Using High Efficiency Batteries for Jump Drives

[Arkathan]

Mongoose' Jump Bubbles throw a small monkey wrench into the works.

HG22 pg 17
Jump Drive: In order to use the jump drive, the ship
requires an amount of Power equal to 10% of the hull’s
total tonnage multiplied by the maximum jump number
the drive is capable of. Only fusion and antimatter
power plants can generate the intense burst of energy
necessary to operate a jump drive. In either case, the
power plant must be used to inject hydrogen into a
jump bubble, so alternative fuels cannot be used. Note
that this Power requirement is only needed when the
ship actually initiates a jump – at all other times, the
jump drive remains inert.

This indicates, to me, that the power plant has to have the capacity to power the Jump Drive on its own.
BUT nothing stops you from using batteries to power life support and the Maneuver Drive or screens while the power plant is doing its jump thing.

So the power plant/battery trick IS valid, but the savings is limited to the larger of Life Support + Maneuver OR Jump power requirements. with Battery making up the difference.

 

[Ol'Weedy]

Or better yet, at least one state upwind of the Jet Stream.
Still remember the hourly swipe tests and air samples on the flight deck after Chernobyl.

Things were so much easier back in the 50's...

(In case the reference is too old, that's John Wayne on the set of "The Conqueror". The movie was filmed mostly at St. George Utah, located just downwind of the Nevada nuclear test site. It starred: John Wayne - (Died of Cancer), Susan Hayward - (Died of Cancer), Agnes Moorhead - (Died of Cancer), and Pedro Armendáriz - (Died of Cancer), and was directed by Dick Powell - (Died of Cancer).)

 

[Arkathan]

Things were so much easier back in the 50's...
View attachment 3682
(In case the reference is too old, that's John Wayne on the set of "The Conqueror". The movie was filmed mostly at St. George Utah, located just downwind of the Nevada nuclear test site. It starred: John Wayne - (Died of Cancer), Susan Hayward - (Died of Cancer), Agnes Moorhead - (Died of Cancer), and Pedro Armendáriz - (Died of Cancer), and was directed by Dick Powell - (Died of Cancer).)

IIRC, Yul Brenner was also similarly exposed, although his smoking didn't help him in the slightest.

 

[Vormaerin]

Mongoose' Jump Bubbles throw a small monkey wrench into the works.

This indicates, to me, that the power plant has to have the capacity to power the Jump Drive on its own.
BUT nothing stops you from using batteries to power life support and the Maneuver Drive or screens while the power plant is doing its jump thing.

So the power plant/battery trick IS valid, but the savings is limited to the larger of Life Support + Maneuver OR Jump power requirements. with Battery making up the difference.

Ugh the gas balloon theory... I guess it is no worse than the "Power plants that sip fuel to run for weeks can suddenly overclock to burn a huge mass of fuel for incalculable energy at the point of Jump", which is T5's explanation. Unless you like the hull grid option some editions use.

The only thing that is critical to the game design is that the L-Hydrogen must be used at the point of Jump, whatever your reasoning for that is. From a game play perspective it doesn't really matter where you allow the catalyzing energy to come from. As long as you are not creating a way where the ship doesn't need to have a large chunk of its volume dedicated to "fuel", nothing is going to explode if you allow fission, chemical plants, batteries, or whatever to provide the energy.

 

[Arkathan]

Ugh the gas balloon theory... I guess it is no worse than the "Power plants that sip fuel to run for weeks can suddenly overclock to burn a huge mass of fuel for incalculable energy at the point of Jump", which is T5's explanation. Unless you like the hull grid option some editions use.

The only thing that is critical to the game design is that the L-Hydrogen must be used at the point of Jump, whatever your reasoning for that is. From a game play perspective it doesn't really matter where you allow the catalyzing energy to come from. As long as you are not creating a way where the ship doesn't need to have a large chunk of its volume dedicated to "fuel", nothing is going to explode if you allow fission, chemical plants, batteries, or whatever to provide the energy.

Similarly, under bubble theory <snerk> why can't you have a fuel pump that blows up the jump bubble? Why does it have to be the power plant... other than because HG22 pg 17?
Or does the hydrogen need to be in a superheated plasma state thus the power plant?

