General Collector Discussion

[Grav_Moped]

Try 300 diameters ... or whatever is "beyond standard sensor ranges" above and beyond 100 diameters for the jump point (so everyone jumps in and out while your ship stays out of range beyond their sensor horizon).

Sure, it takes you longer to shuttle in and out from that distance ... but that's what powerful maneuver drives are for, right? Exchanging a few hours of maneuvering time for "security through obscurity" for your jump tender that lacks a maneuver drive at all sounds like a reasonable exchange, all things considered. Basically, if you "park(ing orbit)" where no one is going to bother looking ... that's relatively safe, right? All you need to do is expend a little extra delta-v on an evasive course between the tender and the mainworld (so as to throw any unwanted monitors off the correct trajectory between points A and B) and you're in a good position, security-wise. Not perfect, of course, but fairly decent when "security through obscurity" is deemed adequate for your routine operations.

Bonus points for stationing a decoy drone/decoy off to the side at the edge of sensor range, with a copy your ship's transponder codes (and shut off your own). Relay all comms through the drone. Route inbound/oubound shuttle traffic to line up with the decoy to improve the odds that it'll look like the decoy is the ship they're coming from.

A planetary defense system's sensors might detect the ship at that range; non-state actors probably wouldn't. And, one hopes, they'll detect the decoy instead.

Also, position a picket line of sensor drones a little over an hour of travel time at 6G, in the direction of the mainworld. If they detect an inbound hostile, this provides time to strike the sails and jump before they arrive. The hostile might be able to do a strafing attack in less time than that, but would have to overshoot to do it.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Clarification (edit window expired):
If the picket line is "an hour of 6G acceleration" out, any inbound craft would need to decelerate at 6G for the entire remaining distance to reach zero velocity on arrival. Decelerating by less than 6G reduces the flight time to under an hour, but will leave the incoming craft with a significant vector on arrival.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Another interesting bit from MgT2 HG: It only says Collectors can't collect energy while the ship is accelerating, presumably because the canopy is stowed then (without saying so in so many words). Neither MgT nor T5 appear to have an upper acceleration limit for stowed Collectors. MgT2 doesn't even say that a ship with a Collector is inherently unstreamlined! (Neither does T5 -- but in those rules, exposing a Collector to atmosphere will ruin it so it's a moot point.)

DA1 allows the ship to be pushed at 0.1G by one of its pinnaces. However, while the pinnace's drives produce 200G-Tons of thrust and should be able to push 600Td of hull at 0.33G, the limit is 0.1G. This could be because the small-craft drive is inefficient at pushing a larger hull, but it really feels like it's meant to be constrained by the fragility of the Collector.

And dragging this in from a digression about Boughene Station and getting the long-overdue annual overhaul on Annic Nova done there (and a theory that the ship's collector canopy can survive significant acceleration when stowed):

... So, yeah, it's likely quite delicate.

On the other hand, since the ship has artificial gravity, one might posit that the support arms include artificial gravity generators and inertial damping to ensure that once folded, the volume occupied by the folded canopy is kept in 0G and inertially damped. Wasn't mentioned in the text, though.

The other thing is that if the ship had the hypothesized missing third pinnace*, all three together could push it at no more than 0.2G. The one in the cargo bay docking port provides 0.1G, while the ones on the docking pylons apply up to 0.1G combined. (If two pinnaces could provide more than 0.05G thrust each from the pylon mounts, then they could be operated at half-throttle (some amount over 0.05G each) in place for more than 0.1G combined, and thereby spare the complication of having to relocate one of them to the cargo bay port for "long term maneuvering".)


*that is, the one in which the other 4+ crew members departed the ship, somewhere, after people started succumbing to the primary threat in DA1.

Ok, lets assume that the aliens who built it couldn't do geometry, and built the ship funny.

Under this theory, the reason it's limited to 0.1G from any single pinnace isn't "structural limits" but instead that the docking points (both of the aft pylons and the cargo bay receptacle) are so badly positioned that no single pinnace can use its max rated thrust in any position because they're very off-axis and full thrust will just spin the ship (or the thrust has to be vectored sideways at a significant efficiency penalty).

