ghostrider
06/08/19 10:56 PM
66.74.60.165
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The thought came up that seems to show a time issue with the invasion of Luthien.
How much time did the DC know that the clans were going to hit?
This is important as the story suggests the message was going to take another month to get to New Avalon form the border. So a month to go the distance from there to New Avalon.
With that said, if the battle was going to happen within two months of them finding out, it would be impossible to get the mercs sent to Luthien, due to distance. And this is assuming they used the HPG network to get the message to the border. If not, that even more time.
Now. This is where more goes wrong. The HPG network supposedly can only send a message 50 light years or so. Why is it they can not directly contact something beyond that, when the black box can send a message several hundred light years without needing a relay?
If this was sent from Luthien, then there is even more distance they can reach.
Is there some difference that causes the HPG to basically end at 50 light years, while the box can go much further, at a much slower rate?
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Requiem
06/09/19 04:49 AM
1.158.130.13
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Refer – Michael A. Stackpole - Blood of Kerensky Vol. 2 – Blood Legacy
Chapter 31 – 22 November 3051 – Unity Palace, Imperial City Luthien
Theodore informs Hohiro Kurita and their respective generals of the intended Clan invasion of Luthien. It also went on to states that he only became aware of the attack one hour before the meeting was called and in that time Theodore sent a message via fax to Hanse Davion.
Chaper 32 – 27 November 3051 – Avalon City, Avalon
Hanse Davion is informed by Justin, Intelligence Secretary, of the authenticity of Theodore’s message – Page 226 states that Theodore’s message was received by one of their machines on Murchison (which was a newer faster model) – it was then subsequently sent on to New Avalon where he received it a couple of days earlier than expected – It also stated that the original message won’t reach us until the beginning of next month.
So 30 days in November – can we assume thus at a minimum time 9 days from Luthien to New Avalon and the message was in range.
So can we say that perhaps the specs as given may be a little off when it comes to range and speed of message?
Get thee to Coventry … Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious by this daughter of Tharkad … Our army shall march through. Well to New Avalon tonight.
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Cray
06/09/19 12:24 PM
97.101.136.19
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Quote:
Now. This is where more goes wrong. The HPG network supposedly can only send a message 50 light years or so. Why is it they can not directly contact something beyond that, when the black box can send a message several hundred light years without needing a relay?
Black boxes use utterly different technology than the HPG, which is based on KF drives. Like KF drives, HPGs have a distinctly limited range in how far they can transfer something through hyperspace. They're making a hyperspace connection from point A to point B, and they can only reach point B at a certain distance.
Black boxes are more like a generic FTL radio - if you've got a good receiver then you can get the signal at hundreds of light-years range. You just might have to wait days for the signal to arrive.
However, HPGs have winning attributes. Their point A to B "jump" is nearly instant. They can be set up in chains and relay signals over longer distances vastly faster than black boxes, which have a fixed FTL velocity. Canonically, HPG command circuits have sustained real time, stuttering, low-res, early internet webcam Skype sessions (so to speak) from New Avalon to Tharkad. HPGs are also point to point, which is an advantage for communications security.
Finally, HPGs have much greater data capacity. HPGs can burp out the daily communications traffic for Planet 1 to Planet 2 in a single pulse. Black boxes were compared to "faxes" because they're lucky to manage 2400 baud.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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Frabby
06/09/19 03:30 PM
91.39.171.156
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A chain of courier JumpShips will almost always outrun a FTL Fax machine, and often also ComStar-operated HPGs.
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Wick
06/10/19 11:59 PM
45.43.104.179
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The HPGs are undisputedly fastest, if you pay for premium service. If you're paying regular service, then yes, perhaps a command chain of Jumpships is faster because Comstar may send your message as part of daily or weekly batch. Its generally 6-12 months for a message to cross from one side of the Inner Sphere to another, and a handful of weeks between the capital worlds.
Presumably, firing up a HPG to make a "jump" is the expensive part. Once the hyperspace channel is open, its dirt cheap by comparison which is why all the data is lumped together into batches. If you're willing to pay an exorbitant amount to open the channel as you please, rather than when ComStar pleases, then you'll get the fastest communication possible. I see no reason why Theodore used a fax machine to send the message to Hanse, taking 5-9 days, when House Kurita could have afforded an emergency message stream to New Avalon sent same day (unless suspicions that ComStar might not relay it accurately.) Putting your homeworld at risk to save a few C-bills seemed risky to me. (Actually, a mountain of C-bills, but a mountain one of the great Houses could certainly have afforded in the face of annihilation.)
