8 replies to this topic

[Alcom Isst]

Considering how MWO is currently limited to a virtual 12v12 mech battle, I'm starting to treat the canonicity of MWO the same way the canonicity of BattleTech: The Animated Series was treated.

The battles in MWO aren't setup to feel like an actual BattleTech event, they're simply fun little arcade matches. The game currently has barely an canon connections, and the Clan introduction felt perfectly like a product sell and nothing like a Clan invasion. This feels like a game in the BattleTech Universe, not a game of the BattleTech Universe, and my headcanon is fixating to that concept.

As a result of my new headcanon, a subsequent question occurred. Do HPG stations have the Latency and ability to carry the server-client interaction of MWO between planets? Could MWO be feasibly played across the Inner Sphere, or would it be limited to just one habitable planet or a group of planets within acceptable latency range?

Bonus question: If there is a range limit, where would MWO be played?

Edited by Alcom Isst, 05 January 2014 - 03:02 PM.

[dal10]

hpgs have no latency whatsoever. that being said, they can only transmit one thing at a time. so mwo would stop said hpg from transmitting anything else. so any games like this would likely be limited to the same planet only.

[CyclonerM]

I totally agree with you..

[Arnold J Rimmer]

If I recall, HPG's did have a maximum range of a hundred or so (?) lightyears, and a non-trivial transit time. Still FTL, but not instant. Hence the reason for a massive network rather than a few nodes and receivers.

[dal10]

hpg have a maximum range of 50 light years. their message time is instant, at the very least for the A class units. most messages are processed in a burst format. you can do larger messages but the cost is heavy. If you wanted to do a real time chat with someone, it is possible, but no other data can be sent in the process. i do not know if it can be sent more than one jump however. the cost is astronomical. A 10 minute call could cost more than some battlemechs. as such, basically only factional leaders, or extremely successful merc groups, could do such a thing. They only do it sparingly however.

[Nathan Foxbane]

Arnold J Rimmer, on 05 January 2014 - 04:28 PM, said:

If I recall, HPG's did have a maximum range of a hundred or so (?) light-years, and a non-trivial transit time. Still FTL, but not instant. Hence the reason for a massive network rather than a few nodes and receivers.

HPGs have a range of 50 lightyears. Since they function just like jumpships except for moving data and not ships, transit time is effectively 0. You are thinking K-0 series Black boxes which have a range of 100 light years and a message travel speed of 10 light-years per day.

Latency is however long it takes to redirect the dish and send the message on a priority message. Within the Class A circuit bundles of messages are transmitted every 6 hours, in the Class B circuit it is whenever a world has enough messages to transmit or when someone is willing to pay the cost of priority transmission. This compounds if the target destination is outside the range of a single HPG. If a planet has two HPGs, links can be made in real time or extremely close to it. Extremely expensive to do so and equally rare to have two HPGs on one planet.

TLDR: It depends. Non priority message from Terra to Tharkad takes about a week to get there.

Plenty more information here.

[Vanguard319]

There was a scene in the novel Operation Audacity where Katherine Steiner Davion, who was on New Avalon at the time is having a teleconferenced meeting with her Aunt Nondi Steiner, who was on Tharkad. (a distance of at least several hundred light years.) If I remember right, the transmission itself was described as being a special priority command circuit, due to the number of relays required to transmit the signal in real-time.

Considering that the latency was low enough to have a fairly normal conversation, I would assume that when the HPG network is set up properly, it is possible to have a server connection with a low enough latency for real-time communications. The novel also noted that this type of circuit is both extremely expensive and time-consuming to set up and operate, so it's not exactly something that every world has access to, nor is it something that would be available to commoners.

Edited by Vanguard319, 05 January 2014 - 05:52 PM.

[Brother MEX]

Quote

===K-4 Series===
A true revolution in black box technology, the K-4 was introduced in [[3048]] and increased message speeds to one hundred light-years per day with a range of six hundred light-years. It also increases the size of the data packet that can be sent, allowing for megabytes of data to be transmitted.

Does anyone have any idea what a K-4 Series black box would cost in c-bills ?

[Skylarr]

Brother MEX, on 11 January 2014 - 12:04 AM, said:

Does anyone have any idea what a K-4 Series black box would cost in c-bills ?

Priceless. If you are using it in your RPG game then the players better be able to defend. Every Intel Organization will be coming for it.