Originally posted by rancke:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Hal:
Take a look at Ianic in hex 1924.No, it means that someone can make a profit from selling fuel at the starport, even if he has to import it from outside.</font>[/QUOTE]No, what it means is that ships will jump directly to the gas giant and not visit Ianic itself. Very little of the traffic you mention is actually headed for Ianic.
Also, I'd peg the traffic at roughly 0 ships per week. The major trade route in the area is Lunion to Abadicci, and that will be handled pretty much exclusively by J3 ships.
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Hal:
Take a look at Ianic in hex 1924.No, it means that someone can make a profit from selling fuel at the starport, even if he has to import it from outside.</font>[/QUOTE]No, what it means is that ships will jump directly to the gas giant and not visit Ianic itself. Very little of the traffic you mention is actually headed for Ianic.
Also, I'd peg the traffic at roughly 0 ships per week. The major trade route in the area is Lunion to Abadicci, and that will be handled pretty much exclusively by J3 ships.
rancke
January 26th, 2004, 07:57 PM
Originally posted by Anthony:
No, what it means is that ships will jump directly to the gas giant and not visit Ianic itself. Very little of the traffic you mention is actually headed for Ianic.Of course. I had overlooked the fact that those ships wouldn't want to visit Ianic at all.
Hans
No, what it means is that ships will jump directly to the gas giant and not visit Ianic itself. Very little of the traffic you mention is actually headed for Ianic.Of course. I had overlooked the fact that those ships wouldn't want to visit Ianic at all.
Hans
mike wightman
January 26th, 2004, 08:35 PM
Not many merchant designs carry fuel purifiers as standard; a bit silly IMHO since they pay for themselves so quickly. How many are going to run the risk of misjump?
Gas giants tend to have lots of moons, lots of places for pirates to hide to prey upon those merchants ;) graemlins/file_23.gif
Ianic is a rich world, so it must have something to trade.
Gas giants tend to have lots of moons, lots of places for pirates to hide to prey upon those merchants ;) graemlins/file_23.gif
Ianic is a rich world, so it must have something to trade.
Anthony
January 27th, 2004, 01:11 AM
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
Not many merchant designs carry fuel purifiers as standard; a bit silly IMHO since they pay for themselves so quickly. How many are going to run the risk of misjump?
Well, since there's no source for refined fuel in-system, ships without fuel purifiers will simply not visit Ianic.
Gas giants tend to have lots of moons, lots of places for pirates to hide to prey upon those merchants.
Yes, it is relatively easy to hide if you arrive before the patrol ship. Less easy to hide if you don't. Hiding after you attack the merchant is likely to be practically impossible, and running isn't going to be that easy given the large 100D on a gas giant.
Ianic is a rich world, so it must have something to trade. The trade classifications in CT are useless beyond belief. There's no reason to think Ianic has anything of value.
Not many merchant designs carry fuel purifiers as standard; a bit silly IMHO since they pay for themselves so quickly. How many are going to run the risk of misjump?
Well, since there's no source for refined fuel in-system, ships without fuel purifiers will simply not visit Ianic.
Gas giants tend to have lots of moons, lots of places for pirates to hide to prey upon those merchants.
Yes, it is relatively easy to hide if you arrive before the patrol ship. Less easy to hide if you don't. Hiding after you attack the merchant is likely to be practically impossible, and running isn't going to be that easy given the large 100D on a gas giant.
Ianic is a rich world, so it must have something to trade. The trade classifications in CT are useless beyond belief. There's no reason to think Ianic has anything of value.
BetterThanLife
January 29th, 2004, 02:37 PM
But with, in OTU the per jump economic model the typical freighter and cargo ship is only Jump 1. Nothing else works, no matter the size, with a loan under the "jump every other week model from the OTU."
Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rancke:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Hal:
Take a look at Ianic in hex 1924.No, it means that someone can make a profit from selling fuel at the starport, even if he has to import it from outside.</font>[/QUOTE]No, what it means is that ships will jump directly to the gas giant and not visit Ianic itself. Very little of the traffic you mention is actually headed for Ianic.
Also, I'd peg the traffic at roughly 0 ships per week. The major trade route in the area is Lunion to Abadicci, and that will be handled pretty much exclusively by J3 ships. </font>[/QUOTE]
Originally posted by Anthony:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by rancke:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Hal:
Take a look at Ianic in hex 1924.No, it means that someone can make a profit from selling fuel at the starport, even if he has to import it from outside.</font>[/QUOTE]No, what it means is that ships will jump directly to the gas giant and not visit Ianic itself. Very little of the traffic you mention is actually headed for Ianic.
Also, I'd peg the traffic at roughly 0 ships per week. The major trade route in the area is Lunion to Abadicci, and that will be handled pretty much exclusively by J3 ships. </font>[/QUOTE]
Nurd_boy
January 30th, 2004, 01:47 AM
I tend to think of things not as 'going pirate' but rather....
...commerce of opportunity
'pirate' is such a crude word, invoking too many centuries old stereotypes...besides, parrots don't do well in zero-gee.
:D
...commerce of opportunity
'pirate' is such a crude word, invoking too many centuries old stereotypes...besides, parrots don't do well in zero-gee.
:D
Straybow
January 30th, 2004, 04:27 AM
But parrots do just fine in AG and I-Comp.
rancke
January 30th, 2004, 10:10 AM
Originally posted by Hal:
What it boils down to is that it is cheaper to make money spending 5 days in normal space than to give up a percentage of your cargo hold for fuel bladders. A Jump 1 craft utilizes roughly 30% of its cargo hold in order to carry enough fuel in its fuel bladder.A jump-1 ship has a cargo bay of about 70% of its total volume. It will give up 14% of that to carry enough fuel in its bladder to get back.
Keep in mind that what I am discussing has to do with GURPS TRAVELLER, but the principle holds true in CT as well.No, actually, the two situations are very different. (Which is why I have such a down on SJG for refusing to admit and correct the mistake). The 20% a streamlined ship loses comes straight of the ship's payload. But that doesn't really mean that a streamlined freighter will have that much less cargo space, that means that there won't hardly be any streamlined freighters.
A jump 2 ship has even less cargo space than a Jump 1 vessel. In GT, IIRC, a J-2 200 dton craft has only 49 Dtons cargo space. Utilizing 40 of those 49 is highly inefficient ;) Sure, but a jump-2 ship has enough fuel space to make two jumps-1, so it won't have to use its cargo bay.
Regards to the 50 ships per week - I should have added the following information...
1) those fifty ships all come from 16 different planets
2) those fifty ships are based on a "baseline" of 200 dton ships. For instance, some of the cargo carried from Lunion to Ianic could be carried by 400 dton ships because the incidental freight volume would be high enough. 2b) The fact that Ianic trades with 16 planets doesn't necessarily means that it is visited by ships from 16 planets. For instance, much of the cargo that comes from further to trailing than Lunion can be added to the trade from Lunion, since freight from (say) Mora can easily be offloaded at Lunion and transferred to another ship.
3) GURPS FAR TRADER has what amounts to two types of freight lots for tramp freighters to get their hands on. The first is the "incidentals". This freight market contains the last second freight that wasn't placed on the "freight liners" market for what ever reasons that might be. This stuff is never an absolute. The second is the "too low a volume to be worth our while" freight market. On worlds where the Bi-world Trade Value is 8+, regularly scheduled ships carry the trade with the "incidental last minute" cargo being available for tramps. On worlds with a BTN less than 8, it is wholely carried by tramps.Unless it is carried ten times a year by a 1000 T ship instead of 50 times a year by 200 T ships.
as for route protectors? graemlins/file_23.gif well, Ianic has no real port, and is unable to maintain regularly scheduled maintenance of military forces.Not a problem: A patrol ship can jump to Lunion, get maintained, and jump back to Ianic. A better question is what GWP Ianic has. That will show what it can do for itself.
Hans
What it boils down to is that it is cheaper to make money spending 5 days in normal space than to give up a percentage of your cargo hold for fuel bladders. A Jump 1 craft utilizes roughly 30% of its cargo hold in order to carry enough fuel in its fuel bladder.A jump-1 ship has a cargo bay of about 70% of its total volume. It will give up 14% of that to carry enough fuel in its bladder to get back.
Keep in mind that what I am discussing has to do with GURPS TRAVELLER, but the principle holds true in CT as well.No, actually, the two situations are very different. (Which is why I have such a down on SJG for refusing to admit and correct the mistake). The 20% a streamlined ship loses comes straight of the ship's payload. But that doesn't really mean that a streamlined freighter will have that much less cargo space, that means that there won't hardly be any streamlined freighters.
A jump 2 ship has even less cargo space than a Jump 1 vessel. In GT, IIRC, a J-2 200 dton craft has only 49 Dtons cargo space. Utilizing 40 of those 49 is highly inefficient ;) Sure, but a jump-2 ship has enough fuel space to make two jumps-1, so it won't have to use its cargo bay.
Regards to the 50 ships per week - I should have added the following information...
1) those fifty ships all come from 16 different planets
2) those fifty ships are based on a "baseline" of 200 dton ships. For instance, some of the cargo carried from Lunion to Ianic could be carried by 400 dton ships because the incidental freight volume would be high enough. 2b) The fact that Ianic trades with 16 planets doesn't necessarily means that it is visited by ships from 16 planets. For instance, much of the cargo that comes from further to trailing than Lunion can be added to the trade from Lunion, since freight from (say) Mora can easily be offloaded at Lunion and transferred to another ship.
3) GURPS FAR TRADER has what amounts to two types of freight lots for tramp freighters to get their hands on. The first is the "incidentals". This freight market contains the last second freight that wasn't placed on the "freight liners" market for what ever reasons that might be. This stuff is never an absolute. The second is the "too low a volume to be worth our while" freight market. On worlds where the Bi-world Trade Value is 8+, regularly scheduled ships carry the trade with the "incidental last minute" cargo being available for tramps. On worlds with a BTN less than 8, it is wholely carried by tramps.Unless it is carried ten times a year by a 1000 T ship instead of 50 times a year by 200 T ships.
as for route protectors? graemlins/file_23.gif well, Ianic has no real port, and is unable to maintain regularly scheduled maintenance of military forces.Not a problem: A patrol ship can jump to Lunion, get maintained, and jump back to Ianic. A better question is what GWP Ianic has. That will show what it can do for itself.
Hans
rancke
January 30th, 2004, 10:56 AM
Originally posted by Hal:
The thing to remember is this: Ships that *MUST* go to the Ianic main world don't have any choice but to go to the Gas Giant if they want to get home. The world has a hydrology rating of Zero.That doesn't mean that there is no water on Ianic. It just means that there is less than 5% free-standing water on Ianic. There could be a small ocean next to the colony, or underground water or ice.
The inhabitants has to get water from somewhere. Wherever the Ianic Public Waterworks gets its water (even if it imports it from Adabicci), it must be possible to increase the production a bit and get some fuel out of it. The profits would certainly warrant it.
