Fuel Consumption for interstellar travel

[Don Foley]

Hi,

I am a new traveller GM. I was a player of the game back in the 80's, and out of nastolgia, my group of players wanted to play traveller again. Here is the question I can not find in the books. My player is a belter and has a seeker ship. He is leaving a starport and heading out to the asteroid belt and back, never leaving the system or using jump travel. How do I calculate fuel consumption for that. He is just moving around in the same hex, and not jumping to a new one. He can hold 30 tons of fuel, which he can use for 1 jump.


Hope this is clear?

Don

 

[atpollard]

He will probably starve or run out of air before he runs out of fuel. The exact answer depends on the rule system you are using.

In Classic Traveller, the seeker has a 2G Maneuver Drive and a factor 2 Power plant in a 100 ton ship. The power plant will consume 2 tons of fuel (per High Guard) powering the reactionless maneuver drive, ship's computer, life support and miscelaneous systems for about 28-30 days (4 weeks or 1 month). Using the lower rate of 4 weeks operation per 2 tons of fuel, the 30 ton tanks will be empty in 60 weeks.

Life support is usually purchased in 2 week incraments, so the ship will probably run out of air/water/food before it runs out of fuel.

 

[atpollard]

In Classic Traveller Book 2, the powerplant and maneuver drive would consume 20 tons of fuel every 4 weeks - allowing a mere 6 weeks of operation before needing refueling.

In either case, the Seeker is capable of wilderness refueling and 'burning' unrefined fuel. That means that when the crew needs more fuel they can skim it from a gas giant (like jupiter or saturn) or can melt frozen water or ammonia from the icy asteroids to use as fuel.

Only the Scout ship (and the seeker made from old scout ships) are specifically listed as capable of this in the rules. High Guard lists Purifiers that can be added to any ship to allow the use of unrefined fuel.

I hope that helps answer your question.

 

[mike wightman]

The CT module Beltstrike had extended rules for fuel and life support. You can find it on the CT cd rom.

There is even a chance the MgT Beltstrike supplement may have similar rules but we won't know 'til it's out.

 

[boomslang]

The CT module Beltstrike had extended rules for fuel and life support. You can find it on the CT cd rom.

Wasn't there a dead-tree JTAS article predating that module which also involved asteroid prospecting? I'm out of pocket until the weekend, or I'd go look it up myself right now.

Also, one could always adopt more modest fuel consumption rates inspired by HG2; a Type S (or Type J) might be able to get by on 2 dtons of powerplant fuel every four weeks, which would get one 40 weeks out of a 20-dton standard loadout, plus another 20 weeks from the unused Jump fuel (assuming 30 dtons total) -- by which time the starship will need annual maintenance anyway...

 

[aramis]

Wasn't there a dead-tree JTAS article predating that module which also involved asteroid prospecting? I'm out of pocket until the weekend, or I'd go look it up myself right now.

Yes. I don't know the issue #, but it was in Best of JTAS Vol 1, so it was issue 1,2,3, or 4.

 

[Don Foley]

Thanks! The game went very good, had lots of fun!

 

[tim_manley]

I followed rule of thumb in duration, more fuel means longer duration. Life support has standard and per B2 rules costs X amount (just a $ sink). In my 1st run at an all in-system game players could 'pre-load' life support with more $ by eating 1/2 a ton of space. I ended up fine-tuning this to run a pure, no FTL, in system game where fuel was needed for rockets, etc. Ran for quite a long time and my players loved it... I had a blast with it too.