Author Topic: Safe superjump?  (Read 26976 times)

monbvol

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #60 on: 02 September 2019, 21:26:59 »
Indeed. The real problem isn't that energy storage batteries are too big or diesel generators should be able to charge a jump drive easily, it's that the whole thing doesn't make sense.

Focusing on just one part of the nonsense doesn't fix the problem because of all the other nonsense. A solar sail of this size at this distance may only realistically be getting this much power, but you still need to burn multiple burn days worth of reaction mass to charge the drive without it. Energy storage batteries are a hundred thousand tons and can only store power which has to be trickle charged across, while the largest possible lithium fusion battery is twenty five thousand tons and can power the core directly, but for some reason you can only have one. Also reaction mass is magic.

None of it fits together well, because it was all bolted together over a couple decades by people who didn't really think too hard about it, on top of prior work by people who thought even less about it. The whole space thing is a mess.

*nod*

I don't want to give these people too much crap because engineering/scientific inconsistency/implausibility even back when this was being slapped together wasn't anything new but yeah it is all too obvious that by in large they just threw numbers at things and then multiple attempts to actually put that into rules came later and they all eventually failed to deliver an enjoyable portion of the game.

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #61 on: 03 September 2019, 18:18:47 »
Sadly true, both of you...  :-\

Talen5000

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #62 on: 04 September 2019, 06:32:51 »
*nod*

I don't want to give these people too much crap because engineering/scientific inconsistency/implausibility even back when this was being slapped together wasn't anything new but yeah it is all too obvious that by in large they just threw numbers at things and then multiple attempts to actually put that into rules came later and they all eventually failed to deliver an enjoyable portion of the game.

No  - it's enjoyable.

It may not make much sense, but that doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable.

As I said, FASA obviously wanted the sail motif. There is nothing wrong with that....it's a fairly unique style. And they obviously liked the BattleRider/Battletender concept of Traveller. And the various authors have done a marvellous job stitching things together. That some of it doesn't "quite" match reality is a pity, but it fits in universe and the game is fun. Just don't think too much about the parts that don't make sense and accept them for what they are.
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monbvol

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #63 on: 04 September 2019, 10:02:06 »
I'll admit I should have said "enjoyable to a large enough portion of the fan base to see widespread acceptance and support" as I can't argue there are die hards that enjoy it as is but how often threads show up where people are complaining about all things space and how poorly executed a lot of it really is I'm going to stand by my assessment that all things space are in desperate need of redoing top to bottom.

skiltao

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #64 on: 04 September 2019, 14:11:19 »
I think AeroTech has so little traction because of issues with accessibility and grokkability of the rules, and how big and fiddly any ship's weapon blocks are. Not because of how jump drive charging works.

Gameplay choices (like armor and fuel mass) aside, I find the original 1988 DropShips and JumpShips to be surprisingly rigorous. The quick-charging section does contradict itself, though; can only wonder what might've been lost or mangled in editing.

Rolling back to DS&JS construction would resolve TR:2750's mass bloating, solves several questions about KF mass limits which result from how BattleSpace weighs KF drives, and might obviate the discrepancy between Lithium-Fusion batteries and station batteries.
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Talen5000

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #65 on: 04 September 2019, 17:23:05 »
I think AeroTech has so little traction because of issues with accessibility and grokkability of the rules, and how big and fiddly any ship's weapon blocks are. Not because of how jump drive charging works.

The only way to get rid of those would be to completely redo the rules -not likely.

For example....you could slash the mass of the KF drive and engine by a factor of ten, BUT increase fuel mass AND armour by a factor of 1000.

Now, running costs are a major issue and while the ships have huge amounts of armour, it is heavy.

That way you could also embrace a simple AP vs AV system for combat. Your weapon has a certain AP value which is compared to the targets Armour value and if it passes, then the ship takes an amount of internal damage depending on the where it hit, type of weapon, damage value and margin of success. In effect, you try to crit the ship to death because mile long ships just don't blow up.

However, rewriting AT rules is VERY unlikely to ever happen any time soon. Not with SO on the reprint list.

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skiltao

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #66 on: 04 September 2019, 18:39:40 »
Fixing accessibility and grokkability would involve more than a simple reprint, I agree.

It wouldn't surprise me if trying to implement higher fuel and armor fractions is how TR:2750 got its mass bloat in the first place.

