Manoeuvre Drives

[Nerhesi]

Just reiterating some of the internal play-test critical items that we had a few people agreeing on Matt:

a) Reduce TL by 4, for smallcraft manoeuvre/reaction drives. This maintains the faster drive/less inertia/less hull stress/different feel for small craft.

b) Increase manoeuvre drive size geometrically not linearly. Right now it is a trivial difference to go from Thrust 1 to Thrust 6 really. The return on the investment is too great (6 times speed/dodging/transit times/tactical ability for 5% of hull cost...) - I'd recommend something along the lines of 0.5,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22 - basically, 2x thrust - exactly.

Thrust is a key, key, keeeey aspect of space operations and combat - if it's too cheap, there is no reason not to simply pin every ship at thrust 9.

This will also keep it aligned with reaction drive size, which has it's own constraints (ridiculous fuel, higher possible max thrust, etc).

c) Advanced TL engines? So like TL+3 = 75% of size but 200% Mcr cost? These options were very cool and well used in player/ref designs (old ships and cutting edge designs)

 

[AndrewW]

b) Increase manoeuvre drive size geometrically not linearly. Right now it is a trivial difference to go from Thrust 1 to Thrust 6 really. The return on the investment is too great (6 times speed/dodging/transit times/tactical ability for 5% of hull cost...) - I'd recommend something along the lines of 0.5,2,4,6,8,10,12,14,16,18,20,22 - basically, 2x thrust - exactly.

They did require a higher percentage of the hull originally but the percentages where set from above and got changed.

c) Advanced TL engines? So like TL+3 = 75% of size but 200% Mcr cost? These options were very cool and well used in player/ref designs (old ships and cutting edge designs)

Still exists, look under Primitive and Advanced Spacecraft.

 

[Nerhesi]

Hmmph... ok.. Thank you and.. thank you! I have one followup question - the direction from above is ok with 9G max OTU thrust? That seems to be a departure...

Then that leaves the one-item from the original post:

Reduce TL by some amount like 4 or 5 (but still minimum TL 9 for M-drive) for smallcraft drives, so we can maintain the maintains the faster drive/less inertia/less hull stress/different feel for small craft.

And perhaps revisit fuel-volume/size which is a bit on a crazy size for reaction drives.

 

[AndrewW]

Hmmph... ok.. Thank you and.. thank you! I have one followup question - the direction from above is ok with 9G max OTU thrust? That seems to be a departure...

Actually not a complete departure, some small craft could achieve 9G using gravitic drives. But yup, and for reference the higher jump numbers came down from above in the first place.

 

[Nerhesi]

Hmmph... ok.. Thank you and.. thank you! I have one followup question - the direction from above is ok with 9G max OTU thrust? That seems to be a departure...

Actually not a complete departure, some small craft could achieve 9G using gravitic drives. But yup, and for reference the higher jump numbers came down from above in the first place.

Ah yeah - thats what I was getting at with saying that small craft m-drive TL should be lowered to match that. I see that spacecraft, especially military/merc ones, will have no problem having 9G now though. Correct? Example the Tigress, and so forth should absolutely have 9G.

Trying to delineate smallcraft from larger craft - perhaps we should also extend the M-drive values too? (or also a nono? )

 

[Sir Rath]

Ah yeah - thats what I was getting at with saying that small craft m-drive TL should be lowered to match that. I see that spacecraft, especially military/merc ones, will have no problem having 9G now though. Correct? Example the Tigress, and so forth should absolutely have 9G.

Trying to delineate smallcraft from larger craft - perhaps we should also extend the M-drive values too? (or also a nono? )

Here's something that's always bothered me about dreadnoughts being able to accelerate as much as smaller ships: wouldn't the hull have to be proportionally stronger? Here's a quote from (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Size.html):
"If you're building an immobile space station in a zero-gravity environment (such as the Borg headquarters array, a Federation starbase, or Mir), size doesn't matter. But if you're building a ship, then things become a whole lot more complicated. When that ship accelerates or enters the gravity well of a planet, the resulting forces will be proportional to its mass. Its mass, in turn, is proportional to its volume ... when you scale something up, the mass increases faster than the area. Mass will define load, and area will define load-bearing ability. If load increases faster than load-bearing ability, then we have a problem. For example, if you scale up a building by a factor of 10, it will get 1000 times heavier but it will only get 100 times stronger."

