There was a comment earlier in the thread about "Hot Air Balloon" in reference to CG I think that one is the most on-track I've seen. What about approaching power usage this way: 1) CG needs a fairly large initial power input to start up. This is based on the volume of the object being shielded from the grav well, and is analogous to "inflating" the balloon. It's not listed on the design sheets since it's in the same transient category as the initial pump energy to light off a fusion reactor. 2) CG needs a continuing amount of power to maintain the field - this is "keeping the balloon hot" .. this is about 75% of the listed continuing power need. 3) CG needs a certain amount of power for tweaking the field as it moves in a grav well - analogous to ballast and venting in a balloon. This is about 25% of the listed continuing power needed. Either this is increasing the field strength when descending further into the well (balancing any 'gain' from the decrease in potential energy) or to run heat exchangers and transformers from ascending (since the field needs less strength as the gravity well gets weaker, and the reduction in strength comes as heat.) (This is also why there's a rocket-looking fire thingy when they climb - as the field contracts, the air around the radiator super heats with waste energy making the distinctive glow and heat trail) (And it explains those puffs of vapor as a ship touches down - the slight surge in field strength to nearly stop descent just before touching makes hot air, then the sudden cooling as the field is eased down when the gear contacts makes condensation) 4) As stated in canon, a near-zero mass item in an atmo will float on the air. 5) As stated in canon, a ship can use it's full thrust for accel without having to use part of it to deal with local grav - so a 1G M-drive can lift from a 1.5G world. 6) Shutting off a CG field causes the field to slowly trickle out, causing the volume protected from the grav well to shrink. Effectively, the object slowly regains mass. In atmo, it will slowly sink to the ground. I think this removes the ability to build a flywheel perpetual motion machine - the start up energy would exceed what is produced by the flywheel, and with the slow decay rate the 'off' unit would act as a brake on the wheel. I think it also fixes the "Drop the ship to gain power" option It deals with things like Landspeeders,Hover bikes and such like floating when not in use. The power supply is set up to run the "2"/"3" entries, but it needs a jumpstart for "1" It makes sense for things like grav chutes - the capacitor barely covers the "1" pulse, and then the field slowly decays as you float down.
