JumpShip of the Month (May 2011): Aquilla Class Transport

[SCC]

So there's a problem with the Aquilla and the rules used to build it. Specifically the rules try to cover two different eras in the same package, these two era's are the actual primitive/prototype for JumpShips and lets call it the pre-modern era. The pre-modern era runs between the K-F Drive reaching maturity sans K-F Boom (This seems to be in 2300) and the development of the K-F Boom, whilst primitive/prototype is everything before that. It's a bit like saying everything 'Mech constructed before the development of DHS is Primitive.

The lumping together of these two era's seems to be because of a misconception about how much mass a K-F Drive can Jump. It can Jump up to 3 times it's own mass (including itself), but the rules seem to be written from the perspective that to Jump most of this mass you need K-F Booms when in fact you don't, at least from what I can garner. Now allowing people to play around with this for modern designs shouldn't be allowed, that's not how things work in BT, mainly from an economic perspective, but for designs before the K-F Boom this should really be exploited.

How do you fix this? Well you want to account for both increasing efficacy in Jump Core mass to Jumpable mass ratio getting better as time progress, with greater range also being allowed and possibly accepting a limit on Jump Range increasing the mass ratio.

The Aquilla, something that could have been much better.

Sorry, this has just been something that's been bothering me for a while.

[Giovanni Blasini]

I'm not sure I at all follow what you just said.  Please clarify, and show your work mathematically.

The Aquilla is very much a prduct if the 2148 era, not the 2300 era. For a look at what primitive transport JumpShips look like, you want Conestoga class transport JumpShip.

An Aquilla is never going to transport three times its KF drive's mass.  At 100,000 tons, the Aquilla can carry but a single DropShuttle Bay, which can accommodate no more than two 5000-ton DropShuttles. Predating KF booms by centuries, and existing in an era when Primitive DropShips maxed out at 4000 tons anyway, I see no way around those limitations.

[Wrangler]

SCC, can you clarify where you're drawing the construction rules from?

There been some revisions of the rules since the Aquilla first Appeared.

[SCC]

I'm talking about the IO construction rules and the fact that they say for a 30 ly jump a Primitive JS has to follow the 95% of mass rule like a regular JS.

And I found/remembered another important data point: Sub-Compact K-F Drives, 30 ly jump radius, become available in 2320, can shoot up to twice their mass.

[Wrangler]

I would ask the question to the rules thread. You can get better clarification.   The later Conestoga Transport JumpShip (2310) was able to Jump 30 light years due to its size being large enough to accommodate the bigger primitive KF Jump Drive

[Giovanni Blasini]

I would ask the question to the rules thread. You can get better clarification.   The later Conestoga Transport JumpShip (2310) was able to Jump 30 light years due to its size being large enough to accommodate the bigger primitive KF Jump Drive

The Conestoga had a 20-LY jump drive, not 30.

[Wrangler]

The Conestoga had a 20-LY jump drive, not 30.

ack, I miss-remembered.

[Intermittent_Coherence]

Do the construction rules for primitive drives actually state such a limitation for it?
Or is somebody just injecting this previously unmentioned restriction in an attempt to 'make it make sense'?

The rules for primitive drives are fairly simple:
Range of 5% +3%/LY of ship's mass with the 'common' model being 50% for 15LY, up to a max of 30LY for 95%.
KF Booms aren't expressly forbidden, but don't exist in the same era.

The part about KF Booms is where somebody is trying to inject a limitation it would seem.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Do the construction rules for primitive drives actually state such a limitation for it?
Or is somebody just injecting this previously unmentioned restriction in an attempt to 'make it make sense'?

The rules for primitive drives are fairly simple:
Range of 5% +3%/LY of ship's mass with the 'common' model being 50% for 15LY, up to a max of 30LY for 95%.
KF Booms aren't expressly forbidden, but don't exist in the same era.

The part about KF Booms is where somebody is trying to inject a limitation it would seem.

Primitive JumpShips built after 2458 should be able to mount docking collars that can connect to KF booms, based on Interstellar Operations.

[Intermittent_Coherence]

Primitive JumpShips built after 2458 should be able to mount docking collars that can connect to KF booms, based on Interstellar Operations.

