Emergency Beacon Detection Range

[Terry Mixon]

For @Arkathan from DR #4.

 

[Arkathan]

At least it means the annoying less than 4 weeks of fuel warning could go away.

Next update, Small Craft Rule in use will disable the warning.

 

[Terry Mixon]

And some from DR #5, @Arkathan.

 

[Terry Mixon]

To see how things would need to change if 1 pp was the floor (which I do not concede), I made some variants of my life pods and bumped size to get equivalent longevity.

The 1-ton single person life pod as designed. It uses one of my custom single-person AutoBerths. It draws a whopping .2 power. Cost with discount: KCr390.15.


The bumped up 3-ton single person life pod with the purportedly mandated 1 pp. Cost with discount: KCr 507.15.



A price increase of KCr117. Not awful, but I dislike taking three times the space.

The 2-ton five-person life pod. It uses one of my custom emergency AutoBerths. It draws .7 power points (I see no reason to draw ten times the power of a single person berth. 5 people = .5 pp for my designs.). Cost with discount: KCr563.26.



The bumped up 2.5-ton five-person life pod. Cost with discount: KCr 601.51.



A price increase of KCr38.25. Not painful, but I again dislike taking a 20% bump in space. Nothing much bigger would run into any issues.

 

[Condottiere]

I like taking a more conservative approach.

Minimum size of a spacecraft is five tonnes, so basics default to one power point. You can salami that to a quarter point if the hull is ungravitated, and minimum power requirement.

Minimum size has been stated in an official publication, so that is the minimum I stick with.

If the revised Vehicles has the same power output for the power density as spacecraft, and presumably in a fusion powered electrical scooter, then it demonstrably scales equally.

 

[Terry Mixon]

I like taking a more conservative approach.

Minimum size of a spacecraft is five tonnes, so basics default to one power point. You can salami that to a quarter point if the hull is ungravitated, and minimum power requirement.

Minimum size has been stated in an official publication, so that is the minimum I stick with.

If the revised Vehicles has the same power output for the power density as spacecraft, and presumably in a fusion powered electrical scooter, then it demonstrably scales equally.

If pods had motive power, I'd build them with the minimum size of a ship. Life pods are really the only thing I go smaller than five tons on because that just makes sense. Bigger and you get movement and a lifeboat.

 

[swordtart]

Of course since it is not a ship, just a hull then maybe you can treat it like a Hab module and fit one of the small capacity power generators from CSC?

Haaaaabs in spaaaaaace!

Just sayin'

 

[swordtart]

If pods had motive power, I'd build them with the minimum size of a ship. Life pods are really the only thing I go smaller than five tons on because that just makes sense. Bigger and you get movement and a lifeboat.

How are you storing and launching these life pods? Are they in a docking space. If so you are wasting most of a DTon as the docking space is 10% but a minimum of 1 DTon. You might as well have a 10 Dton thing and get the most space available. Maybe this could be a modular thing that carries multiple pods, but I think 10 Ship with several of the the multi occupancy Mixoncorp low berths would make more sense.

As a Re-entry pod is just 1 Dton and can take two people it doesn't seem outrageous to me that you could replace that second person with a low berth type robot and a very long lived CSC type power plant just to keep the robot charged up. It can drift in space for years and if it finds a habitable planet wake the passenger so they can conditionally direct it to boost-coast into atmosphere and land.

There isn't much read across between the various book for the various plants. We are asked to believe that ship fusion plants can produce a minimum of 1 power (based on one book) and will take up at best 1/20th of a DTon (0.7 cubic metres) (not including fuel), vehicles plants take up 10 spaces which would be 5 shipping Dtons alone. In CSC a fusion reactor can be as little as 10kg (which includes 5kg of fuel) which will last 20 months of operation. That CSC reactor is capable of running a large family home, a 5 module hab or charging a light vehicle (which would require a 10 space fusion reactor from its own book). I am not sure what 10kg is in volume but I could believe it could fit into 1/100 of a DTon (a cube approx 0.5m on a side).

