General Collector Discussion

[Grav_Moped]

...
In an edge case (I'm writing up a 100Td ship with maybe a 2-man crew, so the gravity-pod would be 2 staterooms plus 2 tons of the bridge, for 10Td total) I could believe a 1/5 EP spin-up cost. It's accelerating 10Td to 1G by playing "crack the whip" (wikipedia) with the tether cable.

Ok, looked it up. at 15m radius you're not getting 1G without nauseous spacemen. 2RPM is easily tolerated; above that, Coriolis force causes nausea in non-adapted personnel. At a 15m radius, 0.5G needs about 6RPM. Drop to 0.1G and it might work...

An easily-tolerated 1G from 2RPM needs a 224m radius. You're going to need to do this with a tethered pod, because even a 3m x 4.5m cross-section makes for a 1400Td ring at that radius.

That "accelerating 10Td to 1G" is actually more like the effort needed to accelerate a large city bus up to 84kph (50MPH), at a 224m radius.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I suggested this to Marc some years back. Borders are now completely porous and impossible to guard. Your assault squadrons could sail effortlessly straight to Rhylanor or Zhodane or Capital (or ...) and bomb it back to the Stone Age.

Your Virus-laden ships can tromp straight across the Rift, and voila', no Domain of Deneb.

Etc.

The way I think those discussions went, is that Collectors aren't great.

They ARE quite nifty, but they are edge-case technologies. Good for recon and scouting. Bad for actual combatants, because you'd still need a power plant and fuel.

Something along those lines.

Still not sure what stopped Virus though.

Collector ships are slow -- they can't use drop tanks or fuel caches for a jump-per-week cadence. At TL 15 you get a Jump-1 average pace (J-2 every other week), at TL 14 it's Jump-0.5 (J-1 alternate weeks). They can't outrun the news of their arrival, and there aren't that many places that can even build them. Assuming Virus didn't wreck those worlds before realizing they had peculiarly useful ships...

...Come to think of it, I suspect Marc was thinking that Collectors must be able to work regardless of star proximity, if only because it makes the ANNIC NOVA's trip from the Solomani Sphere to the Domain of Deneb more like a straight-line course.

...Which might imply that their homeworld is on the other side of Zhodani space...

AN's operational range (25 jumps out, 25 back between annual overhauls) at Jump-3 means they're based no more than 75 parsecs from where they were found. Probably fewer.

That's with MgT/T5 rules. As written in DA1, the ship averages 5 parsecs in 5.5 (2+1D) weeks, so its operational radius is only 22 parsecs -- not counting astrographic issues because it needs to be at a star to refuel. It would need a base within the Spinward Marches or Vargr space. That radius includes Zho territory but it's just out of range of the Darrians.

And the stellar proximity thing had to go away because the HG '80/LBB2 '81 requirement of Pn=Jn broke the DA1 collectors. Physics dictates that they simply couldn't intercept as much energy as the later rules said they needed to, let alone store it with canonical energy storage systems. So, they leaned into the "broken-ness" and decided that Collectors sucked energy from nothing at all.

Why are the 1977 rules starting to look strangely attractive? LOL

 

[Condottiere]

The Collectors don't need run continuously, just long enough to get the drop on the opposition.

Most importantly, fleet tankers combining conventional fuel with the Collection agency, become viable.

 

[mike wightman]

Agreed.

Build a 10,000,000 ton strategic mover - it's job is to ferry a surprise force across empty hexes

 

[Condottiere]

Oh yeah, rift cruisers.

I wonder if exotic particles is the code name for dark matter?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

AN's operational range (25 jumps out, 25 back between annual overhauls) at Jump-3 means they're based no more than 75 parsecs from where they were found.

Annual maintenance can be made by the ship itself, see JTAS#24. Machine shops and adequate crew are required, but the Annic Nova has at least the shops.

 

[robject]

Annual maintenance can be made by the ship itself, see JTAS#24. Machine shops and adequate crew are required, but the Annic Nova has at least the shops.

That's a good point. It seems explicitly equipped to a level that might make scout ships jealous.

The design philosophy appears to be "range". Perhaps an interstellar mobile home.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Annual maintenance can be made by the ship itself, see JTAS#24. Machine shops and adequate crew are required, but the Annic Nova has at least the shops.

That's a good point. It seems explicitly equipped to a level that might make scout ships jealous.

