The greenhouse life support model requires air and light to function- items in short supply after impacts after combat or crashes.
General Emergency Lifeboats?
- Thread starter Spinward Scout
- Start date
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
According to CT Beltstrike, the fuel consumption formula for power plants is 0.05 tons of fuel per 100 tons of hull to provide Basic Power (life support, automatic doors, landing lights, housekeeping services, etc. etc. etc.) for 7 days.
By contrast, 1EP of production (used by weapons, computers, screens, maneuver/agility, etc.) costs 0.35 tons of fuel per 100 tons of hull.
Therefore ... for a 100 ton hull that is capable of up to 2G maneuver, you get the following fuel demands:
- Basic Power = 0.05 tons of fuel consumed per week
- 1EP = 0.35 tons of fuel consumed per week
- 2EP = 0.7 tons of fuel consumed per week
20 tons of fuel / 0.4 tons consumed per week = 50 weeks of continuous 1G acceleration endurance
20 tons of fuel / 0.75 tons consumed per week = 26 weeks 16 hours of continuous 2G acceleration endurance
Any kind of closed loop regenerative biome life support will get "billed" to the Basic Power requirement for the amount of tonnage dedicated to that function. If it's integrated into a ship, the Basic Power budget for the ship's tonnage "pays for" the energy production bill to keep the closed loop regenerative biome life support systems operational and balanced.
If, however, you do what I've been doing and put those regenerative biome life support systems into separate modules (I've been using 12 ton modules as my basic building block) then the Basic Power for those extra modules needs to be paid as "extra hull" above and beyond the native hull displacement of the parent craft.
So if I've got a 100 ton hull with a 24 ton hangar in it that 2x 12 ton modules can be loaded into (doesn't matter what they are, staterooms, laboratory, environmental tank, cargo hold, anything) ... then that craft will have a Basic Power fuel consumption rate of 100 (the ship, including the hangar) plus 24 (the two 12 ton modules loaded into the hangar). So the total amount of hull displacement needing Basic Power services is actually 124 tons, not merely 100 tons. Reason being that you're paying for the fuel consumption of every ton of hull ... and if the (otherwise unpowered) modules are dependent for Basic Power from their parent craft, then the fuel consumption demand for those "extra hull tons" is going to get "billed" to the power plant of the parent craft. It's not a HUGE difference (more like a rounding error compared to the EP fuel consumption), but it is still present and ought to be accounted for (if you're drilling down to this level of fuel consumption bookkeeping).
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
If the damage table results point in that direction ... sure.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Which do you prefer?
Or
Put another way, if regenerative life support is added to the ship then it needs to be included in the damage results.
Regenerative life support is now dead.
Or
The regenerative life support could be a hold item.
Put another way, if regenerative life support is added to the ship then it needs to be included in the damage results.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Depends on the details of how the craft is built.
If the life support is in its own hull in a module, a hangar bay or cargo hold hit would damage it (depending on design details).
If the life support is integrated into the main hull, then a hull hit could decompress/destroy a life support laboratory.
Of course, most of a ship's hull ought to be depressurized in anticipation of combat or other event that could depressurize the hull ... so count up how many pressure containment sections there are besides bridge, drives and weapons (which are usually their own pressurized compartments) and then roll randomly to determine which pressure compartment on the deck plan took the hull hit and got depressurized.
In other words, it's perfectly possible for a depressurization hull damage hit to affect a stateroom block (preemptively depressurized) that is pressure bulkhead isolated from the life support system (still pressurized).
Of course, such questions are mainly a matter for High Drama With Deck Plans kinds of settings and circumstances, but if you REALLY want to go to the effort as a Referee ... you can. Nothing is stopping you.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I agree with you that steps would be taken to mitigate the decompression damage that can be caused to RLSS, having emergency "iris" valves would be mandatory.
For PC ships I make much more detailed damage tables based on the d6 by d6 matrix.
For PC ships I make much more detailed damage tables based on the d6 by d6 matrix.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Compartmentalization and "seal all compartments" during general quarters conditions helps a lot against cascading battle damage casualties. Being unable to seal off sections of a ship is when you start getting into the "lost all the eggs in the one basket" scenarios.
I’ve come to the conclusion StarTrek combat in shirtsleeves is inhumane foolishness. Ya ya ya show costume budget and time constraints, but especially with the modern movies showing crew sucked out to space, I just shake my head while muttering “amateurs”.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
First, I'd check the colour of my uniform shirt.
I don't see this in my copy. Was this TNE FF&S or T4 FF&S? All I could find in my TNE version was Chapter 11, page 77, and what it says is pretty limited, doesn't really talk about duration or consumption.
I would just think that given the abundant power available on ships, that while, naturally, life support would be limited, finite, the fundamentals would be abundant to the point of not being a chronic concern, even in most potential emergency situations. Consider, particularly for a combat vessel, I envision that the commander wouldn't think twice about decompressing the ship, or large segments of the ship, in order to reduce the impact of battle damage, knowing full well he has bountiful supplies to repressurize the ship. I don't know of any references that says they can only do that X times before running out.
Would a combat vessel, if this was doctrine, be over provisioned just for this potential use case than, say, a trader or passenger ship? Perhaps.
But at the same time, I would think that life support, being particularly vital, is not the place to "cheap out", or provision "just enough". But, rather, a ship may well be equipped for a 60, 90, 120 day supply, and routinely topped off even after their week in jump. Even to the point that part of the life support equipment is an internal, emergency generator so as to not be completely reliant on ships power that will let it run in a reduced capacity, if necessary.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Dunno. I have access to neither. I was just using the (linked) Travellerwiki article that cites FFS.
Before the adoption and use of Replicator Technology, life support supplies are consumables. You can spend extra tonnage on building a closed loop regenerative biome life support system, but in MOST designs that's a luxury ... not the standard.
That's because the assumption that any kind of "depressurize this section" action is going to recover and store the atmospheric gases for later repressurization, rather than simply venting them out into space (like battle damage would). That's why you don't see mentions of limits on depressurize/repressurize actions. It's all swept under the deck plates (so to speak).
CT Beltstrike, p3 ... 150 person/weeks of life support consumables requires 1 ton of cargo space (and is depleted as consumed) and costs Cr150,000 per ton.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
It's in the T4 version.
Right. Space suits are unnecessary -- just have everyone wear non-red shirts during combat!
What if it's a red spacesuit?
Then you get a situation similar to sticking a slice of buttered toast (always lands butter-side down) to the back of a cat (always lands on its feet), then pushing it off the counter.
Usually results in the self-destruction of AI supercomputers, or Spock raising an eyebrow significantly.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
You could pay it forward, and keep a stock of spare parts.