I agree that an Imperial Navy ship would be designed to accelerate as fast as possible, but it seems silly for a 500kdT battleship to be as agile as a 5kdT frigate.

Of course, since Traveller ships use gravity tech. to mitigate the affects of high Gs on a crewman's body, perhaps these same inertial dampers are keeping the hull from tearing itself apart. Still, that would require a much larger percentage of the M-drive allocated to giant ships. I'm not sure how this factoid would be implemented in-game without making designing ships a convoluted mess though.

 

[Kaelic]

Ah yeah - thats what I was getting at with saying that small craft m-drive TL should be lowered to match that. I see that spacecraft, especially military/merc ones, will have no problem having 9G now though. Correct? Example the Tigress, and so forth should absolutely have 9G.

Trying to delineate smallcraft from larger craft - perhaps we should also extend the M-drive values too? (or also a nono? )

Here's something that's always bothered me about dreadnoughts being able to accelerate as much as smaller ships: wouldn't the hull have to be proportionally stronger? Here's a quote from (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Size.html):
"If you're building an immobile space station in a zero-gravity environment (such as the Borg headquarters array, a Federation starbase, or Mir), size doesn't matter. But if you're building a ship, then things become a whole lot more complicated. When that ship accelerates or enters the gravity well of a planet, the resulting forces will be proportional to its mass. Its mass, in turn, is proportional to its volume ... when you scale something up, the mass increases faster than the area. Mass will define load, and area will define load-bearing ability. If load increases faster than load-bearing ability, then we have a problem. For example, if you scale up a building by a factor of 10, it will get 1000 times heavier but it will only get 100 times stronger."

I agree that an Imperial Navy ship would be designed to accelerate as fast as possible, but it seems silly for a 500kdT battleship to be as agile as a 5kdT frigate.

Of course, since Traveller ships use gravity tech. to mitigate the affects of high Gs on a crewman's body, perhaps these same inertial dampers are keeping the hull from tearing itself apart. Still, that would require a much larger percentage of the M-drive allocated to giant ships. I'm not sure how this factoid would be implemented in-game without making designing ships a convoluted mess though.

All it really takes is for energy output to scale the same with size. A reactor 10 times bigger is 100 times more powerful.

 

[Kaelic]

Ah yeah - thats what I was getting at with saying that small craft m-drive TL should be lowered to match that. I see that spacecraft, especially military/merc ones, will have no problem having 9G now though. Correct? Example the Tigress, and so forth should absolutely have 9G.

Trying to delineate smallcraft from larger craft - perhaps we should also extend the M-drive values too? (or also a nono? )

Here's something that's always bothered me about dreadnoughts being able to accelerate as much as smaller ships: wouldn't the hull have to be proportionally stronger? Here's a quote from (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Size.html):
"If you're building an immobile space station in a zero-gravity environment (such as the Borg headquarters array, a Federation starbase, or Mir), size doesn't matter. But if you're building a ship, then things become a whole lot more complicated. When that ship accelerates or enters the gravity well of a planet, the resulting forces will be proportional to its mass. Its mass, in turn, is proportional to its volume ... when you scale something up, the mass increases faster than the area. Mass will define load, and area will define load-bearing ability. If load increases faster than load-bearing ability, then we have a problem. For example, if you scale up a building by a factor of 10, it will get 1000 times heavier but it will only get 100 times stronger."

I agree that an Imperial Navy ship would be designed to accelerate as fast as possible, but it seems silly for a 500kdT battleship to be as agile as a 5kdT frigate.

