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Monthly Archives: September 2020

State of the Frontier – Sept 2020

I had hoped to be able to do four full articles this month but between kids’ sports activities, running a half marathon, a protracted job interview process (it will probably be a month or two before I hear anything – you’ve got to love the slow academic hiring process), and a few other things, the month got the better of me.

Looking Back

Besides the Detailed Frontier Timeline post, this month didn’t look anything like what I expected. I had planned to do a location post and a game write up but due to complications, my game session that would have completed the adventure (so I could post the write-ups spoiler free) was canceled. Instead, a discussion on the Star Frontiers: Alive and Well Facebook group prompted me to write up my notes on Void Jumping. And then I followed that up with a post that hearkens back to the tag line of this blog (“Creating sci-fi RPG resources”) that provided links to all the maps and counters I use in my games, many of which I created myself.

Behind the scenes, I have started working on issue 30 of the Frontier Explorer. I’m not as far along as I’d like due to all the other things going on this month but I’m quickly catching up.

Also, I was playing in RJ McDonough excellent Second Sathar War Campaign but again, this month’s events intervened and I had to bow out of that game. And then unfortunately, just a few days ago he had to close the game down completely.

And that’s about it. Like I said, this month has been crazy.

Looking Forward

October looks to be much better. We’ll have the timeline post as usual, and by then I should have had the final game session of the current adventure so you can look for a new location, a bio-lab operated by the Greater Overall Development Corporation, that the the PCs have been investigating. I also plan to do an adventure write-up as a second post detailing the adventure itself and how I used the location. I have no idea what the fourth post this month will be. We’ll see how it goes.

The other major item this coming month is issue 30 of the Frontier Explorer. Look for that in the latter half of the month. This will be taking up most of my time until then.

I want to get back to working on the deck plans and 3D model of the HSS History’s Hope from the timeline but we’ll see if I actually get that far, most likely that will have to wait for November.

Behind the scenes, I have a short editing effort that I’m doing for another FrontierSpace adventure by Trevor Holman and it looks like it’s almost time for me to do my freelance writing assignment for the upcoming Space Kids RPG by Nick Landry. The Kickstarter for that funded at the beginning of the year but COVID-19 had impacted the production and we’re just getting to my part in the endeavor.

Final Thoughts

I don’t really have much more to say. September has been rough and I’m hoping October goes a bit better. I should at least be able to get caught up on all my regular activities that have been put off by first the truck issue in August and the extended job interview process in September.

If there are any topics you would like to see my write about, let me know and I’ll try to get them into my queue.

September 29, 2020 Tom Leave a comment

Maps and Counters

It has been a crazy week and I’ve not had any time to sit down and work on anything new. That should change starting today (although I have the next Frontier Explorer next looming over me still). But that doesn’t help for today’s post.

As such, I thought I’d round up all the Star Frontiers maps and counter scans that I have and make them available at one central location (namely this post). Some of these were up before and I took off-line a couple of years ago when WotC had us put the Frontier Explorer on hiatus. Others are ones I’ve done for myself or others over the years. Many of these are linked from various places around the but I’ve never really made a centralized directory.

Counters

Let’s start with the counters. I have scans of both the Alpha Dawn Counters and the Knight Hawks counters at a number of different resolutions. You can download the ones you want to use. Most of these are saved as .PNG files which is a lossless compression format, as opposed to JPEG which is lossy. That means that the files are going to be fairly large, especially at the higher resolutions, and that you get all the detail from the original counters.

AD Counters

I’ve never really scanned in the AD counters. I found a good scan of them years ago and have always just used those. One of these days I’ll get around to making my own scans from like-new, unpunched counter sheet that I have. But until then, this one is quite good.

  • An older scan (by someone else) stored in JPG format (400 DPI – 2.7MB)

KH Counters

  • Full Sheet – 100 DPI (1.3 MB)
  • Full Sheet – 200 DPI (5.4 MB)
  • Full Sheet – 300 DPI (16 MB)
  • Full Sheet – 400 DPI (23 MB)
  • Full Sheet – 600 DPI (46 MB)

I’ve also made a zip file (1.1 MB) with all of the KH counters (and a few of the AD ones) cut out at 100 DPI that you can download. Additionally, you can get the individual counters from that zip file (and a link to the file as well) on this page.

Maps

That’s all the counters. Over the years I’ve done a number of maps as well. Some of them are already linked and shared here on this blog. Others, mostly recreations of the original maps from the game, I’ve posted in various locations around the web as I’ve created them.

Scans

First, let’s look at a couple of scanned maps. Namely the cover maps of SF0: Crash on Volturnus that give the deck plans of the Serena Dawn and the surface map of Volturnus. I have both of these as either PNG (full resolution) or JPG (smaller size).

