Making a Jump and Power needs

[PsiTraveller]

From page 148 in the Core book
Divert Power: A jump drive requires a tremendous
amount of power to function which must be supplied
by the ship’s power plant. On many vessels, especially
older ships, the power plant strains to provide this
much, leading to the tradition of ‘jump dimming’ where
non-essential systems including lighting is shut down
to allow for jump. If insufficient power is available, the
jump drive cannot be activated.
Jump!: Firing the jump drive requires an Easy (4+)
Engineer (J-drive) check (1D x 10 minutes, EDU),
modified by the Effect of the original Astrogation check
and the following modifiers.

How long does the ship need to provide power to the Jump Engines? If the Engineering (J Drive) check is a 6 on the roll the Jump check lasts 60 minutes, or ten turns of activity. (6 minute space combat rounds). If the roll is a one the ship Jumps in 10 minutes (bumped up to 12 in my mind for 2 space combat rounds.)

And is the M-Drive running while the Jump Drive is being powered up? I remember a discussion on a thread about 0 relative velocity. Can the ship be running away and Jump on the move? Or is it a case of holding position and remaining motionless?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

How long does the ship need to provide power to the Jump Engines? If the Engineering (J Drive) check is a 6 on the roll the Jump check lasts 60 minutes, or ten turns of activity. (6 minute space combat rounds). If the roll is a one the ship Jumps in 10 minutes (bumped up to 12 in my mind for 2 space combat rounds.)

At a guess the Jump drive has to be powered for as long as the task takes. Note that you can hurry the jump procedure and jump within a single space combat round, see action Jump on p160.

And is the M-Drive running while the Jump Drive is being powered up?

Can be, don't have to be. I've seen references to military ships accelerating fully into the jump, but civilians mostly slowing down first and not accelerating.

Many ships don't have power for both jump drive and m-drive (and all other systems) simultaneously.

 

[Reynard]

Once astrogation has been completed and that is often done on the way to the jump point, Divert Power is part of the jump sequence as the reactor charges the engine which is being calibrated and manipulated by the engineer(s) and can be on average 10-60 minutes. That time frame shows how the engineers need to regulate power flow and it isn't always consistent. I would say it's at this point the jump engine power requirement kicks in. Most ships will have decided on the ship's pre-jump thrust vector and shut the maneuver drive down to use that power for jump as it's wasteful to run both and you have to be super paranoid to upgrade an engine to run both simultaneously. I believe the power used by jump is a one shot. Once the ship is in jump space it no longer draws power but then again, you can't use maneuver drives in jump space either.

If there's no threat or time constraint, the process can be bumped to 1-6 hours to be super careful though that's paranoia in it's own right and mostly because the cheap captain has skipped a couple maintenance calls and loves unrefined fuel. If your chief engineer is a Scotsman and you have that one in a thousand pirate encounter you can try to fire up the engine in 1-6 minutes. It's all the manipulation of incoming power to the jump.

This is also one reason pirates LOVE hunting ships on the way out of the system. Not every merchant wants to chance a misjump by hurrying. Then again, some do out of panic or rolled real well on the jump timeframe. The lion doesn't always catch the gazelle.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm working my way through the book, but if you overload the jump capacitors, you blow up the ship; they might leak, and you might have to keep them filled up.

Though if they leak, where is that energy going?

 

[Reynard]

They leak?

"To avoid this, the capacitors can be discharged. For every combat round the black globe generator is switched off, the capacitors will discharge an amount
of damage equal to 1% of the ship’s total tonnage multiplied by 10% of the tonnage of the ship’s power plant."

I guess capacitor discharge is a form of leaking but controlled leakage. Since they mention ship tonnage and power plant as part of the discharge process, I suspect energy sinks. Normally you use the power in the capacitor fairly soon after charging but nothing says it must discharge within a certain time frame. Look how Collectors work. It's obviously a great idea to get rid of the energy during combat when you're close to topping off. Remember one thing about charging and holding that charge, you can still misjump on a bad check.