Re: [GZG] How fast is FTL in GZGverse?

[Ryan Gill <rmgill@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 9:46 PM +0100 5/13/08, Phillip Atcliffe wrote:
>
>Actually, it all sounds rather reminiscent of the scenes in the book Dorsai (aka The Genetic General) in which the hero simulates an attack on a enemy planet by continually "phase-shifting" a small detachment of ships into an attack position and then popping out again, over and over again until the crews can't stand it any more -- only more so, since there's a much greater jump delay and effect on the crew and AIs in the GZGverse. Or Asimov-style hyperspace jumping with added Jump shock a la Pournelle. Either way, or just on its own merits, the speed of Jump-type travel is commonly limited by two things-- or possibly three if you consider the extra one to be a separate issue: how far a single jump can take you, how long it takes to recycle the engines and crew, and how long it takes to work out where you are at the end of each jump.

So any system needs to factor in:

Grade of drive
Technology level of the force
Skill of the Navigator/computer system/officers
Abilities of the crew to handle the jumps
random errors

This seems to work out to portions of the Lt Leary Series (crew skill and morale help in enduring longer trips through bubble space) as well as bits of Lois McMaster Bujold's Miles Vorkosigan series where it concerns space travel time/distance issues.

FTL communications would work well by having couriers at various spacings able to jump between known and possible points to transmit and receive bursts of data that is encrypted. REALLY critical information which cannot be transmitted must be handed off from ship to ship. Needless to say, this would be expensive.
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