Rules Only: The Advantages of Low Tech Starships

[Vargr Breath]

" It's not too much of a stretch to read those rules so that they do,"
That's the nice thing about LLBs to have the freedom to do just that.

 

[willtron3030]

FF&S has Thruster Plates (among other things) as alternative tech.



1000 Diameters of what? Anything?

Sun it 865K miles in diameter, so 1000 diameters is 865M miles. Saturns influence is 72M miles, giving 937M miles of 1000 diameters to work with. Saturn should JUST fit.

What's funny about these is that the drive flames out during the decel phase, so the ship will have to turn over early and coast when it reaches the threshold.

For Sol, 1000D ~= 9.3AU
The semimajor orbital distance of Saturn is 9.588AU. And with an eccentricity of 0.056, it's average distance is a hair over 9AU, and the semiminor axis is 8.527AU, well inside the 1000D line.

Thank you. That's the first time I ever plugged in the numbers. I have new ideas now.

 

[Spinward Flow]

it makes logistics for High Guard fleets somewhat problematic.

To be fair, logistics for maximum tech level naval fleets ought to be somewhat problematic in terms of sourcing logistics across sectors of space.

"Flyin' through hyperspace ain't like dustin' crops, boy!"
- Han Solo

 

[Condottiere]

1. There's a reason why Tee Fifty Fives are so numerous and still employed: they exist, and you can upgrade them.

2. Speaking of which, the equivalent would be the hundred tonne Scout.

3. How much is a Scout on the second hand market?

 

[Dragoner]

"I had to know!"

So, I threw together a quick book 1 navy char generator to answer the question "Assuming someone would dedicate their career to navigation, what are the best navigators the navy can produce? and how many?".

Simply, I rolled up 10000 characters. I tried to enlist them in to the navy, then I dropped those that did enlist but didn't meet the EDU 8+ requirement, since the Navy makes Navigation an Advanced 8+ Education table skill (vs the Scouts, which will apparently train anybody).

Then, whenever these folks got a skill, they rolled on that table, trying for Navigation.

Out of the 10,000 I started with, 5571 actually enlisted. Of those, 2728 were educated enough. (What I did not do is try to improve the uneducated to where they could actually train in navigation in a later term.).

Of the 2728 that passed, 636 didn't survive. Of the survivors, what did we get?

Nav +0	828
Nav +1	689
Nav +2	347
Nav +3	150
Nav +4	52
Nav +5	16
Nav +6	10

Why is this important?

Simply, while certainly rare, there are "instant" navigators out there. These would be cherished by intelligence agencies and mega-corps. (One of the +6 navigators is only 5 terms, so that one is actually pretty young, most were 8 terms.)

So, anyway, curiosity sated.

Thanks! Yes, I did think there would be the those best ones, sort of cool to think about too, I mean the bad ass navigator is not something in the lore for the most part.

 

[Dragoner]

There's a reason why Tee Fifty Fives are so numerous and still employed: they exist, and you can upgrade them.

Also that chassis is very durable, and is used from the Antarctic to the Sahara, as various vehicles.

 

[spank]

While I don't encourage necromancy, But....
I thought the initial thought was interesting, it reminded me of something I did a while back, changing cost by TL.
Basically I reduced the cost by 10% per TL, but instead of adding a 10% reduction per TL I compounded it on the previous TL.
So at +9 TL the cost multiplier was 1.0 * (0.9^9) or 0.387 instead of 1.0 * ( 10%*TL DIF) Which ended up looking like this:

I shifted the "base" cost up to TL 12, using the justification that this Imperial average, and manufacturing cost would be base on this. This resulted in less reduction for TL-15. The reduction as a percentage is still the same, but the cost is ~1.37x. for example using TL 9 as the base a TL 12 component would cost 0.73x as much, but using TL 12 as the base it cost ~1.37x more or 1.0 as much -- Base Price.

I had not thought of using Industrial, Non-Industrial, and Average planets to modify the cost. But The idea interested me, So I made a new chart, using 0.95 for N-I, 0.9 for AVG and 0.85 for IND. And it looked OK, except the IND got more expensive than AVG below the base TL and the Non-Ind got cheaper . I swapped the numbers above the fold and it was better, but still not great.

So I slid the base 1.0 cost up one for Non-IND and and down one for IND, better but still not great, and the IND bonus and Non-IND Penalty end up compounding, so the spread get bigger as TL increases. So I went back to using the AVG world as Base Cost, and Gave NON-IND a 1.05 multiplier and IND a 1.05 Reduction, better, but the costs were kind of close, I stepped it up to 1.1 and then 1.15, Which I think works pretty decent.

 

[Spinward Flow]

While I don't encourage necromancy, But....

I thought the initial thought was interesting

For most Adventure Class Ships (ACS), all of those factors conspired to create a mentality of "TL=F or Bust" when it came to custom designing starships to have fun with.

And as soon as you introduce that "high tech starships require high tech maintenance" logistics tail requirement, suddenly EVERYTHING changes in terms of being able to operate on the fringes of civilization in the low tech backwater regions.

If you can't maintain something, then it's only useful until it breaks ... creating a "burner" style of disposable consumption and usage.

Put those two factors together ... cheaper to buy, easier to maintain ... and suddenly it makes a whole lot of sense for commercial shipping to angle for low tech starships (TL=9-11) as being the best investments, rather than always angling for the highest of the high tech available in every single instance.

I have my moments.