Ship Designs where Jump tech is big and really expensive

[Thunderbolt]

After watching and enjoying Killjoys, and most recently The Expanse, it's got me thinking again about settings where the action is primarily within systems, a seed set long ago by JTAS #18 'Travelling without a starship'.

Killjoys alludes to other star systems beyond the Quad, so I was thinking about how jump drive could be made much rarer, perhaps making drives much larger, fuel requirements even larger still, and drives perhaps an order (or two) of magnitude more expensive.

Interstellar travel would become much rarer, ships would be much larger and infrequent, systems would be more self sufficient (shipping food between the stars would become unthinkable).

The PC ships would at a stroke become system bound, nobody but governments or their corporate counterparts can afford jump ships.

Has anyone else explored this idea, what worked, what didn't work?

 

[MThompson016]

You might end up with something like Battletech, where space craft are either specialized in-system craft and carry all cargo and are armed, or jump ships with minimal m-drives. If there's a shortage of jump capable craft, they then become more or less sacrosanct, and owning one gives you infinitely more independence.

 

[mike wightman]

Have you ever read Blue Planet? The wormhole that allows travel from our Solar System takes years to reach due to its location far beyond the orbit of Pluto - it may even be as far out as the hypothetical Oort cloud (have to go and check the exact details). Making your jump points far away means it takes a major effort to reach them.

Variations on this theme could be naturally occurring jump routes accessed via jump drives or jump gates, but the jump routes come and go so they can only be used infrequently.

You could mix the two ideas.

 

[Keklas Rekobah]

Have you ever read Blue Planet? The wormhole that allows travel from our Solar System takes years to reach due to its location far beyond the orbit of Pluto - it may even be as far out as the hypothetical Oort cloud (have to go and check the exact details). Making your jump points far away means it takes a major effort to reach them. ...

An increase of the Minimum Safe Jump Distance (MSJD) from 100 diameters to 10,000 diameters would place the Sol System's MSJD somewhere in the Kuiper Belt -- 30 to 50 A.U. from Sol (beyond the orbit of Neptune).

The next question then becomes: "How long would it take an object accelerating at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 Gees to travel 50 A.U.?" Solve for both (1) a constant acceleration profile, and (2) acceleration to the half-way point, a turn-around, and then deceleration to the jump point.

 

[aramis]

An increase of the Minimum Safe Jump Distance (MSJD) from 100 diameters to 10,000 diameters would place the Sol System's MSJD somewhere in the Kuiper Belt -- 30 to 50 A.U. from Sol (beyond the orbit of Neptune).

The next question then becomes: "How long would it take an object accelerating at 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6 Gees to travel 50 A.U.?" Solve for both (1) a constant acceleration profile, and (2) acceleration to the half-way point, a turn-around, and then deceleration to the jump point.

If you use masking as well as shadow, that makes jump past a neighboring system unlikely. It also makes your destination pretty obvious in most cases.

 

[Ulsyus]

You might end up with something like Battletech, where space craft are either specialized in-system craft and carry all cargo and are armed, or jump ships with minimal m-drives. If there's a shortage of jump capable craft, they then become more or less sacrosanct, and owning one gives you infinitely more independence.

They were fairly big affairs, weren't they? They carried warships and dropships, and stayed pretty much in the outer system?

 

[agorski]

After watching and enjoying Killjoys, and most recently The Expanse, it's got me thinking again about settings where the action is primarily within systems, a seed set long ago by JTAS #18 'Travelling without a starship'.

Killjoys alludes to other star systems beyond the Quad, so I was thinking about how jump drive could be made much rarer, perhaps making drives much larger, fuel requirements even larger still, and drives perhaps an order (or two) of magnitude more expensive.

You could always just put a small number of systems inside a rift and accomplish the same thing. Or have a highly detailed system in a pre-FTL universe.

 

[kilemall]

Another restricted travel jump tech was the Dune series, where the economic bottleneck was the creation, care and feeding of Navigators, in lieu of the banned computers. The ships therefore became huge affairs carrying riders in Traveller terms, and most action was on planetary surfaces.

