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Fletcher-Class Destroyer

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
The capacitors can store 36EPs per ton of capacitors.
Your ship has 0.5%xMxJn tons of capacitors for free, which is 45 tons of capacitors.
That's 36x45 = 1620EPs stored.
1. If you are playing by the letter of the rules: There is no way to charge the capacitors except a black globe.
2. What the rules clearly *do* say is that you can withdraw energy only at a rate equal to the power plant's output. Now I usually interpret this to mean that you can only use energy equal to the power plant's output *in total*, arguing that the power plant infrastructure is needed to convert the energy stored in the capacitors to a useful form. If you don't accept this, and instead insist on playing blindly by the letter of the rules: See above.

Regards,

Tobias
 
Interesting topic most of which has been hashed, re-hashed, and re-re-hashed over the years. Still, you never know what new angle someone will come up with.

Off the top of my pointy head:

- HG2 should have included batteries. It didn't and people have been shoehorning capacitors into the role ever since. Trouble is capacitors aren't batteries. As Flykiller explains they only store potential. They also can't release that pontential in dribs and drabs like a battery can with the chrage it stores. Capacitors are an 'all or nothing' device so you won't be able to siphon off just an extra EP or two, you'll get the whole bunch at once.

- HG2 didn't include batteries, but what is keeping you from adding them? This isn't holy writ were dealing with. Come up with a dTon rating, cost, EP storage level, and run it by the folks here. They'll tell you if it works or not. The one thing you'll also have to add is a way to damage batteries in combat. Batteries aren't on the damage tables. What's more, only the capacitors inside the jump drives and not the extra ones are listed there too.


Have fun,
Bill
 
Well, I thought I had found that, as I designed a Meson Mine on that basis, but it looks like I called them "capacitors". I thought it was under Small Craft in LBB2 or LBB5, but I can't find it either. (Of course, capacitors work for firing a Meson gun...)
 
HG2 didn't include batteries, but what is keeping you from adding them?
nothing, 'cept the changes to the game.

if batteries are significantly cheaper and smaller than power plants then one can easily imagine a warship that waddles around on power plant 2, but when faced with a combat situation suddenly calls upon its bank of batteries and starts racing around at maneuver 6. the possibilities for PC ships are also noteworthy. not saying it shouldn't be that way, nor am I advocating a top-down approach where rules are judged by their results, just pointing out what might happen.
 
Flykiller correctly pointed out:
nothing, 'cept the changes to the game. if batteries are significantly cheaper and smaller than power plants then one can easily imagine...[?QUOTE] (snip of excellent examples)


Fly,

I very, very, VERY much agree. Having batteries beefy enough to supply a warship with enough juice to buzz through a 50(?) minute HG2 combat round with all weapons firing is taking things much too far. The game is now broke and twenty five years of official designs are now scrap paper. That is not a good thing.

However, let's include batteries and then limit their effectiveness.

You're an ex-squid like me. Every ship, even subs, have emergency diesel generators. They don't allow the ship to fight in any real manner, but they will help the ship with DC efforts. As for subs, they'll even supply a bit of motive power. If you're limping along on your EDGs, you're not looking for a fight, you're just lucky to be alive!

I'd make batteries BIG, TIME LIMITED, and COSTLY. They'll give you a combat round of computer use after your powerplant is knocked out, no more. Maybe they can give you a combat round of 1g from your m-drive, again no more. Maybe you can get a single round of fire from a low factor battery. Maybe having batteries storage capacity equal a certain LOW percentage of your ship's total EP load would give you a bonus on DC rolls. All this is nothing flashy, nothing game straining, just a few more bits of chrome.

I liked playing the HG2-Mayday fusion in my day. Having a chance to tweak your vector after your powerplant is gone would be nice. You can fire missiles and sand after your p-plant is slagged, but the your computer and lasers might as well be gone. Getting some of those back for one turn might fun.

Imagine, you need to choose just what you'll expend your battery's charge on. Do you need that vector tweak? Should you chance firing that laser battery? Or should you save it for the DC roll bonus? Decisions, decisions...


