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Reinventing Traveller

The alternative to the manoeuvre drive, in it's various forms that I suspect are most clearly laid out in Tee Five.

Also, in terms of energy density, I don't think it matters, because going by customization rules, it's how efficient the drive is.
 
The reaction drives of T5 and MgT are totally science fantasy, and don't scale down to a 50kg package.

There is this thing called rocket science - it is very well understood. It's not even that hard since it comes down to one equation...
 
About scaling down.

Except for a minimum ten tonnes for the jump drive, most restraints for spacecraft engineering have been defenestrated, at some point or another.
 
On the missile power issue….

I think someone quoted the Type S as 750 metric tons.

500 MW power plant and 2G performance.

750/500 yields 1 MW accelerates 1.5 tons 2G. Let’s make that simpler, 1MW accels 3 tons 1G.

50/3000=.0167 (slight rounding). So the works out to 16700 watts per G- pretty reasonable range to expect out of some micro fusion or advanced chemical reaction.

That’s mass, let’s go the dton volume route, assuming 1000kg is the hydrogen dton volume and the 50kg as expression of volume.

500 MW accels 100 dtons at 2G. So 2.5 MW per 1dton at 1G.

50/1000=.05 .05 of 2.5MW is 125000 watts- considerably bigger number, but still not crazy numbers. At 6G we are at .75 MW for however long (I assume the supplement missile expression 5x5 to mean 5G for 5 1000 second turns).

BTW, assuming the 36EP value of the capacitor is 250MW x 36 x 1000 second turn, and 1000kg per dton re volume value, 10kg of capacitor gives us .36EP for a turn or a 90MW budget- enough to power a missile for several turns. We already have crazy energy density in game.

Course that means charging missiles before firing, capacitors aren’t batteries and I would not be keen on having that much charge sitting around unless it was very very inert.

Point being, we accept some ridiculous power to accel numbers for sake of gaming, why go all hardcore when it comes to missiles?

Now then, game balance and heading off players at the MinMax Pass is another matter. The critique re why not power personal gear off missile power is serious bizness.

My solution is to postulate ship mDrive but to fit in itty bitty missiles, it requires a super hot micro fusion plant, say something between a normal plant and our postulated jump power plant crank up.

This power requires getting rid of heat, and radiators or magic grav bleeding doesn’t work due to the missiles’ small volume. Only way out, ejecting superheated fuel.

Now I came up with this due to another minmax pass cutoff, the frac-c high kinetic attack if missiles could fly for weeks. I wanted fuel burn to keep those ranges down. But can work to throw obstacles for the too clever crowd on alternate use.

Could be a fun MacGyver to get power for an emergency use, if they can just avoid the near melting and super exhaust.
 
For reference, an AIM-9 Sidewinder (short range) air-to-air missile has a mass of 85kg ... and nowhere NEAR the range of a Traveller missile ...
It does, however, have 40 G for about 5 sec for a bit over 200 G‧seconds, and guidance for 60 sec, Its peak of 850m/s is due to friction, not the 2000m/sec vector it'd generate in vacuum (with suitable nozzle swap and fuel core geometry alteration. A less stable but higher Isp, lower acceleration, fuel could also improve burn time.
 
It does, however, have 40 G for about 5 sec for a bit over 200 G‧seconds, and guidance for 60 sec, Its peak of 850m/s is due to friction, not the 2000m/sec vector it'd generate in vacuum (with suitable nozzle swap and fuel core geometry alteration. A less stable but higher Isp, lower acceleration, fuel could also improve burn time.
200G-seconds capped at 6G is a bit over 30 seconds of burn time. Not sure how finely Mongoose dices up time increments, but LBB 2 turns are either (version-dependent) 10 minutes or almost 17 minutes long; LBB 5, 20 minutes.
 
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200G-seconds capped at 6G is a bit over 30 seconds of burn time. Not sure how finely Mongoose dices up time increments, but LBB 2 turns are either (version-dependent) 10 minutes or almost 17 minutes long; LBB 5, 20 minutes.
What about the AIM-54 Phoenix? 190 km range and max mach 5 (C model), according to Wick-i-pee-dee-ah.
 
What about the AIM-54 Phoenix? 190 km range and max mach 5 (C model), according to Wick-i-pee-dee-ah.
I'm not familiar with it. The main constraint here is total acceleration capability (G-seconds, and in the case of boost/sustain motors, average Gs*burn time), not top speed in atmosphere.
 
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