  • Serena Dawn – full – PNG (3.8 MB)
  • Serena Dawn – full – JPG (492 kB)
  • Volturnus – full – PNG (3.9 MB)
  • Volturnus – full – JPG (607 kB)

I have scans of the Port Loren map from the Alpha Dawn rules and the station map from the Knight Hawks rules but I’ve also created remastered versions of those which are much better. We’ll look at those below.

I also have a scan of the Frontier Deployment Map which is the outside cover of the SFKH1: Warriors of White Light module and is used in the Second Sathar War strategic game from the Knight Hawks Campaign Book. This one is just saved as a JPG.

  • Frontier Deployment Map – JPG (360 kB) – Roughly 100 DPI

Finally, I have the two halves of the Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space map of the Frontier. I never actually stitched these two together. These are stored as BMP (bit map) files, another lossless compression algorithm. I don’t think I did the original scans and don’t remember where I got them from.

  • Zeb’s Guide map – left half (5.5 MB)
  • Zeb’s Guide map – right half (5.5 MB)

Remastered

Let’s look at my remastered maps. These are maps that I’ve recreated as original digital creations. Most of these maps were created as scalable vector graphics (SVG) files and then exported as PNGs at 100 DPI which was more than enough resolution for what was drawn. I can always re-export them at any resolution I want.

Let’s start with the big maps. These are all 50 pixels to the square and two squares to the inch. These are faithful recreations of the original maps matching colors, fonts, shapes, etc. as close as I could get them.

  • Port Loren map – (990 kB) – This is the big poster map from Alpha Dawn
  • Station map – (1.68 MB) – This is the big station complex on the back of the space map from the Knight Hawks set.
  • Station Commercial – no cut (1.7MB) – This is the left half of the station map including the bit of the zoo area cut off by the diagonal zig-zag.
  • Station Residential – no cut (175 kB) – This is the right half of the station map including the bit cut off by the diagonal zig-zag.
  • Port Loren Starport map (539 kB) – I created this remastered version to match the same colors and styling as the original Port Loren map, but the design of the map was done by someone else, whose name I can no longer find. If anyone knows the original creator, let me know.

Those are the main maps on the two posters. I’ve also done some of the smaller maps from the posters as well

  • Town map – (16 kB) – this was used for “Slave City One” from the module SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery. I actually recreated it for an adventure we published in issue 1 of the Frontier Explorer.
  • Assault Scout Deck Plans – green (26 kB) – This is from the Knight Hawks poster map and is a remastered version of the original assault scout deck
  • Assault Scout Deck Plans – blue (29 kB) – The same as above but blue.
  • Knight Hawks battle map – black on white (40 kB) – A computer generated hex grid matching the KH battle map, including hex numbers. This one is black lines on a white background
  • Knight Hawks battle map – white on black (40 kB) – Same as above but with the colors inverted.

Finally, I have a set of maps that were created by Tom Verreault. One is a remastered version of the mountain terrain map from the back of the big AD poster map. The others are an expanded area that connect the first one and then a big map of all four together as a single file.

  • Mountain A map (31 kB)
  • Mountain B map (39 kB)
  • Mountain C map (45 kB) – this is the original from the AD map
  • Mountain D map (32 kB)
  • Full map (81 kB) – The four maps above combined

Final Thoughts

I hope you can find these useful. I probably have a few more that I’m not finding at the moment. If I do find others, I’ll update this post or make another one. I do have a number of other image and logos I’ve created over the years. I considered adding them here but decided they really deserve their own post so look for those in the future.

Some day I plan on remastering all the terrain maps from the back of the AD map but I’ve just never gotten around to it.

September 22, 2020 Tom 4 Comments

Void Jumping, Acceleration, and Other FTL Nuggets

This post is going to get a little bit math heavy toward the middle. Just warning you now.

The idea for this post stemmed from a recent discussion on the Star Frontiers: Alive and Well Facebook group talking about the accelerations involved in faster than light (FTL) travel in that game. I’ve written about this many times over the years on forum posts but since I can’t seem to find those posts (I think some of them at least are on the now defunct forums at starfrontiers.org), I’m going to do it one more time here on this blog as a permanent reference. But before I dig into the details of the math and physics, I’m going to share some links to other posts I’ve made that I do still have.

Other Posts

First up we have a post from 2010 on Void Jumping on my Star Frontiers Network site. I don’t think this article is linked from anywhere anymore so this will help to bring it back to life. This essay talks about some of the issues associated with making a Star Frontiers style void jump for FTL travel. This essay was the basis for the sci-fi novel, Discovery, that I published back in 2011 (has it really been that long!).

Next, in 2015, when I was still writing on the Arcane Game Lore blog, I did a series of posts on Void travel that expanded and refined those ideas a little more in the direction of a personal sci-fi game I work on off and on. The first two of these posts were actually part of the November 2015 RPG Blog carnival.

