[SaltyWaffles]

Seriously, this is critical from a storytelling, lore, and setting perspective. There's some serious discrepency in WiH about how often and how quickly a ship can jump, about how common it is for a ship to have two (the Atreus? Highly experimental tech! The GVD Shepseskaf? It can jump in, then decide to jump out again with its "second drive" in under a minute without any issues whatsoever), and the whole nature of a "crash jump" and its results.

I'll go into all of the specifics and contradictions later if I have to point them out and explain them, but hopefully I won't have to.

But you NEED consistency. Otherwise, one mission is going to have a ship's inability to escape via jumping as a major plot point, while another will have a ship casually jump away in seconds even after just having jumped in a minute ago. And it will totally break narrative coherence and immersion.

In addition, by establishing and adhering to a set of clear rules, you flesh out the setting and story as a whole, and the whole thing gets a life of its own. It feels realistic and relatable, in the sense that it has clearly defined internal logic and is very consistent with it--it becomes a real world in a sense, instead of just a setting that the author changes and messes with on a whim when it's convenient.

Though it would still be nice to have some explanation of what a "crash jump" is at some point, given how it's thrown around a lot.

[LordPomposity]

I haven't noted whole lot of inconsistency in this area. Basically, after you jump, you need to wait a certain amount of time (how long depends on the size of your ship and how advanced the drive is) for your drives to cool down; if you jump before this, you risk blowing your ship up. The Shepseskaf can jump out immediately after jumping in because is has two separate jump drives, each of them on its own cooling cycle. So does the Carthage; it jumps in during Pawns on its main drive, then jumps out using its second drive (which is already cool). After hitting Saturn, both drives are hot from recent jumps, and the Carthage needs to wait twenty minutes before either of them cools down enough to jump in safety. In the case of the Atreus, either its jump drives are a lot more advanced than the UEF is giving them credit for, or Steele is just being reckless and getting lucky (which seems to be how he rolls most of the time).

A crash jump is a jump you make when you haven't calculated where your jump will take you and/or how to get there--you jump to some random location, which might or might not be in the corona of a star. This shows up in a lot of science fiction and never makes a whole lot of sense, as space is so empty that your chances of hitting something are too small to be worth considering (NASA does not bother to check the orbits of asteroids when sending probes through the asteroid belt). For crash jumps to make narrative sense, you have to assume that large objects actively attract ships in subspace toward them (or there'd be no danger) and that subspace navigation is so complicated that computers centuries ahead of what he have now will take several minutes to compute them (or nobody would ever need to make crash jumps).

I don't see any real need to present the players with established rules so long as the team avoids contradicting themselves mission-to-mission.

[NGTM-1R]

Consistency is the enemy of dramatic storytelling.

[Scotty]

The general rule of thumb for ship jump drives is: As the plot demands.

Just kidding.  But only a little.

On a more serious note, unless the ship (remember we're only talking warships right now) has one of the higher tech experimental sprint drives (off the top of my head, Serkr team, the Atreus, the Carthage, presumably the Imperiouse although that's not canon), if it jumps into the middle of a mission, it will not jump back out again because the drives are recharging.  You can see this in the examples of the Medea and the Valerie, in particular, as well as the Arethusa, and those two warships in Pawns On a Board of Bone (second to last mission), as well as the Vatican in Post Meridian.

However, if a ship has spent an amount of time long enough to recharge their jump drives (please note that this amount of time is deliberately not mentioned so that the team has some leeway with it), which usually means on the field before the engagement started, it will usually take the opportunity to jump out if too heavily damaged.  Every single one of the Carthage's escorts can and will leave the field of engagement if you do not disable their engines during the course of the mission, as will most of the Meridian's escort.

However, not all ships do that, because sometimes an additional six or seven seconds of on-station engagement time is critical to the mission, and in the grand scheme of things, corvettes and cruisers in the Solar theater are expendable.  This is never more clear than in the mission to capture the Anemoi logistics vessel.  The warships defending it stay on station regardless of whether their jump drives were operable to give the logistic ship a chance to escape.  The fact that it doesn't is not the point, the point is that it's worth more than they are, and their loss to defend it is important enough to be justified.

