Jump Drive mechanics

[PTTG (OP)]

If the destination system is unsurveyed you will end up at a distance from the star somewhere between 100% and 170% of the hyper limit and in a random direction from the star. Your arrival heading will be consistent with your point of origin. So you could arrive on the far side of the star heading away from it. In fact, for an unsurveyed system it is highly unlikely you would arrive on an suitable attack heading.

Steve

I like this. It suggests that rough-and-ready prospectors will be able to operate in the frontier, and even guerrilla military forces, while making them far less efficient than regular navies.

[procyon]

There is a minimum velocity requirement of 200 km/s for hyperspace entry and you can only jump when you are lined up on another star.

I probably missed it in all the reading.  My apologies.  Nice to know someone is solving the problems faster than I can think of them.

I like the idea of knowing the direction from which the ship originated. However I end up handling detection of ships entering the system, I'll include an estimate of the system of origin - based on heading.

Cool.

If the destination system is unsurveyed you will end up at a distance from the star somewhere between 100% and 170% of the hyper limit and in a random direction from the star. Your arrival heading will be consistent with your point of origin. So you could arrive on the far side of the star heading away from it. In fact, for an unsurveyed system it is highly unlikely you would arrive on an suitable attack heading.

No arguement.  I would just jump in at a 'low' speed as far out as I could.  Adjust course toward the primary and them release the ordinance.  Then turn toward where I want to go and jump out.  The ordinance won't need any fuel to get in system.  Picking targets will be a problem...but no plan is perfect.  The first run might just be missiles with sensors to find the targets.

As a thought, would it be a bad thing to fudge the 'unsurveyed jump' %s both up and down from 100%.  Perhaps 30 - 170% (although making sure it didn't end up in something might be a coding nightmare -don't know).  If I had to miss I want to end a long way from the folks who might be shooting at me.  Jumping farther out just gives me more time to adjust for what I find.  If I accidentally end up in the middle of the system, in the midst of the 'natives' defenses - well, that could be a little embarassing....

[UnLimiTeD]

Or you might end up right next to your target, and survive barely long enough to empty your box launcher of tactical nukes on the planet.
Goes both ways.

[chrislocke2000]

Perhaps 30 - 170% (although making sure it didn't end up in something might be a coding nightmare -don't know).  If I had to miss I want to end a long way from the folks who might be shooting at me.  Jumping farther out just gives me more time to adjust for what I find.  If I accidentally end up in the middle of the system, in the midst of the 'natives' defenses - well, that could be a little embarrassing....

Jumping too close with a system of taking damage as a result of exiting in too strong a gravity field is how I was thinking of this. Landing next too your enemies with your fire controls in need of repair could be even more embarrassing...

[Antagonist]

While busy researching something for a game of my own, I came across a thought I think I'll share:

Apparently dwarf stars are MASSIVELY underrepresented in our star catalogs simply because of limitations to how far we can detect them.  If you add dead stars to this mass, it becomes possible that these could explain a quantity of dark matter as not being actual dark matter, but rather undetectable real matter.

Now if you have drives that operate by navigating using gravity wells, this potentially significant and constantly-changing interstellar debris could prove a significant navigational problem if it can pull ships out of hyperspace. Any actual collision is unlikely, since space is BIG... but scouts and explorers would likely travel to another star by jumping from gravity-pocket to gravity-pocket, staying in real-space only long enough to survey the debris and its gravitational effect, recalculate, then jump again.

This process would of course make interstellar travels much longer and more hazardous, possibly explaining lost ships.  Once mapped however you should be able to bypass all this debris and simply jump directly to the target star.

Such a system would make interdiction and interception possible, as well as introduce a 'survey upkeep' (the debris don't stand still after all) and make long jumps expensive and risky versus shorter jumps.

Any thoughts?

[PTTG (OP)]

The debris is moving at stellar speeds. While fast in a cosmic sense, even over a few hundred years we probably won't see anything notable. Still, reminds me of some science fiction story where a rouge planet was tearing along at most of the speed of light through the galaxy. When explorers finally find it and reach it, they almost land before realizing it's from a different region of the universe- one dominated by antimatter. They actually find that the leading face of the planet has been radiated and eroded by constant impacts with interstellar hydrogen. There's apparently a civilization on the falling edge, although how it functions without a sun worries me. Perhaps they  collect matter from the horizon area and have a neutralization-based biology.

[madpraxis]

A quick two cents here....more distance = more error...so you pop out every couple of systems to take a star sighting basically like the good old days of sail, so you know, you end up somewhat near your target. Considering the shear amount of SLOW in-system drives have over the whoosh there we go power of jumping around you could literally shave days of in-system travel off by stopping on the way so you end up somewhere near and close in to your target instead way out in BFE. I read all, missed most, I'm going to sleep....as an excuse if this was already brought up. More like...wassat...er...david drakes books? Commander leary, thassit...