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dph
Lieutenant
Joined: 17 Jul 2009
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 Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 9:52 am Post subject: Astrogation |
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Hi guys
I'm running a Tramp freighters campaign http://www.obsidianportal.com/campaigns/roguetraders and obviously there's a lot of Astrogation calculation involved.
I've had a few recurring and potential issues that I haven't been able to clarify in the RAW (or Tramps, Platt's etc.) and was hoping anyone out there could either point me to some official/expanded or house rules or just your general opinions!
Return Trip
Does a crew need to recalculate their trip home to the previous departure point? Do they simply 'reverse' the coordinates in the Nav comp and not reroll?
Calculating form an Unknown Location
Calculating from an 'unknown location' (according to RAW) can take days! A common 'trick' by pirates is to force a ship from hyper into real space thus leaving them unable to simply jump out. In my campaign the players are doing this deliberately to try and flush out a pirate crew; Could the crew 'monitor' their route while traveling, or otherwise find a way to identify the location they have 'dropped' into and thus allow them to jump away again more quickly?
Stored Coordinates
When a jump is stored in a Nav computer or Astromech Droid, is this route then always 'free' (no roll or time to calculate) Can you store a single location rather than a 'route'?
Some of these may seem obvious but I want to cover all the basics and angle here!
Thanks for any help... |
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
Posts: 3868
Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 11:29 am Post subject: Re: Astrogation |
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| Tossk wrote: | | I've had a few recurring and potential issues that I haven't been able to clarify in the RAW (or Tramps, Platt's etc.) and was hoping anyone out there could either point me to some official/expanded or house rules or just your general opinions! |
Astrogation in the RAE page 48 gives the following times:
(1) one minute to calculate a jump from a known position on a commonly travelled jump route for which coordinates have already been calculated.*
(2) a few hours when position is known but destination is one you have not travelled to and the nav computer must calculate coordinates.
(3) one day when you must take readings to calculate your ship's current position and then compute coordinates.
*Note that page 118 elaborates on this and allows a character to make an emergency jump. Astrogation difficulty is doubled and the character rolls once per round until they succeed (or really mess up their roll  ).
| Quote: | Return Trip
Does a crew need to recalculate their trip home to the previous departure point? Do they simply 'reverse' the coordinates in the Nav comp and not reroll? |
Yes they need to recalculate a return. I don't think you can just reverse the directions. (Might be some one-way hyperspace routes.  ) This is most like (2) above. It should take one hour to a few hours since they have been their before, but they need to calculate the route back.
| Quote: | Calculating form an Unknown Location
Calculating from an 'unknown location' (according to RAW) can take days! A common 'trick' by pirates is to force a ship from hyper into real space thus leaving them unable to simply jump out. In my campaign the players are doing this deliberately to try and flush out a pirate crew; Could the crew 'monitor' their route while traveling, or otherwise find a way to identify the location they have 'dropped' into and thus allow them to jump away again more quickly? |
Good question. Maybe. They could certainly look at a large number of possible exit points along their route and predict what the stars would look like from that location. This would require a lot of work by the astrogator, but I would think this should make it a lot faster to calculate their new location. They might also have precalculated jumps from neighboring planets or stations along the route so that they would only need to calculate a jump from new location to nearest known point. Then they could use the nearest known point to continue their route. Should save time/difficulty.
| Quote: | Stored Coordinates
When a jump is stored in a Nav computer or Astromech Droid, is this route then always 'free' (no roll or time to calculate) Can you store a single location rather than a 'route'? |
I would interpret that as a route, not a location. See page 117 Nav Computers "Ships without nav computers often use astromech droids - such as R2 units - to store astrogation coordinates. (Pilots can try to make hyperspace jumps without navigation coordintes, but his is an incredibly risky proposition.)" Without a Nav computer or astromech the astrogation has a +30 difficulty.
I would not consider the jump a free action, but it would act like (1) above and should only take a minute or so to complete the calculations for the jump to lightspeed.
Some GMs will follow the astrogation rules as written for all jumps. Others play much looser with the rules and only require the players to roll their astrogation in interesting or stressful situations. |
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Fallon Kell
Commodore
Joined: 07 Mar 2011
Posts: 1846
Location: Tacoma, WA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 4:36 pm Post subject: Re: Astrogation |
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| Tossk wrote: | | Could the crew 'monitor' their route while traveling, or otherwise find a way to identify the location they have 'dropped' into and thus allow them to jump away again more quickly? |
They may be able to get their hands on a series of realspace beacons that they could drop ahead of time and use to triangulate their position. They would probably be kind of expensive since they would need a hyperspace transciever or some other FTL broadcasting option. Maybe rentals?
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garhkal
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Joined: 17 Jul 2005
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Location: Reynoldsburg, Columbus, Ohio.
