I recently acquired Challenge 45, which has the "One Small Step" rules
for pre-gravatic space flight. Overall, I think it is a very good
article. However,
one of the drives listed, the Fusion Rocket, is an amazingly good drive,
even for
higher tech ships (I believe it was taken directly from COACC, which I do not
have, so I won't hold it's peculiarites against the writer of the article).
The stats are as follows:
Thrust: 195 tons Mass: 4 tons Volume: 1 kl
Fuel: 0.005 kl/hour Power Output: 3.9 MW
Cost: 350,000 credits
In the description, it is noted as having an advantage over grav
thrusters, but it "loses its last tangible advantage" when manuver drive
thrusters are introduced at TL 11. I disagree. On the contrary, it can not
even be fully used until the introduction of inertial compensators at TL10
makes it possible to use the high accelerations it can generate without
crushing the crew and passengers of a ship.
For ships without armor, it is far superior to the standard manuver
drive. For example, assume a 100 ton ship that masses 1 ton per kl (total
mass 1350 tons) wishes to increase its max acceleration from 1G to 2G.
The standard method is to add 3 thruster units and ~12 kl of TL15
powerplant to power them. This has the following stats:
Fuel needed Volume(kl) Mass(tons) Cost(KCr)
0.108 kl/hr 52.5 129 4,500
A Fusion Rocket with a thrust of 1350 tons, enough to increase the max
acceleration from 1G to 2G, has these stats:
Fuel needed Volume(kl) Mass(tons) Cost(KCr)
0.035 kl/hr 7 28 2,450
As you can see, it costs less, masses less, takes up less space, and is
cheaper to boot! Oh, yes - it produces 27 Mw of power too...
The only reason I can see to use thrusters on an unarmored ship is to
be able to land and take off without scorching the surroundings. My
suggested solution is to retain a 1G standard drive, and get the rest
of the acceleration from the Fusion rockets.
Fusion rockets also make it very easy to get acceleration
over 6G: you can get 20G easily, 30G with some work, and 40G if
you really want it. This makes it possible to outrun missiles, let alone
system defense boats, patrol cruisers and navy ships. Figuring out
the exact performance can be a pain though, because you can get
up to a significant fraction of c within a couple of weeks if you want.
I even was able to design a STL starship that could cover 300 parsecs
in less subjective time than a jump-6 ship. Of course, ~1000 years
will have passed for the rest of the universe, but it might be a handy
way to get away from the Rebellion...:-)
Alas, this drive has a physics nullifier box (its easy to miss -
its by the fuel intake :-)). To get 195 tons thrust for an hour with
just 5 liters of reaction mass would require a exhaust velocity well
in excess of the speed of light. A more reasonable fuel rate would
be ~0.5 kl/hour, I haven't worked out all the details yet.
Finally, a merchant ship design that I modified to use the
fusion rockets:
Torch class merchant, TL 15
Item Power Volume Mass Cost(Kcr)
- - -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
200 ton hull, config 4SL, armor 40G - [2700] 323.4 7,871
Powerplant - Fusion (0.225 kl/hour) [450] 25 50 5,000
Jump-4 (10 units) (fuel 675) - 135 270 30,000
Manuver-1 (4 units) 280 54 140 2,800
Fusion Rocket - 24,180 TT, fuel 0.62/hr [483.6] 124 496 43,400
Comm. & Sensors (standard) 0.9 0.7 0.5 1,652
Environ & LS (not fuel - 1700 kl) 6.8 22.1 22.1 867
Inertial Compensators (whole ship) 54 27 54 675
Grav Plates (not fuel - 1700 kl) 85 17 34 850
Computers - 3 x 3 - 12 3 11,400
5 Holo HUDs 0.1 5 2.5 500
Weapons: 2xPlaser,2xMissile,2xSand 504 27 18 3,000
20 Missiles - 2 1 400
6 Small Stateroooms - 162 12 240
2 Elow Berths - 54 4 200
3 Airlocks - 9 0.6 15
Fuel Purif. Plant (200kl/6hrs) 1 40 80 30
Fuel and scoops - 1000 (70) 203
Cargo (~73 tons) - 990.2 (990) -
---------------------------------
931.7 2700 1511.7 109,103
Mass = 1511.7 tons empty, 1581.8 with fuel, 2572 with full load of
cargo (x 0.8 = 87,282)
Spare power = 1.9 MW Lasers can only be fired when Fusion rockets are on.
Acceleraton: 17.0 Gs empty
16.2 Gs with fuel
10.4 Gs with full cargo load
Endurance: 1 Jump, 30 days basics and 1G, 10.9 days combat
and full acceleration.
W. Dow Rieder
When the only tool you have is a hammer, all your problems
start to look like nails...