TL 14 Collectors In High Guard
- Thread starter alex_greene
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Thanks Sig
Fusor: Collectors rely on something that doesn't exist today. Today.
Just like traveller armour relies on something that doesn't exist. None of the materials we have today, can be applied to have the effect of ignoring particle/fusion/near-c kinetic/nuclear etc attacks.
That material is magic or magically treated.
Just like jump drives, psionics, mesons.
These explanations are just as weak, as collectors (some less some more).
Fusor: Collectors rely on something that doesn't exist today. Today.
Just like traveller armour relies on something that doesn't exist. None of the materials we have today, can be applied to have the effect of ignoring particle/fusion/near-c kinetic/nuclear etc attacks.
That material is magic or magically treated.
Just like jump drives, psionics, mesons.
These explanations are just as weak, as collectors (some less some more).
AnotherDilbert
Emperor Mongoose
I have to agree, not all handwaveium is equal.fusor said:
MT Referee's Manual, p56 had a good introduction:
And I see that they left out jump technology, sigh. And inertial compensators...
That's supposed to be it when it comes to pure handwaveium in Traveller. If you take real physics and these assumptions you have the classical Traveller universe.
As LBB0 said:
LBB0, p34.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
I understand your point I just disagree with you totally. You do know modern science doesn't know everything? Up until a couple of years ago there was no Higgs boson, just a theory. Then evidence was collected. Unlike dark energy and dark matter which are purely theoretic with no evidence whatsoever beyond solving a few equations. But I digress from my point. Earlier this year scientists were excited because a blip in the data suggested an unknown particle that would destroy the standard mode. Fortunately for the standard model the data proved to be just an aberration, but scientists conducting these experiments are open to the possibility that one day experimental evidence of a particle that breaks the standard model will be discovered. That is science.fusor said:
Saying that something can not exist - I wonder if a caveman could contemplate the quark?
A bit of this could have been resolved if someone had stuck to this bit in the original adventure:
I agree with you (see above quote from the adventure) and postulate either a type of particle that we have not detected yet in the real world or it is some kind of manipulation of the neutrino (which is an interesting particle in itself since it can change from one type to another by a mechanism we can not fully explain yet)
That would work for me too.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Very true, I am not a particular fan of DGPs MT handwavium.AnotherDilbert said:
I see the tech breakthroughs/paradigm shift as understanding these technologies:
fusion - actual working nuclear fusion power stations
gravitics - including null grav modules (or contragrav or anti-grav - I just stick with the earlier term), the gravitic maneuver drive (don't like MT handwavium for this), acceleration compensation (or inertial dampers as just about everyone has adopted the Star trek term
jump drive
nuclear damper technology - manipulation of the strong nuclear force
meson technology - manipulation of the strong and weak nuclear forces
PsiTraveller
Cosmic Mongoose
The game changing nature of Collectors depends on three things that I can think of off the top of my head.
1; The speed of Collection of the exotic particles. 1 week flat rate allows a 2 Jumps a month just like a regular ship. This saves the need for skimming or buying a lot of fuel and allows Collector ships to just be more efficient and profitable than the old ships. Sucks to be old Tech.
2: Does the Collector need to be in a system with a star in order to collect energy? Annic Nova showed a 1-6 week recharge time. This really slows down the competitiveness with Hydrogen if it can take 6 weeks to recharge.
If the new system does not need a star to recharge, then crossing rifts becomes a tactical possibility and changes the military balance everywhere Collectors are available.
3: How far can the Collectors move a ship? Is is J1, J2, J3? higher? Can they power a Jump 4 Jump Engine? If so that has some military implications as well. J4 normally needs 40 percent of the hull volume in fuel. Collectors allow far more cargo or weapons to be moved within the same size hull.
Anyone else have anything to add to the list?
1; The speed of Collection of the exotic particles. 1 week flat rate allows a 2 Jumps a month just like a regular ship. This saves the need for skimming or buying a lot of fuel and allows Collector ships to just be more efficient and profitable than the old ships. Sucks to be old Tech.
2: Does the Collector need to be in a system with a star in order to collect energy? Annic Nova showed a 1-6 week recharge time. This really slows down the competitiveness with Hydrogen if it can take 6 weeks to recharge.
If the new system does not need a star to recharge, then crossing rifts becomes a tactical possibility and changes the military balance everywhere Collectors are available.
