 February 6, 2011 - 2:03pm | I would like to raise some discussion of FTL travel. I admit (again) that I'm not that practiced with the game, but I was trying to work through some voyages, and some things jumped out at me. Please correct me where I'm wrong, as I walk through this from KH. How long does it take to travel between systems? I was looking at Lossend to Clarion, and I see the following. It's 10 LY between them, so the navigator has to spend 10 10-hour shifts working out the route. - really? That long? - Can he be assisted? Can an assistant work the 10-hour shift when the astrogator sleeps? - Can he turn the whole thing over to a computer, assuming it has a big enough program? - Can he work on this while speeding up to jump speed, and does he have to be in his origin system to do it? - How much of this could be automated? Can the astrogator just pay for a supercomputer at a spaceport to do some or all of the work, and just upload the data? How long to get into Void speed? At ADF 1, reaching 200 hexes/turn will take 200 turns, or 33.33 hours. Then the ship will be in Void space, for "a few seconds" and then need 200 turns to decelerate in its origins system. That's a bit more than 3 standard days, and certainly not 1 day per LY. With these numbers, it's irrelevant how far the distance is, it's all dependant on the ADF of the ship. As I see it, the most time-consuming element of FTL travel is the number-crunching before the ship even leaves dock. Opinions? Information? |
 February 6, 2011 - 2:13pm | I think that the time involved for computing a void jump should be dealt with on the campaign level in the early timeline it takes the long time to compute after 1st sathar war the time is halved eventually it gets down to 1 hour/ LY I like the idea of Void travel eating up time ie a 5 LY trip last 5 days real time. skip figuring in time dilation as that would be complicated and not really add much. Kind of like on the Millenium Falcon when Luke began his initiation into the Force while they travelled to the system that the Death Star just destroyed. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 February 13, 2011 - 2:16pm | Here's my take on it. I've posted on some of these ideas before and you'll see all of it show up in the story I'm writing for the Star Frontiersman. 1) I like the near instantaneous "jump" described in the KH campaign book where you travel at a rate of 1 ly per second in the Void. 2) I like the Void being an unpleasant, or at least disorienting, place to be in. I've adoped the idea from Larry Niven's FTL travel that space outside the windows of your ships is like the blind spot in your eye, you know there is something there but your brain can't register it. Portholes and displays showing exterior to the ship all "vanish" from your field of view. i.e. they become void, hence the name. I also like to have it mix up the senses. You see things in negative, you taste sound, that sort of thing. 3) Calculating a jump is fairly easy and assisted by modern computers. You plug in your starting point, the ehemerides for all the objects in both systems and let it chug out a vector for you to follow. Takes a few hours at most. 4) However, because everything is in motion, your computed course is good for only a day or two at the most. If you miss that window you have to recompute. But that's not a big deal since computation only takes a short while. Assuming you have the facilities onboard to do the compuation. You could just buy the route from the Spacer's Hall but if you miss your window, you have to buy it again. (insert Evil Referee chuckle here). 5) It still takes a long time to make the jump, 10 hours (half a day) per light year traveled. This isn't due to calculations, or require constant duty time by a fleet of astrogators. This is simply due to the fact that jump travel is nearly instantaneous and follows straight lines through space-time (which may or may not look curved in 3D space). Since you are not navigating when in the jump, you have to be lined up nearly perfectly on your desired vector and the tolerances are very, very small. It takes a lot of time to make the measurements to verify that you are on course and make adjustments. Not because the measurements are hard, but because you are triangulating your position based on the motion of nearby stars and you have to move quite a distance in the system to be able to detect those changes accurately enough to verify your course. So the astrogator may only be making obervations every hour or two but he needs a good baseline for the measurements to give him the data he needs. In the end you will probably have traveled 1-4 AU in the course of setting up the course properly. He's not crunching numbers and making calucations, he's actually navigating and verifying the ship's course. And that assumes you're traveling at 1g acceleration the entire time. You could travel slower or faster and change the time needed but you still need to cover the distance to get the necessary baselines. 