I am therefore happy that the CSC and HG are at least operating at the same order of magnitude, but the Vehicle Handbook is an outlier in many regards. For comparison a starship type low berth is 2 vehicles spaces. Also TL12 fusion plants are supposed to have become ubiquitous and yet the highest tech fusion plant in the book is TL10 and it minimum is the same volume as 5 low berths which would be 2.5DTon. Except the shipping tonnage is usually 0.5 ton per space (so a low berth is 1 DTon not 0.5) and is 1 ton = 1DTon as they could be very different things.

Hopefully Geir will fix at least some of this in the new Vehicle book

 

[Terry Mixon]

How are you storing and launching these life pods? Are they in a docking space. If so you are wasting most of a DTon as the docking space is 10% but a minimum of 1 DTon. You might as well have a 10 Dton thing and get the most space available. Maybe this could be a modular thing that carries multiple pods, but I think 10 Ship with several of the the multi occupancy Mixoncorp low berths would make more sense.

As a Re-entry pod is just 1 Dton and can take two people it doesn't seem outrageous to me that you could replace that second person with a low berth type robot and a very long lived CSC type power plant just to keep the robot charged up. It can drift in space for years and if it finds a habitable planet wake the passenger so they can conditionally direct it to boost-coast into atmosphere and land.

There isn't much read across between the various book for the various plants. We are asked to believe that ship fusion plants can produce a minimum of 1 power (based on one book) and will take up at best 1/20th of a DTon (0.7 cubic metres) (not including fuel), vehicles plants take up 10 spaces which would be 5 shipping Dtons alone. In CSC a fusion reactor can be as little as 10kg (which includes 5kg of fuel) which will last 20 months of operation. That CSC reactor is capable of running a large family home, a 5 module hab or charging a light vehicle (which would require a 10 space fusion reactor from its own book). I am not sure what 10kg is in volume but I could believe it could fit into 1/100 of a DTon (a cube approx 0.5m on a side).

I am therefore happy that the CSC and HG are at least operating at the same order of magnitude, but the Vehicle Handbook is an outlier in many regards. For comparison a starship type low berth is 2 vehicles spaces. Also TL12 fusion plants are supposed to have become ubiquitous and yet the highest tech fusion plant in the book is TL10 and it minimum is the same volume as 5 low berths which would be 2.5DTon. Except the shipping tonnage is usually 0.5 ton per space (so a low berth is 1 DTon not 0.5) and is 1 ton = 1DTon as they could be very different things.

Hopefully Geir will fix at least some of this in the new Vehicle book

I'm getting cafinated and have other tasks to do at this morning but will come back to this once I can and see what I think when I can think. Thanks.

 

[MasterGwydion]

As has been repeatedly stated, the "fuel" used on a weekly basis is actually reactor coolant. The Stirling plant is sealed, eliminating the need to replace lost coolant, and thereby proving the previous sentence to be true.
TL 6: Coolant is lost because the chemistry needs to be carefully controlled in order to avoid corrosion.
Radioactive action tends to make a hydrogenated coolant acidic. This is not conducive to the continued function of the heat exchanger tubes, which are thinner than a cheap piece of copier paper. You bleed some of that off and treat it with a basic pH additive. Same goes for the steam generation side if they are separate loops.

If this is the case, then Mongoose needs to stop calling it "fuel" if it is not fuel! We have enough issues with trying to understand 40+ years history without improperly using words. Does this mean that jump "fuel" is not fuel either? If not, then why call it fuel if it doesn't fuel anything???

 

[Arkathan]

If this is the case, then Mongoose needs to stop calling it "fuel" if it is not fuel! We have enough issues with trying to understand 40+ years history without improperly using words. Does this mean that jump "fuel" is not fuel either? If not, then why call it fuel if it doesn't fuel anything???