As this thread is about increasing jump distance and handling multiple KF charges, I won't comment on weapons too much except to say that there's multiple ways to make the stat blocks less huge, most of which don't require a complete rewrite of the rules and some of which may change hardly any rules at all.
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Liam's Ghost

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #67 on: 04 September 2019, 19:19:53 »
As this thread is about increasing jump distance and handling multiple KF charges, I won't comment on weapons too much except to say that there's multiple ways to make the stat blocks less huge, most of which don't require a complete rewrite of the rules and some of which may change hardly any rules at all.

Battleforce Space, or Battleface among the cultured.
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m79

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #68 on: 04 September 2019, 21:45:58 »
Getting back to the original topic...

Given the existence of an FTL ship weighing barely 6100 tons, the possibility that the Hegemony developed something much more advanced and toyed about with them (i.e. Lucretia) and perhaps developed a much longer range capacity.  It might also have encouraged the reported 'no more than one KF drive within X km' rule to discourage the other powers from trying the same experiments.

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #69 on: 04 September 2019, 23:04:54 »
It's interesting to see, though, that in the BTU K-F-drives and HPG transmitters become more efficient at some point, i. e. they can be build much smaller, but they not more effective, meaning their range maxima stay constant. That seems rather odd, since usually being able to build something smaller means one has mastered its power, too. By analogy, that would be like microchip processors being build on ever smaller circuit boards, but not being able to build computers that can do more calculations per microsecond. These technological boundaries do exist for certain spans of time, yes, but usually they are solved within a couple of years and can temporarily be circumvented by adding processor cores and enhancing clocking speed.

For K-F technology, no such circumvention seems to exist, not even during the heydays of the Star League. That suggests a rather hard limit, probably due to the nature of hyperspace. Unless one finds a new way to look at the problem, which is WoB scientists might have done.
would that imply that the only improvements were in materials and manufacturing, not design and architecture?  Like they're just miniaturizing the existing blue prints without "daring" to alter any of the "arcane" circuitry?

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #70 on: 04 September 2019, 23:09:03 »
In a dual core ship, you could control the variables much more easily even to the point of taking into account the particular impurities in each core.  If you can precisely control the variables, you could potentially calibrate the two cores to eliminate interference and instead resonate and create a stronger jump field.

Of course, not many factions in the fiction understand K-F mechanics well enough to mess with the precision required here, to say nothing of the resources needed.
well, everyone so far is right if you (could according to canon) just define your two tightly integrated compact cores as a single full size doubly powerful supercore

Vaguely like upgrading from one 200XL engine to one 400XL engine not 2x200XLs

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #71 on: 04 September 2019, 23:26:19 »
Indeed. The real problem isn't that energy storage batteries are too big or diesel generators should be able to charge a jump drive easily, it's that the whole thing doesn't make sense.

Focusing on just one part of the nonsense doesn't fix the problem because of all the other nonsense. A solar sail of this size at this distance may only realistically be getting this much power, but you still need to burn multiple burn days worth of reaction mass to charge the drive without it. Energy storage batteries are a hundred thousand tons and can only store power which has to be trickle charged across, while the largest possible lithium fusion battery is twenty five thousand tons and can power the core directly, but for some reason you can only have one. Also reaction mass is magic.

None of it fits together well, because it was all bolted together over a couple decades by people who didn't really think too hard about it, on top of prior work by people who thought even less about it. The whole space thing is a mess.
well I tried to point out in another thread, that the canon rules are actually surprisingly realistic, if you interpret the rules such that what you are actually doing is just topping off the charge stored in the drive, due to practical losses to all of your EM, neutrino, and gravity wave emissions at either end of the jump transit

The vast majority of energy required to "eject" matter, from the fabric of space time into hyperspace, you actually recover on the other end, when all that mass "drops back into" the fabric of space time

Only some of it "spills" out as losses

If so, your KF drive (in the fabric of space time) is never less than 99% charged and you're just cycling from 99%-100% jump 99%-100% jump...

[gimme a sec 😅 ]

Retry

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #72 on: 04 September 2019, 23:59:26 »
No  - it's enjoyable.

It may not make much sense, but that doesn't mean it isn't enjoyable.

