How powerful ARE MGT star ship Fusion Power Plants?

[DFW]

I'm looking at creating a MGT compatible power point system. Something not so coarse that it can't be used to also figure out vehicle sized needs. I will be trying to figure power based on star ships and known parameters (power requirements). Also, using some data from ground/vehicle scale weapons and how they would relate to ship energy weapon requirements.

Here is a list of knowns and unknowns (some based on MGT rules & some physics).

Known: Volume/size of Fusion PP type A
Known: Volume of 200Dton star ship
Unknown: Mass of heaviest 200Dton star ship
Unknown: Power usage of single star ship laser (so can multiply by 6)
Unknown: Power needed by M-Drive to accelerate 200Dton star ship @ 1G.
Unknown: Power needed by inertial compensator to negate 1G acceleration
Unknown: Power needed to supply 1G field in crew accessible areas of ship
Known:For an object of mass m, moving with velocity of magnitude v, this energy can be calculated from the formula E= 1/2 mv ^2
Known: Watt = 1 Joule/ 1 second, 10 to the 7th ergs
Unknown: Power needed to maintain life support for fully crewed & 'passengered' star ship
Unknown: Power used by maxed sensor suite
Known: All of the above must be able to be powered from the PP at the same time.

Some assumptions based on MGT rules set:

A ship laser has to be able to penetrate a hull that is pretty resistant to a modern day MBT AT round (by how many times? based on divide by 50 rule, need to look up). So, will compute off known, modern day laser power consumption.

There will be efficiency breakpoints based on Fusion PP size. (maybe can be figured out from HG capital ship and small craft PP tables.) Will assume that all star ship Fusion PP's in CRB are of same efficiency.

 

[rust]

I have only GURPS Traveller data, but perhaps they could give an idea of
the approximate Mongoose Traveller data, too.

The heaviest standard ship in GURPS Traveller is the 400 dton System De-
fense Boat with a Loaded Mass of 2,657 tons.
As for 200 dton ships, a Free Trader has 598 tons, a Far Trader 559 tons,
a Yacht 439 tons (Loaded Mass each).

From GURPS Vehicles (the system used for GURPS Traveller technology):
- Grav Compensation requires 1,000 kW per 2 G
- Artificial Gravity requires 1,000 kW per 27,000 cubic feet
- Life Support requires 10 kW per person
- Sensor Suite requires ca. 0.25 kW per mile of range

For starship lasers the formula is:
Power in kW = Output in Kilojoule x 2
- and a standard GURPS Traveller starship laser has an output of 405 Me-
gajoule

A reactionless thruster requires 0.05 kW per pound of thrust.

 

[DFW]

I have only GURPS Traveller data, but perhaps they could give an idea of
the approximate Mongoose Traveller data, too.

Thanks for this.

I think I can use weight/mass info as is. As well as the sensors & life support.

Grav, laser & Thruster data I should verify to make sure it's in the ball park based on real world physics.

 

[zero]

Mind posting your findings when theyre done, DFW?

 

[rust]

I finally found my Traveller New Era stuff, and here the data for the power
plants of the standard designs are:

Scout / Courier: 138 MW
Free Trader: 156 MW
Far Trader: 148 MW
Yacht: 456 MW
Gazelle Escort: 891 MW
Lab Ship: 258 MW
Patrol Cruiser: 870 MW
System Defense Boat: 920 MW
Subsidized Merchant: 282 MW
Mercenary Cruiser: 540 MW
Modular Cutter: 116 MW

However, please consider that Traveller New Era uses reaction drives, not
reactionless thrusters. Still, I think this gives an impression of the appro-
ximate power output of the Traveller universe's fusion reactors.

 

[phavoc]

I had tried something similar, but never got very far into it (that darn time thing).

I looked at it from a cost / power generated / displacement perspective. I really wanted to come up with a system that made logical sense and was scalable from 100ton ships to 1,000,000 ton ships.

Then I wanted to apply the technology factors - higher tech would generally mean smaller, more power, though not necessarily more costly. I figured that TL 9-10 plants would roughly cost the same, but TL10 would generate more power than TL9, but have same displacement. TL11-13 would jump up in price, but also provide more power while the size decreased slightly. TL14-15 would be much more expensive, more power, and smaller displacement. I was thinking of adding in some sort of scale of output-per-ton, but again never got that far.

Creating power plant output would allow for two things as I see it - first you could allocate power to your weapons (should be the biggest hogs of it), but also to your secondary systems. By being able to define how much power a system took, it would give you a lot more flexibility for characters to design ships that would be able to, for example, dump all their power into their maneuver drive and go faster (assuming they had a fast enough drive) but then maybe they had no power to shoot lasers. Or maybe that would lead them to install very low-power weaponry (missiles and sandcasters). Warships would, I think, be able to do it all at the same time.

The second thing it would allow for is multiple power plants. So instead of scaling up the fusion reactor, you might have 3-4 of them spread around the ship. It would also allow you to either run all of them at diminshed capacity so if one got hit the other plant still had enough juice to power all the systems, or perhaps you only needed 3, so you install 4 and the first powerplant destroyed has no effect on your power generation capabilities.

