Topics Enjoying 30 Years of Discussion

[infojunky]

Yea, the Carrier most definitely is not lit up like a Christmas tree. It's a dark hole in the water. The pickets and screening ships are the ones shouting and searching. If anything is lit up like a Christmas tree and saying "Look at me, I'm an aircraft carrier", that's likely a destroyer trying to attract cruise missiles.

Hum, it’s radars are active durning flight operations, as are it’s radios. Not to mention the big 3d air search Radars, having stood Lookout watch above the bridge on a bird farm you could tell when the big boy was operating, which is most of the time.

In MT terms the best thing they introduced was active and passive EMS sensors, they fit in with sensors as described in CT.

 

[aramis]

You forgot Female Asian in Comfortable Shoes.

And CaniBilani vs VegeBilani...

 

[Grav_Moped]

You forgot Female Asian in Comfortable Shoes.

Wait. Of course they'd wear comfortable shoes. Aslan are an advanced, spacefaring species, and the females are their more practical gender. Obviously, the shoes would be designed for leonine hindpaws, but --

Oh, right. "Kitten heels."

 

[whartung]

Hum, it’s radars are active durning flight operations, as are it’s radios. Not to mention the big 3d air search Radars, having stood Lookout watch above the bridge on a bird farm you could tell when the big boy was operating, which is most of the time.

Most of the time the carrier is not being hunted. Things are a lot easier with air and sea superiority.

With all of the work going into Chinese anti-shipping missiles, the carriers best defense is the enemy not knowing where they are. In the 80's the nightmare scenario was 50 Backfire bombers with 6 cruise missile each flying over the horizon and saturating the battle group from 200 miles out. There were definitely "wild weasel" DDs designed to attract these missiles away from the quiet carrier.

 

[Condottiere]

There's always the scenario from Red Storm Rising, where the Soviets feint with drones to draw out the American air defence missiles, under cover of massive jamming, and then the second wave being the actual anti ship missiles.

 

[G. Kashkanun Anderson]

Xboats - Originally Broken

The Xboat is a gee-whiz invention of early classic Traveller: a starship with no power plant. This was allowed in the earliest rules, but was quickly changed.

As AnotherDilbert (upthread) points out, this was never the case in the '77 rules; but there's more to it than even that.

Clearly a grandfathered design that works by means unknown. The process for creating a ship without a power plant is not present in current rules systems.

Never grandfathered, and not broken in its original introduction. XBoats are mentioned as early as the Spinward Marches supplement ('79), but they are not described with any technical detail until JTAS #6, which was published in October 1980, and it says there (on page 12) that:

Space is so cramped aboard the xboats that they do not even contain maneuver drives.

And that's it. No mention of power plants at all. Only the missing maneuver drives.

What's more, just three pages later, on page 15 of that same issue (in the High Guard '80 pullout supplement), it says that:

All ships require power plants.

In other words, the XBoat is first described to us after Book '77 shipbuilding rules have been amended by High Guard (2nd edition!), and concurrently with the reiteration that power plants are required equipment on all starships.

It was later that year, at the very end of 1980, when Traders and Gunboats came out, that XBoats are first described as being power plant-less, at least as far as official publications are concerned.

 

[robject]

It was later that year, at the very end of 1980, when Traders and Gunboats came out, that XBoats are first described as being power plant-less, at least as far as official publications are concerned.

That's a useful summary.

I suppose Book 2 '77 would make it painfully clear that the Xboat cannot have a Power Plant. Let's try it out.

[5] A power plant, to provide power for one trip (internal power, maneuver drive power, and other necessities) requires fuel in accordance with the formula: 10Pn.

ONE TRIP?? Does that mean what I think it means?

(100 tons): STANDARD 100 TON HULL.
  15 tons: Jump drive B (J-4). This fills the engine room.
  40 tons: Jump drive fuel.
  20 tons: Bridge with basic controls, comms, and sensors.
   2 tons: Computer Model/2 (is that enough?)
   8 tons: Two staterooms.

Looks like we still have 15 tons free.
However, the jump drive does fill up the STANDARD HULL's engine room, leaving no room for a power plant.

 

[kilemall]

In fact, basis should be reality as we know it, and how rules try to adapt it.

Ummm. No.

Traveller is not a hard space sim it’s a golden age sci-fi story sim.

If your ‘story’ is one of hard science then certainly. However if it’s something more dramatic in a conventional or space opera sense, that’s playing and running the game right too.

Entertainment choice, not one reality diktat.

 

[Grav_Moped]

ONE TRIP?? Does that mean what I think it means?

In '77, it was pretty much explicitly maneuver fuel.

