Personnally, I hope you don't make the ships not able be larger than the standard 2.5 million. It would make them more interesting to play. You can rig it so it doesn't cause troubles for game balance. I can picture eventually Nebulans building arc ships eventually finding away out of the Nebula and exploring the deep periphery.
I was thinking of limiting Skip Drives entirely to ASF/SC/DS, but I can stick to the older posts with WS/JS/SS being limited to Stationary variants of the Skip Drives (Defense only).
I can see that 2.5Mil a Dyson sphere Monitor...
Well I can design you a
Deep Space Habitat Sphere, imagine a hollow sphere with a diameter of 10km, and at the center a smaller spherical structure containing most of the machinery. The sphere has six automated pressurized repair bays, each hemisphere contains three of them. The inner hull surface of each bay contains a huge grav deck and an array of hydroponic chambers, these get most of their light from the central structure which is covered in light emitting systems.
Deep Space Habitat Sphere (Standard)
Mass: 2,500,000 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Advanced)
Introduced: 2750
Mass: 2,500,000
Battle Value: 105,117
Tech Rating/Availability: E/F-X-F-F
Cost: 7,624,579,000,000 C-bills
Fuel: 100,000 tons (250,000)
Safe Thrust: 0
Maximum Thrust: 0
Sail Integrity: N/A
Heat Sinks: 300
Structural Integrity: 1
Armor
Nose: 1000
Fore Sides: 1000/1000
Aft Sides: 1000/1000
Aft: 1000
Cargo
Bay 1: ARTS Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (2,500,000)1 Door
Bay 2: ARTS Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (2,500,000)1 Door
Bay 3: ARTS Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (2,500,000)1 Door
Bay 4: ARTS Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (2,500,000)1 Door
Bay 5: ARTS Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (2,500,000)1 Door
Bay 6: ARTS Standard Repair Facility (Pressurized) (2,500,000)1 Door
Bay 7: ARTS Small Craft (60) 30 Doors
Bay 8: Cargo (413653.0 tons) 2 Doors
Ammunition:
None
Dropship Capacity: 0
Grav Decks: 6 (1500 m, 1500 m, 1500 m, 1500 m, 1500 m, 1500 m)
Escape Pods: 10,000
Life Boats: 0
Crew: 100 officers, 494 enlisted/non-rated, 6 gunners, 300 bay personnel, 60000 passengers
Notes: Equipped with
1 Mobile Hyperpulse Generators (Mobile HPG)
1 Naval Comm-Scanner Suite (Large)
7,500 tons of ferro-carbide armor.
Weapons: Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat) Heat SRV MRV LRV ERV Class
Nose (12 Heat)
6 Small Pulse Laser 12 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
FRS/FLS (12 Heat)
6 Small Pulse Laser 12 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
ARS/ALS (12 Heat)
6 Small Pulse Laser 12 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
Aft (12 Heat)
6 Small Pulse Laser 12 2(18) 0(0) 0(0) 0(0) Point Defense
[standard version, no exotic/custom technology applied yet].
I'm guessing the incompatibility between Skip Drives and KF Drives is because Skip Drives are still technically tiny KF Drives?
Skip Drives are KF related technology, the core itself can best be seen as containing a continuous KF event which is force feed reactor plasma. The KF event itself is used as a (bit explosive) pressure cooker to turn that fusion plasma into something more exotic plasma, which is then used to generate all the effects. Both the exotic plasma and the KF event do not react kindly to Jump Fields.
More of a living with instead of gaming terms
Your skip drives have range/days I assume that means it travels 4 ly per day?
Yes, the most advanced ones do.
My question would be 2 fold I guess
A) are they aware of the travel time I.e is this some sort of jump space? Or is it instantaneous for them but time passes for everyone else (if its the latter you could have some really "old" crews on ships that jump a lot)
They are aware, they can make course changes and make manual stops.
B) what's the max range could they for example choose to go 400 ly and it takes 400 days (I know they are in the nebula do that would technically be impossible just curious)
As long as their fuel lasts (1G Burn Days), their Skip Drives consume the equivalent of a 1G Thrust of reactor plasma. I choose that for easy usage.
C/ Do they need to know their destinations coordinates or will it work throw the switches hope for the best? Main reason I'd ask here is you said gravity isn't an issue for them JumpShips and WarShips tend to jump near a star to avoid the planets orbits and other debris these things technically could jump anywhere but would still generally aim for a star?
Gravity is less of an issue but not a non-issue. They can choose a direction and the safety systems will do their best to avoid gravity wells and strange anomalies. But if those systems malfunction and the ship travels through a planet while in hyper space then it will be fatal, or the Game Master (Q) will snap his fingers and something strange will happen to save their lives.
