vladthemad
Mongoose
Anyone else notice that all the ships have only a 2 week operational range? That seems pretty low.
Lack of Fuel
- Thread starter vladthemad
- Start date
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
That is a Traveller Universe setting thing. Part of what makes Traveller Traveller. Some players might have issue with it being changed. Expect to see other options in the Companion core book for ships. Lots.vladthemad said:
AndrewW
Emperor Mongoose
-Daniel- said:
That's the current plan (or at least the last I heard) it should all be going into High Guard.
Currently stuff is scattered across a multitude of books, the majority of the options spread out across the various books have been brought together into High Guard.
Doesn't entirely invalidate, one consideration was space.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
High Guard is a Traveller setting book. I'm talking about the ships for other settings. The hyper and warp drive ships. The ultra TL stuff, etc. Unless Matthew has decided not to include such options in any core book.AndrewW said:
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Ok. Found them. They were in another chapter, mixed in with Imperial Navy stuff.AndrewW said:
vladthemad
Mongoose
I can't say I've seen Classic, Mega Traveller, or TNE (Yeah, we played it, so what!) in nearly twenty years but I don't ever recall running that lean on fuel back then. Interestingly, I checked and saw that in the old core rule book by Mongoose there were some that also had 2 weeks that I hadn't recalled. I'm surprised, as it seems most of the ships in the supplements universally had 4 weeks and up.
The way ships work in the new rules has already deviated greatly from previous versions, no reason to stop at fuel limits...and as noted by AKAramis:
At any rate, we're here to fix things and I think this aught to be fixed. It's a pretty minor change, and not fixing it makes space travel absurdly risky. Inaccurate jumps will get you killed. I think 4 weeks is a good bare minimum for all jump capable ships with rare exception. How does everyone else feel about it?
ShawnDriscoll said:
The way ships work in the new rules has already deviated greatly from previous versions, no reason to stop at fuel limits...and as noted by AKAramis:
AKAramis said:
At any rate, we're here to fix things and I think this aught to be fixed. It's a pretty minor change, and not fixing it makes space travel absurdly risky. Inaccurate jumps will get you killed. I think 4 weeks is a good bare minimum for all jump capable ships with rare exception. How does everyone else feel about it?
Since we are now getting into energy points, isn't this the perfect time to now create a fuel consumption rule? The idea that your fusion plant is either ON or OFF with no middle ground seems ripe for change. It's not like this hasn't been debated through all the editions.....
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
phavoc said:
Shouldn't be to hard to do a simple X power uses Y fuel per week for the plants since you don't need to use the M drive in jump or the J drive in real space.
Two weeks is too little, very dangerous. Maybe the Imperium doesn't have Health and Safety rules and is happy to have entire ships suffocate when they run out of fuel after a week.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Needs more cowbell, or fuel allocation for the power plant, Health and safety may state it has to be four thirds of power plant tonnage, while more fringe designers and operators might allocate only ten days worth.
I was looking at the fuel issue in real-world ships. Destroyers and frigates have fuel is listed with a 'cruising' speed much less than full speed. Some have a range of 8-10,000 nautical miles at say 15 knots. But when you change that to say 27-28 knots, that range drops down a LOT.
So it would be nice to see some sort of formula or rule that sets a lower-output from your reactor in exchange for a longer operational period. Right now fuel calculations are based on 100% power output all the time, and with the change to energy points from a reactor, there should be some way to regulate just how much power is being generated.
So it would be nice to see some sort of formula or rule that sets a lower-output from your reactor in exchange for a longer operational period. Right now fuel calculations are based on 100% power output all the time, and with the change to energy points from a reactor, there should be some way to regulate just how much power is being generated.
vladthemad
Mongoose
Hmm...while I like the idea of fuel consumption (with all the trails and tribulations it could bring!), it's more work load on a new player and ref, so maybe (if it isn't already) add it to High Guard instead and just fix the current ships in the Core Rule book?
vladthemad said:
It could be as easy as saying for every 10% of power output you lower your reactor by, you reduce your fuel consumption by 10%. Then, if it becomes an issue, it's easy enough to figure out and you don't need to be playing spreadsheets in space. But since we already keep track of all other kinds of things, it's not like it's big deal. And it's not like this issue hasn't been cropping up for a while in various rulesets.
Captain Jonah
Mongoose
For the standard ships the fuel used is a lot less than first edition which makes it very easy to simply add a bit of extra fuel.
For example the Free and Far Traders (60 and 75 power) use 1Dton of fuel for two weeks, adding another Dton of fuel is hardly going to be a huge change though the fuel on the Far trader is wrong since it should be 41Dtons or maybe 42.