Now, it's very important to keep in mind that all of the above isn't quite a hard limit.  Recall, if you will, the Duke in AoA.  It makes repeated, short-duration and short-recharge jumps.  The reason that most ships don't do this is explained in the mission: the Duke's jump drives are consequently almost completely disabled.  Most ship captains will not risk such a tactic if it's going to leave them dead in space with an easily plotted and easily intercepted trajectory which they can no longer alter.  "But wait," you interject, "why don't ships that know they're about to die do that?", to which the answer is more clear than it appears.  Of all the ships that must die for the campaign to progress, most either die too quickly to plot a course that won't send them straight into the heart of the sun or other celestial body (see: crash course in the post above mine), or will actually win without the player mucking things up.  The Valerie and Medea are both entirely capable of savaging your friendly UEF frigates and supporting vessels without being destroyed, they're just struck by the cosmically undeniable (and canonically necessary) bad luck of opposing the player character.  When the battle is as close as that, and in a fleet action so committed and pivotal in the war effort, their decisions (or necessity) to stay in position until their destruction is not so confusing.

Fighters and bombers, of course, recharge their drives much much faster, to the point where it's not even really worth describing the fighter's jump drive recharge time in any meaningful length of time.

[MatthTheGeek]

It feels realistic

NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE NOPE
I ****ing don't want realism in mah BP. GTFO.

Unless what you meant was credibility. Then it's cool.

This shows up in a lot of science fiction and never makes a whole lot of sense, as space is so empty that your chances of hitting something are too small to be worth considering

Well yeah, aside from the fact that it is canon that gravity has an influence on subspace tech (you need a gravity well to perform intra-system jumps) and that it's BP canon that gravity can alter subspace trajectories ("The  Carthage's jump trajectory was captured by Saturn's gravity well." quote : DE briefing). Which means you don't have to actually hit something in the nothingless of empty space, but you just have to get close enough to it. What "close enough" means is up to the BP team in this context, but in all cases, this hugely increases the chances of a crash jump going wrong.

Recall, if you will, the Duke in AoA.  It makes repeated, short-duration and short-recharge jumps.  The reason that most ships don't do this is explained in the mission: the Duke's jump drives are consequently almost completely disabled.  Most ship captains will not risk such a tactic if it's going to leave them dead in space with an easily plotted and easily intercepted trajectory which they can no longer alter.  "But wait," you interject, "why don't ships that know they're about to die do that?", to which the answer is more clear than it appears.  Of all the ships that must die for the campaign to progress, most either die too quickly to plot a course that won't send them straight into the heart of the sun or other celestial body (see: crash course in the post above mine), or will actually win without the player mucking things up.

And another thing being that the Duke probably concentrated all power available to her subspace drive for a long enough period or time in order to recharge it quick enough. This is obviously not an option available to ships already engaged in combat.

[Dragon]

Duke was a special case, considering who really commanded it. Considering what we see them do later on, manipulating a Terran jump drive beyond it's normal capabilities shouldn't be difficult for them. And it still melted down afterwards.

[jr2]

And another thing being that the Duke probably concentrated all power available to her subspace drive for a long enough period or time in order to recharge it quick enough. This is obviously not an option available to ships already engaged in combat.

ninja'd.

If subspace drives didn't insta-charge like in FS/FS2, and had capacitor banks that needed to be filled first (or similar tech that had a charge time), you could jump out faster by using all available reactor power to charge the jump drive.  Say, a reconnaissance ship.  But, throw in some combat, and now, you have to recharge your weapons, and your shields, and your engine afterburner banks. (As well, your top speed is limited when power is being diverted elsewhere.)

This would explain jump times being slightly variable (or even less than slightly, throw in more variables, like maybe overclocking the reactor core and overloading the distribution grid to reduce charge time, maybe jumping out with a 85% charged core which means jump has a 5% chance of stalling and not opening the rift or some technobabble).

[crizza]

What about the Vasudans then?
The desty of them is most likely not the newest one, but do we take it for granted, that after the tragic loss of the Psamtik all zod destys got a secondary jumpdrive?
Their reactor technology should be good enough for that.

[MatthTheGeek]

Err, whut ?

The Tevs lost as many, if not more, desties and warships than the Zods. Do all of their ships sport jump drives ? No, they don't. Not to mention that the Hatie is still a Capella-era design, so not easy to retrofit with such a novel feature as sprint drives.

Zods reactors being consistently better than Terrans, I expect Capella-era Zod ships to have a faster recycle rate than Capella-era Terran warships. Since we lack any sort of information on new-gen Zod warships, we can only speculate from that point.

[headdie]

Indeed i have noticed the mod normally attempts to explain "abnormal" behavior, such as the Duke's run where it even says wither in mission or in the between missions logs that the Duke was risking slagging components jumping like it was.