  • The first is an article on Void Travel Sickness. Not really relevant to this discussion but fun none-the-less and falls under the “nuggets” heading.
  • The second, Your Final Destination – Exiting a Void Jump, talks about variations in your arrival at your destination. The blog carnival topic that month was “Surprises” and both of these articles were things that could add surprises or randomness to your FTL travel. I actually recommend you read this one after the next one as it talks about things at the end of the journey but it can be read first.
  • The third (and final) article in that set was part of my “Designing out Loud” series of articles where I talked about game design decisions and ideas. This one was entitled “Designing Out Loud – Void Jumping” and expanded on the ideas in my 2010 article.

While you don’t necessarily need to read those article to follow along with the following, it definitely wouldn’t hurt.

Void Jumping

The concept of the Void Jump was introduced with the Knight Hawks supplement in Star Frontiers. In the original rules (renamed to Alpha Dawn when the Knight Hawks rules came out), there were no spaceship rules and it just said to treat interstellar travel at the rate of 1 light year per day.

So how does it work? According to the rules, you make a jump by leaving your starting point and accelerating until you reach 1% the speed of light. At that point you “jump” into the Void. To get out of the Void, you just have to slow down slightly. While you’re in the Void, you travel amazingly fast, on the order of 1 light year per second (The rules don’t actually so but imply something close to that so that’s the value I use). Once you jump into your destination system, you swing the ship around and start decelerating. Remember, there is no artificial gravity in Star Frontiers so this acceleration and deceleration is what provides gravity in the ships. Most ships make these trips accelerating at 1g.

So how long does this take? For these calculations, we’ll take 1 g to be equal to 10 meters per second squared (m/s/s) of acceleration. On Earth we define 1 g to be 9.82 m/s/s but rounding up to 10 just makes everything easier and its less than a 2% difference.

Okay, here comes the math.

If you start at rest, your velocity at any given time is just:

v(t) = at

where v is velocity (in m/s), a is acceleration (in m/s/s), and t is time (in seconds). Technically v and a are vectors but we’ll just worry about speed, not direction.

Now, the void jump occurs at 1% the speed of light. We’ll take the speed of light to be 300,000,000 m/s. It’s really 299,792,458 m/s but we’ll again round up to make the math easier. The difference is less than 0.07%. Good enough for this discussion. 1% of that is just 3,000,000 m/s. That’s our target velocity.

Since our acceleration is 10 m/s/s, dividing 3,000,000 m/s by 10 m/s/s gives us 300,000 s of acceleration needed to reach jump speed. That works out to 83 hours and 20 minutes of acceleration. Given that a standard day in Star Frontiers is 20 hours long, that is 4.17 days.

That’s the time to get up to jump speed. It takes that much time to slow down on the other side as well. Which means at a minimum, an interstellar jump takes 8 and 1/3 days, assuming everything lines up perfectly (see the Exiting the Void Jump article for things that might lengthen that).

That’s the time required. What about distances covered? The equation for position is just the integral of the velocity equation above. Again, for starting at rest, and assuming that you measure the distance from your starting point, your position at any given time is given by:

x(t) = \frac{1}{2}at^2

where x is your position in meters. We know what t is from the velocity equation above is 300,000 s. a is just 10 m/s/s. Plugging these in gives us a distance traveled of 450 billion meters or 450 million kilometers. (A lot of people forget that factor of a half and end up with the wrong number.) Now the distance from the Earth to the Sun, called an Astronomical Unit (AU), is 150 million kilometers (again I’m rounding, the actual value is 149,597,871 km so the rounding is less than 0.3%).

So in those 4.17 days of acceleration, you traveled 3 AU. If you started at Earth and headed straight out from the sun, you’d be 4 AU from the Sun. That’s most of the way from Earth’s orbit to Jupiter’s orbit (at a distance of 5.2 AU from the Sun). That distance puts you well beyond the main asteroid belt which ends at 3.3 AU.

Now, these numbers all change if you use a different acceleration. Doing those calculations is left as an exercise for the reader.

ADF and the Board Game Rules

The above all works just fine. The problem comes when you start looking at the rules for the spaceship combat board game and try to rationalize those rules with the math above.

From the board game, we have that one hex is 10,000 km and one turn in the game is 10 minutes of time. Added to that is the ship’s statistic, the Acceleration/Deceleration Factor (ADF) which is described as the number of hexes that a ship can speed up or slow down in a given turn. The fastest ships (fighters and assault scouts) have and ADF of 5.

Let’s look at some numbers. First, what is Void jump speed on the game map. Well, jump speed is 3,000,000 m/s or 3,000 km/s. Since a turn is 10 minutes or 600 seconds, that works out to 1,800,000 km/turn. Given that a hex is 10,000 km across, that works out to a speed of 180 hexes per turn. Since the game map is only 54 hexes wide, you’ll never get to that speed in the game.

The problem comes when people start looking at ADF as acceleration in gees, i.e. that 1 ADF = 1g of acceleration. If you make that assumption, then accelerating at 1 ADF per turn, it would take you 180 turns to get to jump speed from rest. 180 turns at 10 minutes per turn means that it would take just 1,800 minutes, or 30 hours, significantly faster than the 83.33 hours calculated above. Obviously 1 ADF cannot equal 1 g.

