GPS in Star Wars

[Fallon Kell]

A couple of technical points:

[ZzaphodD]

[CRMcNeill]

True. It requires a special vessel with precise knowledge of the HOST' location to physically dock with it to bring it out of hyperspace.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[Fallon Kell]

Oh, we'll never mind then. It's been awhile since I read up on those things.
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Or that excessively long "Noooooooooo" was the Whining Side of the Force leaving him. - Dustflier

Complete Starship Construction System

[KageRyu]

Just home from hospital - not feeling well. Hoping we can all at least reach a common ground. If any of this seems terse, I apologize in advance, in a lot of pain, hard to focus.

[Fallon Kell]

[KageRyu]

[Fallon Kell]

[KageRyu]

[Fallon Kell]

[KageRyu]

It is clear you are just being argumentative - with that I will simply say whatever, and be done with it.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[CRMcNeill]

I know from personal experience that it takes two to argue. I also know that if you are going to get into it with Fallon, you need to be prepared to go the distance.

The conversation may have gotten off topic, but the point remains that when a ship is trying to get far enough outside of a gravity well to safely jump, it is not a question of getting outside of the gravity well so much as it is how far up the "slope" of the well a ship must travel before a hyperspace jump can be done safely.

I did some research regarding the WEG-generated safe distances. The 50 unit safe-jump number was from the 2E books, while 2R&E changes the benchmark to a more neutral 5 minutes. Speaking for myself, I prefer the 50 unit rule, as it better reflects the ability of faster craft to reach safe jump distance more quickly (An A-Wing travelling All-Out can cover as much as 48 units per round, while a stock YT-1300 at All-Out can only cover 16). However, I do think the 50 unit value is a little low; I'm just not sure exactly how high it should go.

Another gripe with the 50 unit benchmark is that, IMO, it should be more of a sliding scale than a simple binary choice. AFAIAC, it should be something more along the lines of the difficulty of the hyperspace jump increasing the closer the jump is attempted to the planet. I'm thinking something like this:

-Ships must travel a minimum of 60 (or whatever number you feel is appropriate) units away from a planet to make a hyperspace jump without interference from the planet's gravity well. The minimum safe distance varies depending on the type of planet (various factors determining gravity well).
-Ships may attempt to make jumps closer to a planet, but for every unit of distance below the minimum safe distance, there is an equal increase in the jump's difficulty (Example: if the minimum safe distance is 60 units, and a ship attempts a hyperspace jump at 40 units, the difficulty for that jump increases by 20 points).
-Rather than saying that a ship jumping into hyperspace too close to a planet automatically creates a catastrophic event on said planet, have the catastrophic event be the result of a wild-dice failure or something, so that it gives the PCs some room to maneuver ("You could try to jump to hyperspace from low orbit, but it's insanely risky), and also addresses the backstory conflict.

I played around with something similar a while back where I wrote up rules for a Starship Troopers / Star Wars crossover. The concept I wrote up was for an Imperial Skytrooper unit that used a Strike-Class Cruiser as a delivery vessel. The cruiser in question was modified with an advanced CGT array and nav computer, allowing it to drop out of hyperspace much closer to a planet than usual, delivering its troops by orbital drop pods before the planet's defenses could be brought to bear.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index

[KageRyu]

*Redacted and rephrased*
Abetter aspect of common sense failing that I referred to, and did not mean as an insult o anyone in particular, but a general digression of the conversation is in regards to trying to be overly technical in the extreme with the application of terms and disection of language when discussing a system that, by it's very nature, is intentionally vague. I already pointed this out. To go even further and take the tchnical minutia to it's extremes to "win" such an argument is poor common sense and in poor tatse. However, it also has to do with how, in numerous posts now, I said my problems with the Hyperspace Satelite were my opinions and resulted from contradictions I see in that idea and how Hyperspace travel is presented in the Star Wars RPG (at least the edition I played the longest). I have referenced some of the material on Hyperspace in the rulebook that supports these contradictions - I see no one providing counter evidence that the whole 50 units is not completely arbitrary and provided simply to have a number handy (and was my whole problem with the measurement) - so I see having proven my stance in regards to my view on that as well. The information on desolate worlds I will need to find, and have already conceeded I may be mis-remembering (though I am certain it was Star Wars - but as is often the problem, I have read and watched so much Sci-Fi in my life). It was never an issue of "going the Distance" or trying to start an argument - it was about having things taken completely out of context and then argued.

Sadly, I feel I may have to admit that a significant portion of my Views regarding the effects of Planetary and Stellar Gravity Wells (and let's be reasonable I do mean things of sufficient size and mass as to be a hinderance) may have come from Star Wars Novelezations, Technical Journals, Magazine Articles, and especially the Timothy Zahn Dark Force saga. While some of this was considered official to a degree it is all technicly Expanded Universe, and I can not cite specific sources for any given item (especially in reference to material from the old Starlog magazines, as I no longer even have those). All editions of the Rulebooks are vague, even those with some number or fact only plugged in arbitrary values (I think I can say we see a concensus on this?) just to have a go too rule.

However, maybe you are right. After all, even the writup on the Interdictor's is rather vague, and since I did use them as a reference point I may have to accept defeat. No real specifics are provided on the quantity, or gravemetric shearing strentgh of the gravity fields used by the Interdictor's to block hyperspace escape. In fact, all that is said is that they sit outside of the direct combat zone and "blanket the battlezone with gravity fields" to inhibit vessels escaping by jumping to hyperspace. It could very well be that this blanket constitutes billions of gravity wells with the average gravity field stregth of naval lint - and perhaps thast is all that is nescessary to block hyperspace use (perhaps hyperspace technology is truly fragile after all). Since the rules are unclear, this may very well be the case, and if so I accept defeat.

I will apologize for being overly curt inmy last post - I am in a great deal of pain right now, and the medications are not helping it. While not an excuse, I hope my fellow members of the board will at least see to understand.


In the interest of getting back to constructive discussion, I wanted to touch on:

[ZzaphodD]

Ok, regarding the topic I dont wont be using any 'hyperspeed satellites' for GPS. I assume that gps satellites are cheap as dirt in the SWU (Given the low cost of flying across the galaxy). Sure you might shoot them down if your laying siege to a planet, but perhaps it will be more expensive to hunt them down than to get them into position. Perhaps the GPS system is present in all satellites orbiting the planet (if its cheap enough). Any way in my mind GPS should be an easy thing to replace and rather tiresome to shoot down.
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[CRMcNeill]

Dude, don't go off on me. You're the one tripping out on gravity wells because you don't like how they are applied in the SWU. Well, if you have a better idea, here is the time and place. Don't just tell me an idea doesn't work; throw out some options. Discussing gravity wells and their effects on hyperspace travel is on topic because a key portion of my original post was about the feasibility of putting an object into hyperspace in orbit around a planet. This is a concept which already has official status, per the Hyperspace Orbital Scanner, which I have referenced previously. You obviously have some knowledge on the subject, and I would appreciate if you would apply that knowledge to the optional rule concept I just posted, as opposed to getting defensive over minutiae and semantics.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

The CRMcNeill Stat/Rule Index