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 5:17 pm Post subject: |
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| Tossk wrote: | Return Trip
Does a crew need to recalculate their trip home to the previous departure point? Do they simply 'reverse' the coordinates in the Nav comp and not reroll? |
Any hyperspace trip, even one they have already done in the past, they need to make a roll for, but the jump should be easier coming back from somewhere you just went.
| Tossk wrote: | Calculating form an Unknown Location
Calculating from an 'unknown location' (according to RAW) can take days! A common 'trick' by pirates is to force a ship from hyper into real space thus leaving them unable to simply jump out. In my campaign the players are doing this deliberately to try and flush out a pirate crew; Could the crew 'monitor' their route while traveling, or otherwise find a way to identify the location they have 'dropped' into and thus allow them to jump away again more quickly?
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I'd say over time it would eventually make it easier, if they keep coming out into the same region.
| Tossk wrote: | Stored Coordinates
When a jump is stored in a Nav computer or Astromech Droid, is this route then always 'free' (no roll or time to calculate) Can you store a single location rather than a 'route'? |
They still need to roll, but its an easy diff, and iirc take half a min..
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ZzaphodD
Rear Admiral
Joined: 28 Nov 2009
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 6:59 pm Post subject: |
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The whole idea of 'stored coordinates' doesnt really make much sense. Why not just buy a lot of memory and store all jumps you make, and then just reuse them again as long as your going the same route.
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Bren
Vice Admiral
Joined: 19 Aug 2010
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Location: Maryland, USA
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 7:14 pm Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | | The whole idea of 'stored coordinates' doesnt really make much sense. Why not just buy a lot of memory and store all jumps you make, and then just reuse them again as long as your going the same route. |
Because the galaxy is always in motion after a time the old jump coordinates become obsolete and need to be recalculated. |
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
Joined: 05 Apr 2010
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 8:16 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | Because the galaxy is always in motion after a time the old jump coordinates become obsolete and need to be recalculated. |
Maybe that's part of the distinction between preprogrammed coordinates and a navcomputer; that a navcomputer can make the calculations necessary to factor in relative galactic motion.
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garhkal
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| Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:07 pm Post subject: |
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Yup.. think of the way the Stargates do coorelative updates periodically.. to account for Stellar drift. The same needs to be done for hyperspace coordinates, as things move around.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:08 pm Post subject: |
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Yeah. Each planet is also revolving around a sun, which in turn is also moving. So each time you make a trip it would be a little differernt than the time before.
I think Navicomps probably do all the math working out where every stellar object is going to be during the trip. Stored jumps are probably only good for a limited amount of time. They probably would still "work", but some of the object on the route will have moved. That might mean only a minor inconvience, like a slightly longer trip if the destination planet has moved a few million km away from the termination point, but could be faltal if the destination planet has moved inot the termination point.
Personally, I don't like the stored coordinates idea. I get the feeling that astromechs CAN serve as navicomps, but that they are like the laptop equivalent ot a navicomp. Ive been thinking of replacing the stored jump idea with a increased difficulty idea. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Tue Apr 05, 2011 4:38 pm Post subject: |
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Most gms i have played under that DID give out 'stored coordinates' for a jump' they had a 2-5 day life cycle before becoming outdated.
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atgxtg
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 4:59 pm Post subject: |
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| garhkal wrote: | | Most gms i have played under that DID give out 'stored coordinates' for a jump' they had a 2-5 day life cycle before becoming outdated. |
I just kick up the difficluty every so often, as the data becomes more and more outdated. The more difficlt the trip and the longer the journey the faster the increase. |
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ZzaphodD
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 5:13 pm Post subject: |
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| Bren wrote: | | ZzaphodD wrote: | | The whole idea of 'stored coordinates' doesnt really make much sense. Why not just buy a lot of memory and store all jumps you make, and then just reuse them again as long as your going the same route. |
Because the galaxy is always in motion after a time the old jump coordinates become obsolete and need to be recalculated. |
But then, whats the expire date of stored jumps? 
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CRMcNeill
Director of Engineering
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Location: Redding System, California Sector, on the I-5 Hyperspace Route.
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 6:06 pm Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | | Bren wrote: | | ZzaphodD wrote: | | The whole idea of 'stored coordinates' doesnt really make much sense. Why not just buy a lot of memory and store all jumps you make, and then just reuse them again as long as your going the same route. |
Because the galaxy is always in motion after a time the old jump coordinates become obsolete and need to be recalculated. |
But then, whats the expire date of stored jumps? :lol: |
When it comes to "galactic drift" or whatever you want to call it, I would think an expiration date would not be realistic. As someone already suggested, rather than jumps coordinates being "good" up to a certain date, they should gradually become more and more inaccurate (increasing the difficulty of the jump) until they reach a point where a jump mishap is a practical certainty.
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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
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Bren
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| Posted: Fri Apr 08, 2011 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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| ZzaphodD wrote: | | But then, whats the expire date of stored jumps? |
I guess it's like the expiry on milk. It's not that there is a definite date and time, it's just that before the expiry date virtually everyone agrees it is still OK to drink. And certainly there is some point in time where nearly everyone agrees it is no longer fresh milk. The expiry addresses the former, not the latter. If characters choose to use expired jumps they may end up in the stinky cheese. |
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garhkal
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| Posted: Sat Apr 09, 2011 3:29 am Post subject: |
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Hence my 2-5 days..
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