Orbital refineries

[Piper]

Originally posted by Liam Devlin:
As I've come to hear it, it takes longer to find, shovel and process ice-teroids than do a GG refueling run.

Almost a certainty, particularly if we use coaling at sea Link as a guide. It's not a perfect analogy, but it could be used as a starting point. While Traveller vessels don't have weather and sea conditions to deal with, ice chunks would certainly present their own challenges.

 

[aramis]

As is, the GG is the primary pre-known fuel source from distance. It's not reliant upon humint nor elint, just a standard sensor suite and a week's observations (AM1).

The "reduced fuel options" are not part of the OTU; they are for GM derived ATUs. MT and TNE have JFuel rates calced differently: 5x JDrive Volume. The canonical designs still only carry 1Jn fuel plus PP & Maneuver fuels (MT=PP 4wk; TNE = MD Fuel, usually around 10-20 G-hours); most of these can make jump 1 on leftover fuel for J3 or better craft.

The GG or any world with accessible liquid hydrocarbons is a fast-refuel, using fuel shuttles alone. Ice dwarves, KBO's, outter zone moons are likely to have serious difficulties in getting the fuel source from the body into the tanks. (Some enterprising players of mine went and took chunks broken off with ship's weaponry, put them in the hold, and used the ship's heat to melt them... but that is still manpower intensive.)

In any case, we have canon stating that GG's are the prime refuel point for invaders. And the difficulties of harvesting sub 100 Kelvin hydrocarbon and water ices would tend to reinforce that. Not that it is impossible, but it is time-wise and labor wise impractical to refuel from them in non-emergency situations.

Also, GGs have moons which may have liquid hydrocarbons.

You need a picket force... according to Regency Sourcebook, we can figure out where the enemy is headed; we can thus follow them and engage in their NEXT system, even if we only have an observational picket. So long as we can get the message to our fleet in less time than their refuel there, we can mount an intercept.

 

[Malenfant]

I'm quite sure there must be tech in the Imperium to rapidly melt ices and extract the H2 - file under "different kind of fuel refinement system".

I expect that if CT never mentioned comets you'd say they didn't exist at all in the setting either... Either way, you seem hellbent on sticking to canon and ignoring reality, so I'll leave you to it.

 

[aramis]

I'm quite sure there must be tech in the Imperium to rapidly melt ices and extract the H2 - file under "different kind of fuel refinement system".

Liquification is easy; raise temp to about 200 K. Extraction from a liquid is easy (we can do it now). Handling liquid in a vacuum is probably not, and conductive heating from a hull is likely to make finding a seal an interesting non-triviality.

I've often let my players refuel from KBO's... but it has been because the GG's were out of food range while using TNE. (TNE PP range is LONG... food becomes the issue right off.) In MT terms, if you aren't out in the Oort, well, you're within the nominal 2.5 weeks of remaining powerplant fuel of the outter system anyway.

The ease* of GG refueling makes it far better than ice refueling from a military mindset. Far better still is finding a surface liquid hydrocarbon or hydrate, and cracking it, from a moon.

If you have the time and effort available to mine, plus the fuel and time to match course and speed, yes, a KBO or cometary body is a fine source of fuel. Given the low gravity, I can see a D-ton a man an hour, maybe two. I'd hate to see the logistics of filling a 50 KTd heavy destroyer's caverous 37KTd fuel tanks.**

This being in the Fleet section and not the IMTU one, canon is an issue.

Canon says sensor ranges of at least 1/2 LS are common; MT, TNE and T4 often have ships with passives at 30+ LM, and scouts with 1/2 parsec passives. Detection is, as you pointed out for asteroids and comets, fairly trivial, given the current tech paradigm. (Time consuming, but not hard.)

Canon also allows pulling a course for an exiting vessel by observation. (TNE RegSB, Referee's Library Data.)

You don't need a combat picket, per se, to have an effective interdict on military forces. You can simply pull their course by observing their jump flash, and send the hour-delayed plot to the forces waiting at the mainworld, and let THEM pursue, and enforce the interdict at the other end of the jump. Canonical GG refueling (the fastest non-port refueling method I've seen rules for, since pulling from liquid sources requires landing time plus the same rate of refuel) takes 5-10 hours. Plus travel in/out.

Since long range assaults require huge logistics trains for the food and LS alone, at 50 person/weeks per DTon IIRC (Beltstrike and the JTAS Asteroid Mining both provide rates) can be a major limit.

The canon operations with tankers are rare, not the normative procedure. (See: 5FW board game; Supplement 5 AHL; Adventure 5 TCS; The Spinward Marches Campaign.) They can and do happen; they are not normative. Normative is use the tankers to gather fuel, process fuel, and be able to refuel the ships which are too large to skim/land themselves. The AHL carried dedicated fueling shuttles, and takes several trips to fill her tanks; one trip will get a J1, IIRC, but a J1 will only let you delay combat or pick a different battlefield.

Under TNE, it is fairly easy to make Meson Guns with huge ranges (provided you are not ship mounting them). Meson guns are definitely NOT realistic, but they are canon, and popular. Same with Grav Focussed Lasers, artificial gravity (as opposed to centrifugal gravity), supra-5KTd ships stressed for multiple G's maneuver, and Jump Drives.


So, back to the original topic: a fueling station outside the 100D limit is going to be enough incentive that almost all legit traffic will use it, and hostiles will smash it. The savings of time makes it financially worthy. An interdict needs to deal mostly with small threats directly, and large threats by observe and report. (That is, OpIntel.)

The biggest problem with space combat in any paradigm is forcing the battle. If you are not faster, and are not longer "legged,"*** you can't force a battle.

I expect that if CT never mentioned comets you'd say they didn't exist at all in the setting either... Either way, you seem hellbent on sticking to canon and ignoring reality, so I'll leave you to it

Hardly. In the case of KBO's, in the late 1970's they were a theory that was little known in the popular mind. It's only recently (last 10 years) that KBO's have really made much stir...

But I also see an environment in the canon setting where KBO's could easily have been dealt with under CT or MT, and with minimal difficulty be mined for denial, at a fraction of the costs of patrolling them. Gives me an idea for an amber zone scenario...

Now, Oort objects, those were known and well mentioned in the popular astronomy of the 1970's... It is an oversight. An important one. Given the current estimates of more than 20,000 Oort objects... So, either the militaries don't see them as viable for refueling (too time or manpower intensive), or they have taken steps to deny access to them (mines), or perhaps, in the 4000 years of manned flight in the OTU, they've been mined out... (unlikely, but possible.)

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*ease being a relative term. Most ships in Traveller are equipped to do so under Bk2, and under Bk 5 it is incidental in cost to equip for it. The PP rules indicate you don't need to have it "refined" before use.

** 30KTd JFuel, 7 KTd for the PP, so it has weapons and an agility of at least a 1...

*** Taken from the chapter title "In Search of Longer Legs." TTA. It refers to more jump endurance.