Jumpspace towing?

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Greetings,
A question: what is required in order to bring an additional ship, or cargo, through jumpspace?

I know about jump nets, and I would assume that docking clamps allow anything carried to tag along, but what about an improvised solution?

Can a ship without jump net, docking clamps or external cargo mounts bring anything with it through jumpspace, and if so, how?

It it enough for the two ships to re reasonably close together, perhaps secured to one another (hull contact?) and then recalculate the total tonnage when doing the calculations?

I’m thinking about hitching a ride, or bringing a salvaged ship back to civilization, or… stuff like that.

To the best of my limited knowledge, neither docking clamps nor external cargo mounts do anything except hold on tight to whatever they’re holding, yet neither makes jump travel impossible?

To use a recent example from a newly released book, is there any way for a Montreal class bounty Hunter ship to carry a Budget Bounty with it to new hunting grounds?

 

[Condottiere]

In our case, there's this thing called jump bubble.

If you can keep the captured object within it for the next week or so, you're good to go.

Apparently, there might be a method to manipulate the shape of the jump bubble.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

So basically just tie the ships/objects together, adjust the jump calculations, and press the Go button?

Perhaps apply some modifiers to the whole thing, to keep it from becoming “a thing”?

 

[Condottiere]

It's total volume that dictates how much jump drive tonnage, fuel, and power, you need to pierce through the veil of vacuum.

Calculating the actual shape of the jump bubble is a bit of a mystery, though I think Tee/Five bases it on longitudal length.

If you give it a bearhug, it should be okay.

If you plan to tow it, then I would suppose you deploy the jump net, to extend the jump field, and supposedly bubble.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Not that I have a specific situation in mind, but the idea as such was for improvised jump towing”. Emergency transportation of a smallcraft, cargo container or ship with damaged jump drive, or improvised group travel.

If planning was involved, a jump net could be installed

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Greetings,
A question: what is required in order to bring an additional ship, or cargo, through jumpspace?

I know about jump nets, and I would assume that docking clamps allow anything carried to tag along, but what about an improvised solution?

If a clamp works, anything works. If all else fails weld it to the hull.

As long as the external object is within the jump bubble (referees discretion), it comes along for the ride. Jump nets presumably extend the jump bubble, or something like that.


If the external object is not made of spacecraft hull, bad things might happen to the contents...

 

[WHULorigan]

It's total volume that dictates how much jump drive tonnage, fuel, and power, you need to pierce through the veil of vacuum.

Calculating the actual shape of the jump bubble is a bit of a mystery, though I think Tee/Five bases it on longitudal length.

If you give it a bearhug, it should be okay.

If you plan to tow it, then I would suppose you deploy the jump net, to extend the jump field, and supposedly bubble.

In T5, using Standard ("Bubble") Configuration centres the Jump-field on the Jump-drive mechanism itself. So the bubble would normally be the size of the ship's longest axis if the jump drive is located at the centre of the ship. If the Jump Drive mechanism is located aft, the ship's long axis will lie primarily within the jump-bubble radius to the fore of the jump drive, and the radius to the rear will be largely void. That is the ideal configuration for a tow vessel. It also increases the risk of dragging incidental debris along during jump-initiation and increases the risk of misjump.

Those configurations are depicted in some of the jump-bubble illustrations in T5.

 

[Nelphine]

Did t5 happen to make shape of jump bubble part of ship design?

Like in theory, i would expect the jump bubble to be spherical by default, and so youd have to a) put your jump drive at the center of the ship and b) make your ship spherical. If you didnt, and you had a default jump bubble, the amount of fuel you needed would be based on the volume of the jump bubble, regardless of your ships tonnage.

Then, you could alter the shape of the jump bubble by increasing the power needed (but not the fuel consumed), so that you could design ships of different shapes at a cost of extra power plant tonnage.

 

[Vormaerin]

IIRC, they just made the default jump bubble so large your ship wouldn't stick out of it regardless.

 

[WHULorigan]

IIRC, they just made the default jump bubble so large your ship wouldn't stick out of it regardless.

