Interesting article from Paul and others prompted this commentary.
Please use any ideas you find interesting and/or suitable.
Strategic endurance on my spacecraft is limited by three factors: fuel,
life support, and power. Life support is actually the least important
of the three. My traveller world is set far in the future, and most
of the many alien races humans deal with are even older (like millions
of years) than humanity, which has only had a mere fifty thousand years
to perfect various technologies. While I do assume some limits on
technology, I believe you could get microtechnology-biotechnology life
support units that could support humans pretty much for years if they
have power (I assume your basic recycler tank masses 500 kg. and uses
about 5 kilowatts and will work pretty much forever as long as you give
it fluids and solids and gases to recycle and power to help run things;
it's basically an organism of sorts, producing water and foodbars, nothing
fancy.)
Power is not too much of a problem, either. While a fusion generator
will run out of deuterium after a while, you can pack about two years
worth into any power plant. Probably more.
Ah, but fuel, even in super-efficient systems like a fusion drive or
a matter-antimatter drive, is the big problem. Run out of fuel and
something very bad happens--you can't turn around! You don't run out
of power and die (well, not for a while) but you do float off and have
to wait for someone to rescue you (someone will, spacecraft are valuable
enough that salvage teams can change outrageous fees for chasing after
people who have run out of fuel and need to be rescued). Most spacecraft
carry between 400 and 800 G-hours of fuel (i.e., hours of fuel at one
gravity of thrust). Now, even if you use jump drives, this means you
have to be careful. In my game, where people have to use hypergates
(like Stargates in 2001; ships don't carry their own hyperdrives, they
have to go to a hypergate for interstellar transport), you have to be
very careful.
You also have to be careful about what you plan to do. If you whiz by
an enemy fleet at a thouand klicks per second, relative speed, you'll get
a few shots, but then they're gone and it will be quite some time before
you can slow down, turn around, and chase them! So you need good
intelligence to tell you where to navigate. (Mind you, sometimes it's
better to do a fast hit-and-run ambush, but not always.)
I have never worried too much about tactical endurance, except for missiles
and chaff (anti-missile confuse-their-scanners junk). Everything else is
energy weapons. Waste heat is a problem, but unless both sides are commanded
by total boobs, one side has usually anihilated the other side within a few
minutes (like naval warfare today, spacecraft will probably carry weapons
where the main gun is big enough to waste anything their own size in one or
two shots--the only exception being battleships which are so big that no
one shot short of a nuclear blast can destroy the entire thing).
This leads to a new topic of discussion. As I recall, the old Traveller
space combat tables are very slow. I have developed a system which, in
the words of one friend who plays in my game is "brutal, but fair, and
pretty realistic." Gaming combat time almost equals playing time, minute
for minute. What do people think of the various space combat systems
they have encountered, developed, etc.?
Well, I've babbled enough. Take care everyone, and have happy holidays!
Mark
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