Re: Fast X Boat

hi,

I designed this ship mostly to see how effectively such a thing could
be done.  It would be a very popular thing to build and it probably
wouldn't be very cost effective due to the number of ships required.


>>As for the distance travelled: A mis-jump goes 6d6 hexes in a random
>>direction. 6d6 gives an average distance of (6*3.5=21 hexes) which
>>is quite good.

>No, it's d6d6 hexes (unless they've changed that in MegaT) so
>the average distance is (3.5*3.5=10.5) hexes.

Oops, I made a slight error here.  However, it isn't that bad.  The mean is
better than 10.5.


Not quite that easy....the mean of a product isn't the product
of the means.  The result you want is:

for 1d6, average is 3.5
for 2d6, average is 7
for 3d6, average is 10.5
for 4d6, average is 14
for 5d6, average is 17.5
for 6d6, average is 21

Summing the averages and dividing by 6 gives: 12.25 hexes average mis-jump
distance.  This is possible because each of the above is equally likely.


>And since you
>will most propably need 2 or 3 jumps to get to somewhere useful,
>two controlled jumps-6 will be preferable.

Most probably you need 2 jumps,  you have an even chance (50%) of getting
somewhere in 1 jump and a 127 in 128 (= 99.2%) of getting somewhere in 2 jumps.
If you put a jump-2 drive in the ship you would have a really good chance of
getting somewhere in 2 jumps.

As seen above, this method is slightly better than two controlled jump-6s
(.25 hexes on average).  The variance is much larger and since this method
of communication requires multiple ships to be launched, you have a pretty
good chance of sending the stuff further.  You also have a nice chance of
sending is less far as well.


>About the safety factor: I thought there were a small, but not
>insignificant, risk that any misjump would slag the engine.

Maybe I'd better include a second engine in the next redesign.



        						Pauli

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