Nomads in the HV?

penny wrote:I should have made that clearer. Detected after it has long exited hyper and is sitting quietly with all occupants sleeping with no outside lights running. I don't suppose there will be a huge chance of a collision from another vessel.

tlb wrote:If the hyper-transition is detected and the ship does not move, then the position is still known and can be detected by active means (such as radar). The Sharks were not seen because they moved away using the spider drive.

penny wrote:I was relying on an emergence far enough outside of the target system that wouldn't be detected. Which would vary with system. A nomad should be well informed. Since he lives by the emergence.

Naturally; if the transition is not detected, then sitting without a wedge will not be detected. But running a wedge is as detectable as the transition.

But how can a nomad be well informed? Even if information is stocked before becoming a nomad, it can change and new information (of unknown quality) would have to be bought from stops at inhabited systems.

In what way does a nomad live "by the emergence"? Only by buying supplies from systems about which the nomad might not have current information.

penny wrote:I was relying on an emergence far enough outside of the target system that wouldn't be detected. Which would vary with system. A nomad should be well informed. Since he lives by the emergence.

What's the point of translating to n-space in the first place? If you're not going to go into the system to buy something, then why are you leaving hyper and putting wear and tear on your generators? Staying in hyper doesn't require energy, like the warp drive in Star Trek. Remove the power and you stay where you are. You may need station keeping because hyper appears to have "winds" but that's probably not a big deal if you go to a tranquil region.

The only reason I can think of is that you can't stay in hyper indefinitely because the hyperlog will develop inaccuracies. Like in the old days, you may need to go to n-space to get your bearings. But if that's your need, you don't need to go near an inhabited system. And you also don't need to sit around powered down while their defence force comes to investigate: just go back into hyper. That was actually the working theory for the Oyster Bay insertion: a ship that dropped off way too early, realised their mistake, and went back up before the Silver Cepheids came to investigate.

So if you are dropping back to n-space, it's because you need something from it. It could be that you need to capture a passing comet and load up on water. There are plenty of those in the clouds surrounding a system from light-days to light-months away from the primary. There's no reason to come close.

It could be that you need to mine for something other than water. But in that case, you will not be inconspicuous. You'll be making a hell of a racket by trying to drill into an asteroid. And moreover, now you're capturing something that someone owns in that system, so they will have a motive to come chase you off. And both of these cases, why did you go to an inhabited system? Just go to an unclaimed one.

Or you just want to buy something. In that case, you don't drop off light-hours away. You drop off near the hyperlimit, announce yourself and buy the things you need. Then leave as soon as practical.

Reasons I don't agree with: safety. No, the translation will be noticed if you come close to a moderately developed system, so it's less safe than staying in hyper or transitioning very far away. Maybe it's a distinction without a difference if you're going to system whose development is barely different from empty space, but then why go there and not empty space? Plus the maintenance discussion.

Information. No, I don't think you can glean much from what's happening in the Galaxy just by dropping out half a light-day away. No one is going to be powering a Galactic-class omnidirectional beacon with the Landing Post for no good reason. If the system could afford such a transmitter, they can afford to see you too. And besides, I don't think it's worth having such a thing: just use narrow lasers or buoys to transmit/retransmit information. They're cheaper than omnidirectional. So at that distance from the system, you won't be picking up information, just noise.

Hiding your hypercapable ship (maybe it's an illegal surplus BC). That won't work, because the system will ask questions about just where your non-hypercapable parasite came from. If you don't answer to their satisfaction and they don't impound your pinnace, they'll just discreetly follow you to the hypercapable mothership. That means, it's not a good hiding strategy. And if you had a hypercapable parasite, then you could leave your mothership in hyperspace, translate in your courier, buy the things you need, and leave.

Sentimentality. Ok, this one is purely subjective and who knows what a nomad may feel. They may need to see the stars and some ship traffic, lest they lose their connection to humanity altogether. But it's also possible the nomad, by virtue of being a nomad is also an isolationist and doesn't want to see the rest of humanity. If they had enough money to buy a hypercapable ship and provision it for a long-term survival, but had the need to feel connected, they could just buy an asteroid habitat in the Verge or the Fringe, where some traffic exists, but the local government won't bother them.

penny wrote:I should have made that clearer. Detected after it has long exited hyper and is sitting quietly with all occupants sleeping with no outside lights running. I don't suppose there will be a huge chance of a collision from another vessel.

