MegaTrav has ice refueling. CT does not - a notable omission. I have a vague idea from past threads that some of the other game systems have ice refueling, but I don't know the details.
Anyway, MegaTrav ice refueling comes to us courtesy of Starship Operator's Manual, volume only. Fairly straightforward task system, not terribly complicated if you can wrap your head around that. (I think I'm starting to get it, but there are some odd bits I'm still wrestling with.) So I ask myself a couple of questions: why doesn't the Navy use this very obvious strategy for strategic advantage, and can we boil it down to something usable in the CT/HG universe?
And -
Well, the answer to the second question rather answers the first. There are some assumptions made to facilitate it, but it seems to work - if you don't mind the casualty rate.
Getting the ice involves finding the ice first. I'm not addressing that. If they haven't got a very detailed map of what all is in the system and where it orbits after 500 years, someone deserves to get sacked.
The basic MT ice mining task, as portrayed by Master Fugate and company, is a Routine (i.e. roll 7+) task, modified by Vacc Suit skill and Mechanical skill, which makes sense: you're in a vacc suit using some sort of machine to cut ice. It is hazardous - if you make a mistake, you'll likely get hurt, or maybe you'll break your equipment, or both. I tended to presume the first because, well, you're in a vacc suit using some sort of machine to cut ice; unless you actually do that for a living, that sounds like a recipe for injury. Also, it's hard to quantify broken machines of unknown type and character, but I figure if you're doing something where they're likely to break a lot, then you'll have the spare parts and backup machines to repair or replace them so you can get on with the job.
The roll implies a per-person task. That makes it crew-dependent. The roll appears to be outcome based: how long it takes depends on how much fuel there is to get. So, I begin with the assumption that you're at someplace with enough ice to fill your tanks, and you're spending no more than 8 hours a day at the job; I'm not a slave driver.
What I end up with is, very roughly:
A ship of 5000 dT or over can mine fuel equivalent to 4% of the ship's tonnage per day. (Carriers tend to have more crew per dTon than other ships of similar size, but I didn't put the pilots to work; few of them will have Mechanical skill.)
A ship of 1000 dT or under can mine fuel equivalent to 8% of the ship's tonnage per day. (The smaller ships tend to have more crew per dTon.)
In between, it tends to graduate: 7% for 2000, 6% for 3000, 5% for 4000.
But, it's hazardous work. I assume the typical crewman has a +1 to +2 skill bonus - vacc suit or mechanical or both. About 5% of the crew per day will take an injury seriously enough to put them on bed rest for one to two weeks. (Another 7% take a "superficial" injury that allows them to return to work after treatment. About 1 in 400 takes an injury serious enough to put them out for a month or more, but that's more significant to the individual than to the ship.) Could be less if you assume more skill. BEST CASE, if you're skilled asteroid miners, is to cut that to 2%.
So, in a nutshell, your Jump-4 ship/squadron/fleet (assuming something larger than a destroyer) takes 11 days to refuel by ice mining, at the end of which about a third of the crew is on sick call (some of the early injuries having recovered and returned to work). A week in jump will see some return to duty, but the ship will still be short-handed when it arrives.
Of course, nothing says MT extends into CT, but it paints an interesting picture of why ships might not routinely use that as a strategy: it's very slow, and it's very hard on the crew. Whether it's nonetheless tenable, hard or not, is a different question. Canon CT limits sensors to 3 light seconds, but that's for ships. Canon HG says a ship can escape hostile forces even if the they're slightly faster than it, if it can start from the reserve; this would imply some ability to move beyond sensor range. Canon MT adopts similar sensor range limits that have similar effects - again that's for ships, but one presumes a friendly planet can monitor and relay tracking data if it has sensors capable of tracking at interplanetary ranges, and that doesn't seem to happen. Canon TCS says ships can hide out in the outer system - but that's a wargame. Invasion Earth, a wargame centered on a high tech world, adopts the same convention. Fifth Frontier War, a wargame, does not: you fight it out until someone leaves or there's only one side's navy left in the system.
Most of that, but not all, would suggest a ship can park at some ice body and spend 11 days refueling without drawing hostile notice, making a "Hannibal over the Alps" play possible, especially if you preposition a tanker with a crew of skilled miners. On the other hand, there's the ever-present specter of verisimilitude and the question of why TL14-15 sensors can't pick up a distant infrared source that our modern sensors would have no problem spotting. Of course, you might mask the betraying heat by making sure that ice body was between you and the local inhabited world.