Hans
The thing to remember is this: Ships that *MUST* go to the Ianic main world don't have any choice but to go to the Gas Giant if they want to get home. The world has a hydrology rating of Zero.That doesn't mean that there is no water on Ianic. It just means that there is less than 5% free-standing water on Ianic. There could be a small ocean next to the colony, or underground water or ice.
The inhabitants has to get water from somewhere. Wherever the Ianic Public Waterworks gets its water (even if it imports it from Adabicci), it must be possible to increase the production a bit and get some fuel out of it. The profits would certainly warrant it.
Hans
Anthony
January 31st, 2004, 04:46 AM
Originally posted by Hal:
Apparently Anthony, you've not bothered to look at the traffic flow for Ianic deeply. Considering that it was you who forced me to look more closely - I am a little surprised ;) I seem to have been hit by my house rules, which put a cap a bit lower than Far Trader (Jim MacLean came out with a similar variant on max route size, but neither has made it into any errata). However, given the actual economy of Ianic, I think my house rules are more plausible than the standard rules...
Apparently Anthony, you've not bothered to look at the traffic flow for Ianic deeply. Considering that it was you who forced me to look more closely - I am a little surprised ;) I seem to have been hit by my house rules, which put a cap a bit lower than Far Trader (Jim MacLean came out with a similar variant on max route size, but neither has made it into any errata). However, given the actual economy of Ianic, I think my house rules are more plausible than the standard rules...
Straybow
January 31st, 2004, 06:40 PM
"Sure, but a jump-2 ship has enough fuel space to make two jumps-1, so it won't have to use its cargo bay."
The original LBB2 said that a J-2 or higher drive uses the full fuel required even if jumping below its rating. A supplement cut the jump fuel in half from the value in LBB2. I suppose that may have been changed as well, hmmm?
IMTU there is no such thing as fuel scoops and on-board refining. Fusion requires Deuterium, which is only 0.015% of natural hydrogen. That means you'd need to scoop and process 6600 times the amount of hydrogen as the fuel required. Hope you brought a very long book to read.
;)
The original LBB2 said that a J-2 or higher drive uses the full fuel required even if jumping below its rating. A supplement cut the jump fuel in half from the value in LBB2. I suppose that may have been changed as well, hmmm?
IMTU there is no such thing as fuel scoops and on-board refining. Fusion requires Deuterium, which is only 0.015% of natural hydrogen. That means you'd need to scoop and process 6600 times the amount of hydrogen as the fuel required. Hope you brought a very long book to read.
;)
far-trader
January 31st, 2004, 07:28 PM
Originally posted by rancke:
Sure, but a jump-2 ship has enough fuel space to make two jumps-1, so it won't have to use its cargo bay.
True enough but a J2 ship is likely to just do a J2 right by Ianic (in this specific case) unless they have some extremely valuable cargo, which is gonna raise the interest of, erm, certain interested parties graemlins/file_23.gif
The premise here is what does all the J1 traffic, and I for one see plenty*, do about fueling? Rather than mess with changing the starport to include fuel I think it's either skim or melt ice for yourself, or carry it in with you. Most ships have the scoops even if they don't have purifiers and might decide to risk the small chance of a misjump this once.
The Subbies would of course use cargo carried fuel tanks for their own use through Ianic, being less concerned with profits and more concerned with schedules and safety.
Now if I were a nervous nelly of a Free-Trader I'd buy a 20T lot on the next Subbie and ship myself some fuel to Ianic for cr20,000 and use my own cargo hold for something more valuable. Once you refuel you can sell the containers locally or reuse them for cargo to your next destination.
*This is a major trade subsector, the crossroads of the Marches, and the J1 Main (to the Border Worlds, Sword Worlds, Darrian, Five Sisters and Glisten) runs right through Ianic. Granted not every Free-Trader is gonna run the whole Main regularly but a few will, and I expect there would be a stop at Ianic by a Subsidized Merchant or two.
Originally posted by Straybow:
The original LBB2 said that a J-2 or higher drive uses the full fuel required even if jumping below its rating. A supplement cut the jump fuel in half from the value in LBB2. I suppose that may have been changed as well, hmmm?Yep, the LBB did say all your fuel regardless of acutal jump but that was changed in High Guard. First by the inclusion of a Jump Governor conversion and then by simply saying all ships already included it. Not sure which supplement said halve the J fuel but as far as I know it's only been an optional (and very not OTU) rule.
Originally posted by Straybow:
IMTU there is no such thing as fuel scoops and on-board refining. Fusion requires Deuterium, which is only 0.015% of natural hydrogen. That means you'd need to scoop and process 6600 times the amount of hydrogen as the fuel required. Hope you brought a very long book to read.
;) So of course all my blather about such is pointless for your game smile.gif I do agree that it should take a lot longer, and involve more than a little hazard (at least GG skimming). I always figured the skimming rate should be dependant on the purifier rate* and figured that such fuel should be called unrefined with all the negatives it implies. Refined fuel costs so much more imo because it goes through further steps that can't be easily done on a starship.
*Unless you have enough tankage to first skim a full load (or more since it must be reduced by the purifier process imo) and then pump it into another clean tank (big enough for your Jump) through the purifier at your leisure. Just the way I feel it should be handled.
Sure, but a jump-2 ship has enough fuel space to make two jumps-1, so it won't have to use its cargo bay.
True enough but a J2 ship is likely to just do a J2 right by Ianic (in this specific case) unless they have some extremely valuable cargo, which is gonna raise the interest of, erm, certain interested parties graemlins/file_23.gif
The premise here is what does all the J1 traffic, and I for one see plenty*, do about fueling? Rather than mess with changing the starport to include fuel I think it's either skim or melt ice for yourself, or carry it in with you. Most ships have the scoops even if they don't have purifiers and might decide to risk the small chance of a misjump this once.
The Subbies would of course use cargo carried fuel tanks for their own use through Ianic, being less concerned with profits and more concerned with schedules and safety.
Now if I were a nervous nelly of a Free-Trader I'd buy a 20T lot on the next Subbie and ship myself some fuel to Ianic for cr20,000 and use my own cargo hold for something more valuable. Once you refuel you can sell the containers locally or reuse them for cargo to your next destination.
*This is a major trade subsector, the crossroads of the Marches, and the J1 Main (to the Border Worlds, Sword Worlds, Darrian, Five Sisters and Glisten) runs right through Ianic. Granted not every Free-Trader is gonna run the whole Main regularly but a few will, and I expect there would be a stop at Ianic by a Subsidized Merchant or two.
Originally posted by Straybow:
The original LBB2 said that a J-2 or higher drive uses the full fuel required even if jumping below its rating. A supplement cut the jump fuel in half from the value in LBB2. I suppose that may have been changed as well, hmmm?Yep, the LBB did say all your fuel regardless of acutal jump but that was changed in High Guard. First by the inclusion of a Jump Governor conversion and then by simply saying all ships already included it. Not sure which supplement said halve the J fuel but as far as I know it's only been an optional (and very not OTU) rule.
Originally posted by Straybow:
IMTU there is no such thing as fuel scoops and on-board refining. Fusion requires Deuterium, which is only 0.015% of natural hydrogen. That means you'd need to scoop and process 6600 times the amount of hydrogen as the fuel required. Hope you brought a very long book to read.
;) So of course all my blather about such is pointless for your game smile.gif I do agree that it should take a lot longer, and involve more than a little hazard (at least GG skimming). I always figured the skimming rate should be dependant on the purifier rate* and figured that such fuel should be called unrefined with all the negatives it implies. Refined fuel costs so much more imo because it goes through further steps that can't be easily done on a starship.
*Unless you have enough tankage to first skim a full load (or more since it must be reduced by the purifier process imo) and then pump it into another clean tank (big enough for your Jump) through the purifier at your leisure. Just the way I feel it should be handled.
Straybow
January 31st, 2004, 10:40 PM
The difference between Hydrogen and Deuterium is one of those gratingly unscientific things that reaches the point of being broken in Traveller and needs to be fixed. I'm mystified at why it wasn't fixed decades ago…
Hal
February 2nd, 2004, 02:58 AM
Originally posted by Straybow:
The difference between Hydrogen and Deuterium is one of those gratingly unscientific things that reaches the point of being broken in Traveller and needs to be fixed. I'm mystified at why it wasn't fixed decades ago… Shhhhhhh - don't say that, you never know who might be listening ;)
The difference between Hydrogen and Deuterium is one of those gratingly unscientific things that reaches the point of being broken in Traveller and needs to be fixed. I'm mystified at why it wasn't fixed decades ago… Shhhhhhh - don't say that, you never know who might be listening ;)
jfwking
February 2nd, 2004, 06:03 AM
Originally posted by Hal:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Straybow:
The difference between Hydrogen and Deuterium is one of those gratingly unscientific things that reaches the point of being broken in Traveller and needs to be fixed. I'm mystified at why it wasn't fixed decades ago… Shhhhhhh - don't say that, you never know who might be listening ;) </font>[/QUOTE]/looks outside at howling mob with pitchforks and torches. Points in opposite direction and says "he went thataway" then ducks :rolleyes:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Straybow:
The difference between Hydrogen and Deuterium is one of those gratingly unscientific things that reaches the point of being broken in Traveller and needs to be fixed. I'm mystified at why it wasn't fixed decades ago… Shhhhhhh - don't say that, you never know who might be listening ;) </font>[/QUOTE]/looks outside at howling mob with pitchforks and torches. Points in opposite direction and says "he went thataway" then ducks :rolleyes:
TheEngineer
February 2nd, 2004, 07:17 AM
Hi,
guess the H/D topic was just neglected because it was not considered as really important for actual gameplay.
Thinking about skimming....:
The time consuming part of the skimming procedure surely might not be to pump a few cubic meters water around.
Its the breaking down into gasous H2/D2 via electrolytical/catalytical means.
D2 could be - at least technically - derived in that way, too.
So, IMHO skimming an amount of "unpurified" H/D mix could take as long as the skimming / purification to D2 in a plant designed and optimized to do that.
Perhaps Traveller puri-plants are just as fast as scoops.
Just a thought... smile.gif
Regards,
Mert
guess the H/D topic was just neglected because it was not considered as really important for actual gameplay.
Thinking about skimming....:
The time consuming part of the skimming procedure surely might not be to pump a few cubic meters water around.
Its the breaking down into gasous H2/D2 via electrolytical/catalytical means.
D2 could be - at least technically - derived in that way, too.
So, IMHO skimming an amount of "unpurified" H/D mix could take as long as the skimming / purification to D2 in a plant designed and optimized to do that.
Perhaps Traveller puri-plants are just as fast as scoops.
Just a thought... smile.gif
Regards,
Mert
Straybow
February 2nd, 2004, 02:00 PM
Well, yes, if you want to allow fuel skimming then the H vs D distinction must be ignored. The ratio of D is what makes the purification a lengthy process requiring bulky equipment. Or you create a Traveller-friendly universe where D is naturally 10% of hydrogen, allowing unrefined fuel to be used in fusion with lower power output.
Maybe a ship would have an emergency purifier, so that water or scooped gas could be processed into sufficient D2 to allow minimal life support while awaiting rescue. No manuevering except emergency O2/H2 rockets (sufficient for orbit maintenance and docking) and no jump.