As stated earlier a "Crash Jump", "Blind Jump" ,etc generic space sci-fi plot device where in emergency situations it is not possible to properly prepare for a subspace/other FTL departure, in story this could be inability to plot and check jump calculations quickly enough, inability to charge you drive sufficiently for a reliable jump, inability to secure the ship for jump, e.g. not retracting turrets and other mobile structures to protect them from the stresses of the transit.  Crash jumps tend to be balanced by the risk or guarantee of an unfavourable outcome (hence why the technique is not used commonly in the story) common effects are hitting a large objects, getting lost in subspace, partial reversion (leaving part of the ship in subspace) or bits breaking off the ship.  Plot Shield tends to get heavily involved here in poorly written fiction.

[crizza]

And once again we're at my most favorite theme^^
If the nowadays United States manage, to improve their carriers with each one they built and modernize those in drydock, why should a species like the Zods, which has a completely intact fleet industry, not be able to redesign their ships for modern standards.
It could even be possible, that a recently build Hatie has many things which were tested for a new design?

You see...I really like this, but I guess as like always, I don't take everything into account.

[MatthTheGeek]

That is true, as evidenced by the Shepseskaf sporting several (2 IIRC) VasPulse weapons. However I think we can agree that replacing some turret subsystems is significantly easier than gutting open the ship to remove and replace its subspace drives.

There's a point where it's easier to build new ships than retrofitting older ones, as demonstrated by the TEI ships in the first place (impracticality to retrofit older ships with meson reactors to support blue beams). Especially since, like you said, the Zods have a relatively intact industry and shipbuilding capabilities, and so are more than able to start mass-producing new designs to replace the old ones.

We know where this point lays for Tevs, but we still have few to no info on the BP-era Zod fleet specifics to guess what warrants retrofit and what warrants building a new ship. It is entirely possible, like you said, that all/most got sprint drives (or are going to, since the technology is still significantly new), as is the opposite. This is all wild speculation until we learn more.

[General Battuta]

This thread seems like a plea for 'IMPORTANT' action on a nonexistent problem. We were pretty careful to play with a consistent set of rules regarding jump cycles. There's always going to be a 'speed of plot' element, but for the most part, a ship that jumps in during the mission will not jump out again unless considerable time has passed and that ship has been able to devote power to recharge, or the ship has a sprint drive or some other piece of power grid trickery.  If you find any inconsistencies, please catalogue them.

A jump requires two ingredients: a charged jump drive and a navigational fix. When you have the charge, but no navigational fix, you can make a crash jump.

A crash jump is a jump you make when you haven't calculated where your jump will take you and/or how to get there--you jump to some random location, which might or might not be in the corona of a star. This shows up in a lot of science fiction and never makes a whole lot of sense, as space is so empty that your chances of hitting something are too small to be worth considering (NASA does not bother to check the orbits of asteroids when sending probes through the asteroid belt). For crash jumps to make narrative sense, you have to assume that large objects actively attract ships in subspace toward them (or there'd be no danger) and that subspace navigation is so complicated that computers centuries ahead of what he have now will take several minutes to compute them (or nobody would ever need to make crash jumps).

Indeed, crash jumps are dangerous because subspace trajectories tend to snag on mass, and the probability of this happening is not simply linear based on the amount of mass. There's a whole set of concerns about structural stress as well.

e:

While it's always great to have a thoughtful fan, and I really appreciate your analysis

In addition, by establishing and adhering to a set of clear rules, you flesh out the setting and story as a whole, and the whole thing gets a life of its own. It feels realistic and relatable, in the sense that it has clearly defined internal logic and is very consistent with it--it becomes a real world in a sense, instead of just a setting that the author changes and messes with on a whim when it's convenient.

did you really think, playing War in Heaven, that this wasn't something we thought about?

[crizza]

Yeah, I agree that retrofitting ships is quite expensive and in  many cases not worth the trouble, as seen with the Typhoon.
But I'm also talking about Haties build after Capella, since I'm speculating , it cuold also be that there are recentlyy build Haties with power cupplings, cabling, genereators etc, so their whole layout was modernized before building, taking for granted my beloved Zods have learned from the Typhoon debacle^^

If you're trying to tell me that Mat, nevermind my post

[MatthTheGeek]

What I'm really trying to say is that you may be right, as much as you may not. We simply don't have the required info on Zod tech and fleet doctrine to make more than wild guesses. From what I heard, even internally for the BP Team those things aren't entirely decided and fixed yet, and probably won't be until WiHP2 release.

