2000 J4 Drop Tank Cargo Hauler

[phavoc]

I agree that the rule is not perfectly clear. I see it as another condition on the ships streamlining:

SHIP CONFIG         WITH DROP TANKS
Unstreamlined       Unstreamlined
Partially           Partially
Streamlined         Partially

so a ship with drop tanks can be partially streamlined, at best, not guaranteed.

A chart like this is quite useful, and would help with ambiguity. It is an EXCELLENT IDEA (hints to the powers that be...)

Partial streamlining means that the ship can enter atmospheres, hence it can skim fuel.

Partial streamlining allows a ship to skim gas giants and enter Atmosphere codes of 3 or less, acting in the same way as streamlined ships. In other atmospheres, the ship will be ponderous and unresponsive, reliant on its thrusters to keep it aloft. All Pilot checks will be made with DM-2.

Nowhere is it stated or implied that drop tanks are so fragile that they will fall off or disintegrate at a gust of wind. Aircraft drop tanks today can withstand a few G and a full atmosphere. The Imperium has had 3000 years to refine the concept.

The issue here is that a drop tank attaches by a collar, implying that one end of it is secure. At no place in the description (or analogy) of the drop tank are we led to believe these are equivalent to the conformal fuel tanks that say an F-15 carries. As I understand the description, the drop tanks are meant to be the cheapest way to add fuel, NOT functionality, to a ship. And you would think if you are tacking on, in some cases, 30-40% of the TOTAL tonnage of a vessel on an external mount, it's going to impact the operation of the vessel. Plus when you are in space you really only have to worry about the tank being connected via the collar for acceleration purposes. When you enter a gravity field things change dramatically. And a ships internal anti-gravity field doesn't extend beyond it's hull. A drop tank isn't part of the ship, and therefore logically should not get any of the advantages of a grav field. Could you crank it up to do so? Sure, maybe.

It's also stated nowhere that drop tanks ARE robust and capable of all these things. I'm assuming that if they are are built to be as cheap as possible they have the minimal necessary structural integrity to do the job. And the job is to get a ship from one system to another, in a zero-g environment. It's quite different if you are trying to take them into an atmosphere with you.

This is not how drop tanks have ever worked in Traveller. You want to change them to something more fragile. That is your prerogative.

Actually I'm not too far off from canon there. What I'm trying to do is to put them in their proper place. It's been cited enough that aircraft have drop tanks, and we have used that analogy to describe form, function and cost. But do you notice that no LARGE aircraft uses them (aside from the B-58 Hustler with it's multi-purpose centerline hub). No civilian airliner uses them - they use internal tanks or stop and get fuel. No large military transport uses them - they stop and get fuel or get refueled in mid-air. I'm also stumped at coming up with any major naval combatant that has ever followed this same thought process. The only ones I can think of are single-purpose ships, such as river monitors, or some of the other specialized craft that exist for very singular and specific purposes. Everything else follows the normal design parameters.

To draw a similar equivalent, the LASH concept in the 60s was thought as 'the way' to revolutionize cargo transport. Except the discovered that what seemed really neat and cool and efficient on paper didn't hold up to the test of reality, nor could it keep up with other changes, the biggest being containerization for break-bulk cargo.

So if we want to continue the analogy, drop tanks aren't used outside of small fighter craft. And canonical designs (TCS not withstanding), the NORM is the usage of internal fuel for all standard operations, with drop tanks being the exception. My suggestions still allow for drop tanks, but it removes the incentive to convert as much as possible (and reduces the liklihood of people making fleets of Cortes class ships. TCS did, if I recall correctly, fix the holes that drop tanks made. As cited earlier, the winner looked for rules loopholes to exploit.

We are all free to do as we choose in our group's gaming universe. But I prefer we all start with a good rule base upon which to deviate from.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

My last statement in this debate:
Spacecraft with large reusable drop tank:

 

[phavoc]

My last statement in this debate:
Spacecraft with large reusable drop tank:

...That's never been re-used. And has a whole host of limitations attached to it (while attached to the shuttle). There were certainly suggestions on how the tanks might be re-used in orbit, yet as we saw over the decades, exactly zero came to fruition. Sad, some were pretty interesting.