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jump 0 --- stutterwarp

spank

SOC-12
I have read a little bit about 2300ad and I wondered how it's stutterwarp compared with a jump 0 drive.
 
Originally posted by spank:
I have read a little bit about 2300ad and I wondered how it's stutterwarp compared with a jump 0 drive.
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IIRC, and wiser heads may prevail over me, speeds of up to 1 parsec per day(3.26 light years). But then the ship moved from gravity well to gravity well. 17 days was max before the ship HAD to stop and dump off its built up energy, before it killed the crew and the ship. in a nutshell.

Jump 0, comes in at TL-9 (IMTU), and is used with same parameters as J-1, save jumping to farsystem is faster(thus cheaper) than say, M-drives the same distance)-6.5 days, + or - 12 hrs.
 
2300ad stutterwarp had a maximum range of 7.7ly (jump 2 and a bit?), after which the ship had to spend 24 hrs in a gravity well (0.0001g or greater IIRC) and discharge a 'charge' which built up on its drive coils. If it didn't the drive engine would explode or melt (I forget which, but your warranty was void either way) and flood the ship with deadly radiation. However, rules allowed for the discharge to be delayed by up to 24 hours. Each ship had a max no of LY that could be travelled in a day, from a measly 0.5 up to a whopping 4.5 with an average of about 1- 1.5, so theoretically if you had a "fast" enough ship you could extend the maximum trip up to 12.2ly. This was fairly rare, as it was difficult and very dangerous. A mishap would blow/melt the drive and kill everybody on board.

There were also rules for using jump tugs, where you towed a ship half way with its engines off-line (and hence not building up a charge), and then it set off under its own power and the tug turned back, and for using multiple, disposable engines. Use one until it was fully charged, dump it and fire up another one. Very expensive, though.

There was also an adventure which introducedfor a lost alien jump drive tech with a range of something like 9 or 12Ly. The Eber were a former starfaring race who had literally nuked themselves back to the stone age and had a 'dance of the atoms' which was a ritual dance that indicated their ability to travle farther than the 7.7ly limit.

Ther were no specific rules that trips had to be from gravity well-to gravity well, but you need one to discharge the drives, so not much point in doing anything else...

Stutterwarp tech differes significantly from jump drive tech in that the ship effectivly remains in realspace, each jump moving the ship instantaneously from one point to another. The individual jumps are very short, but not very far, in the order of a few hundred meters. The drive cycles very quickly to deliver FTL travel. Between jumps the ship tracks star locations and adjusts its heading for the next jump, hence the ship has an effective 'speed' in LY per day based on the distance of each jump, how fast the drive cycles and how long the ship is in realspace between each jump (last two are the same, i suppose). The ship keeps its initial vector (some ships had no thruster systems at all, just relying on their stutterwarp) between jumps, but has a 'pseudo velocity' related to the frequency and direction of its jumps. Stutterwarp efficency drops off in proximity to a gravity well, giving each system a threshold where the effect means the ship is no longer travelling FTL. The efficeny continues to drop to a point that it eventually cannot overcome local gravity, so its no good as an interface device but can always be used to maintain orbit, and can do so and discharge the buit up charge on the drive coils at the same time.

I'm not really familliar with Jump-0, so i cant compare the two, but the trip in realspce vs trip in jumpspace seems to be the main difference in tech types to me. It allows for interaction between ships in mid voyage and also means that even within a gravity well a 2300ad stutterwarp equipped ship is going to run rings round a ship equiped with Traveller maneouver drive, tactically speaking. Even a 6G equipped ship is going to seem like a slug compared to one that is moving at even low stutterwarp speeds, which are still travelling at significant portions of the speed of light.
 
Originally posted by apoc527:
Wait...I'm confused. Any reason why Stutterwarp isn't better than jump drive?
It isn't really a case of beter or worse, but that stutterwarp isn't availible in the official Travelelr universe. If you want to use it, go for it! However, stutterwarp changes a lot of tactics and assumtions on space travel.

Shane
 
Originally posted by spank:
I have read a little bit about 2300ad and I wondered how it's stutterwarp compared with a jump 0 drive.
Speeds were measured in ly/day, with values of less than 1 usual for merchants, with warships heading up to the 4 mark (see http://www.geocities.com/Area51/9292/2300/Kennedy.htm ). The drive stored radiation accumalated during the transit, and could only store 7.7ly (about jump-2) worth before disintegrating, while irradiating the ship and killing the crew. It was possible to operate past this limit, with a good engineer, but the chances of being destroyed each crossing were usually greater than 3 in 4.

Insystem, the drive needed flushing at a major body, taking 1.6 days. Insystem speed was 0.645x warp AU/day.

Insystem, stutterwarp beats jump for speed. Outsystem it beats jump-1 and 2 for reasonable vessels (warp 1.0 +), but jump 3+ is way ahead of stutterwarp.

Bryn
 
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