So let’s work that out. 1 ADF represents a change of velocity of 10,000 km per 10 minutes in 10 minutes (or 100 km/min/min). That’s an acceleration, just not in the normal units of m/s/s. So lets convert them:

\frac{10,000 km}{10 min * 10 min} = \frac{100 km}{min^2} = \frac{100,000 m}{60 s * 60 s} = 27.778 \frac{m}{s^2} = 2.78 g

So we see that 1 ADF is really 2.78 g of acceleration. You’re not going to sustain that for 30 hours and have anyone in any sort of condition to function unless severe precautions are taken. Heck, even sustaining that for 1 turn (10 minutes) is going to be rough. It’s doable, that amount of acceleration and duration is roughly equivalent of a launch to low Earth orbit with modern rockets, but you wouldn’t want to keep it up for a long time.

That also raises another issue. 5 ADF is actually 13.89 g of acceleration. And Star Frontiers doesn’t have any sort of artificial gravity tech. Pulling those kind of maneuvers is a little unrealistic. (There are discussions about using interia screen tech to help with this but that’s a different article.)

There are a couple of solutions to this. One, which is the one I use and which is probably the simplest, is a willing suspension of disbelief. The board game rules are just that, rules for a board game that simulates (sort of) spaceship combat. There are other issues with the board game physics besides this one, so I don’t expect it to represent “reality”. It’s a fun way to approximately simulate spaceship combat.

Another option, which immediately removes the 1 ADF not equaling 1 g issues, is to change the size of the hexes in the board game. Simply saying that they are 3,600 km in size instead of 10,000 km, makes 1 ADF = 1 g. If you keep the range of weapons the same (measured in hexes as they are described in the game rules, the only thing that really changes is that any planet counters you put on the map have to take up 7 hexes instead of just 1. And it might tweak the gravity rules a bit, but not significantly. This doesn’t solve some of the other problems, however. That’s a whole different post as well.

How I Apply This In Game

So how do I use this?

Basic Application

For most ships, I assume that they have two astrogators that can work in alternating shifts around the clock to do jump calculations. Since the rules say it takes 10 hours of calculation per light year traveled. And since it takes over 80 hours of travel time to get to jump speed. This means that any jump of 8 light years or less takes the same amount of time, namely 8.5 days, which I typically round up to 9 for maneuvering around the station and slight variations in arrival location (see my linked posts). And actually, since I round this up to 9 days, it play it that jumps of 9 light years or less all take 9 days, regardless of distance. Each light year beyond 9 adds a half of day of travel time to allow for the calculations. This is how I calculate the travel times for ships in my Detailed Frontier Timeline.

Again that assumes that they have two astrogators. If not, jumps take significantly longer, namely one day per light year traveled, plus 4.5 days to slow down at the destination, with a minimum of 9 days total travel. So in this case, jumps of five light years or less take 9 days, and each additionally light year adds a day on to the jump time.

Now I do allow the jump calculations to be started before the ship leaves it’s berth, assuming the crew knows when they plan to leave (to within a day or so). But because the planets and stars are always in motion, and the jump calculations have to be done for each specific jump, no more than half the calculations can be done in advance. The rest must be done “in flight.” For me this represents the tweaking and refining of the ship’s course in preparing for the jump that I discuss in the other articles I linked. But that means that even for a ship with a single astrogator, they can reduce the flight time if the astrogator gets started before they leave on the longer jumps.

Traversing multiple systems in a single trip

Another aspect of this is what I like to call the “high speed transit.” This occurs when the ship wants to traverse several star systems but doesn’t need to stop in each one. In this case, the first jump starts as usual, but once they traverse the Void the first time things change.

In each system after the first, until they reach the final system that they want to stop in, they don’t decelerate, at least not appreciably. But rather remain near jump speed, either drifting or, if they want gravity, decelerating for a few hours, flipping around and accelerating, and repeating until they are ready to jump. During this time the astrogators work on the jump and the engineers do any needed engine overhauls. The amount of time spent in system is just the longest of those two activities. Once that’s done, they nudge into the next system and repeat until they arrive at the destination system where it then takes 4.5 days to slow down.

Let’s look at an example: The UPFS Stiletto, an assault scout, is on patrol in Truane’s Star and has orders to get to Dramune as quickly as possible. This route has 4 jumps:

  • Truane’s Star to Dixon’s Star – 5 light years
  • Dixon’s Star to Prenglar – 5 light years
  • Prenglar to Cassidine – 7 light years
  • Cassidine to Dramune – 4 light years

Using normal jumps, these are all less than 9 light years so each jump would take 9 days for a total of 36 days.