The design philosophy appears to be "range". Perhaps an interstellar mobile home.

Can machine shops make canopy material? The original concept didn't include wear and tear for the canopy, but it would become an issue eventually.

IMTU, I'd retcon the machine shops to be Maker devices that could do it, but that wasn't in the original (mostly because it was 1979 and nobody had really thought of it yet).

 

[Grav_Moped]

I suggested this to Marc some years back. Borders are now completely porous and impossible to guard. Your assault squadrons could sail effortlessly straight to Rhylanor or Zhodane or Capital (or ...) and bomb it back to the Stone Age.

Your Virus-laden ships can tromp straight across the Rift, and voila', no Domain of Deneb.

Etc.

The way I think those discussions went, is that Collectors aren't great.

They ARE quite nifty, but they are edge-case technologies. Good for recon and scouting. Bad for actual combatants, because you'd still need a power plant and fuel.

Something along those lines.

Still not sure what stopped Virus though.
...

I'm not sure how it either didn't get loose as soon as someone discovered the planet with the self-modifying silicon-based lifeforms. Natural selection would end up turning the whole planet into a hive-mind (winners get bigger and then network), and it'd take out the first ship that landed there. That's the ballgame.

If for some reason that didn't happen, I don't see how the place doesn't get glassed, Red Zoned, and interdicted to a 13 parsec radius as soon as someone figures out the implications of self-modifying silicon with ranged infection capability. Any knowledge about this gets filed at a secrecy level that can only be described as "Beyond Ultimate Godzilla Threshold" (TV Tropes) -- don't even look at it unless there's something about to render Humaniti literally extinct.

I mean, the Imperium has to maintain some kind of inventory list of their archive of Things Man Was Not Meant To Know, broken down into categories of "how bad things have to get before you can look at this specific tranche of hidden info".

 

[robject]

Can machine shops make canopy material? The original concept didn't include wear and tear for the canopy, but it would become an issue eventually.

That's an interesting question that makes me want to ask Marc, but instead, let's mull that problem over thoroughly and see if we can figure it out.

Let's consider a machine shop that can make Canopy cloth. It means your canopy can get fixed if you're in the middle of nowhere and it tears -- a very possible scenario that seems to fit the general mission of the Collector in the first place.

So I'm in the middle of the Rift, and the canopy gets destroyed by a random asteroid. Am I stranded? Or can I push my MakerShop to build an Inferior Canopy that's good enough for me to limp back to civilization?

I'd want the latter.

So say that the MakerShop can do a spit-and-baling-wire version of the canopy in case of damage. Perhaps we'd say it has low Quality, low Reliability, low Efficiency, and low Safety? i.e. "Hard" QREBS?


And it should go without saying that I want an official replacement as soon as I can afford it.

 

[robject]

Can machine shops make canopy material? The original concept didn't include wear and tear for the canopy, but it would become an issue eventually.

Check out the original article in JTAS 1... from which I shall now quote freely.

...the ANNIC NOVA is subject to a variety of unpredictable and incapacitaing breakdowns; breakdowns which are then difficult to repair because of the innate unfamiliarity of the crew with this new-found starship. In order for the referee to customize this ship for his players and their campaign, refer to the breakdown chart for the 11 most important components on the ship...

The Canopy is item No. 8, and the Accumulators are No. 9.

...Performing routine maintenance is a problem because the ship is non-standard. An overhaul must be performed on a custom basis after competent personnel have been found. Figure the overhaul will last at least 2 weeks (and probably more: add 1D-1). Four individuals are necessary: two with electronic-3+ and jack-of-all-trades-2+, and two with mechanical-3+ and jack-of-all-trades-I+. Each draws a salary of Cr6000 per week, and a simple materials cost will run about Cr20,000. Theoverhaul must be performed in orbit, with the nearby world having a tech level of at least 10

In other words, the ship including its canopy is certainly maintainable, with somewhat custom requirements.

So apply the sorts of rules you'd apply if the characters' ship had an exotic jump drive.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Check out the original article in JTAS 1... from which I shall now quote freely.



The Canopy is item No. 8, and the Accumulators are No. 9.



In other words, the ship including its canopy is certainly maintainable, with somewhat custom requirements.

So apply the sorts of rules you'd apply if the characters' ship had an exotic jump drive.

Wait, what? You could fix Collectors at TL 10?

