Fascinating discussions! I have been trying to get through this thread for a few weeks; there's been a lot to take in, obviously.
First comments: I can see that all of the warship-related discussion (strategies, tactics, operations, fueling issues, etc.) prove that a wargame was grafted on to CT--not as in the individually complete Mayday, Snapshot, Striker, Azhanti High Lightning, Fifth Frontier War, or Soloman Rim War games, but as a series of unthought out bits and pieces (on both the ship, fleet, planet, system, and empire scales). That's why there are too many broken ship designs, or broken concepts (riders, and external fuel tanks). An
Atlantic or
Kokirrak adds flavor to the TU, but without research to make sure they work. There's also an economic wargame, if you will, in bits and pieces. Little bits of information designed to further free tramping, but hints of the larger world: information about subsidized merchant vehicles, but not much to make them practical, from Book 2; much more helpful info seen in the Traveller Adventure book about operations, but not enough to get started. Then through that book as well, we learn a bit about subsector and sector lines, as well as some good details about Megacorps. More info comes through additional resources. CT Book 4 (Mercenary) and 5 (High Guard) help expand the wargame aspect, while 7 (Merchant Prince) expands the economic wargame aspect. But both of these grafted on wargame and economic wargame are drastically broken. That's why I think we have all these problems that have come up in this thread. Making matters worse, there are all these additional things grafted on from the later rulesets: MT, TNE, T4, MGT, and GT. They only seem to cause more confusion!
I have not studied the rules in depth, or made the calculations as some of you have had. But I have read your comments and studied what has been presented. It almost seems like it would be better to dump both drop tanks and battle riders as ideas...yet some how they both co-exist in the OTU.
If you can have weird dispersed hull configurations which can jump okay, such as the battleriders, it should be easy enough to have the jump field include drop tanks. It's just another dispersed configuration...isn't it?
It seems as though the most practical solution for MTU is to rule out the drop tanks. Then, allow jump capacitors to hold the energy for the jump long enough for a tanker to top off the warship's tanks and move away to a safe distance before a jump can be made. Finally, rearrange the ship damage allocation tables for more practical results.
On the question of refitting ships from TL 14 to TL 15, I thought about several examples as seen onscreen in four major science fiction franchises.
In Star Wars IV: A New Hope, the Y-wing and X-wing fighters have their armament changed, presumably from turbolasers, to the proton torpedoes necessary to hit the Death Star's thermal exhaust port. That seemed to be a drastic but feasible solution well within the resources available for the Rebel base on the moon of Yavin 4. In the original Battlestar Galactica series, there was one episode (The Long Patrol) where the lasers were replaced by superior speed and maneuverability (and an advanced voice-activated computer was attached that could fly the ship). These were experiments, seen in just the one episode. In a later episode (Fire in Space), the lasers were modified with some special mechanisms to shoot fire-fighting chemicals on attack-style runs into the landing bays when the Galactica was on fire. In all three of these cases, the replacement equipment fit well into the existing housings, suggesting some modular tech designing. It goes without saying that the Imperial Design Protocols should be able to do the same thing as well, to replace damaged units or even to upgrade to advanced models.
In the second Star Trek: The Original Series pilot, it is shown to be possible to adapt control panels from a mining station to replace starship bridge control panels with minimal work ('it fits like a glove'). The non-canon but licensed Star Trek Technical Manual by Franz Joseph postulates bridges are comprised of replacable modules; it also shows a great many types of Federation Starfleet starships with similar design components such as the saucers, or the lower engineering hulls, or cylindrical warp nacelles, all of which could be rearranged into different designs. In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, we see that existing starships can be refit to take advantage of technological advances (hinted at from the era of the two pilots, and the ship is clearly refit between the second pilot and the original series; and from the original series to the animated series). Later, in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, we are introduced to the Excelsior, a new ship designed to be a test bed for a new type of warp drive; the ship is later refit for active service, as seen with a different bridge and hull variations in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country under the command of Captain Sulu. The Excelsior class is well-represented by original and variant appearances during the Next Generation (and probably in Deep Space Nine as well). And in the licensed Deep Space Nine Technical Manual, there are many 'kitbashes' where the various sections (saucers, nacelles, engineering hulls) are combined in different (though not likely practical) combinations and permutations.
In the first season of Buck Rogers in the 25th Century (A Dream of Jennifer), there's an ordinary freighter that we discover has an experimental tachyon drive installed aboard (as well as carrying weapons to another planet). This would be a major refit, even as a test vehicle, indicating a strong technical capacity, and that should be well within the capacity of an Imperial Naval or Scout Base or Way Station, I would think.
In fact, it would make more sense that all refueling for active duty (or detached duty) Navy and Scout Vessels should be handled at their bases, where available. In systems without naval bases, Navy refueling should be done at gas giants (most often) or from oceans/glaciers, for security reasons (even for common ships like
Gazelles and
Kinunirs. Perhaps naval bases should have several components: an orbital base around the main world, a downport on a planet (looks better for recruiting purposes), and a facility around each gas giant or non-main world with water resources, complete with fuel skimmer shuttles and purifying plants working round the clock to keep fuel supplies high for the ships based in the system as well as vessels that pass through on patrol (and stockpile for war, disasters, and emergencies). Of course, those additional bases must be garrisoned, guarded, defended with at least SDBs, and have huge amounts of tankage storage space (millions of tons, potentially) either in the form of storage tanks or actually tankers (they have to be based somewhere in peacetime, after all).
Okay, I've gone on long enough for now, sorry.
Gordon Long
I actually found one well stated problem I've not seen or considered before (see next)...
