Idea for Change to Book 2 Designs

[Grav_Moped]

You still have to pay for the infrastructure, and likely increased depreciation.

Indeed. The thing is, without drop tanks the fuel for a J-7 simply doesn't fit. With them, even if the drives are ridiculously oversized and hideously expensive because they're experimental or something, you could do it if there wasn't a hard arbitrary tech level limitation. And in LBB2, there isn't a hard TL limit, just how much Jump the drives are capable of pushing.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Ships should go GREEN and be 100% battery powered … this way you can keep the “fuel cost at port” trope by just paying for a RECHARGE. Cr1/dTon for STANDARD [7 days] and Cr5/dTon for FAST CHARGE [24 hours].

The ref I played with back in the '80s did something rather like this -- the "batteries" ("energy slugs") were an unspecified atomic thingy (likely inspired by H. Beam Piper), but I vaguely recall that they were meant to be swapped out and reconditioned rather than recharged in situ.

 

[Grav_Moped]

That said, the LBB2 power/maneuver fuel rules need some adjustments for plausibility. Those adjustments need to maintain part of the "fuel is a constraint on maximum available performance" aspect, though!

Particularly in smaller ships, power plant fuel is the main constraint on maneuver -- M-drives themselves are small. Also, the big part of the maneuver constraint (Power plant and fuel) is already a sunk cost in high-Jn '81 ships -- so it's relatively easy to get Gs=Jn, and costly/bulky to get Gs>Jn.

I suspect this may have been intentional, or at least not objectionable.

 

[Grav_Moped]

To clarify, the "intentional" part is the low marginal cost of maneuver of G<=Jn, so high-Jn ships get better maneuver capability more easily.

 

[Condottiere]

It's supposed to be balanced.

Eliminating the fuel requirements would capsize that.

 

[kilemall]

Ships should go GREEN and be 100% battery powered … this way you can keep the “fuel cost at port” trope by just paying for a RECHARGE. Cr1/dTon for STANDARD [7 days] and Cr5/dTon for FAST CHARGE [24 hours].

I like the idea for easy table play, but from a physics standpoint you are talking a titanic nuclear plus explosion level if that energy is released all at once.

 

[infojunky]

To clarify, the "intentional" part is the low marginal cost of maneuver of G<=Jn, so high-Jn ships get better maneuver capability more easily.

I still think the '77 edition probably had it right where jump drives didn't require a matching power plant.

 

[infojunky]

Ok, a divergent PoV, I am a miniatures guy, as such I have a largish collection. In that collection I find ships that use a common engineering section over various models, often with multiples of the same drive sections.

The idea there are standard drive units with fixed outputs, looking all the world like the standard letter drives. Following this the might be common units that are more common than others.

Which when I get here starts to look a lot like allowing multiple drives to meet a dissed performance.

 

[daryen]

Stacking doesn't work in Bk2 because of the maths. The implied formulas have a constant offset, so they can't just be stacked.

Not that you can't do it anyway, and not that you can't change the formulas. But, as given, the numbers don't work.

 

[infojunky]

Stacking doesn't work in Bk2 because of the maths. The implied formulas have a constant offset, so they can't just be stacked.

With the installation of multiple drives you pay for the overhead (in tonnage) of each drive installed.

 

[Grav_Moped]

With the installation of multiple drives you pay for the overhead (in tonnage) of each drive installed.

The other issue is that it breaks the linkage between drive capability and Tech Level. T5 does go that route, but I'm still kind of attached to the "bigger is better, and only TL lets you build bigger" paradigm of LBB2. That said, you don't really have much choice in the matter if you're trying for a Big Ship Universe though.

 

[mike wightman]

Heretical idea 2.

Scrap the mortgage.

Replace with a much lower insurance premium.

 

[Condottiere]

One reason navies patrol sealanes is to lower insurance premiums.

If the threat of piracy and misjumps exist, it's probably more expensive than the nominal mortgage.