Rather than do this, let’s look at what this takes using the high speed transit option. According to the rules, engine overhauls take 60 hours minus 1d10 hours for each engineer level. The rules also say that Spacefleet ships typically have level 4 engineers. That means that on average, it will take 38 hours to overhaul each engine. We’ll assume that there are 2 astrogators and 2 engineers onboard the Stiletto. This is what a high speed transit looks like in this scenario:

  • Accelerate out from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days – plenty of time to do the 50 hours astrogation calculations
  • Transit Dixon’s Star – astrogation calculations take 50 hours (2.5 days of round-the-clock work), engine overhauls only take 38 hours of work, but since there is only one engineer per engine, they have to sleep. So these are the slow part, taking 4 days – so after 4 days, they jump to Prenglar
  • Transit Prenglar – astrogation will take 70 hours (3.5 days of round-the-clock work). This one is closer but the 4 days of engine overhauls is still the limiting factor. After 4 days they jump to Cassidine.
  • Transit Cassidine – Here the astrogation calculations only take 40 hours (2 days of round-the-clock work) and the astrogators get a bit of a break while the engineers finish up. After 4 days, they make the jump to Dramune
  • Decelerate in Dramune – it takes 4.5 days to slow down and arrive at Inner Reach.

All told, this trip takes only 21 days instead of the baseline 36, saving 15 days of travel. The crew might be a little tired, but they made it without taking any risks.

If you only had 1 astrogator and two engineers, one level 3 and one level 2 (more likely on a merchant ship or PC ship), the transit looks like this:

  • Accelerate from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days, same as before. We assume the astrogator got started before they left.
  • Transit Dixon’s Star – Astrogation takes 5 days, engine overhauls take 43.5 for the level 3 engineer and 49 for the level 2 engineer. The level 3 engineer can help the other engineer once they are done so the total time to do the overhauls is five days – Time in system 5 days.
  • Transit Prenglar – In this case the limit is the astrogation which takes 7 days. Time in system, 7 days.
  • Transit Cassidine – This time the astrogators win and the jump is waiting on the engineers – Time in system, 5 days.
  • Decelerate in Dramune – 4.5 days.

Total time: 26 days. Takes a little longer but still faster than the base 36 hours. If there was only one engineer, it would actually take longer than 9 days per system as one engineer just can’t do engine overhauls on two engines in each system that fast (unless they are level 5 or 6). You might as well stop over in the station each time unless you have a reason not to go into a system.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this post. There are other aspects of the travel that I could talk about such as vector movement, the process of lining up for a jump, what happens to your calculations and alignment when you have to maneuver for a combat or something else, and a discussion on how long those alignment efforts take anyway. Some of those ideas I touched on in the posts I linked. I might look at these again in a future post or two as well.

What are your thoughts? What questions do you have? Share them in the comment section below.

September 15, 2020 Tom 1 Comment

Detailed Frontier Timeline – FY 61.173 to FY 61.203

This was a rough month for getting the timeline posts out on Twitter. I was doing good and had them all scheduled up through my vacation, but then when I got back, completely dropped the ball for the rest of the month. Mainly do to being swamped by dealing with the loss of my truck and getting it replaced. In fact, I’m still getting caught up and some of the events in this post won’t make it up until later today.

This was another busy month in the timeline with several threads overlapping including the completion of the Dramune Run and Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes module events, and the beginning of the Face of the Enemy module events. Additionally, the last saurian Ark Ships leaves their home system and the saurians make contact with the Frontier.

Here’s the events of the last month:

Date (FY)Events
61.173– The Osprey departs Minotaur (Theseus) for their jump to the Padda system.

– The sathar vessels overtake the 8th Ark Ship just hours before it is ready to jump.  The escort vessels, combined with the defenses of the Ark Ship, put up a heroic defense. 

– The escort vessels sacrifice themselves to ensure the escape of the Ark Ship and manage to damage the pursuing sathar vessels enough that the Ark Ship, while severely damaged itself, can escape their pursuers and slip alone into the Void.  They arrive safely in OFS191.
61.174– Decelerating toward the inner regions of the OFS191 system, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins scanning the binary star system. 

– After being sedated and interrogated for 10 days, the crew of the Gullwind is taken to meet with the Malthar.  On the return to their cells, their guards are set upon by chukkahs running free in the station.  They escape to the docking bay where the Gullwind is being held. (SFKH1)

– Next to the Gullwind’s bay, the crew discovers a room with cages of imprisoned chukkahs and transport containers for them.  Loading as many as they can into the transport containers and on to the Gullwind, they then depart the station just as a swarm of combat robots attack the ship. (SFKH1)

– As the Gullwind departs Darkworld station, the Malthar’s ships pursue and attempt to destroy the vessel.  The fight is quickly joined by both the Inner Reach militia and the elements of Strike Force Nova (LC, 2xFF, 4xAS) in the system.   (SFKH1)

– With the Spacefleet ships quickly turning the tide of the battle, the pirate and Outer Reach militia ships scatter.  The Third Dramune War is over. (SFKH1)
61.175– Arriving at Inner Reach, the crew of the Gullwind give a full report to the Inner Reach Government and Spacefleet on their discovery and the events of the Dramune Run.  The crew discovers that Garlus left the Gullwind to them in his will.

