Annic Nova: review and ideas

[Timerover51]

The Collector PP is. The AN as published in CT can be built with T5.0, 5.01, 5.09.

Go crunch the numbers. A collector the size of the ANNIC NOVA in Earth orbit gets your megawatts, not gigawatts of power, and that assumes 99.99% efficiency in converting solar energy into electrical energy. If that generates enough power to Jump, then Jump takes a lot less power than assumed by the rules before T5.

The following is a quote from T5.10, Book 2, page 118, bottom.

The ship’s Power System consumes fuel in an extremely rapid (and inefficient) process, channelling the required energy to the Jump Drive

For a large ship, you are talking hundred of tons of Liquis Hydrogen, which is being heated by an inefficient fusion process to very high temperatures. Where does all of the now very hot Hydrogen Gas go? It is not going back into the ship fuel tanks.

Also, if the ANNIC NOVA drives can be built at lower tech levels and powered by Collectors, why bother with all of the Liquid Hydrogen, inefficiently fused, or required for the Hydrogen Jump Bubble? A ship of a given tonnage can suddenly carry a LOT more cargo, which starts to serious mess with the given ship economics.

 

[Grav_Moped]

The way I read it was that one nacelle was Jump-x and the other was Jump-y.

You multiply x * y to get jump Z; i.e. 2 x 4 = Jump 8.

No, it's exponential, not multiplicative. 2^3=Jump 8. 3^2=Jump 9. (And presumably 2^2=Jump 4.)

 

[Grav_Moped]

Go crunch the numbers. A collector the size of the ANNIC NOVA in Earth orbit gets your megawatts, not gigawatts of power, and that assumes 99.99% efficiency in converting solar energy into electrical energy. If that generates enough power to Jump, then Jump takes a lot less power than assumed by the rules before T5.

It's late and I can't math, but the Collector gathers its energy over 1-6 weeks (original version) and the Jump Drive only does its thing for 20-40 minutes.

For a large ship, you are talking hundred of tons of Liquis Hydrogen, which is being heated by an inefficient fusion process to very high temperatures. Where does all of the now very hot Hydrogen Gas go? It is not going back into the ship fuel tanks.

Out the exhaust, like unburned fuel in a cross-flow ported (deflector-piston, from before Schnuerle porting) two-stroke engine.

Also, if the ANNIC NOVA drives can be built at lower tech levels and powered by Collectors, why bother with all of the Liquid Hydrogen, inefficiently fused, or required for the Hydrogen Jump Bubble? A ship of a given tonnage can suddenly carry a LOT more cargo, which starts to serious mess with the given ship economics.

They were originally a "fair cheat", in that the Collectors and Accumulators took up the same space as the fuel a normal Jump Drive would have used. As they were 1st Edition, no powerplant was necessary. (Mind you, they were also one-shot per charge, because Jump Governors didn't exist in 1st Edition. This is the pre-retcon reason for the dual drives.)

What'll really frost your cookies is if you can unplug the Collector from the Accumulator (aka "magic particle tank"). Charge up a bunch of Accumulators and plug 'em into outbound ships. No fuel, no fragile Collectors, and you can carry several Jumps worth of Accumulators and still come out ahead of what you'd need for hydrogen fuel.

 

[robject]

Two Things.


1. The Hieronymus Device is not in the T5 Core Rules -- it's not the same as a drive nexus, which is the T5 term used for what I used to call "drive stacking".

2. Collectors.

... if the ANNIC NOVA drives can be built at lower tech levels and powered by Collectors, why bother with all of the Liquid Hydrogen, inefficiently fused, or required for the Hydrogen Jump Bubble? A ship of a given tonnage can suddenly carry a LOT more cargo, which starts to serious mess with the given ship economics.

It depends on what the tradeoffs are and what your ship's mission is.

State your ruleset referenced if anyone answers any of these.
1. How much space do you save with Collectors vs fuel?
2. How important is it to be able to bypass fuel sources (and cross rifts)?
3. How important is it to have week-long refuelings?
4. Is the replacement cost of a Canopy any burden at all?
5. What power source will you have for the maneuver drive? (Can you get by with a fission source, or an F+ source?)
6. What else am I missing?

