General Question- 400t Merchant + 100t Trader

[MADMANMIKE]

We picked up a modded 400ton Subsidized Merchant ship, but the launch was missing. Could I dock a 100ton Fringe Light Trader in the Launch spot and jump safely?

We're playing Mongoose if it matters..

 

[Major B]

We picked up a modded 400ton Subsidized Merchant ship, but the launch was missing. Could I dock a 100ton Fringe Light Trader in the Launch spot and jump safely?

We're playing Mongoose if it matters..

What was the tonnage of the launch?

If it was 10 or 20 tons then you may not be able to jump but what you can do depends and the jump capability you had and somewhat on the system you are using.

I don't remember the Sub Merch details from CT but if it was capable of J1 with a launch then your tonnage will be too high to jump at 500 combined tons. That is assuming MgT jump mechanics work like T5.

If you could do J2 with the launch, you can likely pull off a J1 but not a J2 with the 100 ton ship attached.

In T5 the type of jump system matters too. A Jump Bubble can handle the odd-shaped combined hull but jump plates or jump grid systems will likely misjump with the extra load added, unless the ship had a compatible system and they were both mated together under one controlling computer for the jump.

Hope that helps.

 

[MADMANMIKE]

Thanks for the input!

There's no tonnage listed on the launch, but it displaces about 35% of the space the Light Freighter does..

The cargo capacity of our ship is 200 tons.. if we run light could that offset the 100 ton trader or does that tonnage have to be within the hull? I guess I'm asking if the process of going into and travelling through Jump Space requires streamlining here?

The reason I ask is the Light trader is in bad shape and may not have a working jump drive, so ideally getting it to a safe harbor for repairs is the plan.. Current location is at war..

 

[infojunky]

We picked up a modded 400ton Subsidized Merchant ship, but the launch was missing. Could I dock a 100ton Fringe Light Trader in the Launch spot and jump safely?

We're playing Mongoose if it matters..

The short answer is Maybe....

In that a standard Subsidised merchant in CT (and MgT1ed) has Class C drives, which will give up to a 600 dTon ship Jump 1.

Other editions of the rules aren't as quite as flexible...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You have three problems to address:

1) Can you securely dock a 100 Dt craft?

2) Does the jump drive have the required capacity?

3) Do you have enough jump fuel?


1) The mount point for a 20 Dt launch can't securely mount a 100 Dt ship. See Docking Grapples. I would allow the players to solve this with a bit of fuss...


2) A MgT1 jump drive C is oversized and can consequently jump up to 600 Dt, so no problem.
A MgT2 percentage based 15 Dt jump drive can only jump 400 Dt. Fixing this requires a new jump drive which is a major refit.


3) A 480 Dt ship (400 - 20 + 100) uses 48 Dt jump fuel. The Subbie only has 40 Dt jump fuel. This can be easily solved by installing a demountable tank, but this involves a starport...

 

[Major B]

Thanks for the input!

There's no tonnage listed on the launch, but it displaces about 35% of the space the Light Freighter does..

The cargo capacity of our ship is 200 tons.. if we run light could that offset the 100 ton trader or does that tonnage have to be within the hull? I guess I'm asking if the process of going into and travelling through Jump Space requires streamlining here?

The reason I ask is the Light trader is in bad shape and may not have a working jump drive, so ideally getting it to a safe harbor for repairs is the plan.. Current location is at war..

If you can fit the 100 ton ship in your cargo bay then it will not count as additional tonnage and you can still jump just as easily as if the hold was full of cargo.

I assumed you wanted to carry it externally.

 

[MADMANMIKE]

Okay, so no, we can't fit it into our cargobay; the question is can the drive on our ship successfully create a jump with the smaller ship docked. This is what it would look like:

I'm starting to think this would be a GM decision in Mongoose, I don't see the level of technical detail in the rules as I'm gathering were in other editions like MegaTraveller.

