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Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest

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I think it's probably unwise to tandem-jump to the same planet in the future. If we jump to separate planets, we still have that redundancy of two separate survey ships, but if things go hot, the second arrival isn't dropping into something they can't get out of.

Perhaps we should have a jettisonnable probe saying "we come in peace" that we can leave behind, so it doesn't look entirely like an advance scout for an invasion force?
 
At the very least we need to make sure we don't look like mysterious prelude to an invasion force so this doesn't become a self fulfilling prophecy.
 
WestOrEast said:
A Loony Tunes idea that says everyone is a paranoid murderous nut when evidence otherwise can be seen outside the window every single day.
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Until you realize it perfectly describes the reason that nearly every conflict in Human history happened.

And it's not even about just Humanity.

So no you can't just "look out the window" to disprove it.


I will admit it likely isn't entirely true. But it's a good warning against interacting with civilizations that have an actual chance of overpowering us.
 
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Rat King said:
At the very least we need to make sure we don't look like mysterious prelude to an invasion force so this doesn't become a self fulfilling prophecy.
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Yeah, it's something to consider. We've got reason to suspect these guys are Human, so they'll likely think in similar ways to us.

Notice, they haven't attempted hailing us and instead immediatelly scrabled their craft. That is unusual.
 
[X] Set up a diplomatic mission and actually stay long enough to talk this time.
[X] Additional Interstellar Cruisers
 
i think that one thing that we need to work on is getting a better understanding of how jump drives work because the fact that we had two ships of the same class jump within minutes of each other and coming out with a six hour time gap is just not acceptable.
 
Hm. We don't have room for actual diplomats on our scouts, but we could probably drop off a drone/beacon with some sort of pre-recorded first contact package, yeah? Seems like that'd strike a nice middle ground between "jumps into your system, scans all your shit, refuses to elaborate, leaves" and "asking a crew with no trained specialists in the field to directly conduct a first contact, while also risking exposure of jump tech and Home coordinates to hostile forces."
 
I'd like to initiate first contact but we opted not to include any facilities for such a thing on our craft because, uh, reasons, I guess.
 
Based on the above events, would you like to make any changes to the operational mission doctrine, or should the same standards be maintained for penetration into S'taxu?
[X] Intill the issues with jump coordination are fixed, each ship should aim for a different point in system.
2,000 tons of yard space are available to the Navy. What would you like to use that space for?
[X] Something else - write-in
-[X] A first contact (diplomatic) ship

Remember our scout are SCOUTS. NOT first contact vessels.
 
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Wiadi said:
Hm. We don't have room for actual diplomats on our scouts, but we could probably drop off a drone/beacon with some sort of pre-recorded first contact package, yeah?
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Yes. We could drop it if we see these guys scrambling their ships. What exactly should it say?
Wiadi said:
while also risking exposure of jump tech and Home coordinates to hostile forces.
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Now that I think about it, since jump points exist, these guys will already know where our scouts came from, wouldn't they?
 
Rat King said:
I'd like to initiate first contact but we opted not to include any facilities for such a thing on our craft because, uh, reasons, I guess.
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Because the purpose of these ships is to be scouts, not diplomats, and trying to do everything at once is a great way to be bad at all of it.

and also because I personally think it would be fun/funny for our office to be moderately to severely corrupt, considering our political situation

Anyway, given that the Janus crew considered using a mining drone as an improvised comm beacon, I'm going to just assume this is possible and throw in a vote:

[X] Have Home's finest diplomats, social scientists, etc. compile a first-contact package (while respecting security concerns), load it onto a beacon in place of one scout's mining drones, and drop it off if the visited system appears to contain a sufficiently advanced civilization to interact with it usefully. Also send a ship back to Xyri to drop one off there.

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Magnificate said:
Now that I think about it, since jump points exist, these guys will already know where our scouts came from, wouldn't they?
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I don't think there are jump points which map to specific destinations 1-to-1, I'm pretty sure it's more just an issue of doing calculations and staying outside gravity wells. Though happy to be corrected if someone knows otherwise.
 
