Originally posted by ravs:
Is there anything to suggest that jumping out of a starport would create collateral damage to the surroundings, or would you simply be magnifying the chances of a misjump by a huge amount?
Well my answer above was largely facetious
Not terribly helpful, so I apologize and offer the following as penance...
Suggest yes, prove no. The amount of energy involved in ripping a hole in space into jumpspace suggests a huge energy release. The amount of fuel used also suggests (unless you use the jump ballon idea) a huge energy release. The nature of jumpspace itself being violently hostile to normal space and material not protected by a jump grid suggests bad things for the local environment in close proximity to the open hole to jumpspace.
The ship IS going to have the misjump DM for inside 10D so they may even survive and simply be somewhere else. There are no rules that very close proximity jumps are more dangerous than close (10D) proximity ones. I wouldn't let anyone willfully attempting such a thing survive though.
Originally posted by ravs:
From what I have read on this thread there are now two potential ways in which a starship can wreck a downport:
1. Through misuse of the fusion plant
2. By activating the jump drive whilst in port.
If such actions were possible, taking out a starport would be a very simple process. Perps fly in and either rig up the fusion drive on their ship as a timed bomb or put some sort of timer on the J-drive. Then they just leave.
So my questions:
A1. Which is more probable? That jumping from a starport does or does not cause damage?
A2. Which is more probable? That the fusion plant on a ship can or cannot be turned into a potential nuclear device?
B1. If the answers to either or both A1 and A2 is that it's more probable for damage / nuclear device, then how does a starport protect itself?
If either of these methods are feasible it seems like a much easier way to launch a pre-emptive strike than using a navy.
Yep, and yet there doesn't seem to have been a rash of such incidents. We may speculate that no one in the OTU is so desperate or whatever to employ such expensive methods or, as in MTU...
All starships are built with hardwired failsafes to prevent dangerous tampering and employment.
Powerplants cannot be overloaded and exploded, they simply shut down with a hardwired lockout of the system in such a case.
Jump Drives cannot be initiated in very close (less than 1D?) proximity to a gravity source and any attempt to do so will result in a hardwired lockout of the system.
Navigation programs have built in collision avoidance overrides. So no autopilot high vee impact craters. Though a pilot may manually fly into something or set up the ship on a collision course far enough away to avoid the override and then attempt to disable the program. However such an attempt to interrupt a flight program in use will probably result in the computer initiating a hardwired emergency all stop and lockout of the Maneuver drive.
The Imperium, and every other star-faring polity, has had millenia to perfect the safety sytems to prevent such idiocy. I think if the players can think of it someone else has already considered it and come up with a way to prevent it. All that's left to the ref is to describe why it fails and then book the character(s) on the next prison transport