6) You've been accelerating the entire time on the way out. You're going to have to accelerate for the same amount of time on the other side so you can stop at your destination. So it takes another 10 hours per light year to slow down and your entire trip ended up taking 1 day per light year. There is some scatter in this in reality. Your destination may be on the other side of the star from you when you drop into the system and it make take an extra day or four to cover the extra distance. To first order, we just ignore this but in reality, these variations would be there. 7) I'm not wedded to the 1% c requirement. If you have that, then any jump takes at least 83.3 hours at 1g accleration to get to jump speed and a jump takes at least 8 1/2 days regardless of distance (it could be longer if you require the extra time to line up the course). I have no problem getting rid of it to allow for some shorter hops (but see #9) below. 8) I also like the wrinkle that you have to be so far out of the gravity well of any nearby objects (stars, planets, moons, etc) This would tend to make short distance jumps take longer but not have much effect on longer jumps as you'd be that far out anyway after taking the time to confirm your course. It also adds more variation in to the jump times (like in #6 above) since now your point of origin may also be on the other side of the star you are starting from relative to your destination and now you have to travel all the way across the system to get clear of the gravity well. If you have to take an extra two days of travel to get out of the origin system, it's going to take you an additional extra two days to slow down in the destination system. Plus this allows for a misjump table entry. "Encounter uncharted mass in the outer reaches of the solar system. Drop out of void space early. Spend d10 hours verifying your course wasn't altered before continuing on." This would be fairly rare and if it occured could be potentially fatal (although I'd never do that to players in a game). At the speeds your ship is traveling when making a jump, at best you'd have a few seconds of warning before you passed by the object that dropped you out of the Void (and you have more warning the bigger the object). If you happened to be on a collision course, you'd probably not be able to react in time and would smash into the object obliteraing your ship. 9) If you don't use the 1% c explaination of entering the void, you need some sort of jump initiation device to trigger the shift into the void. Anyway, those are some ideas that can be discussed, picked apard and expanded upon if you want. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 February 13, 2011 - 2:49pm | Time is also something that is never really figured into the whole void jump thing. do we assume that what is happening on one planet is happening at the same moment throughout the galaxy, or since light takes a year to travel one light year is the information gained from using sensors real time information or dated. Yes I'm opening the window for time travel, but is it not feasable that traveling through the void warps time as well so that a ship actually crossing the void is travelling backwards in time by 1 year per light year jumped to arrive where the ship was supposed to go wanted to in days instead of years. A long time ago I read a series of 6 books called the Rissa and Tregare series, which added time into the whole Interstellar travel thing. In the book travellers moving through void space aged at a different rate than they did on world, so that for the few months that they spent crossing the void was actually several years back home. I made for interesting reading though I don't see it working well for the Frontier. I mean if this was an in game rule if the Sathar attacked Prenglar and the fastest that a taskforce would get there was 8 days through the void 8 years would have passed on Prenglar, and the fate of the people on Prenglar would have depended on what ships they had on world to hold of the Sathar for the time that it would take for the taskforce to arrive unless the void jump actually allowed them to travel back in time so they arrived in 8 days. Sorry just a weird thought for today (blame it on my cold). "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
February 13, 2011 - 7:01pm | Terl, I'm with you on #1 through #4. Five and 6 kinda lost me. If it were up to me, I would prefer #8 to #5-7. As for #9, I like the idea that the kind of drive used might be the trigger itself, once it gets beyond the gravity well. Back to #5-7: Is it that each LY spent in the Void requires some re-calibration? If so, that might be tied to a skill check to reduce that time. Is it a pop-in, pop-out, re-calibrate, pop back in again phenomenon, or a one-time event? Again, can this be done by computer, or does it require a real person? |