If you ignore the "structural limits" of the docking pylons and the fragility of the canopy, this then implies that when all three of them are present, the net thrust is balanced. Thus, each one could then provide its full 200G-tons thrust to the ship, and the 600Td combination would then be capable of 1G.

This turns Annic Nova into a significantly different ship! And it explains why it has an observation dome and windows on the hydroponics deck: with 1G capability, it can actually get close enough to a world to do a little sightseeing from orbit. As presented in JTAS and DA1, it pretty much has to hide out at Jump Limit due to lack of mobility, so those windows really wouldn't see much use.

It might have been originally meant to be given a push toward/past the world (with the limited burns from the LBB2 '77 drives) before deploying the canopy; by the time it was recharged, it would be back out at Jump Limit again. Given the second-jump capability (again from its '77 roots) that's not an optimal tactic, but I don't think they really thought it through anyhow. As a 1G-capable ship, charging at Jump Limit then going in to the world isn't quite as silly (and retconned to have LBB2 '81 maneuver drives with 4 weeks of full thrust instead of the '77 ones with only a few hours worth, it's even less silly).

I'm not convinced this is the case, but it's another way to look at it.

 

[Condottiere]

Why not stick a docking clamp on the nose of the pinnace, or any other spacecraft, brown nose the Annie, and push at a greater acceleration?

 

[Grav_Moped]

Why not stick a docking clamp on the nose of the pinnace, or any other spacecraft, brown nose the Annie, and push at a greater acceleration?

What? Wow, I didn't realize that the MgT High Guard version of it doesn't have that feature!

The CT version has a nose-dock at the aft end of the cargo bay, where a pinnace can be parked for efficient transfer of cargo and passengers (see attached deck plans -- it's in the deck with the two large weapon turrets).
That's also where you're supposed to move one of the two pinnaces to push the ship when you're using them for more than attitude control.*
I think the MgT version isn't supposed to have that constraint, and is meant to use both pinnaces for orientation and for and long-duration acceleration.

As mentioned above, it has been long theorized (on the ancient Traveller Mail List) that the ship should have had a third pinnace, which would have used that as its normal attachment/carriage point. At least half of the crew is missing when the player-character party discovers the derelict ship -- the theory is they left in the pinnace that would have docked at the cargo deck.

Image credit: someone selling a hardcopy original online. (Image rights would reside with FFE, I suppose.)
It was easier than scanning my copy...



*Yes, there's an obvious pun on "pinnace" here, and where the design intends for it to be stowed. This is a family-friendly site so I won't write it out.
This can't possibly have been intentional.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The CT version has a nose-dock at the aft end of the cargo bay, where a pinnace can be parked for efficient transfer of cargo and passengers (see attached deck plans -- it's in the deck with the two large weapon turrets).

Also, it means that despite having 150 tons of cargo space, it can only load it 12 tons at a time (from the '77-rules version of the pinnace) because that's the only cargo hatch!

Well, you could transfer stuff by floating it from a shuttlecraft's cargo hatch into the dock and then pushing it sideways into the cargo hold, but that's a hassle.

 

[Spinward Flow]

As mentioned above, it has been long theorized (on the ancient Traveller Mail List) that the ship should have had a third pinnace, which would have used that as its normal attachment/carriage point. At least half of the crew is missing when the player-character party discovers the derelict ship -- the theory is they left in the pinnace that would have docked at the cargo deck.

That was always my assumption, that the third Pinnace was used as a lifeboat to escape the Plague aboard ... and may or may not have succeeded/survived (somewhere).

If so, the simplest solution to solving the Annic Nova's 1G maneuver problem is ... to buy another Pinnace (for MCr20) so you have 3 of them. While you're at it, you could probably have the remaining two Pinnaces refitted to be "ambiaxial" so as to remove their port/starboard handedness and do the same with the new replacement Pinnace so that all 3 small craft are both common design and interchangeable for docking locations between the aft location of the cargo bay and the two aft pylons.

Certainly a cheaper option than dumping MCr48 (plus architect fees, etc.) on installing a maneuver drive and fusion power plant and fuel tank into the cargo bay. Also a more flexible option, all things considered.

