Bayern: Additional thoughts

[LemnOc]

Some thoughts I have gleaned about the Bayern:

It carried only four drives on a trip to the distant Pleiades, which is conceptually at odds with what is later understood gravitic charges and towing assembled drives through unstressed space. Under that later understanding, a ship reaching the second +7.7 LY gap would be obliged to turn around and go home (with one engine to spare). I conclude that the Bayern module was written before a lot of later thinking about stutterwarp.

In 2320, Colin suggests the Bayern carried a first generation calibration device, very huge and complicated, to bring dismantled engines online. Charged engines were ejected.

Elsewhere, BMonnery tells us, contra conventional wisdom, that a charged drive can in fact be discharged and dismantled, but it is a task of great complexity and difficulty.

From all this I conclude the Bayern’s cumbersome calibration device could possibly, with great difficulty, rehabilitate a spent engine... or at least render it in a condition where it could be safely towed to a gravity well. If successful, the engine would not need to be jettisoned; if unsuccessful, failsafe jettison. In either case, the calibration device would serve to bring additional engines online.

Does this seem to make sense and jibe with what is generally known?

 

[ben51]

I don't have the Bayern adventure in front of me as its packed away for my move. But from what I remember the route was extensively mapped by Core based telescopes and they knew of only one gap greater than 7.7LY.

So when they set out from Earth with four drives three of them are offline. At that gap, of say 14.0 LY, they proceed for 7.7 LY and then are forced to stop in deep space. They dump / eject the charged drive as there is no way to discharge it or bring it off line (BMonnery is incorrect). Using their special equipment they bring a second drive on line and cross the rest of the gap, thus reaching a place to discharge.

They are now left with one drive on line and two off line drive. With the active drive they reach the Pleiades and do their research. To get home they must once again cross that gap of 14.0 LY. So they go half way and then eject a second active drive and restart a new one. This leaves the Bayern with one active drive and one offline drive (a back-up).

But even with this extra off line drive they would not have been able to cross two gaps greater than 7.7 LY on the way to the Pleiades. Two gaps would have meant carrying five drives in order to get there and back again.

Benjamin

 

[BMonnery]

DG gives shutting down a drive as a 14+ task (15+ in 1st ed tasks). Bayern's drivemaster is an expert (skill-5) so in 2nd ed terms she'll succeed a shutdown 20% of the time (and succeed a startup 60% of the time).

The task description in the DG implies shutting down a charged coil is possible, but failure results in *boom*. 80% chance of a small nuclear explosion is poor odds - I'd probably skip it.

For Bayern, starting up a stutterwarp will involve damaging it 34% of the time and the drive actually damaging the ship 15% of the time. This with a high end drivemaster.

Since 4 is a nonsense number of drives for a 15.4 crossing it looks like the ships builders factored in blowing a drive during restart (although this alone means Bayern has a 1/3rd chance of disappearing). Spinning up a new drive is not trivial.

 

[epicenter00]

I've never really thought such extreme complexity as calibration devices was necessary to explain the Bayern's operation. I've always assumed it was a matter of design of Bayern. It's designed to eject the saturated stutterwarp drives, probably with some days worth of battery power to keep it running. Only after the stutterwarp drive is ejected is the new one brought on-line.

The way I've always imagined Stutterwarp coils to work is that the coil has to somehow be powered to operate: both as a drive as well as to function accrue and hold a charge.

It is cannon that a coil with a charge cannot be taken off-line:

"... Also, a drive being taken offline must first be fully discharged. Failure to do so results in the charge residue collection on a few small drive parts, breaking them down, and flooding the ship's engineering section with lethal radiation (automatic death). If the drive has been discharged before it is taken offline, this danger will not occur."

(sidebar, page 67 under "Task: To take an active stutterwarp drive offline", 2nd edition 2300 Director's Guide)

 

[LemnOc]

I've never really thought such extreme complexity as calibration devices was necessary to explain the Bayern's operation. I've always assumed it was a matter of design of Bayern. It's designed to eject the saturated stutterwarp drives, probably with some days worth of battery power to keep it running. Only after the stutterwarp drive is ejected is the new one brought on-line.

I imagine a new drive could be assembled and brought online before an old drive was ejected.

The way I've always imagined Stutterwarp coils to work is that the coil has to somehow be powered to operate: both as a drive as well as to function accrue and hold a charge.

If a drive lost power, would it immediately and catastrophically release its charge? It's an interesting question. Colin somewhere indicates that a drive will naturally "relax" in 1000 weeks, even in unstressed space, which suggests a drive will hold its charge even if depowered.

I also like to think these things aren't terribly fussy or explosive. The main point being that once they're charged to their limit they're useless as interstellar drives. That seems sufficient penalty to me.

I imagine ejected drives would also contain a beacon so they might one day be recovered, whether by future tech or when 1000 weeks elapse.

It is cannon that a coil with a charge cannot be taken off-line:

"... Also, a drive being taken offline must first be fully discharged. Failure to do so results in the charge residue collection on a few small drive parts, breaking them down, and flooding the ship's engineering section with lethal radiation (automatic death). If the drive has been discharged before it is taken offline, this danger will not occur."

(sidebar, page 67 under "Task: To take an active stutterwarp drive offline", 2nd edition 2300 Director's Guide)

It certainly ends more debate than it begins to rule that a charged drive cannot be discharged (or relaxed) except within a gravity well.

 

[BMonnery]

If a drive lost power, would it immediately and catastrophically release its charge? It's an interesting question. Colin somewhere indicates that a drive will naturally "relax" in 1000 weeks, even in unstressed space, which suggests a drive will hold its charge even if depowered.

In the shut down task the problem is described that the charge needs to be homogenised across the coil. During shutdown the charge concentrates in places beyond a physical threshold and the drive goes boom. The skill is therefore a very controlled shutdown keeping the charge homogenised.

The same applies on the "delay discharge" task. It's described as tuning the drive to keep the charge more homogenous than normal.