 February 13, 2011 - 9:45pm | @TerlObar I don't get your item 6. Are you proposing a system here of 10 hours acceleration/deceleration per light year traveled, thus a variable jump speed? I have toyed around and debated with my brother a system where 1% c is not a fixed requirement. I proposed that the Dralasites were experimenting with long duration acceleration of a probe when it jumped, thus discovering void travel. The probe was equipped with subspace transmitters to beam back telemetry data from the probe. At 1% c the probe activated the transmitter to send back the data on the ships condition and speed. The transmission coupled with the speed caused the probe to enter the void. Then fail safe devices caused the ship to execute a breaking maneuver when the communication was lost. This brought the probe out of the void and subspace communication was reestablished. Thus the Dralasites discovered void travel. Earlier probe experiments did not have the fail safe breaking mechanism and were lost to the void unbeknown-st to the Dralasite scientists. Further experiments proved that there was a relationship between the speed, mass, and transmission strength. My idea goes like this: The larger the mass the larger the transmission strength needed to bridge the mass into the void. The higher the speed of the mass the lower the transmission strength needed to bridge the mass into the void. Thus it would take an infinite power transmission to bridge a stationary mass into the void. Also an infinitely small mass requires near zero transmission power. Maybe this is where all those subatomic particles are coming from and going too in our particle accelerator experiments. Using the subspace transmission allows for the option of eliminating the overly aggressive engine overhaul rule and introduces variable jump speed for a ship to choose from. The astrogator checks the mass of the ship then determines the speed or transmission power he wishes to make the jump into the void. Increased speed is chosen when the energy cost for the power is too high. Also the higher the transmission power, the more wear and tear on the transmitter, with the maximum limit of burning out the transmitter. So, this introduces transmitter maintenance in place of engine overhauls. This is one of the ideas I wanted to bash around with you at the star party last fall. Anyway, I like your other items in your list, especially number 8. I like to think of jump speed being related to gravitational effects. Thus natural objects do not naturally enter the void within systems. I also like to think that governments would actually impose speed zones in their systems for safety reasons. It is not good for a 1% c starship to be orbiting or on a trajectory near habitable worlds. Final thought, I wonder if the original designers were trying to come up with a sound barrier for FTL travel? -iggy |
March 13, 2011 - 3:59pm | How about the 1C issue is old tech and around year FY120 better theories of Void Space were developed and a proper "void drive" was developed allowing for significantly better performance though the penny pincher might not replace his old equipment. introduces the void initiator as cutting edge tech but peeps that dont like it can ignore it. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
May 8, 2011 - 12:13pm | I was looking at accel/decel times recently. At 1 ADF = 1 g, a ship needs (I think) 2 million km and 2000 minutes to reach speed 200. That's 33.3 hours out and the same back. If the time in the Void is a few seconds, that assembles a voyage of a day and a half to the Void, a few seconds, and then a day and a half to decel to the target planet. That led to another question: how fast do passenger ships go? Would you rather spend a voyage of ~3 days at normal g; or one of less than one day, but practically the whole time squashed into an accel couch at 3 g? Would passengers on the latter prefer to be knocked out the whole time? |
May 8, 2011 - 1:48pm | Actually, its 450 million km (3 AU) and 83.3 hours at 1g (10m/s^2) to get to 0.01c and the same amount to decelerate on the other end. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
May 10, 2011 - 7:25pm | To answer Putraack's question, I'm betting that there will be a transport service that pays its crew's higher premium or hires heavy worlders to move cargo that absolutely needs to get there over night. These ships would be loaded with storage class berths since freeze field/stasis feild tech will do away with the problems of being squished into the accel couch. Federation Express- a subsidary of Trans Travel. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 May 11, 2011 - 8:35pm | I agree with points 1 through 9 as stated by TerlObar, and though I understand it all, not any way I can think of to simplify it.... there is some complex abstract specific ambiguity that is involved in breaking reality's rules, while constrained in ways that are naturally allowed by what isn't perceivably real... straight lines are curved on a globe, cats are not always in the same box you left them in, and if you were already where you wanted to have been, then you can't be where you were when you will be on your way there...  I think I am going to get temporal sickness... 's'xcuse me.... [ralpf] uhh, excuse me...I also like that proposal iggy, I have wondered about that often myself, but had no real model for it... My addition is just a further complication, I like the idea of having different ftl-drives and thrust types, using the one best suited for the design purpose of the ship. As long as Atomic Engines and Atomic Power Generators reign supreme in FTL capabilites, and are the most space inefficient and risky for everything else, and nothing changes the Accelerated Gravity Simulation (except the Sathar), as many classes of engine and ftl-drive types as you care to stat out, some that take longer some that are faster, some that have no psychological side effects, some that cause 'void-blindess' or permanent 'void-neurosis'... I'm not one for dealing with time-travel issues tho' and the Federation Express - Delevery Drones... heck, yeah!  3 ship crews of descending gravity adaptation, could trade off every two shifts and minimize penalties during accel/deccel and still rest ... but robots could do it more efficiently for less pay... Spacer Unions don't like robots (or Mechanon)... and neither does the 'need a person to have a story' rule. Oh humans!!  We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
