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Posted by: sloanjh
« on: April 01, 2010, 06:37:55 PM »

Do you need to have a jump ship in a TG in order for the TG to be able to jump?
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No.  If you're using the "standard transit" command, then the jump ship can be "parked at" (either side of) the warp point in its own TG and it will allow other TG to jump, as long as no ship in the other TG exceeds the size limit of the jump ship.  The usual commercial jump drive restriction also applies; TG containing ships with military drives cannot utilize a jump ship with commercial jump engines.
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: March 20, 2010, 11:17:37 AM »

"What's the difference between the 'standard transit' and squadron transit' orders?  Which should I use when?"
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A squadron transit in Aurora lands a random distance away from the JP on the other side, and is limited to a few ships at a time (the squadron size).  In situations where there might be bad guys on the other side of the JP, this is the command you should use.  Note that a TG with a squadron transit order must contain a jump ship with a squadron size rating greater than or equal to the number of ships (including the jump ship, but not including embarked parasites) in the TG, and whose jump engine and mass are both greater than or equal to the mass of the largest ship in the TG.

In situations where there isn't going to be any combat, the squadron size requirement would lead to a LOT of micromanagement involving twiddling TG compositions to order multiple jumps to escort all the ships across.  To avoid this micromanagement, the game rules were changed to allow a standard transit order which avoids this micromanagement.  Any TG can "standard transit" a JP as long as there's a jump ship at that JP which is capable of escorting each ship in the TG through the JP.  The jump ship can either be in the TG, or can be parked on either side of the JP (in other words it's sitting there holding a wormhole open while the TG transits through the wormhole).  The disadvantage of this is that the TG's sensors etc. are destabilized for a significantly longer period of time, making it a sitting duck if there are bad guys on the other side.  This is the transit order that most players use most of the time.

Just to emphasize the last point:  for "standard transit" orders, the jump ship does not have to be part of the TG; instead you can give a "move to jump point X" order to a jump ship and after it arrives it will automatically ferry ships across,  effectively acting as a jump gate for ships it is able to escort.

For more details about this, see this post viewtopic.php?f=19&t=2256&p=21655&hilit=standard+transit#p21655
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: January 29, 2010, 08:41:28 AM »

"I just built a jump ship and can't get it to transit.  What's wrong?"
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There are several things that commonly go wrong here:

1)  The size (in HS) of ships that can transit a JP is the lesser of the capacity of the jump ship's jump engine and the size of the jump ship itself.  In other words, if you build a jump ship with a 6000 ton (120 HS) jump engine, but the size of the jump ship is only 5750 tons (115 HS), then it won't be able to escort a 6000 ton cruiser through the JP - the biggest such cruiser would be 5750 tons.  Note that this limit is on a per-ship basis; the jump ship could escort 2 5750 ton cruisers as easily as one (assuming its squadron size limit isn't exceeded for a combat transit - see below).

2)  Ships with non-civilian engines (i.e. military, GB, fighter) cannot transit a wormhole created by a commercial jump drive.  The technobabble for this is that the commercial wormhole pays for its higher capacity with a lower stability, and would be destabilized by the transit of military-grade engines with their higher power levels.  So don't put military engines on a commercial jump freighter :-)  Commercial ships can, of course, transit through wormholes created by a military jump drive.

3)  If you've given a "squadron transit" order to a TG, then the number of ships in the TG (including the jump ship, but not including embarked parasites) must be less than the "Squadron Size" parameter of the jump drive, and the jump ship must be in the TG making the jump.  For "standard transit" orders this is not a problem, since the standard transit order tells the jump ships to open a long-term wormhole through which any number of ships can pass, but which disrupts their sensors etc. for a longer period of time.  So for the jump ship and two cruisers discussed in #1, the squadron size of the jump ship's drive would need to be three or greater.

4)  Note that when you're doing a squadron transit with multiple jump ships, the Squadron size is not cumulative.  In order to fully utilize the squadron size ratings of multiple jump ships when doing a squadron transit, you must break the TG up into multiple TG, each with one jump ship.  This is because the wormhole created by a jump ship in a squadron transit appears in a random location on the far side of the jump point; different jump ships (and the ships they're escorting) will come out in different locations and so can't be part of the same TG.

5)  For experienced players:  Steve took out the checkbox that turns jump drives off on ships - he said it was doing more harm than good.  So this is no longer a failure mode.
Posted by: sloanjh
« on: January 29, 2010, 08:23:24 AM »

FAQ for the various forms of jumping