3: How far can the Collectors move a ship? Is is J1, J2, J3? higher? Can they power a Jump 4 Jump Engine? If so that has some military implications as well. J4 normally needs 40 percent of the hull volume in fuel. Collectors allow far more cargo or weapons to be moved within the same size hull.
Anyone else have anything to add to the list?
Sigtrygg said:
Right, but that's what the science in science fiction is about. It's got to have some basis in science. If it doesn't, then it's just fantasy.
Cavemen couldn't contemplate the quark. But their equivalent level of "science fiction" would extrapolate from things that they know about the world (Ok, they don't have science, but roll with me here). They know big tigers exist, their stories might have huge mammoth-sized tigers. They know fire exists, their stories might have raging firestorms descending from the sky. Maybe they think there's another land over the big ocean, that might have other strange cavemen on it. And so on. Those would be valid example of their "science fiction".
But if some caveman said "ugh. matter made from particles. particles made from other tinier stuff. Me call it quark", then that would be pure fantasy to everyone else around them. That's just making stuff up that isn't there.
The point being that science fiction, like science, isn't fixed - but it still must have a basis in the science known at the time to qualify as such, otherwise it's just not "science fiction". I'm not saying it has to slavishly adhere to science and realism, but it's one thing to say "it takes stellar neutrinos and converts them into exotic particles, and the efficiency drops with distance from the star" and another to say "it takes magical particles that we haven't seen and that are emitted by stars that are strangely the same no matter what the distance or stellar luminosity is".
alex_greene
Guest
Collectors, plus the space folding drive.
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
I agree with you - an attempt should be made to at least have a nod towards science.fusor said:
Which is why I detest he ion canon and the tachyon canon - not too keen on the meson gun either to be honest
Ion canon - the particle accelerator is an ion cannon, it fires charged particles - ions - at an enemy, the 'ion' cannon as described should be more properly described as an electromagnetic pulse projector. The name is a rip off from Star Wars and misuses the term ion. Oddly enough I have no problem with the weapon system itself - I need something liked this to provide rules for the EM affectors in my Culture campaign.
Tachyon cannon - please no, just no.
Too much pseudoscientific technobabble makes a game science fantasy rather than science fiction
Sigtrygg
Emperor Mongoose
Perhaps the race that built them copied them from the jump 2 and jump 3 traders/scouts that came calling. They don't have a jump 1 drive and the jump 2 engine is used for jumps 0-2 and the jump 3 engine for jump 2.1-3 only.
Another oddity is the software package includes jump 4
Another oddity is the software package includes jump 4
The space folding drive doesn't use fuel, just power so it's usefullness as an alternative to fuel is mute. I would imagine in most cases the size of the collectors wouldn't be larger than the extra size for the power plant to provide the power needed for the SFD.alex_greene said:
AndrewW said:
Looking at the original adventure, it says "the accumulators can store enough energy to power each jump drive once, as well as maintain internal life support under normal conditions." So it sounds as if it could charge up, then use its J3 for one jump and then its J2 for a second jump, so perhaps it's a low tech way of getting the equivalent of J5 on a single charge (it specifically says that they can't be combined into a single J5 jump though)? (then again J5 should be possible at TL 14 shouldn't it? So I guess this race hadn't figured that part out at least).
Also, while collecting, the canopy for the Collector unfurls into a big circular disk that's 1km in diameter, so this thing needs a lot of room! (p15 of the original adventure).
And as Sig notes, they do actually say in the original adventure that charging takes 1-6 weeks depending on the type of star and distance from it. So if that could be broken down and tabulated more clearly in HG2 so that GMs knew exactly how long it would take to charge given the situation then that would work.
alex_greene
Guest
Belisknar said:
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
"1; The speed of Collection of the exotic particles. 1 week flat rate allows a 2 Jumps a month just like a regular ship. This saves the need for skimming or buying a lot of fuel and allows Collector ships to just be more efficient and profitable than the old ships. Sucks to be old Tech. "
As I said in an earlier post, most ships don't spend a lot of time traveling to and from jump points and destination. Travel between a far neighbor world and a destination world and back again at 1g is a week. That's obviously far further that a 100D ride at the destination even if it's a gas giant for any reason. Far more likely than not, you are parked in orbit at the destination for a long time watching ships that arrived at the same time refueling with hydrogen and off in far less time. If there's no highport, you better hope for expensive cargo/fuel load and unload shuttle service or waste space for your own small craft. You still need to find L-hyd for your power plant at the same time you're charging the jump. Lots of missed opportunities at downport only sites. Sucks to be specialized new tech.
