After-market Shrinking Jump Drive

[Darkwing]

Has anyone made rules for shrinking jump drives? I'm kind of fudging it right now. I figure that the stock engine size is not the smallest it can be, and that a higher rated engine can be made to fit a given space. All it takes is money. Now, most people aren't going to spend that kind of money, and some who might will prefer easier maintenance access to higher power in the same space - so the Navy might put a shrunken high-Jump engine in a smaller combatant, but for a battlewagon, they would just design the compartment larger if they needed a bigger jump drive.
Intelligence agencies, on the other hand hand, might not only build a J-3 engine to fit an A-2, but also pay to put it in a custom casing that looks like the standard after-market J-2 that fits into the J-1 compartment of a free trader.
Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

 

[aramis]

Well, the general deckplan guideline is that half the drive space is actually maintenance and control space. I've allowed up to 50% over-sized drives on occasion - but also doubling the maintenance/crew requirements, and reducing effective engineer skill by 1. Since I was using TNE at the time, that was a double whammy.

 

[Darkwing]

Still sounds like fudging, though. I'm wanting to make a progression table for aftermarket jump drives, showing how much they add to cost, subtract from skill, etc.

 

[Dragoner]

Thoughts, ideas, suggestions?

Automated Drives, Powerplants that don't need to have engineers to operate.

 

[aramis]

Still sounds like fudging, though. I'm wanting to make a progression table for aftermarket jump drives, showing how much they add to cost, subtract from skill, etc.

The drives aren't any smaller - the space you're installing them in is. Hence the increased maintenance time/crew, and skill penalty. It's taking more man-hours to pull and perform maintenance, as you have no space to actually work on stuff you've pulled except for a few designated work-spaces.

Think of it like the difference between having your car's engine mounted in the cabin, and being able to pull plugs, filters, and such while in the car, vs having it normally mounted in the engine compartment, and having to pop the hood...

 

[Darkwing]

I need positions for PCs to fill, so I'm not getting too much into automation. Already, they only need to check on things from time to time, except when fighting, jumping, or dealing with intruders.

What I'm trying to do is come up with a reasonable progression for after-market drives designed to fit in the place of smaller, lower-tech, lower-jump# drives.

 

[Darkwing]

The drives aren't any smaller - the space you're installing them in is. Hence the increased maintenance time/crew, and skill penalty. It's taking more man-hours to pull and perform maintenance, as you have no space to actually work on stuff you've pulled except for a few designated work-spaces.

Think of it like the difference between having your car's engine mounted in the cabin, and being able to pull plugs, filters, and such while in the car, vs having it normally mounted in the engine compartment, and having to pop the hood...

Except that in Traveller, the engines are already inside a shirtsleeve environment. All that does is decrease the amount of space. And since the engine compartment is a finite volume, stuffing a bigger engine in is a pretty limited thing. I think someone would have started trying to build engines smaller as a way to make money; I've just had little time between work and game to put together a good progression, and to make sure it isn't just a better drive. There should be tradeoffs. More frequent tuneups, higher chance of misjump, greater fuel purity requirements, etc.

Right now, I'm running my first Traveller game, and also a post-apocalyptic fantasy game and working full-time, standing security watches and I'm a resident advisor at the barracks. So my thinking time is less than I'd like, and I know that my familiarity with this game comes from reading books and skimming supplements, not actual play and contact with a strong Traveller community. Surely someone's thought of some of this and I can make a better table by looking at that, rather than just using my own resources.

 

[HG_B]

Has anyone made rules for shrinking jump drives?

MGT HG has rules for smaller drives based on higher TL. They cost more of course.

 

[Darkwing]

Thanks, I should have thought of that.

As for the cost, I expect them to cost more; I want my PCs to bleed for the cost of these things.

 

[Timerover51]

In the design rules that I am working up, military drives are one-half the size and mass of civilian drives, and cost twice as much. They also require more maintenance, amounting to 10% of the initial cost every year. Civilian drives as per Classic Traveler, but the cost increase for larger drives is less than the increase in mass and volume, rather than the cost increasing faster than mass and volume. The maintenance cost is 5% of the initial cost of the drives per year.

Therefore, you could purchase used military drives for the same price as civilian drives that would be lighter and use less volume, but at the price of increased maintenance costs. As the drives are used, maintenance costs should be around 15% of original military cost.

 

[robject]

MGT HG has rules for smaller drives based on higher TL. They cost more of course.

That's what I was going to suggest.

T5 does something similar. The reduction there is in both drive size and fuel requirements. It divides drive vol and fuel needs by 1.1 at TL+1, 1.2 at TL+2, and 1.3 at TL+3.

 

[Icosahedron]

The drives aren't any smaller - the space you're installing them in is. Hence the increased maintenance time/crew, and skill penalty. It's taking more man-hours to pull and perform maintenance, as you have no space to actually work on stuff you've pulled except for a few designated work-spaces.

Think of it like the difference between having your car's engine mounted in the cabin, and being able to pull plugs, filters, and such while in the car, vs having it normally mounted in the engine compartment, and having to pop the hood...

Or think of it like a post-1980 car engine where everything is shoehorned into the engine bay and you have to strip half the GDMF engine just to change a plug!!! AND you need a fully fitted laboratory to tune the little black boxes...

I'd say the best improvement would be greater fuel efficiency. A couple of percent shaved there would make a real difference to the overall volume.

One of my early houserules was shoehorning Jump drives into small craft...

 

[Darkwing]

That's much the same idea. I figure 100 tons isn't necessary, that's just the economic break-even point where it's financially reasonable to build a ship that can jump. Anything smaller is more expensive relative to the hull and brings less profit margin.