[TML] Jump limits

[Jerry W Barrington]

On 8/28/07 2:17 PM, "tml-request at travellercentral.com"
<tml-request at travellercentral.com> wrote:

> Jerry W Barrington wrote:
> 
>> Also, the tidal force at the center of a large mass would be zero, but I
>> doubt you want people jumping from large body cores.  I wonder what the
>> tidal force of an Azhanti would be?
> 
> Well, if you jump from the core of a large body (or other local flat
> point), you just stop when the tidal force exceeds some critical value,
> which it will do fairly quickly, so it's not particularly useful.

Good point.  And this would be the better reason for not jumping from the
Lagrange points.  Of course, it also means you must jump from the correct
*side* of a body.  If you want to jump rimward, you can't do it from
coreward of a star or planets ju,p limit sphere!  This is not specifically
mentioned in canon, but it follows from the canon comments about being
precipitated out of J-space by a gravity well.



On 8/28/07 2:17 PM, shadow at shadowgard.com wrote:

> The list has gone over "jump precipitation" *many* times. There are a
> number of problems if you allow it for anything other than the
> endpoint of a jump being inside the 100 diameter limit of the target.
> 
> The biggest is *when* does the ship pop out of jump?
> 
> Consider a j6 ship making a J6 with something "in the way" at j3...

Yes, this is a major flaw of all jumps taking 1 week.  :P  Seriously, like
any form of travel, jump should have a "velocity", at least in my opinion.
This would actually be a good use of tech level variation.

> Me, I figure the 100 diameter limits only matter at jump entry and
> exit. If you are inside the 100 diameter limit when you try to start
> a jump, you have the problems listed clear back to the original
> rules.
> 
> If your chosen exit point is inside a 100 diameter limit it gets
> "pushed" back out to the limit.
> 
> Stuff in the middle doesn't count.

If stuff in the middle doesn't count, then the 100 diameter limit is "in the
middle".  It's not logical to treat it separately.

> Also, running into the 100 diameter limit of something out in
> interstellar space *isn't* all that likely. There's a *lot* of space
> out there.

Low odds on any one jump.  Multiply those odds by trillions of jumps tho...

>> Also, the tidal force at the center of a large mass would be zero, but I
>> doubt you want people jumping from large body cores.  I wonder what the
>> tidal force of an Azhanti would be?
> 
> Actually, the tidal forces (curvature of space) at the center of a
> large body aren't likely to be zero, even though the *gravity* is
> zero. There's a non-zero rate of change of accel with distance from
> the center.

True, there would be only a point of zero (which isn't terribly meaningful
for tidal force, which is innately an area affect), but it would be below
whatever threshold jump requires for a good space around.

Actually, on the subject of tidal force not being a point affect, larger
ships should have higher safe jump limits.  Tidal force is the difference in
gravity across an object.  Bigger object, bigger difference!  Ooh, I've
gotta write that one up some time.