On 19Nov2019 1409, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:

Yeah they could've been J4 but then the Xboats would've been as fast as
the IN Fleet Couriers so that might've been a consideration altho the
fact that the c.1100 version only averages 2.6 parsecs/jump means that
the IN's couriers would still be a lot faster even if they both had the
same Jmax.Perhaps the upgrade to J4 happened when the 3I achieved a Jmax
of 5 & all the Fleet Couriers were upgraded or replaced?Also, way back
when, when the system was upgrade to J4 it appears that a whole new
design was produced as the internal tankage was bumped up to 40Dtons of
fuel.All along I've had in my mind a sort of 'bifurcation' system where
dispatches destined to go farther than J4 would be separated form the
rest.There are some places (doglegs & 'triangles' etc) on maps of the
Xboat system that seem to imply that.

The way I see it, the X-boat system was always J-4. At the time the
'need' for the bureaucracy to have access to information faster than
'the public' may not have been 'known'. I put these words in quotes,
because the idea that the government must know things faster than the
public is pretty dubious, but it's very much the sort of thing that a
government would come to believe after a few centuries of faster comms.
So, it starts out with most information going through the x-boat system
at J-4 but with somewhat inefficient routes, with some very high
priority stuff moving via more direct nearly J-4 all the way routes in
IN and IISS couriers (and via the Imperial family's private secret
network, and those of the various megacorps). Later, the IN, etc.
upgrade to J-5, and then J-6, and more and more governmental data gets
moved that way while the X-boat system remains the best that most people
and even system governments and unconnected subsector nobles can access.

By the 1100s high level Imperial bureaucrats and nobles have been in
this environment for 300-400 years and consider it the natural state of
affairs, essential to 'good government' (which actually means 'essential
to their ability to manipulate and manage popular opinion and system
governments').

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>