That is what I seem to recall: it was spherical and large enough to encompass the ship and whatever else it was designed for (and whatever else was incidental).

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, battle tenders would be spheres.

Going by hex squares, so would battle riders.

 

[Nelphine]

Yeah from a gameplay and useability pov that makes sense, just wondered if anyone had provided 'harder' rules for those who wanted it.

 

[WHULorigan]

Did t5 happen to make shape of jump bubble part of ship design?

Like in theory, i would expect the jump bubble to be spherical by default, and so youd have to a) put your jump drive at the center of the ship and b) make your ship spherical. If you didnt, and you had a default jump bubble, the amount of fuel you needed would be based on the volume of the jump bubble, regardless of your ships tonnage.

Then, you could alter the shape of the jump bubble by increasing the power needed (but not the fuel consumed), so that you could design ships of different shapes at a cost of extra power plant tonnage.

I like your idea.

Of course, you realize that the consequence would be that everyone would build spheroidal hull-designs unless there was a specific reason to do otherwise, solely for the cost factor.

T5 has both "grid" and "standard" (i.e. "bubble") "jump-readiness" options. Hull-grid by definition creates a conformal field, whereas standard radiates a spherical (or spheroidal) bubble centered on the jump drive mechanism. Rule-observation suggests that size of jump-bubble is tied to size of jump-volume enclosed (i.e. the letter-rating/energy-point value of the drive unit(s)). Hence, jump-engines are placed near the center of the maximum combined tonnage of volume that is planned to be moved in any/all configurations.

 

[Nelphine]

Yeah, and it might be reasonable for gameplay reasons to allow other shapes by default as well. Obviously the standard is hand wavium, but it would be an interesting thought exercise to see what that does to shipping, starports, prevalence of low vs high ports, etc.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

T5.10, B2, p113:
Jump Bubble
Without any additional mechanisms, the Jump Drive creates a quasi-spherical (often an egg-shaped oblate spheroid) bubble. The Naval Architect Manual computes the size of the Jump Bubble as:
D= (Tons * 13.5 )^1/3 *20 (in meters)
For example, a functioning jump drive in a 100 ton ship creates a jump bubble with a diameter (=100*13.5 ^1/3 * 20 = 11.05 *20 =) 220 meters.
For example, a functioning jump drive in a 2400 ton ship creates a jump bubble with a diameter (=2400 * 13.5 ^1/3 *20 = 32.3 *20 =) 640 meters.
For most purposes, a Jump Bubble is about five times the diameter of the average of Length, Width, and Height of the ship and centered on the Jump Drive.

T5 also has conformal Jump Grid with slightly different properties and no extra space.

 

[Condottiere]

If the jump field is a gravitic bottle, can we manipulate gravitic bottles?

 

[phavoc]

The rules really don't address this, so using the mechanics presented I'd think you'd have to secure the two ships together hull to hull to minimize gaps and (possibly) make a few modifications to your drive to cover a larger arear than normal. There should be some risk about coming out of jump earlier since you are cobbling together something that's not meant to work that way.

Ideally you would have custome designed ships meant to unfold smaller vessels inside to make the jump safely, think of like fleet repair docks, or some vessel with a frame a number of spindly appendages that when deployed will allow for different shaped warp bubbles to accommodate all kinds of outsized cargos. These would be specialized jump transport carriers, just like we have special ships, trucks and aircraft to move special cargoes.

 

[Condottiere]

That was the point of dispersed structures, I would say, originally, for battle tenders.

Nowadays, you can hook up to anything.

 

[ProfGrizzlyJon]

I use this jump bubble mechanic fairly extensively in my Weird Charted Space games.
I allowed a software defined change (aka Jump Expander/1) that creates a larger jump bubble, at an increased fuel cost. Basically, a 400dton ship with J-4 running Jump Expander/2 could create a jump bubble capable of displacing 800 dtons into jumpspace. If the bubble is larger than the displaced vessels, there is an increased risk for misjump (by picking up other objects in space)