New referee confused with parts of ship building

[leastdevotee]

Specifically High burn thrusters. My group is looking to build a custom ship to wander the stars with and a few of them were interested in High burn thrusters to add to the design. Unfortunately something about the wording in the High Guard update 2022 book makes my brain blue screen when trying to work out how to implement them when building a starship. Looked around here and reddit trying to see if anyone had already mentioned this but didn't find anything explaining the practical execution. So here I am asking directly.

As far as I can tell there's two ways to interpret the explanation for what a High burn thruster is rules wise. 1: you add any reaction drive from the drive tables and add that reaction drive's thrust to your normal drive's thrust rating. 2: you choose a reaction drive that has a higher rating than your normal drive and it supplants your normal drive while the High burn thruster is in use.

Honestly I figure that there's something really basic in the rules I'm missing that would make this entire question redundant and I'm going to feel really silly after learning what it is. Thank you for the help in advance.

 

[phavoc]

They are the afterburners of the 52nd century. So they give you that extra boost you are looking for. Don't try to go down the logical rabbit hole of how you are able to provide so much extra thrust using a chemical drive. That will just hurt even more.

 

[Reynard]

I always interpreted it to add to the thrust of a maneuver drive. It's a short duration turboboost. Most ships I build with HBT need the boost for combat. You gain a great way to 'pounce' a target quickly then out-maneuver at close range. Also great for escape.

Remember though that reaction drives are gas guzzlers. They are enhancers and not great as a primary drive. Try building a low tech, 'modern' day rocket ship and see how... useful it is.

 

[Condottiere]

1. It's a retcon.

2. Mongoose First I designed a really neat rocket sled around the high burn thrusters chemical rockets.

3. As I recall, Mongoose Second had an entry for it, but no explanation as to what it is, or how to integrate it into engineering.

4. The update explained it's actually a/the term for reactionary rockets and manoeuvre drive combination.

5. I would guess that editorially no one cared about high speed thrusters, and decided a convenient cop out was to attribute it to that.

Smallest possible civilian smallcraft

Rocket Sled

1. Two ton hull at 0.2 Mcr.
2. Reinforced structure 5% is 0.1 tons at 20'000 Cr.
3. Cockpit compact 1.125 tons at 0.15 Mcr (based on 20 tons, otherwise 42'000 Cr); standard electronics suite and iPod.
4. Chemical battery factor one (1.2 tons/10) 0.12 tons at 1.2 MCr for one hour activity, plus 0.003 tons at 30'000 Cr for twenty five hour standby.
5. High Burn Thruster sA 0.05 tons at 0.1 MCr.
6. Thruster fuel consumption 0.0125 tons for an hour burn at 125 Cr.
7. Flight crew of Pilot.
8. 1.5005 tons//1.7 MCr.
9. Cargo/unallocated 0.4995 tons

Performance 10 gees for one hour.