Fuel skimming would be a viable commercial enterprise, with massive equipment in orbit around a gas giant or on the surface of a world with volatiles so that 6600 tons hydrogen/unit of fuel can be economically processed.
Maybe a ship would have an emergency purifier, so that water or scooped gas could be processed into sufficient D2 to allow minimal life support while awaiting rescue. No manuevering except emergency O2/H2 rockets (sufficient for orbit maintenance and docking) and no jump.
Fuel skimming would be a viable commercial enterprise, with massive equipment in orbit around a gas giant or on the surface of a world with volatiles so that 6600 tons hydrogen/unit of fuel can be economically processed.
mike wightman
February 2nd, 2004, 05:35 PM
Straybrow said:
Fusion requires Deuterium Not quite ;) .
The version of fusion reactor that we have been trying to build (unsuccessfully so far after nearly fifty years of r&d and who knows how much money) relies on D+D fusion. This is because the temperatures and pressures required for the "cleaner" forms of fusion (4P-He, or 3He+H, or 3He+3He) are way beyond current technology.
Fusion power is achieved at TL9, it could be the breakthroughs in grav technology that lead to controllable fusion reactions involving hydrogen as the fuel in the Traveller Universe.
Development of nuclear damper tech (strong force manipulation) at TL12 could lead to its incorporation in TL13+ reactors which is why you get the increased EP output.
Fusion requires Deuterium Not quite ;) .
The version of fusion reactor that we have been trying to build (unsuccessfully so far after nearly fifty years of r&d and who knows how much money) relies on D+D fusion. This is because the temperatures and pressures required for the "cleaner" forms of fusion (4P-He, or 3He+H, or 3He+3He) are way beyond current technology.
Fusion power is achieved at TL9, it could be the breakthroughs in grav technology that lead to controllable fusion reactions involving hydrogen as the fuel in the Traveller Universe.
Development of nuclear damper tech (strong force manipulation) at TL12 could lead to its incorporation in TL13+ reactors which is why you get the increased EP output.
jfwking
February 3rd, 2004, 07:06 AM
To admit to following non cannon herasy here but I tend to ignore the whole H/D thing. Fuel purification is simply to get all the rubbish out of it before use or it clogs up your drives. Gas from a giant or space ice or sea water all have loads of impurities which need filtering out before they can be used. Imagine landing on a coast, sucking on board a full full load for your far trader (45 odd tons). In that lot are going to be fish/plants/disolved metals and minerals etc. You could maybe sell some of it on like the half ton of salt you would get from salt water ocean refueling.
Besides which a misjump due to unpurified fuel caused by a fish jammed into the fuel flow pipe strikes my evil GMs heart as realy funny.
Besides which a misjump due to unpurified fuel caused by a fish jammed into the fuel flow pipe strikes my evil GMs heart as realy funny.
TheEngineer
February 3rd, 2004, 07:45 AM
Regarding security aspects I would be glad with tanks full of water, too smile.gif
Hal
February 3rd, 2004, 11:19 AM
Originally posted by Captain Jonah:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Hal:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Straybow:
The difference between Hydrogen and Deuterium is one of those gratingly unscientific things that reaches the point of being broken in Traveller and needs to be fixed. I'm mystified at why it wasn't fixed decades ago… Shhhhhhh - don't say that, you never know who might be listening ;) </font>[/QUOTE]/looks outside at howling mob with pitchforks and torches. Points in opposite direction and says "he went thataway" then ducks :rolleyes: </font>[/QUOTE]/pulls on a mask that makes him look like Captain Jonah saying "He went that way and looks like a fuzzy blue thing - kept talking like a real live furby too. " ;)
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Hal:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Straybow:
The difference between Hydrogen and Deuterium is one of those gratingly unscientific things that reaches the point of being broken in Traveller and needs to be fixed. I'm mystified at why it wasn't fixed decades ago… Shhhhhhh - don't say that, you never know who might be listening ;) </font>[/QUOTE]/looks outside at howling mob with pitchforks and torches. Points in opposite direction and says "he went thataway" then ducks :rolleyes: </font>[/QUOTE]/pulls on a mask that makes him look like Captain Jonah saying "He went that way and looks like a fuzzy blue thing - kept talking like a real live furby too. " ;)
Straybow
February 3rd, 2004, 02:42 PM
:) Well, I surprised myself. The 0.015% D naturally occuring in hydrogen could be enough, if we assume that Traveller fusion techniques can do that. There are some other hard figures given that turn out, well, realistic.
1 EP (250MW) can accelerate a 100 dTon (assume 500 ton mass) starship at 1G. Normally a conservation of momentum equation does the trick, but with gravitics (exchange of momentum with the rest of the universe via distortion of space-time) we'll have to approximate.
250MW = Energy/sec
250MW = m·a·d/sec = m·a·v (averaged over 1 sec)
250MW = m·a·(0+a·t)/2 = ½m·a²·t
a² = 250MW/(½m·t)
a² = 250MW/(½500ton·1s) = 250MW/.25Mkg·s = 1000W/kg·s
a = 31.6 m/s²
Gravitics are operating at a reasonable 30% efficiency of input energy.
So let's see how we're doing in the fusion department. One dton (2 tons mass) D2 can produce 0.006355·2000kg·c² = 1.14e+18 Joule. That's 250MW for 145 years! D2 occurs naturally at 0.015% abundance, so if we throw that factor in we still get 1 EP from 1 ton of natural hydrogen for 7.9 days assuming complete fusion of all D2.
Traveller allows 2 days acceleration (288 10 min maneuvers in LBB2). Allowing a 50% efficiency converting raw thermal/gamma energy into electrical power, that means Traveller fusion power needs only 50% of fusionable mass used up from the 1 ton of hydrogen fuel requirement per EP.
:cool: So, yes, refining would just be removing all the heavy nuclei that suck up the power you're using to reach criticality and the power you get out of the reactions.
On the other hand, a pure D2 engine could operate with proportionately lower fuel requirements, and thus hold fuel for hundreds of jumps (being very conservative). That could be a better option than fission for those willing to spend the extra cost up front for concentrated fuel.
(See High Guard 3 (http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=10527) thread)
1 EP (250MW) can accelerate a 100 dTon (assume 500 ton mass) starship at 1G. Normally a conservation of momentum equation does the trick, but with gravitics (exchange of momentum with the rest of the universe via distortion of space-time) we'll have to approximate.
250MW = Energy/sec
250MW = m·a·d/sec = m·a·v (averaged over 1 sec)
250MW = m·a·(0+a·t)/2 = ½m·a²·t
a² = 250MW/(½m·t)
a² = 250MW/(½500ton·1s) = 250MW/.25Mkg·s = 1000W/kg·s
a = 31.6 m/s²
Gravitics are operating at a reasonable 30% efficiency of input energy.
So let's see how we're doing in the fusion department. One dton (2 tons mass) D2 can produce 0.006355·2000kg·c² = 1.14e+18 Joule. That's 250MW for 145 years! D2 occurs naturally at 0.015% abundance, so if we throw that factor in we still get 1 EP from 1 ton of natural hydrogen for 7.9 days assuming complete fusion of all D2.
Traveller allows 2 days acceleration (288 10 min maneuvers in LBB2). Allowing a 50% efficiency converting raw thermal/gamma energy into electrical power, that means Traveller fusion power needs only 50% of fusionable mass used up from the 1 ton of hydrogen fuel requirement per EP.
:cool: So, yes, refining would just be removing all the heavy nuclei that suck up the power you're using to reach criticality and the power you get out of the reactions.
On the other hand, a pure D2 engine could operate with proportionately lower fuel requirements, and thus hold fuel for hundreds of jumps (being very conservative). That could be a better option than fission for those willing to spend the extra cost up front for concentrated fuel.
(See High Guard 3 (http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=10527) thread)
Anthony
February 3rd, 2004, 10:03 PM
Um...
Power requirement of gravetics, assuming perfect efficiency, is thrust * velocity, where velocity is relative to whatever you're pushing on (unknown in this case). Assuming a 100dton ship is 100T (unlikely), that's 1 million newtons, so at velocities exceeding 250 meters/second you're breaking conservation of energy.
As for being able to match the power output of a fusion plant with the amount of D in the amount of fuel the plant uses, we have a problem because it implies you can purify your fuel to, oh, 15% D by volume and use 0.001 tons of fuel per energy point per month, instead of 1 ton. The effects on jump drives are particularly noteworthy.
Power requirement of gravetics, assuming perfect efficiency, is thrust * velocity, where velocity is relative to whatever you're pushing on (unknown in this case). Assuming a 100dton ship is 100T (unlikely), that's 1 million newtons, so at velocities exceeding 250 meters/second you're breaking conservation of energy.
As for being able to match the power output of a fusion plant with the amount of D in the amount of fuel the plant uses, we have a problem because it implies you can purify your fuel to, oh, 15% D by volume and use 0.001 tons of fuel per energy point per month, instead of 1 ton. The effects on jump drives are particularly noteworthy.
Straybow
February 5th, 2004, 12:59 PM
A slingshot maneuver (as used by NASA to send probes to the outer planets) accelerates with apparent violation of conservation of momentum. The exchange of momentum is moderated by gravity, and the loss of orbital momentum on the planet is too small to measure.
:alpha: Note that I assumed "exchange of momentum with the rest of the universe via distortion of space-time." Since we don't know the mathematics of interaction between a synthetic gravitational effect and the natural gravitational space-time curvature we can't perform momentum exchange calculations. Traveller assumes the limitation is 6 G for gross maneuvering and sufficient spike averaging for effective inertial compensation.
:omega:
If you're going to be picky about it :p, you'd have to apply General Relativity as well (not Special Relativity, which only applies to unaccelerating frames of reference). When you've completed your PhD in Physics let us know and we'll all listen very carefully.
[Corrected per Siggy :) ]
:alpha: Note that I assumed "exchange of momentum with the rest of the universe via distortion of space-time." Since we don't know the mathematics of interaction between a synthetic gravitational effect and the natural gravitational space-time curvature we can't perform momentum exchange calculations. Traveller assumes the limitation is 6 G for gross maneuvering and sufficient spike averaging for effective inertial compensation.
:omega:
If you're going to be picky about it :p, you'd have to apply General Relativity as well (not Special Relativity, which only applies to unaccelerating frames of reference). When you've completed your PhD in Physics let us know and we'll all listen very carefully.
[Corrected per Siggy :) ]
Straybow
February 5th, 2004, 01:08 PM
As for the energy of fusion from D, it's "just the facts" as Friday would say. Traveller already allows fission for TL9 jump engines, and there are rules for larger fission plants and higher tech size reductions.
See the thread I linked to earlier.
:file_22: If they overlooked the effect of concentrated D2 fuel, or for that matter the level of energy possible with proton fusion at higher tech, it is just one more avenue to explore for the rest of us.
See the thread I linked to earlier.
:file_22: If they overlooked the effect of concentrated D2 fuel, or for that matter the level of energy possible with proton fusion at higher tech, it is just one more avenue to explore for the rest of us.
mike wightman
February 5th, 2004, 01:37 PM
Here's another thought. If we are going to consider high tech fusion (with the benefit of nuclear damper tech to amplify the strong force) then why not allow for He fusion and so on?