 

[Grav_Moped]

you could probably have the remaining two Pinnaces refitted to be "ambiaxial" so as to remove their port/starboard handedness

You don't have to -- just dock them upside-down. The docking pylon access tubes are in 0-G (though it's not clear whether that's because they lack artificial gravity and inertial compensation, or whether they have both and it's set to 0G). There's only one door into the cargo bay, on the port side. For the cargo pinnace, it aligns with the 4.5m wide port-side cargo bay door. For the passenger pinnace, it aligns with the airlock and 3m of blank smallcraft hull.

and do the same with the new replacement Pinnace so that all 3 small craft are both common design and interchangeable for docking locations between the aft location of the cargo bay and the two aft pylons.

For convenience, the third one should be "ambidextrous" with one docking port on each side. Only one side needs an airlock, though.

The "centerline" nose-dock is still off-center of mass, and should be angled down/aft -- at what, 45 degrees? -- to put the pinnace's thrust line through the ship's center of mass. (But it's in the middle when you look at the deck plans, so it "looks right," and that's supposed to be enough. Again -- as always -- this isn't a space naval architecture simulation, it's drawn up to be a haunted castle in space for a PC party to find. It's not really meant to make sense.)

 

[Grav_Moped]

The "Annic Nova but it's 1G capable if all three pinnaces are present and pushing" interpretation could change the ship's tactical and strategic operating procedures. This is particularly the case when it's placed in the context of LBB2 '77 rules, but still valid under the '81 rules if it keeps the "no self-discharge" accumulators from the DA1/JTAS writeup. It almost works the same if the "self-discharge in about a day" rule from T5 still allows a jump 24 hours after canopy stowage, but it's cutting things really close.

As noted above, with only fractional-G capability (that is, as presented) the safest strategy is for the ship to stay at jump limit (or further out). The writers may have intended for the standard operating procedure to be to briefly accelerate the ship toward (and eventually past, and back out from) the mainworld, rotate to point the Collector at the system's star, then deploy the canopy and coast through the entire 1-6 week charge period. Most cargo transfer would happen in the middle of the transit, when the ship was closest to the mainworld. I don't think this is optimal, but I think it's what they expected.

With 1G capability, it's plausible to arrive insystem, recharge at jump limit (or beyond), then do a standard approach to the world with the ship. This reduces cargo transit times, and provides "normal" interactions with the rules mechanisms (ship encounters, port fees, cargo trans-shipment, and so forth). Even ships with T5 collectors (assuming jump is possible up to 24 hours after canopy stowage) can do this at smaller worlds, but it'd take very rapid longshore work to turn the ship around in time. It's also feasible to come in and do the recharge under cover of the mainworld's planetary defenses.

Still, given the potential consequences of combat damage to a Collector, I'd just as soon hide the ship out in the dark distance.


I'll note here that this doesn't quite fit my vision of the ship, but it's interesting to consider.

 

[mike wightman]

The Annic Nova only has pylons for two smallcraft to attach during jump. Since the pinnaces are of modern design it does beg the question of what the originals were? What if the docking pylons are more akin to the docking points for a dispersed structure?

Mayme the original Annic Nova could act as a jump tender for much larger spacecraft...

As to the current 'truth' behind the Annic Nova:

Spoiler:

A family group of Vilani merchant/explorers miss-jumped far beyond the Vilani area of influence. They were rescued by a race of advanced 'aliens' who were of a much higher TL but had never made the breakthrough for jump technology. They 'healed' the crew and reverse engineered jump drive technology from the primitive Vilani jump 1 drive. They improved on it, building a jump 2 and a jump 3 engine and also the Hieronymus nexus, which allows for a jump of a distance equal to the core drive raised to the power of the other drive (by my reckoning this allows for jump 2, 3, 8 and 9).
Upon return to Vilani space the crew gifted the jump 2 technology to the powers that be, but kept the jump 3 an Hieronymus nexus secret to their own family.
Not long after the Vilani would upgrade their military to jump 2 and launch a war of conquest and consolidation that would forever change Vilani culture and establish the Shadow Emperor and the Ziru Sirka - makes you think doesn't it...