I used to pull into the parking lot of some store and rest when driving and the overwhelming need for sleep hit me. Like right after exam week when I am already mentally drained and have been existing off of intestinal fortitude and little sleep for the entire week before traveling back to my hometown. I was driving a Porsche 924 at the time. It was a hatchback with a lot of back window that seemed to spread the rays of a cop's flashlight in ways that made it appear like a bright sun. But I refused to pull over on the side of the road and take a chance of getting rear-ended by a drunk driver or someone inattentive. Yet, the advice is to pull over when feeling drowsy.

Truck stops were a merciful sight, but few and far between. It'd be nice if there were truck stops along well traveled routes in the HV.


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The Honorverse doesn't need truck stops to let ships stop and take a rest -- they aren't trucks with 1 (or 2) drivers pushing themselves until they hit the legal limit on driving hours, or are too tired, and need to stop. These are massive ships, with multiple shifts of crew, that just keep going for the weeks it takes to travel between ports.

Now once they reach port they get the other truck stop style services (though ports had them first) -- fuel, supplies, food, entertainment, etc. But they've no reason to 'pull over' until they reach their next port.

penny wrote:That's okay by me. Jonathan needs to field that question. If I understand him correctly, he is saying that a mistake in astrogation could land you way out in the boondocks. He also seems to be implying that intentionally trying to drop out of hyper just outside the fence of some system's property isn't exactly easy. I didn't think it would legally be a problem since legally the ship is still outside of the system. But Thinksmarkedly disagrees with the “hand in the face of a sibling” comment. And I see his point. But like I said, militaries toe the line all the time. “We did not cross the 37th parallel.”

Which, BTW Jonathan, also goes to motive as to why those codified laws would be needed, if systems are so anal as to want to cause problems just because you are “in his face.” Shit happens and excrement excretes.

Anyway, I didn't even think any detector could see a hyper footprint that is outside the system. And I assumed that a ship outside of a system would not be discovered. Especially with all possible systems shut down.

But yeah, far enough away from any laws and the possibility of a cop shining his lights through your car window is the objective.

That's not what I said. I said in a normal trip between systems there isn't any good reason to drop out of hyper in deep space. (And it'd be an especially bad idea in an emergency)

That's not at all the same thing as saying it isn't easy to do.

I'm not aware of any navigations or technical difficulty in dropping out of hyper in deep space. If for some idiosyncratic reason you wanted to park your ship out in someone's Oort cloud that should be easy enough. Hyper navigation relies on the inertial navigation hyper-log; so it's not like navigation gets easier as you approach a system -- there's still not reference points to take a fix from. You've always got some chance of ending up somewhat off from your planned emergence point; but I can't see why the chance would change if you were aiming to coming out 30 light minutes, 30 light hours, or 30 lightyears from a given star.

And (as far as we know) beyond the 12-hour limit (so more than 6 LH from a star) you're in international space and perfectly free to be there. There's nothing profitable to do there, so I can't imagine most people would bother - but there shouldn't be any laws against it. (Well, not unless you get close to something out there that someone's claimed and had infrastructure and defenses around; like a wormhole terminus)

That said, if the system is like Manticore and has system scale grav sensors with enough range to see you emerge out there expect some warships to show up and check you out, international space or not, to make sure you're not some hostile force trying to sneak and attack into their system. (Just like the 4 destroyers of the "Silver Cepheids" went out a lightmonth to investigate the possible sensor ghost that was actually the Oyster Bay Sharks hyper emergence)

As for an astrogation mistake stranding you in deepspace; where did I say anything like that?

Sure, astrogation mistake do happen; but the largest I can recall a military having was in EoH where the Peep fleet that tried to pounce on the Basilisk terminus overshot by "twenty-three-point-seven million klicks" (~1.3 lightminutes)
It's apparently not unknown for merchant ships to miss by more than that, as I seem to recall it not being alarmingly unusually to have system sensor notice a ship dropping out far enough away that it presumably reentered hyper to close the distance (presumably after taking a navigational fix) -- worth investigating; but not an unheard of event.

But I'd be fairly shocked if anybody ever had a astrogation mistake so bad they missed their destination by even a lightday.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm not aware of any navigations or technical difficulty in dropping out of hyper in deep space. If for some idiosyncratic reason you wanted to park your ship out in someone's Oort cloud that should be easy enough. Hyper navigation relies on the inertial navigation hyper-log; so it's not like navigation gets easier as you approach a system -- there's still not reference points to take a fix from. You've always got some chance of ending up somewhat off from your planned emergence point; but I can't see why the chance would change if you were aiming to coming out 30 light minutes, 30 light hours, or 30 lightyears from a given star.

As you mentioned earlier there is one real possibility for a technical problem that would make this a VERY BAD idea. We know that hyper-generators can fail and if it failed as you transition into the middle of nowhere, then you are terminally screwed.