Provided it is an exothermic reaction and you get out more energy than you have to put in, even taking into account the energy requirement of the nuclear "damper" that is built into your reactor, then fusion reactions higher up in the sequence (CNO and triple alpha reactions) may be possible.
In which case the fuel formulae from T2300/TNE/T4 may be more accurate.
By the way, Straybow, i agree with you that if D-D fusion is used in fusion reactors then deuterium is all you would carry for your reactor. Maybe that is where the reduced fuel requirements of the above game systems comes from ;)
Provided it is an exothermic reaction and you get out more energy than you have to put in, even taking into account the energy requirement of the nuclear "damper" that is built into your reactor, then fusion reactions higher up in the sequence (CNO and triple alpha reactions) may be possible.
In which case the fuel formulae from T2300/TNE/T4 may be more accurate.
By the way, Straybow, i agree with you that if D-D fusion is used in fusion reactors then deuterium is all you would carry for your reactor. Maybe that is where the reduced fuel requirements of the above game systems comes from ;)
mike wightman
February 5th, 2004, 02:10 PM
If you're going to be picky about it , you'd have to apply Special Relativity as well (not General Relativity, which only applies to unaccelerating frames of reference). When you've completed your PhD in Physics let us know and we'll all listen very carefully. Actually, if you want to be picky ;) graemlins/file_23.gif General Relativity is all about accelerating reference frames (a gravitational field is equivalent to an accelerated frame of reference etc), while Special Relativity is for inertial frames with constant velocity relative to one another.
TheEngineer
February 6th, 2004, 02:18 AM
Hi,
well, I guess Relativity not really is a PhD topic anymore smile.gif . The math is very simple, just imagination is stressed.
If we would respect simple energy conservation laws, it might be less likely to get into serious Relativity trouble anyway.
"Revising Traveller technology" IMHO would surely include to respect at least these fundamentals for normal space travel.
Especially in order to get away from the constant deadly thread of ultra high velocity starships / spacecraft, effectivly unable to manuever and navigated by weird or drunken pilots smile.gif
Really, I hate this near-c weapon bug.
But I had to admit playing Traveller a long time, telling my physics-aware but SF-willing players that thrusters are in fact capable of opening micro-gates to another alternate space. Accelerating is motivated by this space. Taking the universe as the sum of all spaces, energy is conserved....yep, perhaps I was drunk.
So IMTU actually I use "energy conservation" for space travel. At least it only has minor effects on normal player activities or gameplay. Space combat still works fine, travel times are a bit delayed.
In fact travel times are quite delayed and microjumps become more common, but I have a more hard-SF feeling now when dealing with in-system travel.
Nevertheless, everytime I think about changing something IMTU to add more "realism" I force myself to the second thought "Is this of any value for gameplay ?". Mostly I come to the conclusion, that it is actually completely unimportant.
Well. at least thinking it over was fun smile.gif
Best regards,
Mert
well, I guess Relativity not really is a PhD topic anymore smile.gif . The math is very simple, just imagination is stressed.
If we would respect simple energy conservation laws, it might be less likely to get into serious Relativity trouble anyway.
"Revising Traveller technology" IMHO would surely include to respect at least these fundamentals for normal space travel.
Especially in order to get away from the constant deadly thread of ultra high velocity starships / spacecraft, effectivly unable to manuever and navigated by weird or drunken pilots smile.gif
Really, I hate this near-c weapon bug.
But I had to admit playing Traveller a long time, telling my physics-aware but SF-willing players that thrusters are in fact capable of opening micro-gates to another alternate space. Accelerating is motivated by this space. Taking the universe as the sum of all spaces, energy is conserved....yep, perhaps I was drunk.
So IMTU actually I use "energy conservation" for space travel. At least it only has minor effects on normal player activities or gameplay. Space combat still works fine, travel times are a bit delayed.
In fact travel times are quite delayed and microjumps become more common, but I have a more hard-SF feeling now when dealing with in-system travel.
Nevertheless, everytime I think about changing something IMTU to add more "realism" I force myself to the second thought "Is this of any value for gameplay ?". Mostly I come to the conclusion, that it is actually completely unimportant.
Well. at least thinking it over was fun smile.gif
Best regards,
Mert
Straybow
February 6th, 2004, 03:56 AM
Thanks Siggy. :o I blame lack of sleep for that fumble. It isn't my fault somehow. ;)
About He fusion and higher, the question "why?" comes to mind. The universe is 97% hydrogen. With proton fusion you're going to have cheap, nearly unlimited fuel. The binding energy release for fusion drops significantly as mass increases, so you'd be getting less energy/mass fuel from anything else. Stick with hydrogen.
There could be other reasons for using unconcentrated hydrogen in fusion reactors. Perhaps some trick of physics involved in making fusion work (which we obviously don't know yet) requires the plain H be present in substantial quantities. In fact, I can think of one right now:
For power generation you don't necessarily want to pipe million-degree plasma around, so you might want comparatively large quantities of unheated fuel to dilute the product stream. At the same time you need to return mass into the reactor, and you don't want that mass to be substantially diluted from a fuel standpoint.
In that situation a fuel concentrated to 1% D2 would still work but reduce fuel demand by a factor of 60 (more conservative than my very conservative hand-waving factor "hundreds").
:paragraph: Herr Engr, my point about General Relativity is that it deals with the shape of space instead of simplified Lorenz transformations. The math to deal with synthetic distortions of space and their interaction with the "normal" shape of space would likely be PhD material until Gravitics becomes commonplace in late TL10. Unless… you know something we don't…
These things are important for gameplay (though admitted a bit off track in a piracy thread). When fission power requires many orders of magnitude less fuel than fusion :eek: something is seriously screwed up!
About He fusion and higher, the question "why?" comes to mind. The universe is 97% hydrogen. With proton fusion you're going to have cheap, nearly unlimited fuel. The binding energy release for fusion drops significantly as mass increases, so you'd be getting less energy/mass fuel from anything else. Stick with hydrogen.
There could be other reasons for using unconcentrated hydrogen in fusion reactors. Perhaps some trick of physics involved in making fusion work (which we obviously don't know yet) requires the plain H be present in substantial quantities. In fact, I can think of one right now:
For power generation you don't necessarily want to pipe million-degree plasma around, so you might want comparatively large quantities of unheated fuel to dilute the product stream. At the same time you need to return mass into the reactor, and you don't want that mass to be substantially diluted from a fuel standpoint.
In that situation a fuel concentrated to 1% D2 would still work but reduce fuel demand by a factor of 60 (more conservative than my very conservative hand-waving factor "hundreds").
:paragraph: Herr Engr, my point about General Relativity is that it deals with the shape of space instead of simplified Lorenz transformations. The math to deal with synthetic distortions of space and their interaction with the "normal" shape of space would likely be PhD material until Gravitics becomes commonplace in late TL10. Unless… you know something we don't…
These things are important for gameplay (though admitted a bit off track in a piracy thread). When fission power requires many orders of magnitude less fuel than fusion :eek: something is seriously screwed up!
Anthony
February 6th, 2004, 04:07 AM
Originally posted by Straybow:
A slingshot maneuver (as used by NASA to send probes to the outer planets) accelerates with apparent violation of conservation of momentum.Um...no. A slingshot manuever simply does momentum transfer between the probe and a planet or moon.
A slingshot maneuver (as used by NASA to send probes to the outer planets) accelerates with apparent violation of conservation of momentum.Um...no. A slingshot manuever simply does momentum transfer between the probe and a planet or moon.
Straybow
February 6th, 2004, 05:15 AM
No, where do you get that from?
We know it is a transfer of momentum because we firmly believe in conservation. Orbital mechanics initially assumes the planet's energy and momentum is constant (in fact, assumes a non-accelerating frame). The probe changes its vector by the gravity of the planet. Angular momentum of the probe wrt the sun is conserved, resulting in a change in tangential velocity wrt the planet.
In reality the planet gives up a tiny bit of momentum, but that is back-calculated from the probe's change in kinetic energy and not part of the flight mechanics (a higher-order correction to the initial equation can be performed based on the planet's change in momentum at this point).
With Traveller grav tech you can back-calculate the momentum exchanged with the rest of the universe by assuming conservation. There, it's done. To know the distribution of that momentum among nearby objects would be a matter of grav-tech mechanics which are unknown at this time.
We know it is a transfer of momentum because we firmly believe in conservation. Orbital mechanics initially assumes the planet's energy and momentum is constant (in fact, assumes a non-accelerating frame). The probe changes its vector by the gravity of the planet. Angular momentum of the probe wrt the sun is conserved, resulting in a change in tangential velocity wrt the planet.
In reality the planet gives up a tiny bit of momentum, but that is back-calculated from the probe's change in kinetic energy and not part of the flight mechanics (a higher-order correction to the initial equation can be performed based on the planet's change in momentum at this point).
With Traveller grav tech you can back-calculate the momentum exchanged with the rest of the universe by assuming conservation. There, it's done. To know the distribution of that momentum among nearby objects would be a matter of grav-tech mechanics which are unknown at this time.
TheDS
December 14th, 2004, 04:18 PM
Yeah, Anthony. And if you'd read the whole post, you'd've seen that he explained that. So Nya!
Anyway, y'all can blame Sigg for pointing me in this direction. Here (http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=28&t=000209&p=2#000022) is where I came from.
He3 cannot be used because it is radioactive and thus is exceedingly rare!
Based on this idea about damper-catalyzed fusion, I think I am going to decide that Traveller reactors start out as D-D or are CNO cycle, then at TL12 they become P-P, aided by dampers. Naturally, this drastically reduces their fuel efficiency, especially when you go below the probable bottom limits of P-P (about a cubic kilometer), and the smaller you go, the less efficient. Gotta pay for the energy being used to reduce the temperature and pressure requirements of fusion, you know, and the more you lower those limits, the more energy you need.
I will assume that as tech progresses and our bottom limit goes down (as written in the tables) that the reaction gets more efficient at a given volume; basically, the power required for gravitics and strong force and electromagnetics gets less.
The listed bottom limits are going to be the point at which you cannot extract more energy than you are inputting, so no more TL16 backpack fusion reactors for your battledress. Aboce that limit, the diminishing returns will lessen, until you get back to cubic kilometer size, where efficiency will always be maximum (and this maximum may go up too).
Anyway, y'all can blame Sigg for pointing me in this direction. Here (http://www.travellerrpg.com/cgi-bin/Trav/CotI/Discuss/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=28&t=000209&p=2#000022) is where I came from.
He3 cannot be used because it is radioactive and thus is exceedingly rare!
Based on this idea about damper-catalyzed fusion, I think I am going to decide that Traveller reactors start out as D-D or are CNO cycle, then at TL12 they become P-P, aided by dampers. Naturally, this drastically reduces their fuel efficiency, especially when you go below the probable bottom limits of P-P (about a cubic kilometer), and the smaller you go, the less efficient. Gotta pay for the energy being used to reduce the temperature and pressure requirements of fusion, you know, and the more you lower those limits, the more energy you need.
