Talk:K-F Boom

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Fundamental mistake?

While copyediting I noticed that this article may be fundamentally flawed, as it mixes up the K-F Boom with the Docking Collar. To wit, a K-F Boom is an additional piece of equipment on JumpShips for their Hardpoints. Only vessels with a K-F Drive have K-F Booms. Unless, of course, that was changed in recent additions. Unfortunately I don't own Tech Manual yet so somebody else will have to look this up. Frabby 11:03, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi Frabby. The K-F Boom is kind of hard piece of equipment to write up. Its in both the TechManual, and the Strategic Operations. Problem i had get alot help from the old Forums in order to piece it together. Cray tried to explain it, its IS related to the K-F Drive, where has connect to the ship's drive so the mobile space station needs to be tell the Drive that is part of the ship. There isn't a actual write up of the actual equipment itself, its just scattered. about the two above mentioned sourcebooks. You may want to ask writers again for some help on it. Its been too long since I wrote it to intelligently fix the article. -- Wrangler 22:44, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Some minor edits...

Just as a note I revised the core content of the article to be more clear (before I made an account). As a point of interest the portion that says "Essentially the ship with the K-F Boom plugs into the JumpShip's computers so the computer knows to calculate for the DropShip/Station/etc and its contents when making the Jump into Hyperspace." is confusing.

The reason is this, Does the K-F Boom make a physical connection to the jumpship allowing the sharing of the Jumpships jump field. OR does the K-F Boom plug into the jumpships nav system so the ship can adjust its field accordingly...or may be both? This needs to be clarified and since I do not have the proper books, I can not make the edits. -- SyberSmoke 22:14, 22 June 2012 (UTC)

As others have pointed out, there are multiple somewhat-inconsistent sources for this. The developers and freelancers on the BattleTech "ask the authors" forums have explained the mechanism a little better. It's both: a physical and a computer connection. Essentially the idea is that to extend the KF field around the full bulk of the attached DropShip, you need some minor KF parts on the dropship itself.

Docking Collars do many other things besides provide KF transporting capabilities; they especially allow bulk transfer of cargo. But anything that is JumpShip-transportable requires the KF boom. Think of it like a branch off the KF core. 131.96.47.17 11:44, 2 November 2012 (PDT)

I'm new to Battletech but wouldn't that mean that a Jumpship could just just the dropship while leaving itself in the starting star system?

No. The KF drive (drive coil) creates a bubble around itself, and the KF Boom technology allows that bubble to be extended around DropShips mated to the jump drive. The JumpShip is still at the center of the jump (figuratively, but also more or less literally). There are examples of spacecraft being sheared in half or warped by jump fields in misjumps, but ultimately you can't "jump" another vessel without jumping yourself. Frabby (talk) 05:43, 29 August 2019 (EDT)