This Ship Does Not Exist (600Td, J3&J2/2G)

[Grav_Moped]

This ship does not exist.

If it did exist, it would have a 600Td (tons displacement) flattened-sphere hull, with fuel scoops. A very careful external view of the hull would show a wedge-shaped hatch that is likely sized to allow a standard Type S Scout/Courier to be carried internally. It also shows a 2G maneuver drive and exhaust nozzles sized for two jump drives -- one Jump-3, one only Jump-2. The power plant exhaust seems large for Pn-3. There is one triple laser turret, and one empty hardpoint that appears to have been repurposed as an extra airlock.

Its registration indicates that it's a TL-13 fast freighter (J5/2G) constructed 73 years ago on the far side of the Imperium -- but the drives are different, and more advanced than it had originally. Probably the drives were retrofitted at some point and the registration wasn't updated. That is, if it's even the same ship. After all, it doesn't exist.

Should you be allowed on board and be given the run of the ship (which wouldn't happen), you could tell that it had a crew of 7: Pilot, Navigator, Medic, 3 Engineers, and a Gunner, each in a single-occupancy stateroom. The ship does carry a perfectly ordinary Type S Scout Courier in a dorsal bay, but otherwise has only 1Td of cargo space. In the drive bay are two Jump Drives: one capable of Jump-3, one Jump-2 (the latter appears to be a backup unit). There is also a TL 15 Power Plant-5. Close observation of the Jump Drives reveals they can be connected by a Nexus linkage*, which is odd since those are only supposed to work with matched drives. However, if the Jump-3 drive was operated at Jump-2, the power plant could probably power them together for Jump-4 capability. The ship has fuel for a 5-parsec range, and 4 weeks of fuel at Pn-5.

Adjacent to the bridge is a very large computer, seemingly slightly larger than a Model/9. Actually, it's not -- it's a Model/9 encased in Factor 15 armor. With a mechanically-actuated explosive/electromagnetic destruction system.

If you aren't a crew member, that is what you would see, if it existed.

Here's the line-item breakdown:

Tons: MCr:  Component:
 20    3    Bridge
 13  140    Model/9 Computer
  2    0.46 Computer Armor (AV-15)
 28    3.5  7 Staterooms 
 42  168    Jump Drives (J2&J3)
 30   90    Power Plant (Pn=5, TL-15)
 30   16    Maneuver Drive (2G)
300    0    Jump Fuel
 30    0    Power Plant Fuel
  0   48    Hull (Flat Sphere)
  1    4.2  1 Turret 3xL (2 hardpoints)
  3    0.03 Fuel Processor
  0    0.6  Fuel Scoops
  1    0    Cargo
100   29.43 Type S Scout/Courier
600  471.79


LBB5 '80, TL-15.

Why all the mystery? What is he going on about with this annoying "doesn't exist" bit?

Well, if the unusual drive linkage and overkill computer (that's both heavily armored, indicating that it's extremely important, and rigged for manual destruction, meaning that they don't trust that it can be erased or shut down electronically if necessary), plus that it's 600Td with a Jump-3 and Jump-2 drive and enough power to run them simultaneously haven't given it away...

Spoiler:

It's a Hieronymus Drive ship, built by someone or some organization that had examined ANNIC NOVA, figured out its original capabilities, and re-created it with TL-15 components. (House Rules Ahead...)

It can do Jump-4, Jump-8, and Jump-9 by exponentiating the two Jump Drives (Jump-2^Jump-2 for Jump-4, J3^J2 for J8, J2^J3 for J9). Jump-5 through Jump-7 are only possible by plotting a Jump-8 trajectory through an intervening gravity well to force premature precipitation from Jump Space. Of course, the drives can do Jump-1 through Jump-3 as usual.

It's a Hop-0.9 drive, sort of -- but not really, because it works and a Hop 0.9 drive shouldn't work. Jump-9 would be TL-18 in the normal TL progression, if that progression carried through based on known jump drives.

