On 08Jul2020 0121, Thomas Jones-Low wrote:

> As I recall from the IW playtest the question was the Imperium board  > game dis not allow deep jumps. You must jump from world to world.
And > this was done for game balance and scenario planning reasons. But
it > is the source of the “no deep space jumps" canon for the IW. >
Contradicting that is the original Terrian mission to Bernard Star. >
Where the team made several jumps to a deep space depot between the >
two. > And during the FFW there was the battle of the two suns, where
the > Zhodani constructed a deep space base for military operations. >
So when the process was invented and when it became safe enough for >
general use is a question up for repeated debate.
I have a vague memory of the Vilani using 'tugs' to relay ships across
two-parsec gaps back when they only had jump-1. They only did it at a
few points (probably one per main-main connection, I expect) and
abandoned the system when they developed jump-2. I don't recall where I
read this, though.

So, my (probably vain) attempt to reconcile this is:

That it was discovered and forgotten several times.

That the Vilani system involved a 'tug' jumping a ship out into deep
space, and the ship them jumping onwards. This means only the tug needs
to deal with the jump into deep space, and can thus have
extra-sophisticated and optimised computers and drives. It's probably
also jumping to the same, very carefully surveyed, spot each time and
whenever possible it will be a point with some mass there even it's tiny
by planetary standards.

That the Terran jumps to Barnard's star were very carefully calculated
using super-computers to pre-generate the course data, and the drives
were hand made and recalibrated before every single jump. Procedures and
risks acceptable to a research and survey vessel are not going to be
acceptable for normal civilian or even military ships.

That even later methods are not popular with ship users (and probably
not with their underwriters either) - even in the New Era, with TL15,
borderline TL16 technology the Regency prefers to jump to known
'calibration points'. Now, these are also refuelling points where
they've used tankers to stockpile fuel for trans-rift jumps, but it's
telling that they didn't call them 'deep space fuelling points' or
anything like that, but rather calibration points. To me that implies
that the use of a known and very carefully pre-surveyed point remains an
important part of deep space jumping even at such high tech levels.

To sum up: I think that deep space jumps, especially into deep space,
are difficult to do safely and require either a great deal of
calculation and some risk, or a very carefully surveyed jump point
(which means someone has already taken some risk to go out there and map
it). It's not something a sensible merchant would do unless the point
was in constant use and thus very well mapped and even then they'd
probably rather go round if they can, if only for peace of mind.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>