Well, water is raw fuel, so there it kind of makes sense... but I suspect the real reason is to put a rule into one paragraph rather than two.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Well, water is raw fuel, so there it kind of makes sense... but I suspect the real reason is to put a rule into one paragraph rather than two.

So, try and save space, but instead only create confusion. Not a great plan.

Raw water is unrefined fuel, the same way that oil is unrefined gasolene. Put oil in your gas tank and see if it still counts as fuel. There are some things that can run on oil straight out of the ground, but it is still not considered "fuel" in its general usage. Trees are fuel. people are fuel. Animals are fuel. If everything is fuel, then the word means nothing, and We need to find a different word and start using that.

 

[boggo2300]

seems counterprocuctive to change the name it's had since 1977 to one that will make it more confusing and difficult to understand for the majority of people who don't have an understanding on how nuclear reactors work. Rules need to be simple enough to understand to not make casual or new players read them and put the book down to never pick it up again. especially since there is no reason to believe that later non-fission reactors DON'T use it as fuel

 

[Geir]

Raw water is unrefined fuel, the same way that oil is unrefined gasolene.

Not necessarily the same as oil->gasoline. But... While water might only be 1/9 hydrogen, it is still a almost as dense a way of storing hydrogen as liquid hydrogen. (Almost said better, but LH2 is 2 hydrogen, so that, if my math is almost right, makes LH2 9/7 as good as water. Not going to try to compute it for liquid methane or ammonia because I'm supposed to be working right now...)

 

[MasterGwydion]

Not necessarily the same as oil->gasoline. But... While water might only be 1/9 hydrogen, it is still a almost as dense a way of storing hydrogen as liquid hydrogen. (Almost said better, but LH2 is 2 hydrogen, so that, if my math is almost right, makes LH2 9/7 as good as water. Not going to try to compute it for liquid methane or ammonia because I'm supposed to be working right now...)

My point being, one is refined, the other is not. Also, no matter how much hydrogen that water has, it won't run an internal combustion engine. If you "refine" it first and separate the oxygen and the hydrogen it can, but with just water, it can do nothing.

 

[boggo2300]

Not necessarily the same as oil->gasoline. But... While water might only be 1/9 hydrogen, it is still a almost as dense a way of storing hydrogen as liquid hydrogen. (Almost said better, but LH2 is 2 hydrogen, so that, if my math is almost right, makes LH2 9/7 as good as water. Not going to try to compute it for liquid methane or ammonia because I'm supposed to be working right now...)

There are also Multi-fuel engines that can actually work with either refined petroleum or anything lighter than crude as fuel

 

[boggo2300]

My point being, one is refined, the other is not. Also, no matter how much hydrogen that water has, it won't run an internal combustion engine. If you "refine" it first and separate the oxygen and the hydrogen it can, but with just water, it can do nothing.

fuel<>petroleum

 

[MasterGwydion]

seems counterprocuctive to change the name it's had since 1977 to one that will make it more confusing and difficult to understand for the majority of people who don't have an understanding on how nuclear reactors work. Rules need to be simple enough to understand to not make casual or new players read them and put the book down to never pick it up again. especially since there is no reason to believe that later non-fission reactors DON'T use it as fuel

So, you'd rather every new player to the game have to learn an entirely new English language (where fuel means coolant or several other things) because us "old guys" couldn't be bothered to actually use correct language? That makes no sense if you are looking to the future of gaming instead of the past.

Hey! Who wants to learn to play Traveller? Just remember kids. Fuel means coolant, Population could mean anything, and Bandwidth is a nonsense term that means nothing at all. That is just the tip of the iceberg.

 

[MasterGwydion]

There are also Multi-fuel engines that can actually work with either refined petroleum or anything lighter than crude as fuel

Does it work if I pour water or anti-freeze in the tank?

 

[boggo2300]

Does it work if I pour water or anti-freeze in the tank?

no, and neither will a traveller power plant.