Not disputing that. The 'issue' is that doing so will effectively increase the mass the primitive drive is carrying to effectively 4 or more times its own mass. A 100KT ship such as the Aquilla, for example, can support up to 2 collars. If each was to carry a full 100KT dropship, then jumpship + dropships would all total 300KT or 6x the 50KT jump drive.

I don't have a problem with it, but some apparently do.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Not disputing that. The 'issue' is that doing so will effectively increase the mass the primitive drive is carrying to effectively 4 or more times its own mass. A 100KT ship such as the Aquilla, for example, can support up to 2 collars. If each was to carry a full 100KT dropship, then jumpship + dropships would all total 300KT or 6x the 50KT jump drive.

I don't have a problem with it, but some apparently do.

All JumpShips can do that.  I don't understand why there is an issue with late Primitive JumpShips doing it too. They're still only hauling them a fraction of the distance.

[Intermittent_Coherence]

All JumpShips can do that.  I don't understand why there is an issue with late Primitive JumpShips doing it too. They're still only hauling them a fraction of the distance.

Neither do I, TBH. Apparently some want to put great stock in the 'primitive' descriptor. It occasionally makes me want to go over the construction rules again word by word in the hope of figuring out where they are getting this 3x the drive's mass hoopla. But I have other things that require my attention.

[Liam's Ghost]

where they are getting this 3x the drive's mass hoopla

Oh, that's docking collars, because a ship can hypothetically have a docking collar for every fifty thousand tons of its own mass but each docking collar can transport one hundred thousand tons, so the total tonnage that the drive pulls through hyperspace is 3x the mass of the ship doing the jump.

But... that applies to every ship with docking collars, so I don't know why anybody would say it means anything in particular to primitive jumpships. It's a function of the docking collar, not the core the collar is fitted to.

[Wrangler]

Thing that make a drop collar able pull the dropship along, is also the KF Boom.   

This was game changer technology as well.  The boom essentially plugs into the dropship from the collar making IT part of the overall JumpShip, thus why they park on the OUTSIDE of a Jumpship instead taking up room inside.   DropShuttle Bay can traditionally hold up to 5,000 tons of dropshuttle/primitive dropship per bay.  Though I think its relaxed it being only Aerodyne only.   This also due to limited number aerodyne primitive dropships to begin with.  Most of them have been sphereiod, The DRoST which was most notable of these early dropships/shuttles, being the grand daddy of military type dropships.   However tonnage was never right initially until retro-grade variants were added.  The ship is known as 5,300 tons, proper primitive dropshuttle is max 5000.   

I think only the Saturn Class Patrol Ship (DropShip) is only one that meets that right tonnage wise.  She was again Sphereiod so i think they dropped the Aerodyne only thing.

[Giovanni Blasini]

There was never a limitation of aerodyne only.  I have no idea where that’s coming from.

[Frabby]

Before there were DropShips (with KF booms) that could be carried to hyperspace on JumpShip docking collars with a mass of up to 100,000 tons, there, well, were none. There were only Dropshuttles, a related but different technology that was limited to 5,000 tons per vessel.

Design history is a bit borked here, but the gist I get is that many existing Dropshuttle types were converted to DropShips and some existing primitive JumpShips were refitted with hardpoints instead of Dropshuttle bays. The subsequent size increase for DropShips was a gradual process.

The 6,200 ton Czar class, the first DropShip massing over 5,000 tons, was created in 2462, four years after the introduction of the KF boom hardpoint coupling. It took over 30 years until DropShips approached 10,000 tons - Triumph, Lion, Dictator, with the latter being the largest at 9,000 tons until the Aqueduct made a quantum leap in DropShips size in 2638 with 45,000 tons, five times bigger than the biggest existing DropShip so far.
The 100,000 ton Behemoth was prototyped as early as 2650 but its design wasn't finalized until 132 years later in 2783 and until then the Aqueduct remained the largest DropShip in existence with only the Colossus and Lee getting "close" at not even half its size.

[SCC]

It occasionally makes me want to go over the construction rules again word by word in the hope of figuring out where they are getting this 3x the drive's mass hoopla. But I have other things that require my attention.

