On Sat, Feb 3, 2018 at 8:14 PM, Caleuche <xxxxxx@sudnadja.com> wrote:

> Reading further in the Reformation Coalition Equipment Guide, which I got
> when wanting to read about the personal reentry kits, I found the section on
> communications devices and noted that many of the uplinks are limited to
> 3000 km range when contacting a ship in orbit. Planning missions around
> those kinds of limitations can be kind of interesting.
>
> Often times communications systems will have additional restrictions when
> communicating with an orbiting object - for example that object must be at a
> minimum of 10 degrees elevation relative to the horizon and ideally more
> like 15 degrees. Perhaps omnidirectional communicators will only work out to
> 300 km, but if you have a directional, self guiding antenna you get more
> like 3000 to 6000 km. As I mentioned before, to me it adds flavor to the
> game if celestial conditions can be described and even more if they actually
> influence surface operations. As the ability of Traveller ships to hover
> perpetually for long periods of time over a single point, I think I'm just
> outright going to remove that ability and set about reworking slower than
> light propulsion rules for "IMTU".
>

I dunno... I'm peeking in MegaT, and a Grav Parachute runs 2500cr and is TL10
To me, a cubesat with an unfolding solar panel and a cheap grav module
along the lines of the above makes sense for comm relays.
The whole thing would pack down to about 15 liters if you figure the
solar panel is the size of a parachute, so you'd be packing quite a
few of them in one kiloliter of a Type-S's equipment bay, and it
sounds like just the tool for the job. It's only got to stay in orbit
a week or so for the survey anyway.

Or, you could go the other way.
Check out: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KickSat
I can picture the IISS having a "Spreader-sat" the size of a 2 liter
coke bottle that is in a fairly fast ball of twine orbit, and has
oodles of chipsats in launchers all over the outside of it. Drop one
in orbit, and it uses the launchers to pop one off every few minutes
to cover the planet. The chipsats would use mesh radio to relay from
one to another until the message got to the ship.

I can see the desire to add a player complication, or 'realism', but
after 3000 years of space operations, I'd think that what Early 21st
Century Terra calls "realism" and what 1100's Sylea calls "realism"
are two very different things.