Using High Efficiency Batteries for Jump Drives

Regardless, saying fission plants are equal to quiet mode fusion plants means you can't have fission powered ships unless you have Fusion plus because you can't run Normal power mode to power your active sensors and weapons systems?

The question is (reading between the lines), can Fusion Plus (and hence Fission, in your example) power those systems, and are P-Plants ONLY needed for the Drives (and perhaps Spinal Mounts, but those are not covered in ACS)? Re-read the references closely. It is somewhat ambiguous.
 
I was interpreting some of your points as already "built in" to the tables / equations. The power plant descriptions on 132 talk about how the Fusion plant ability to Overclock is key to their ability to be so small and supposed to be a factor in the TL changes to size and efficiency of the Fusion plants. At size A the fusion plant is almost a quarter the size of the fission plant. Since both follow a linear progression of size (5 for fission, 3 for fusion), that changes to half the size at size H (800 EP) and 55% at size T (1800 EP). Theoretically, a larger fission plant could be installed that didn't need to overclock for the same power - but why 'waste' the space on a ship? Since this 'standard overclock' capacity is already reflected in the EP produced by the plant for normal operations, the M-drive doesn't seem to have a unique pull on the power than other systems. All 3 P-Plants for operations (H/U/A) can use the different operational modes, not just Fusion (H).

Earlier (beta) ruleset iterations had the Overclock rate per TL explicitly noted in a table, and also noted the standard Overclock rate for the given setting era. Golden Age Imperium Standard Rate is the 100% Base Rate against which everything else was compared, and 100% is available at TL13.
 
The question is (reading between the lines), can Fusion Plus (and hence Fission, in your example) power those systems, and are P-Plants ONLY needed for the Drives (and perhaps Spinal Mounts, but those are not covered in ACS)? Re-read the references closely. It is somewhat ambiguous.
I'm not a super big fan of the whole overclocking mechanic in the first place and I can't for the life of me even imagine a point in restricting M-Drives to fusion only. Like, the size and cost difference between fission and fusion already makes this a thing that favors fusion without special rules making fission plants worthless by fiat.

What is the point of even including fission plants in the rules for starships if they can't actually power a starship? So I'm going to parse it as "not completely moronic" :D Especially since one of the examples is a Nexus 9Z U-plant putting out 194,400 EP. Which is just slightly more than a 1A P-Plant's 100EP. :P
 
Well, that is my best attempt to play devil's advocate ;). I lean toward the chart being wrong.

But I suppose you could also say that the P-Plant Fuel consumption rate is an abstraction that averages the rate based on a normal lower consumption rate when the ship is not manoeuvring vs. a higher rate when it is (for typical usage patterns). But then of course a ship with a P-Plant but without an M-Drive for manoeuvre should get a benefit of low P-Plant fuel consumption.
 
Honestly, I vastly prefer HePlar to M-Drives in theory. It's just that M-Drive is much more player friendly. The number of times in my decades of playing Traveller that I've had players who derive any fun from figuring out how much fuel to use on particular maneuvers approaches 0.
 
Honestly, I vastly prefer HePlar to M-Drives in theory. It's just that M-Drive is much more player friendly. The number of times in my decades of playing Traveller that I've had players who derive any fun from figuring out how much fuel to use on particular maneuvers approaches 0.
I will do vector combat all day long - and in three dimensions - but I will never allow ships using reaction mass because I will not bother with the Tsiolkovsky equation.
 
I will do vector combat all day long - and in three dimensions - but I will never allow ships using reaction mass because I will not bother with the Tsiolkovsky equation.
The TNE g-hours thing almost makes it work without math, but only if you have a limiter on the acceleration, because it doesn't make the acceleration go up as you get lighter. Or propellant is such a small amount of the total mass that it doesn't matter... which of course makes little sense...
 
The TNE g-hours thing almost makes it work without math, but only if you have a limiter on the acceleration, because it doesn't make the acceleration go up as you get lighter. Or propellant is such a small amount of the total mass that it doesn't matter... which of course makes little sense...
Not to mention the difference between a fully loaded Free Trader and an empty one...
 
FF&S gives you the option:
"Calculating Gs: Craft with the huge fuel requirements listed above require a separate mechanism for calculation of Gs, because the mass of the vessel is continually changing as fuel is consumed. As a result, thrust is measured not in Gs, but in tonnes of thrust (the thrust necessary to give 1 tonne of mass an acceleration of 1G).
Once the craft is designed, calculate its G value when fully loaded, and then calculate its G value at each 10% increment of fuel consumption. G value is calculated by dividing the thrust in tonnes by the total mass of the craft (including fuel) in tonnes. By dividing the total fuel endurance of the craft by 10, you can arrive at a useful approximation of its performance, which may, for example, be 10 minutes at 1.2 G, 10 minutes at 1.4 G, 10 minutes at 1.6 G, etc.
Next, determine how much thrust in G-hours each 10% increment of fuel generates. To do so, divide the minutes of the increment (10 minutes in the example above, but it can be any length) by 60. The resulting value is multiplied by the G value of that increment to determine the total G-hours generated.
Using the example above, the increment is 10 minutes. Dividing 10 by 60 yields a value of 0.167. Therefore, the first 10 minute increment will generate 0.2004 Ghours (which we'll round down to 0.20), the second will generate 0.2338 G-hours (rounded down to 0.23), the third will generate 0.2672 G-Hours (rounded up to 0.27), etc"
 
Divide the fuel into 10 lots and calculate the drive performance is not difficult, a bit tedious if you are maths averse but you wouldn't be using FF&S in that case :)

If you want a quicker way and don't mind the fudge use a graphical method.
x axis point 1 mass of ship with full fuel, point 10 mass of ship with no fuel
y axis point 1 g performance fully loaded, point 10 no fuel g performance (ok just before no fuel as at no fuel no performance :))

Now connect the dots like this:
1738575050584.png
Not ideal but it works.

You can now read off the performance every 1/10 of fuel increment.

Give a laminated version to the players, they will either have fun with it or you can go back to ignoring fuel use.
 
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