Friday, June 5, 2020

Alternate Jump Constraint, Near Space

Its a minor thing but because I made Fuel Tanks reaction mass for Intra-stellar travel. what allows multi-jumps? What is the constraint for jumps? 

I'm planning Crew and Machine Work Hours. Every jump creates a lot of Work for the crew to get the system up and running and the drive to get ready. 

A Far Trader to double jump needs expandable tanks. Now that Tanks just add DeltaV/Kmps - I need to model who can double jump and how.  

I can simplify it as the 2 jumps per month = the engineering consumables and maintenance. Jumping more is 50% a month's consumables and manhours. in addition. Take the Value of the Jump/Warp Drive and derive a Consumable Value. A larger value than 1/1000th by 1/12 months by 1/2 per month. Probably just 1/1000th of the value of the Jump Drives and it consumes 1/2dton and 40 man hours (x the Inflated Manhours of an Older ship). 

Example
  1. Jump Drive Model A costs 10,000Cr to Jump-1. This replaces the cost he would normally spend on jump fuel. 
  2. Jump Drive Model B costs 20,000Cr to Jump-2. Both consume 0.5 dton of engineering jump-drive consumables. 

Mechanics of Jump Consumables.

  • Take the Value of the Jump Drive and Divide by 1000 for the value of the Consumables.. 
    • The consumable, regardless of range, only occupies 0.5 dtons.
    • For the sake of simplicity, the value of these consumables does not go up with older ships. Lets say its a commodity like Oil.  
    • You can can get these consumables in Star Ports. So when going into wilderness areas, its best to stock up in a lot of these. 
  • It takes 40 engineering hours per 35dtons of Jump Drive to set up the Jump-drive for another Jump. Older ships using the Technical Debt Rules may take 2-3x the number of Manhours
  • The ship is ready to Jump onces the Engineer performs the 40 manhours of prep.  

Implications. 
  1. Jump Range is Speed and not "Range"
    1. Technically I can Jump with enough Supplies to a Jump 1 ship to 6-parsec distance - If there are Jump Points along the path. I just have to keep paying the high consumables.
    2. That means stocking up in 60,000 of consumables and maybe a BUFFER. 
    3. That means spending 40 or on an old ship 120-170 hours getting the ship ready for the next jump. A crew Over-Timing this OR taking on Working Passage  so they can rest during the jump . GMs who want to enforce the 14-hour maximum shift duration used in ships may ask penalties ignoring RAW 18+END hours of being awake.  
    4. Working Passage is now a very viable option. 
    5. Working Passage allows for a revolving door or Interesting NPCs. Revolving door of NPCs allow for Characters who are "Back Room" or "Front Room" to do some boring ship stuff while other characters do exciting stuff. 
  2. The emphasis in the Maintenance and Engineering preparation. 
  3. Long Range Ships have a lot of engineers and maintenance. 
  4. Engineering Characters have their own "Adventure" in Procurement, Vetting, and Problems. 
  5. If I want to limit the jumps, I just reduce the supply of the consumables. 

Near Space 

Today I discovered this Awesome Work called the Near Space by  Omer Golan-Joel and Richard Hazlewood and Ian Stead. I was just carefully going through recommendations from Drive Through RPGs and I discovered this very lucky find. 

I'm a fan of GURPS Interestellar Wars and despite owning an official electronic copy there wasn't any electronic PNG or JPG for me to use in Roll20. I've tried uploading the Screenshot or Captured JPG used in the PDF is terrible quality. This real star system is great for teaching ME about the nearby stars and It gives a wild card. 

I'm imagining sensors trained all over the sector looking for ships Jumping across the Chasm of 2 or 6 parsecs during the Interstellar War era. Since I made it that only very sophisticated survey vessels can find and create Jump routes (in order to reduce the complexity of orbital bombardment) and there tend to be only 1 route per system. 

I plan to just Convert the ships into thrust-is-down oriented ships. Drawing from the Expanse and Children of a Dead Earth. 

Update on Blender. 

I've been too busy to update my Blender Notes. Much of Blender is mastering the 
1) Transformation, 
2) Hotkeys and 
3) Workflow of Modeling.

The main problem is the workflow of modeling the exterior detailing that makes the ship believable is very time-consuming as compared to getting the shape and measurements. Imphenzia's workflow is actually brilliant for a Game - keep the game in a Low Poly - Ghibli approach means a very economized approach in visualizing data for Players and Audience. Let them imagine the details and high fidelity information - we just need enough visual references to make game decisions. 
Think Ghibli -after the analysis I did about their style - looking how PLAIN everything is and its movement and actions that make them hold attention - makes me realize that this is like an AGILE and LEAN approach to World Building and Game Prep

Just Imphenzia's workflow and you can make low poly ships. You can learn Precision Modeling and creating Scenes (Particularly Line art) once you are able to express yourself in "Sketching" using blender.  If your an old gamer who does this to relax like me then there is no rush - just enjoy the journey. 

 

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