Have fun,
Bill
 
I think the easiest way to retrofit an emergency type battery generator would be to make it a part of the powerplant and already included in the design cost and volume, just not much considered until it's needed.

Something like:

Each powerplant includes a large battery array. Normally this is used to prefire the fusion powerplant when cold or to serve as a massive uninterruptible power supply (UPS). In an emergency, such as being out of fuel or the fusion powerplant being damaged beyond operation the battery is good for X days of minimal life support or 1 turn of X EP. Where X is of course the original USP value of the installed powerplant. The full 1 turn of X EP need not be used in a single turn and a fraction could be used, for example to alter course, and then the rest returned to minimal life support duty. Minimal life support is just that. Low and limited emergency lighting and communications, and minimal O2 cycling and heating. Conditions will not be pleasant but will allow survival and a chance for damage control and rescue.

This should be enough to keep the crew alive for after action rescue or to gamble on a last parting shot or course correction without upsetting any past battle outcomes too much.

Trying to figure out how to make this as a seperate system would of course mean changing every design and a lot of tactics as noted since some bright light will try to use just the battery system and ignore the rest of the requirements (power routing, breakers, inverters, who knows... ).

Even as outlined there would be some new tactics to consider
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I'd make batteries BIG, TIME LIMITED, and COSTLY.
well if they're too big and costly they'd just be replaced by an emergency power plant and fuel. and to be worthwhile they'd have to be better than capacitors - but by the official rules those capacitors are pretty good. 36 ep turns per dton, and a dinky 100 dton scout ship has 1.5 dtons of capacitor. even if you cut that storage value by 90% that's still 5 ep turns - without a battery.

maybe that's the answer. power plants and jump capacitors are better than any battery.
 
Originally posted by flykiller:
maybe that's the answer. power plants and jump capacitors are better than any battery.


Fly,

It could very well be the answer. Now the question becomes; 'How do you damage them in combat?'

Capacitors aren't specifically listed in the damage tables. You can pound that black globe armed ship or that ship with extra capacitors to scrap and only one roll will result in the capacitors' destruction - and that roll means the ship is destroyed too!

I suppose you can wrangle some sort of proportional damage result out of p-plant and j-drive hits with the current p-plant rating limiting the number of EPs available and the current j-drive rating limiting the dTons of capacitors available. I'd prefer a separate line item though.

Then again, I'd prefer sensors and ECM/ECCM be decoupled from computers too! ;)


Have fun,
Bill
 
Flykiller, the capacitors in the, say, scout ship are devoted to the J-drive, though. I would disallow their use for anything but jump and black globe operations.

And, I am positive I grabbed capacitors and called them batteries when I wrote down the concept of Meson mines.
 
flykiller, a minor nitpick if I may.

The capacitor formula in High Guard is 0.5%MJn - where M is ship displacement tonnage and Jn is jump number of the jump drive.

A type S scout has 0.005x100x2=1ton of capacitors ;)
 
I'm going to use the scout again for another example.

On page 39 the rules describe breaking off by jumping.

To do so a ship has to feed two turns of output from a power plant whose rating equals that of the jump number being attempted.

2x0.01xMxJn is the formula.

For our scout that's 2EP per jump number being attempted.

If the ship can generate these EPs in only one turn then it may jump in only one turn - providing it also has the jump fuel available.

So the scout could prep for a jump 1 in one turn, but it takes two turns to prep for a jump 2.

Why then does the jump drive have capacitors rated at 36EPs?

My answer is the initial burst of energy from the power plant is to warm everything up before the jump drive itself initiates a much larger burn - more of a controlled nuclear detonation really (IMTU I have a part of the jump drive labelled Nuclear Detonation Containment Chamber ;) ).

This generates the 18EP per jump number required for the scout.

All of which is a very long winded way of getting round to saying that perhaps the capacitors can be used as batteries for up to 4EP per ton of capacitors - any more and you risk damaging the jump drive mechanism.
 