 

[Condottiere]

If I recall correctly, the lanthanum grid has to be powered for the entirety of the transition, besides accounting for life support and the electric can opener.

So unless the ecks boat was harvesting static electricity in the warp, that would be grounds for an early exit, and possibly, crew pining for the fjords.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Jump Capacitors/Batteries are charged up by the Express Tender prior to the XBoat undocking ready for jump.
That "battery power" is sufficient for 10 days of life support operations (still EP=0 as far as CT is concerned).

The lanthanum jump grid requires full power to enter jump space, but after that the craft just "coast" on essentially "jump inertia/momentum" (for lack of a better descriptor) with no extra power required until breakout. It's not like the jump drive requires continuous power to "keep the ship in jump" for the duration. If it did, you'd have a hyperdrive/warp drive that would allow you to drop out of hyperspace/warp at any point along the journey since all you would need to do is shut off the power to the grid to "drop to impulse" at any point along your flight path. A Jump-4 drive could transit 1 parsec in 2 days, for example, if the hyperdrive/warp drive requires continuous power supply to achieve FTL.

that would be grounds for an early exit, and possibly, crew pining for the fjords.

That doesn't seem to be how jump drives "work" in a Traveller universe context (pick one).

 

[whulorigan]

The lanthanum jump grid requires full power to enter jump space, but after that the craft just "coast" on essentially "jump inertia/momentum" (for lack of a better descriptor) with no extra power required until breakout. It's not like the jump drive requires continuous power to "keep the ship in jump" for the duration.

Per T5 (and some earlier iterations of Traveller) the jump grid/bubble needs to be continuously powered during the week in jumpspace in order to maintain a safe "normal-space physics" field around the ship so that it is not destroyed by direct interaction with the physics of the jumpspace-dimension. It is true that you do not need power on the order of the "burst" of power utilized at Jump-initiation, but the field-grid or field-bubble still needs to be powered and maintained with some small amount of power during the "coasting" phase thru jumpspace or the ship will be lost.

 

[Grav_Moped]

In LBB2 '77 and maybe MgT, the ship construction and fuel use rules suggest there isn't a continuing need for power after Jumpspace entry. All other rules suggest there is, though perhaps not if the jump is collector-powered.

 

[robject]

In LBB2 '77 and maybe MgT, the ship construction and fuel use rules suggest there isn't a continuing need for power after Jumpspace entry. All other rules suggest there is, though perhaps not if the jump is collector-powered.

I think 1977 rules is where we get the idea that the jump drive powers itself and/or maintains the jump.

DGP's Starship Operator's Manual ran with that theory:

[12] Entering jumpspace requires large amounts of energy. A special high-yield fusion power plant incorporated within the jump drive itself provides this energy. The jump drive power plant consumes copious quantities of fuel very quickly in order to charge the energy sinks (typically zuchai crystals) with high-grade energy in preparation for the jump transition.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Could be something as simple as needing "1.21 gigawatts" (or so) to enter jumpspace ... but there may need to be a residual trickle charge of (say...) 1 watt per ton of starship displacement that needs to be continuously supplied to the jump grid in order to "stay on course" and not "slide off the track" into a misjump situation. Basically, the jump grid doesn't get shut off "cold" to power supply, but the power supply required is so trivial that Traveller rules mostly just handwave the consideration away (so as to get on with the good stuff).

 

[Condottiere]

As I recall, when I asked specifically about what happens to the power requirement, when for some reason the calculations didn't kosher up, I was definitely told that the jump drive switches off after transition, and since it was a Mongosian jump bubble, that seemed plausible.

The other aspect is life support, which in theory you can isolate, and with enough preparations, might be switched off until during transition, but it seems unlikely that the courier pilot union would tolerate that, nor their passengers.

 

[Spinward Flow]

it seems unlikely that the courier pilot union would tolerate that, nor their passengers.

"We jumped ya to the system yuz wan'ed to git tuh."
"Life support? That's extry. Did yuz plus up yer tickit?"
"No?"
"Well, yuz gots whats yuz paid fer ... as per contract."

 

[Condottiere]

That's RyanAerospace.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I think 1977 rules is where we get the idea that the jump drive powers itself and/or maintains the jump.

Yes. There is no explicit fuel requirement for the power plant (or, indeed, a requirement for the power plant itself except when a maneuver drive is present) in '77. MgT (apparently following that lead) only requires power on jump initiation, and its overhead power requirements (life support, gravity, electronics) are the same for non-starships as for starships.

 

[Grav_Moped]

That's RyanAerospace.

Well, except for the "got you to the system you wanted to get to" part.