Jonathan_S wrote:You had started by talking about "a ship could experience an emergency which causes them to drop out of hyper" if the emergency is with the hyper generator then dropping out 99 LY from anything is a very bad thing because you're no more able to fix the generator but now if it refuses to work you're centuries of n-space travel from anybody who can help you and there's no way to call for help. So you run out of resources and die.

Therefore the longest distance away from an inhabited system that can be safely recommended to transition is the distance that can be traversed with your existing food, water and fuel.

tlb wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I'm not aware of any navigations or technical difficulty in dropping out of hyper in deep space. If for some idiosyncratic reason you wanted to park your ship out in someone's Oort cloud that should be easy enough. Hyper navigation relies on the inertial navigation hyper-log; so it's not like navigation gets easier as you approach a system -- there's still not reference points to take a fix from. You've always got some chance of ending up somewhat off from your planned emergence point; but I can't see why the chance would change if you were aiming to coming out 30 light minutes, 30 light hours, or 30 lightyears from a given star.

As you mentioned earlier there is one real possibility for a technical problem that would make this a VERY BAD idea. We know that hyper-generators can fail and if it failed as you transition into the middle of nowhere, then you are terminally screwed.

Jonathan_S wrote:You had started by talking about "a ship could experience an emergency which causes them to drop out of hyper" if the emergency is with the hyper generator then dropping out 99 LY from anything is a very bad thing because you're no more able to fix the generator but now if it refuses to work you're centuries of n-space travel from anybody who can help you and there's no way to call for help. So you run out of resources and die.

Therefore the longest distance away from an inhabited system that can be safely recommended to transition is the distance that can be traversed with your existing food, water and fuel.

Yeah, probably could have phrased my response better.

I'm not aware that it's any more difficult to exit hyper in deep space than it is to exit near a hyper limit. But, you've got a point about the risk because there's always some little non-zero chance that even a perfectly maintained hyper generator could fail on you it is riskier to exit hyper out there (basically the near-zero change of failure times the unlikelihood of surviving that failure if stranded beyond reach of habitation). With a well maintained ship that risk is probably low enough to be near negligible; but why take even a near-negligible risk when there's no apparent benefit for doing so?

So yeah, that'd be another reason (beyond waste of time, fuel, and supplies) for ships to avoid leaving hyper anywhere except within n-space travel range of a habitable spot (or at least a well traveled one; since some of the wormhole termini seem to have no nearby habitable planets)

penny wrote:
Why is dropping out of hyper in interstellar space 99 light years away from civilization a bad thing? As long as the ship is fully functioning it can just get back into hyper after a good night's sleep. Instead of having some cop knocking on your window and shining a light on you because you pulled over to get some rest while driving all night long.

Anyway, a nomad just wants to pull over and get some sleep. Can't do it in some system's parking lot or they'll call the cops just like the big department stores.


I suppose setting up house in hyperspace would be a better option. Unless within the vicinity of a rogue grav wave where it would be just as dangerous as pulling over on the side of the road where a drunk driver can knock your rear end into your throat.

Dropping out of hyperspace in interstellar space 99 years from an inhabited system isn't so much a bad thing as there are going to be real questions asked if somebody finds you there. The question is why you want to do that?
Are you on a specific schedule and MUST show up on X date and "normal" hyperspace cruising speed for your ship would get you to the destination days earlier.....well, you can set up your speed to not go that fast and get there on time.....commercial fighters and passenger liners do it all the time to manage arrivals -and you normally want to leave the system or port you have been in "on time" to keep port costs down.

On the other hand, most of what we have seen talked about when people stop somewhere out in the deep -even if it is well outside the system of some star with nothing of economic value. Or you can really be off the map and be somewhere light years away from said star. It's a question of navigation. But they you are doing things like the freighter that took delivery of the Silver Bullets for delivery to Beowulf or the RMN Hexapuma meeting both the ship the "borrowed" at Montana and the RMN Talbot Quadrant ships that Terekhov ordered to rendezvous with the Hexapuma. Or the empty area Peep's ships were using as operating out by Silesia. It's a clandestine meet-point well away from any place anybody is likely to go so nobody stumbles across the ships that are meeting there- even if it is going to be used for months in the case of the Peeps. So, it's suspicious and somebody needs massive operational security.
There are challenges of course, mostly relating to having anybody notice that one of the vessels involved took too long to get from point A to point B on a scheduled journey. Not so much as question with military vessels but regularly scheduled freighters and other ships also have logs that are usually queried by whatever the local Astro Control is at any places they stop.

Ships usually operate in a couple of modes, the 1st being that they use the most economical speed to make normal transits (presuming they don't leave late from their last stop) or they adjust the speed per "weather" or unforeseen events. And they log those reasons.