Re: [FT universe] was [URL] ...

   This discussion about making small FTL jumps to allow a ship to get
closer to a specific location.	The assumption naturally is that shorter
jump are more accurate.  That brings up the question, what is the
smallest
FTL jump possible, and the longest possible?

    The Full Thrust rules do not address this.	But since ships going to
FTL during a battle completly leave that battle, we can assume that
ships
can't make small enough jump to be useful as a tactic in a battle.  I
can't
say I'm going to FTL to put my ship behind that big bad super
dreadnought
my enemy has.  Unfortunatly this does not help us much since no scale
for
distance or time is given in the rules.

    Another unknown is how fast do the ships travel FTL?  Also do the
ships
have control of how fast they go in FTL?  Then there is the unknown
factor
of how short timewise can a FTL jump be controlled.  Current technology
can
easily time controls to at least the microsecond range.  Of course FTL
jumps
involve a lot of engery which can't be turned on and off that quickly.

    So I'll make some assumptions:

1 - The slowest FTL travel possible is just barely above the speed of
light.

2 - Combat occurs at distances on the order of thousand of miles
maximum.

3 - The shortest time that an FTL jump can take is one second.

    That gives us the shortest jump distance of a light second or
186,000 miles.	This should pose no problem for the signals used to
locate a cache of supplies.  Currently we can receive very low power
signals from the likes of Marriner and Voyager at longer distances
that that.

Enjoy,
Tom Granvold				<thomas.granvold@eng.sun.com>