Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: Aardwolf on August 19, 2006, 08:39:52 pm
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How far can an in-system jump go? Can it go from any point within a certain distance of the gravity source (sun) to any other point within that same object's warp / gravity field? Or can you only go, like, halfway across a star-system? How far does the jumpable region extend? Past, say, the orbit of Pluto? And is it equally large in the direction perpendicular to the orbital plane? I'm basing what I know on the "in-system jump requires a gravity source" stuff, which is rooted, I believe, in the "Subspace" section of FS2 Techroom Intelligence. Also, how long does it take a big ship, like the Colossus or a Sathanas, to recharge its jump drives? I know they can be FREDded to do it instantly, but what do the FS laws of physics dictate on this issue?
I'm working on a new FS-related project that I need to know this for. Why, you might ask, have I given up on the 2D FreeSpace game? I got frustrated by speed issues. I might come back to it later, though. I cannot guarantee any release date for either project, however.
Thank you for your time.
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The fact is, no one really knows the answers to your questions. The FreespaceReferenceBible says that intrasystem jumps require very little energy, while intersystem jumps require a very great deal of power (hence why fighters at first couldn't make jumps on their own). So I think it's likely that the jump drives would be, if not immediately, then very quickly recharged, the larger the reactor, the faster they'd be recharged. As for how far they can jump... that's up in the air. The gravity well has to be present, but at what strength? I'd say Pluto would be possible, but an object like UB313? That'd be pushing it.
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yeah, but I say smaller ships could go farther than larger ones probably requires less gravity
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Ah. But they also have larger, more powerful jump drives so you could just as easily make the case that big ships should be able to go further.
There is no data whatsoever to make a judgement with. I say make the limits on how far an in-system jump can be whatever you want them to be.
As for engine recharging, we don't have much data.
1) We know from King's Gambit that a ship can recharge from an intersystem jump and do an in-system jump in about a minute and a half or so.
2) We know the Iceni can recharge from an in-system jump and do an intersystem jump in about 30 seconds.
3) We know that fighters recharge from an in-system jump almost immediately as there are occassions where ships jump in and then jump out again (If the timing is right in the very first mission the Herc jump in seconds and then straight back out again when the vasudans arrive).
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I always wondered whether ships could build up and store an extra charge so as to jump out quicker.
But Karajorma's points tie right in with what the Reference Bible says, so I'd accept those as fact.
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I always wondered whether ships could build up and store an extra charge so as to jump out quicker.
I'd say that's exactly what the Iceni did in order to get past the Colossus. Perhaps you can't do it when the first jump was an intersystem jump (Cause I can't think of any sensible reason for the NTF to stick around and endure nasty, bright mjolnir induced death otherwise). Or perhaps the Iceni was specially designed for it.
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I always wondered whether ships could build up and store an extra charge so as to jump out quicker.
I'd say that's exactly what the Iceni did in order to get past the Colossus. Perhaps you can't do it when the first jump was an intersystem jump (Cause I can't think of any sensible reason for the NTF to stick around and endure nasty, bright mjolnir induced death otherwise). Or perhaps the Iceni was specially designed for it.
It could be correct but not certain.
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The gravity well has to be present, but at what strength? I'd say Pluto would be possible, but an object like UB313? That'd be pushing it.
What are you talking about? UB313 is bigger than Pluto.
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And they're both nothing compared to the Sun. That would be the measure of local gravity, not the planets.
Although it might be interesting if there were "intrasystem nodes" that would take you to parts of a system beyond the range of an insystem jump.
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I suspect Dark Hunter was refering to a Gravity\Distance ratio.
In other words although UB313 is bigger than Pluto (debatable actually. According to wikipedia the diameter includes a error margin that could make it smaller or larger) it's also a lot further away making a jump to it impossible.
Not saying I agree with that but I suspect that's what he was on about.
