Ship duration days

[atpollard]

One power-hungry ship system that only runs some of the time is the maneuver drive. In fact, it only runs for about half a day every 14 days (7 days in jump, maneuver 6 hours from arrival point to destination world, spend 6 days scrounging around for cargo and passengers, maneuver 6 hours out to jump limit).

I was thinking about military ships where cruising for weeks between planets might be required.

However, it is a good point for a Merchant Ship. Perhaps a PP#3 to run the Maneuver Drive is a good idea. At 1 day duration, a trip to a Gas giant to refuel might require more fuel than you have aboard at the end of a jump, so 1 week of Maneuver Drive fuel might be a reasonable compromise.

 

[aramis]

PP Category 1: Life Support (BLS, ExtLS), Artificial Gravity, Staterooms, Computers, controls, labs and sickbays. 28day
PP Category 2: Maneuver Drive, Inertial Compensation, Sensors. 3-28 days, mission dependent.
PP Category 3: Weapons, Screens, 1-7 days, mission dependent

 

[magmagmag]

I will look for an explanation printed somewhere, but the 'details' on subdeviding power plant requirements are simple:

1. select which items need to run all of the time (Maneuver, Life support, etc.) and design PP#1 to generate enough power for the 'all of the time items'. Provide enough fuel to run PP#1 for 28 days (or whatever duration you decide on).

2. select which items only run some of the time (weapons) and design PP#2 to generate enough power for the 'some of the time items'. Provide enough fuel to run PP#2 for 24 hours (or whatever duration you decide on).

3. Note on the ship design that it can operate normally for 28 days but it can only operate for about 24 hours in combat.

The power hungry and fuel hungry weapons will not require giant power plants that run all of the time. This reduces the total fuel requirements.

The only limitation is the 1 ton minimum for each power plant (to avoid the small power plant penalty). This is usually not a problem.

Thank you very very much.

Is "28 days(or whatever duration you decide on)" written in MegaTraveller Journals?
Is "24 hours (or whatever duration you decide on)" written in MegaTraveller Journals?

Which Vol. of MegaTraveller Journal is these PP slice written in?

 

[whartung]

Thank you very very much.

Is "28 days(or whatever duration you decide on)" written in MegaTraveller Journals?
Is "24 hours (or whatever duration you decide on)" written in MegaTraveller Journals?

Which Vol. of MegaTraveller Journal is these PP slice written in?

Um..just curious, why does it matter? It's just simple math and projection.

28 days is just some number that "seems good", and 24 hours is another.

For example, consider powering combat weapons. I forget how long a combat turn is. In TNE, it's 1/2 hour. If you go with the swag that your ship will be firing all of it's weapons for 10 turns (guesstimating that the combat will be over one way or the other by then), then you can allocate 10 turns of power to the weapons (i.e. 5 hrs), figure out a "power/hr" consumption rate for fuel, and voila! Numbers for tankage.

And the numbers aren't hard and fast rules, they're just guidelines. If you want to figure out how much power is consumed by, say a lunar shuttle, you're most likely not going to need 28 days of fuel and life support as the ship isn't designed to go past lunar orbit.

Knowing how much fuel and how long it lasts gives you a better idea on how to handle adventure situations. Like when a fuel valve gets hit by a meteoroid and dumps 30% of the fuel before it can be fixed. Now how long can the brave crew survive? Can they get home??

FYI, also recall that the "beauty" of the M-Drive in everything but TNE is that the drive is reactionless. So, save for Power Plant fuel, no reason to just run the drive. Full bore, a ship with a 2G drive can get from Earth to Jupiter in about 5 days (2G will get you to the moon in about 2hrs). That'll give you a good guess on what kind of durations ships might have in space.

In TNE it's a different problem, but also in TNE, Power Plants take zip fuel for power. They run forever. Reaction mass, however, different story entirely.

 

[aramis]

T4 has both reaction and reactionless drives, and long-term plants ala TNE, so it's quite possible to run out of food and still have power and light.

 

[magmagmag]

Um..just curious, why does it matter? It's just simple math and projection.

28 days is just some number that "seems good", and 24 hours is another.

Your description is totally right.

However, If standard duration daysa are shown "formally" in Traveller Journals, I want to know it.
Beacuse duration days control a ship design greatly.

If there are not formal values of duration days, I want to study appropriate values on this site.