The Xboat is a HG2 design
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AnotherDilbert
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It's presumably a LBB2'77 design, slightly retouched for S7 (just as the Far Trader on p23).
They didn't even update the graphic to a m/4 computer:
It's clearly not a valid design under LBB2'81 rules...
Note that S7 was published in 1980, before LBB2'81 was...
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Spinward Flow
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Oh it's definitively a product of LBB2.77 alright.
A model/1bis computer (CPU 4/0 Storage) would be sufficient to run (LBB2.77, p12):
- Jump-1 (1 space) or Jump-2 through 4 (2 space each)
- Navigate (1 space)
XBoats were hyperspecialized enough in their use case mission role that reprogramming of their computer for an outbound jump would be handled by personnel aboard the Express Tenders when preparing an XBoat for departure.
So under LBB2.77 construction rules, XBoats were perfectly legal as a starship design.
Their jump drives were "inefficient" ... consuming 40 tons of fuel regardless of how many parsecs they were jumping (this was pre-jump governors!) ... when jumping less than 4 parsecs, but all things considered, that was a small price to pay for a design that WORKED as a J4 courier @ TL=10!
The premium model is the one with the Mod2/bis.Try model/2bis and get back to me ...
In a 100 ton starship, every ton COUNTS!
(For some reason I thought the 3 was cheaper, but it turns out that they are the same price. I think it was because the 3bis is more expensive than the 4, and I was going from memory.)
Condottiere
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If I recall the context correctly, hub and spoke would be more efficient, unless there's some (retroactive) redundancy involved with duplicating information packets.
Which is my whole point. Something has to give, or it simply can't or won't exist in-universe.
As a HG build, it's absolutely rules-compliant, but it could, and almost certainly would, have at least a token maneuver drive for practicality -- in which case it's not the canon XBoat, but a courier instead. This would change the underlying infrastructure requirements significantly, reshaping the entire network.
As a LBB2'81 build, it either has to contravene one of the three main build-rule paradigm changes made from '77 by omitting the power plant*, or allow some flexibility in the mandatory minimum power plant fuel allocation. Reverting to the '77 concept that PP fuel is almost entirely maneuver fuel, and isn't necessary for a non-maneuvering ship isn't viable because non-starships have the same fuel requirement as starships. What remains is cutting power plant fuel back to what will actually be used (and in this case, the most it could possibly use) in its designated mission. And then you end up with a ship with literally no room for even the smallest LBB2 maneuver drive, one which then matches the performance of the canon XBoat.
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* the other two are computer=Jn and PP fuel is now 4 weeks instead of 1 trip -- the revisions to the drive table are bookkeeping, not a paradigm change.
[Edits for clarity.]
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But they were not inefficient in the context of the 1977 rules!
It's even possible at TL-12, but then costs MCr14.002 extra* and loses 1Td of cargo plus either the Air/Raft or a stateroom. (Power plant, fuel processor, and losing the Standard Hull discount make the difference.)
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*before quantity discounts.
AnotherDilbert
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They avoided the problem by not even trying to reimagine the XBoat under LBB2'81 rules, but just continued to use it without detailed specification...
Just as they did in MT.
And I don't see any problem with that: Smallcraft works just fine, even if we don't have any design system for them in LBB2.
LBB2'81 small craft did have a design system: LBB5'80. They didn't bother to mention that's what they'd done, though.
As noted, it's broken in '81. Which is ok as fiat, but the implications break the build rules.
AnotherDilbert
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Sure, but if you didn't buy HG, how would you know? They would just be "magic"?
There is no design system for the smallcraft in LBB2'77, the grav vehicles in any LBB3, or the Modular Cutter in LBB2'81. Does that make them broken and unusable?
I've never seen anyone complain that the Air|raft or Modular Cutter are broken...
The rules we have describe how we do some things, not everything in the Universe. E.g. there are no collectors in CT, yet we still have the Annic Nova.
