AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
It's perfectly consistent: If you use the j-drive or m-drive for five minutes, you must keep the power plant at that power level for four weeks.
The Xboat is a HG2 design
- Thread starter robject
- Start date
Perfectly consistent, and perfectly reasonable. Sure.
Rules-defined setting rather than rules-described setting.
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mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
The TCS power down rule makes no sense.
If power plant 1 output is required at all times for basic systems how come it isn't factored into agility calculations?
When building a HG80 ship you should need
pp1 basic systems
+pp6 for max agility
+ppN for weapons, screens and computer
for a total pp of 1+6+N
If power plant 1 output is required at all times for basic systems how come it isn't factored into agility calculations?
When building a HG80 ship you should need
pp1 basic systems
+pp6 for max agility
+ppN for weapons, screens and computer
for a total pp of 1+6+N
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Wait, you mean that Traveller DOESN'T happen in the same simulated universe as the one that we're living in? 
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
I never said anything about reasonable...
The explanation is that while combat maneuvers don't use an appreciable amount of fuel -- especially at HG rates -- over long distances/times it does add up.
The JTAS#14/TCS rule covers hiding in the outer system. Running to the outer system happens over a few days of full acceleration, and a like amount of braking. Returning takes the same.....
This isn't just a typical trip to jump limit.
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Mongoose does this, but their baseline requirement is much less than the equivalent of a HG EP.
I think the idea here is that CT power plants cannot idle down to less than Pn-1, so if you want any power at all you're getting and paying for Pn-1, like it or not.
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AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Presumably because they wanted to maintain compatibility with LBB2?
A PP-1 is enough to provide basic internal power and M-1 in all versions of CT.
If you want more detail, there is always FF&S.
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And I really ought to be able to get a better idea of the intended actual fuel burn rates from those data points.
And it works if you time it properly!
Give it 1.5 tons over the 10.16 fuel minimum.
Start with the tender backing away, and the XBoat spinning up its power plant. The power plant reaches it's full Pn-4 rating, the jump drive does it's thing, and then the power plant goes to idle at Pn-1.
Then you get to the critical part, and the reason you need a live pilot: The pilot walks over to the calendar on the bulkhead and flips it to the next page.
That Pn-4 rate burn it started out with -- using maybe half a ton or so -- is so last month. The pilot and his ship are in a brand new month now, one where the power plant is running at Pn-1. A month in which it has 4 weeks of power plant fuel...
Timing is everything.
(Variations on this can be used for other exploits of the TCS power-down rule. But really, realizing that the rule's context includes a couple of weeks of flat-out acceleration makes more of a difference than this sort of semantic tomfoolery.)
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
If there was only some way to recharge the onboard batteries and/or jump capacitors by moving through jump space.
One thing I'd considered when looking at Annic Nova was a magneto-hydro-dynamic generator driven by the jump drive exhaust. Another was that it might be extracting power from either the jump drives' waste heat or from trickling out the last dregs of whatever the collector drive collects and dumps into the jump drive.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
I don't think it can be done with a jump bubble, but if you place the turbine outside the lanthanum grid.
It's only used at start time, during the collector equivalent to the "fuel burn" phase. Power goes into capacitors, then tranferred to batteries for longer-term storage.
The generation from the drives's waste heat would use thermocouples or a sterling engine or something like that. Call it solar panels tuned for infrared radiation, that are wrapped around the drives.
Neither involve huge amounts of power, but they're using sources that are otherwise overlooked. And reasonably so -- normally, your starship has a fusion reactor, so this stuff is small potatoes.
And at the time, I was trying to justify Annic not needing a power plant (as per the old GDW description). Mongoose gave it one (as did T5), so it's non-issue if you stick to the new rules.
Actually, barring an actual T5 write-up, there is nothing in T5 requiring that the ANNIC NOVA has a Power Plant under T5 rules. Sure, Collectors can only power Jump Drives, but under T5 a Power Plant (P-Plant or equivalent) is only otherwise absolutely necessary to power Maneuver (M) Drives, which the ANNIC NOVA does not have. A G-Drive does not require one, nor do the other drive types. Standard on-board systems power and life support do not require it either of you are using decentralized power configuration with local Fusion-Plus modules, which are sufficient for all of the power needs for the ship locally for up to a year or more before needing their water-fuel tanks to be topped-off.
This has implications for other ships as well if it is equipped with Fusion Plus and configured with the decentralized power option: you can power down the power-plant long term as long as you are not planning to Jump or do any maneuvering with an M-Drive.
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