The lab ship (power 180) is 1Dton a week, how hard is it to add 2 extra Dtons?
The patrol cruiser (power 405) is 3Dtons for 2 weeks, allowing for a one week jump that's not much of a patrol. Before anyone checks yes its 124Dtons, 120 for the jump, 3 for the Power and 1 to refuel the small craft
The Liner (power 360) is 3Dtons for 2 weeks but has reduced staterooms and far more cargo than it needs (it's been turned from a liner into a bigger longer range Far trader but that's a personal gripe), it could easily find space for 2 more weeks as a safety margin for all those passengers. Also the extra 1Dton is for refueling the small craft.
Re down rating power plants. Every single standard ship power plant can be divided by three.
Given the ability to halve the power consumption of basic systems this means every single ship can go to emergency power and sit or drift on 1/3rd power for a long time, some of the military ships can actually manage 1G and emergency power at 1/3rd power. This effectively triples power fuel duration. With only 2 weeks of fuel its not a huge margin but moving to a standard of 4 weeks allows for a jump and a long enough safety margin for a ship to be reported missing and for rescue ships to jump to the likely locations since a broken down or miss jumped ship could go to emergency power and last 9 weeks (4 weeks power, one week of jump then 3 weeks at 1/3rd power). Enough time for the adventure and the rescue.
Even running at 2/3 power which increase fuel duration by 50% allows most ships to manage emergency power and move, some can run with full ships power and still make 1G on 2/3rd power.
There may well be ship power plants that don't divide by three in High Guard but every standard ship does divide by three and its fairly easy to manage power plant fuel in days with 1/3rd or 2/3rds use.
For example the Free and Far Traders (60 and 75 power) use 1Dton of fuel for two weeks, adding another Dton of fuel is hardly going to be a huge change though the fuel on the Far trader is wrong since it should be 41Dtons or maybe 42.
The lab ship (power 180) is 1Dton a week, how hard is it to add 2 extra Dtons?
The patrol cruiser (power 405) is 3Dtons for 2 weeks, allowing for a one week jump that's not much of a patrol. Before anyone checks yes its 124Dtons, 120 for the jump, 3 for the Power and 1 to refuel the small craft
The Liner (power 360) is 3Dtons for 2 weeks but has reduced staterooms and far more cargo than it needs (it's been turned from a liner into a bigger longer range Far trader but that's a personal gripe), it could easily find space for 2 more weeks as a safety margin for all those passengers. Also the extra 1Dton is for refueling the small craft.
Re down rating power plants. Every single standard ship power plant can be divided by three.
Given the ability to halve the power consumption of basic systems this means every single ship can go to emergency power and sit or drift on 1/3rd power for a long time, some of the military ships can actually manage 1G and emergency power at 1/3rd power. This effectively triples power fuel duration. With only 2 weeks of fuel its not a huge margin but moving to a standard of 4 weeks allows for a jump and a long enough safety margin for a ship to be reported missing and for rescue ships to jump to the likely locations since a broken down or miss jumped ship could go to emergency power and last 9 weeks (4 weeks power, one week of jump then 3 weeks at 1/3rd power). Enough time for the adventure and the rescue.
Even running at 2/3 power which increase fuel duration by 50% allows most ships to manage emergency power and move, some can run with full ships power and still make 1G on 2/3rd power.
There may well be ship power plants that don't divide by three in High Guard but every standard ship does divide by three and its fairly easy to manage power plant fuel in days with 1/3rd or 2/3rds use.
After reading through all this, it's reinforced what I ws thinking when I first read through the chapter.
The ships statistics should clearly state:
Fuel
Ships Maximum Fuel Tank Capacity.
Fuel Cost per Jump-1
Fuel Cost per Two week operation.
Based on that you can plan out pretty much everything.
I know that it's common knowledge for most players that the standard jump-1 is 10% of the ships displacement but when I was reading through the jump rules earlier it didn't mention that at all. So might be something worth having listed with the ships.
The ships statistics should clearly state:
Fuel
Ships Maximum Fuel Tank Capacity.
Fuel Cost per Jump-1
Fuel Cost per Two week operation.
Based on that you can plan out pretty much everything.
I know that it's common knowledge for most players that the standard jump-1 is 10% of the ships displacement but when I was reading through the jump rules earlier it didn't mention that at all. So might be something worth having listed with the ships.
vladthemad
Mongoose
Belisknar said:
Agreed, I found it a little odd that it's not separated into jump fuel/power fuel.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Or perhaps clearly emphasizing normal power plant consumption, in case the ship hangs around longer than normal in the same system.