– After a quick resupply, the element of SF Nova that survived the battle depart for the Fromeltar system to rejoin the Strike Force.
61.176– Just a few hours before making the jump to the Padda system, the CMS Osprey detects unknown radio signals in the outer system.  The ship’s energy sensors confirm several faint sources in the same direction.  They have passed close to the saurian Ark Ship and its escorts and detected some intership communications.

– The CMS Osprey attempts to contact the unknown radio source but receives no response. They radio the contact back to Minotuar and continue on their way to the Padda system.

– After analyzing the report from the CMS Osprey, the destroyer, frigate, and two assault scouts of the Theseus milita begin boosting toward the location of the contact.
61.177– The HSS History’s hope arrives back in the YS07 system and begins deceleration. Unfortunately, all jumps forward from here are 10-12 light years long.  The team begins weighing which of the five systems would make the most sense for progress beyond it.

– The CMS Osprey successfully jumps to the Padda system.  They immediately begin working on the jump calculations to the Waller Nexus system while not slowing down, only angling their vector toward that system.

– The saurians detect the militia ships traveling toward them. Given their analysis of the radio signals collected so far from the system and the CMS Osprey, they believe the species living here are not allied with the Sathar and decide to risk communication.
61.178– With the militia ships only a day away and now decelerating toward their location, the saurians open communications, attempting to contact the approaching ships.  The Theseus militia receives the communication attempt and responds in kind. They also notify Minotaur of the development.

– While initial communication between the saurians and UPF is difficult, both due to the long light delay as the signals travel between the ships, and the lack of a common language, progress is made as the distance between the ships decrease and the saurians’ computers translate Pan-Gal into saurian.
61.179– The Theseus militia ships arrive at the location of the saurian Ark Ship and its escorts. They are impressed by the design of the saurian Battle Rays and the sheer size of the Ark Ship itself. 

– Rudimentary communications between the saurians and Frontier races are established and the story of the saurians’ flight are related to the crews of the UPF ships.  This information is relayed back to Minotaur.

– The Minotaur government notifies the UPF Council of Worlds via subspace radio of the detection of the saurian vessels and their contact with them.

– The detachment of SF Nova arrives in the Fromeltar system from Dramune.  The remainder of the Strike Force beings accelerating for a jump to the Kizk-Kar system.
61.180– Having found no suitable planets in the OFS191 system, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating for a jump to the OFS179 system.

– The Council of Worlds temporarily suspends all other deliberations to discuss and debate what to do about the saurians.
61.181– Having picked a system as their next target, and with deceleration complete, the crew of the HSS History’s Hope begin work on jump calculations for the next leg of their journey, a M5 dwarf 12 light years away.

– The detached ships from SF Nova rejoin the main group as it accelerates toward Kisk-Kar.
61.182– Calculations complete, the CMS Osprey jumps into the Waller Nexus system and begins decelerating toward Mahg Mar.  They radio the UPFS Eleanor Moraes to establish communication with the downed ship.

– The UPFS Elanor Moraes responds to the hail from the CMS Osprey and transmit the survey data they have collected along with coordinates for the Osprey to find the Moraes.
61.183As the Council of Worlds continue discussion, the Minotuar (Theseus) government, under pressure from many of the citizens of their world, invite the saurians to bring their ships into the inner system. 
61.184– While working on jump calculations and surveying the YS07 system, the radar system on the HSS History’s Hope suddenly stops working.

– As the engineers begin to work on HSS History’s Hope’s radar, they realized that they have been out so long that they have missed their annual maintenance.  They discover several other systems that may cause problems in the future.

– With it being about 100 days to make a high speed transit, perform the maintenance, and return to their current location, the HSS History’s Hope crew must decide if they should return or press forward with an increased chance of breakdowns in future jumps.
61.185– After two days of internal debate, the saurians begin accelerating toward Minotaur, escorted by the militia ships.

– The 8th saurian Ark Ship successfully jumps to the OSF179 system.  The immediately detect a beacon left by the 7th ark ship indicating that the system had been surveyed but nothing suitable found.  Deciding that the neutron star in OFS192 is a non-starter, they begin plotting a course to FS58 and shifting their vector for the jump.
61.186– After four days of deceleration, the Osprey settles into orbit around Mahg Mar (Waller Nexus).  After a couple of orbits to orient their mapping systems, they locate the UPFS Elanor Moraes and descend to the planet’s surface, landing just a few hundred meters from the survey vessel.