Our GM uses our success or failure on certain skills to determine the feasibility of our plans; currently we are waiting on our Engineer to make a roll to determine if we can even get this 100ton off the ground (it's a pbp game). My character paid 10k credits (and a 25% stake in the ship) to get his buddy in the starport offices to have someone forge a title for him (it's been abandoned after a trading company tried to salvage parts from a Fringian Provincial Trader to make this Fringian Light Trader fly).

Half our party is in another city that's suffering from a full scale rebellion and my character thought he might be able to go pick them up with it since our ship (which we just acquired) was missing it's Launch.

My character to the engineer: "Do a dirty pre-flight; If it flies we can use it to go pick up our ship-mates; if the weapons work we might survive doing so. If it will make orbit, we'll worry about docking with our other ship for the Jump to a port where we can get it up to par."

 

[LeperColony]

Supplement 9 talks about "special field cables" to allow a ship's jump process to encompass external cargo. That ship is 5k dton, so I don't know if it would work on smaller scales, but the precedent is there.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I'm starting to think this would be a GM decision in Mongoose, I don't see the level of technical detail in the rules as I'm gathering were in other editions like MegaTraveller.

This is well defined in either edition of Mongoose, you may have to look in High Guard for the finer details.

Summarised:

You have three problems to address:

1) Can you securely dock a 100 Dt craft?

2) Does the jump drive have the required capacity?

3) Do you have enough jump fuel?


1) The mount point for a 20 Dt launch can't securely mount a 100 Dt ship. See Docking Grapples. I would allow the players to solve this with a bit of fuss...


2) A MgT1 jump drive C is oversized and can consequently jump up to 600 Dt, so no problem.
A MgT2 percentage based 15 Dt jump drive can only jump 400 Dt. Fixing this requires a new jump drive which is a major refit.


3) A 480 Dt ship (400 - 20 + 100) uses 48 Dt jump fuel. The Subbie only has 40 Dt jump fuel. This can be easily solved by installing a demountable tank, but this involves a starport...

 

[MADMANMIKE]

Okay, I've been going over the books.

You are correct, there is only a 20 ton docking clamp so that would need an upgrade to type III for it to work.

As to the Jump Drive, I see nothing about Jump Drive Capacity; Our Subsidized Merchant is modified with an additional TL12 Power Plant that has it's own fuel supply, increasing the power points to 180. The cargo bay is also modified to divide into four separate fuel containers, giving it enough fuel for five jumps.

The Jump-1 drive requires 40 Power points per jump, that moves 400 tons.. where would I find penalties for powering it up with 50 points to increase that bubble another 100 tons?

 

[aramis]

I'm starting to think this would be a GM decision in Mongoose, I don't see the level of technical detail in the rules as I'm gathering were in other editions like MegaTraveller.

Mongoose's design sequences are less granular; Volume, Price.
MT uses Mass, Volume, Power, and price
FF&S uses Mass, Volume, Power, price, and Surface Area.

Mongoose (at least 1E) has more total options, tho'. Some of the FF&S2 options are missing, tho' — long term LS, for one.

MGT puts the details in different places.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

As to the Jump Drive, I see nothing about Jump Drive Capacity; Our Subsidized Merchant is modified with an additional TL12 Power Plant that has it's own fuel supply, increasing the power points to 180. The cargo bay is also modified to divide into four separate fuel containers, giving it enough fuel for five jumps.

The Jump-1 drive requires 40 Power points per jump, that moves 400 tons.. where would I find penalties for powering it up with 50 points to increase that bubble another 100 tons?

OK, you have plenty of power and jump fuel. Good.

You need to bodge the docking clamp but that should be doable, at worst just weld the hulls together temporarily.

Since you have Power points this sounds like MgT2. The Subbie (Core, p184 & HG, p138) has a 15 Dt jump drive, just enough for ( 15 - 5 ) / 2.5% = 400 Dt (HG, p14). Not good.

By RAW there is no way to jump 500 Dt with a 400 Dt capacity jump drive. A friendly Referee might allow you to use the Overload Drive action (Core, p160) to do it anyway with a severe risk of misjump (this should probably not be a routine manœuvre).