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Well, regardless, i'm thinking the most logical way for it to work [at least from a storytelling perspective] would be an exponential increase in energy required as distance from the local star increases. So, a little fighter won't be able to go nearly as far as a Destroyer, but even the latter has a limit.
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2) We know the Iceni can recharge from an in-system jump and do an intersystem jump in about 30 seconds.
On the flipside of that, if you listen carefully you will notice the Iceni shooting at the Collossus with SGreens instead of BGreens. I think in order to do that it needed to sap power from it's other systems, including weapons.
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2) We know the Iceni can recharge from an in-system jump and do an intersystem jump in about 30 seconds.
On the flipside of that, if you listen carefully you will notice the Iceni shooting at the Collossus with SGreens instead of BGreens. I think in order to do that it needed to sap power from it's other systems, including weapons.
Or maybe firing with BGreens would reduce the Colossus hull intergrity obscenely.
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someone should edit the mission so the iceni has bgreens and see what happens
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Not much I imagine. The Colossus just laughed off the Repulse's BGreens.
The problem with insystem jumps is there must be some kind of restriction on them we don't know, otherwise there's no reason for battles to occur where they do; but we've never been told of such restrictions and for all we can prove they don't exist.
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Colossus wouldn't be much good if BGreens did much damage to it.
The Collie is some tough ****.
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What I'm interested is, how prescise can a in-system jump can be?
Can it prescise to the level of ~m or ~km?
Also what would be the shortest distance for a jump?
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The Psamtic mis-jumps and ends up around 8km away from Knossos 2 in one mission so we know that they have a greater degree of control than that.
On the other hand there are several missions where convoys jump in several thousand metres away from an objective. Is this so that they are a moving target while recharging jump engines or is this because they couldn't be more accurate?
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I thought the Psamtik missed because the Knossos was throwing out subspace interference.....
In FS1, in the mission where you must apprehend McCarthy, they say you will jump in "Approx. 5Km away from the exchange", and then you jump in 5 klicks out, so I'd say jumps are in general very accurate.
As for how close... Inferno has a technology called "nano-jumping" built onto the Nemesis-class superdestroyer, which allows it to make a subspace jump of less than 1000m, such as to reappear off a damaged flank. I know Inferno isn't canon, but there are several opportunities for ships to make "nanojumps" in the campaign and they don't, so the shortest distance would be somewhere around 200-300 klicks?
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I thought the Psamtik missed because the Knossos was throwing out subspace interference.....
I think you missed my point. If the margin of error on jumps was say 20km then no one would know that the Psamtik was off target as the distance it arrives from the knossos would be well within the normal margin of error.
So in other words we know that the margin of error is much smaller than that.
In a similar fashion the fact that Alpha 3 complains about the coordinates being bogus in The Roman Blunder when the Iceni is 5km away suggests that fighter jumps are also capable of much more accuracy.
The way I tend to put it is that military grade engines are capable of pretty high precision jumping. The engines on freighters and the like tend not to be as good though.
As for how close... Inferno has a technology called "nano-jumping" built onto the Nemesis-class superdestroyer, which allows it to make a subspace jump of less than 1000m, such as to reappear off a damaged flank. I know Inferno isn't canon, but there are several opportunities for ships to make "nanojumps" in the campaign and they don't, so the shortest distance would be somewhere around 200-300 klicks?
Inferno isn't canon in any way, shape, size or form. You can't make any kind of predictions based on what it does.
I would tend to agree that nano-jumps are not possible or not worth the energy expenditure in FS2 though seeing as we never see one.
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From basic information available to us I would surmise that GTVA capital craft jump accuracy is not that great, since they tend to end up having to manuver to engage; the Shivans by way of contrast rarely have to manuver their capital craft to bring their weaponry to bear or to close the range.
In terms of fighters the situation seems slightly reversed; GTVA fighters seem to emerge from jump very close to their targets (or their charges on an escort mission) in most circumstances. It could be the two sides are just playing to their strengths; the Shivans have tradiationally had superior capital craft and the GTVA traditionally superior fighters.