September 19, 2011 - 5:09am | Proposal originally, up to FY111, ships used a void field initiator to enter void speed at 1%. But eventually some smart cookie realized some things about void fields and developed the void field generator. This device allows the creation on of a void field at any speed. The one limiting factor is that proximity to a high mass object like a star or black hole collapses the field. Part of the reason that ships pop out of the void as they reach a star. But even though you can jump at any speed you must be beyond a certain limit depending on the mass of the star involved. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 20, 2011 - 4:47am | Interesting, using it that way I would implement these... Trade-offs; astrogation difficulties increase slightly, but even when astrogation is 'perfect' an increased miss-jump results from the tendency to drop-out with an unforeseeable deep-space gravity-wave flux is higher, reduces effective jump-distances to one-third due to mass interferences being increased, requires fewer overhauls between jumps but at a slightly higher-cost, enforces more heavily the dificulties in sharing astrogation calculations as astrogation routes become more individualized, jumps are from system-edge to system-edge only, eliminates all in-system "micro-jumps", ADF is no longer a requirement for a Void-Capable Ship, nearly eliminates mass collision accidents (cheaper insurance), speed and entry vectors are more controllable and predictable to the ship less pradictable to others... pirates (and Star-Law) can have an easier time knowing where but can not always be sure how fast (as opposed to knowing how fast but not always where). A note, using the basic Atomic or Ion Drive systems (and void field initiator), I tend to make it very clear that jumping into a mass of bodies (like a star-system) "blind" (without acurate data of the local orbits) is a VERY bad idea... and is still risky when you "think" you have accurate data... the jump from anywhere is easy, the jump to anywhere can be a killer... with this alt void field generator drive Jedion proposed, I would see this being inverted, jumping "blind" 'to' an in-system point or mass of bodies will more likley just result in an outer-system or far-system drop-out... though it may sometimes "kick" the craft out into open space also (miss-jump into 'empty' space around destination's vicinity)... jumping 'from' an in-system location even with lots of astrogation knowledge and perfect calculations is more likely to result in a failed-jump (destabilizes void-entry and nothing happens), unexpected short-jump "kicks" (miss-jump out of system as if departure-system was the destination-system, and empty-space is a valid destination point), or a destabilized void-jump (miss-jump to a new system normally from destination system)... moving from far-system to far-system points is much less unpredictable, but undetectible deep-space flux between systems can still be a factor in miss-jump. Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
September 20, 2011 - 8:02am | With the void field generator I would keep the time in void at 1 sec/light year travelled And increase the time in some way for reduce speed void jumps. Void jumps over a certain amount of time require and ability check STA or INT and failure means the characater vomits, experiences nausea, disoreintation etc leaving the character unable to do anthing for one 10 minute KH turn (except whip the vomit off his face) and with a -5 or -10% penalty to INT/LOG for 1d5 hours. Some other wrinkles : Perhaps Void jumps are impossible over 1C while possible below it with the new tech Each ADF point of speed lower than jump speed a jump occurs at increases the time in void space by 1 sec/light year travelled; Void jumps over 10 seconds require the check for nausea but are easy to pass, over 20 secs have a penalty applied to the check which increase for every 10 seconds beyond that. computing a void jump should become easier with better programing and deeper insights into void space and the art of astrogation over time and should be realized after year FY111 with a reduction in the time it takes an astrogator to compute a jump. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
September 22, 2011 - 1:42am | I have been researching all this stuff trying to figure out what I may have missed... >_< THE PHYSICS OF THE GAME Time To Calculate Jumps: ~10hrs per LY Maximum Void Speed: ~1Day per LY Maximum Jump Range: ~24-29Ly