Thoughts?
Anyway, MegaTrav ice refueling comes to us courtesy of Starship Operator's Manual, volume only. Fairly straightforward task system, not terribly complicated if you can wrap your head around that. (I think I'm starting to get it, but there are some odd bits I'm still wrestling with.) So I ask myself a couple of questions: why doesn't the Navy use this very obvious strategy for strategic advantage, and can we boil it down to something usable in the CT/HG universe?
And -
Well, the answer to the second question rather answers the first. There are some assumptions made to facilitate it, but it seems to work - if you don't mind the casualty rate.
Getting the ice involves finding the ice first. I'm not addressing that. If they haven't got a very detailed map of what all is in the system and where it orbits after 500 years, someone deserves to get sacked.
The basic MT ice mining task, as portrayed by Master Fugate and company, is a Routine (i.e. roll 7+) task, modified by Vacc Suit skill and Mechanical skill, which makes sense: you're in a vacc suit using some sort of machine to cut ice. It is hazardous - if you make a mistake, you'll likely get hurt, or maybe you'll break your equipment, or both. I tended to presume the first because, well, you're in a vacc suit using some sort of machine to cut ice; unless you actually do that for a living, that sounds like a recipe for injury. Also, it's hard to quantify broken machines of unknown type and character, but I figure if you're doing something where they're likely to break a lot, then you'll have the spare parts and backup machines to repair or replace them so you can get on with the job.
The roll implies a per-person task. That makes it crew-dependent. The roll appears to be outcome based: how long it takes depends on how much fuel there is to get. So, I begin with the assumption that you're at someplace with enough ice to fill your tanks, and you're spending no more than 8 hours a day at the job; I'm not a slave driver.
What I end up with is, very roughly:
A ship of 5000 dT or over can mine fuel equivalent to 4% of the ship's tonnage per day. (Carriers tend to have more crew per dTon than other ships of similar size, but I didn't put the pilots to work; few of them will have Mechanical skill.)
A ship of 1000 dT or under can mine fuel equivalent to 8% of the ship's tonnage per day. (The smaller ships tend to have more crew per dTon.)
In between, it tends to graduate: 7% for 2000, 6% for 3000, 5% for 4000.
But, it's hazardous work. I assume the typical crewman has a +1 to +2 skill bonus - vacc suit or mechanical or both. About 5% of the crew per day will take an injury seriously enough to put them on bed rest for one to two weeks. (Another 7% take a "superficial" injury that allows them to return to work after treatment. About 1 in 400 takes an injury serious enough to put them out for a month or more, but that's more significant to the individual than to the ship.) Could be less if you assume more skill. BEST CASE, if you're skilled asteroid miners, is to cut that to 2%.
So, in a nutshell, your Jump-4 ship/squadron/fleet (assuming something larger than a destroyer) takes 11 days to refuel by ice mining, at the end of which about a third of the crew is on sick call (some of the early injuries having recovered and returned to work). A week in jump will see some return to duty, but the ship will still be short-handed when it arrives.
Of course, nothing says MT extends into CT, but it paints an interesting picture of why ships might not routinely use that as a strategy: it's very slow, and it's very hard on the crew. Whether it's nonetheless tenable, hard or not, is a different question. Canon CT limits sensors to 3 light seconds, but that's for ships. Canon HG says a ship can escape hostile forces even if the they're slightly faster than it, if it can start from the reserve; this would imply some ability to move beyond sensor range. Canon MT adopts similar sensor range limits that have similar effects - again that's for ships, but one presumes a friendly planet can monitor and relay tracking data if it has sensors capable of tracking at interplanetary ranges, and that doesn't seem to happen. Canon TCS says ships can hide out in the outer system - but that's a wargame. Invasion Earth, a wargame centered on a high tech world, adopts the same convention. Fifth Frontier War, a wargame, does not: you fight it out until someone leaves or there's only one side's navy left in the system.
Most of that, but not all, would suggest a ship can park at some ice body and spend 11 days refueling without drawing hostile notice, making a "Hannibal over the Alps" play possible, especially if you preposition a tanker with a crew of skilled miners. On the other hand, there's the ever-present specter of verisimilitude and the question of why TL14-15 sensors can't pick up a distant infrared source that our modern sensors would have no problem spotting. Of course, you might mask the betraying heat by making sure that ice body was between you and the local inhabited world.
Thoughts?