I will assume that as tech progresses and our bottom limit goes down (as written in the tables) that the reaction gets more efficient at a given volume; basically, the power required for gravitics and strong force and electromagnetics gets less.
The listed bottom limits are going to be the point at which you cannot extract more energy than you are inputting, so no more TL16 backpack fusion reactors for your battledress. Aboce that limit, the diminishing returns will lessen, until you get back to cubic kilometer size, where efficiency will always be maximum (and this maximum may go up too).
BetterThanLife
December 15th, 2004, 10:35 AM
How the heck did we get from a discussion of the Practicalities of Piracy to Astro Physics? smile.gif
Chuck Anumia
January 25th, 2005, 05:31 PM
We are going from science fiction to science fact. :rolleyes:
Straybow
January 28th, 2005, 01:30 AM
The practicalities of piracy depends on the practicality of gas giant fuel scooping (as a means of keeping your pirate ships fueled, and as an important means of providing targets for piracy).
Anthony
January 28th, 2005, 01:55 AM
Of course, if there's pirates out there, the practicality of gas giant fuel scooping (which is currently practical for waypoint systems, impractical for destination systems) drops dramatically.
We can, from the canonical interest rate on ships, determine that the odds of a ship being lost for any reason (including, but not limited to, piracy) must not be above 1-2% per year -- or else banks would never offer loans at the rates they do.
We can, from the canonical interest rate on ships, determine that the odds of a ship being lost for any reason (including, but not limited to, piracy) must not be above 1-2% per year -- or else banks would never offer loans at the rates they do.
graden1
January 28th, 2005, 03:10 PM
One house rule I've adopted in my T20 campaign makes piracy a lot more feasible; ship manuever ratings are based on current mass, rather than displacement. For example, a "loaded" far trader masses about 270 metric tons and pulls 2g's, so I give its drives about 540 tons of thrust. Now, a far trader that turns pirate will be running with no cargo, and might reduce its fuel to jump-1 (just enough for a quick getaway), which would give it a 3g manuever rating. Its target vessel will most likely be loaded down with cargo, and unlikely to pull more than 2g's. There is a downside to this; any trader pulling more than 3g's is obviously "running light", and such a merchant ship stopped for inspection would have a hard time explaining why the cargo hold is empty.
This rule also adds a new dimension to the cargo mass/profit equation for smugglers and pirates. A low-volume high-value cargo may be worth running all by itself, even with the rest of the hold empty, if it allows the ship extra speed for running blockades. A corsair vessel "running light" can make 5 or 6g's running a few tons of contraband. With great risks come great rewards....
XO
This rule also adds a new dimension to the cargo mass/profit equation for smugglers and pirates. A low-volume high-value cargo may be worth running all by itself, even with the rest of the hold empty, if it allows the ship extra speed for running blockades. A corsair vessel "running light" can make 5 or 6g's running a few tons of contraband. With great risks come great rewards....
XO
jatay3
February 3rd, 2005, 04:06 PM
Try "the Meditterranean" by Fernand Braudel to get a picture of what piracy is like.
Until quite recently(1700's-so)there was seldom any law on the sea except in localized places. People quite openly sailed into port with captured prizes and as long as it was nobody they knew few cared.
Pirates took several forms. There were pirates grande who had whole flotillas behind them and were used as bogeymen by their victims("if you're not good El Draco will get you"). Then there were pirates lite operating out of undeveloped areas, preying on the weakest of the weak and only surviving because they could run into their hills when a vengeful Venetian galley comes looking for them. Much like Indonisian pirates today.
Then their were part-time pirates who were traders or pirates by turn.
Their were some odditys-like one Spaniard who considered it his mission to rescue fleeing refugees off the coast of Algiers. That of course isn't really piracy, but would make an interesting inspiration for a campaign.
Another oddity is the Knights Hospittilers who in between raids maintained one of the best medical facilities in the world, and considered it a sacred duty to minister to the distressed-some of whom of course were distressed because of their raids. These would have considered themselves warriors rather than robbers; but then so would their enemies in Algiers.
In Traveller it would probably it would be very easy to fence prizes beyond the juristiction of the Big Empires(and the more straitlaced of the little ones). Only a few Vargr states would ask all that many questions for instance.
In the Marches their are a number of states with a "sense of humor" but the Zho's and the Imperium-and the Darrians, and the Swordies and the Aslan(both of whom are warlike but have "rules" for how to go about it which would probably not include lawless piracy, though it would countenance formal privatering),would all be looking over their shoulders. The Ardens of course have a "sense of humor"-but they are crawling with spies from the "humorless" states.
Thus the Marches, while a good place for piracy is not without disadvantages. However there is also quite a bit of prey to be had, which is probably less so in Vargr territory.
A Marches pirate would have to be constantly changeing bases to keep ahead of the avenger. Their would be plenty of places to hide but he could not hide forever. His main advantage might simply be that it is impractical to sack every "Port Royal".
A Marches pirate could live on forage, there being enough settled places to simply rob his food. Fuel is more of a problem as a force powerful enough to extort a reasonable sized starport would attract attention. On the other hand he could get fuel from ships. In any case the Marches have plenty of Ports Royal.
A pirate who works in the Marches but is based elsewhere might do well. As long as he is prepared for a long voyage.
Until quite recently(1700's-so)there was seldom any law on the sea except in localized places. People quite openly sailed into port with captured prizes and as long as it was nobody they knew few cared.
Pirates took several forms. There were pirates grande who had whole flotillas behind them and were used as bogeymen by their victims("if you're not good El Draco will get you"). Then there were pirates lite operating out of undeveloped areas, preying on the weakest of the weak and only surviving because they could run into their hills when a vengeful Venetian galley comes looking for them. Much like Indonisian pirates today.
Then their were part-time pirates who were traders or pirates by turn.
Their were some odditys-like one Spaniard who considered it his mission to rescue fleeing refugees off the coast of Algiers. That of course isn't really piracy, but would make an interesting inspiration for a campaign.
Another oddity is the Knights Hospittilers who in between raids maintained one of the best medical facilities in the world, and considered it a sacred duty to minister to the distressed-some of whom of course were distressed because of their raids. These would have considered themselves warriors rather than robbers; but then so would their enemies in Algiers.
In Traveller it would probably it would be very easy to fence prizes beyond the juristiction of the Big Empires(and the more straitlaced of the little ones). Only a few Vargr states would ask all that many questions for instance.
In the Marches their are a number of states with a "sense of humor" but the Zho's and the Imperium-and the Darrians, and the Swordies and the Aslan(both of whom are warlike but have "rules" for how to go about it which would probably not include lawless piracy, though it would countenance formal privatering),would all be looking over their shoulders. The Ardens of course have a "sense of humor"-but they are crawling with spies from the "humorless" states.
Thus the Marches, while a good place for piracy is not without disadvantages. However there is also quite a bit of prey to be had, which is probably less so in Vargr territory.
A Marches pirate would have to be constantly changeing bases to keep ahead of the avenger. Their would be plenty of places to hide but he could not hide forever. His main advantage might simply be that it is impractical to sack every "Port Royal".
A Marches pirate could live on forage, there being enough settled places to simply rob his food. Fuel is more of a problem as a force powerful enough to extort a reasonable sized starport would attract attention. On the other hand he could get fuel from ships. In any case the Marches have plenty of Ports Royal.
A pirate who works in the Marches but is based elsewhere might do well. As long as he is prepared for a long voyage.
jatay3
February 3rd, 2005, 04:16 PM
The Marches probably have a lot of "ports royal" but only a few "tortugas"
robject
February 3rd, 2005, 05:17 PM
Originally posted by Xavier Onassis:
One house rule I've adopted in my T20 campaign makes piracy a lot more feasible; ship manuever ratings are based on current mass, rather than displacement. ... I think this is a great idea.
One house rule I've adopted in my T20 campaign makes piracy a lot more feasible; ship manuever ratings are based on current mass, rather than displacement. ... I think this is a great idea.
Chuck Anumia
February 3rd, 2005, 05:45 PM
Originally posted by jatay3:
A Marches pirate could live on forage, there being enough settled places to simply rob his food. Fuel is more of a problem as a force powerful enough to extort a reasonable sized starport would attract attention. On the other hand he could get fuel from ships. In any case the Marches have plenty of Ports Royal.
A pirate who works in the Marches but is based elsewhere might do well. As long as he is prepared for a long voyage. The more organized the pirates could become, the more protection and support they could offer each other. Fuel ships could be staged in areas where they are gong to be raiding for faster getaways.
A Marches pirate could live on forage, there being enough settled places to simply rob his food. Fuel is more of a problem as a force powerful enough to extort a reasonable sized starport would attract attention. On the other hand he could get fuel from ships. In any case the Marches have plenty of Ports Royal.
A pirate who works in the Marches but is based elsewhere might do well. As long as he is prepared for a long voyage. The more organized the pirates could become, the more protection and support they could offer each other. Fuel ships could be staged in areas where they are gong to be raiding for faster getaways.
Sephrim
February 10th, 2005, 05:33 PM
Combining resources, intel and protection, as well as a market for ill gotten good. Isn't that state formation. Not a bad thing, a Nation is born smile.gif
Chuck Anumia
February 10th, 2005, 05:42 PM
Originally posted by Sephrim:
Combining resources, intel and protection, as well as a market for ill gotten good. Isn't that state formation. Not a bad thing, a Nation is born smile.gif Long Live Tortuga!!! graemlins/file_23.gif :D graemlins/file_21.gif
Combining resources, intel and protection, as well as a market for ill gotten good. Isn't that state formation. Not a bad thing, a Nation is born smile.gif Long Live Tortuga!!! graemlins/file_23.gif :D graemlins/file_21.gif
BetterThanLife
February 10th, 2005, 11:08 PM
The lesson of Granicus, is that it is outside the Imperium border and is part of a multi-system government. The Raidermarch would be in a similar situation. Now on the Spinward end of the Imperium, there isn't much hope in District 268, Pax Rulin or Egryn subsectors even though these are outside the Imperium. Your best bet would be Coreward of the Spinward Marches. (Probably coreward of Regina, or Aramis, in the Uthe and Firgr subsectors.) Thinking about it there aren't all that many Imperial Naval bases along that border for some reason. In the Coreward 75% of those two subsectors there are a grand total of two Naval bases at, EFATE and Pixie (And they are far to Spinward of Regina Subsector.).
whartung
February 28th, 2005, 06:40 PM
Now, someone correct me if I'm wrong.
When it comes to jumping from system to system, I pretty much assume that the target location within the destination system can be pretty much anywhere within the system (modulo 100D limit et al). I also assume that there is some margin of error (i.e. you don't pop in at some exact point in space, but reasonably close).
Next, I would think that since (as I understand it) your original Real Space vector is maintained through the jump, you would want to get a vector heading towards your destination planet (wherever it is plotted to be, probably completely unrelated to your current planet), or you simply stop the ship, jump, and create a new vector when you arrive.
