Star Frontiers has a near instantaneous FTL drive.
You spend three to fifteen seconds in "the void" once you've accelerated to 1% light speed.
Like so many other games, I don't think they did the math very well.
The assault scout's atomic engines can accelerate at 4g.
It only takes 21ish hours to get to 1% C... So basically two days to make a jump.
Ion drives accelerate at 1g. So, about a week.
Chemical drives also get 1g, but don't have enough fuel to get get to speed.
The system is not detailed very well.
I am considering doing some conversions to GURPS: Vehicles.
An interesting thing about Star Frontiers that didn't stick right away back in 9th Grade...
No fusion.
The atomic drives are explicitly fission using uranium or plutonium as fuel. No mention of reaction mass.
Ion and chemical drives are using hydrogen. Ion engines use the hydrogen as reaction mass, chemical drives also have oxygen tankage.
It will be interesting if I can recreate the game's performance numbers using hard-science assumptions.
The wee little engines on that assault scout hold enough fuel for three jumps. So I only need to figure out about a week's worth of thrust total... Wait... That's a LOT of reaction mass with an atomic engine.
Gonna be fun?
Update:
Using hard science numbers for the drives, I can't even get 1% of a G for the 42 hours needed to get to 1% C and back down to system speed for a jump.
It's the reaction mass.
The Assault Scout is supposed to be in the neighborhood of 9,000 cubic-feet. I can't pare that down hardly at all. Staying within the size constraints I can get 2 to 2.5 G for 15 minutes.
The equations, they be HARD.
So, do you toss the system or modify it into GURPS and make it work?
ReplyDeleteGiven your report here, how exactly does the Traveller Gee drive and Jump drive work out in GURPS?
Traveller got an official conversion to the GURPS 3e rules a long while back. Some changes were made, but they conformed greatly to Megatraveller changes to the technology while still keeping the flavor of the LBB Traveller.
DeleteI've never been unhappy with the conversion, but it's definitely Space Opera Handwavium Technology brought to you by SCIENCE!
Star Frontiers is proving to be just as magical as a reactionless drive just giving them more mundane labels to sound more realistic.
The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress. After that it gets worse.
ReplyDelete