As I said, FASA obviously wanted the sail motif. There is nothing wrong with that....it's a fairly unique style. And they obviously liked the BattleRider/Battletender concept of Traveller. And the various authors have done a marvellous job stitching things together. That some of it doesn't "quite" match reality is a pity, but it fits in universe and the game is fun. Just don't think too much about the parts that don't make sense and accept them for what they are.
I've felt the Aerospace portion was the weakest.  It felt weird going from the ground-based game with somewhat loose realism for both gameplay reasons and practical concerns (like range brackets being under a kilometer), to space where they pretend to be much harder sci-fi on newtonian-style physics but which breaks down when you start considering digging deeper into stuff like reaction mass.  I think I would have preferred soft sci-fi space physics over the half-and-half solution.

Aero Design isn't particularly interesting either IMO.  Fighters especially feel the same, they're functionally just weapon platforms with some armor slathered on top.  They fly the same, even in atmosphere, despite if the fighter is a flying wing, a delta wing, foward- or backward- swept.  Which for hard sci-fi is realistic, granted, but not immersive or interesting whatsoever.

Other units feel far better in the design aspect, such as Battlemechs (unsuprisingly).  Even within the same weight and engine class you can make many, many different and useful designs with different niches that are a bit more than "platform for Weapon A".

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #73 on: 05 September 2019, 00:05:06 »
Because 100,000 Tons is vastly vastly vastly too much mass to devote to batteries which shouldn't exist.
those rules make total sense, if the actual energy required to boost matter clear out of the fabric of space time is absolutely enormous, requiring those kinds of tonnages

The 130MWhr figure is only the residual topping off required after the jump to make up for practical losses to heat, Neutrino EM and gravitational radiation

Your 100Ktons does not store merely 130MWhr... That is just the icing of the gravy of the hint of a whiff residual on top of the actual raw energies involved



You can easily imagine 1MJ/kg with 21st century battery technology

 x100Kton = e14J

= 30,000 MWhr

KF drives might take years if not decades to construct just from charging in the factory
« Last Edit: 05 September 2019, 00:51:38 by Thunderbolt »

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #74 on: 05 September 2019, 07:24:40 »
Regarding reaction mass, think if you read tons per burn day as Kton per burn day the numbers check out well enough

Talen5000

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #75 on: 05 September 2019, 08:22:29 »
those rules make total sense, if the actual energy required to boost matter clear out of the fabric of space time is absolutely enormous, requiring those kinds of tonnages

The 130MWhr figure is only the residual topping off required after the jump to make up for practical losses to heat, Neutrino EM and gravitational radiation

In which case, there is no need for a solar sail whatsoever and the charging mechanic as descrbed is a lie.

That isn't the case. Sails gather the energy to spark the jump, the core stores it, and uses that energy during the jump process.

However, the energy gathered by the sail, even over the course of a week, is relatively minuscule but even if you multiplied it by ten to account for mistakes or magical super efficiencies or whatever, a sail can be replaced by a modern compact diesel generator.  Call it three or four to allow for resiliency and you've just replaced the entire sail assembly, and the randomness of star type for a reliable power source with minimal running costs and a fixed recharge period.

Call it a fuel cell and your fuel is standard reaction mass or water so you can't even blame running costs for the sail.

This is simply an inherent contradiction that must be accepted, just like DropShips and fasanomics.
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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #76 on: 05 September 2019, 10:04:17 »
In which case, there is no need for a solar sail whatsoever and the charging mechanic as descrbed is a lie.

That isn't the case. Sails gather the energy to spark the jump, the core stores it, and uses that energy during the jump process.

However, the energy gathered by the sail, even over the course of a week, is relatively minuscule but even if you multiplied it by ten to account for mistakes or magical super efficiencies or whatever, a sail can be replaced by a modern compact diesel generator.  Call it three or four to allow for resiliency and you've just replaced the entire sail assembly, and the randomness of star type for a reliable power source with minimal running costs and a fixed recharge period.

Call it a fuel cell and your fuel is standard reaction mass or water so you can't even blame running costs for the sail.

