AnotherDilbert
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LBB2'77:
The power plant is needed regardless of whether you install an M-drive or not.
Note that an M-drive is not optional.
The Xboat is a HG2 design
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Note that an M-drive is not optional.
Spinward Flow
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So you want to mix and match custom and standard drives ... that thing which the rules explicitly and deliberately go out of their way to say NOT TO DO.
Just so we're clear on the concept.
AnotherDilbert
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I can't see it. Where does it say that?
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Therefore the x-boat is not a starship since it lacks a maneuver drive and a power plant.
AnotherDilbert
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Quite, hence it can not be designed using the Starship Design system.
Ironically, the Starship Design system can be used to design "non-starships" without a jump drive. They must still have both an M-drive and a power plant.
That's farther than even I've ever taken that... I assume 1/4 of 4 weeks fuel for the XBoat use case*, and TCS power-down outside of Jump.
Going to Pn=1 during Jump outright breaks the implied fuel use rate. On the other hand, going to Pn=actual Jn (not rating) seems perfectly reasonable, as does dropping the EP requirement for the computer -- I see the multi-megawatt power draws as being almost entirely ECM transmissions rather than power required to crunch numbers.
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*maybe 1/4 + 10%, to allow for maximum-duration-variance Jumps
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
a) The rules require a full load of fuel, regardless of actual current fuel use.
b) The powering down rule is perweek month; as soon as you power up the PP you consume fuel at the higher rate for the entire week month.
Anything else, however reasonable you think it is, are house rules not applicable to any other campaign.
b) The powering down rule is per
Anything else, however reasonable you think it is, are house rules not applicable to any other campaign.
You seem to be neglecting the rule on Page 49 of Book 3.
It says "Unless Marc says so."
The entire point of the XBoat is not an exercise in ship design. It's an exercise in story projection. The idea that you need to have a "stripped down ship", like a young, light weight Pony Express rider, in order to facilitate communications in a universe where communication is the speed of travel.
The ship doesn't matter. Arguably, this is the smallest, cheapest, jump ship possible with a specialized purchase so that there can be many of them, ready to go at a moments notice in order to make communications as fast as possible.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Perhaps then.
Though if it tends to be mostly parsec two and three hops, that's questionable as well.
It's now clearly canonical that Marc Miller has set the minimum at a hundred tonnes, and having a go at it from a Mongosian design outlook, trying to shave off a couple of tonnes (at a hundred tonnes) doesn't seem worth the cost.
Though if it tends to be mostly parsec two and three hops, that's questionable as well.
It's now clearly canonical that Marc Miller has set the minimum at a hundred tonnes, and having a go at it from a Mongosian design outlook, trying to shave off a couple of tonnes (at a hundred tonnes) doesn't seem worth the cost.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
There are two sentences, the first is explicitly stating that a starship needs all three drives and that the power plant is for the maneuver drive and internal power, while the second states the power plant must be at least equal to the maneuver drive.
The xboat is a setting element and the rules as written are fudged/interpreted, implying that the powers that be have ruled that if you don't have a maneuver drive you don't need a power plant. This thus becomes an implied rule for the setting.
The xboat is a setting element and the rules as written are fudged/interpreted, implying that the powers that be have ruled that if you don't have a maneuver drive you don't need a power plant. This thus becomes an implied rule for the setting.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
I'm pretty sure at one point it was stated that the jump drive can only be activated by an overclocked fusion reactor.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Nope, the same article that explained how the jump drive works also made clear that it can be activated by collector and antimatter technology, not just fusion.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
I think that particular statement was made to explain why batteries and fission reactors couldn't be tapped .
Currently, almost any power source can be used.
Currently, almost any power source can be used.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
LBB3'77 does not have 49 pages, at least the pdf...
Of course the Referee can do whatever he wants, but that is the exception not the rule.
Of course you can produce a ship without a jump- or M-drive (despite the rules), but CT is rather specific on that you must have a power plant (and ample fuel). E.g. battery powered craft are specifically banned.
