High Guard Fuel Purification Clarification

[agorski]

In Book 5, pg 27, it states that a large ship requires several fuel purification plants, and that a plant cannot be procured that has less than 1/5 the tonnage and cost shown per 1000 tons of fuel.

So am I correct in assuming that if you have a TL 13 ship (25 tons & Cr150,000) with 2100 tons of fuel that you actually have 3 plants, not 1 giant plant scaled up in size? In which case the 3rd plant would be 5 tons and Cr30,000, slightly more than actually required for the fuel tankage (100 tons)?

 

[atpollard]

Or 3 plants at 7/10 stanard size ... size each plant for 700 dTons of fuel

25 dT x 0.7 = 17.5 dT
Cr 150,000 x 0.7 = Cr 105,000
Capacity = 700 dtons of fuel

3 x 700 dT plants = 2100 dtons of fuel

 

[atpollard]

Personally, Scale up the plant if you want ... what possible difference will it make.

Heck, install 7 x 300 dTon capacity plants if it makes you happy and looks good on the deckplan.

 

[agorski]

Or 3 plants at 7/10 stanard size ... size each plant for 700 dTons of fuel

Excellent point.

25 dT x 0.7 = 15.5 dT

17.5 dT, actually.

Which means just multiplying 2.1 * cost and dT gives exactly the same results.

So I only have to worry about the case where the total tankage is less than 200.

 

[agorski]

Personally, Scale up the plant if you want ... what possible difference will it make.

Heck, install 7 x 300 dTon capacity plants if it makes you happy and looks good on the deckplan.

No deckplan, I'm coding up High Guard ship design.

 

[Timerover51]

No deckplan, I'm coding up High Guard ship design.

I would argue for more than one plant simply from the benefits of redundancy if one plant has a problem.

A Subsidized Merchant that I have designed of 600 dTon has 2 plants, each of 0.5 dTon in size, but I am using the LBB 1977 Edition of the rules for building ships.

 

[mike wightman]

A5:TCS clarified and expanded on fuel purification plants:

PERCENTAGE-BASED FUEL PURIFICATION PLANTS
The fuel purification plant table in Book 5 (page 36) shows the tonnages for various plants at different tech levels. The percentage-based table on the next page shows those plants as a percentage of the fuel tankage of a ship, and includes the minimum tonnage required and the cost per ton of purification plant installed.

Basically is converted the purification plant to a % based component.

 

[McPerth]

In Book 5, pg 27, it states that a large ship requires several fuel purification plants, and that a plant cannot be procured that has less than 1/5 the tonnage and cost shown per 1000 tons of fuel.

So am I correct in assuming that if you have a TL 13 ship (25 tons & Cr150,000) with 2100 tons of fuel that you actually have 3 plants, not 1 giant plant scaled up in size? In which case the 3rd plant would be 5 tons and Cr30,000, slightly more than actually required for the fuel tankage (100 tons)?

Exact phrasing is:

The fuel purification plant cost is based on 1,000 tons of fuel. A large ship with a large fuel tank capacity requires several plants. A small fuel tank capacity requires a fraction of the fuel purification plant shown. In no case may a fuel purification plant be procured with less than one-fifth the tonnage and price shown.

The first sentence makes me think that the purification plant may be enlarged to any size, but numbers given are per 1000 tons of fuel, so a ship with 2100 tons of fuel would have a single plant 2.1 times what's given in the table. I'm probably the least one to talk about English wording, but I guess otherwise it would be "A purification plant processes 1000 tons of fuel and its size and cost are given in the table" instead of "its cost is based on 1000 tons of fuel".

Then the second sentence talks about several plants...

In any case, as it is given, I understand that the numbers are based on 1000 tons of fuel, and in no case may the total purification plant tonnage be less tan 1/5 of it (so, mínimum fuel purification capacity would be 200 tons). The fact of it being a single larger plant or several smaller ones, would be irrelevant from the design POV (though Timerover's comment is quite pertinent).