This is simply an inherent contradiction that must be accepted, just like DropShips and fasanomics.
Well, how about economics? To generate the energy acquired by a jump sale for free. Over the course of a week or 10 days could require as much as a ton of hydrogen.  That's 50 tons of year. 50 tons more hydrogen you have to have shift all the way out to some remote jump point. You have to pay some drop ship to deliver it to you. Then you'd have to pay them for their time whilst their crews hooked you up and transferred the fuel over. You probably have to pay your own cruise overtime also. For an EVA. On the jump ship end of the transaction. Moreover, time is money and you'd have to pay every other drop ship hooked up to your hull for their time, waiting around for your fuel transfer.

Or you could just enjoy free energy from the local star. Save everyone time and money and make your merchant line. Or Quartermaster reputation better.

Back in the good ol days of the Starleague everyone probably used recharging stations or worst case. Recharging tugs whilst the station was down for some freak accident. But after the attrition of the succession wars. Jumpships have fallen all the way back to a frontier near Periphery Pirate Bandit mentality. Where theyre required to use? What were originally installed as backup emergency energy generation systems?

So the jump sale is an economical. Emergency fall back system, which has been pressed into service because of? The. Demands of the era.

Talen5000

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #77 on: 05 September 2019, 17:59:31 »
Well, how about economics? To generate the energy acquired by a jump sale for free.

Sure...it's free. It's also replacing a readily created fossil fuel or water, makes you reliant on the star type whereas a diesel engine or fuel cell would guarantee a fixed  minimum time recharge and when you get down to it, you already have a massive power plant in the form of the ships engines.

The Jump Sail system just does not work. The reason given is that it is economical, and that it replaced a large heavy and bulky generator system that halved the range and as far as that goes, it makes sense.

The trouble is the amount of energy generated by a sail is too small for the sail to be anything other than an emergency system. The sail system even takes up more mass than a generator and would be more complex to operate.

And if you need fuel, you just siphon a couple of tons off the DropShips you carry.

ts a contradiction, a paradox that you need to accept for the setting to work.
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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #78 on: 05 September 2019, 19:06:54 »
And if you need fuel, you just siphon a couple of tons off the DropShips you carry.

ts a contradiction, a paradox that you need to accept for the setting to work.
not for free, and not instantaneously, and time is money

How much H would you really need?  Quick calculation...

 f dm/dt c2 = 100MW
 f = 0.008 for optimal fusion efficiency

dm/dt ~ e-5

1 kg per day

Say 10kg per week including non ideal operating conditions
Half ton per year
Twice as much if you're using deuterium

Is an extra ton per year alot for a JS?

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #79 on: 05 September 2019, 19:07:54 »
If only the rules were that consistent...

Syzyx

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #80 on: 05 September 2019, 19:48:34 »
I don't know if this fits in this thread, but this discussion sparked the idea.

Why do we assume the jump drive works on electricity?
Could the sail be collecting something else that isn't efficient to convert from electrical power?
Similarly, could the Li-F batteries be storing that 'other' energy whilst the station system is using the inefficient but cheaper method to bank it?

Probably questions to make cray roll his eyes but I thought I'd throw it out there and learn.
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Liam's Ghost

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #81 on: 05 September 2019, 20:08:40 »
Just to make things worse, Mechwarrior 2nd Edition actually put a hard number on how much power was needed to make a jump.

1,000,000 kilowatt hours or 1 megawatt hour.

(this is not a conversion error on my part. That's what the text actually says).

The original Pathfinder generated this power using a huge tank of seawater to produce deuterium to feed the onboard fusion plant, which took three to four weeks to charge the core. The jump sail was supposed to be a superior alternative that saved mass, made recharging faster, and increased jump range (by freeing up mass for a larger core).

Obviously, a lot of this has gone away, but you can still see some of the bones of it in modern rules, particularly the way primitive jump drives get heavier as they gain range, and the way you have to burn exorbitant amounts of your fuel to charge your jump drive.

But yeah, the inconsistencies run deep.


EDIT: The information related in Mechwarrior 2nd edition was actually copied verbatim from Mechwarrior 1st edition. I think it may very well be the oldest description of how a jumpship actually works. 

Another EDIT and tangent: this old entry also indicates why recharge stations were a big deal. The old fluff indicates they could recharge a jumpship in eighteen hours rather than the week it took for the solar sail or the fusion plant. At the time, it does not appear that quick charging the drive (with the additional risk of damage) had been invented yet. The charging time was simply the limit of the power output of the fusion plant or solar sail.

