On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 5:31 PM Vareck Bostrom <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

> I don't know that Traveller space stations or battle stations are in orbit at all and they do rely on continuous thrust. You run across occasional bizarro comments like (T5 imperiallines 06 page 10) "The scout base, which includes the system's xboat station, holds a position above the "north" pole of the gas giant". This after noting that the naval base is in orbit around Assiniboia 60º ahead of Regina. So the naval base is in an orbit at the L4 point presumably carefully chosen so that a very minimum of stationkeeping thrust is required and the scout base is not in orbit at all requiring continuous thrust or it will fall into Assiniboia.
>
> Traveller is weird.

The thought occurs to me that if you have the tech to build a/g
floating cities, then things like "orbiting" might not mean what we
think of it as meaning.

>
>
> On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 11:28 AM <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> So here's my question, please give your thoughts in a particular rules iteration's context:
>>
>> Can one install a fractional main drive?

T5 - absolutely. In fact, with tech level changes, it looks pretty common.
T5.10 Book 2 p76 looks like if you install a "Basic" drive, cost is
half, thrust produced is 90% of normal, but fuel consumption is 10%
higher.
Or you could go the other way - put in a "Modified" at full cost, get
110%, 90% normal fuel usage and half the tonnage for the drive.
A Type-S built TL 14 could use a M-Drive A (TL11 Modified->TL 13) and
get back 1 ton of drive space, get back 0.1 tons of fuel usage, and
give you 2.2G accel.
If you didn't mind spending money, for 3x the normal cost of an
M-Drive, you could push TL10 concepts to the very edge and have an
"Ultimate TL10 M-Drive A" that is 0.5 d-tons instead of 2, gives you
back another 0.3 d-tons of fuel, and gives you 2.6G accel

>>
>> Really, I think the question really may be: Is there a clear enough progression or an equation that would let me calculate the right amount of engine to install to get X.Y G drives (where X and Y are integers)? I'm willing to ignore the second decimal place.
>>
T5.10 - There's too many options when you put in TL effects.

>> Do the drive sizes grow linearly for main drives? Or is there some other curve that they follow?

T5.10 - base drive size is linear, but then the tech options make
things complicated

>>
>> (I'm asking this for my notion of a rebuilt Guardian class battle station - I might want to put 0.1 or 0.2 G station keeping /orbital adjustment drive on it)
>>

T5.10 - Adds the "Z-Drive", which is gravitic and useful within 1D of
a gravity source. They're also included with the hull purchase price,
use negligible volume and power. Such a drive would let you park a
space station motionless 12kkm above any point on Earth, which lives
up to the "Traveller weird orbits" trope.