 

[Major B]

Okay, I've been going over the books.

You are correct, there is only a 20 ton docking clamp so that would need an upgrade to type III for it to work.

As to the Jump Drive, I see nothing about Jump Drive Capacity; Our Subsidized Merchant is modified with an additional TL12 Power Plant that has it's own fuel supply, increasing the power points to 180. The cargo bay is also modified to divide into four separate fuel containers, giving it enough fuel for five jumps.

The Jump-1 drive requires 40 Power points per jump, that moves 400 tons.. where would I find penalties for powering it up with 50 points to increase that bubble another 100 tons?

I can see one way to make it work that I would use if I were your referee. It is only viable because your ship is already fitted with fuel tanks and additional power capacity that make it possible.

My thinking is that the additional volume you want to carry will reduce the range you can jump. I can illustrate the idea using T5 rules though it is relating a different idea that just works in a similar way. In T5 you have Tech Level Stage Effects that allow you to build things like drives at earlier tech levels (with added penalties) or at later tech levels (with added bonuses). A drive capable of J1 is Standard at TL9. You can build a Early version at TL8 but it suffers a -10% efficiency penalty meaning rather than being capable of J1 it can only accomplish J0.9.

In the rules as written that would round down to J0 but as referee I would allow that drive to do microjumps. Microjumps are jumps less than a parsec usually used when they save time for in-system travel.

In your case, and only because you have the extra fuel capacity to make it workable, I would allow you to make a series of microjumps to cover the parsec distance you could do without the extra volume added.

But because I am not prone to being a generous referee, it would work out to be 5 microjumps, or 4 microjumps that use 10 extra fuel tons each, to ensure you use all your fuel capacity.

Mike

 

[MADMANMIKE]

Since you have Power points this sounds like MgT2. The Subbie (Core, p184 & HG, p138) has a 15 Dt jump drive, just enough for ( 15 - 5 ) / 2.5% = 400 Dt (HG, p14). Not good.

By RAW there is no way to jump 500 Dt with a 400 Dt capacity jump drive. A friendly Referee might allow you to use the Overload Drive action (Core, p160) to do it anyway with a severe risk of misjump (this should probably not be a routine manœuvre).

Okay, now you've lost me.. HG p14 shows a chart that says a TL9 Jump-1 drive must be at least 2.5% of the hull.. 2.5% of 400Dt is 10Dt, so a 15Dt drive should be able to move 600Dt..

Looking over the ships in HG, some have that extra 5Dt on the drive and some don't.. is there a spot that explains a necessity for the extra 5, or is that a 'just in case, build it bigger' situation? Cause this is definitely a 'just in case' scenario..

 

[MADMANMIKE]

By the way, I really appreciate the feedback guys!

I think I mentioned I first bought into Traveller with a T20 Bundle of Holding, and since bought the GURPS and MegaTraveller Bundles of holding, then backed Mongoose's The Great Rift kickstarter and picked up their Pirates of Drinax Bundle.

Now that I'm actually getting to play, I'm leaning heavily towards running Mongoose as my rules; My group has some familiarity with D20 so I thought it would be best, but the simplicity of Mongoose is more appealing to me now (we've played quite a bit of D6 Star Wars over the years, I find it similar in feel mechanically).

Still, the insights into MegaTraveller and FF rule variations are educational. Thanks!

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Okay, now you've lost me.. HG p14 shows a chart that says a TL9 Jump-1 drive must be at least 2.5% of the hull.. 2.5% of 400Dt is 10Dt, so a 15Dt drive should be able to move 600Dt..

There is a fixed 5 Dt cost for a jump drive, in addition to the percentage.

So a 15 Dt jump drive is 5 Dt fixed + 10 Dt percentage, hence can jump 10 / 2.5% = 400 Dt.

Select the jump score you wish your ship to have and use the figure below as the percentage of the ship’s hull that the jump drive will consume, then add 5 tons.

 

[MADMANMIKE]

Thanks AnotherDilbert, I must need glasses, lol.