Sure, throw down a challenge like that....
Yes, so? They're still consistent with a set of design rules, even if it's not defined in LBB2'81.
'77 sort of used Size A Drives (and maybe half a Size C drive in the Shuttle?) The LBB description of the Air/Raft is insufficiently detailed to adequately reverse-engineer its components for re-use in other vehicles. On the other hand, the XBoat uses components that are well-characterized in both editions of LBB2. The Modular Cutter's only problem is that its performance without a module is undefined.
Indeed. That said, we have only one known Annic Nova, and its potential new owners may seek to keep it secret to the extent possible, after completing DA1. But, there are tens of thousands of XBoats in service, and have been for hundreds of years.
And those tens of thousands of XBoats have a capability, if grandfathered-in from '77 unmodified, that should have affected ship construction: they have Jump drives that do not use dedicated power plants, so Pn only has to match Gs for a design to be valid. This affects as a minimum the canon A2 Far Trader (after DA 6) and the Type M Subsidized Liner, which could then be less expensive and have additional payload. (It probably also affects most commercial vessels of greater than Jump-1 capability.)
Which is to say that while the rules don't explain how we do some things, they explicitly describe how we do other things. The problem I'm having here is that the rules of HG'80 and LBB2'81 describe how a starship should work, and the LBB2'77 XBoat does not work that way. The HG'80 version works, but has no good reason to just be an XBoat within a specific infrastructure rather than a courier that might not even need such an infrastructure.
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Spinward Flow
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When the RULES change ... what can (and cannot!) be done within the boundaries of those rules ALSO CHANGES ...
And (or except that) when the rules change to make something "not work" while the setting materials say "it still works," the conflict simetimes poses an interesting challenge.When the RULES change ... what can (and cannot!) be done within the boundaries of those rules ALSO CHANGES ...
[ETA] That's because the setting materials then indicate that the rules change was not intended to make it "not work." Therefore, there ought to be a reasonable interpretation of the new rules that enables it to still work.
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Spinward Flow
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For me, the distinction that TL=10 Jump Governors (LBB5.79, p32) are not "standard equipment" for LBB2.77 drives, but are "already included" in LBB5.79, LBB5.80 and LBB2.81 drives is effectively the "retcon factor" you're looking for which can make things still work.
If you're willing to accept the "limitations" built into LBB2.77 drives (no power plant needed, but consumes maximum jump fuel every time), making them "less efficient" than the later alternatives. It's the equivalent of using reel to reel tape storage in the digital age ... yes, you can do it, but there are better (later) alternatives that do things differently (which is why they're better).
Think of the LBB2.77 construction rules as being an "alternative" technology/industrial base that is more ... calcified ... rather than innovative. The tech is more compartmentalized and less interdependent, but is also less flexible as a result. Since the XBoat is perhaps the LEAST FLEXIBLE starship design in existence in all of CT, it "works as a carve out" in which building to LBB2.77 standards makes sense (within that paradigm) and doesn't invalidate anything that came along afterwards.
Interesting. I don't really accept that, but I understand it.
Where I'm coming from is that I see the rules as describing the game universe, rather than defining it. '77 describes a different universe from that which '81 does.
An extreme case of this is the 100Td 6G speedster using Size C drives (Mod/1, 1 stateroom, that's it). Say I want it as a moon rocket (assuming the Earth-Moon system as reference). The table in LBB2'81 says going 400,000km (the 384,000km actual distance, rounded up) takes 83 minutes at 6G.
So, go to the moon, offload whatever, onload whatever, and come back. Three hours total transit time, plus loiter time and any waiting before launch and after landing on the return. Say you spend an entire day there, that's about 1/30 of a month. At the LBB2'81 rate, that'll use about 2 tons of fuel if you kept the power plant running flat-out for the whole day, not just the 3 hours spent in transit.
You expect to refuel every time you return to Earth.
Why does this ship need to carry an extra 58 tons of fuel?
