Map of the Steppes (Seren-Tinza) Front

[Arioch]

At this time of Sunday night when the new page is not quite ready, I usually post something in the WIP thread, but the 89 WIP's are a little too spoilerific, and while I hope to have the finished page up by the end of Monday I thought I'd post this instead, since there were questions in other threads about it.

This is a translated, expanded version of the map shown on page 59, showing the Charred Steppes region from the Seren Corridor to Tithric space. Historian territory is just off the left edge of the map (you can see the clipped name of one of the former Historian systems "Place of Contempt" at the edge. The top of the map faces galactic Spinward (up the Orion arm), and the right faces toward the Galactic Core. Human space is located Coreward and toward Galactic North ("up" out of the map toward the viewer) roughly two map-widths.



This map comes with the following caveats:

• The map represents a "slice" of space of indeterminate width, in which I have tried to "squish" as many important locations as I can. However, areas above and below this slice are sometimes not on the map. For example, the route Bellarmine used to enter Naam is "above" the map.
• As a result of the squishing, the scale here is not very exact, but the width of the map is in the neighborhood of 100-150 light years. The map is most accurate near the point of focus (the Steppes) and drops in accuracy as it moves farther away.
• The green lines represent routes, which may or may not correspond to actual jump links. The colored dots represent actual stars, but the gray dots represent "nodes" that link routes; these may be aggregations of multiple stars, or routes that lead above or below the plane of the map.

[ColdRain]

In rough measure, then, the route from Azimol to Seren looks like about 5 links of around 10 light-years length each. Few of these links will follow the plane of the map, so add, say 50% more to the distance to cover that, for a total of 75 light-years.

Insider's FTL Tech page notes jumps are preferably 6 light-years or less. Stars won't always be positioned for convenience either, so many jumps will be shorter. I'll use 4.5 light-years as a guesstimate of the average distance of a jump along this route.

That makes the Seren-Azimol route around 17 jumps, or around two days communication delay for the Command and Control Network mentioned in the System Defense page, and probably several weeks travel for a fleet.

Is that accurate (within an order of magnitude)?

[Arioch]

That sounds in the correct ballpark.

[CptWinters]

So, assuming Kikitik is telling the truth, Umiak forces are several weeks travel behind Loroi lines?

That'll ruin your day.

[ColdRain]

I was guesstimating the distance from Seren (on the far left) to Azimol (around the lower center). The distance from Naam (where the story is currently occuring) to Azimol is maybe one-quarter that, perhaps four or five jumps.

[CptWinters]

I see what you're saying. I thought you had meant from the Seren front, not the system itself.

[ColdRain]

Aha. With the Seren Corridor, Seren Sector, and Seren system itself labeled on the map, I should have been more specific.

Looking again at the map and Arioch's notes, none of the dots between Naam and Azimol are grey, so it may actually be only two jumps between them.

An unrelated thought: Morat space seems to be bordering quite a large area of no-man's land. I wonder how many previously-inhabited systems they've lost to Loroi bombardment, and if they're angrier at the Loroi for killing the worlds, or the Umiak for failing to defending them.

[Karst45]

can i have some precision for the "spinwise"?

[Arioch]

"Spinward" is the direction of the galactic spin (clockwise relative to galactic North), an angle perpendicular to any line you draw between yourself and the galactic center ("Coreward").



The opposite of Coreward is "Rimward"; the opposite of Spinward is "Anti-Spinward"; the opposite of galactic North is galactic "South."

Modern astronomy uses a UVW coordinate system, in which U=Coreward, V=Spinward, and W=North.

[manticore7]

so this puts the conflict on or near the Perseus arm of the galaxy?

[Razor One]

That would be significantly further than what's implied, arms are generally separated by thousands of lightyears.

If we take the sun to be at the centre of the circle indicated, then Naam and the surrounding locations would be about a pixel or three down and to the left, still well within the Orion spur.

[Arioch]

It's all within the Orion Spur. The area of "known space" is within the Local Bubble, which is about 1,000 light years across... roughly the size of the little circle labeled "Sun" in the galaxy image.

[CptWinters]

It's all within the Orion Spur. The area of "known space" is within the Local Bubble, which is about 1,000 light years across... roughly the size of the little circle labeled "Sun" in the galaxy image.

Really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

[NOMAD]

Very nice Arioch, this make thing so much easier to understand.

I can see why the Umiak decided to attack the Naam system, on the loroi side of the steep are about 4-5 point of entry into Azimol. very clever, I wonder how long they were planning this

[osmium]

It's basically just a polar coordinate system wherein the current angle is instead written as the vector perpendicular to the radial vector at the given angle.

That is to say coreward points towards the center of mass (i.e. the point around which the galaxy is rotating) and spinward points in the direction of rotation (i.e. sorta like what the linear momentum would be without gravity accelerating the mass inward thereby drawing a circular curve rather than a straight line).

I assume that this methodolgy is *actually* a cylindrical coordinate system with some heretofore unspecified "height" measure to represent the direction in the thickness of the disk.

