A modest attempt

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cmryan
08/05/04 05:02 PM
68.136.26.217

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A modest attempt to evaluate the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Battle Tech Kearney Fuchida Jump Drive vs the Star Trek Warp Drive.

KF jump drive is powered up by starlight, which is available for the price of a solar sail.
KF jump drive cannot be intercepted enroute. You jump and instantly arrive at your selected coordinates.
KF jump drive is limited to single jumps of no more than 30 light years. Lithium Fusion battery option adds two more jumps. Total jump distance 90 light years. Separate calculations required for each of the three jumps.
KF jump drive ships can be arranged in Command Circuits. Allowing dropships to travel substantial distances in a single day.
KF jump drive ships are critically dependant on the accuracy of their star charts for navigation. A mis-jump is extremely hazardous.
KF jump drive ships are critacally dependant on keeping the KF jump drive core super cool. If you blow a seal in an inhabited friendly star system you can call for help. If you are risking travel through uninhabited star systems you can get in fatal trouble.
Warp drive requires matter/antimatter reaction extremely powerful and dangerous.
Warp drive ships can be tracked enroute.
Warp drive ships can recover from most failures of navigation information. If you run into a black hole well…
Warp drive ships are expensive to operate. Star Fleet vessels are not used as freighters. Freighters in Star Trek are depicted as small and slow craft.
Greyslayer
08/05/04 05:09 PM
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I thought the battery added a second jump rather than adding 2. Unless this changed in AT2 or something.

You also forgot to mention that KF drives can be recharged from an outside source other than a sun (recharge stations). very quick, so the same vessel can leave with the minimum of fuss.
CrayModerator
08/05/04 07:07 PM
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Quote:


KF jump drive is limited to single jumps of no more than 30 light years. Lithium Fusion battery option adds two more jumps. Total jump distance 90 light years. Separate calculations required for each of the three jumps.




LF Battery adds one more jump, total of 2 jumps, total distance 60 LY.

Quote:

KF jump drive ships are critically dependant on the accuracy of their star charts for navigation. A mis-jump is extremely hazardous.




Only for "pirate" points. Navigation sensors - big ass telescopes - on jumpships are adequate for them to look across 30 light-years and assess a safe arrival point from a target star based on its mass and major planets. Charts are not necessary for zenith/nadir points.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
CrayModerator
08/05/04 07:11 PM
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Quote:

I thought the battery added a second jump rather than adding 2. Unless this changed in AT2 or something.




No, AT2 did not change that.

Quote:

You also forgot to mention that KF drives can be recharged from an outside source other than a sun (recharge stations). very quick, so the same vessel can leave with the minimum of fuss.




No, recharge stations are not fast. If any power source (the jumpship's solar sail, the jumpship's fusion engine, or a recharge station) charges the KF drive in less than about 160 hours, there's a risk of drive failure.

AT2R finally gave recharge stations a weak nod: they make the quick charge rolls to avoid drive failure with a +2 bonus.

The advantage of recharge stations is that some stars take up to 200 hours to recharge the KF drive by solar sail (approx. 2 days longer than the safe recharge limit), while fusion engine recharging uses more fuel than most jumpships carry. So there's a niche for merchants interesting in shaving a few days off their routes.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Greyslayer
08/05/04 07:25 PM
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Quote:

No, recharge stations are not fast. If any power source (the jumpship's solar sail, the jumpship's fusion engine, or a recharge station) charges the KF drive in less than about 160 hours, there's a risk of drive failure.




How does a Lithium-Fusion battery get around this issue then? If there is no problem charging from the battery why not just recharge the battery for quick jumping?

Anyway, recharge stations are quite rare from what I have read and would only be on the most busy commercial routes taken by jumpships.
CrayModerator
08/05/04 08:44 PM
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Quote:

How does a Lithium-Fusion battery get around this issue then? If there is no problem charging from the battery why not just recharge the battery for quick jumping?




The LF battery does not recharge the KF drive - it directly powers the KF drive through the jump. The second charge is in the LF battery, not transferred to the KF drive's energy storage widget.

Note that when you try to quick-charge the LF battery, you run the same risk of damaging it as you would damaging the normal KF drive.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.


