Map of the Steppes (Seren-Tinza) Front

[Luge]

The fact that a safe exit from hyperspace appears to require a gravity well of appreciable size.

So save for the very unlikely and almost non existent black hole in our stellar back yard, a "deep Space" exit isnt going to happen.
its my guess that black holes have enough gravity to them that you could safely jump in at a distance out that would be considered deep space. But there are no black holes know of anywhere near where this is going on, so no deep space exits.

Hm.. Then I didn't read Arioch's original "Hyperspace" drawing properly. I thought the green "good" jumps were all away from the deep wells.

Arioch: If you were to add another "very short" jump on your graph, which way would it go?

L.

[captainsmirk]

The fact that a safe exit from hyperspace appears to require a gravity well of appreciable size.

So save for the very unlikely and almost non existent black hole in our stellar back yard, a "deep Space" exit isnt going to happen.
its my guess that black holes have enough gravity to them that you could safely jump in at a distance out that would be considered deep space. But there are no black holes know of anywhere near where this is going on, so no deep space exits.

Hm.. Then I didn't read Arioch's original "Hyperspace" drawing properly. I thought the green "good" jumps were all away from the deep wells.

Arioch: If you were to add another "very short" jump on your graph, which way would it go?

L.

What are you defining as "deep space", most people I imagine take it to mean well beyond are star's gravity well. The drive systems in use in Outsider only push a ship into hyperspace they don't offer anyway of exiting, thus they require the gravity well of a star to drag the ship back out of hyperspace. A good jump therefore needs to be within a gravity well, however it is generally preferable to arrive on the edge of a star system as there is generally less to crash into (and you are less likely to be pulled into the star itself, a risk the deeper into the well you jump).

I believe there is already a "very short" jump on the diagram, to the left of the "short" jump, it goes 'Doink!' and the sends the ship bouncing off into hyperspace again to end up who knows where...

[Shrike]

Hm.. Then I didn't read Arioch's original "Hyperspace" drawing properly. I thought the green "good" jumps were all away from the deep wells.

I think there's a misinterpretation going.

Basically imagine star system being a target 20 AU across, which you need to hit to emerge from hyperspace. If you hit the bullseye (the star) you explode in a fire and die, so you don't want to aim too close, but if you miss by going outside you go all Event Horizon (bad!). It's a tiny fraction of the distance between stars.

And that's why close jumps are preferred, because it's easier to hit your target (like shooting a gun).

Of course as I pointed out, short jumps can be either sub-optimal or completely off the table. And why increasingly accurate hypernavigation would be a growth industry because you can shave a lot of transit time off by using longer jumps, particularly over long trips.

All this blather aside, you can probably expect that you'll need to make about one jump for every 4 LY of direct seperation if you're playing it safe and not exceeding 8 ly per jump - but this is statistical and thus is more relevant for long trips, because stars don't line up nicely for linear travel.

IIRC the Steppes are ~250 ly from Earth, so that's on the order of 60 jumps. I dunno how many they can make in a month, but from the impression I get that's a reasonably substantial distance. A fair chunk of a year, anyhow, if not more.

[fredgiblet]

It took the Bell 2 months to get to Na'am, a Loroi courier could probably make the trip in less than a month.

[Shrike]

Guess I misrembered how long they take to cross a star system and how much burn-time Loroi ships have. Oops!

[Mayhem]

IIRC the Steppes are ~250 ly from Earth, so that's on the order of 60 jumps. I dunno how many they can make in a month, but from the impression I get that's a reasonably substantial distance.

Looking at Insider we get

Distance from Sol to Esperanza (82 Eridani): 19.7 LY
Diameter of Human Space: 35 LY
Distance from Sol to Naam: 217 LY (60 parsecs)

So, It will generally take several days to a week to transit each system. It took the Bellarmine nearly two months to reach Loroi space from 82 Eridani, a distance of 217 LY.

Human space is not one star; it's 40 systems across 35 light years, the edge of which is only 217 light years from the actual front line.

Only nearby stars have workable jump links (max 10 light years, and preferable safe distance is about 6 light years or less).

And from the comic itself:

02:36 14 July 2160
Naam system, 217 Light-years from Earth
Earth Scout ECS-154 Bellarmine on alien contact mission, day 58

No, our nearest vessel is the Prabhu, our tanker and communications relay, still ten jumps behind us.

Interpreting we get:
58 days
217 Light-years (is hyphenation correct?) from somewhere in Human space.
@ ~8 LY a jump 217 LY is 27 jumps in a straight line
but only 58 days available with 1+ days between jumps
So reasonable estimate might be 30-40 jumps

Presumably the 4 contact seeking vessels went in separate directions when the tanker stopped (10 jumps back) giving a current search hemisphere of radius up to say 80 LY.

Distance to Pleiades cluster (on the other side of Loroi space): 425 LY (130 parsecs)

Arioch, is this a distance from Sol as well?

[Arioch]

425 light years is the distance to the Pleiades from Sol, yes.

Naam is 217 light years from Sol, but the 58-day counter started when the scouts left Esperanza (82 Eridani), which is itself 20 light years from Sol.

Another item to consider is that 8-10 AU is a typical transit distance between jump points for a Sol-type star, but about three-quarters of the stars transited will be small red M-type stars, in which the transit distance will be perhaps half that.

[GeoModder]

So reasonable estimate might be 30-40 jumps

I kept it closer to 40 jumps. There would have been deviation from the direct line between Naam and Esperanza. The real distance jumped comes probably closer to 250-260 lightyears.

