Talk:Jump Point
Sarna News
Anon's Editing Notes
Like my description note said, the words "transient" and "Lagrange" don't show up in rulebooks (at least) before BattleForce 2, p. 71 (and carried forward to AeroTech 2, p. 72). Contrast with DropShips & JumpShips - Operations Manual, p. 30 and BattleSpace - Rulebook, p. 44. Text and the long-lived diagram of a sphere indicate that transient points weren't considered yet. I even checked MechWarrior, 2nd ed.
Looking at the outer "life zone" distances in Campaign Operations, the rule of thumb for finding the distance saved when using a non-transient pirate point is to subtract 1 from the star's subtype before entering the "Proximity Point Table." Doing that for a few selected star types in travel times results in the time savings I cited of around 5% to 10%. A proper spreadsheet analysis of all possible time savings is left as an exercise for the reader.
Compared to AeroTech 2, p. 57, Strategic Operations: Advanced Aerospace Rules, p. 76 seems to have lost the note in the "Hyperspace Navigation Table" indicating that the +4 modifier for using a transient point is cumulative with the +4 modifier for using a non-standard point (a "double pirate point" penalty, if you will). I suspect this is both caused by and contributes to the confusion around the definition of "pirate point."
Personal speculation: "transient points" got added because authors did the math and realized "pirate points" as written in the old rulebooks didn't lead to the kinds of time savings seen in lore & fiction.
Personal prediction: someone writing something important will confuse a Lagrange point with a barycenter.— The preceding unsigned comment was posted by 192.145.116.143 (talk • contribs) .