My concern with regard to piracy, is simply that if you essentially allow ships to come in system with any vector, and allowed to arrive within any part of the system, that patrol of the system would be neigh impossible. The resources required in terms of just the volume of patrol vessels would be utter madness.
The reason is two fold. The first is simply gettting enough ships to effectively cover the vast area of space with sensors roaring to extend their reach, but more importantly, two, is to have patrol vessels close enough that their response time is meaningful. It simply does not matter how many patrol craft you have if they can not get to the ship in distress in any reasonable amount of time.
So, given those two details as a premise: ships can arrive pretty much anywhere within a system, regardless of their starting system and the wide open space is simply unmanageable from from an actual patrol point of view, doesn't it make sense that systems will have designated "injection" areas and trade lanes to the planet?
The idea being that if you limit where ships can come in to the system, and the routes they take once in system towards the planet, then you vastly reduce the number of patrol craft necessary to provide security to the shipping lanes, and still have effective coverage and response time.
Now certainly there is nothing to stop you from coming in to a system whereever and whenever, but the systems traffic authority can make compliance to their injump, outjump and trade lanes a condition on whether they will be able to provide security for your vessel.
Assuming the routes are efficient, there's no reason a trader wouldn't take these routes. Even though planets move et al, etc. there's no reason these publish routes can't be made relative to the host planet, and no reason any normal star chart wouldn't have that information. It's just another minor detail in your jump planning.
The only downside is for those ships that aren't willing to take the time/fuel to change their vectors from a fixed location for the destination planet.
Even if that were the prevailing view then the in system patrol can set up and patrol the common vectors for ship egress, from the common trade partners. Most planets have very few trading partners within J-1,2 or even 3, and that leaves a finite number of "optimal vectors" where folks should be coming in to the system, and where they should be exiting the system.
It would seem to me that without these kind of restrictions, piracy would be much easier to do, much like pickpocketing on the New York subway, just too much to police.
Especially if the pirate is operating near the 100D limit, it seems that the pirate can easily evade an approaching patrol by simply jumping outsystem. It doesn't even have to be a particularly GOOD or really accurate jump, just "close" to get the ship out of the system, even if it were a micro jump out into deep space. Burns a week, but better a week spent in J-Space than a life on a prison colony.
On an unrelated note, some folks questioned how to dispose of a ship once you've captured it. If you're talking about just getting rid of it, I think that would be fairly easy, shut it down so it's a cold rock, and just push it off the elliptic plane into deep space, or toss it into a nearby Gas Giant or star.
When it comes to jumping from system to system, I pretty much assume that the target location within the destination system can be pretty much anywhere within the system (modulo 100D limit et al). I also assume that there is some margin of error (i.e. you don't pop in at some exact point in space, but reasonably close).
Next, I would think that since (as I understand it) your original Real Space vector is maintained through the jump, you would want to get a vector heading towards your destination planet (wherever it is plotted to be, probably completely unrelated to your current planet), or you simply stop the ship, jump, and create a new vector when you arrive.
My concern with regard to piracy, is simply that if you essentially allow ships to come in system with any vector, and allowed to arrive within any part of the system, that patrol of the system would be neigh impossible. The resources required in terms of just the volume of patrol vessels would be utter madness.
The reason is two fold. The first is simply gettting enough ships to effectively cover the vast area of space with sensors roaring to extend their reach, but more importantly, two, is to have patrol vessels close enough that their response time is meaningful. It simply does not matter how many patrol craft you have if they can not get to the ship in distress in any reasonable amount of time.
So, given those two details as a premise: ships can arrive pretty much anywhere within a system, regardless of their starting system and the wide open space is simply unmanageable from from an actual patrol point of view, doesn't it make sense that systems will have designated "injection" areas and trade lanes to the planet?
The idea being that if you limit where ships can come in to the system, and the routes they take once in system towards the planet, then you vastly reduce the number of patrol craft necessary to provide security to the shipping lanes, and still have effective coverage and response time.
Now certainly there is nothing to stop you from coming in to a system whereever and whenever, but the systems traffic authority can make compliance to their injump, outjump and trade lanes a condition on whether they will be able to provide security for your vessel.
Assuming the routes are efficient, there's no reason a trader wouldn't take these routes. Even though planets move et al, etc. there's no reason these publish routes can't be made relative to the host planet, and no reason any normal star chart wouldn't have that information. It's just another minor detail in your jump planning.
The only downside is for those ships that aren't willing to take the time/fuel to change their vectors from a fixed location for the destination planet.
Even if that were the prevailing view then the in system patrol can set up and patrol the common vectors for ship egress, from the common trade partners. Most planets have very few trading partners within J-1,2 or even 3, and that leaves a finite number of "optimal vectors" where folks should be coming in to the system, and where they should be exiting the system.
It would seem to me that without these kind of restrictions, piracy would be much easier to do, much like pickpocketing on the New York subway, just too much to police.
Especially if the pirate is operating near the 100D limit, it seems that the pirate can easily evade an approaching patrol by simply jumping outsystem. It doesn't even have to be a particularly GOOD or really accurate jump, just "close" to get the ship out of the system, even if it were a micro jump out into deep space. Burns a week, but better a week spent in J-Space than a life on a prison colony.
On an unrelated note, some folks questioned how to dispose of a ship once you've captured it. If you're talking about just getting rid of it, I think that would be fairly easy, shut it down so it's a cold rock, and just push it off the elliptic plane into deep space, or toss it into a nearby Gas Giant or star.
BetterThanLife
March 1st, 2005, 02:39 PM
Originally posted by whartung:
The idea being that if you limit where ships can come in to the system, and the routes they take once in system towards the planet, then you vastly reduce the number of patrol craft necessary to provide security to the shipping lanes, and still have effective coverage and response time.
Only problem is that you don't know when or where someone is coming in. If you limit your approach vectors you could end up with some nasty collisions. What happens when two ships happen to hit the same window and jump into the same space? Granted that is a remote chance, but two ships leaving the same port a day apart heading for the same destination can arrive at the same time, and if you severely limit arrival portals, in the same place. Ooops! Now if you put your patrol craft in the same space, what happens when a big freighter shows up right on top of your little 400 Ton Patrol Corvette.
On an unrelated note, some folks questioned how to dispose of a ship once you've captured it. If you're talking about just getting rid of it, I think that would be fairly easy, shut it down so it's a cold rock, and just push it off the elliptic plane into deep space, or toss it into a nearby Gas Giant or star. Actually I believe the discussion was how to profitably dispose of a prize. Not how to dump it into a sun.
The idea being that if you limit where ships can come in to the system, and the routes they take once in system towards the planet, then you vastly reduce the number of patrol craft necessary to provide security to the shipping lanes, and still have effective coverage and response time.
Only problem is that you don't know when or where someone is coming in. If you limit your approach vectors you could end up with some nasty collisions. What happens when two ships happen to hit the same window and jump into the same space? Granted that is a remote chance, but two ships leaving the same port a day apart heading for the same destination can arrive at the same time, and if you severely limit arrival portals, in the same place. Ooops! Now if you put your patrol craft in the same space, what happens when a big freighter shows up right on top of your little 400 Ton Patrol Corvette.
On an unrelated note, some folks questioned how to dispose of a ship once you've captured it. If you're talking about just getting rid of it, I think that would be fairly easy, shut it down so it's a cold rock, and just push it off the elliptic plane into deep space, or toss it into a nearby Gas Giant or star. Actually I believe the discussion was how to profitably dispose of a prize. Not how to dump it into a sun.
whartung
March 1st, 2005, 05:10 PM
Oh, I don't think that collsions are that likely. Space is pretty darn big. If you have a 10,000km diameter volume slated for entry, collsions I think would be pretty darn rare.
The problem is simply response time.
If you consider the patrol volume to be the area between 10 diameters and 100 diameters, then for a size 8 (12000km world), you need ~420 4G patrol ships to give an average 1 hr on site response time. From that you guesstimate what a workable response time is for a pirate incident within the patrol range, and staff up the ships from there.
So, if you can limit approach to any volume of space, you can cut back on the patrol forces necessary or improve response time.
Obviously there's nothing limiting a ship from coming and going wherever they want, but if you basically publish that you patrol a certain volume, and those volumes lead to the most common destinations, like, say, the Jump Routes from system to system, then you can make things really difficult for the potential pirate without a large amount of resources.
With a 10000km diameter corridor out to the 100 diameter limit, with the volume oriented to suit the best vector for a given planet, you can patrol that with FOUR 4G patrol cruisers and have 1hr response time.
Quite the reduction in resources.
You can also have traffic control hand out jump out points or jump in points to even further mitigate any potential collisions for merchant traffic.
The problem is simply response time.
If you consider the patrol volume to be the area between 10 diameters and 100 diameters, then for a size 8 (12000km world), you need ~420 4G patrol ships to give an average 1 hr on site response time. From that you guesstimate what a workable response time is for a pirate incident within the patrol range, and staff up the ships from there.
So, if you can limit approach to any volume of space, you can cut back on the patrol forces necessary or improve response time.
Obviously there's nothing limiting a ship from coming and going wherever they want, but if you basically publish that you patrol a certain volume, and those volumes lead to the most common destinations, like, say, the Jump Routes from system to system, then you can make things really difficult for the potential pirate without a large amount of resources.
With a 10000km diameter corridor out to the 100 diameter limit, with the volume oriented to suit the best vector for a given planet, you can patrol that with FOUR 4G patrol cruisers and have 1hr response time.
Quite the reduction in resources.
You can also have traffic control hand out jump out points or jump in points to even further mitigate any potential collisions for merchant traffic.
BetterThanLife
March 2nd, 2005, 02:15 AM
Originally posted by whartung:
Oh, I don't think that collsions are that likely. Space is pretty darn big. If you have a 10,000km diameter volume slated for entry, collsions I think would be pretty darn rare.Pretty darn rare is a relative thing. Lets call it one chance in a million. (For the sake of argument, there is not enough statistical canon evidence to get us a good probability, though one chance in a million is pretty darn rare. smile.gif ) If there are an average of 400 systems per sector. There are between 20 and 21 sectors in the Imperium alone. So lets call it 8000 systems. If each system averages 100 flights a day, you would get a collision about every 1.25 days. I think once a year from something like that is too often.
The problem is simply response time.
If you consider the patrol volume to be the area between 10 diameters and 100 diameters, then for a size 8 (12000km world), you need ~420 4G patrol ships to give an average 1 hr on site response time. From that you guesstimate what a workable response time is for a pirate incident within the patrol range, and staff up the ships from there.
So, if you can limit approach to any volume of space, you can cut back on the patrol forces necessary or improve response time.
Obviously there's nothing limiting a ship from coming and going wherever they want, but if you basically publish that you patrol a certain volume, and those volumes lead to the most common destinations, like, say, the Jump Routes from system to system, then you can make things really difficult for the potential pirate without a large amount of resources.
With a 10000km diameter corridor out to the 100 diameter limit, with the volume oriented to suit the best vector for a given planet, you can patrol that with FOUR 4G patrol cruisers and have 1hr response time.
Quite the reduction in resources.