Do you plan on rating power plants in say Mjoules? Or going with something simpler like a plant generates 1point of power per 1 displacement ton, a laser uses 2 points of power, life support uses 1 point of power per 100 tons displacement, etc? Its nice to have detail, but I prefer keeping the math simple as possible.

 

[rust]

After my experiences with the very detailed GURPS Vehicles system I
would recommend to use Power Points instead of real world units to
keep things simple and avoid the need to hire an accountant.

The scale could start with 1 Power Point for the devices with the lowest
power consumption, probably passive sensors and life support, and go
up from there to those with the highest power consumption, probably
the energy weapons of capital ships.

 

[DFW]

Mind posting your findings when theyre done, DFW?

No problem. They will need a sanity check in any event.

I finally found my Traveller New Era stuff, and here the data for the power plants of the standard designs are: ...

Cool, I'm short on New Era material here.. Still good info as it acts as another check by subtracting M-Drive on this side of the "ledger".
Thank you again.

 

[DFW]

...I looked at it from a cost / power generated / displacement perspective. I really wanted to come up with a system that made logical sense and was scalable from 100ton ships to 1,000,000 ton ships.

I want it capable of going vehicle to Capital ship. At vehicle level I will add weight/mass of Power Plant so GMs can figure lift capability, etc.

Do you plan on rating power plants in say Mjoules? Or going with something simpler like a plant generates 1point of power per 1 displacement ton, a laser uses 2 points of power, life support uses 1 point of power per 100 tons displacement, etc? Its nice to have detail, but I prefer keeping the math simple as possible.

After my experiences with the very detailed GURPS Vehicles system I would recommend to use Power Points instead of real world units to keep things simple and avoid the need to hire an accountant.

I plan on a PP system. 1 PP will be assigned to the smallest significant vehicle power using system. I will, for GM's, give an approximate Watt equivalent for 1 PP. This so that if a PC Engineer finds a Grav Flat Bed Truck and the Fusion PP is wrecked, they can see if it is possible to use that Turbo Diesel engine to power it instead.

Or, just how many gerbils are needed to get it off the ground. :mrgreen:

 

[DFW]

I'd say the best base would be to take a look at MegaTraveller. This is closer to MGT than TNE (that uses totally different weapons, reactor fuel consumption,...

I'll be looking at all versions to "get my bearings" & to come up with energy usage data of comparable magnitude. (How many more X's energy does a certain Spinal weapon use vs. a certain Bay Weapons, etc.). Fuel consumption will be MGT. I'm keeping this compatible with MGT ship construction rules and creating something that is usable for vehicle design as there isn't anything usable right now.

 

[DFW]

If you introduce power to all components, why keep it compatible with MGT? The system isn't "numbers" oriented to start with

Because I'm going to lay it over the MGT rules and I don't want to to have it not compatible with the star ship creation rules.

I might want to use it in conjunction with the MGT Trav SRD.

 

[Nathan Brazil]

CT (via Striker), MegaTraveller, TNE and T4 all had specific formulas in their design sequences to take TL and volume(or Tonnage) to arrive at power plant output in MW. If you like, I can post partially the relavant information.

 

[DFW]

CT (via Striker), MegaTraveller, TNE and T4 all had specific formulas in their design sequences to take TL and volume(or Tonnage) to arrive at power plant output in MW. If you like, I can post partially the relavant information.

That'd be great. Thanks!

 

[phavoc]

Pick up Traveller The New Era Canon on CD-Rom. It's got most of the TNE source books on it, including Fire, Fusion & Steel.

I can also send you the fission/fusion power plant table. Or post it somewhere so others can see it too.

 

[DFW]

Pick up Traveller The New Era Canon on CD-Rom. It's got most of the TNE source books on it, including Fire, Fusion & Steel.

I can also send you the fission/fusion power plant table. Or post it somewhere so others can see it too.

A friend has FF&S. Is that where the table in question is?

 

[DFW]

As part of the definition process I've decided that energy weapons probably fire for ~6 seconds during a combat turn. Any reason why this wouldn't be the case?

 

[Sevya]

In CT High Guard, there was an energy point system that works with MgT starships. The formula is E=0.01MPn. E is Energy Points, M is the displacement tonnage of the ship and Pn is the Power Plant Number.

MT the used most of the ship components from CT High guard, converted to be used in a design system based on Striker. The power usage of starship components is consistently 250 mw for per energy point the system used in CT.

I hope this gives you something to start from.

Sevya

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

In the MGT High Guard Book, under the description of the Black Globe Generator, it uses something called an Energy Value. EV is given for various weapons systems. That might help give you an MGT ratio of weapons strength and power requirements. HG Page 52, LH Column.

Remember though, this is ABSORBED power, not required power to shoot it. I would figure that most systems are going to be about 50% efficient at best, so double the EV value when computing the PP requirements to generate it.

 

[ShadowDave]

I plan on a PP system. 1 PP will be assigned to the smallest significant vehicle power using system. I will, for GM's, give an approximate Watt equivalent for 1 PP. This so that if a PC Engineer finds a Grav Flat Bed Truck and the Fusion PP is wrecked, they can see if it is possible to use that Turbo Diesel engine to power it instead.

Or, just how many gerbils are needed to get it off the ground. :mrgreen:

We use horsepower for cars, so I see nothing wrong with megagerbils for power plants.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Per MegaTraveller, an EP (from HG either version) is about 250 MW.