boggo2300
Cosmic Mongoose
99.99999999999% of players don't give a damn, it acts like the fuel you put in your car, cool lets call it FUEL! job done just like every day since 1977
Emergency Beacon Detection Range
- Thread starter Terry Mixon
- Start date
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Just do it by maths.
14 cubic metres of liquid hydrogen is 1,000kg of hydrogen, doesn't matter if it is atoms or molecules or metallic.
14 cubic metres of water is 14,000kg of which 2/18 or 1/9 is hydrogen ~ 1,556 kg half again as much as liquid hydrogen by mass.
Liquid water is a much more efficient way to transport hydrogen if volume is the key factor.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
There's always the potato.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
It will, water has always been one of the unrefined fuels that you can send to your engines - they used to have a higher chance of drive failure or misjump. Methane, ammonia, ethane, ethanol, anything with a high hydrogen content could be used as unrefined fuel.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
This is factually incorrect. You can totally use unrefined fuel in your power plant. Just ask the rest of the old-timers in here. Refined fuel is only needed for a jump drive. I am pretty sure that Traveller even considers raw sewage to be "Unrefined Fuel"
boggo2300
Cosmic Mongoose
Well I screwed up both ways, of course water will work in a power plant that IS unrefined fuel. and a multi-fuel will run on anti-freeze, not well but they certainly will, my excuse 2AM and I'm more exhausted than I should be writing on forums!
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
My car will work without coolant. It will not work without gasolene. Without fuel, the car won't even start. Without coolant it will, but I wouldn't recommend it.
By this description that means that I can run a ship with no fuel as long as I have coolant. But if fuel is coolant? What is the actual fuel? Is it valuable? Is it traded? Can a planet be blockaded from getting it or is it extremely abundant.Your players may not give a damn and like being spoon-fed their adventures. Any players who actually like to use their brains and come up with novel solutions to problems or enjoy sandbox campaigns. Selling unrefined "coolant" for 100Cr a ton or cornering the market on one world for whatever is actually used as fuel. Can't do it if you don't know what it is.
boggo2300
Cosmic Mongoose
for one thing @Arkathan was talking about 1 specific type of TL-6 Fission reactor, not every powerplant in the game all of which the more commonly used ones are speculative. the Fuel in a fission reactor is the fissionable material... that lasts basically what 10 years in a Naval reactor? you are taking one edge case, mentioned by someone with first hand knowledge of one VERY rare (in the game) powerplant and conflating it with every other powerplant and for some reason conflating reactor cooling with car anti-freeze.My car will work without coolant. It will not work without gasolene. Without fuel, the car won't even start. Without coolant it will, but I wouldn't recommend it.
Your players may not give a damn and like being spoon-fed their adventures. Any players who actually like to use their brains and come up with novel solutions to problems or enjoy sandbox campaigns. Selling unrefined "coolant" for 100Cr a ton or cornering the market on one world for whatever is actually used as fuel. Can't do it if you don't know what it is.
In Traveller, Hydrogen fuel, unrefined AND refined acts like fuel in every way that matters, I have NEVER played with anyone that has difficulty with that concept.
And I guarantee none of my players EVER will tell you I spoon feed them anything.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
See the post from someone other than Me above that stated that fuel, was coolant. Reactor coolant and coolant in a cars coolant system are all coolants. You are making the same assumption about the word fuel even though they are not being used the same way.
Really? How so? Does it power the jump drive like it does in a power plant? No? Coolant and fuel and not remotely the same thing. One removes energy from a system, the other is used to create energy.
As I do not know any of your players, I cannot comment, but I will say that if they don't know any better, that is not saying much.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
I tend to think that unrefined fuel will likely gunk up the plumbing.
We could try adding additives.
We could try adding additives.
I think it is the additives that are the problem. Whet we need are subtractives
Geir
Emperor Mongoose
Yes, you're right.
That's what I get for overthinking it. Or not thinking it correctly.
And ammonia appears to be the winner when it comes to the mass of hydrogen in one dton (about 1,685 kg).
So, as long as M-drives only care about volume, completely raw fuels from ices, oceans, or gas giants are likely able to be stored in the same size tanks as those allocated for liquid hydrogen. Unless you're using reaction rockets - then you're screwed because of the mass difference. Though there needs to be some sort of distillation or disassociation process that occurs prior to it being dumped into a fusion drive (or spit out for jump?). And then a lot of nitrogen to vent. Or carbon, or oxygen, or a bit of each. Hmm. If anything there should be a requirement for equipment (beyond scoops) to even operate on unrefined fuel... but I digress. Or regress.
The SOM doesn't seem to talk about the process at all, but at least it is fairly acceptable to think of the entirely unrefined stuff to be sitting in the same sized tanks as refined fuel. I could even see some sort of membrane (soft expandable tank material) expanding or contracting in the tanks to accommodate a growing percentage of refined fuel as the crude stuff cycles through the refinery.
Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
I still haven’t sat down to look at this in more detail, but I could get about the extra ton of docking space by making the escape pod .9 tons. Then the extra ten percent take it to 1 ton.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 thought it was the extra space required for the docking space that needed to be rounded up to a DTon not the combined space.I still haven’t sat down to look at this in more detail, but I could get about the extra ton of docking space by making the escape pod .9 tons. Then the extra ten percent take it to 1 ton.