 

[Blue Ghost]

No, it's exponential, not multiplicative. 2^3=Jump 8. 3^2=Jump 9. (And presumably 2^2=Jump 4.)

Ah, my bad. Thanks for the correction. But even so, I don't see a barrier in the rules to building the AN. I mean, I can't recall there being a rule prohibiting a ship from having two jump drives, however unusual.

 

[robject]

Ah, my bad. Thanks for the correction. But even so, I don't see a barrier in the rules to building the AN. I mean, I can't recall there being a rule prohibiting a ship from having two jump drives, however unusual.

Grognards like me could use "drive stacking" to get around the Book 2 drive size/performance limitation.

So for instance, if Drive X yields Jump 3 in a 1,000 ton ship, then ten "stacked" or "ganged" Drive X's would yield Jump 3 in a 10,000 ton ship.

That's the general theory anyway. It works well enough in the simple cases, and isn't worth dealing with in more complicated cases.

Even the damage track could work.

 

[Blue Ghost]

That's interesting. I can imagine a gaming session where some bright NPC engineer, on which the PC s are riding, says "Well, three J3s "daisy chained" … wouldn't that, according to the AN revelations in that article I read … wouldn't that yield a 3^3^3 phenomenon? Let me try this!" And suddenly you're 19683 parsecs across the galaxy :devil:

Talk about misjumps.

 

[Grav_Moped]

There's never been a rule that you couldn't have multiple drives. What there was, until (I think) T5, a rule saying you couldn't gang the drives -- the other ones couldn't be run at the same time, but you could have them as backups. This was implied in LBB2, made explicit in LBB5, and used in Adventure 4: Leviathan.

The thing that Annic Nova was doing with the multiple Jump drives was getting around the "no jump governors" rule (or absence of one) from the '77 edition. Any jump used the full 10% per Jn CAPABILITY (not actual Jn). So, if you had a ship with J3, and wanted to Jump twice consecutively, you'd need tankage of 60% of your tonnage even if you were doing two J-1s (and you'd end up burning the whole allocation). AN could do two consecutive Jumps, one of them up to J3 and the other up to J2, using only the equivalent of 50% of its space for the "fuel" (and as I noted above, the Collectors were a "fair cheat" in that they took up the same space as fuel tanks would).

I'm surprised that this wasn't used anywhere else under first edition rules. The introduction of Jump Governors in LBB5 -- '77 and making them the default in CT '81 rendered the concept moot.

 

[Grav_Moped]

That's interesting. I can imagine a gaming session where some bright NPC engineer, on which the PC s are riding, says "Well, three J3s "daisy chained" … wouldn't that, according to the AN revelations in that article I read … wouldn't that yield a 3^3^3 phenomenon? Let me try this!" And suddenly you're 19683 parsecs across the galaxy :devil:

Talk about misjumps.

Wait. I've just figured out why the Imperium lets the players keep ANNIC NOVA!

1. Collector Drives are known tech, but economically non-viable. The Imperium isn't interested.
2. Drive Linkages are known tech. ANNIC NOVA can run the J-3 drive at J2 and link it to the J-2 drive so as to get J-4. Imperium still doesn't care.
3. Seeing this, they don't really check the drive linkage system all that closely,and miss that it works by exponentiation rather than addition since J2+J2=J2^J2... In fairness, the players probably don't don't know this either... and the installed computer couldn't run it anyhow if they did.

Also, IMTU the "machine shop", "metallurgical shop", and "electronic shop" are replaced by a pair of very old Maker Devices that can each create spares for the other and can extrude replacement Collector sail material if loaded with exotic and expensive feedstock (lanthanides and powdered Zuchai Crystals, perhaps). Again, known tech so the Imperium doesn't care.

The lack of a powerplant gets explained by having some kind of generators powered by the Jump Drive exhausts, recharging a battery bank every time one of the Jump Drives is powered up. Should provide a few weeks of basic ship power plus enough to fire each of the turret lasers three or six times before recharging again.

