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Future Jump Calculations
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MrNexx
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 9:09 pm    Post subject: Future Jump Calculations Reply with quote

So, let's say I'm in a system, and know I will need to leave a week from next Tuesday.

Can I make the calculation for the jump to hyperspace NOW? How far in advance can I have those calculations made?
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Sutehp
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 9:57 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

An interesting question. It's known that astrogation data does go out of date, but how quickly it goes out of date is an open question.

Me, I wouldn't think that astrogation data would go out of date that quickly when you take into account just how empty intergalactic space is. This is just me, but considering that alot of the time, people fall prey to the Sci Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale trope and fail to realize that there's a reason it's called "space": because it really is nothing but a crapton of empty space. Pick a random direction to travel in while inside a galaxy and 99.9% of the time, you will hit nothing. Sure, a galaxy might look dense from the outside, but the distance between stars is so ridiculously immense that the idea of randomly hitting any object unless you take the time to calculate a safe path is ludicrous. I freely admit that my knowledge of the distances between stellar objects colors my opinion about astrogation. But we're talking about a galaxy (universe?) where Asteroid Thickets are commonplace and "verisimilitude" is a key watchword, so I know that I'm overthinking this.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 10:03 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Its like I said in the other thread: if we are talking about FTL travel just fly over or under the orbital planes at a distance where planetary gravity is a non factor. The calculation should really only include obstacles in the current system (like our own kuiper belt, comets, etc) and the similar objects in the destination system and finally where will the destination's "exit lane" be next Tuesday?

As long as intervening stars arent experiencing a super nova or you arent having to cross the central black hole, taking a wide berth, it should be fairly simple.
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PostPosted: Tue Jun 06, 2017 11:51 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I've not seen anything in a book saying how long you can keep them, but doesn't the R2 unit 'store' 10 jumps worth, so technically that r2 if never wiped or updated, could have 10 jumps worth of data for years...
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Bren
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 1:01 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

garhkal wrote:
I've not seen anything in a book saying how long you can keep them, but doesn't the R2 unit 'store' 10 jumps worth, so technically that r2 if never wiped or updated, could have 10 jumps worth of data for years...
That can't be the case. I'd say its far more likely that the R2 unit gets revised and updated computations either from a friendly ship or from a local starport on a regular basis and we just don't focus on that occurring in the same way that most of us don't pay any attention to how often the ship's power cells are recharged, the blaster gas is topped off for handweapons, new raw materials placed in the automat, or the freshers are refreshed...so to speak. I seem to recall one or more of the sourcebooks talked about getting new or updated computations for the astromech. (Might have been one of the Platt's Guides.)
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 2:03 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I don't recall the exact source, but we have discussed astrogation support services in the past. Per Wookieepedia, BoSS does just that. Here's a link to where we discussed it.

As far as the original question, I don't think a week will make much of a difference. While it's reasonable to assume some degree of drift, it is likely negligible over that short of a time frame. Right now, we're talking about ships getting nav computer updates every time they replenish, so that's an update every 1-2 months for space transports.
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:24 am    Post subject: Re: Future Jump Calculations Reply with quote

MrNexx wrote:
So, let's say I'm in a system, and know I will need to leave a week from next Tuesday.

Can I make the calculation for the jump to hyperspace NOW? How far in advance can I have those calculations made?


I'd say yes.

The question is, though: Should a GM put a penalty on that Astrogation throw when it is made for using old data?

If you've got good information on your destination, will that info deteriorate in time? Isn't it easy to compensate?

We see in the books (novels) where Jump coordinates are hidden--fed to ships from another source besides the ship itself.

Isn't it possible to buy coordinates from a starport?






Idea:

What if you added +1 to the base difficulty for every day the info is old. So, hyperspace coordinates computed yesterday would start at base 16. Jump coordinates that where computed five days ago would have a base 20 for the Astrogation roll. And so on.
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Wajeb Deb Kaadeb
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 9:51 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

It seems to me that jumping to hyperspace really isn't a big deal at all, and is 100% safe, as long as you've got time. By the game's rules, you can add time and low difficulty to a 100% chance of success.

It would seem that everybody would do that--go the 100% route--unless it was really, really important to speed the journey.



As for pre-calculating and storing data, the more I think about it, the more I agree--especially with the note about the R2 droid storage--that it should be no big deal to whip up some coordinates and save them for a rainy day.
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garhkal
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 2:08 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I could see 'stored data' going from known points to other known points along well traveled routes being safe for say a year. As you get less and less traveled routes, or off the beaten path, the data's safe for a lot less time..
So going from barely known planet, to barely known planet along a barely used route, the data might be only good for a week or two.
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Naaman
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 4:47 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think Wajeb is onto something:

IRL, we have road maps that are good for a very long time (decades even) depending on how newly developed an area is. What the maps dont tell us is whether there is road construction, a storm, a wreck, etc, on the route.

These changes can be planned (detours uploaded to the "hyper-net"), or unplamned (a supernova creating a gravity well too close the the typically travelled route, a ship ran out of fuel or "broke down" in the middle of its journey, etc, etc).