 

[infojunky]

The other issue is that it breaks the linkage between drive capability and Tech Level. T5 does go that route, but I'm still kind of attached to the "bigger is better, and only TL lets you build bigger" paradigm of LBB2. That said, you don't really have much choice in the matter if you're trying for a Big Ship Universe though.

Don't get me wrong I am totally a small ship universe sorta guy.

 

[infojunky]

A couple ot thoughts/ideas,

Have you ever considered building the maximum size ship based on the drive potential table? You could get J1 and M1 in a 12,000 ton hull just for that table.

Also the average commercial ship travel times is around 30 days.

So there is room for long distance slow trade.

 

[infojunky]

A idea on fuel use for standard drives.

What if the fuel requirement was based on the drive instead of the ship volume?

Type A drives require 20 tons to jump, 2 tons for power, Etc. etc...

 

[Spinward Flow]

Type A drives require 20 tons to jump, 2 tons for power

That would actually work.

Letter drives are code: 1 per 200 tons = 20 tons of jump fuel per letter (A=1, B=2, etc).
Letter drives are code: 1 per 200 tons = 2 EP per letter = 2 tons of power plant fuel per letter.

Yet another way to "backdoor" LBB2 into compliance with the LBB5 paradigm.

 

[Grav_Moped]

A idea on fuel use for standard drives.

What if the fuel requirement was based on the drive instead of the ship volume?

Type A drives require 20 tons to jump, 2 tons for power, Etc. etc...

Well, the "Size A powerplant always uses 2 tons of fuel (for a month)" is literally High Guard rates expressed in a different form. If it's by letter rather than output, the TL-15 drives (W-Z) also get a fuel-efficiency bump out of it.

The problem with just going to 1%*Pn (or, in this formulation, about 1 ton per EP) is that it enables hot maneuver drives in small ships. I'm not totally averse to this, but it's going to unbalance things. I'd think it ought to be more in the range of 5 tons per letter (2.5 tons per EP) to keep some degree of forced trade-off.

The key points are to switch to a formula that's proportional to both rating and ship tonnage rather than the existing rating-only formula, and to keep the fuel requirement high enough to place meaningful limits on M-drive capability in smaller ships. That would then leave the fixed-size 20Td bridge and the computer as the drivers of scale efficiency.

Others here consider it to be outright heresy, though.

 

[infojunky]

Well, the "Size A powerplant always uses 2 tons of fuel (for a month)" is literally High Guard rates expressed in a different form. If it's by letter rather than output, the TL-15 drives (W-Z) also get a fuel-efficiency bump out of it.

The problem with just going to 1%*Pn (or, in this formulation, about 1 ton per EP) is that it enables hot maneuver drives in small ships. I'm not totally averse to this, but it's going to unbalance things. I'd think it ought to be more in the range of 5 tons per letter (2.5 tons per EP) to keep some degree of forced trade-off.

The key points are to switch to a formula that's proportional to both rating and ship tonnage rather than the existing rating-only formula, and to keep the fuel requirement high enough to place meaningful limits on M-drive capability in smaller ships. That would then leave the fixed-size 20Td bridge and the computer as the drivers of scale efficiency.

Others here consider it to be outright heresy, though.

To be honest I was really thinking about the Jump drives at the start.

Though to point out a bit of my thinking, I tend to focus on the sub-2000 tons tonnages for the most part. Consider that Cruisers out side of Book5 run around 1000 tons (At least in the Aliens Books)

 

[Grav_Moped]

To be honest I was really thinking about the Jump drives at the start.

Though to point out a bit of my thinking, I tend to focus on the sub-2000 tons tonnages for the most part. Consider that Cruisers out side of Book5 run around 1000 tons (At least in the Aliens Books)

That's the right edge of the drive performance table kicking in.

You can either have ships that are big, or ships that are fast, but not both without high tech.