 

[WHULorigan]

There also this silly undefined 'overclocking' thing that T5 might or might not say, but it definitely says Fission is not allowed, presumably because does not produce the required 'extremely rapid (and inefficient) process' required to puncture space.

I've been to Trinity Site. Fission can be very good at extremely rapid and inefficient, but you want to be sitting behind a berm a mile upwind.

And it has the added side benefit of being a single-use High-Thrust Pulse Reaction Drive; Two drives for the price of one!

The hamsters need cocaine or at least amphetamines to power the jump drive. Of course, that's T5, an interesting arcane reference that is not necessarily compatible with MgT2.

Or as I mentioned on a similar thread once over on COTI, you need to buy GeDeCo's™ state of the art Cat-on-Treadmill High-Performance Module.

 

[Arkathan]

Or as I mentioned on a similar thread once over on COTI, you need to buy GeDeCo's™ state of the art Cat-on-Treadmill High-Performance Module.

The one with the really big cats that has the "low berths" positioned just above their kennels?

 

[WHULorigan]

Ugh the gas balloon theory... I guess it is no worse than the "Power plants that sip fuel to run for weeks can suddenly overclock to burn a huge mass of fuel for incalculable energy at the point of Jump", which is T5's explanation. Unless you like the hull grid option some editions use.

The only thing that is critical to the game design is that the L-Hydrogen must be used at the point of Jump, whatever your reasoning for that is. From a game play perspective it doesn't really matter where you allow the catalyzing energy to come from. As long as you are not creating a way where the ship doesn't need to have a large chunk of its volume dedicated to "fuel", nothing is going to explode if you allow fission, chemical plants, batteries, or whatever to provide the energy.

Another option is to presume that the Jump Drive is actually doing something to the L-Hyd to produce the Jump Effect, such as converting the protons and/or electrons in the plasma into some type of exotic particle thru a transmutation process (analogous to Nuclear Dampers with the Strong & Weak Force), generating the Jump field.

This then is why the Collector can generate a Jump without L-Hyd fuel (it is harvesting exotic particles from some other "virtual medium" in unstressed free space), and antimatter power plants can be modified to generate the exotic particles thru pair production from annihilation-quanta and/or other secondary-decay bosons without the use of carried L-Hyd.

Exotic Particle decay then might be related to the decay and eventual collapse of the Jump-field after a certain specified standard half-life for the exotic particles.

 

[Vormaerin]

Yeah, the explanation isn't really important. There's quite a few that could work. I like the transmogrification type concept along the lines you just described personally.

 

[WHULorigan]

Yeah, the explanation isn't really important. There's quite a few that could work. I like the transmogrification type concept along the lines you just described personally.

It does have the benefit of explaining a number of different "threads" or concepts that have arisen within "Jump Theory" over the decades and within various editions of the game.

 

[Condottiere]

1. The jump bubble variant resolves the issue what happens if the hull is damaged, and the lanthanum grid disrupted.

2. Official adoption of Collector technology indicates that you need exotic particles to initiate dimensional shift.

3. Which need not be related to the jump bubble, which may just be a byproduct of the process.

4. And, at some point, some scientist figured out that it can substitute for the lanthanum grid.

5. Or not, if the MongoVerse doesn't have lanthanum grids.

6. Since you can use unrefined fuel to jump, I'd say the chances are that the jump turbines strip off the hydrogen atoms.

7. And turn those into exotic particles.

8. But, if Collectors can store exotic particles, why not run the fuel through the jump turbines, and store them until needed?

9. Preemptively.

 

[Condottiere]

Good information. Can you point me to the reference that says that power is produced in 6 minute intervals? I assume you are referring to one space combat turn?

Game mechanics.

Everything happens in one spaced turn, and all activities are calculated within it.

And canonically it's been stated to be six minutes.

So, if your power plant has a given power point output, and a ship component requires a specific amount of energy to operate, they have to correspond.

It's the reason that allowing the batteries to power the jump drive was semi revolutionary.


Regarding light dimming, this could have been misinterpreted by passengers as power diversion, when actually it was meant as a visual warning that the transition was being initiated.