Mysterious alien artefacts, such as the Annic Nova, are not an official expansion of the design system, just exceptions.
It perhaps shows how seriously MWM took the rules, i.e. not very. The rules are guidelines not restrictions to your game. Have fun and play however you want, but don't pretend that it's the Traveller rules that make you play that way.
This is insincere.
What Marc cared about was selling games. What Marc cared about was creating content. What Marc cared about was trying to breath some life in to the book of tables and figures.
The XBoat is supposed to give a feeling of what A society (and, inevitably, what THE society) would look like and how it might operate given the KEY constraint, in fact pretty much the only constraint on the society -- travel == communication.
The Pony Express is a romantic notion. It was dangerous frontier work. Folks willing to risk their lives to get the mail through.
How do you convey that in an interstellar society with abundant power and a galaxy of resources?
He could have just left mail to the Traders and Subsidized merchants. He could have kept Jump Torpedoes for the use of messaging. Disposable message drones flitting out every 15m, or whatever. But that's not what he wanted. He wanted the old empire, messaging is slow, ships are The Way kind of universe.
Once you have that vision, rules aren't that important, especially remote edge cases like this. It's all about feel.
It's hard to grasp how fast things were moving back then, how much stuff they were publishing, how fast they were publishing, and how small they were. We spend 30 years kvetching about things they decided in a microsecond so they could get something on paper and get the next product out.
That doesn't mean they didn't take the game or the system seriously. But they knew it was a framework, not writ in stone. And a 100 ton boat, gorged with drives, with some guy strapped in between the radiator and the alternator, committed to the premise of getting the mail through as fast as possible. Even when messaging takes a week, every minute counts, every dollar shaved on the ship and operation counts. Mail was not a laissez-faire thing, it was social contract worthy of standing up something like the XBoat system rather than leaving to the whims of the Capt. Mals of the 'verse.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
The ecks boat network doesn't look sensible (as opposed to making sense).
There's a sort of a gaming aspect fascination in trying to min max a starship, but unless there's a third way to activate the jump drive besides collectors or power sources, exceptionally solar panelling, I don't think it's mentioned.
There's a sort of a gaming aspect fascination in trying to min max a starship, but unless there's a third way to activate the jump drive besides collectors or power sources, exceptionally solar panelling, I don't think it's mentioned.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 1K
The problem you're going to have with that option is the power density.
EP=1 is 250Mw ... and most 100 ton starships aren't going to have the surface area to capture 1 EP from solar collectors sufficiently fast to energize a jump. Get close enough to a star and you can make it work ... but most Tender station orbits are going to be beyond the habitable zone, usually around gas giants for easy access to fuel, where solar power is going to be remarkably weak.
Jupiter in the Terra system at 5.2 AU from Sol only receives 3.7% of the solar radiation that Terra does at 1 AU.
The inverse square law of distance means that solar power is only going to be "useful" at distances that are well within a star's jump shadow ... which is less than ideal for craft that are all jump drive with no maneuver drive.
To be fair, solar power IS NUCLEAR POWER ... you're drawing power from stellar fusion (in a star) rather than building your own fusion reactor (that you can take with you wherever you go). The problem is that luminous stars pumping out lots of energy to capture by solar collectors tend to be somewhat massive, meaning large jump shadows.
So the combination just doesn't work out quite as nicely/neatly as you might want ... at least, not in a "we need to jump within the next hour" kind of time pressure demand sense that the Express Network would need.
I think the process just stops at "fudged."
It's GDW playing around with the rules they wrote, as they went along. Note the Gazelle and the Annic Nova. All three are inconsistent with the rules-as-written. That all their work gets sucked into the orbit of the Imperium could be just... gravity.
All three break something about the rules, so they are of course not standards to follow, and I think most of us (?) feel that they're not a model for anything other than THIS IS FUN, because of Loren's Rule No. 2 ("Be careful not to destroy balance of play").
In short, they used Traveller the way referees use Traveller.
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Well, the loophole with solar panelling is channelling the captured energy into a battery, which than is used to energize the jump drive.
