News travels fast/slow in 3025 Era?

[silverfoxdmt73]

More of a question about HPG and other forms of communication in the Four Succession War.

I'm starting a campaign in 3025, initially based in ghe Oberon Confederation and was wondering how long it would take for events such as Hanse and Melissa's wedding and the start of the 4th SW to reach that area of the Inner Shpere?

[Decoy]

ComStar runs an interstellar news network. Given how far away the Confederation is, any world with an HPG may know what happens on Terra within say.... a month or two, if you're generous. An isolated planet with no HPGs is at the whim of interstellar traders. IIRC It took roughly a year for the Taurian Concordat to find out about the Clan invasion. (Granted, Comstar was covering it up) and for several years after still believed it was Davion propaganda.

[Dave Talley]

yeah,it would be priority news, most likely that last leg would be ferried in by jumpship since most planets out there dont have a hpg station

[Deadborder]

Oberon IV does have a Class B HPG (Which is actually rather odd for an independent periphery pirate world), which routinely would send and receive messages every week or so, but important news might be 'rushed'. Given that, I can imagine that the news of such import might take a couple of weeks to a month.

Then again, its HPG broke down in 3045 and was never repaired, so that's going to slow things a little.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

On average the time for transmission of a non-priority message between Terra and Tharkad takes about a week, and from Terra to the limits of the explored the Periphery about six months. Priority message over the same distance could take between few hours to a day depending on conditions and network message load.

I don't know if we've ever been given a map of all the Class A HPGs, but according to that same article it was only about 50 or so stations.  ComStar's network greatly resembed AUTODIN (probably not a coincidence either, given the period that BattleTech was invented)... including its hub and spoke network configuration.  It might be a neat fan-project to see if one could assemble a list of all the Class A HPGs, and then a fairly reliable isochronic map could be generated for the communication lag from any two points.  For routine traffic, at least.  It'd even give you a rough estimate of quantifying exactly HOW convoluted a priority's message path might be.

[Frabby]

On the specific issue of the Steiner/Davion wedding, according to the BattleCorps story Unholy Union Hendrik Grimm III was aware of it well in advance and made his own plans.

For a pirate realm to be viable they need to have good intel to pick their targets; access to a HPG is almost a necessity unless they have extensive courier JumpShip networks (or well-connected agents).
(Edit: On second thought, probably not. They only need to be within 50 lightyears of another HPG to receive its messages, as a HPG is only required to send messages but not to receive them although ComStar would still have to set up the sending HPG accordingly and know when and where to receive a message, and how to decode it.)

Jordan Weisman said in an interview that the slow message exchange was an underlying requirement for the neo-feudal setting.
But given the possibility of real-time HPG communication I suspect the real reason is that ComStar needs time to read and digest all the off-world messages.

[Daryk]

Not too long after the last board crash, Bad Syntax did some research, though I can't find a list of planets: http://btengineer.blogspot.com/2011/09/more-hpg-stuff.html

The effort started with a list of 49 from the Hegemony, then added additional Class A Stations from individual planet descriptions, ending up with 124.  I think the guess that there are more than 124 is accurate.

[silverfoxdmt73]

So old Solaris VII duels would be about a year or so behind?

Thinking of adding a bit of flavour to a Periphery merc canpaign by showing tri-vids of Gray Noton and Justin Allard etc as the 4th SW unfolds.

[guardiandashi]

So old Solaris VII duels would be about a year or so behind?

Thinking of adding a bit of flavour to a Periphery merc canpaign by showing tri-vids of Gray Noton and Justin Allard etc as the 4th SW unfolds.

not really, from what I remember there were mentions that the holovids of the solaris VII battles often got transmitted along what amounted to command circuits to get them places asap.  so weeks behind definitely months maybe a year or more? only is you are really out in the boonies.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I've done a lot of thought about Solaris videos.  Fluff seems to indicate that they're popular not just for viewing, but betting across the Inner Sphere.

So how do the bookies keep from losing money on bets from people who already know the outcome of the matches (perhaps they saw it live on Solaris, or were in another system that got the broadcasts earlier than the given system)?

I've come up with a couple paradigms, but none have any basis beyond conjecture.

[guardiandashi]

I've done a lot of thought about Solaris videos.  Fluff seems to indicate that they're popular not just for viewing, but betting across the Inner Sphere.

So how do the bookies keep from losing money on bets from people who already know the outcome of the matches (perhaps they saw it live on Solaris, or were in another system that got the broadcasts earlier than the given system)?

I've come up with a couple paradigms, but none have any basis beyond conjecture.

the one that would be tough to stop would be the "I have a buddy on solaris who priority HPG messages me the basic info on a match, "Justin Allard in match # centurion vs griffon wins at timestamp, via ac20 hit to head assembly Killed opponent. while I am on Luthien or New Avalon (or wherever) so that I can go put down, enough to cover: bet with a bunch of profit, the cost of the priority message, and some extra to pay my "friend" for his time and a bit extra.
if you are doing a ~10k up to maybe 100k at relatively low odds, its not really worth it, on a multi 100k to millions bet it could easily be worth it, depending on the exact cost of the hpg priority message.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

the one that would be tough to stop would be the "I have a buddy on solaris who priority HPG messages me the basic info on a match, "Justin Allard in match # centurion vs griffon wins at timestamp, via ac20 hit to head assembly Killed opponent. while I am on Luthien or New Avalon (or wherever) so that I can go put down, enough to cover: bet with a bunch of profit, the cost of the priority message, and some extra to pay my "friend" for his time and a bit extra.
if you are doing a ~10k up to maybe 100k at relatively low odds, its not really worth it, on a multi 100k to millions bet it could easily be worth it, depending on the exact cost of the hpg priority message.

Exactly. 

And when it comes to the outer edges of the Inner Sphere and the near Periphery, people can plausibly start to witness the coverage in system A, then travel to system B and place the bets on the games.  Sure it's expensive (so are priority tips about the outcomes, too) but if you're guaranteed to make money on the bets, so long as you have the money to spend in the first place there's theoretically no limit on making it back and more.

How do Bookies keep from getting taken on interstellar gambling is a topic worthy of its own thread.  Or being asked in the "Ask the Developers", I suppose.  Sorry for derailing this one with a tangent :D

[massey]

Anything like a Solaris game, where people are betting large sums of money on it, the outcomes would probably be transmitted as quickly as possible.  HPG still generally beats jumpship travel for speed of communication.  Most of the time, you're getting the results before anybody who knew the outcome could travel to your world.

In cases of planets that were really slow in getting news, you probably don't get people willing to take very large bets... especially from people who just arrived on the once-every-six-months jumpship.  That's also why bookies employ leg-breakers.  For smartass outworlders who place big bets and seem to know too much.

[idea weenie]

Bookies would make sure to establish limits on bets, and would also keep an eye on large betters.  Anyone who is willing to cheat at that level of money based on an activity that occurred far away and some time ago will definitely have people keeping an eye on him/her.  Regular bookies will have legbreakers, people at that level will be much more creative.

Or people at that level will simply say that a wager on an old game is for common people, they would instead wager that same ten million on which rain drop will reach the bottom of a window sill first.

After all, using early knowledge to enrich themselves is Comstar's game, and they are very jealous.