I think the first account of quick charging a drive was in the warrior trilogy, which created the idea that you could charge a drive faster, but you might break something (which makes sense when you're talking about the energy output of a fusion reactor needing weeks to match a relative small solar sail fighting against the inverse square law. Once that notion was codified as rules, the poor energy storage batteries got shafted by association, since they too had to avoid burning out the drive by charging too fast.

I may research later where the idea that you had to burn reaction mass to quick charge came from. If it's a relic of the old seawater tank on the pathfinder or if it was a later addition to make not using a jump sail less attractive. I don't think that rule actually appears in battlespace.
« Last Edit: 05 September 2019, 20:37:43 by Liam's Ghost »
Good news is the lab boys say the symptoms of asbestos poisoning show an immediate latency of 44.6 years. So if you're thirty or over you're laughing. Worst case scenario you miss out on a few rounds of canasta, plus you've forwarded the cause of science by three centuries. I punch those numbers into my calculator, it makes a happy face.

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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #82 on: 05 September 2019, 21:14:06 »
Just to make things worse, Mechwarrior 2nd Edition actually put a hard number on how much power was needed to make a jump.

1,000,000 kilowatt hours or 1 megawatt hour.

(this is not a conversion error on my part. That's what the text actually says).

The original Pathfinder generated this power using a huge tank of seawater to produce deuterium to feed the onboard fusion plant, which took three to four weeks to charge the core. The jump sail was supposed to be a superior alternative that saved mass, made recharging faster, and increased jump range (by freeing up mass for a larger core).

Obviously, a lot of this has gone away, but you can still see some of the bones of it in modern rules, particularly the way primitive jump drives get heavier as they gain range, and the way you have to burn exorbitant amounts of your fuel to charge your jump drive.

But yeah, the inconsistencies run deep.


EDIT: The information related in Mechwarrior 2nd edition was actually copied verbatim from Mechwarrior 1st edition. I think it may very well be the oldest description of how a jumpship actually works. 

Another EDIT and tangent: this old entry also indicates why recharge stations were a big deal. The old fluff indicates they could recharge a jumpship in eighteen hours rather than the week it took for the solar sail or the fusion plant. At the time, it does not appear that quick charging the drive (with the additional risk of damage) had been invented yet. The charging time was simply the limit of the power output of the fusion plant or solar sail.

I think the first account of quick charging a drive was in the warrior trilogy, which created the idea that you could charge a drive faster, but you might break something (which makes sense when you're talking about the energy output of a fusion reactor needing weeks to match a relative small solar sail fighting against the inverse square law. Once that notion was codified as rules, the poor energy storage batteries got shafted by association, since they too had to avoid burning out the drive by charging too fast.

I may research later where the idea that you had to burn reaction mass to quick charge came from. If it's a relic of the old seawater tank on the pathfinder or if it was a later addition to make not using a jump sail less attractive. I don't think that rule actually appears in battlespace.
well, a very large sail at say the minimum safe JP distance might harvest most of one million KW = 1 GW

That's almost what the original text reads

Of course you would need more like 1GW week or more of total power x time = energy

= 100-1000 TJ

~ 100 M KWhr
= 100 K MWhr
= 100 GWhr

So yeah I think these figures are ballpark accurate

Think that is the equivalent rest mass energy of 1-10g of matter

---

The largest sail size mentioned, 50km, would increase collected power >1000x

Such sail sizes of 10-50km would also show up on AT2 map boards as hex clusters 1-5 hexes across

Such super sails might also double as station keeping drives via radiation pressure? Plus stellar wind?

2-for-1, harvest energy all without thrusting??

Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #83 on: 05 September 2019, 21:47:19 »
Regarding alternate uses or purposes of the solar sail, what about harnessing stellar wind like an actual veritable sail?



Solar wind ranges from 0.1-100 nPa = 0.1-100 mN per square km

Whereas solar radiation pressure is more like 1-3 N per square km = 1000-3000 mN per square km

Guess maybe much of the time radiation pressure is greater than particle wind pressure?

Daryk

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #84 on: 06 September 2019, 03:47:47 »
There was a "quick charge" table in the original Dropships & Jumpships book from 1988.

Talen5000

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #85 on: 06 September 2019, 08:16:46 »
Is an extra ton per year alot for a JS?

No. Its not quite a rounding error but even a Scout carries 45t of fuel.

Station based charging made a degree of sense when it allowed the jumpship to safely charge in hours instead of a week...