Of course, since Traveller ships use gravity tech. to mitigate the affects of high Gs on a crewman's body, perhaps these same inertial dampers are keeping the hull from tearing itself apart. Still, that would require a much larger percentage of the M-drive allocated to giant ships. I'm not sure how this factoid would be implemented in-game without making designing ships a convoluted mess though.

All it really takes is for energy output to scale the same with size. A reactor 10 times bigger is 100 times more powerful.

 

[Nerhesi]

That's what we're all struggling with I think - I'm not sure I understand the logic behind 1-6%, nor the in-universe reasoning.

Most ship designers, will opt for max thrust. The cost for return on investment is trivial.

This doesn even touch upon the agility issue in that "Gs" are really about more than just acceleration (I can 9Gs constantly in one direction, then instantly change?) - it has inertia and agility implications.

I know this is from up-on-high, but I think we need to clearly articulate this for Marc. At the very least, classic trav and mgt1 still had differences between smallcraft and spacecraft acceleration/mdrives... we don't want to ignore the problem AND take it a further step back in the wrong direction...

 

[Sir Rath]

Ah yeah - thats what I was getting at with saying that small craft m-drive TL should be lowered to match that. I see that spacecraft, especially military/merc ones, will have no problem having 9G now though. Correct? Example the Tigress, and so forth should absolutely have 9G.

Trying to delineate smallcraft from larger craft - perhaps we should also extend the M-drive values too? (or also a nono? )

Here's something that's always bothered me about dreadnoughts being able to accelerate as much as smaller ships: wouldn't the hull have to be proportionally stronger? Here's a quote from (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Science/Size.html):
"If you're building an immobile space station in a zero-gravity environment (such as the Borg headquarters array, a Federation starbase, or Mir), size doesn't matter. But if you're building a ship, then things become a whole lot more complicated. When that ship accelerates or enters the gravity well of a planet, the resulting forces will be proportional to its mass. Its mass, in turn, is proportional to its volume ... when you scale something up, the mass increases faster than the area. Mass will define load, and area will define load-bearing ability. If load increases faster than load-bearing ability, then we have a problem. For example, if you scale up a building by a factor of 10, it will get 1000 times heavier but it will only get 100 times stronger."

I agree that an Imperial Navy ship would be designed to accelerate as fast as possible, but it seems silly for a 500kdT battleship to be as agile as a 5kdT frigate.

Of course, since Traveller ships use gravity tech. to mitigate the affects of high Gs on a crewman's body, perhaps these same inertial dampers are keeping the hull from tearing itself apart. Still, that would require a much larger percentage of the M-drive allocated to giant ships. I'm not sure how this factoid would be implemented in-game without making designing ships a convoluted mess though.

All it really takes is for energy output to scale the same with size. A reactor 10 times bigger is 100 times more powerful.

Forgive me if I'm missing something, but I don't see how that works with the posted rules. For example, TL 15 Fusion plant produces 20 EP per Ton. A 100dT plant produces 2,000 EP. If you increase the reactor size by a factor of 10, you'd have a 1,000dT plant that produces 20,000 EP. That's the point of my concern; the structural/energy requirements increase at an exponential scale, while the hull, M-Drive, and P-Plant capabilities only have a linear increase with size, again, unless I'm missing something.

 

[Kaelic]

I just meant how it could work as a fluff explanation. I'm not sure you can reconcile this easily in game design because the numbers are trying to sit within reasonable values of each other. Sorry for the confusion of my response!

 

[Nerhesi]

A simple approach to this problem is to just adhoc add a thrust value for smallcraft m-drives.

Could be as simple as "small craft thrust values benefit from +3 thrust"

Or bit more complex as "smal craft thrust value is increased depending size, 10-30 +3, 40-70 +2, 80-90 +1"

 

[Infojunky]

Here's something that's always bothered me about dreadnoughts being able to accelerate as much as smaller ships: wouldn't the hull have to be proportionally stronger?

Well, Yes. In general the support structure is a exponential function. Couple that with the Surface area vs hull thickness problem that Armor has. Whaich also brings up the whole 1 hard point per 100 dton cannard....