Playing with Drives
- Thread starter infojunky
- Start date
Yes. It serves no useful purpose, however, as it makes it far too much trouble to re-design the standard sub-1Kdt starships around it. Fuel requirements get messy -- or perhaps I should I "messier" -- too.
:CoW:
If you are really grokking CT ship design and want to extend it, I would recommend looking at CT Alien Module 2: K'kree, which brings HG2 drives down into B2 design. You will note that to avoid a few small-ship headaches, the system embraced by the K'kree uses hull sizes only in multiples of 1000 dtons, and is therefore more manageable when using percentage based components. (This is because the K'kree of course require fairly huge starships for even the simplest of interstellar travel scenarios. But they do not try to re-engineer the standard letter-designated drives, as the full-replacement approach seems simpler and therefore more workable for players and refs.)
:frankie:
If you're good with spreadsheets, you can redo all the Book 2 ships in an afternoon on the weekend. Although, honestly, if using a spreadsheet, might as well use the HG formulas.
I think you are missing my point, I was just contemplating switching around the volumes as such that ratio Jump, Power Plant and Maneuver resemble the ratio of the three in High guard. In that Jump and Maneuver drives are smaller than Power plants.
It a sheerly visual rearrangement with zero effect on game play.
Nothing there changes....
Nope, total a different direction. Was looking at the Rocinante from the Expanse, notable it's drive, then comparing that to the visual representation as described in book 2 and was just pondering how to reconcile them. In a literal rules sorta way.
The easy way is just to sum up all the volumes from drives and make it work that way.
Taking a look, only two Book 2 designs would have to be redone, the subsidized liner and patrol cruiser. All the other starships have the same drive letter for all drives and so the totals are unchanged.
One thing that will change is power plant fuel, unless you keep the Book 2 formula. In most cases the ship will gain a few tons of free space.
Edit: the Starter Set adds the lab ship and safari ship, both of which would have to be redesigned.
One thing that will change is power plant fuel, unless you keep the Book 2 formula. In most cases the ship will gain a few tons of free space.
Edit: the Starter Set adds the lab ship and safari ship, both of which would have to be redesigned.
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esampson
SOC-13
You can't exactly translate the Rocinante from the books because the the author has problems with his math. If you have accelerations remotely like what the characters were travelling under the travel times would have been drastically shorter.
My guess is that at one point he had a different engine design, most likely much lower acceleration but nearly unlimited specific impulse, and he worked out some times for distances. When the acceleration changed he didn't take that into account. Another possibility is that he had someone calculate some very short brachiostone trajectories such as Earth to the Moon and then didn't scale them properly for the longer distances.
This is Incorrect, in that I never left book 2. I just reshuffled the titles of the drives, making the Power plant the big drive (where it started as the Jumpdrive) with Maneuver being the middle sized drive and the Jump drive the smallest. Yes there are some changes in the numbers for volume of drives, but fuel use stays the same.
Honestly this only effects the deckplan not the stat line for the majority of ships.
I wasn't, I was playing with it's visual representation.
Sorry. When you said you were trying to better match HG I thought you would be changing the PP fuel formula.
Is ok, I wasn't real specific. And really it was a visuale results sorta question not a specific rules one.
Honestly the question can be solved by lumping all the volume into one composite volume and just design from there. It's not like the visuals require specific pieces to be identified. Well at least if one uses the White Dwarf method of deckplans design.
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
For a TL9 pre jump solar system campaign I ran a long time ago I repurposed the drives.
The jump drive and jump fuel became the long range in-system reaction drive - g rating of 0.2-1.2 (multiply the jump rating by 0.2) with jump fuel being reaction mass providing a number of days of continuous burn - 10% per 0.2g/day.
The pp remained as is but with pp fuel removed, the mdrive became the combat drive that provides 1-6g of thrust but uses fuel at a much faster rate.
The jump drive and jump fuel became the long range in-system reaction drive - g rating of 0.2-1.2 (multiply the jump rating by 0.2) with jump fuel being reaction mass providing a number of days of continuous burn - 10% per 0.2g/day.
The pp remained as is but with pp fuel removed, the mdrive became the combat drive that provides 1-6g of thrust but uses fuel at a much faster rate.
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Been pondering that as well.
In a bit of thread Necromancy last night I found you asked the same question I asked back 2004 Mike...