You can also have traffic control hand out jump out points or jump in points to even further mitigate any potential collisions for merchant traffic. When you consider weapon ranges, under LBB2 COmbat you can move a Light second with a 0/0 intercept in an hour, or 2 light seconds if you don't slow down in an hour. (Well about an hour, 4000 seconds.) A Light second is about 300,000Km.
100D with a 12,000Km world is 1,200,000Km. One ship could get from close orbit to 100D in 4 hours under LBB2 combat rules. (If you wanted to come to rest there.) Now according to the travel rules a 4G ship takes about 3 hours to get to 100D of a size 8 world. I figure you could get good coverage with just over a dozen ships. You couldn't be everywhere at once but you could definitely keep a pirate on their toes and out of your system. And if you had capital ship sensors monitoring things you could preposition your ships, kind of like the Battle of Britain, and mess up anyone's day.
Oh, I don't think that collsions are that likely. Space is pretty darn big. If you have a 10,000km diameter volume slated for entry, collsions I think would be pretty darn rare.Pretty darn rare is a relative thing. Lets call it one chance in a million. (For the sake of argument, there is not enough statistical canon evidence to get us a good probability, though one chance in a million is pretty darn rare. smile.gif ) If there are an average of 400 systems per sector. There are between 20 and 21 sectors in the Imperium alone. So lets call it 8000 systems. If each system averages 100 flights a day, you would get a collision about every 1.25 days. I think once a year from something like that is too often.
The problem is simply response time.
If you consider the patrol volume to be the area between 10 diameters and 100 diameters, then for a size 8 (12000km world), you need ~420 4G patrol ships to give an average 1 hr on site response time. From that you guesstimate what a workable response time is for a pirate incident within the patrol range, and staff up the ships from there.
So, if you can limit approach to any volume of space, you can cut back on the patrol forces necessary or improve response time.
Obviously there's nothing limiting a ship from coming and going wherever they want, but if you basically publish that you patrol a certain volume, and those volumes lead to the most common destinations, like, say, the Jump Routes from system to system, then you can make things really difficult for the potential pirate without a large amount of resources.
With a 10000km diameter corridor out to the 100 diameter limit, with the volume oriented to suit the best vector for a given planet, you can patrol that with FOUR 4G patrol cruisers and have 1hr response time.
Quite the reduction in resources.
You can also have traffic control hand out jump out points or jump in points to even further mitigate any potential collisions for merchant traffic. When you consider weapon ranges, under LBB2 COmbat you can move a Light second with a 0/0 intercept in an hour, or 2 light seconds if you don't slow down in an hour. (Well about an hour, 4000 seconds.) A Light second is about 300,000Km.
100D with a 12,000Km world is 1,200,000Km. One ship could get from close orbit to 100D in 4 hours under LBB2 combat rules. (If you wanted to come to rest there.) Now according to the travel rules a 4G ship takes about 3 hours to get to 100D of a size 8 world. I figure you could get good coverage with just over a dozen ships. You couldn't be everywhere at once but you could definitely keep a pirate on their toes and out of your system. And if you had capital ship sensors monitoring things you could preposition your ships, kind of like the Battle of Britain, and mess up anyone's day.
veltyen
March 2nd, 2005, 02:34 AM
1 in a million is pretty high.
A landing area 10,000 km across has a spherical volume of (5*10^11) km ^3. Considering that if the distribution is smooth accross that volume, and an ENORMOUS ship (71 million dTon - nothing that I know of in canon is anywhere near that large) would take up 1 km^3 and that the first thing to do when entering system is to leave the jump area.
This makes the pr(collision) extremely low. 1 in 1000 million would still be on the high side. One accident every three years over the entire imperium is something that is a tragic accident, but dwarfed by piracy, sabotage and jump drive failure.
A sphere of sdb's and recovery boats at 20,000 km radius should be relatively safe, and also keep the area safe.
A landing area 10,000 km across has a spherical volume of (5*10^11) km ^3. Considering that if the distribution is smooth accross that volume, and an ENORMOUS ship (71 million dTon - nothing that I know of in canon is anywhere near that large) would take up 1 km^3 and that the first thing to do when entering system is to leave the jump area.
This makes the pr(collision) extremely low. 1 in 1000 million would still be on the high side. One accident every three years over the entire imperium is something that is a tragic accident, but dwarfed by piracy, sabotage and jump drive failure.
A sphere of sdb's and recovery boats at 20,000 km radius should be relatively safe, and also keep the area safe.
BetterThanLife
March 2nd, 2005, 09:36 AM
Originally posted by veltyen:
1 in a million is pretty high.
A landing area 10,000 km across has a spherical volume of (5*10^11) km ^3. Considering that if the distribution is smooth accross that volume, and an ENORMOUS ship (71 million dTon - nothing that I know of in canon is anywhere near that large) would take up 1 km^3 and that the first thing to do when entering system is to leave the jump area.
This makes the pr(collision) extremely low. 1 in 1000 million would still be on the high side. One accident every three years over the entire imperium is something that is a tragic accident, but dwarfed by piracy, sabotage and jump drive failure.
A sphere of sdb's and recovery boats at 20,000 km radius should be relatively safe, and also keep the area safe. And an average of 100 ships per day is also low, IMHO. The point I was making wasn't that numbers accuracy, it was the sheer volume of traffic in the Imperium, (forget about the rest of the Known Universe) was so high that even a small percentage was likely to be fatal all too often.
Now consider that a ship is supposed to come out of jump at 100D at 168 hours, ideally. But both have a normal variance of +/- 10% on a successful jump. Not knowing when you are going to arrive or when you are going to arrive makes figuring out traffic control at the arrival end a pain in the butt. If two ships are aiming at the same point, (The center of the Arrival zone.) and arrive at the same time from two different destinations then you get a collision especially since they had no idea that the other was coming. If you limit the area where ships are coming in you drastically increase the chance of collision. 2 ships leaving the same departure world, two hours apart, for the same destination world, aiming at the same arrival zone both hit really close to the target (They have really good astrogators. They both hit the center of the zone. However the first ship hits it at +1 hour and the second ship hits it at -1 hour. (Jump Convergence?) Now if ships are aiming at their favorite arrival zone/vector, the chance of collision goes way down.
1 in a million is pretty high.
A landing area 10,000 km across has a spherical volume of (5*10^11) km ^3. Considering that if the distribution is smooth accross that volume, and an ENORMOUS ship (71 million dTon - nothing that I know of in canon is anywhere near that large) would take up 1 km^3 and that the first thing to do when entering system is to leave the jump area.
This makes the pr(collision) extremely low. 1 in 1000 million would still be on the high side. One accident every three years over the entire imperium is something that is a tragic accident, but dwarfed by piracy, sabotage and jump drive failure.
A sphere of sdb's and recovery boats at 20,000 km radius should be relatively safe, and also keep the area safe. And an average of 100 ships per day is also low, IMHO. The point I was making wasn't that numbers accuracy, it was the sheer volume of traffic in the Imperium, (forget about the rest of the Known Universe) was so high that even a small percentage was likely to be fatal all too often.
Now consider that a ship is supposed to come out of jump at 100D at 168 hours, ideally. But both have a normal variance of +/- 10% on a successful jump. Not knowing when you are going to arrive or when you are going to arrive makes figuring out traffic control at the arrival end a pain in the butt. If two ships are aiming at the same point, (The center of the Arrival zone.) and arrive at the same time from two different destinations then you get a collision especially since they had no idea that the other was coming. If you limit the area where ships are coming in you drastically increase the chance of collision. 2 ships leaving the same departure world, two hours apart, for the same destination world, aiming at the same arrival zone both hit really close to the target (They have really good astrogators. They both hit the center of the zone. However the first ship hits it at +1 hour and the second ship hits it at -1 hour. (Jump Convergence?) Now if ships are aiming at their favorite arrival zone/vector, the chance of collision goes way down.
daryen
March 2nd, 2005, 10:03 AM
Of course, if you have a designated "landing zone", you can also specify that anyone using that landing zone has to enter with a relative velocity of zero or be subject to very large fines.
While that sounds restrictive, it really isn't. If you are not going to enter with a relative velocity of zero, or are going to be entering hot, just do it somewhere else away from the landing zone.
That alone should mitigate most accidents, and lower the fatality levels of any that do happen. At the landing zone, anyway.
While that sounds restrictive, it really isn't. If you are not going to enter with a relative velocity of zero, or are going to be entering hot, just do it somewhere else away from the landing zone.
That alone should mitigate most accidents, and lower the fatality levels of any that do happen. At the landing zone, anyway.
BetterThanLife
March 2nd, 2005, 11:05 AM
Originally posted by daryen:
Of course, if you have a designated "landing zone", you can also specify that anyone using that landing zone has to enter with a relative velocity of zero or be subject to very large fines.
While that sounds restrictive, it really isn't. If you are not going to enter with a relative velocity of zero, or are going to be entering hot, just do it somewhere else away from the landing zone.
That alone should mitigate most accidents, and lower the fatality levels of any that do happen. At the landing zone, anyway. My question is what happens when two ships happen to emerge from Jump at the same place and time. Velocity would have no real relevance.
Of course, if you have a designated "landing zone", you can also specify that anyone using that landing zone has to enter with a relative velocity of zero or be subject to very large fines.
While that sounds restrictive, it really isn't. If you are not going to enter with a relative velocity of zero, or are going to be entering hot, just do it somewhere else away from the landing zone.
That alone should mitigate most accidents, and lower the fatality levels of any that do happen. At the landing zone, anyway. My question is what happens when two ships happen to emerge from Jump at the same place and time. Velocity would have no real relevance.
Fritz_Brown
March 2nd, 2005, 12:48 PM
Which is why a 10% variance in time and distance is ludicrous. Jump has been around for what, 1500-2000 years, and you can't get any closer than 10%?! If I were the CEO of a Megacorp that produced jump drives, I would shoot all my R&D folks if they couldn't fix that in a 10 year period. (And, no, I wouldn't let them quit before their contract was up!) graemlins/toast.gif
Chuck Anumia
March 2nd, 2005, 01:13 PM
Of Course you are right Fritz 88!
What Megacorp could maintain its market share if the competition could make improvements to say 5% or even 1% variance during 2000 years of trial and error? :confused:
What Megacorp could maintain its market share if the competition could make improvements to say 5% or even 1% variance during 2000 years of trial and error? :confused:
mike wightman
March 2nd, 2005, 01:31 PM
Two handwaves:
either the physics of jump don't allow anything better than the 10% variance;
or,
higher TL computers, or more advanced (and larger/more expensive) software, can reduce the jump variance.
either the physics of jump don't allow anything better than the 10% variance;
or,
higher TL computers, or more advanced (and larger/more expensive) software, can reduce the jump variance.
far-trader
March 2nd, 2005, 01:33 PM
Easy. It's the MegaCorp with the exclusive monopoly on the Jump Drive tech. They provide the whole Imperium with the only legal (if not the only) source of the critical components, carefully manufactured to a strict tolerance for 10% variance. Naturally there are certain ships that are built to much more precision, or so the conspiracy theorists claim ;)
A similar situation exists in the Solomani space. And of course we all know the Vargr can't be bothered with improving the tech, and the Aslan just copied a crashed Solomani design so they don't know how to improve it. The Zhodani are a few TL behind but could be overall much more accurate in all their ships jumps, not being concerned with duplicity needs to keep the improvement secret to the point of crippling it's military fleets.