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Wiadi said:
Also send a ship back to Xyri to drop one off there.
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That, I would hold off for the moment, because now it's their turn to come to us. If they'll come and want to talk, then all is well. If they come and want to fight, all our military assets are at Home anyways. If they don't come, it might be that they don't have Jump Drives and that leaves us... options.
Drahcir said:
-[X] A first contact (diplomatic) ship.
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Or, just make it a cargo-ship that can double as diplomatic? After all, diplomats only need space and cargo-holds can be refitted for that use.
 
Magnificate said:
That, I would hold off for the moment, because now it's their turn to come to us. If they'll come and want to talk, then all is well. If they come and want to fight, all our military assets are at Home anyways. If they don't come, it might be that they don't have Jump Drives and that leaves us... options.
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The fact that they immediately scrambled a response to the jump flash suggests pretty strongly to me that they were at least able to recognize its significance, at which point what do we actually lose by making a quick diplomatic overture? We don't have to show up in the same part of the system so there's no realistic way they can be lurking to intercept us, and there's a non-trivial chance that seeing an attempt at communication will sway them away from an aggressive response to our probe.
 
Magnificate said:
Now that I think about it, since jump points exist, these guys will already know where our scouts came from, wouldn't they?
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Sorry, my fault for being lazy language. Jump Point here means "point outside of 100D of closest gravity well that we have chosen to jump from" not "these are points in space where jump is only possible from"
 
Rat King said:
I really think we should actually try talking instead of being paranoid shut-ins.
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Nonsense! We're space Dwarves.

Paranoid shut-in is in our genes.

Magnificate said:
Notice, they haven't attempted hailing us and instead immediatelly scrabled their craft. That is unusual.
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Very much so. They must know we'd know they were burning towards us. You cannot hide a Drive Plume in space. So hailing us would loose them nothing, and could give them answers long before their ships could come and take them.
 
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[] Plan Follow-Up
-[] Wait with the mission until first contact package is prepared. This ought to give time to see whether Xyri visits our system, to do some data analysis from previous jumps and to catch up on Interstellar Cruiser construction.
-[] Revisit Xyri to drop the first contact package, containing [???].
-[] During S'taxu mission, aim for different points in the system in an attempt to mitigate the issues with coordination. If the arrival was detected drop the first contact package containing [???].
-[] Interstellar Cruisers

What might we want to actually say? "Hello, we are Humans from Home. We mean no harm. This is a part of astrographic charting mission. We expect the next jump to this system to take place in 6 months."

Question: Is there a way to improve our sensors? Society for Interplanetary Science mentioned an additional sensor suite in their earlier proposal, so it might be the case we're not using optimal sensors.
 
Rat King said:
I'd like to initiate first contact but we opted not to include any facilities for such a thing on our craft because, uh, reasons, I guess.
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Personally, I supported not having it because we're going to presumably be scanning a lot more solar systems with nothing in it than places with people we need to do diplomacy to, so having the cheapest possible scout is good.
Plan Follow-Up seems good to me?
 
Magnificate said:
Question: Is there a way to improve our sensors? Society for Interplanetary Science mentioned an additional sensor suite in their earlier proposal, so it might be the case we're not using optimal sensors.
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You have the best (pending me checking some things) sensors that TL8 can buy. You managed to detect heat signatures at uhhh.... iirc, a light hour. I'd say you're doing okay.
 
It seems my expectations for sensors were more in-line with what Star Trek sensors offer. ;) Gotta downscale the expectations. Now that I think about it, FTL sensors don't seem to exist. That in turn means FTL communication doesn't exist, does it?

As for diplomatic ships, would it actually be feasible to take an Interstellar Cruiser, pull out some supplies and include temporary accommodations for a diplomatic crew? Or do those guys need dedicated staterooms to do their jobs?
 
Magnificate said:
What might we want to actually say? "Hello, we are Humans from Home. We mean no harm. This is a part of astrographic charting mission. We expect the next jump to this system to take place in 6 months."
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I think until we establish degree of linguistic drift (assuming they're even from the same original culture as we were, which seems probable but not certain) we should open with stuff like "APPLE [picture of an apple]." Only, y'know, a bit more sophisticated.
 
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