MT has rules for jump time in the Imperial Encyclopaedia and the Starship
Operator's Manual.

Imperial Encyclopaedia

Determine how much time the ship spent in Jump 1D
1= 6 Days
2 to 5 = 7 Days
6 = 8 Days

There are tasks to perform, and if a Mishap occurs
Superficial ship remains in Jump 1D +4 days

Starship Operator's Manual

@120 hours all hands placed on jump exit alert.
Jump exist usually occurs @ 160 hours, but may occur @ 120 or as late as 200

Hours in jump space = 124 + (2D x6)

Roll 2D on mishap table (DM +3 is warning light event during jump)

			Mishap
11 uneven event 	1D (crew)
12 rough exit 		1D (hull)
13 violent exit 		2D (system)
14 violent exit 		2D (crew)
15 violent exist 		3D (systems)

They detail the warning light event if the Navigator doesn't do a cross
check and the Referees uncertain task roll fails ...

And then there is the Jump mishap table ... where a superficial mishap
causes you to exist 80 + (3D *10) Hours.

--
For the fallen in the cause of the free:
 "When I go home I will tell of them and say,
 For our tomorrow, They gave their today."

 My spelling is entirerly due to dyslexia, typos, and poetic license

-----Original Message-----
From: Jeff Zeitlin - editor at freelancetraveller.com (via tml list)
<xxxxxx@simplelists.com>
Sent: Sunday, June 9, 2024 8:42 PM
To: xxxxxx@simplelists.com
Subject: Re: [TML] Jump Fluctuator

On Sat, 8 Jun 2024 21:28:17 +0100, Timothy Collinson wrote:

>Now I've finished catching up with some other duties, I can turn once
>again to TML after a week away and a week rather overwhelmed by being
>unplugged for seven days.
>
>Sitting in a hot tub overlooking Bywater (which felt very Hobbitish),
>the thought came to me about  a Jump Fluctuator.  But I can't tell if
>it's a Belbin 'plant' idea that's one of the 99 out of 100 that should
>be dismissed, or an idea worth pursuing.  You can judge.

Somehow, while I do see a Hobbit as enjoying a hot bath, I think of this in
terms of lots of soapy water and suds, not so much soaking and relaxing.
Other than that, hot water is (in fact) a good way to get ideas to dredge
themselves up from the odd nooks and crannies that make up the several
underlayers of the human mind...

>Now, oddly, I really thought Traveller and MegaTraveller had dice
>rolled 'weeks' in Jump to give some variance, but now I come to look it
>up, apparently not.  Even though the text says "about a week". Paint me
>surprised, I was sure there were some rules for some slight variation.
>TNE: "one week" but a D6 table: 1=6 days, 2-5 = 7 days, 6 = 8 days
>T4: 150-175 hours (no means for determining that I can see)
>Mongoose: 148 hours + 6D
>ORMV (other rulesets may vary - I've not gone through them all)

I do seem to recall that CT and MT both _stated_ that jump was 'a week, plus
or minus ten percent', but I don't actually recall any official rules for
playing with that ten percent. Although it was written with a somewhat
different intent, I suppose you could use "The Color of Jumpspace",
Freelance Traveller July 2013 and
www.freelancetraveller.com/features/rules/jumptune.html to implement that
variation...

Obviously, one can apply additional modifiers or boons/banes to the various
rolls; for example, if the ship is behind on maintenance, the event roll
might take a bane, where a failure on the roll means that your navigator
can't make an observation because s/he's helping the engineer straighten out
the frammistan on the drive's potrzebie unit, which really should have been
replaced at the last maintenance but wasn't because, well, the bank balance
wasn't looking so good...

>So, I must have just imbibed it with TNE or MgT and thought it had
>always been that way.  Not to worry, the thought still stands.  The
>dice rolls of MgT tend to average around fairly limited variations of
>mostly just hours (I presume because of the averaging effects of
>rolling 6D).  I wondered what might happen if you could fit a device
>that *randomly* shortened them or lengthened them by 1-3 days.
>
>Roll your usual Jump duration and then roll a + or - die and then a D3
>for the number of days to subtract or add.  (There may be cleverer ways
>of doing that but my math(s) skill and rule design ability are, as ever
>limited).  I've not come up with any 'science' on *why* it should be a
>day or 24 hours.

'Days' is very much too coarse a granulation for jump variance; even one
full day puts you outside the ten-percent boundary. Hours is better. Ten
percent of a week is about two-thirds of a day. If a device exists that lets
you - under certain circumstances - shave a day or more off the length of a
jump, any ship that has it and successfully uses it is going to be pulled
apart to find out _why_, in hopes that whatever it is can be controlled so
that "one jump = one week" will be a thing of the past. Even a navigator who
gets consistently good results from "The Color of Jumpspace" will probably
have ... difficulties ... retaining a job. Or freedom.

>The idea is that if you're in a desperate hurry you activate the
>fluctuator for a 50/50 chance of coming out sooner than you might
>expect (but with the risk you could take longer).  Presumably there are
>some situations where that would be an acceptable risk.

I suspect that in most cases, this will be to Get Away From The Big Baddie.
In which case, it's likely that three days late will be just as useful as
three days early. If it's to Prevent The McGuffin From Disasterating, you'd
better not figure on succeeding at Getting There Too Soon, since it's even
odds that you'll Get There Too Late, or, depending on what the Disasteration
is, Not At All.

RTraveller is a registered trademark of
Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2024. Use of the trademark in this notice and
in the referenced materials is not intended to infringe or devalue the
trademark.

--
Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
Freelance Traveller
    The Electronic Fan-Supported TravellerR Resource
xxxxxx@freelancetraveller.com http://www.freelancetraveller.com

Freelance Traveller extends its thanks to the following enterprises for
hosting services:

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