Plotting the FASTEST course may be a matter of knowing some alternate routes or simply having a ship that is capable of "off-road" travel. Whereas plotting the known route that every soccer mom uses to get from townto the suburbs may not even require a roll.

The other thing to keep in mind is that the only relative movement in a galaxy is the movement within a system: the constellations dont change (at least not over the course of centuries or millenia). Therefore, interstellar travel should not really be affected except for minimally one every several decades (like when a particular comet passes through a spot in the system).
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Zarn
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 6:30 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I partially disagree with that (of course I do).

Basically, when you're travelling in hyperspace, you're travelling in time. As amply demonstrated by the Harbinger. In order to do so safely, you need to simulate where things were and will be, in addition to where things are. This, in my opinion, tends to devolve to a variation over an n-body problem.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N-body_problem

Throw in some extra hyperspace-related twirls and eddies, and you're deep into np-complete computational territory.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NP-completeness

Which means that if you're doing 'safe' loop-de-loops deep in interstellar space, there should be little other than hardware failure that will mess you up. Rogue planetoids and (large) Kuiper belt or Oort cloud style objects should be rare enough that they're highly unlikely to trip the mass sensor.

If you're pushing a tighter trajectory, shaving a few hours here and there from your journey, or trying to do longer jumps without stopping to reorient ... it's much harder. Numerical methods will get you only so far.

Also, there's some evidence for pretty dense stellar clusters in Star Wars, such as Kuat. When you're using a couple of neighboring systems as staging areas for jumps into the system on very specific approach vectors, there's something going on because you have a way too big volume to defend if you're trying to build defenses there - which means that there's likely natural obstacles that remove fairly large swathes of possible approach volume.

Then, there's also some evidence that there may be 'weather' in hyperspace - I believe that hyperspace was shut down for travel a couple of times in the old EU, probably in the Kathol Rift or something, although the exact reference eludes me.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:02 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I think the relative Difficulty of traveling a route has to be tied primarily to how well-traveled the route is. Consider that BoSS provides regular chart updates, but they have to get that data from somewhere, and the most likely candidate is the flight recorder data of ships traveling in hyperspace.

Here's my thinking:
    -A ship traveling in hyperspace must have a CGT array or some other form of gravity sensor integrated with the hyperspace cut-out.

    -The cut-out only engages if it detects a gravity well of sufficient strength that a collision is likely, but the CGT is probably still detecting strength and bearing to other gravity fields, even if it doesn't predict a collision.

    -Multiply that by hundreds or thousands of ships traveling a given route, all with minor variations in course, and the massive amount of data allows for the generation of a highly detailed picture of that route, along with some ability to predict for future course changes by a chronological analysis of the route.

    -Enter the BoSS. They offer spacers a quid pro quo; let us have a copy of your flight recorder data, and we will give you a discount on updating your nav computer to the most recent map file.

    -But the less traveled a route is, the less data BoSS has to work with to generate safe routes, so the less well-traveled routes become consecutively more and more difficult to astrogate. Where a commonly traveled route (the Hydian Way or Corellian Trade Spine) might be Easy or Very Easy, a "you want to go where?" route would be Very Difficult or Heroic.

    -Nav computer data would certainly degrade slowly over time, but on a galactic scale, it should be more along the lines of +1 Difficulty per every 3-6 months since the last map update, IMO. Objects in space don't move all that far in a week, and obstacles which must be navigated around are likely a factor in trip duration, not base jump difficulty.

To take the BoSS idea a step further, why have the characters calculate the jump at all? BoSS has all the data, plus computers to do the data crunching. Just pop into the local BoSS office at the starport and purchase a pre-calculated route based on the latest available data.
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Bren
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

CRMcNeill wrote:
To take the BoSS idea a step further, why have the characters calculate the jump at all? BoSS has all the data, plus computers to do the data crunching. Just pop into the local BoSS office at the starport and purchase a pre-calculated route based on the latest available data.
Because you don't want BoSS to know your real flight plan. Why? Because you are a Rebel, a smuggler, a pirate, a privateer, or a legitimate company or corporation with trade secrets who wants to keep others from analyzing their shipping and travel schedules.

Its the same reason that Star Wars has physical credit coins.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

But that won't apply to every route. Not every jump a ship makes is going to be secretive. Plus, in universe, BoSS is largely autonomous, as their control over nav services gives them a lot of pull, such that the Empire doesn't consider it to be worth the trouble to take it over.

And anonymous, generic routes could simply be loaded on a datachip and transferred into the ship's nav computer (or manually entered, if one is worried about malware).

Obviously, there will be some routes you want to keep secret, but this won't always apply.
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CRMcNeill
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PostPosted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 8:25 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Another thought about the flight recorder data I mentioned above...

A ship can also conceivably generate its own nav data if it uses the same route often enough. A route may be practically unheard of by the galaxy in general, but if a ship is making regular runs on that same route on a consistent basis (and if nav computers have the ability to analyze their own flight recorder data), it would actually lower the Difficulty for that route for that ship alone.

Alternately, analyzing flight recorder data could be part of the Astrogation process, predicting gravity well positions so as to cut corners on a route.
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