 

[Blue Ghost]

There's never been a rule that you couldn't have multiple drives. What there was, until (I think) T5, a rule saying you couldn't gang the drives -- the other ones couldn't be run at the same time, but you could have them as backups. This was implied in LBB2, made explicit in LBB5, and used in Adventure 4: Leviathan.

The thing that Annic Nova was doing with the multiple Jump drives was getting around the "no jump governors" rule (or absence of one) from the '77 edition. Any jump used the full 10% per Jn CAPABILITY (not actual Jn). So, if you had a ship with J3, and wanted to Jump twice consecutively, you'd need tankage of 60% of your tonnage even if you were doing two J-1s (and you'd end up burning the whole allocation). AN could do two consecutive Jumps, one of them up to J3 and the other up to J2, using only the equivalent of 50% of its space for the "fuel" (and as I noted above, the Collectors were a "fair cheat" in that they took up the same space as fuel tanks would).

I'm surprised that this wasn't used anywhere else under first edition rules. The introduction of Jump Governors in LBB5 -- '77 and making them the default in CT '81 rendered the concept moot.

It's been so long that I simply don't recall all of those rules. I vaguely recall both adventures, and I think Leviathan was a "proto Traveller" adventure wherein Referee and Players both generated systems and a subsector as they explored new trade routes. Meaning that jump drive was ultra important during those early days of the game.

I'll have to reread Bk5...again

 

[Blue Ghost]

Wait. I've just figured out why the Imperium lets the players keep ANNIC NOVA!

1. Collector Drives are known tech, but economically non-viable. The Imperium isn't interested.
2. Drive Linkages are known tech. ANNIC NOVA can run the J-3 drive at J2 and link it to the J-2 drive so as to get J-4. Imperium still doesn't care.
3. Seeing this, they don't really check the drive linkage system all that closely,and miss that it works by exponentiation rather than addition since J2+J2=J2^J2... In fairness, the players probably don't don't know this either... and the installed computer couldn't run it anyhow if they did.

Also, IMTU the "machine shop", "metallurgical shop", and "electronic shop" are replaced by a pair of very old Maker Devices that can each create spares for the other and can extrude replacement Collector sail material if loaded with exotic and expensive feedstock (lanthanides and powdered Zuchai Crystals, perhaps). Again, known tech so the Imperium doesn't care.

The lack of a powerplant gets explained by having some kind of generators powered by the Jump Drive exhausts, recharging a battery bank every time one of the Jump Drives is powered up. Should provide a few weeks of basic ship power plus enough to fire each of the turret lasers three or six times before recharging again.

Again, as per my previous post … I think I actually ran this adventures a few times, but didn't latch onto a lot of the details regarding her jump drive setup. My players were pretty bloodthirsty and/or trigger happy, so I threw in a marauding Corsair with an equally trigger happy Vargr boarding party. Things kind of went from there, but the technical specifications of the AN were never fully explored. I can't remember what I was thinking at the time I ran the adventure, other than there was campaign potential, but not "trigger happy" potential episodes for the guys I gamed with.

And hearing the interview with mister Marc Miller, I understand a bit better of what the AN was supposed to be about, but am curious as to why the adventure wasn't published with those details, or why a follow up hadn't been published. I don't know that it would have made for a more gripping narrative, but it might have created some industrial espionage threads or stories for the players to negotiate. Maybe there's a crack repossession team hired by Ling Standard or someone to hijack the AN for its tech or something.

Either way your TU sounds pretty interesting. For me there were enough odds and ends in the AN for potential campaigns, but our sessions, at least the way I ran them, tended to be more … Blade Runner meets Star Wars, if you can imagine that.

That's an interesting tech level rule though.

And FWIW 19k+ parsecs takes you well clear of the Milky Way where you could take a picture of the entire galaxy with a consumer camera. Just a thought.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Yep, that's a bit of a hop all right!

(Ok, it's Bound-2, not Hop; Hop Drive only has a 90-parsec max range.)

Bound Drive starts becoming available at TL 26, range at TL 26 is 10k parsecs.
This per the Wiki (also, probably T5).