Edited by Cray (08/05/04 08:46 PM)
Greyslayer
08/05/04 09:11 PM
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Quote:

The LF battery does not recharge the KF drive - it directly powers the KF drive through the jump. The second charge is in the LF battery, not transferred to the KF drive's energy storage widget.

Note that when you try to quick-charge the LF battery, you run the same risk of damaging it as you would damaging the normal KF drive.




So the point of a battery is to jump twice quickly but spend 2 weeks recharging?

A bit of a waste really. Unless of course they develope a system of 'hot-swapping' LF Batteries. This could be incorportated by having small 'dropship' type batteries eject and accept new 'batteryships' for further jumps, though the expense of a jumpship is based on the number of dropships it carries so perhaps an internal 'bay' could be organised for something like this?

Apart from that not really an improvement in technology.
cmryan
08/06/04 01:23 AM
4.12.82.110

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No. I blew it. I went home and reread my copy of BattleTech Technical Readout 2750. A Lithium Fusion Battery is good for one jump. This is what I get for posting from work.
CrayModerator
08/06/04 06:01 AM
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Quote:

So the point of a battery is to jump twice quickly but spend 2 weeks recharging? ... Apart from that not really an improvement in technology.




The LF battery can double long-range speeds. It also opens a lot of interesting tactical options, both offensively and defensively.

The classic TR:2750 example (or was it SLSB?) had a corvette scout ahead of a Terran Hegemony force. It found an ambush waiting at one jump point, so it jumped back, told its fellows, and they used the other main (undefended) jump point to invade the system.

There's all sorts of options opened by for correcting your mistakes in that way: jump to the site of a major invasion, realize this was just a trick and the real invasion is elsewhere, so you hop back to the real invasion.

The problem with a single KF drive charge is that you're committed once you jump. The LF battery open an enormous range (IMO) of options for changing your mind - options that do not exist at all without the LF battery.

Offensive options are pretty good, too. Simply doubling your interstellar speed is nothing to sneeze at: it cuts an attack on/from the Clan home worlds from ~33 weeks to ~16 weeks. You can completely bypass another House's "front lines" as they've reckoned them for centuries. You can get in, dump your dropships, and get your fragile jumpships out of dodge before the shooting starts.

That, to me, is a fairly useful improvement in technology but, of course, YMMV.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
Greyslayer
08/09/04 08:47 AM
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Quote:

The LF battery can double long-range speeds. It also opens a lot of interesting tactical options, both offensively and defensively.




If fact, unless under a particuarly strong source of power you will be stuck at a location for 2 weeks instead of one while waiting for recharging of both the drive and battery. It does not 'halve' travel time for long distances, unless everytime you finish jumping you end up at a recharge station that could recharge both the drive and battery since I doubt the sail could manage the job considering how hard it is just to unfurl one just able to recharge the drive and then the battery.

Quote:

Simply doubling your interstellar speed is nothing to sneeze at: it cuts an attack on/from the Clan home worlds from ~33 weeks to ~16 weeks.




See above.

Quote:

That, to me, is a fairly useful improvement in technology but, of course, YMMV.




It isn't, being unable to recharge a battery unless via 'trickle' charging is pretty useless. The battery should be so far more resiliant than a drive that rolls are not necessary or substantially better recharge times that will not result in rolls being necessary for periods of about a day instead of a week (160 hours).


Edited by Greyslayer (08/09/04 09:20 AM)
CrayModerator
08/09/04 01:10 PM
147.160.136.10

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Quote:

If fact, unless under a particuarly strong source of power you will be stuck at a location for 2 weeks instead of one while waiting for recharging of both the drive and battery




If you plan on long range travel without recharge stations, bring along a hydrogen tanker and use the fusion drive in parallel to the sail. The sail charges one system (the KF drive or LF battery) while the fusion engine charges the other. You'll have another double jump ready in 160 hours.

So, yes, you can double long range speeds.

Quote:

It isn't, being unable to recharge a battery unless via 'trickle' charging is pretty useless.




Well, clearly, your mileage varies. IMO, with or without fast long range speeds, the huge tactical advantages remain.
Mike Miller, Materials Engineer

Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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