It's not in the construction rules, it's in a prose section on page 123 of the old StratOps: "use the so-called standard core. This cost-effective core can normally only transport about twice its mass through hyperspace (plus its own mass)"

[Intermittent_Coherence]

Sigh. You missed the forest for the trees. The operative adjective there is cost-effective.
While a compact core or even primitive core can be said to be more efficient in that they can carry more in terms of relative mass, they also cost 5 times the price.

[Giovanni Blasini]

…which is why standard core JumpShips exist.  And? ???

[SCC]

Sigh. You missed the forest for the trees. The operative adjective there is cost-effective.
While a compact core or even primitive core can be said to be more efficient in that they can carry more in terms of relative mass, they also cost 5 times the price.

You're treating a hack to the construction rules because the devs took a shortcut for actual in-universe rules, ANY jump core constructed after 2300 is a fully mature one (See how that's when Warships and everything else becomes available), and isn't actually Primitive, it being classed as Primitive is merely a rules artifact, and not an in-universe thing. That quote I provided? The limit of 3 times mass (at least for 30ly cores) APPLIES to ANY standard jump core (which all Primitive ones are), regardless of K-F Booms, you try and break that and you've found a messy way to commit suicide

[Giovanni Blasini]

You're treating a hack to the construction rules because the devs took a shortcut for actual in-universe rules, ANY jump core constructed after 2300 is a fully mature one (See how that's when Warships and everything else becomes available), and isn't actually Primitive, it being classed as Primitive is merely a rules artifact, and not an in-universe thing. That quote I provided? The limit of 3 times mass (at least for 30ly cores) APPLIES to ANY standard jump core (which all Primitive ones are), regardless of K-F Booms, you try and break that and you've found a messy way to commit suicide

What.  Your entire premise is so flawed it can't even be described as wrong, but actively illegal under the rules.  It's literally impossible you build a primitive-core JumpShip with enough docking collars to do that.

[SCC]

What.  Your entire premise is so flawed it can't even be described as wrong, but actively illegal under the rules.  It's literally impossible you build a primitive-core JumpShip with enough docking collars to do that.

You're missing an important distinction I and the fluff make, to whit:

Not disputing that. The 'issue' is that doing so will effectively increase the mass the primitive drive is carrying to effectively 4 or more times its own mass. A 100KT ship such as the Aquilla, for example, can support up to 2 collars. If each was to carry a full 100KT dropship, then jumpship + dropships would all total 300KT or 6x the 50KT jump drive.

I don't have a problem with it, but some apparently do.

All JumpShips can do that.  I don't understand why there is an issue with late Primitive JumpShips doing it too. They're still only hauling them a fraction of the distance.

Here Intermittent_Coherence has stated, and you have agreed, that an Aquila can Jump in excess of 300K tons, yet the Aquila has a core size of only 50kt, while the quote I provided is very clear it's the weight of the core, not the whole JumpShip, that determines how much can be Jumped, which means that the Jump capacity is actually 150kt, not 300kt, (Yes, I realize there's a problem here with the rules allowing a ship to Jump more then that, but stuff's been grandfathered)

[Giovanni Blasini]

First off, the “three times” statement is an estimation, and describing a core that is 95% the mass of the ship.

Second, the Aquila can do no such thing.  It can move its own 100,000 ton mass which, depending upon version, may also include the allocation of 11,000 tons to carry up to two 5,000 ton DropShuttles.

Third, a hypothetical Primitive core JumpShip built with docking collars can carry 2 for every 100,000 tons of ship mass.  Not core mass.  That’s the same for any other type of JumpShip, except Sub-Compact Core.

Finally, a hypothetical Aquilla refit with 2 docking collars would not simultaneously be able to retain its DropShuttle bays so, even with two Behemoths attached would be jumping no more than 300,000 tons.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Lastly, this is probably not the thread to discuss a hypothetical Primitive JumpShip built three centuries after the Aquilla using a number of newly invented technologies to do things the Aquilla will never be able to do.  Instead, those should be broken off into their own thread, and instead we should focus on what the Aquilla actually can and can’t do.