Double Adventure 1 was never published with the Word of Marc retcon because he came up with it after even Mongoose had done their rules and supporting materials.

The point is that when they wrote the scenario and designed the ship, it was just supposed to be strange and alien. They really didn't have the answers for the loose ends they left way back then.

The main theme behind my TL rules for Hieronymus Drives is to nerf them in the way T5 nerfs Collector Drives. It's known tech, but also known to be pretty much pointless because it doesn't do anything that you can't do better with regular Jump Drives before TL 18/19. This keeps it from breaking the OTU until after at least the 1115 era.

The IMTU variation (house rule) about Maker Devices is to explain how a ship with a Collector Drive that wears out in a year or two keeps on going for thousands of years. The reason is that it can make its own replacement parts even if the crew (or their civilization) doesn't have the technological capability to do so themselves.

 

[robject]

the technical specifications of the AN were never fully explored [in our Traveller games].

Not a bad thing. Oftentimes the players aren't interested in the same aspects of the adventures as the referee.

And hearing the interview with mister Marc Miller, I understand a bit better of what the AN was supposed to be about, but am curious as to why the adventure wasn't published with those details, or why a follow up hadn't been published.

I imagine Marc's views on the Annic Nova have been slow in getting out and recognized as official. A transcript of Marc's talk, posted to the wiki, would probably help.

 

[Condottiere]

My rule for ganged jump drives is that they have to be:

1. Synced

2. Not more than nine

3. Manufactured to be capable of achieving that factor on their own.

 

[robject]

My rule for ganged jump drives is that they have to be:

1. Synced

2. Not more than nine

3. Manufactured to be capable of achieving that factor on their own.

I like all three of those guidelines.

I also prefer that the drives are each of the same potential. Don't make me do math!

 

[Grav_Moped]

SOME EDITS AFTER POSTING. SHOULD BE FINAL NOW...

Dropping this here, having stripped it out of my post on the T5 errata thread:

Annic Nova as presented in DA1 can be almost perfectly explained using T5.1+MongT: part of the "sails" are actually solar panels (MongT rules) charging a battery that supports all of the ship's non-Jump power requirements.

The solar panels need proximity to a star to recharge the ship, and can do so in the time it takes the Collectors to recharge (spec them for a minimum of 10x basic ship's power, with batteries to suit). It may not have occurred to the ship's previous crew that the Collectors could recharge without a nearby star -- or they may not have cared. The 1-6 week charge time from DA1 is still valid: it's just that it always takes 1 week... At least until the Collector starts to wear out.

The Collector-3 has no Jump Governor (TL stage effect). It can only support a Jump-2 or Jump-3 (T5) and doing so completely discharges the Collector-3 unit. The Collector-2 does have one, and support J-2 once or J-1 twice. (This still doesn't explain why it has an extraneous J-2 Jump Drive. Only the Collector-3 is adversely affected by TL stage effects, so the Jump Drive-3 itself can do any Jump from 1-3.)

(IMTU) The ship uses solar power because a fusion power plant would interfere with the retconned exponentiation trick somehow (back when the ship could do it). It's still using solar power because the previous crew(s) just went with what was already installed. Fusion power doesn't affect normal Jump Drive operation, so existing Collector-powered designs with standard power plants are unaffected.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The Collector-3 has no Jump Governor (TL stage effect). It can only support a Jump-2 or Jump-3 (T5) ...

A jump governor is a property of a jump drive, not the power source.

A Collector is a power source for a jump drive.

You need both a jump drive and a power source (and potentially fuel) to make a jump.

 

[Condottiere]

Collectors harvest exotic particles, you still need electricity to kickstart the alchemical process, which arguably can be activated by either batteries or black globe capacitation.

The reason you need fuel (and a fusion reactor) is because life support isn't a dispensable luxury during the one week transition.

 

[robject]

...part of the "sails" are actually solar panels

I hadn't thought about this before, but T5 has rules for ambient cells... I betcha they'd scale up.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I hadn't thought about this before, but T5 has rules for ambient cells... I betcha they'd scale up.

Wait, what? Missed that, will look again. Thanks!

I was going to resort to deriving something from Jump Capacitors...