From the "rules define the universe" perspective, it's because the rules say so. If you have Pn-6 you must have 60 tons of fuel and none of it can be considered "extra". The fact that this would also mean you could make that same trip 27 more times in a row is a nice bonus, but really doesn't matter because the rules say you have to have 60 tons of fuel, period. And no room in the ship for anything else.
From the "rules describe the universe" perspective, there's no need for the other 58 tons of fuel. (Ok, maybe another couple of tons over and above the two tons you expect to use, in case something unexpected comes up -- but it's optional.) 60 tons for 4 weeks is 15 tons per week, or 2.14 tons per day. If you only need one day worth, you only have to have one day worth. Call it -- including a 100% fuel reserve, and round up -- 5 tons. And that allows 55Td payload in that 6G speedster.
Similarly, from a rules-defined-universe perspective, the LBB2 Drives and Power Plants table lists the only possible drives. Aliens who have never even heard of a parsec or the metric system will invariably make stardrives that correspond exactly to those drives, and no others.
From a rules-described-universe, you might see those same total aliens come up with Size A drives (because that's as small as they go), but then also have drives of every intermediate half-step (A.5, B.5, C.5, and so on) because they come out to nice round numbers in their base-whatever math system. As long as they match the formulae underlying the Drive Performance Table, they ought to work similarly.
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Spinward Flow
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This is flawed thinking.
When LBB2 is all you have then you're correct, because that's ALL YOU HAVE.
This is the inherent flaw involved in oversimplifying everything into being a table (that you have to print out) rather than being a formula (that you can do all kinds of different things with). It's the difference between arithmetic (1+2=3) and algebra (x+y=z). You can use algebra to do arithmetic, but you can't use arithmetic to do algebra ... because algebra allows variables while arithmetic doesn't.
They're both an incredibly "bounded" sandbox to play in, unlike LBB5 which is more open ended.
LBB2 provides a limited option of 24 drives to work with (A-Z) and a scant handful of hull size form factors to put them into.
It's a SIMPLE system, but it can hardly be called ... elegant.
It also ... breaks ... pretty quickly (and pretty badly) whenever you try to "draw between the lines" of what is explicitly provided. So you wind up with a kind of "walled garden" experience where you are exhorted to NOT eat from the Tree Of Knowledge™ that will lead to more interesting (and diverse) designs of starship construction.
The best way to think of it is that LBB2 is "starship design by cookie cutter" ... while LBB5 is more "freeform" and less restricted (and constrained).
Needless to say, when you mash LBB2 and LBB5 together in ways that "don't play nice with each other" ... stuff BREAKS ... rapidly.
Because first draft of rules wasn't vetted to the extent that they should have been.
When you artificially limit starship construction to arithmetic values, there are going to be "no go" edge cases you don't have to worry about, because the boundaries of the paradigm don't permit those edge cases to (reasonably) exist. It's only when you move into the more powerful/useful algebraic formula approach that the shortcomings of such shortsighted simplifications (such as the LBB2 fuel rule that you're citing) become glaringly obvious and problematic.
This is why I figure that LBB2 drives are merely "points on the continuum" of possibilities, with LBB5 laying out the formulas that define that continuum. That way, LBB2 can "go into LBB5" if you want, but the reverse won't work ... because you can use algebra to do arithmetic, but you can't use arithmetic to algebra.
1+2=3 gives you ONE answer.
x+y=z gives you ALL THE ANSWERS.
The second edition wasn't either -- or, rather, the writers prioritized backward-comptibility over rationalizing it.
Except HG doesn't use the same formulae, so it's not describing the same underlying system. The drives (and paradigm) are different.
When you make LBB2 act like HG, you get T5. When you make HG act like LBB2, you get HG'79.
...which you have to turn into HG'80 almost immediately because... oof.
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And Mongoose came closest to HG-izing LBB2, aside from, well, being different because they're Mongoose.