 

[Condottiere]

Clannish; also, terrible Military Intelligence, or otherwise.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The Annic Nova only has pylons for two smallcraft to attach during jump. Since the pinnaces are of modern design it does beg the question of what the originals were? What if the docking pylons are more akin to the docking points for a dispersed structure?

Mayme the original Annic Nova could act as a jump tender for much larger spacecraft...

As to the current 'truth' behind the Annic Nova:

Spoiler:

A family group of Vilani merchant/explorers miss-jumped far beyond the Vilani area of influence. They were rescued by a race of advanced 'aliens' who were of a much higher TL but had never made the breakthrough for jump technology. They 'healed' the crew and reverse engineered jump drive technology from the primitive Vilani jump 1 drive. They improved on it, building a jump 2 and a jump 3 engine and also the Hieronymus nexus, which allows for a jump of a distance equal to the core drive raised to the power of the other drive (by my reckoning this allows for jump 2, 3, 8 and 9).
Upon return to Vilani space the crew gifted the jump 2 technology to the powers that be, but kept the jump 3 an Hieronymus nexus secret to their own family.
Not long after the Vilani would upgrade their military to jump 2 and launch a war of conquest and consolidation that would forever change Vilani culture and establish the Shadow Emperor and the Ziru Sirka - makes you think doesn't it...

Heironymus mode also enables Jump-4 (2^2), but it's inferior to "standard" J-4 tech (though it's identical to "standard" T5 Nexus tech in practice if not implementation).

Also note that they didn't pass on Collector technology either! I'm pretty sure we went over this (including my proposing a set of technology assumptions, a compatible backstory for the ship, and house rules for implementation) a few years ago. I can't find it easily, though.

My IMTU current retcon has a slightly different origin story (for at least the ship that player characters find at Keng/Regina (DA1)):

It fell into the OTU from a parallel universe where LBB2 '77 (and nothing published later than that) is an accurate description of how starships are built and operate. Its collectors can only retain charge for longer than one week because the high-energy accumulator field has trapped part of that parallel universe within it -- complete disassembly will destroy this effect.

 

[Grav_Moped]

(including my proposing a set of technology assumptions, a compatible backstory for the ship, and house rules for implementation)

Summary:
1. Technology assumptions
a. Heironymus jump range TL tracks the pattern of Jn/TL progression from TL-11 onward: J4 is TL 13, J8 is TL-17, and J9 is TL-18. J16+ isn't possible until after a culture goes through a technological Singularity, and by then Hop drives are available anyhow.
b. Expo jump requires a TL-dependent hardware component (I'm no longer quite as sure of this as I was back then).

2. Compatible backstory (different from that in my preceding post):
a. Ship is indeed as old as the Word of Marc retcon describes.
b. Performance degraded over time, but ship was maintained to the degree permitted by available TL.
c. Ship has periodically been lost to misjumps or other mishaps for extended periods, and upon recovery, restored to the degree permitted by available TL at that later date. By a peculiar coincidence, this has resulted in the ship being returned to something very close to its original configuration.

3. House rules (I'm not quite as sure of the hardware requirements now):
a. As in 1a, above, it requires TL 13, 17, and 18 for J4, J8, and J9 respectively. (J4 at TL-13 is redundant, though, and J1 -- 1^1 -- is just pointless.)
b. Jumps are possible only in distances equal to integer exponents: J4, J8, and J9. Any other distances must be accomplished either with ordinary jumps (for Annic Nova, J1-J3 are possible without exponentiation; J4, J8, and J9 are possible with it) or by crashing into a gravity well before reaching the full jump distance.
c. Requires a Hieronymus Nexus Controller that is equivalent in size and cost to a standard computer with a model number equal to the Jn, but requires TL as in 3a above to build. This controller is dedicated to the drives, and cannot be used as an ordinary computer (primary or backup).
d. Requires a ship's computer model equal to that of the Jn of the ship's largest jump drive.

