Talk:Essay:JumpShip distribution

Primitive JumpShips

For completeness, I'd suggest adding the reference in XTRO: Primitives III (in the Prototype JumpShip Docking Hardpoint section on page 17) as to the virtual extinction of JumpShip classes without Docking Collars by the beginning of the 26th century. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 15:44, 2 July 2018 (EDT)

Thanks for your input. But I have to say I disagree with the notion that they are "virtually extinct" and instead believe they might still be around in niche applications.

The verbatim quote is "leading to the near-extinction of the "primitive" JumpShip by the beginning of the next century." Combined with the notion that previous DropShuttle-carrying "primitive" JumpShips couldn't be refitted to carry DropShips on Hardpoints, I'm reading this to mean there was a radical shift in design away from DropShuttles and "primitive" JumpShips to the new Hardpoint/KF-Boom JumpShip/DropShip combo, rendering the former hopelessly obsolete within three decades. However, the old JumpShips would remain in service for a time, even as a dying technology, because they were still prefectly serviceable. Why scrap a working JumpShip?

I can easily see entire fleets of those primitive JumpShips surviving in the near periphery (Hyades Cluster) and especially Deep Periphery (Chainelane Isles, Hansa, Nueva Castile, Jarnfolk, etc.) well into the Clan Invasion era and beyond. Frabby (talk) 08:27, 3 July 2018 (EDT)

I haven't seen anything in canon to support the idea of entire fleets of ships that are six centuries out of production and obsolete moving around up to and including the Clan invasion era, and it seems a stretch to suggest that it's the case, given the only quote we've really got about their life in service beyond the introduction of the docking hardpoint is that within fifty years, they were nearly extinct. Once a support infrastructure for something goes, those items drop out of service pretty steadily. Where JumpShips from early hardpoint-using classes exist, they're novel enough to attract attention - like the Leviathan used by Hannibal's hermits, or even old JumpShips from classes that are still in production, like the Star Lord class Rama Sita that used to be a part of the United Hindu Collective military and was still in use during Operation SERPENT. Given that, if there were fleets of Aquilas and other ancient, out-of-production JumpShips still moving around as anything other than isolated unicorns, wouldn't they have attracted some kind of mention? Much though I like the idea, I don't see any evidence for it. As for the question of scrapping a working JumpShip, the most obvious one would be so that the germanium-titanium core can be re-used in something more useful. While the primitive JumpShips may have been relatively plentiful up to a certain point, once the industrial base of the Inner Sphere shifted over to more modern JumpShips, I'd imagine the bulk of the ships ended up either simply being scrapped because they were unsupportable, or cannibalised for spares to keep other ships running - until it simply became unprofitable to keep them running, and companies and the military simply bought new ones to replace them. BrokenMnemonic (talk) 02:57, 9 July 2018 (EDT)