What real use are escape pods?

[Condottiere]

I can speak from the High Guardesque aspect, and additions to such.

And, apparently, deep dive submersibles, as well as what's happening in Ukraine.

This depends on the complexity of the machinery involved, and I'd guess, reaction time/latency.

You probably could simplify the interface/controls to a games controller, assuming that the pilot understands the feedback he's given, and the controller delivers instructions exactly as the pilot understands how the *craft involved interacts with it's environment.

For Traveller, we have a cut off, currently, at fifty tonne hulls, for cockpits, so anything sized upto that, in accordance to the rules, should be permittable.

 

[agentwigggles]

when the small craft undocks it has the same velocity as its mothership. So it can just scoot in front of it. The crew may not have means to repair the m drive but they have the means to make temporary struts. Even if they have to cannibalize part of the ship. And any amount of retro thrust will reduce the mothership speed. They have a 2 week time frame to slow down the ship. SO they wont need to apply high thrust, risk the struts breaking.

 

[agentwigggles]

Ok, you made your point. No need to respond.

So, essentially you can have O2 with fire or you can have no fire and no O2,. We're getting somewhere. If you have fire, you're having stuff melting (plastics, insulators, control surfaces). If you vent to get rid of the meltiness (that's also consuming your O2), you have an O2 free environment. Winning.

At some point, a life raft starts to look better than the out of control, and eother on fire or vented mass. That's maybe not the hardest science out there but we're talking about games with jump drives and psionics

I would also guess that none of this is being done in a safe, orderly controlled environment. And may involve dice rolls (so something may go wrong).

As for attitude adjustment, I'm sure I could work out the distance for a 5 degree change over 2 days at 16,000km/s but I'll keep that for myTraveller. You don't need to respond.

You can evacuate the air as part of fire suppression without the air being lost. And if you didnt have the atmosphere to repopulate the fire damage room. Then you just leave it sealed off and dont worry about it.
This is where how movie dramatic YTU is about holes in space.
In real life, its not that dramatic. It can be very deadly. Just visually boring and short lived. Air is restricted from leaving a volume based on tis diameter. Small holes, small leaks. Even if the leak is to vacuum. Big holes will have that hurricane effect we see in media, but only for a few moments. Its unlikely to move an adult size person with force out into space unless you got unlikely and where at at the hole when it was formed. Though if you were at the hole when it was formed, you're probably dead anyway.
Its totally valid to run it like Aliens 3 where a hole in the hull has sustain infinite force, and will suck anything through it. Just make sure everyone at the table knows. This is a thing the characters would know, as well they lived, or worked in space all their life.

 

[swordtart]

It may not be about volume as much as pressure. If the ship has been depressurised (or the oxygen has been burned up or the air has been contaminated I may have no option but to blow it out the air lock). That means that whole compartment is now at zero pressure. Let's say that is a single stateroom of 4 DTon. If my 1/2 DTon escape pod has enough air in it for 1 atmosphere to last a week and I instead pump it into the stateroom, it might give me 1 day if I am lucky. Or depending on if it were recirculating, enriching and scrubbing that air, it might be a weeks worth of air at 1/8th of atmospheric pressure.

If the whole of a 200 Dton ship had been depressurised even assuming I could seal it all up and had maybe 10 escape pods with 5Dton of air between them, even if I blew all 7 days worth at once it would still only be able to pressurise the ship with air to last 35/200 days or under 4 hours. If they recirculated the air I would have 7 days of air at 0.025 atmospheres.

Sometimes keeping a small amount of air in a smaller volume is better than spreading it thinly throughout a larger volume.