16 G small craft not possible

[DFW]

I was going to design a 16 G Small craft. So, I check the drive potential table. 30 ton hull with sZ
M-drive is the only combo that gives 16G Acceleration. I check the drive tables and it is only possible to build using low tech rocket drives not, modern M-drives. Did I miss some errata or, did they just screw up when they wrote the rules?

 

[far-trader]

Not having run the full design I don't think they necessarily screwed up, nor that it is impossible. Just as you noted it is only possible for reaction drive ships. Rockets are GO!

...looking at it though I wonder, would people think it a cheat to have a blended thruster ship?

Say (for example*) a 30ton 16G craft with sQ grav thrusters and matched fusion power (15.3tons) for 10G cruising and a (calculated sZ-sQ) reaction rocket (4.25tons, plus fuel of course) and fusion power 1-sB (1.5tons) to boost to 16G?

Total drives of 21.05tons leaving 8.95tons for the fuel and the rest of the ship. Seems good to me. The booster rockets are over-tonnage (4.25t v 2.25t) and over-cost (MCr8.5 v MCr4.5) of the performance added (6G drive sJ) which would seem a reasonable compromise.

* other breaks could be done, the trade-offs being endurance over volume and maybe cost

 

[DFW]

Interesting idea far trader. That should be possible ... hmm.

 

[phavoc]

Question is could the grav compensators take care of that? People can take 8-9 Gs for short periods, but since a combat turn is 6 minutes long, you don't really get the ability to maneuver an entire turn at 16g.

Now if you intended for this to be unmanned, that would work.

As for the hybrid, you could a much smaller drive in there to get from point A to B, and use the reaction drives for combat only. Which would help to keep your fuel supply small.

 

[middenface]

I had a similiar issue, I wanted a hotrod 'ludicrous' speed thing... I think if you apply TL weight saving you can just about do it.... not sure..

Rockets sounds better and cooler...

 

[SSWarlock]

Hybrid thrust engineering is definitely allowed in Traveller. Supplement 6: Scoundrel specifically details the use of a "High-Burn Thruster" for boosting a ship's M-Drive performance (see page 88). No details on whether or not the additional thrust is covered by the ship's inertial compensation. IMTU, I've ruled it's not..YMMV.

 

[DFW]

No details on whether or not the additional thrust is covered by the ship's inertial compensation. IMTU, I've ruled it's not..YMMV.

I agree. IMU the compensation is tied into the grav drive. Would need accelerator couches and what not.

 

[locarno24]

IMU the compensation is tied into the grav drive

Makes sense; there's no reason to create additional pieces of magical tech if you don't have to.

I had a similiar issue, I wanted a hotrod 'ludicrous' speed thing... I think if you apply TL weight saving you can just about do it.... not sure..

Rockets sounds better and cooler...

Frankly, the only practical use for a 16G craft (short of some sort of super-heavy long ranged missile)
is a racing craft. In either case, long-term endurance isn't really a problem so reaction drives are probably fine. It makes sense to me as an outgrowth of current concepts, too; rockets give you high-G but low total impulse burns, higher tech devices (ion drives are about it at the moment) give you lower accelerations but higher effective speed as they burn for days on end.