Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
Well, as soon as you crack the drive performance tables open in a more formulaic fashion a significant portion of that "custom tonnage" limitation falls by the wayside for LBB2.81 standard drives. Not all of it, granted ... but at least you aren't being straightjacketed into an extremely limited set of options as the only "viable" set of possibilities.Standard drives are better for building 200 Dt ships at low TL (i.e. standard ships), custom drives are better for building 150 Dt or hightech ships (i.e. custom ships).
In other words, standard components force you to build standard (boring?) ships. E.g. LBB2 only lets you build Scouts and Free Traders somewhat economically. 150 or 300 Dt ships are just not economically viable. 400 Dt allows some choice. Large (i.e. high TL) ships have lots of choice.
I certainly agree with the notion that the "table data format" creates a "caged prison" context, where remarkably few people are even aware of the "walls" imposed by the granularity of the breakpoints involved in a lookup table rather than use of a mathematical formula to yield the same (but more diverse!) set of results.We are so used to be forced into narrow viable choices by LBB2, that we hardly see the prison walls anymore...
Being able to eliminate the risk of misjumping due to unrefined fuel is probably the BIGGEST investment in safety and longevity you can get when it comes to starship economics (aside from protection against piracy, but that's a different problem). Even though a 1/36 chance of a misjump is a low number per jump ... make enough jumps/keep rolling the dice and eventually it's going to happen. After 8 jumps, a 1/36 chance has a cumulative overall chance of happening at least once of slightly over 20%. After 10 jumps the cumulative odds of at least 1 misjump rise to almost 25%. After 18 jumps the cumulative odds of at least 1 misjump rise to almost 40% ... and at 25 jumps the cumulative odds of at least 1 misjump rise to over 50%.can operate without misjumping every few years.
For anyone paying attention, that's WORSE than the safety record of the NASA Space Shuttle program during its lifetime (which lost 2 orbiters with all crew aboard during 135 launches over 30 years from 1981-2011).
So it's the accumulation of risk that is the real threat over the longer term when using unrefined fuel, particularly when that risk involves the potential for COMPLETE LOSS OF CRAFT WITH ALL HANDS ABOARD.
Now, in the context of the original conception of Traveller gaming (basically "one shot" sessions with "disposable" characters), that kind of risk accumulation is going to be pretty minor, especially if the size of your map is only a single subsector (so the campaign "won't go far" before ending), so it wasn't that big of a deal.
However, from the context of a Universe Simulation and taking a longer view of things, having an up to 50% chance to misjump EVERY YEAR FOR 40 YEARS that could potentially result in the COMPLETE LOSS OF CRAFT WITH ALL HANDS ABOARD is absolutely unacceptable! If you need a 40 year time horizon to recoup your investment in a hull. Tou can't have that hull "likely go missing" within the first 5 years! That's simply no way to run a for profit business!
![Money with wings :money_with_wings: 💸](https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f4b8.png)
So yeah ... refined fuel (and the reliable sourcing thereof) is an absolutely MISSION CRITICAL resource for merchant ships (and their crews) as a preventative measure against the small but very real potential of catastrophic loss and bankruptcy (if not outright DEATH!).
As gamers we tend to underestimate the value/danger of cumulative low level risks like this, even though the outcome of those risks can be literally life changing (if not life ENDING).
It certainly is!The "regulatory arbitrage" diffeence at the 200Td breakpoint is significant.
The problem is that craft under 200 tons are pretty severely limited in their capabilities, so you had better be finding a REALLY GOOD EDGE CASE with what you're doing when exercising this option. The biggest limitation is the difficulty in "making the shoe fit" when limited to under 200 tons.
I agree.Yes, the A2 is a silly ship in LBB2. If you want a J-2 trader in LBB2 you get a 400 Dt standard hull.
The Far Trader would be a MUCH better designed ship if done as a 400 ton J2/2G craft. It would be more expensive ... but a lot better!
Of course, I'm also crazy enough to think that the Express Tender would be a far superior design if done as an 800 ton custom hull using H/H/H drives for J2/2G performance as well ... so as to be able to self-deploy across 4 parsec segments of the Express Network without requiring the deployment and assistance of tanker support. That way Express Tenders can be periodically rotated to Way Stations for deep maintenance and service life extension program (SLEP) work to help keep hulls in service.
Totals: 110 dTon (+440 fuel), 450 MCr. Needs 1.1 engineers
Because you're dealing with a 1000 ton hull, LBB2 crew requirements still apply (LBB5 crew rules take over on hulls over 1000 tons).Note that HG 1000 Dt ships still use LBB2 crew requirements, so no major difference in engineers.
110/35 = 3.142857142857143 ... so depending on whether you rule that the engineering requirement is a round off or round up, you're looking at needing 3-4 engineers, not just 1.1 engineers.
I prefer to think of it as being the case that under LBB2 design rules, higher tech makes bigger ships POSSIBLE ... with a side effect built in that the TL=15 V-Z drives have an efficiency bias in their favor, making them the most economical (see: TL=15 is the BESTEST at EVERYTHING! discussion).I don't think its unintended, it's the high tech advantage. Bigger ships are higher tech, and more efficient.
Where LBB2 standard drives "shine" the most is in the small ship/high performance regime at LOW tech levels (9-10 especially for ACS), although doing so comes at some pretty significant cost in other areas of an overall completed design. Being able to "hotrod" smaller starships at lower tech levels using standard drives rather than custom drives becomes its own mini-game in the starship design space.