 

[WHULorigan]

8. But, if Collectors can store exotic particles, why not run the fuel through the jump turbines, and store them until needed?

9. Preemptively.

Because "Exotic Particles", like virtually all particles, are presumably unstable and decay into other particles according to an intrinsic half-life. If you have some form of "Damper" that can mediate or postpone/delay particle decay, then it would be a question of how much (continuous) energy you would need to supply to the Damper mechanism to power it in order to prevent that decay.

 

[Condottiere]

Wouldn't take too much to borrow the storage compartment from the Collector, and attach it to the jump drive.

 

[Sigtrygg]

As the inventor of the exotic particle or jump particle theory (which is probably no more correct than any other theory) let me restate once again.

A "particle" does not exist as anything more than an excitation of a field.

Jump particles, or exotic particles should be read as "excitations of the jump field".

Hydrogen fusion powered jump drives use some of the fusion fuel to generate the energy necessary to interact with the "jump field" to generate the "jump particles - excitations of the jump field". This "particle or field excitation" then undergoes a tachyonic condensation that breaks spacetime symmetry and opens the way to the "jump dimensions".

A collector gathers jump field vibrations until they reach a critical level in the accumulator which allows for them to undergo the phase change. Collecting "exotic particles" or "jump particles (or excitations of the jump field as it should be stated)" was too simple a handwave however many years ago I posted it on CotI.

Antimatter/matter is even more efficient at exciting the jump field to tachyonic condensation.

At no point is a hydrogen filled bubble necessary to jump - it was introduced by T4 authors misreading/misunderstanding MT SOM

Individual referees have to decide how this stuff works for themselves, but take care:

accumulators that can be loaded like cassettes means starships can very quickly be made ready for the next jump

drop tanks that can be recovered open the door to having a long hose pipe pumping the jump fuel from a ship or station to the jump ship

you very quickly realise that your jump hadwavium changes the setting in unintended ways, almost as if there is some universal law of unintended consequence.

 

[Vormaerin]

Wouldn't take too much to borrow the storage compartment from the Collector, and attach it to the jump drive.

The T5 version of the collectors doesn't have any accumulators. It retains the absorbed energy in the array until use and there is no indication that you can "fill" it any other way.

 

[Condottiere]

Then I'd place the Collector in a breakaway hull, and bombard it with an unshielded jump drive, which should speed up collection considerably faster.

 

[WHULorigan]

The T5 version of the collectors doesn't have any accumulators. It retains the absorbed energy in the array until use and there is no indication that you can "fill" it any other way.

Then I'd place the Collector in a breakaway hull, and bombard it with an unshielded jump drive, which should speed up collection considerably faster.

The T5 Version of the Unit (by Displacement Volume) is 50% External Canopy that does the actual "Collecting" in unstressed non-accelerated Free Space (presumably of "Excitons" of the Jump Field) while deployed, and 50% Internal Mechanism which maintains the collected "excitation-state charge" for subsequent Jump-field discharge.

The entire assembly is very expensive, and the Canopy degrades with use over time and eventually needs to be replaced (and is NOT cheap).

 

[Condottiere]

I get the impression collection rate is more due to particle density.

And, in war, time is an unrecoverable, precious commodity, and money can be borrowed.

 

[Anstett]

Game mechanics.

Everything happens in one spaced turn, and all activities are calculated within it.

And canonically it's been stated to be six minutes.

So, if your power plant has a given power point output, and a ship component requires a specific amount of energy to operate, they have to correspond.

It's the reason that allowing the batteries to power the jump drive was semi revolutionary.


Regarding light dimming, this could have been misinterpreted by passengers as power diversion, when actually it was meant as a visual warning that the transition was being initiated.

Along these lines.

If a ship enters a system with enough fuel to jump "immediately" out.... what does Immediately actually mean?

1 - Time for Astrogator to calculate the next jump is one obvious bit of time

2 - Utilizing the excess fuel seems to be six minutes

3 - Unknown - do jump drives need a recycle/cool down time between uses?

My gut has always told me 30 minutes minimum in system but based on other threads and this comment maybe it could be tightened up even more?