Wildstar:
>Steve Higginbotham (did I spell thant right?) writes:
You did...
>Thank you! As far as the modifiers go, I have one suggestion:
>Well change it!
I have every intention of doing so. I let you know primarily to give
you some feedback.
>I assumed that most merchant starships would use as small a jump number
>as possible. Larger jump drives are considerably more expensive,
>require a larger crew, and additional fuel requirements. All of these
>typically come at the expense of cargo space. The result is higher
>expenses and lower revenues, a situation which most merchants detest.
J-2 for a 200T ship costs only MCr4.8 more than J-1. About 7.5%
increase in cost, with the benefit of making (on average) three times as
many worlds accessible with one jump. Unless you are on a fixed route
(in which case your ship would have the J-drive required by the route,
neither more nor less), a J-2 will (probably) pay for itself just from
the extra flexibility it gives all those footloose free-trader types out
there.
>Finally, checking all worlds within jump-1 or jump-2 is a practical
>thing to do by hand, on a hand-written map. Checking all worlds within
>jump-6 (for each and every world in the subsector) is a daunting task.
>In a case like this, I would simply ditch the modifiers and change the
>die roll as indicated.
I don't believe in J-6 merchants, though Hans recently gave me an idea
that might make me start to believe.
>Go for it! (and let me know how it turns out) Kinda reminds me of my
>college wargaming society's motto: "We can fix these rules!"
I'll let you know...
Pauli:
>But there is a major difference: one-cycle steam engines are not
>economical to build or run these days. Ships powered by steam would be
>much more costly to run and would probably be slower travelling too
>(correct me on that bit if necessary). A starship with J-1 takes the
>same time as a J-6 ship to make that short jump and it burns less fuel
>and it costs less to build and maintain. Sure, over longer distances
>J-1 isn't as economical but so long as a world has trading partners
>close enough J-1 would be the way to go.
Too true. But a ship with J-1 has real problems going across two
parsecs of empty space. A ship on a set route will have whatever drives
are required, be they J-1 or J-4. On an unscheduled trip (like most PC
types make), a higher J-drive number is almost always worth the cost -
especially if you carry most of the fuel in drop tanks, so your cargo
capacity doesn't suffer.
>Also, the jump-1 drive of 3500 years ago is exactly the same as the
>jump-1 drive of the present imperium. They have made no real progress
>in all that time (actually, they can build jump drives that go further
>but the basic jump-1 drive is still the same size/cost/everything else
>as it was originally).
This is true. This makes very little sense, but that IS the way the
rules are written. This is not really relevant to my point, which was
that J-1 is too low to use as a favourable mod, since heavy traffic
systems will trade with anyone within J-4 probably. J-1 is too
restrictive an assumption for defining areas of heavy traffic.
---Steve