Jump Points

LeHah

212 Squadron - "The Old Man's Eyes And Ears"
Couple small questions about jump points:

1.) Whats the exact purpose of the jump point buoy? Does it just mark the jump entrance or is there some kind of "activation" of the point between the buoy and the ship?

2.) Do all jump points move or is that more of a characteristic of unstable jump points like the Charybis Quasar?

3.) I remember Fleet Action telling us that going into a jump at full speed could have disasterous results from ships hitting each other on the other side. Perhaps I haven't played WC3 or 4 in a while, but I vaugely remember the Victory strike group going through the jump point as one unit. Im assuming this is more to move the story along than it is suppose to be accurate, but it also seems that jumping in the game is different and seemingly less complicated than in the books? (Or am I just reaching here?)
 
LOAF's Jump FAQ should make a quick entry into the thread https://www.wcnews.com/articles/jumpfaq.shtml

3.3.9 What are jump buoys?

Jump buoys serve three purposes: they mark the locations of jump points, they track ship movements and they form the working backbone of the Confederation's FTL communications network. Jump Buoys are capable of transmitting data to one another across jump space. This information is passed across star systems via relay stations to other jump buoys.

The Kilrathi also make use of two other types of jump buoys: they maintain a network of cloaked spy buoys and automated missile-armed defense buoys.

2.6 Are jump points permanent?

No. Jump points have been known to close or change course due to major shifts in gravity. For example, a star going supernova would disable numerous jump lines.

3.3.3 What are the dangers of the Akwende Propulsion System?

Approaching a jump point at high speed, as is often necessary in a combat situation, is also exceedingly dangerous. Ships can still jump without stopping to calibrate, but it is extremely risky. If they approach the jump at the wrong angle, then they will either end up in the wrong star system or be destroyed completely mid-transit. It is also common that ships in such situations overshoot the points entirely, requiring hours to turn around.

Another serious danger of jumping is a failure to equalize antigraviton flux. If a jump drive fails in this manner, only portions of a ship will pass through the jump point.

External energy use is also a problem -- every jump removes energy from a jump line, which must then recharge. If a ship uses too much energy in jumping, the jump line will change positions or close in mid-jump. The ship will either be deposited somewhere unexpected, or completely lost.

In military situations, the flash of light and neutrinos generated at both ends of a jump point by excess energy use is also a danger - they are easily detectable by enemy ships. This is a solvable problem -- many military (and some civilian) ships mount variable flux engines. These, along with extra time spend on energy calculations, can allow a ship to pass through a jump point stealthily.

Since the jump-in point is not exact, it is dangerous to jump multiple ships in a row. If two ships jump into the same spot, both are vaporized in a white-hot explosion.

A size limit has long plagued jumping ships: prior to 2668 the normal limit for ships was those that fit within the 500 meter antigraviton flux radius. Larger ships could still jump, but they were forced to utilize exponentially higher amounts of energy to do so. The Kilrathi Empire premiere technology that solved this problem on their Hakaga class heavy carriers.

Due to the total amount of energy in some jump tunnels, a second size limit is imposed: 'minor' jump tunnels have energy pools so small that larger ships can never successfully use them to jump. This is why larger ships, like the Confederation's Vesuvius class heavy carriers, just plot special routes to avoid such locations.

Another problem is turbulence: when a sufficiently large ship exits a jump point, it experiences a momentary node deceleration in which the ship is shaken dangerously.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
LeHah said:
Couple small questions about jump points:

1.) Whats the exact purpose of the jump point buoy? Does it just mark the jump entrance or is there some kind of "activation" of the point between the buoy and the ship?

Jump bouys serve as communication links, opening the Jump Point by a microscopic amount and sending a radio signal through. This consumes far less power (and is harder to intercept) than tachyon-based interstellar transmissions, and it has the benefit that it does not require a huge tachyon transmitter (such as the one seen in the Prophecy mission in which Blair is your wingman). Jump bouys also keep a record of what ships have passed through the jump point (and their IFF codes if they are friendly).

2.) Do all jump points move or is that more of a characteristic of unstable jump points like the Charybis Quasar?

It is unknown whether Jump Points orbit their parent star in a freefall manner as if they were solid objects, but other than that, stable jump points are not known to move significantly.

3.) I remember Fleet Action telling us that going into a jump at full speed could have disasterous results from ships hitting each other on the other side. Perhaps I haven't played WC3 or 4 in a while, but I vaugely remember the Victory strike group going through the jump point as one unit. Im assuming this is more to move the story along than it is suppose to be accurate, but it also seems that jumping in the game is different and seemingly less complicated than in the books? (Or am I just reaching here?)

AFAIK, ships emerge from a jump point with the same relative positions and velocities as they enter--the space inside the Jump tunnel is effectively "not there". I think that the ship collision issue is mainly an aspect of vessel size--a jump point can only open so wide (the width varies between jump points, as we saw in WC4). The Victory group could jump together because the ships were small enough to fit through the jump point if they maintained a very tight formation. On the other hand, fleet carriers are too large to jump together with their escorts (and Vesuvius carriers are too large to fit through some jump points at all).
 
Ijuin said:
AFAIK, ships emerge from a jump point with the same relative positions and velocities as they enter--the space inside the Jump tunnel is effectively "not there".

That depends on the jump point. Usually you're right.. there are long jumps where the ships will exist inside the tunnel for extended periods of time.
 
ChrisReid said:
That depends on the jump point. Usually you're right.. there are long jumps where the ships will exist inside the tunnel for extended periods of time.


...As seen in a handfull of wc4 cutscenes...
 
I always had the belief that a Jump Point in WC is similar to how they are in Battletech, where they have to be so far away from a star and away from the electromagnetic gravity reach of it in order to generate a jump field. But the difference was that in BattleTech, a Jump Point could be used to go in pretty much any direction within range of the jump (30 light years). For example, from Terra one could jump to any number of star systems in range.

But in WC, the Zenith Jump Point of Terra will ONLY take you to one system, and then you have to transit within that system to get to where you need to get. I read somewhere that a controlled nucleur explosion during a jump will ensure that a Jump Point is 'set' to only go to one destination and back, and both the Kilrathi and Humans know this and have set up everything for it.
 
Sigmar Maximus said:
I read somewhere that a controlled nucleur explosion during a jump will ensure that a Jump Point is 'set' to only go to one destination and back, and both the Kilrathi and Humans know this and have set up everything for it.
If you ever remember where you read that, I'd be very interested to know...
 
It has been a very, VERY long time since I have read a Wing Commander novel. It may well have been a BattleTech or ALIENS/PREDATOR novel though where I read that.
 
Sigmar Maximus said:
It has been a very, VERY long time since I have read a Wing Commander novel. It may well have been a BattleTech or ALIENS/PREDATOR novel though where I read that.

Isn't that something they did in Freespace? Well, granted, blowing up the Lucifer collapsed EVERYTHING, but...
 
Back
Top