Multiple Powerplants

[equilibrium]

Hi there,

i'm in the middle of designing my planetoid prison ship and i've realised that i'm in need of far more power than a single power source can provide. Even antimatter plants only put out 8EPs. This may be an obvious question, but can I plonk as many powerplants as needed onto the ship? I'm imagining its the case but can't find where its mentioned in the T20 book.

Also, for size comparison just how big is a 1,000,000 planetoid? the moon? i have no idea and i'm thinking its just a weeeeee bit too large for my purposes....

cheers guys/gals

Jason K...

 

[Ben W Bell]

Yes you can. In fact it is quite common with a lot of designs. In many fan designs battleships etc have a separate power plant for their weapon systems so they aren't powering them when they are not needed. It's completely fine to do it.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by equilibrium:
Hi there,

i'm in the middle of designing my planetoid prison ship and i've realised that i'm in need of far more power than a single power source can provide. Even antimatter plants only put out 8EPs. This may be an obvious question, but can I plonk as many powerplants as needed onto the ship? I'm imagining its the case but can't find where its mentioned in the T20 book.

Also, for size comparison just how big is a 1,000,000 planetoid? the moon? i have no idea and i'm thinking its just a weeeeee bit too large for my purposes....

cheers guys/gals

Jason K...

Hi Jason,

If I read between the lines right the answer you're looking for in the first case is yes. The explanation is that each of the listed "power plants" in the book is in fact a "unit" and you install as many "units" of power as you need to make the desired "power plant".

For example if you have a ship that needs 12EP and you are building it at TL11 you could use a TL9 Fusion Power Plant that would be 18tons (12 x1.5tons), cost Mcr54 (12 xMcr4.5), and require 12tons of fuel for 4 weeks of continuous operation (12 x1ton).

It could indeed be more than one power plant as noted and they don't need to be the same final size either.

For the second part, the answer depends on the shape of the hull or planetoid. If its a sphere 1Mton will be about 300m in diameter

What you do is take your ship tons and multiply by 14 to get the total cubic meters. From that you just divide to get the length, width and height of your shape. Naturally that's simplistic, you'll need some volume formulae for different shapes. I use spherical and hemispherical volume so much its memorized (4/3 Pi r3 = volume of a sphere).