– With repairs still ongoing on the HSS History’s Hope’s radar system, the crew comes down on the side of caution and decide to return to Scree Fron for maintenance.  The calculations for the jump forward are aborted and calculations are started to jump back to YS06.
61.187With the arrival of the CMS Osprey and the supplies it brought, the repairs on the UPFS Eleanor Moraes begin to progress much quicker.  Captain Dentin takes command of the expedition and begins sending out the survey robots to scout the surrounding terrain.
61.188– SF Nova arrives in orbit around Zit-kit In the Kisk-Kar system.  They will remain here for 6 days.

– The saurian ships settle into orbit around Minotaur (Theseus).  Constant holovid coverage has greatly increased the public interest in these strangely graceful ships.
61.189– The Theseus militia establishes a “no fly” zone around the saurian vessels to keep away all the curious onlookers attempting to visit and observe the ship up close in their small shuttles and private yachts.

– Having discovered what appears to be some sort of village about 30 km away members of the Moraes crew are sent by Captain Dentin to investigate with the Osprey crew continues working on the repairs. (SFKH3)
61.190– The two newest assault scouts for SF Meteor arrive at Gollwin Station orbiting Morgaine’s World (Prenglar).  They are debriefed and join with their fellow assault scouts and formed into Patrol Group Meteor until the capital ship complete construction.

– About 3/4 of the way to the village the crew of the UPF Eleanor Moraes discover a strange, small vehicle containing the bodies of two dead sathar and what appears to be a small, functioning robot.  They radio the find back to the Osprey which sends out another team to collect the vehicle. (SFKH3)

– With about 3 km left to the village, the Moraes crew reaches a tall cliff that their explorer cannot climb.  They need to continue the rest of the way on foot.  They camp at the base of the cliff for the night. (SFKH3)
61.191– The saurians agree to send an envoy to meet with members of the Minotaur government aboard Minotaur station.  They request that the captains of the militia vessels they had met originally be present at the meeting.

– Security is enhanced on Minotaur station in preparation for the historic first meeting with the Saurians.  Several protest groups are dispersed that were threatening to become violent.

– As the crew of the UPFS Eleanor Moraes reach the top of the cliff, a strange, birdlike creature briefly emerges from the underbrush and then disappears again. The crew can see it crouching in the bushes and decide to wait to see what happens. (SFKH3)

– After a several minutes, the creature emerges again from the underbrush and begins trying to talk to the Moraes crew.  Establishing some basic communication with the aid of a polyvox, the creature, Beet-Chest, begins leading them to his village. (SFKH3)

– Meeting with the village elders, the Moraes crew learn that the sathar had arrived on the planet about 3 months ago and 2 sathar attacked a party of the Notui (what the bird-like creatures call themselves) and were killed by the Notui.  The crew spends the night in the village after reporting in.
61.192– Patrol Group Meteor is dispatched to White Light via Timeon.

– The saurian delegation arrives at Minotaur stations.  Large crowds line the passages hoping to catch a glimpse of the visitors, but they are quickly moved away from the crowds.  After several hours of discussion, they return to their ships.

– Having determined the general direction of where the sathar’s ship landed (roughly in the same direction from the village as the UPFS Eleanor Moraes), the Moraes crew return to their ship to confer with Captain Dentin.
61.193– Calculation and course corrections complete, the 8th saurian Ark Ship jumps to the FS58 system.  They again detect a beacon from the 7th Ark Ship and realize they are still following the previous ship.

– Having completed jump calculations and gotten the radar system fixed, the HSS History’s Hope begins accelerating toward YS06, they plan to make a high speed transit back to Scree Fron spending only enough time in each system to overhaul engines and make jump calculations.

– The saurians of the 7th ark ship return to Minotaur station to continue their discussions with members of the UPF and Minotaur governments, returning once again to their ships at the end of the day.  This continues for the next several days.
61.194– After much deliberation the saurians of the 8th Ark Ship decide that jumping through the nebula again (which would take them to the Tristkar system) would not be the best plan, and like the 7th Ark Ship before them, start plotting a jump to the Theseus system.

– Strike Force Nova departs Zit-Kit (Kisk-Kar) for the K’aken-Kar system.
61.195After three days of detailed survey by the robots, no trace of the sathar ship can be found on land and Captain Dentin suspects that it landed in the water of the nearby river.  The Moraes’ crew sets out to try to find some trace of it along the river.
61.196A delegation from White Light, including Crown Princess Leotia Valentine Leotus, arrives at Minotaur station and joins the deliberations with the Saurians. 
61.197– Jump calculations complete, the 8th saurian Ark Ship begins accelerating toward the Theseus system.

– After two days of careful search along the riverbanks, the Moraes crew discover a metal cable attached to a stake in the ground, partially buried in the sand, and extending out into the river.  Investigation shows some sort of small craft submerged in the river at the other end of the cable.
61.198– HSS History’s Hope jumps into the YS06 system and begin immediately working on the engines and jump calculations for a jump to YS05.

