Vehicle Batteries

[Libris]

Its been a while so please bear with me. I may be mistaken but I assumed this topic had been discussed before. However, I had a hunt through the archives for notes on vehicle batteries and then checked out the errata but can't find any more details.

At each TL batteries take up less space per EP than fuel does. Why use a fuel burning engine at all? Sure, cost is a factor but at TL11 batteries can run a vehicle for 3 hrs 20 minutes for the same cost as an advanced fuel cell but only takes up 38% of the space.

It appears that only nuclear powerplants outperform batteries. Is this what was intended?

Or have I missed something glaringly obvious?

 

[far-trader]

Well there is the fact you have to recharge periodically so you're tied to another powerplant somewhere. And also the reason there aren't more battery vehicles used here and now, it takes a long time to recharge but very little time to refuel. So batteries make sense in some situations, fuel systems in others.

 

[Libris]

Well, perhaps in real life (whatever that is) but it takes a mere 1 round per EP to recharge batteries. This limit appears to be on the battery as a whole (as I read it on p241) but I think a more reasonable amount would be a number of rounds equal to its duration in hours. For example, an air-raft is powered by a 10 EP turbine and has duration for a week so it takes 168 rounds to fully charge it. Whichever way you look at it electric's the way to go.

Or advanced fusion, it's hot. Well it could be cold but it's cool.

 

[far-trader]

Yes but which "rounds"? The personal combat round of 6 seconds (pg. 151), the vehicle combat round of 1 minute (pg. 159) or the advanced vehicle combat round of 10 minutes (pg. 172)?

Why couldn't they have just said seconds or minutes or hours to recharge an EP? It's not like you're going to be recharging your batteries in the middle of combat (I'd hope). Besides the battery duration is listed in hours. Rule number one: Never mix units of measure when one unit will suffice

Maybe it's an edit error and it should be per hour per EP for recharge too.

TNE had you pay a premium for fast discharge batteries, maybe the same could apply to fast recharge batteries. There should probably be a TL limit on the minimum rehcarge factor as there was (iirc) on the TNE discharge factor.

Anyway, I've always thought batteries should be used if the design system supports it. The advantages seem obvious to me. No reliance on atmo (natural or bottled) to burn fuel. No reliance on perhaps unavailable local fuel sources. Less risk of fire and explosion.

Of course some batteries, especially high power and fast discharge/recharge may be as bad as fuel for fire and explosion risk.

I recall working out battery comparisons to reality for MT and TNE and finding the future supporting high energy batteries at high cost yet so few uses of them in heavy gear.

As for charging times I need to rethink the old long charge times. My Radio Shack flyer this week has 15 minute recharge AA Ni-MH batteries

Hmm how many EP's in a AA battery

Ah, that reminds me of another factor never much considered. Batteries have a useful life much shorter than fueled powerplants. Yet there is no required replacement schedule and afaik a Traveller battery left charged (but not recharging) on a shelf will still have it's full charge in a year, or ten, or a hundred.

 

[wa11eye]

wouldn't the charging time really based on the amps that the charger puts out. It takes less time to charge my deepcycle battery at ten amps than two and if you run a multi bank charger you can charge more batterys at the same time.

wa11eye