Jump Drives: Analog vs. Digital

[Sifu Blackirish]

I may have missed this debate elsewhere. If I am beating a horse, I apologize.

IMTU I have several small, but distinct differences in the operation of my 'G-space' drives and OTU drives:

*small ships with large jump drives can 'overcharge' their jump capacitors to get extended range. They still must burn all the fuel at once, and they remain in jump space longer; a scout that overcharges for a jump 4 instead of their standard jump-2 spends twice as long in jump space.

*technology advances result in smaller drive sizes. A ship can retrofit a more modern drive and get extended range.

*military grade drives get a performance boost in that they can perform 1/2 jumps. A TL13.5 ship has a basic jump capacity of 4.5 parsecs/week.

Most of these assumptions are made because I postulated that the Terran drives are analog in nature. now, I was wondering...have I moved too far away from OTU assumptions to properly call if TRAVELLER?

 

[Malenfant]

Why should it even matter what it "should" be called? If it works for you and your setting then just do it.

EDIT: and FWIW, I think those are good ideas to make things more interesting. So just use them, and to heck with whether that makes it "Traveller" or not!

 

[Spinward Scout]

Those are great ideas - consider them stolen. Er, borrowed... I always thought the drives should get smaller as the TL went up. A TL 11 Jump-1 drive should be smaller than a TL 10 J-1 drive, IMO. Your overcharging idea is unique, I haven't seen that one before. You'd have to adjust the Astrogator's difficulty - modify the roll for the overcharging. It'll change the Jump aperture.

Here's an idea for you: what if energy moved faster in JumpSpace than matter did?

 

[Icosahedron]

Here's an idea for you: what if energy moved faster in JumpSpace than matter did?

IMHO that's when it stops being Traveller. You could then send signals faster than ships and you'd upset the whole basic premise of the game.

IMTU I rationalised the rigid sizing of drives by making it an aspect of the laws of physics that jump drives must be a certain minimum percentage of the hull size in order to work, so there is no miniaturisation and no overrunning. Makes for easier calculations. I do allow starship drives to be shoehorned into small craft though, provided the fuel and performance is calculated on the hull the drive was designed for.

And I got rid of the artificial Jump 6 limit. If you look at the Book 5 design rules there is a natural limit at Jump 8 anyway. Why have two? (a J9 ship would have zero payload space) This takes the design up to TL17-18 when antimatter becomes available - neat.