[discord]

to me it seems like 58 days is VERY short for even a 197 LY trip, given preferred 'safe' jump distance of 6, we simply divide 197 by 6 and get 32 and change, less than 2 days per system? that is moving real fast, I'd expect something around a week or two, for a low burn fuel efficient scout mission....

could be day 58 from the prabhu i suppose....

edit
forgot about tangential jumping, would not have to actually CROSS all the systems...still seems pretty damn fast.
/edit

[Arioch]

58 days is very much on the short side; when I wrote that number down (ten years ago) I didn't do any complicated calculations. But it is doable; if you figure not more than 30 jumps and account for most of them being small systems, you can get an average transit velocity that's not far above the previously estimated 3,000 km/s (1% lightspeed). It's by no means a high-efficiency, low-burn flight plan, but they did have a tanker at which to refuel while underway.

90 days is probably a more reasonable figure, but that's not what I wrote down back then.

[discord]

arioch: that is also assuming a straight line of stars, or nearly so....highly unlikely, any course would be a zigzag of doom...adding 50-100% distance I'd guess. which would almost double the amount of jumps.... as i said, VERY fast.

[GeoModder]

We can always assume they followed part of the route the Orgus took. Didn't they arrive at Esperanza in 2158 in the story?
So the initial part of the journey would be just following a road map so to speak.

[Karst45]

Maybe the Terran have more efficient jumpdrive that make them jump farther. After all they didnt base this tech on Soia artifact

[icekatze]

hi hi

I always figured that they had the route planned in advance, based heavily on both deep space telescope data, previous scouting missions and whatever old archived star charts the Orgus might have collected through trade with various interstellar races. With a route pre-planned, they wouldn't need to waste much time scanning for new routes and could conserve velocity from previous systems to maximum effect.

[NOMAD]

hi hi

I always figured that they had the route planned in advance, based heavily on both deep space telescope data, previous scouting missions and whatever old archived star charts the Orgus might have collected through trade with various interstellar races. With a route pre-planned, they wouldn't need to waste much time scanning for new routes and could conserve velocity from previous systems to maximum effect.

nicely stated ice, But I would expect maybe 10-20% of the time for scaning the new reigons to see if their was Loroi or Umaik ships present. Maybe just a quick active and passive scan to check things out.

[javcs]

Maybe the Terran have more efficient jumpdrive that make them jump farther. After all they didnt base this tech on Soia artifact

Possibly, at least, that a possibility that I floated ages upon ages ago.
Or I seem to remember it being said that the way we do math is easier/more efficient than the method used by the main races - IIRC, they're saddled with (Soia?) base 12 math. It may be that our math edge permits better/faster jump calculations.

[fredgiblet]

We can always assume they followed part of the route the Orgus took. Didn't they arrive at Esperanza in 2158 in the story?
So the initial part of the journey would be just following a road map so to speak.

Except that would take us straight to the Umiak, and it's not necessarily the best route either as the Orgus were likely blazing trails. My expectation is that we asked the Orgus where the front line was and headed off in that general direction.

Maybe the Terran have more efficient jumpdrive that make them jump farther. After all they didnt base this tech on Soia artifact

The drives don't make any real difference, human or loroi they're all capable of jumping an effectively unlimited distance, the limiting factor is knowledge of the "terrain" and finesse at aiming and picking the perfect velocity.

nicely stated ice, But I would expect maybe 10-20% of the time for scaning the new reigons to see if their was Loroi or Umaik ships present. Maybe just a quick active and passive scan to check things out.

Any starships with active engines will be easily visible from across the system, there's no need to stop for a scan. The only real benefit to doing that is the chance that you can remain unnoticed for slightly longer, and when your entire mission is to make contact that's not much of a benefit.

Possibly, at least, that a possibility that I floated ages upon ages ago.
Or I seem to remember it being said that the way we do math is easier/more efficient than the method used by the main races - IIRC, they're saddled with (Soia?) base 12 math. It may be that our math edge permits better/faster jump calculations.

Base 8, and it's all done by computers anyway. While it's certainly possible that we have computers that are closer to them than our other tech (due to our culture potentially prioritizing computerized devices to a higher degree) most likely it would make no real difference.

[GeoModder]

We can always assume they followed part of the route the Orgus took. Didn't they arrive at Esperanza in 2158 in the story?
So the initial part of the journey would be just following a road map so to speak.

Except that would take us straight to the Umiak, and it's not necessarily the best route either as the Orgus were likely blazing trails. My expectation is that we asked the Orgus where the front line was and headed off in that general direction.

I said part of the Orgus route for a reason. The Orgus refugees came all around the Umiak Hierarchy to reach human space. I gather at least the first 50 lightyears (perhaps even a hundred) could easily be traveled (knowledge in "terrain" ) without the need to scout ahead for jump links.

[Mjolnir]

Or I seem to remember it being said that the way we do math is easier/more efficient than the method used by the main races - IIRC, they're saddled with (Soia?) base 12 math. It may be that our math edge permits better/faster jump calculations.

Choice of base is largely irrelevant. The main difference is that they use a bijective numeration system, without placement zero...they must still use a character for the quantity zero, but it's not used as a placeholder in numbers. It's still a placement system, it's not certain that our system would have any major benefits...it's not like they're using tally marks or Roman numerals.

And as mentioned, the calculations are all done by computers, which will use a number system of their own. And advanced mathematics of the sort needed for figuring out how to perform those calculations tends to require little in the way of arithmetic on known quantities, it doesn't matter that much what system they use. If the Loroi don't perform as well at math as us, it's likely just due to having a culture that doesn't value it as much.

[icekatze]

hi hi

Although the Orgus were said to be reclusive, they were at least partially connection to the local community of space-faring species. I figured that since the destination system was presumably decided by intel from the Orgus, that they must have picked up some star maps from other species. Perhaps the Orgus civilization had access to an old Soia era star map, maybe an old hard drive, maybe a guidestone like in homeworld...or at least they did until they were conquered by the Umiak.