New Jump drive inspired from S&P 93

[dalamar981]

Based off the thoughts generated by the ship in S&P 93 I wanted to create a new kind of J-drive that doesn’t uses tons of fuel just the power necessary to do the jump.

Without further ado

Capacitive Jump Drive:
Tonnage = J-drive
Cost = J-drive
Fuel = None

Alt Rules: Instead of using fuel you must charge the capacitors to the necessary level to make your Jump. We will uses the current formula used to calculate jump fuel, but instead of tons we get hours.
.1 x ship tons x jump distance = charging time in hours. (Minimum charging time is 1 Minute)

Using the book example
.1 x 200 x 1 = 20 hours

I understand that this system makes ships that want to jump farther and or are bigger take days to charge to make one jump (could be weeks for capital ships). Therefore we introduce some variables to the above now base charge time.

Using the same P-plant for your M-drive and your J-drive increases charge time by 10% per rating of the M-drive.

For each rating the P-plant is above the Jump distance decrease time by 20%

An Engineer can redirect power from the M-drive to the J-drive. Rating is reduced by the effect of the skill check. Each rating reduced decreases the charge time by 10%. (I don’t know what the skill check should be engineering: P-plant, M-drive, or J-drive. Also what kind of negative effect for failing the check with a negative effect.)

I Need to have some variable if using E-weapons off of the same P-plant.

What do you guys think? How would this effect the game?

 

[barnest2]

I think it would change the game a lot. While you have the expense of the jump drive, you can carry a huge amount more cargo, and/or passengers. Plus, it wouldn't limit ships to jump routes.
It would be a very different universe with a drive like this. Oh, and it makes charge time ridiculous for capital ships:

Say i'm jumping a 20,000 ton capital ship, 3 parsecs.
It will take me 6000 hours to charge the drive. That's 35 weeks. Thats over 6 months. Which makes this silly

 

[phavoc]

Basically sounds like the jump drives that were around before Mongoose did their twist. Jump grid on the hull, Zuchai drive crystals, lanthanum, etc

But as a game changer? not at all.

 

[DFW]

Basically sounds like the jump drives that were around before Mongoose did their twist.

Not by a million light years performance wise.

 

[E.D.Quibell]

Check out the Black Globe absorbtion rules in MgT High Guard on page 50 on, and work out the energy needed to fill up a standard jump drive, and them take that as the energy needed to jump.

Best regards,

Ewan

 

[phavoc]

Basically sounds like the jump drives that were around before Mongoose did their twist.

Not by a million light years performance wise.

doh! you're right...

(gotta learn to scroll down)

 

[dalamar981]

Oh, and it makes charge time ridiculous for capital ships:

Say i'm jumping a 20,000 ton capital ship, 3 parsecs.
It will take me 6000 hours to charge the drive. That's 35 weeks. That is over 6 months. Which makes this silly

I agree that this system is not effective with capital ships. However given your example if you ran dedicated P_plants for M and J drives, and went state of the art Jump 6 drive and at least Maneuver 4 drive I can make the Jump 3 in 1 minute if I divert all power from the M-drive to the J-drive.

This system would shrink the scale of ships way down with very little capital ships out there. and the ones there are won't be able to move and jump at the same time. Or a different sort of Jump like the standard would need to be used for Capital ships.

 

[dalamar981]

Check out the Black Globe absorbtion rules in MgT High Guard on page 50 on, and work out the energy needed to fill up a standard jump drive, and them take that as the energy needed to jump.

Ok so using the 200 ton ship it requires 72 energy to make a Jump 1 and 288 energy to make a jump 6. Is there a way to figure out how much energy per time unit a power plant puts out per rating.

I just used the math for the fuel because it was there and worked for Starships.

 

[SSWarlock]

Well, a combat round for space combat is 6 minutes and any power plant distributes enough juice in that time to power an entire warship's combat needs. That's quite a bit.

Hopefully, someone else will be more helpful.

 

[barnest2]

Cant give an actually figure, but a Jump-1 drive needs:
0.02 energy per second, or 1.2 energy per minute. Whatever unit that is, I have no frigging clue
A jump 6 needs:
0.08 energy per second, or 4.8 energy per minute.

But that is just for the jump drive. that's not plant output.

 

[Jak Nazryth]

There is already a Mongoose option for Jump Drives without liquid Hydrogen as the fuel.
See antimatter page 109 of the core book.
ALL fuel space currently required for power plants and jump drives can be used for cargo, state rooms,.... hockey rinks! 8)

 

[Jak Nazryth]

If I'm not mistaken... doesn't antimatter "traditionally" come in around TL 16?

 

[barnest2]

True... but that's YTU, rather than a normal option we should be considering for OTU.
And yes, something like that

 

[BP]

There is already a Mongoose option for Jump Drives without liquid Hydrogen as the fuel.
See antimatter page 109 of the core book.
ALL fuel space currently required for power plants and jump drives can be used for cargo, state rooms,.... hockey rinks! 8)

Combining the AM Power Plant with a Teleport or Hyperspace Drive does eliminate the need for fuel tonnage.

 

[dalamar981]

There is already a Mongoose option for Jump Drives without liquid Hydrogen as the fuel.
See antimatter page 109 of the core book.
ALL fuel space currently required for power plants and jump drives can be used for cargo, state rooms,.... hockey rinks! 8)

Combining the AM Power Plant with a Teleport or Hyperspace Drive does eliminate the need for fuel tonnage.

I think my point in coming up with this drive was to get rid of the fuel yes, but to have it seem to be around the same level of tech. It still needed to have a drawback, in this case time.

You don't have to spend the time skimming for fuel, but you need to charge your Jump drive.

 

[alex_greene]

So make it a flat one week charging period.

The ship jumps into unoccupied space about a light hour out from the planet, ahead of it, possibly in the same orbit so it'll always be ahead of the world. Once there, it unfurls the solar collectors and spends the next week just basking in sunlight while the ship's boats go shuttling back and forth to the planet. Job done, it parks the ship's boats, rolls up the sails, turns to the next system and just jumps straight out.

One week at a time. Plenty of time for another adventure.

 

[Captain Jonah]

Which moves us into the Battletech tech with starships and warships using sails to recharge jump engines.

Of course there seems no reason why you cannot have vast arrays of solar sails and panels at the 100d limit and lots of power storage. A ship jumps in, plugs in for a recharge, pays you and flys away a few hours later ready to jump again.

Unless you go the battletech insaneness where you couldn't charge the drives above a slow trickle or they exploded or some such.