Also given that communication time for actual ships I would expect that critical communication would be sent via reusable one-time-charged railgun (or otherwise quick acceleration) launched mini communication probes (likely mounted on say a satellite of a small planet like our moon). I would expect that while the bandwidth is likely low that the Loroi (and maybe even the Umiak) maintain a capability of sending important messages empire wide within say 2 hours or so.

truthfully I'm not sure why they wouldn't use such a system for basically all communication, as I'm sure a solid state drive and some sort of simple EM transmitter wouldn't require much of the things a full fledged starship would. I just cannot see why they would send a full starship that requires days to accelerate to do the job of simple communication.

-O

[Mjolnir]

I assume that this methodolgy is *actually* a cylindrical coordinate system with some heretofore unspecified "height" measure to represent the direction in the thickness of the disk.

It's not unspecified...that direction is "galactic north/south".

Also given that communication time for actual ships I would expect that critical communication would be sent via reusable one-time-charged railgun (or otherwise quick acceleration) launched mini communication probes (likely mounted on say a satellite of a small planet like our moon). I would expect that while the bandwidth is likely low that the Loroi (and maybe even the Umiak) maintain a capability of sending important messages empire wide within say 2 hours or so.

truthfully I'm not sure why they wouldn't use such a system for basically all communication, as I'm sure a solid state drive and some sort of simple EM transmitter wouldn't require much of the things a full fledged starship would. I just cannot see why they would send a full starship that requires days to accelerate to do the job of simple communication.

The fact that the starship can go FTL would seem to be a fairly decent point in its favor.

And in-system communications can almost always be handled at lightspeed. I don't see where railgun launched communication probes are supposed to fit in. And I've got no idea where you're getting your "across the empire in two hours" figure. Even assuming lightspeed transmission across systems and no delay for the courier ships to jump out and relay to the next system, with jump zones around sol-like stars being roughly 5 AU out, you'll likely exceed that time before your message transits two systems.

[Mayhem]

Also given that communication time for actual ships I would expect that critical communication would be sent via reusable one-time-charged railgun (or otherwise quick acceleration) launched mini communication probes (likely mounted on say a satellite of a small planet like our moon). I would expect that while the bandwidth is likely low that the Loroi (and maybe even the Umiak) maintain a capability of sending important messages empire wide within say 2 hours or so.

truthfully I'm not sure why they wouldn't use such a system for basically all communication, as I'm sure a solid state drive and some sort of simple EM transmitter wouldn't require much of the things a full fledged starship would. I just cannot see why they would send a full starship that requires days to accelerate to do the job of simple communication.

Are suggesting using a railgun to launch an A.I. controlled messenger vessel into a jump zone at the right speed for it to jump to the next system where it will transmit its data payload?

The difficulties I see with this
1) a messenger isn't going to small.
Insider (see "Power and Scope of Jump Fields") Suggests ~100m as the minimum size (at current tech levels) for a crewed jump capable vessel.
Dropping the crew, life support, normal space engines, power plant and fuel may reduce it to the 25-40m range but you still need inertial dampers, jump drive and a massive (pre-charged) capacitor bank capable of powering the jump.

2)you now need to make the messenger vessel survive the stresses, temperature and massive electromagnetic fields that come with being an railgun projectile.
Which means a lot of shielding to protected the fragile A.I. computer, data store and capacitor bank.
Which adds to the size and weight of the projectile making it require more energy to launch.

Having said that it is an interesting idea which could be made to work for some use cases though a more general purpose jump-capable courier vessel may still be preferred for flexibility and independence from a system's infrastructure.

[osmium]

No AI, it's literally a solid state drive of some sort storing the information to be transmitted, a large capacitor tied to a jump drive (or whatever they charge when they charge jump engines) and a transmitter with a switch to turn on post jump. Shouldn't require much by means of inertial dampening as Arioch said something like even if the ship could sustain the stress it would be pulled into hyperspace when talking about one ship throwing another not working. Now this could be just a what if, but to me it sounds like a statement that the forces are great and usually ships are not designed for this stress and thus would be broken, not that the forces are so great no material could sustain the stresses involved. It's sorta like a car engine powering one of those little metal quad bikes for kids, the engine is basically the whole device. So you're throwing a jump engine with a thumbdrive and cellphone strapped to it (maybe the transmitter needs to be a little bigger, but still basically the same thing).

What I am envisioning would need to be picked up by a ship on the farside of the jump, would have no (or very little) propulsion capabilities of it's own, and would make a single jump between charges. Obviously, you would need to scramble some sort of tug or something to go catch the probe, but the point is that if you can accelerate a probe to jump speed along a jump vector with a railgun and have it jump basically immediately after you could have a viable, if low throughput communication system, likely used in case of emergency with other messages merely being sent along with supply ships etc. (relatively low tech and not a ton of investment, if big and only really viable in well-defended systems)

-O

[icekatze]

hi hi

Normally to make something like that work, I would suggest having an external FTL drive that projects whatever energy field it uses on the smaller object as they pass by each other, but I gather that nobody in the Outsider verse makes jump gates, so I have to assume that there is some technical issue with that plan.

I would imagine that there are a lot of courier ships that make regular trips back and fourth between heavily populated systems, such that at any given time there is probably at least one ship on route to a jump lane that you could beam a message to.

[Karst45]

It's all within the Orion Spur. The area of "known space" is within the Local Bubble, which is about 1,000 light years across... roughly the size of the little circle labeled "Sun" in the galaxy image.

Really puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

yeah that what i liked in Spore, the galaxy map and how freaking big it was. and even there am sure they are far from the true.