3.1: Revised house rules (I'm sort of leaning towards this):
a. TL limits as above.
b. There is no significant hardware component.
c. The control software is TL-limited.
d. T5 tech level stage effects apply to computer software rules (cost and CPU space).
e. The necessary Navigate and Generate programs are base TL-18 ("experimental" at TL-15), and cannot be halted or copied without destroying them. Program creation requires destructive (lethal) identity transfer from an extremely highly-intelligent and skilled jump space theoretician ("mad scientist" level, very rare and hard to train up so it doesn't scale well... and for some reason you can't just copy the personality.)
f. Jump-8 is TL-17, Jump-9 is TL-18. As "prototype" and "experimental" programs, they are enormous and expensive.
In practice, this requires the use of a Model/9 computer for J-9. Pretty much the entire Model/9 computer, too.
g. (maybe) This only works with LBB2 drives (which in practice limits it to 4000Td with Z drives).
h. (also maybe) Fusion reactors interfere with this, so it only works with Collectors or Antimatter power.

 

[Spinward Flow]

c. Requires a Hieronymus Nexus Controller that is equivalent in size and cost to a standard computer with a model number equal to the Jn, but requires TL as in 3a above to build. This controller is dedicated to the drives, and cannot be used as an ordinary computer (primary or backup).

Good thing then that the Annic Nova's computer is 3x the tonnage it "should be" for its model capabilities ...

 

[mike wightman]

And stores the memories and personalities of every occupant for the past few millennia...

 

[Grav_Moped]

Good thing then that the Annic Nova's computer is 3x the tonnage it "should be" for its model capabilities ...

Yes, I'd sort of figured that the computer room was sized for a Model/9. As written, the computer behaves like a Model/3. It might just be that it's a lot better than that but nobody's figured it out yet...

And there's a break room just off the bridge that might have been where the ship's main computer once was.

And stores the memories and personalities of every occupant for the past few millennia...

Oooh.... I was thinking it had just one mad scientist personality, if that.

The "personality transfer" requirement is how these house rules ensure a "no plans, no prototype, no backup" situation -- it's a one-off that can't really be duplicated, at least not at scale. Not an issue at TL-17+ because then you can just spin up an AI and install it.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The Annic Nova only has pylons for two smallcraft to attach during jump. Since the pinnaces are of modern design it does beg the question of what the originals were? What if the docking pylons are more akin to the docking points for a dispersed structure?

Mayme the original Annic Nova could act as a jump tender for much larger spacecraft...

From a "meta-gaming" perspective, they were of "modern" design because that was what Traveller had available (without invoking HG) in 1979. They were straight out of LBB2 '77 if I recall correctly.

I have to admit that's a different perspective than I've used. I was looking at it as something complete -- that is, what would it be if everything that appears to be missing (the third pinnace, mostly) was there. It didn't occur to me that it might be much more incomplete than that.

Some possibilities:
- It originally had four docking pylons, with the missing two opposite the two that remain. Perhaps they were the anchor points for a Jump Net? How does size affect Expo Jump (and it's not straightforward because LBB2). Could the 600Td Jump-8 ship have been a 1000Td Jump-4 one to start with?
- The navigation dome up front may have replaced something else up there that needed a through-decks tunnel from the bridge. What could that have been?
- The aft observation dome may have replaced an attachment point for a module. Living space? Cargo?
- The airlock on the keel is odd. Were there more decks below it, originally?

 

[mike wightman]

The 'missing third pinnace' is a fanon invention. The capsule description and the ship details only mention two small craft.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The 'missing third pinnace' is a fanon invention. The capsule description and the ship details only mention two small craft.

Agreed. But it's a very plausible one, and provides a reasonable explanation of where the other 5+ crew members went. And the capsule description is of the ship in the state in which the player characters find it, not how it might have been originally equipped. The MgT version doesn't have the cargo-bay nose dock though.*

Assuming that the deceased "child" was not filling a crew slot, and that the ship had the minimum crew of the DA1 writeup, at least 5 other crewpersons would have been required. One of them (from the Flame-Broiled Room) might be a corpse in the Death Room, but that'd be creepy since one or more of the others in there was/were probably still not yet dead when the rest left.




*The MgT version appears to have been drawn up using the capsule description, explicitly rejecting or simply being unaware of the fanon addition that makes the nose-dock a non-optional feature of the design (but Mongoose deck plans, go figure...)

 

[mike wightman]

Or it could be they had input from the original designer who said there was no third pinnace since it was only ever a TML invention - it would be like saying everything ever discussed on CotI is semi-canon