But even then, 100kTon  energy storage batteries don't out benefit a diesel engine connected to a spotlight.
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Thunderbolt

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #86 on: 06 September 2019, 10:58:31 »
No. Its not quite a rounding error but even a Scout carries 45t of fuel.

Station based charging made a degree of sense when it allowed the jumpship to safely charge in hours instead of a week...

But even then, 100kTon  energy storage batteries don't out benefit a diesel engine connected to a spotlight.
well, +1 ton/year drains a Scout in 45 years and they and other JS have had to survive almost 10x that long, on a "SL frontier" style budget without charging stations, by the 32nd century. The only ones to survive have learned to economize every corner and pinch every penny

And aren't those 100kton storage batteries essentially LF batteries?  That's why they can quick charge jump hyper drives?  KF drives are very sensitive to charging particulars 

skiltao

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #87 on: 06 September 2019, 17:52:04 »
As things currently stand, station batteries work like regular quick-charging but a little faster and safer. They don't work like Lithium-Fusion batteries.

Could the sail be collecting something else that isn't efficient to convert from electrical power?

Maybe (and I've proposed something similar in the past), but if there's a practical/play issue with how things work, it's more useful to suss that issue out first before deciding what fluff excuses may be needed.

Battleforce Space, or Battleface among the cultured.

:)

Another EDIT and tangent: this old entry also indicates why recharge stations were a big deal. The old fluff indicates they could recharge a jumpship in eighteen hours rather than the week it took for the solar sail or the fusion plant.

Ahhh, I should've remembered that. I must be off my game.

Quote
I may research later where the idea that you had to burn reaction mass to quick charge came from.

Pretty sure it first appeared in AeroTech 2. I assume it was added to make quick-charging less attractive, but don't remember if Hartford ever said so.
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Thunderbolt

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  • ex scientia, ad astra
Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #88 on: 07 September 2019, 00:05:45 »
Please permit just one tangent, from visualizations of multi body bound systems, looks like a JS in a binary, trinary or multi star system...

In which all the members are firmly gravitationally bound...

Could jump, not only "through" the star the JS was hovering over, from zenith to opposite nadir JP...

But could also jump "past" your star "through" other bound stars in the same system, in the same field of view as your star, to JPs on the opposite far sides of those stars as well...

Because the "gravity wells" of mutually bound objects connect, such that the gravitational potential between the objects is lower than around the outsides of the system...

And if you are high up on those outermost slopes of the system potential well, you can jump "over the low ridge" between objects, to the far side outer slopes of the system potential well

However, you might not be able to jump "through the low ridge" to JPs on the near sides of the other stars

Physically, if you were in a multi star system, you could look at your star, and know you could jump "through" (hyperspatially "over" it) it to JPs on the far side...

and you could look at other bound stars, in the same general direction as your star, over the limbs of the same, and know you could jump "through" ("over") them to JPs on their far sides opposite your present position...

But you might not be able to jump to a JP on their near sides closest to you, or to any JPs of stars in the opposite direction, away from your star, because the fabric of space time "ridges up in between" and blocks HS LOS:



Safe jumping  :)

idea weenie

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Re: Safe superjump?
« Reply #89 on: 07 September 2019, 12:02:34 »
well, +1 ton/year drains a Scout in 45 years and they and other JS have had to survive almost 10x that long, on a "SL frontier" style budget without charging stations, by the 32nd century. The only ones to survive have learned to economize every corner and pinch every penny

The Scout Jumpship likely asks for a top-up of fuel from any Dropships that want to jump.

And aren't those 100kton storage batteries essentially LF batteries?  That's why they can quick charge jump hyper drives?  KF drives are very sensitive to charging particulars

A Li-F battery and a Energy Storage Battery are two different things.

The Li-F battery is linked directly into the KF core, and allows the vessel to make a second jump almost immediately.  It affects the KF core cost multiplier, and masses 1% of the mounting ship's mass.

An Energy Storage Battery is put on Space Stations and used to recharge a Jumpship or Warship the slow way.  It can charge faster if it is attached to the Jumpship Warship, but you still have to charge the KF core slowly with it, unless you are wanting to take risks with frying the core.  It does not affect the KF cost multiplier, and masses 100,000 tons, no matter the size core it is supposed to recharge.

 

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