– Using spacesuits with improvised weight belts, the Moraes crew investigate the submerged vessel.  It is a hull size 2 ship of sathar design never seen before.  They locate the airlock at the other end of the cable but do not attempt to enter.
61.199Descending again to the sathar ship, the Moraes crew breach the security system on the airlock and enter the ship.  Fighting through the ship’s defenses, they gain control of the ship with only minor damage to the ship and no serious injuries to the crew.
61.200After a day of examining the sathar vessel, the Moraes crew discover what appears to be a sathar base of operations for the ship located in the FS30 system and astrogation data to get there.  They send a report back to the Frontier Expeditionary Force HQ on Clarion.
61.201PG Meteor arrives in orbit around Lossend (Timeon).  They plan to spend two days here before continuing on to Clarion (White Light).
61.202– The 8th saurian Ark ship successfully jumps into the Theseus system and immediately detect radio signals from the inner system.  A few hours later they detect the 7th Ark Ship and establish communications.

– The UFPS Eleanor Moraes and CMS Osprey receive orders from the Frontier Expeditionary Force commander to select a crew to man the sathar scout ship.  The three ships are to jump to the FS30 system and attempt to capture the sathar base.

– PG Meteor’s time in Timeon is cut short and their orders are changed to proceed immediately to the Theseus system to support Frontier Expeditionary Force operation in the FS30 system.  They leave immediately for the White Light system.
61.203– Strike Force Nova arrives at Ken’zah-Kit in the K’aken-Kar system.  They will remain in this system for 18 days patrolling the outer system.

– Engine overhauls and jump calculations complete, the HSS History’s Hope jumps back to they YS05 system and begins working on the jump to YS03.

And here’s the full timeline file:

DetailedFrontierTimelineDownload

September 8, 2020 Tom 1 Comment

State of the Frontier – August 2020

As has been par for the course this month, this post is coming a few hours late. I had always intended to do this post on Sept. 1st as the first post of the month but it’s still not coming at the usual time slot in the morning. (I wonder how many of my readers actually read it when it first drops. Probably very few if any.)

Looking Back

This has been a rough month for me. I managed to get my regular posts out but it was a close thing. I partially looked at this in my post last week for the RPG Blog Carnival where I summarized all the projects I’m working on. That’s really nothing new as all of those projects have been going on and off for years, but they still contribute to everything I have to think about each month as I work. The funny thing is, after I published that post, I thought of a few other things that I had forgotten. I updated the post to add the podcast stuff, but I thought of other things later that probably should have been in the list.

The other posts for last month were the regular Detailed Frontier Timeline post, a detailed post on Brekstoone Manor in Myha’s Beach on Pale, and an outline of the Skills for Hire adventure I ran last month. There should have been a second session of that game but life intervened and I had to cancel.

The month started well as we took the family up to Glacier National Park in Montana for an 8 day camping trip. We had a lot of fun and it was quite relaxing.

The problems started on the way home. As we were driving we needed to stop. As I was making a left hand turn, a car came up from behind (in the on coming traffic lane – he was apparently passing people in the line of cars behind me on the two lane highway) and clipped the front of my truck. He went flying off into the ditch with a big dent in the side doors of his car and my front bumper was bent in. Luckily no one was hurt. We were able to drive our truck home (another 650 miles) without any real problems. The only real issue to driving was that making a right turn caused the tire to rub against a bit of plastic on the bent in bumper. However, it turned out that the damage was enough that the truck was considered totaled (it was an 18 year old truck).

Dealing with that – taking the truck in for repair, finding out it was totaled, getting a rental car (with 6 drivers we could not manage on only 2 cars), and looking for a new truck – used up all my spare time this month. So there really was no “behind the scenes” game work done. I’ve even fallen way behind on the timeline posts on Twitter and have about a week and half of them to complete writing and catch up on. The good news is we found a new truck we’re happy with and all that is now officially behind us. I’m turning the rental car in later today.

Looking Forward

Beyond the Detailed Frontier Timeline post next week, I really don’t have a clue what is coming down the pipe. This month has five Tuesdays which is why I moved this post to today. I think I’ll be posting another location. I have the maps all sketched out, I’d just need to do the write-up and make nice versions of the maps. This is the next location for my Skills for Hire game which I am hopefully running tomorrow. So you might get a write-up on that adventure as well. Beyond that, we’ll see.

Behind the scenes I’m starting work this week on the next issue (#30) of the Frontier Explorer to be released in October. That will take up a bunch of my time as well but I’m going to focus on getting started early so it is more manageable and more spread out to allow me to work on other things as well.

I still have a bit of real life stuff to catch up on now that the truck purchasing is out of the way and that will probably use up any extra time I have left. School has started for my wife (she’s an astronomy professor) and kids so we’re starting to get back into a regular routine. Hopefully the schools don’t shut down again and throw a wrench in that.

Final Thoughts

It’s not a long post but there really hasn’t been a lot happening this month related to the blog. I just managed to squeak by. I looking forward to September being a little less stressful. As always feel free to share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.

September 1, 2020 Tom 1 Comment
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