Personally I don't have an issue with doing everything in fractional DTons rather than constantly rounding things up. That is a handy convention if you are building things with pen and paper, but these things are going to be built with spreadsheets so keeping track of decimal DTons isn't really an issue.
There are few cases where rounding up could be considered necessary because of some physical properly and if things have a minimum size it should be stated rather than implied. If a docking space has to be a minimum of 1 DTon because of personnel access requirements then fine, but that doesn't preclude it from being 1.1 Dtons.
Here's a bit if handy rules lawyering for you. You can have fractional DTon PPs. So if you only need 1 Power, rather than install 0.1 DTon of TL8 powerplant RAW says a 0.01 DTon of TL 8 plant which produces 0.1 power can be made Very Advanced at TL10 and only extra 25% costa and it will have 1 power as the 10% increase is rounded up. You could use the same dodge with a 0.000000000001 DTon power plant. This is clearly not legit or as intended and wouldn't even be considered without that slavish obsession with rounding things to whole DTons when other components that have been in the game since Adam was a small boy are already fractions of a DTon (e.g. low berth).
Free your minds, embrace the fraction
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Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
I thought it was the extra space required for the docking space that needed to be rounded up to a DTon not the combined space.
Personally I don't have an issue with doing everything in fractional DTons rather than constantly rounding things up. That is a handy convention if you are building things with pen and paper, but these things are going to be built with spreadsheets so keeping track of decimal DTons isn't really an issue.
There are few cases where rounding up could be considered necessary because of some physical properly and if things have a minimum size it should be stated rather than implied. If a docking space has to be a minimum of 1 DTon because of personnel access requirements then fine, but but that doesn't preclude it from being 1.1 Dtons.
Here's a bit if handy rules lawyering for you. You can have fractional DTon PPs. So if you only need 1 Power, rather than install 0.1 DTon of TL8 powerplant RAW says a 0.01 DTon of TL 8 plant which produces 0.1 power can be made Very Advanced at TL10 and only extra 25% costa and it will have 1 power as the 10% increase is rounded up. You could use the same dodge with a 0.000000000001 DTon power plant. This is clearly not legit or as intended and wouldn't even be considered without that slavish obsession with rounding things to whole DTons when other components that have been in the game since Adam was a small boy are already fractions of a DTon (e.g. low berth).
Free your minds, embrace the fraction
Seems to say 10% of the craft (bolded) and it can be smaller than 1 ton as a vehicle according to the italicized part. Docking spaces for grav bikes? Doable, I believe, so an escape pod of .9 tons should work as well.
I think you are misinterpreting that. The shipping size for an Air Raft (for example) is 4 Tons, but docking space for air rafts is 5 DTons. The shipping size is the size of the craft to which you add 10% (rounding up) to get the docking space (4 Shipping tons +10% = 4.4 DTon rounded to 5 Dton.
It's a similar argument in my mind as the docking clamp. Does that 1DTon for a Type 1 include some personnel access. I am fine with an awkward hatch (which would be the same as for a life pod). How much space do you actually need to move a human through, especially if the access tube is short and just drops you into a crew/passenger compartment.
Assault capsules do not need docking space, and they cannot be much smaller than a low berth, so why cannot any other small craft take up whatever its shipping space (or hull size) be in a launch tube on the Hull with minimal extra space for an access tube to the interior. A 0.75m diameter tube would be plenty in my mind and if it could be 3 metres long and still take up less than 0.1 DTon. No self respecting passenger would consent for this to be their normal form of access (it might crumple their fascinator), but for getting the heck out of dodge and for crewmember it would be perfectly acceptable for occasional use.
I had assumed that these sorts of things already existed for maintenance of other components and were including in their DTonnage.
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Terry Mixon
Emperor Mongoose
I wasn't stating that it was the actual weight. Only that a smaller craft, like a g/bike (I didn't bring up air/rafts), would fall below the line for a roundup to the next full ton. As it is stated below, that .5 tons shipping, would be .6 when adding ten percent, and then rounding up to the next full ton, so 1 ton for a docking space for a g/bike. The same for a .9-ton escape pod. Adds ten percent to 1 ton, no need to round up.
Ah, apologies I misunderstood your point then. I think we are in agreement, except I might be even more evangelical about abandoning the tyranny of the integer
"What is that you say officer - insufficient safety equipment for the crew. Well no, you see Zzrag there has lost an arm and his tail, Screet lost both legs after a tumble in her racing skiff. I, as you can see, am short an eye, and also my pancreas and my right leg below the knee after an unfortunate incident in the late unpleasantness. Of my crew fully 50% are... well probably not fully 100% as it were. So while I have 12 on the books we really only number 10 full crew between us."
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Arkathan
Emperor Mongoose
That sounds like the joke we used to tell about the old local jail. What do you call a full set of teeth? Cell Blocks 35A and B.Ah, apologies I misunderstood your point then. I think we are in agreement, except I might be even more evangelical about abandoning the tyranny of the integer
"What is that you say officer - insufficient safety equipment for the crew. Well no, you see Zzrag there has lost an arm and his tail, Screet lost both legs after a tumble in her racing skiff. I, as you can see, am short an eye, and also my pancreas and my right leg below the knee after an unfortunate incident in the late unpleasantness. Of my crew fully 50% are... well probably not fully 100% as it were. So while I have 12 on the books we really only number 10 full crew between us."
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