Flykiller, the capacitors in the, say, scout ship are devoted to the J-drive, though. I would disallow their use for anything but jump and black globe operations.
if a player says he's charging up the system for a jump, then cancels the jump, then uses the retained energy to power ship's systems, at what point do you tell him it's disallowed?
 
I still say there's a rule reference somewhere that says leaving a charge, any charge, in the capacitors beyond two turns results in the capacitors discharging completely and quickly, i.e. BOOOOM

Not something you want to do.

However I've not been able to find the reference and no one else seems to recall it so maybe it was a house rule for just this problem. Obviously it was based on the references to two turns being the jump power cycle which does turn up in many places. It would end the use of these capacitors in many of the roles that would break the model of the Imperium and Traveller as it is, and even explain some of the mysterious Kinunir incidents.

Capacitors (today, or yesteryear at least) can only be measured for overload failure by testing some of each batch to destructive overload*. Then after many tests the minimum becomes the rated limit. The jump drive capacitor type may have the 36EP per ton as such a measure and the Navy may routinely exceed this safe rating in dire need in combat. Unfortunately the margin may not have been as much as expected on the rushed Kinunir class manufacture due to minimal testing and/or inferior materials/manufacture.

* Such overloads can be quite explosive and dangerous for the larger capacitors, and we aren't talking anywhere near 36EP per ton energy density (I think) or huge multi-ton capacitor banks.

Further and more germain to this discussion perhaps this capacitor type also has a similarily determined limit on the charge hold and that it does not leak over that time but instead explosively discharges once it reaches the limit. Again this would be a safe limit of two turns which may be exceeded but without knowing just when it blows up in your face.
 
I still say there's a rule reference somewhere that says leaving a charge, any charge, in the capacitors beyond two turns results in the capacitors discharging completely and quickly
not in CT.

as for exploding capacitors, the jump capacitors described in book 5 have a capacity far in excess of any power plant that might supply them, i.e. exploding them will take some deliberate and concerted effort to overcome the inherent safety margin.

consider the scout ship jump drive capacitor. it's one dton of engineering space, so call it .5 dton. that is one gigantic capacitor. it'll take some serious effort to overload it.
 
Dan, the rule you're remembering is probably from the DGP Starship Operator's Manual, which says that the Zuchai crystals in the energy sink array begin to break down after holding a charge for a couple of hours.

Zuchai crystals do not exist IMTU, I prefer the TNE/FF&S write-up which makes the jump drive capacitors the same sort of capacitor/HPG that are used elsewhere in the ship.

I like the tactical options the use of capacitors in this way open up. It allows ships to "run silent" - if you use sensor rules to play sub-hunt type combat.
 
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
The ship that Jame's built doesn't have a black globe, the capacitors are part of the jump drive plus the extra ones installed.

There is nothing in LBB5 about capacitors having a limited ability to store a charge or degrading with time.

This is another reason why it's sneaky ;)
There is also nothing in LBB5 about charging capacitors in a way other than by receiving energy from a strike on your BG screen.
 
What about the bit about transfering energy from the power plant to the jump drive during breaking off by jumping? ;)

It's charging the capacitors by implication (and is specifically mentioned in TAS news bulletins IIRC???).

Why else would the jump drive have all those capacitors if they can't be charged somehow?
And the fact that the charge can be fed into the ship's regular power distribution network - the reverse should be therefore possible ;)
 
Flykiller, I agree with Dan: you let the players know (if they ignore your previous warning) when the capacitors go KABLOOIE!

I like the idea of batteries, but I can also see how they would change some premises. After all, an A powerplant (LBB2) takes 4 dTons! And, to get that kind of power, it needs a small nuclear reactor inside. How do you explain being able to store that load of energy for any length of time? (And, after installing Jump Drives and reactionless Manuever Drives, you don't have a lot of handwavium left over.)
 
Sigg, I follow everything you say, except the part about "the fact that the charge can be fed into the ship's regular power distribution network". Where are you getting that? Are you drawing that from the BG stuff?
 
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