Oh humans!! We discover a galactic community filled with multiple species of aliens, and the first thing we think about is "how can we have sex with them?".~ anymoose, somewhere on the net... so... if you square a square it becomes a cube... if you square a cube does it become an octoid? |
 March 19, 2015 - 5:59pm | I've brought this up on other forums but my basis for "Void" jumps is enough similar to this: (http://well-of-souls.com/outsider/forum_ftl_tech.html) that I pretty much use it as a basis. 1% LSp is required for the Void circuit (combination of Subspace radio technology and Freeze Field) to allow a ship to transit from Normal space into the Void. A ship HAS to go at at least 1% to ensure clearing the local solar gravity field and retain enough speed to fly a set distance through the Void. Slightly faster for futher "jumps" but at a risk of bouncing off the target system gravity well. The jump seems instant for the people doing the jump but subtly "wrong" as time still "seems" to pass for them. (Think "Wing Commander" movie "freeze-frame" moment) The need to get the vector and angle "just" right means there are "routes" between certain systems but travel is NOT limited to "1ly per day" in my SFU even though I intially based my entire "star-travel" system prior to KH on that bit of fluff :) The "Void" however does not like bits of our reality being shoved into it and vis-versa so it will kick the ship out after a certain amount of time regardless if your at a star or not. (I have in fact incorperated that a "dog-leg" deep space manuever is in fact required to clear a portion of the nebula on route to Volturnus) Routes CAN be pre-planned and "taped" and as long as you follow the tape EXACTLY you don't in fact even need an astrogator to perform a jump. (Threw out the "10-hours" per light year stuff obviously) NOT that anyone in fact will do a jump without a astro on board and performing "back-up" to a taped flight plan. Randy |
 March 22, 2016 - 8:42am | I think the course computational time (at least between known systems) should be basically dropped. We have desktop programs that can whip up accurate stellar processionals/regressionals in a matter of minutes for any time past or future mathematically based on a single originating data point. For developed worlds, that "baseline data" should have been established long ago, so it's a simple plot between (for example) Prenglar and Truane's Star. |
March 22, 2016 - 10:41am | It's not the math it's the aiming. Hours upon hours of course adjustments and checks before committing to the jump because if your off by a millionth of an arcsecond you miss the target system. Then there is the timing so that you land in the system and not short or beyond it. This is shooting a bulls eye from light years away. -iggy |
March 22, 2016 - 7:37pm | Yeah, the math is easy, it's the lining up that's hard. Or more accurately, actually determining your true vector relative the the surrounding stars. Although the math could take some time if you assume that you have to avoid real space objects even while in the Void wheather because of their gravitational effect or whatnot. If there are several hundred or thousands of known objects in the general vicinity of your flight path and your ephemeris is a bit out of date it could take a while to compute updated positions to make sure your path is clear. Especially if you need high accuracy and thus have to account for many times as many objects in a true n-body simulation. Not that I'd acutally go to that level. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
March 25, 2016 - 12:31am | Due to some recent reading, I am now thinking that I like the "1 second spent in the Void per LY travelled" concept. It's a neat piece of fluff, something I can describe to the players. What's got my interest? I'm nearing the end of reading the Dragonriders of Pern series (2.5 to go!), last summer's reading project. Time spent between is usually described as no more than 3 coughs, but that's for crossing a continent. Some trips take less, some take a hair more time in the cold & dark, when one cannot breathe. I'd like to import that description to Void travel in future games. |
 April 18, 2016 - 1:58pm | Okay, let's throw a wrench into the power converter and see what happens. I was doing some math (hard to believe, right?). A ship' day is 20 hours, to travel say 7 light years or 140 hours divide that by 24 hours and a ship in Star Frontier actually travels at 1.2 light years per day and you only spend 5.83 days in void space. 5 Ship days =100 or 4.16 days so on... I actually believe, KH is for Fleet and Exploration campaigns and should not be used running back and forth inside the Frontier. As I stated before, standard routes between planets are well mapped. Therefore you just punch in the planet's name and off you go. Navigation program calculates all this for the pilot. It's only if you jump off into the unknown, KH rules apply. |
 April 21, 2016 - 9:34pm | KH Jumps are very much like Star Probe & Star Empires... and it seems to me the nexus and space station systems in those games in which KH inherited much had quicker turn around then trying to traverse space without those aides. I really do need to restart trying to figure out just how big those ancient TSR ships where, I mean huge by KH standards. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