[crizza]

Too bad that there is no way to play a part when they refine their new Zod fleet doctrine^^

But as always, they will most certainly impress me

[SaltyWaffles]

This thread seems like a plea for 'IMPORTANT' action on a nonexistent problem. We were pretty careful to play with a consistent set of rules regarding jump cycles. There's always going to be a 'speed of plot' element, but for the most part, a ship that jumps in during the mission will not jump out again unless considerable time has passed and that ship has been able to devote power to recharge, or the ship has a sprint drive or some other piece of power grid trickery. If you find any inconsistencies, please catalogue them.

Will do. Will. Do.

Got to take a final right now, though.

[General Battuta]

Just looking over the campaign (I don't know how far you are, but it's got to be pretty far if you met the Shepseskaf)

mission 0: no warpouts at all so no problem here
mission 1: no warpouts
mission 2: the Cho, Cardinal, Idomeneus and Regensburg are all present at mission start and warp out after a full charge cycle. Some Ares jump in and out, they're fighters. Serkr Team (a group of next-gen shock jump corvettes) jumps in, takes a little while under risky attack to charge up, and jumps out. No problems here
mission 3: The Meridian is present at mission start and can (obviously) warp out. Same goes for her escorts. I think the only potential for a real problem here involves the Yangtze, which might be allowed to jump out very soon after jumping in depending on how the mission script plays out...but most players will probably never even see her, so I'm not sure.
mission 4: obviously no warpouts
mission 5: no capship warpouts
mission 6: the Redoubtable is present at mission start and warps out on a full charge. The AWACS can jump out really soon after jumping in, but they're very small craft. The Valerie doesn't have a chance to jump out after jumping in, nor does the Indus. The Atreus is a next-gen combatant with a sprint drive. No problems here.
mission 7: no capship warpouts
mission 8: no capship warpouts
mission 9: This one I'd question why the GTVA didn't jump one of its warships clear. Presumably they were unwilling to risk abandoning the Agincourt, though it's pretty negligent that they didn't manage to get even one jump-capable ship off the deck - the warships themselves were probably still in charge cycle after their last jump. No capship warpouts, however, except the Agincourt if you fail the mission - it takes quite a while to charge up. I'm less happy with this one but I don't think it has glaring issues.
mission 10: the Indus and Yangtze won't try to warp out at mission end, presumably because it's a situation just too critical to abandon the fight. Torpedo Two jumps in and gets shot to **** before they have any chance to jump out, unless you're really good. The Hood jumps out at the end of a full charge cycle. The Medea jumps in and doesn't get a chance to recharge before being shot up.  Seems fine.
mission 11: the one I'd worry about here is the Hesperia, but I'm not sure exactly if or when it jumps out - it might be a bit quick. Possibly a problem here, but it's not tactically relevant.
mission 12: nuttin big
mission 13: the Spectre is an AWACS and has time to charge anyway; the Shepseskaf has something seemingly akin to a sprint drive setup, which makes sense given how excellent Vasudan reactor design has always been. No big problems.
mission 14: jump dynamics are obviously a big deal here, but the Antenor and Norfolk both get caught on the down end of a charge cycle, and the Carthage has to use her sprint drive to escape. Seems to play by the rules.
mission 15: none of the UEF ships that jump in are able to charge up and jump out, except the Indus, which is the first to arrive and which gets to spend a large chunk of the battle in the relatively safe back rank. It doesn't have a nav fix ready either. A large number of GTVA ships are able to warp out, but they all had time to charge up. Seems fine. Mister Cuddles might break the rules of course 
mission 16: heh.

All in all the rules seem pretty consistent. The one I'd worry the most about is the Hesperia...checking its departure cue, though, it doesn't have one, so no problem there! After that the biggest problem is the Yangtze in Post Meridian, which can, if the mission proceeds along a certain route, jump out immediately after it jumps in. That's a clear continuity error, but it's unlikely to happen.

This is the same kind of check we ran through multiple times during development.

[redsniper]

mission 16: heh.

Indeed.

Spoiler:

The moon must have a sprint drive.

[LordPomposity]

Spoiler:

The moon must have a sprint drive.

Spoiler:

SEEKRIT PROJEKT, JUMP MOON AROUND TEH SYSTEM RUNNING OVER GTVA SHIPS!!!!!!!!111111