[Intermittent_Coherence]

You're missing an important distinction I and the fluff make, to whit:

Here Intermittent_Coherence has stated, and you have agreed, that an Aquila can Jump in excess of 300K tons, yet the Aquila has a core size of only 50kt, while the quote I provided is very clear it's the weight of the core, not the whole JumpShip, that determines how much can be Jumped, which means that the Jump capacity is actually 150kt, not 300kt, (Yes, I realize there's a problem here with the rules allowing a ship to Jump more then that, but stuff's been grandfathered)

You are very confused as to what the quote you provided is clear on.
What it clearly says is that the standard core is cost effective and does around 3x its weight. What it does not say is that it is the only type or even the most efficient type. Neither does the passage say that it encompasses the warship 'compact cores' or even the early 'primitive cores'.

[Daryk]

Yet another reason fiction shouldn't be included in rule books.

[VhenRa]

Before there were DropShips (with KF booms) that could be carried to hyperspace on JumpShip docking collars with a mass of up to 100,000 tons, there, well, were none. There were only Dropshuttles, a related but different technology that was limited to 5,000 tons per vessel.

Design history is a bit borked here, but the gist I get is that many existing Dropshuttle types were converted to DropShips and some existing primitive JumpShips were refitted with hardpoints instead of Dropshuttle bays. The subsequent size increase for DropShips was a gradual process.

The 6,200 ton Czar class, the first DropShip massing over 5,000 tons, was created in 2462, four years after the introduction of the KF boom hardpoint coupling. It took over 30 years until DropShips approached 10,000 tons - Triumph, Lion, Dictator, with the latter being the largest at 9,000 tons until the Aqueduct made a quantum leap in DropShips size in 2638 with 45,000 tons, five times bigger than the biggest existing DropShip so far.
The 100,000 ton Behemoth was prototyped as early as 2650 but its design wasn't finalized until 132 years later in 2783 and until then the Aqueduct remained the largest DropShip in existence with only the Colossus and Lee getting "close" at not even half its size.

You are missing the Mammoth there though.

What's interesting about the Czar is the description of the previous ships in it's design lineage. Describing pre-collar the Hegemony building dropships intended to be system-bound in order to carry cargo between the jump point [and the transfers stations at the jump point] and the planet. And one of those being the direct predecessor of the Czar.

The big wrinkle is the Jumbo. Which has an introduction date that pre-dates the KF Boom by around... 45 years. I suppose you could square the circle by having it be one such system-bound transfer ship that later had a KF Boom added.

[Intermittent_Coherence]

You are missing the Mammoth there though.

What's interesting about the Czar is the description of the previous ships in it's design lineage. Describing pre-collar the Hegemony building dropships intended to be system-bound in order to carry cargo between the jump point [and the transfers stations at the jump point] and the planet. And one of those being the direct predecessor of the Czar.

The big wrinkle is the Jumbo. Which has an introduction date that pre-dates the KF Boom by around... 45 years. I suppose you could square the circle by having it be one such system-bound transfer ship that later had a KF Boom added.

Would hardly be the only such case. DROSTs have the same blurb in their backstories.

[Frabby]

You are missing the Mammoth there though.

The Mammoth is only a bit larger than the Aqueduct that predates it by twenty years.
But yes, technically you're kinda-sorta right.
The intro date is actually uncertain. The same FASA two-step applies here as with the Behemoth to reconcile two very different canonical introduction dates: A prototype existed as early as 2658 but the design as we know it wasn't finalized until 2808, a whooping 150 years later. Not that it matters much when looking at the timeline imho, because of the aforementioned Aqueduct.

The big wrinkle is the Jumbo. Which has an introduction date that pre-dates the KF Boom by around... 45 years. I suppose you could square the circle by having it be one such system-bound transfer ship that later had a KF Boom added.

That's why I said design history is a bit "borked". :) Frankly, the Jumbo should have hit a brick wall in factchecking but the anachronism was apparently overlooked. There are other, similar anachronisms in canon.
Your idea for a FASA two-step seems workable. There is also the notion that Jumbo was used in common parlance for a whole range of different designs of bulk haulers, and thus was not neccessarily used for that one specific DropShip design 45 years before there were DropShips.