Hyper and N-Space Collisions

In the Short Victorious War, a couple of Peep Battle Cruisers dropped out of hyper very close to a Manty SD.

This is because it's impossible to see across the Alpha Wall.

My question is in a star system with a lot of incoming and outgoing traffic, what are the chances that every now and then a ship transitions through the Alpha Wall and instantly collides with another ship on the other side of the wall?

There is a lot of talk about the traffic lanes for a Wormhole, but nothing about shipping lanes outside of wormholes.

Just asking?

BarryKirk wrote:In the Short Victorious War, a couple of Peep Battle Cruisers dropped out of hyper very close to a Manty SD.

This is because it's impossible to see across the Alpha Wall.

My question is in a star system with a lot of incoming and outgoing traffic, what are the chances that every now and then a ship transitions through the Alpha Wall and instantly collides with another ship on the other side of the wall?

There is a lot of talk about the traffic lanes for a Wormhole, but nothing about shipping lanes outside of wormholes.

Just asking?

This all comes down to probability and chance. which in my considered opinion is somewhere between fat and no.

BarryKirk wrote:In the Short Victorious War, a couple of Peep Battle Cruisers dropped out of hyper very close to a Manty SD.

This is because it's impossible to see across the Alpha Wall.

My question is in a star system with a lot of incoming and outgoing traffic, what are the chances that every now and then a ship transitions through the Alpha Wall and instantly collides with another ship on the other side of the wall?

There is a lot of talk about the traffic lanes for a Wormhole, but nothing about shipping lanes outside of wormholes.

Just asking?

If it happens it definitely qualifies as an act of a higher power.

BarryKirk wrote:In the Short Victorious War, a couple of Peep Battle Cruisers dropped out of hyper very close to a Manty SD.

This is because it's impossible to see across the Alpha Wall.

That situation happened because the PRN BCs deliberately dropped into the path of the Star Knight Cruiser Bellerophon just passed. Space is big, but there are apparently conventions in place to define inbound and outbound spacing -- they aren't defined anywhere I know of, but they apparently exist.

If they didn't exist, pirates would have a much harder time staking out the arrival zone(s) for victims; there would be a much wider area for incoming ships to arrive in. There are hints about "least time courses" and excessive wear on nodes the further from the ecliptic at transition to/from hyper, etc.

I suspect it is something as simple as arriving slightly above the ecliptic and departing slightly below or arriving with a safety margin outside the hyper-limit and leaving as soon as it is crossed (It doesn't make much sense to stay in N-space any longer than absolutely necessary.)

BarryKirk wrote:In the Short Victorious War, a couple of Peep Battle Cruisers dropped out of hyper very close to a Manty SD.

This is because it's impossible to see across the Alpha Wall.

My question is in a star system with a lot of incoming and outgoing traffic, what are the chances that every now and then a ship transitions through the Alpha Wall and instantly collides with another ship on the other side of the wall?

There is a lot of talk about the traffic lanes for a Wormhole, but nothing about shipping lanes outside of wormholes.

Just asking?

IIRC the Haven ships were actually going for the smaller ship(s) on a system security patrol. The Mantie SD was a wild card that just happened to be on it's way out of the system.
This is known as " the plan worked perfectly until it didn't".

Weird Harold wrote:I suspect it is something as simple as arriving slightly above the ecliptic and departing slightly below or arriving with a safety margin outside the hyper-limit and leaving as soon as it is crossed (It doesn't make much sense to stay in N-space any longer than absolutely necessary.)

My first thought was similar - that outbound ships have better nav fixes so they'd jump into hyper at soon as they crossed the limit; while incoming ships, due to accumulated navigational uncertainty, have to leave some safety margin.

But that doesn't completely eliminate the risk because the n-space object might be an ship on an intrasystem trip - for example out to mining facility in the asteroid belts beyond the hyper limit, or to a base around one of the Jovians (like Blackbird Yards), or even out to a wormhole terminus. Or for that mater it might just be a chunk of asteroid or comet with the astronomically bad luck to be right under a ship that's emerging.



Since we never hear anybody worry about it, even when hostile ships are entering the system (who presumably wouldn't know or follow the shipping schedules or designated arrival zones) I'd bet that it's just not something RFC wants to have happen so, if pressed, he'd have or come up with a techno reason why it won't happen (beyond simple probability).

Jonathan_S wrote:Since we never hear anybody worry about it, even when hostile ships are entering the system (who presumably wouldn't know or follow the shipping schedules or designated arrival zones) I'd bet that it's just not something RFC wants to have happen so, if pressed, he'd have or come up with a techno reason why it won't happen (beyond simple probability).

There's textev regarding attackers knowing the orbital positions of target systems -- maybe due to scouting, maybe not. Attackers would be in less danger of a collision with other traffic than someone using the normal approach protocols, there probably would be anyone there to hit.

Even with the normal approach and departures, there's the chance of two arriving from different hyper bands in the same spot. The odds of that happening have to be literally astronomical, so "Simple Probability" has to be the largest factor in collision avoidance. Space is BIG and ships (and other space junk) are small in comparison.