As far as speed-to-cost ratio goes, your line of courier jumpships is much more efficient. Assuming of course, you own or are leasing the jumpships in the chain and are not including them as part of the cost (in which case, one should also count the cost of every HPG station along the way, which is presumed to be exceedingly more expensive than a jumpship.) However, couriers for radio message are quite rare in comparison to couriers of dropships, which require undocking, transit, and redocking maneuvers, and so each point of exchange adds several hours of delay at least. If the jumpships in your chain were jumping without benefit of taking along cargo or passengers in the form of dropships, then that seems like a bum deal for the jumpship operators who are counting on such fees as their livelihood. So realistically speaking, over the distance from Luthien to New Avalon, the fax machine was probably still many times faster than jumpship relay. A dedicated courier line between the two may have done it, but if they had to rely on the jumpships that just happened to be between them at the time, and/or needing to wait for a jumpship heading in the correct direction, then there's no realistic way to expect the message to arrive in under two weeks (if at all.)
The fax machine is by far the slowest by absolute speed and has the most limited message complexity - but its also the only one guaranteed to get there and isn't subject to delays. ComStar may decide not to send your message (or alter its contents), your courier may misjump, you may not have a courier standing by to relay, and a host of other things can go wrong, but the fax is at least reliable and got the message several hundred light years across space in just 5-9 days.
If I were Theodore though, I'd have forked over the Kuritan crown jewels for an emergency message via ComStar's HPGs, and used the fax machine as backup. Pray that the HPG message gets there early, and buys you a few extra days of preparation, but if not the fax machine will get there slower, but with a little time remaining.
Did Hanse use priority HPG to communicate to the Wolf's Dragoons and Kell Hounds to come to Luthien's rescue or the fax machine? I guess that should play into the calculations as well. If you've got 14 days to work with, at least 5 are lost on fax from Luthien to New Avalon, you've got 9 days to get the Dragoons and Hounds from wherever they are (Outreach and Tomans, respectively?) to Luthien and that seems to be way too little time for dropship and jumpship transit - and its even worse if you lose another 5-7 days on fax transmission to them. I've always felt this is one of the most technically impossible events in BattleTech history. Both units were just too far away to have been of any help according to the established rules of dropship and jumpship travel.
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Requiem
06/11/19 12:53 AM
1.158.130.13
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Question: was there anything written as to ……..
- who the operative was and what their cover was?
- Where – the Clan held planet - they were?
- How they obtained the information?
- How they transferred the information to Thomas upon Luthien?
For this would make for interesting reading.
As for HPG Times – can we say thanks to Katherine for establishing the first real time call from New Avalon to Tharkad – Back to Back dishes allowing for an almost instantaneous call.
Did they make it post Jihad? ..... probably not, otherwise I would have thought one of the leaders may have called during a time of unrest
How much does this cost per second?
Get thee to Coventry … Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious by this daughter of Tharkad … Our army shall march through. Well to New Avalon tonight.
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Wick
06/11/19 01:31 AM
45.43.104.179
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https://bg.battletech.com/forums/index.php?topic=43531.0
It's somewhere in the 60-90 C-Bills per second range for non-priority video. But if this was instantaneous I suspect the rate may be 100 times greater (6000-9000 C-Bills per second). But this video was very low quality and so maybe closer to 1500-2000 C bills per second. It is unclear if this is to cover the entire distance or just a single hop in the chain. (I flipped through the ComStar book and couldn't make sense of whether sender was charged only for source transmission, or for all transmissions.) I'm going to assume that every hop in the chain adds cost and Tharkad to New Avalon is some 10-15 HPG hops, so now we're talking 15,000 to 30,000 C-bills per second. That doesn't sound like much but a 5 minute call would run you 4.5 to 9 million C-Bills, or the cost of a brand new medium to heavy weight BattleMech. These are extremely loose estimates, but as you can see it is prohibitively expensive. And if ComStar (or WOB) charged a 1000 times normal rate rather than just 100, now you're talking about the cost of an entire regiment's worth of mechs.
