Express Boat

Logo of the IISS X-Boat Service.

Express Boat (a.k.a. X-boat) are rapid communication ships which are designed to make optimum use of jump technology in communicating information within the Imperium. Because the Imperium is so large, ordinary communication must depend on ships traveling along established Trade Routes, making Regina (Spinward Marches 1710) nearly four years out from the Imperial Core.

• X-boats transport X-mail. Many ships are equipped with a Mail Vault for this purpose.

Description (Specifications)

As an X-boat arrives in a system, it beams its recorded data to the express station, which then retransmits it to an X-boat standing by for a jump outsystem.

• Time between jumps is almost always less than four hours and has been recorded at under seven minutes, making the speed of communication nearly the speed of jump (...since X-boats carry Jump-4 drives, speeds near four parsecs per week).
• In practice, this speed is somewhat reduced by the fact that trade routes do not follow straight lines and that not all jumps are made at Jump-4. Nonetheless, the system achieves approximately Jump-2.6 per week.

History & Background (Dossier)

The express boat (abbreviated X-boat) system, established originally in 624 and expanded to cover the entire Imperium by 718, cuts this communication time by nearly 75 percent. Selected locations along major trade routes are established as sites for express stations, which are orbital facilities which service and refuel the X-boats on their communications runs.

Selected Variant Types & Classes

Express Boats:

• Type X class Express Boat
  • Xavier class Express Boat

References & Contributors (Sources)

This article has a secret.

This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Far Future Enterprises or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.

• Marc Miller. The Kinunir (Game Designers Workshop, 1979), 39.
• John Harshman, Marc Miller, Loren Wiseman. Library Data (A-M) (Game Designers Workshop, 1981), 26-27.
• Marc Miller. The Traveller Book (Game Designers Workshop, 1982), TBD.
• Gregory P. Lee. Lee's Guide to Interstellar Adventure (Gamelords, 1982), TBD.
• Traveller Wiki Editorial Team
• Author & Contributor: Lord (Marquis) and Master of Sophontology Maksim-Smelchak of the Ministry of Science