Questions: High tech travel

[DivineWrath]

I have a few points that I want to be sure about. Many of these questions might have answers only the devs can give.

Am I correct to believe that hyperdrive, warp drive, and space folding drive use no fuel?

Am I correct to believe that the time drive does use fuel? Can it use exotic particles from a collector instead?

Can you activate a hyperdrive or warp drive immediately after you exit hyperspace or warp?

It says that the space folding drives need 24 hours to recharge. Recharge how? Could I speed that up somehow? Failing that, could a ship have multiple space folding drives so a ship could make multiple space folds in a 24 hour period? If a space folding drive doesn't space fold its maximum distance, could it make another space fold later before it finishes recharging?

It seems that collectors can refuel themselves by gliding through space for a week. Can you have multiple sets of collectors or a really large collector on a ship so you have fuel to make another jump quickly after getting out of jump space? Can you trade exotic particle between ships so a ship doesn't need to spend a week collecting its own fuel? In essence refuel a collector ship?

Do any of these high tech drives need astrogation checks? It might be the only thing that can slow some of these drives down.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Unfortunately, the answer is "It depends on what you want". Most of these rules are secondary and not fully fleshed out (yet). I believe you can do whatever you want in your setting.

If the drives do not list fuel, then they use the Power Plant for fuel and don't require any of their own. That is the easy one.

Time Drive Fuel - YMMV. Personally, I would say NO, since exotic particles are not (by definition) usually found in open space, so a collector wouldn't be able to collect them. However, a specially designed collector could be something you allow. If you do that, it wouldn't work for other drives or vice versa. Special particles for a special drive.

Immediate Drive Activation - Since these drives are based on other games/TV/SciFi - I recommend that you decide individually for your setting. Personally, I would say YES to the Warp Drive, but no to the Hyperdrive (space needs to smooth out a bit first).

Collectors - these are vaguely based on Magnetic collectors that are a common feature in Bussard Ramjets - The magnetic field being deployed is potentially thousands of km across already. Stacking them really doesn't work. One thing you could do is drive the ship through denser areas of space. Within our solar system, the closer to the sun, the denser the material. The asteroid belt would also be denser. Think DUST though, not hunks of rock. Nebulas would also be denser than normal space, so would be able to refuel faster. That may be more complicated than you are interested in mapping though...

I would use the Astrogation check for ALL of them.

 

[DivineWrath]

Yeah. I figured that I might make things up as go. Maybe I'll mention some of my thoughts.

Collectors - The way they are described indicates that they are much smaller than the tanks you normally use for jump fuel, and can be refilled anywhere (in normal space). Normal jump fuel tanks take up space increments of 10% while collectors take up space in increments of 1%. It is very possible to stuff much more equipment on a ship if you use collectors as the alternative fuel. And it definitely makes it possible to use powerful jump drives without wasting most of your space on jump drives and jump fuel tanks. It has a lot to do with why I'm interested in them. I'm looking for ways to make them easier to use, such as making it possible to refuel them at a starport or store more for consecutive jumping (instead of spending another week to refuel).

Space Folding Drive - I think this drive has 2 major uses beyond simple travel.

With its ability to instantaneously move from one point to another, it makes it possible for a large empire in the Traveller universe to up to date on the news down to the day. The first ship collects the news then jumps, then transmits data to the next ship, then the next ship jumps, starts transmitting data to another ship, so on and so on. At some point the data gets to the core of the empire, the data gets collected and sorted, then a separate fleet of ships starts jumping and sending data to other ships. It can work like a loop, where a ship that reaches the core of the empire starts changes direction and goes the other way the next day. Same goes for the ship that reaches the end of the empire.

Its other use could be tactical. If the space folding drive can be used quickly, it could be used to flank enemy ships or get quickly into weapons range. You would probably need to make the action quicker, suffering a DM-2 to make 1D10 minutes become 1D minutes.

It also has some strategic value as the rating 1 version can make 7 parsecs in 7 days. That is much faster than even what a J-6 ship can do and it does it by using up far less tonnage. And fuel.

Hyperdrive and Warp Drive - Incredible strategic value. Both of these can fly circles around J-6 ships. Using rating 1 drives of all things. At rating 1, you can travel 1 parsec in an hour. If you went so far as to require 2 hours to prepare to travel again using those drives, you could travel 8 parsecs a day. Not only could you out travel a J-6 ship in one day, you could spend the remaining 6 days flying circles around the parsec the J-6 ship is supposed to arrive in.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

It all comes down to what you want in your setting. Most SciFi settings only allow one way to go FTL. If you are going to allow multiple FTL drives, go for it, but there will be some serious consequences to the setting that you will need to work through. Obvious uses of the drives are going to be exploited quickly by every society developing them. If you (or the player's) can think of it, likely someone in-setting has done it too.

The Picard Maneuver is a perfect example of an obvious use of the Warp Drive that shouldn't have been so amazing since it was pretty obvious that it would work that way (Star Trek NG reference).