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ghostrider
06/12/19 02:30 AM
66.74.60.165
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So approximately 8 days for a fax to get from Luthien to New Avalon in the book. It is looking like the black box tech was purposefully left out of the game like a few other things, as it changed the whole game. If the FC went straight with the boxes, they would destroy Comstar's money flow, as well as remove a lot of intel from Comstar.
The range of a jumpship is 30 light years, yet they came up with some that jumped much further as per another thread. The Jihad supposedly had some doing alot further jumps. For some reason, this doesn't make sense. It would figure the clans would have done research into getting more range out of an HPG. Just to avoid waste. One system verse 2 or more to deal with the invasion at least.
Looking at Wicks number of jumps, that actually sounds a little low. 30 to 50 light years per 'relay' seems like it would be much more.
So for 2 jump messages, it may actually be quicker to use the box, then Comstar, if they had to wait until the dish was realigned. Something even further may well be a lot faster.
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Requiem
06/12/19 03:29 AM
1.158.130.13
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Yes the FC could keep ComStar out of the Loop if they introduced mass Black Boxes together with a very insightful encryption algorithm.
However as for the depletion in their revenue – no, this could not happen – the black box sends one group of papers for one individual over a distance. Whereas a HPG sends a worlds papers, video, etc over a distance. Mass transit (all mediums) over individual / single medium (Paper note) will win out in Revenue every-time.
As for long range HPG – yes it is there – if I remember WoB made a couple of them that could go almost from one edge of the IS to the Other.
Get thee to Coventry … Now is the winter of our discontent, made glorious by this daughter of Tharkad … Our army shall march through. Well to New Avalon tonight.
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Wick
06/14/19 11:51 PM
45.43.104.179
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WOB used lithium fusion drives for those super-long range pulses which burned out the HPG core. They were only good for one message stream which severely limited functionality.
>>> Looking at Wicks number of jumps, that actually sounds a little low. 30 to 50 light years per 'relay' seems like it would be much more.
I don't like to be disputed without some evidence. 
I admit to just winging it off the top of my head, but here's the jump list as I just calculated it using Sarna planet data. I stuck to significant planets, not the backwaters to ensure they would have powerful HPG stations (all Class A or B.) I also avoided the potentially problematic Terra and stuck to Fed-Com controlled worlds, except for a Chaos March world which is unavoidable. You see two distance numbers here where the two system's articles don't agree.
1. Tharkad - Gallery (46.37 LY / 45.9 LY)
2. Gallery - Chukchi III (25.0 LY)
3. Chukchi III - Furillo (45.1 LY)
4. Furillo - Hesperus II (34.4 LY - 15.7 LY - the 34 is much closer to correct; the Hesperus article's distance table is clearly wrong)
5. Hesperus II - Carsphairn (28.72 LY / 28.5 LY)
6. Carsphairn - Skye (41.15 LY)
7. Skye - Summer (28.93 LY)
8. Summer - New Earth (39.81 LY)
9. New Earth - Epsilon Eridani (39.56 LY) - questionable if this planet could be used, but its Chaos March neighbors all pose same problem and this is most suitable world in the region
10. Epsilon Eridani - Nanking (30.8 LY / 31.09 LY)
11. Nanking - Bharat (37.90 LY)
12. Bharat - New Hessen (29.48 LY)
13. New Hessen - Chesterton (34.05 LY / 34.5 LY)
14. Chesterton - Axton (43.8 LY)
15. Axton - Muskegon (38.98 LY / 39.9 LY)
16. Muskegon - Talcott (44.7 LY)
17. Talcott - Freisland (35.85 LY / 35.5 LY) - unsure of Friesland's status as major world, but if colonized during First Exodus and founding member of Fed Suns, likely high enough to warrant at least class B HPG station
18. Freisland - New Avalon (32.5 LY / 39.4 LY)
Ok, so I was a little off. I knew the absolute distance was going to be in the 500 LY range (actually 547 which cost me an extra hop), and thought I might find some better routes using more 40-50 LY jumps and a less jagged line through FedSuns space. There may be more efficient paths than this one, and if class C is used then 14 or 15 jumps is certainly possible, but this is what I could do in an hour and sticking to worlds that would be more capable of sustaining a such an HPG chain.
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