The necessary computer programs are TL-15 Prototypes of TL-17 (Jump-8), or Experimental versions of TL-18 (Jump-9, Navigation, and Generate). Navigation (3 CPU spaces, MCr4) and Generate (3 CPU spaces, MCr8) cannot be moved out of the computer's CPU -- it's as if they're hard-coded in. Jump-8 (16 spaces, MCr4.5) and Jump-9 (27 spaces, MCr10), however, can be. [I applied T5 TL Stage Effects to the computer programs. No, I don't know if that's how it's supposed to work -- but house rules, ok?]

The Jump-8/9 programs cannot be used without the dedicated Generate and Navigate programs, and the latter two cannot be copied as they are self-modifying and state-dependent -- which is why they have to be kept in the CPU. They're also an AI, incorporating the personality/identity of a jump-space theoretician. [This is how it can be "no plans, no prototype, no backup": there was only one copy of the personality recording, and it went into the Gen/Nav program. They didn't know it would be irrevocable when they made the commit, and by then it was too late.]

The Scout/Courier is carried to help obfuscate the ship's actual jump range by visiting worlds while the mystery ship stays hidden. If necessary, it can serve as a tanker (needing 11 trips to do so).

The registration, of course, is false; additionally, both ships have re-programmable transponders.

The crew will kill to preserve the secret of the ship's range, and will destroy the computer in order to keep it from falling into the wrong hands. (The AI might object to that, though...)

Who built it? Are there more of them out there? That's up to the referee.

*borrowed from T5.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Last Spoiler Warning

It's going to be a chore to put everything in spoilers for the rest of this thread. So I'm not going to, after this post.

If you've read the first post's spoiler, this is just me expanding on the house rules for it:

Spoiler:

Hieronymus Nexus drives are a thing. MWM described them back in 2016 as a retcon for why ANNIC NOVA is the weird lovable mess of a ship we all know, and they're mentioned -- but without any characteristics -- in T5.

My interpretation of them is that they ONLY work where the Jump Number is an exponent (2^2, 2^3, 3^2) and need to be crashed into a gravity well to get any other Jn than the drives produce individually (T5 does this with FTL drives built before the tech is ready for them). It's possible at the TL for which the normal TL progression would yield that jump number (2^2 or J4 is TL 13; 2^3 or J8 is TL 17; and 3^2 or J9 is TL 18), but is pointless for the TL-14 J4 case.

My house rule here is that the computer programs to run the drives correctly are the only element that's limited by Tech Level, and that T5's TL Stage Effects can be applied to the necessary programs. In addition to the oversized high-TL jump programs, both Jump-2 and Jump-3 also have to be running at jump initiation (for Jump-9, this leaves one of the Model/9's 40 CPU slots open!)

The part about the Artificial Intelligence and needing to keep the high-tech Navigate and Generate program running is to justify a "copy protection" rule to keep the ship unique. If it could be copied, it would be, and then these things would be everywhere. But they're not, so it can't be copied and this is why.

The next step in the progression is Jump-27 (3^3). It'd be TL-36... but you get Hop Drives well before then.

 

[Grav_Moped]

This was something I started to write up maybe a year ago. Originally, it was going to be a LBB2 ship but I couldn't make everything fit, even if I put some of the crew into the Scout/Courier and used the carried ship's fuel to augment the main ship's supply. So I shelved it for a while, then decided it was ok to go with High Guard rules -- and with them, it all fits. Barely.

Also, my vision for it was that it was going to be a straight-up cargo cult replica of the original. The fuel tank would look like a giant propane cylinder above a boxy main hull, the jump drives would be in pods in the middle behind the fuel tank, and the maneuver drives would be in long pods on struts. In that version, whoever built it thought that the original's configuration had something to do with enabling the "drive performance enhancements".

The point of having a Scout/Courier instead of small craft is that the Type S could plausibly get into and out of a star system without having to answer pesky questions about the mother-ship that must have carried it there.

Customizable transponder codes make it harder to track -- which is important, because if anyone does track it on a subsector scale, it'll become obvious that it's going faster than anything should be able to go... and that won't turn out well.

 

[Condottiere]

I tend to think of them more as Zeppelins.

 

[Grav_Moped]

...
I tend to think of them more as Zeppelins.

Hmmn. I can almost see it... The Star Trek Enterprise with a dirigible replacing the disc part of the hull.

 

[Condottiere]

You could move engineering and the hangar to the saucer.