I dunno, just a crazy theory. The "real" reason is of course that it's the way jump-space works. There is no other way.
Oh, also there's not quite 2000 years of progress in there iirc. The long-night took some wind out of the sails don't forget.
A similar situation exists in the Solomani space. And of course we all know the Vargr can't be bothered with improving the tech, and the Aslan just copied a crashed Solomani design so they don't know how to improve it. The Zhodani are a few TL behind but could be overall much more accurate in all their ships jumps, not being concerned with duplicity needs to keep the improvement secret to the point of crippling it's military fleets.
I dunno, just a crazy theory. The "real" reason is of course that it's the way jump-space works. There is no other way.
Oh, also there's not quite 2000 years of progress in there iirc. The long-night took some wind out of the sails don't forget.
daryen
March 2nd, 2005, 01:39 PM
Originally posted by Bhoins:
My question is what happens when two ships happen to emerge from Jump at the same place and time. Velocity would have no real relevance. The simpliest solution is just to say they can't. Whatever it is that prevents a precipitation onto an existing object also prevents simultaneous co-located precipitations.
Sure that's a handwave, but all of jump is a handwave. Why make things harder on yourself?
My question is what happens when two ships happen to emerge from Jump at the same place and time. Velocity would have no real relevance. The simpliest solution is just to say they can't. Whatever it is that prevents a precipitation onto an existing object also prevents simultaneous co-located precipitations.
Sure that's a handwave, but all of jump is a handwave. Why make things harder on yourself?
Fritz_Brown
March 2nd, 2005, 03:34 PM
And, daryen, if you can't drop out of j-space into/onto another object, then we get back to the original issue with having an "arrival area" - velocity coming out of jump. I would say there is a standard velocity range within arrival and departure zones. Much like the "no faster than 250 knots below 10,000 feet" rule - which also applies within what used to be called Terminal Control Areas. And, really busy airports have arrival routes that you MUST follow, including speeds, altitudes, etc.
But, Bhoins, in space you have a massive increase in scale of the "sky" in what is known as "big sky, little bullet" theory. The odds are just against that collision. (But, of course, our airplanes don't have a possibility of popping out near the runway off by as much as 10%!)
But, Bhoins, in space you have a massive increase in scale of the "sky" in what is known as "big sky, little bullet" theory. The odds are just against that collision. (But, of course, our airplanes don't have a possibility of popping out near the runway off by as much as 10%!)
BetterThanLife
March 2nd, 2005, 05:07 PM
If we ignore the 10% varience then you get into real trouble. Because two ships that leave at the same time for the same destination, at the precise center of the arrival zone will be colocated. The big difference between Jump emergence and Aircraft landing approaches is that you know where all the airplanes are in the area around the runway threshold. You don't know where the spacecraft coming out of jump are or when they will arrive before they actually appear. I thik the 10% is actually a safety margin. You are unlikely to hit the exact same spot at the same time with that variance. But the better your astrogator the more likely that you will hit that spot. smile.gif
Talk about law of unintended consequences.
For those of you with a problem with the 10% margin. smile.gif
To paraphrase Capt. Dillon Hunt:
Jump drive isn't the best way to travel faster than light. Its the only way!
Talk about law of unintended consequences.
For those of you with a problem with the 10% margin. smile.gif
To paraphrase Capt. Dillon Hunt:
Jump drive isn't the best way to travel faster than light. Its the only way!
veltyen
March 2nd, 2005, 07:45 PM
Go the other way. There are 100,000 ships in a 10,000 km diametre sphere jump zone. Each large enough to carve out a section of space 1km cubed. While sitting in the zone another ship pops in. The chance of a collision assuming a smooth probability of location is still 1 in 5 million.
As each ship with a 1G+ maneuver drive takes less then 20 minutes to leave the jump zone this would indicate that those 100,000 superfreighters have arrived in the last 20 minutes. Meaning the system has a daily traffic of 7.2 million vessels. This gives a rate of jump collision (jumping and ending up accross the same space as another ship) of about 1.5 accidents per day.
So if your system needs 1000 trillion cubic metres of material trucked in daily then you may want to run several drop zones. smile.gif
Actually, a secondary consideration, especially with larger ships, is the chance of a misjump when you return to realspace near a gravitational object. 100D on a large dreadnaught is a large occluded area.
As each ship with a 1G+ maneuver drive takes less then 20 minutes to leave the jump zone this would indicate that those 100,000 superfreighters have arrived in the last 20 minutes. Meaning the system has a daily traffic of 7.2 million vessels. This gives a rate of jump collision (jumping and ending up accross the same space as another ship) of about 1.5 accidents per day.
So if your system needs 1000 trillion cubic metres of material trucked in daily then you may want to run several drop zones. smile.gif
Actually, a secondary consideration, especially with larger ships, is the chance of a misjump when you return to realspace near a gravitational object. 100D on a large dreadnaught is a large occluded area.
TheEngineer
March 3rd, 2005, 03:09 AM
Hi !
Was there even something noted about a thing like jump collisions ?
AFAIK this never was an issue.
So, I agree with daryen that jump exit simply cannot happen in a gravitionally "disturbed" area like the space occupied by another craft.
Together with the advise to emerge with "low" velocity as Fritz suggested or best with a perfect zero vector (in relation to the destination world and as the basic rules suggest), there is little risk left.
Guess its quite reasonable to expect traffic control in civilized regions, meaning jump arrival space maybe for every possible source system is exactly specified, as well as allowed velocity vectors. This decreases risk to zero.
Veltyen, where comes this misjump idea on g-field collision comes from ?
Was there even something noted about a thing like jump collisions ?
AFAIK this never was an issue.
So, I agree with daryen that jump exit simply cannot happen in a gravitionally "disturbed" area like the space occupied by another craft.
Together with the advise to emerge with "low" velocity as Fritz suggested or best with a perfect zero vector (in relation to the destination world and as the basic rules suggest), there is little risk left.
Guess its quite reasonable to expect traffic control in civilized regions, meaning jump arrival space maybe for every possible source system is exactly specified, as well as allowed velocity vectors. This decreases risk to zero.
Veltyen, where comes this misjump idea on g-field collision comes from ?
veltyen
March 3rd, 2005, 09:39 AM
where comes this misjump idea on g-field collision comes from ?Not from the drive, just from the mass of the ships. 100 diametres of a large vessel does get to be a reasonable size.
Take a 800 dTon sphere. While the ship has only got a 30 metre diametre or so, if it counts as coming in closer then 100 diametres (3 km in this case) as if it was deliberately jumping close to a planet then the chance of a misjump goes higher.
I could of course be completely mistaken smile.gif
Take a 800 dTon sphere. While the ship has only got a 30 metre diametre or so, if it counts as coming in closer then 100 diametres (3 km in this case) as if it was deliberately jumping close to a planet then the chance of a misjump goes higher.
I could of course be completely mistaken smile.gif
robject
March 3rd, 2005, 09:45 AM
Daily traffic of 7 million ships (egads - 49 million per week?!) sounds rather high... assuming an average crew + passenger complement of 4 (wild guess), that's 200 million people per week thrumming through a system. Most solar systems don't have that many people. In fact, isn't it a given that "most" people do not leave their homeworld?
Of course, it becomes a YTU matter with these kind of numbers, in which case anything's possible.
Of course, it becomes a YTU matter with these kind of numbers, in which case anything's possible.
BetterThanLife
March 3rd, 2005, 12:09 PM
I never said that collisions would happen on a regular basis. I just stated that narrowing the arrival portals would increase the risk. smile.gif And that "fairly rare" was relative. There is no rules for what happens if two ships happen to emerge from jump at the same time in the same place. Though there are ships that fail to arrive, perhaps this is one cause. smile.gif
BetterThanLife
March 3rd, 2005, 12:15 PM
We talked about response time for Patrol craft. Remember that a Starship combat round is around 20 minutes. (Plus or minus depending on rule set.) If you include intercepting the target, disabling it and then boarding it a Patrol Cruiser within 2 hours of the Pirate and his target prize, is going to get the pirate. Perhaps not before he has disabled the prize but before he gets away with anything and usually before he can board it. (Launch Small craft, Match bearings and velocities, dock and board takes no less than an hour.)
TheEngineer
March 4th, 2005, 02:16 AM
Hi !
Originally posted by veltyen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />where comes this misjump idea on g-field collision comes from ?Not from the drive, just from the mass of the ships. 100 diametres of a large vessel does get to be a reasonable size.
Take a 800 dTon sphere. While the ship has only got a 30 metre diametre or so, if it counts as coming in closer then 100 diametres (3 km in this case) as if it was deliberately jumping close to a planet then the chance of a misjump goes higher.
I could of course be completely mistaken smile.gif </font>[/QUOTE]I guess Youre just right (if I understood it correctly).
Larger ships really create considerable gravitational effects, which may increase misjump risk.. redface.gif
But as I took a closer look on this issue appearently the typical density of a starship prevents the maximun occuring gravitational force to exceed critical limits.
So lucklily the typical ships own 100D limit doesn't seem to be a problem.
Anyway 250-300 Million dTon plus ships have more problems here smile.gif
Regards,
Mert
Originally posted by veltyen:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />where comes this misjump idea on g-field collision comes from ?Not from the drive, just from the mass of the ships. 100 diametres of a large vessel does get to be a reasonable size.
Take a 800 dTon sphere. While the ship has only got a 30 metre diametre or so, if it counts as coming in closer then 100 diametres (3 km in this case) as if it was deliberately jumping close to a planet then the chance of a misjump goes higher.
I could of course be completely mistaken smile.gif </font>[/QUOTE]I guess Youre just right (if I understood it correctly).
Larger ships really create considerable gravitational effects, which may increase misjump risk.. redface.gif
But as I took a closer look on this issue appearently the typical density of a starship prevents the maximun occuring gravitational force to exceed critical limits.
So lucklily the typical ships own 100D limit doesn't seem to be a problem.
Anyway 250-300 Million dTon plus ships have more problems here smile.gif
Regards,
Mert
Chuck Anumia
March 4th, 2005, 03:27 PM
From the looks of it, TNE 1248 is a near perfect place to carry on Piracy. It has plenty of room for getting and fencing stolen goods. graemlins/file_23.gif
BetterThanLife
March 4th, 2005, 05:15 PM
Originally posted by cweiskircher:
From the looks of it, TNE 1248 is a near perfect place to carry on Piracy. It has plenty of room for getting and fencing stolen goods. graemlins/file_23.gif Or pre 1248 TNE is a better place. (Provided you avoid the Vampires. smile.gif )
From the looks of it, TNE 1248 is a near perfect place to carry on Piracy. It has plenty of room for getting and fencing stolen goods. graemlins/file_23.gif Or pre 1248 TNE is a better place. (Provided you avoid the Vampires. smile.gif )
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