This changes a LOT of things. T5 places Experimental Collector-1 at TL 11 (-3 TLs), and that's the lowest TL that can even attempt them.

But I really like the concept of those special rules. You'll need to assemble a team of subject-matter experts to even begin to tackle the overhaul.

And from further up:

... Or can I push my MakerShop to build an Inferior Canopy that's good enough for me to limp back to civilization?

I'd want the latter.

So say that the MakerShop can do a spit-and-baling-wire version of the canopy in case of damage. Perhaps we'd say it has low Quality, low Reliability, low Efficiency, and low Safety? i.e. "Hard" QREBS?


And it should go without saying that I want an official replacement as soon as I can afford it.

Makes sense. Doesn't seem like something from the original writeup; again, because that sort of thing wasn't common in the SF that Traveller was trying to simulate. Star Trek replicators were "magic-level" technology in Traveller terms. Fleets of self-replicating robot spaceships didn't have to be magic, but the idea of stripping out the inimical AI part of the idea and keeping the automated spaceship factory part didn't come up often.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Wait, what? You could fix Collectors at TL 10?

Not repair or make, just maintain.

An oil change on a current car is not even remotely the same as replacing the engine computer.

 

[Condottiere]

With it's unique jump drive,you should be attracting the cream of engineering talent.

If neither the Imperium nor a megacorporation tries to buy it off you, you'd think [planet] Institute of Technology would charter it, if only to study it.

Which means that likely all the tools necessary for maintenance and repairs are likely onboard, possibly free of charge.

Technological level ten is pretty low in comparison to technological level fourteen, but it probably means that the material is available or manufacturable at technological level ten.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Not repair or make, just maintain.

An oil change on a current car is not even remotely the same as replacing the engine computer.

That buys you up to a year, by the rules. Then stuff starts to break hard.

And what if the intermittent stalling you've been coping with is actually caused by a fault in the engine computer, not a bad wire or a vacuum leak?

 

[Grav_Moped]

With it's unique jump drive,you should be attracting the cream of engineering talent.

If neither the Imperium nor a megacorporation tries to buy it off you, you'd think [planet] Institute of Technology would charter it, if only to study it.

Which means that likely all the tools necessary for maintenance and repairs are likely onboard, possibly free of charge.

Technological level ten is pretty low in comparison to technological level fourteen, but it probably means that the material is available or manufacturable at technological level ten.

Yes, some deep-pocketed Corp or research institution will definitely want to see how it works even if it's old news to the Imperium's energy-system boffins.

The jump drive isn't unique*, just the collector. And since you can't build even a prototype collector at TL 10, you probably can't make the canopy material yet either. It's not as though anyone else in Charted Space uses it, so it won't be the sort of thing you can get with free shipping with Space Amazon Prime.

But basically, the JTAS writeup makes Collector technology possible earlier than T5 or MgT does.



*and it's aggressively non-unique! Even though they should have been heavily modified in order to be able to accept input from an alien power source, the text describes them as box-stock standard LBB2 drives.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

That buys you up to a year, by the rules. Then stuff starts to break hard.

?

Annual maintenance can be repeated as long as supplies or cooperative planets last.

CT has no rules for canopy wear. If they wear out the Annic Nova has 150 Dt cargo space...


By T5 the canopy lasts several years, with a single spare the ship can cruise for a decade or so without needing to go home.

 

[robject]

The jump drive isn't unique, just the collector.

No no, let's go there. Condottiere brings up an interesting question. Could the jump drives have something special about them? I mean, say they are clearly jump drives; however, maybe they're nonstandard. So they can be maintained, it's just that no-one has "ever seen one like this before".


As far as the canopy goes, it's not necessarily unique per Marc's writeup. It certainly is nonstandard, uncommon, exotic...

"Ooooh, a collector. I've heard about them; but I've never seen one of these with my own eyes. I hear they're manufactured on the other side of [referee inserts random plothook location]..."

GRANTED, the OTU never follows this trail. But the adventure's intent is not to box the referee (or players) in. And Marc rehabilitated it (and then some).

 

[Condottiere]

Or some rich aristocrat would like it to complete his hangar full of historical and/or interesting starships.

 

[Grav_Moped]

...
But I really like the concept of those special rules. You'll need to assemble a team of subject-matter experts to even begin to tackle the overhaul.
...

Which means there's now a team of subject matter experts who know how Collectors work, and can probably replicate them if they can get the resources to do it.