Welcome, one and all, to the first JumpShip of the Month article in...well, let's just say a very, very long time. Gio's trying to dust the cobwebs off his ability to write, and starting with this. And referring to himself in the third person. This is never good.
This month, we're going to look at the grandaddy of them all, the Aquilla-class JumpShip, courtesy of XTRO: Primitives Vol. 1. Debuting in 2148, this is, by far, the oldest canon jump-capable spacecraft we've been given stats to thus far, and it gives us an idea of where both the JumpShip and the WarShip came from.
Where did they come from? Pretty modest beginnings.
The first thing to note about the Aquilla is that it's a primitive JumpShip. Its Kearny-Fuchida drive core appears to be a bit larger than the later compact-core KF drives that would come to define a WarShip, yet still far short of that of the standard KF core that would later be definitive of civilian JumpShips.
It's also important to note that it's far, far less efficient than either of the later cores. First, and most obvious, the Aquilla's KF drive can only jump a maximum of 15 light-years at a time. This has an enormous impact on travel times over longer distances, and makes some routes between worlds nowhere near as safe. Of course, when the Aquilla was a new JumpShip, there were no safe routes: the Aquilla was one of the major colonization ships in the early exodus from Earth.
The jump core of the Aquilla is less efficient in other ways, though, too, as it predates the invention of the docking collar. Consider that a JumpShip the same 100,000 ton mass as the Aquilla could hold two docking collars, allowing for an additional 200 kilotons of external ships to be carried. In other words, for 97,000 tons, a standard core JumpShip can transport another 203,000 tons. A compact core? Try 254,750 tons. The Aquilla? By my best estimate, more like 49,000 tons. Will most JumpShips or WarShips reach their max efficiency? No. Are they still far more efficient on average than ships like the Aquilla? You betcha.
Another element of the lower efficiency is the lack of a jump sail. Why is that a problem? Because you need 197.5 tons of fuel to jump, and you're only jumping 15 light-years. So, to match what a later JumpShip or WarShip can do charging off the local star, jumping 30 light-years, takes 395 tons of fuel, and takes twice as long - remember, even when charging off a fusion reactor, you have to essentially trickle-charge your KF drive, or risk damaging it.
So, how does all this work out in practice?
With its 2500 tons of fuel, the Aquilla has enough to make 12 jumps, with 130 tons left over. In practice, though, the ship needs to handle stationkeeping, too, which will cut into that, and few skippers will want to cut it so close on reserve. Thus, from a theoretical maximum range of 180 light-years on a tank of gas, figure most of the time they won't be going more than 150 light-years. Sure, wiley captains could always use part of their cargo holds for more fuel, but that gets us to our next issue: cargo.
The Aquilla packs a whopping 36 kilotons of cargo, comparable to the much later Mammoth class DropShip. And, because it lacks docking collars, that's pretty much its limit. For its day, the Aquilla could not be beat. But, as its own fluff text says, docking collars, standard-core KF drives and DropShips pretty much put the Aquilla out of business. At its 0.5 G cruising thrust, an Aquilla takes nearly 12 days to make the transit from Sol's jump point to Earth. Your average DropShip can do that in 9.1 days. What's more, before the Succession Wars, when JumpShips and DropShips were plentiful, you could jump into a system, drop your DropShips, have them burn in-system, and have a full load of DropShips take off the local planet and burn out to meet you while you charged your sails, cutting loiter times down even more.
Yeah, the Aquilla is kind of obsolete. But, we knew that, right? Given that, what are the odds that some of these are still around, and what good are they in the modern age?
Well, first off, we know that another pre-docking collar JumpShip, an old Leviathan is around, thanks to one of the Mercs Supplementals. We know that Aquilla were still sailing the spacelanes as late as the Reunification War. So, if they survived that long, it's entirely possible that some might still be out there. In terms of utility, think of it as being an oversized, jump-capable Mammoth that can't land on its own, or, even better, a Behemoth that gave up half its cargo for the ability to go FTL. Nobody's going to be terribly worried about one of these in orbit, really, because with a whopping two AC/5s and ten machine guns, it's not like you're going to start bombarding them, and your armor is so paper-thin even most backwater militia aerospace fighters will giggle at you as they repeatedly strafe you.
Unless, of course, you've got one that, like the Periphery's Reunification War Aquillae, yours has been upgunned. You do, after all, have 36 kilotons of cargo, and you're a large spacecraft. Capital weaponry is not exactly verboten to you, and you've got the room to mount a modicum of them. And, let's face it, doesn't the Aquilla's bow just scream "wave motion gun"? Converting cargo holds to fighter berths is within the realm of possibilitiy, too. Besides, you'll need something to fight off the giant Cthulhoid monsters in hyperspace...no, really - not only does the Aquilla being attacked by a giant space squid make an appearance in Interstellar Players 2, it made it onto the damn ship's record sheet.
What else can you do? Well, let's face it, parts for your transit drive might be a bit hard to come by these days. Try to make life easy on yourself, and replace the whole damn thing. I'd recommend the Sunburst M-200L Megadrive system off the Behemoth. You probably won't even have the structural stress issues that Behemoth skippers usually have, so you'll be able to make use of all that thrust. Unfortunately, a jump sail will probably be outside the realm of possibility: refitting your KF drive to recognize its mountings and take it through hyperspace will you probably won't be feasible.
And that, as they say, is it for the May 2011 edition of JumpShip of the Month. In the coming months, I'll be reposting the other, older articles I did, updated whenever possible with new information - for the ships where there is nothing, I'll probably grab the old articles and put them up from the archives.
Now's everyone's favorite part: time for you to chime in with your thoughts on the Aquilla. What say you?
