Hop Culture - Implications

[robject]

Oh yeah, if your TL17 Hop capable culture also has jump, they can install a Jump 7 with an AM power plant as a feasible, and usable design.

Just pointing this out. :devil:

I haven't done the T5 numbers. Maybe I should try. Let's install a Hop drive E (30 tons, Hop 1) in an Oberlindes 1000t Cargoliner.

A Prototype Antimatter E Power Plant (TL17) is 35 tons.

Efficiency is 80%, so maybe we can slave two of these together to power a Hop-1 drive. That's 70 tons.

So 100 tons in a 1000 ton ship to get us ten-parsec jumps.

And one more ton for the antimatter slug storage. An antimatter slug is good for one jump or hop, or one year of operations, at KCr6 per slug. And it looks like since we have two power plants, we'll be using two slugs per hop. But that's OK. So we'll need 100 slugs to last us about a year.

No other fuel requirements (nice).

If we needed to, we could add a Jump-8 drive for another 210 tons. But if I can avoid that, then I will!!

 

[robject]

I have overlooked one scenario: hopping into a nearby empty hex requires two weeks: one hop "out" and one hop "back". This is because there's no star to aim at that will drop you out of hop early.

That would make for an interesting detail in a short adventure.

 

[tjoneslo]

You only need to do that if there's something it the way. Otherwise it's just "Aim for the exclusion zone and go direct."

I would like to add two more differences for the Hop vs. Jump drive. The 5.09 rules, P. 344-345 still state the exclusion zone for jump drives is 100D (about 3AU for stars) but the Hop Drive is 1000D (about 10AU for stars). This is pushing the working limit of the Maneuver/Gravitic drive. That is you have to use something like a HePLAR drive in your Hop ship to make it into the inner system.

I would suspect this means aiming for the exclusion zone is easier, but adds significant time to the normal space travel time.

I think Will mentioned earlier this rule was changed, but it's not done so in the rules. Depending upon how precisely you define "100D limit", charted space is within the 100D limit of the galactic core.

 

[tjoneslo]

Putting on my Research hat: The JTAS Online archives (which Rob has access to and the rest of us should soon), the July 4, 2000 edition has an article "Across the Galaxy" by Allan E. Johnson. This has a really good discussion about a "Kilo-parsec drive". Not the same as the Hop/Skip/Leap drives in T5, but a good discussion about implications and campaign setups for these longer range drives.

 

[Reban]

Putting on my Research hat: The JTAS Online archives (which Rob has access to and the rest of us should soon), the July 4, 2000 edition has an article "Across the Galaxy" by Allan E. Johnson. This has a really good discussion about a "Kilo-parsec drive". Not the same as the Hop/Skip/Leap drives in T5, but a good discussion about implications and campaign setups for these longer range drives.

Reprinted in GURPS: The Best of JTAS Vol. 1 pp.101-106. Great article and a must read for background to this discussion.

 

[Ulsyus]

I would like to add two more differences for the Hop vs. Jump drive. The 5.09 rules, P. 344-345 still state the exclusion zone for jump drives is 100D (about 3AU for stars) but the Hop Drive is 1000D (about 10AU for stars). This is pushing the working limit of the Maneuver/Gravitic drive. That is you have to use something like a HePLAR drive in your Hop ship to make it into the inner system.

Does that really impact on being able to do it, or just represent that at some point a vessel will see a reduction in its acceleration? If the latter, does a ship need to reduce its relative V to 0 before the Hop, or can it still head into H-space with a vector that it'll carry over into the destination system?

 

[robject]

I would like to add two more differences for the Hop vs. Jump drive. The 5.09 rules, P. 344-345 still state the exclusion zone for jump drives is 100D (about 3AU for stars) but the Hop Drive is 1000D (about 10AU for stars). This is pushing the working limit of the Maneuver/Gravitic drive. That is you have to use something like a HePLAR drive in your Hop ship to make it into the inner system.

I would suspect this means aiming for the exclusion zone is easier, but adds significant time to the normal space travel time.

Ah yes. I think that rule is still valid. I think.

There are implications for megacorporate traffic. In particular, I think I would want a new Base Code to represent trade supply/transfer stations that service hop vessels at the 1000D limit, perhaps in a trojan point of a gas giant, or built into a captured comet or ice-teroid.

 

[tjoneslo]

The explicit use of the "Target exclusion zone" brings up the whole jump masking details from GT:Far Trader.

If you are on the rimward side of a system, and you want to go to a system that is coreward, you need to drive the ship in normal space either spinward or trailing until you are clear of the jump shadow of the current system before you can jump.

With the hop drive this becomes an even bigger problem because the 1000D limit is so much bigger, and the normal M-Drives work at 1% efficiency at that range.

Next interesting problem. Rules for Jump Astrogation P338: The difficulty of performing a H-1 astrogation roll is 10D, as standard stellar density is 7D. The overshoot rules (p. 341) indicate you fail the astrogation roll means you end up going the full distance (10 parsecs). This reinforces the idea that you will have both the JDrive and the HDrive in a ship, or sets of ships with each, specialized for their use.

 

[aramis]

The explicit use of the "Target exclusion zone" brings up the whole jump masking details from GT:Far Trader.

If you are on the rimward side of a system, and you want to go to a system that is coreward, you need to drive the ship in normal space either spinward or trailing until you are clear of the jump shadow of the current system before you can jump.

With the hop drive this becomes an even bigger problem because the 1000D limit is so much bigger, and the normal M-Drives work at 1% efficiency at that range.

Next interesting problem. Rules for Jump Astrogation P338: The difficulty of performing a H-1 astrogation roll is 10D, as standard stellar density is 7D. The overshoot rules (p. 341) indicate you fail the astrogation roll means you end up going the full distance (10 parsecs). This reinforces the idea that you will have both the JDrive and the HDrive in a ship, or sets of ships with each, specialized for their use.

Except that it's far easier (design wise) just to put a second hop worth of fuel, instead. The J-Drive is simply wasted space.

 

[robject]

Next interesting problem. Rules for Jump Astrogation P338: The difficulty of performing a H-1 astrogation roll is 10D[....]

And let's think about THAT for a moment.

Most of that 10D curve is pretty linear-ish, and centered on the value 35. A high target indeed to even hit 50%. Characteristic + Skill? Good luck.

I suppose you'd need to reduce difficulty by some means - perhaps some rigorous computational cycles up front.

 

[ovka]

How does hop culture effect exploration? "Today" we look at a map 12 x 18 sectors in size and call it "charted space." Adding hops (and higher tech drives) expands what will be considered charted space.

Do navigators still look at star maps 12 x 18 sectors in size? Is there a term for a 12 x 18 sector map (region, area, quadrant, something more dramatic or Travelleresque)?

Do interstellar polities dramatically expand? Does that expansion make the 12 x 18 sector map obsolete (say, in favor of a 120 x 180 sector map)?

Cheers,

Baron Ovka

 

[whartung]

How does hop culture effect exploration? "Today" we look at a map 12 x 18 sectors in size and call it "charted space." Adding hops (and higher tech drives) expands what will be considered charted space.

Unless "charted space" is surrounded by a 12 parsec void, the only reason it's "uncharted" is because people got bored of "charting" and simply stopped. Simply charting and mapping systems is not that resource intensive. Even conservatively, a single ship can sketch in the fundamentals of one system per month. Imperial space has millions of ships.