 

[MThompson016]

They were fairly big affairs, weren't they? They carried warships and dropships, and stayed pretty much in the outer system?

Close but not quite. JumpShips mass from around 100,000 to 430,000 tonnes and do tend to stay in the outer system. DropShips are smaller, and are from 400-100,000 tonnes, and most are streamlined, capable of in atmosphere operations.

WarShips are mammoth combinations of the above mounting massive weapons, with integral FTL drives. For what it's worth, to keep BattleTech focused on Big Stompy Robot Action, almost all the WarShips have been destroyed in the setting.

 

[aramis]

Close but not quite. JumpShips mass from around 100,000 to 430,000 tonnes and do tend to stay in the outer system. DropShips are smaller, and are from 400-100,000 tonnes, and most are streamlined, capable of in atmosphere operations.

WarShips are mammoth combinations of the above mounting massive weapons, with integral FTL drives. For what it's worth, to keep BattleTech focused on Big Stompy Robot Action, almost all the WarShips have been destroyed in the setting.

And they cannot be replaced, because no one knows the secret of manufacturing KF drives...

 

[mike wightman]

And they cannot be replaced, because no one knows the secret of manufacturing KF drives...

Not at first, but the secret is rediscovered. Later in the timeline we have the Clans, CommStar, the new build warships the Great Houses produce (thanks to the Star League memory core) - rules for which can be found in BattleSpace.

 

[Ulsyus]

...For what it's worth, to keep BattleTech focused on Big Stompy Robot Action, almost all the WarShips have been destroyed in the setting.

Ah, all destroyed by a duck with a machinegun. Too convenient.

And they cannot be replaced, because no one knows the secret of manufacturing KF drives...

Too convenient by half methinks.

Not at first, but the secret is rediscovered. Later in the timeline we have the Clans, CommStar, the new build warships the Great Houses produce (thanks to the Star League memory core) - rules for which can be found in BattleSpace.

I suppose that once they introduced the clans to the setting, who were equipped with capital or cruiser ships, they had to find a way of ensuring some sort of balance.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

Ah, all destroyed by a duck with a machinegun. Too convenient.



Too convenient by half methinks.



I suppose that once they introduced the clans to the setting, who were equipped with capital or cruiser ships, they had to find a way of ensuring some sort of balance.

nothing so Machiavellian or pre- planned, my friend. The WarShips proper were a later addition to the system, and that "they were all destroyed (mainly by each other)" was the explanation and retcon for why these cool new toys were not seen previously (and another way to emphasis the destruction caused by the early Succession Wars that lead to early battletechs scavenger aesthetic) .

its also worth noting that, setting wise, WarShips are fantastically expensive, even by the eye watering standards of battletech interstellar starships, and exceedingly rare. I don't think any single polity (expect the star league) had more than a hundred of them at any point in the settings history (compared to the thousands of JumpShips and tens of thousands of DropShips that are supposed to be floating around the inner sphere

 

[Thunderbolt]

Thanks for these replies, I'd not heard of Blue Planet before.

Dune is an interesting point, if jump became much rarer and expensive it might well become a near monopoly controlled by powerful interests.

I'd was interested in making consequences of actions only light hours away from the law at most, and to close off the chance of trying to jump away from pursuit. Sure you can accelerate out into the darkness for a bit, but eventually your ship runs out of air and fuel so have to come back to the gas giant or star port where the cuffs are waiting for you.

Going to another star system would become a big deal, you trade and adventure in the same patch of space for a while, till you gather enough Joy to get your rust bucket a berth on a mega jump ship. A week later, a whole new system unfolds before you for the next phase of the adventure...

 

[Carlobrand]

Ah, all destroyed by a duck with a machinegun. Too convenient. .

Hey, I found Howard very believable.

 

[Barrel]

Dune is an interesting point, if jump became much rarer and expensive it might well become a near monopoly controlled by powerful interests.

Actually, that sounds very Vilani-ish, like the bureaux.