"2: Does the Collector need to be in a system with a star in order to collect energy? Annic Nova showed a 1-6 week recharge time. This really slows down the competitiveness with Hydrogen if it can take 6 weeks to recharge. If the new system does not need a star to recharge, then crossing rifts becomes a tactical possibility and changes the military balance everywhere Collectors are available."
Annic Nova recharge was based on how far from a star it was. It's making the assumption the necessary energy and particles are part of a star's fusion production (just like fusion PP) and concentrated within a star's local vicinity (inverse square law). They made the process simpler assuming you will always be at an optimal distance from a system's star(s) and you destination.
"3: How far can the Collectors move a ship? Is it J1, J2, J3? higher? Can they power a Jump 4 Jump Engine? If so that has some military implications as well. J4 normally needs 40 percent of the hull volume in fuel. Collectors allow far more cargo or weapons to be moved within the same size hull."
'Collectors consume 1% of the ship’s tonnage multiplied by the maximum jump number its drive is capable of, plus 5 tons.' The collectors are build to handle the size of a ship's jump engine. No J4s in the Core book so we try an 800 ton merc cruiser at J3. That's a Collector displacing 29 tons compared to 249 tons fuel. Sounds great except a Collector cruiser should not be able to deploy that honking huge canopy under gravity in an atmosphere which it's built to operate in. Just to be fair though rather than assuming - Mongoose, can canopies be used planetside or are they those gigantic gossamer structures that work only in zero gravity?
The Annic Nova scenario never explained the double jump drive capacity or how the Accumulator charges both except it could because it was Weird Alien Stuff. The HG2e version was again simplified to handle one jump capacitor system at a time. It seems reasonable it could spend a second week to charge a second jump drive that is equal to or smaller than a primary jump engine. Adding a second Collector system seems impossible with the canopy component.
As I said in an earlier post, most ships don't spend a lot of time traveling to and from jump points and destination. Travel between a far neighbor world and a destination world and back again at 1g is a week. That's obviously far further that a 100D ride at the destination even if it's a gas giant for any reason. Far more likely than not, you are parked in orbit at the destination for a long time watching ships that arrived at the same time refueling with hydrogen and off in far less time. If there's no highport, you better hope for expensive cargo/fuel load and unload shuttle service or waste space for your own small craft. You still need to find L-hyd for your power plant at the same time you're charging the jump. Lots of missed opportunities at downport only sites. Sucks to be specialized new tech.
"2: Does the Collector need to be in a system with a star in order to collect energy? Annic Nova showed a 1-6 week recharge time. This really slows down the competitiveness with Hydrogen if it can take 6 weeks to recharge. If the new system does not need a star to recharge, then crossing rifts becomes a tactical possibility and changes the military balance everywhere Collectors are available."
Annic Nova recharge was based on how far from a star it was. It's making the assumption the necessary energy and particles are part of a star's fusion production (just like fusion PP) and concentrated within a star's local vicinity (inverse square law). They made the process simpler assuming you will always be at an optimal distance from a system's star(s) and you destination.
"3: How far can the Collectors move a ship? Is it J1, J2, J3? higher? Can they power a Jump 4 Jump Engine? If so that has some military implications as well. J4 normally needs 40 percent of the hull volume in fuel. Collectors allow far more cargo or weapons to be moved within the same size hull."
'Collectors consume 1% of the ship’s tonnage multiplied by the maximum jump number its drive is capable of, plus 5 tons.' The collectors are build to handle the size of a ship's jump engine. No J4s in the Core book so we try an 800 ton merc cruiser at J3. That's a Collector displacing 29 tons compared to 249 tons fuel. Sounds great except a Collector cruiser should not be able to deploy that honking huge canopy under gravity in an atmosphere which it's built to operate in. Just to be fair though rather than assuming - Mongoose, can canopies be used planetside or are they those gigantic gossamer structures that work only in zero gravity?
The Annic Nova scenario never explained the double jump drive capacity or how the Accumulator charges both except it could because it was Weird Alien Stuff. The HG2e version was again simplified to handle one jump capacitor system at a time. It seems reasonable it could spend a second week to charge a second jump drive that is equal to or smaller than a primary jump engine. Adding a second Collector system seems impossible with the canopy component.
