Inducer Question

[Jeff M. Hopper]

At TL 17, the Inducer is developed as a weapon. It causes part of a ship to enter Jump space violently.

Can an Inducer cause an entire ship to enter Jump space, like a misjump?

If an Inducer at TL 17 can cause a part of a ship to enter Jump space, then can higher tech level Inducer weapons cause part or all of a ship to enter Hop, Skip, Leap, Bound, Vault, or higher order Jump space?

 

[Reban]

How Weapons Work p.367

The Jump Inducer channels the energies of a ship’s Jump Drive into disastrous jump-like effect on a target.
The name Jump Inducer is misleading: the weapon induces a misjump of components of a ship. The misjump essentially disintegrates the components.
Jump Inducer requires an installed Jump Drive.

Really what the Inducer is doing is projecting an unstable jump bubble at part of the target ship.

It sends the piece into jump space but because the jump is within 10D of a mass i.e. the rest of the ship it induces a catastrophic misjump. The piece also has no jump grid or bubble so it has direct exposure to jumpspace and so is destroyed.

Perhaps a better way to think of it is not sending a piece of the ship into jumpspace but causing jumpspace to come into contact with a piece of the ship.

Can an inducer affect an entire ship as a whole to excatly recreate the "normal" misjump? No. The main reason I say this is because the ship will not have its own jumpgrid/bubble to surround the whole ship and allow it to survive the transition. The effect might be very large, but probably not larger that the firing ship's volume.

Can hop and skip drives induce a hop or a skip? No. I say they expose the target to more "jump energy" or more destructive jump/hop/skip space.

Of course I have a caveat. If the Ref needs an Inducer to cause a normal misjump as a plot device then it can

 

[robject]

The ability to 'misjump' an entire ship would be useful.

It makes a great meteor defense, for example.

 

[Jeff M. Hopper]

The ability to 'misjump' an entire ship would be useful.

It makes a great meteor defense, for example.

I saw the entry for the Inducer and was reminded of the Jump Projector from Megatraveller, which did exactly that.

 

[robject]

I saw the entry for the Inducer and was reminded of the Jump Projector from Megatraveller, which did exactly that.

Me too. I figured it was the Projector by another name, or in another mode. Hmm.

 

[aramis]

Me too. I figured it was the Projector by another name, or in another mode. Hmm.

So did I. I suspect it's a case of Marc wrote the TL table, Joe and Gary developed MT and came up with one meaning, but Marc meant the other the whole time.