 April 20, 2020 - 5:04pm | I really think there is great potential here - and with System Ships in general. |
 April 20, 2020 - 10:48pm | Yeah, post it here. Sounds interesting  |
 April 21, 2020 - 1:56pm | interested. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 21, 2020 - 2:10pm | Actually, more interested in how wide an inhabitable zone is for a star like turane's star and what would a chem drive trip between Pale and New pale look like. and what would a 1adf drive trip look like ? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 22, 2020 - 10:56am | The first thing I tried to work out was how much fuel would be needed. The rules only state that a load of chemical engine fuel costs 250xHS Cr. - double for shuttles and ships taking off from planets. The "load" is good for one "voyage" - it doesn't say whether that voyage is to an orbiting station, a nearby moon or the far reaches of the system. I think the engines would be able to carry a small amount of fuel internally for the trip. I used a HS-1 shuttle and figured it took about 3.6 ADF points to get to 60,000 meters/turn to escape a 1g planet. Doubling this to 7.2 ADF points for escaping the gravity. That would be the minimum an engine could carry internally. Round this up to 8 or even 10 so the small shuttle can control its approach to the station and its relanding on the planet. That works out a shuttle getting to orbit, doing what it needs to do and returning to the planet. I went from there and worked out what voyages would look like for larger system ships and a cost per unit for chemical engine fuel. I thought about writing this all up and submitting as an article. |
April 22, 2020 - 10:59am | I worked with numbers for our own solar system. I'll play around with the Truane's Star system. I'm not sure there has been much offical on it. |
April 23, 2020 - 5:29am | I worked with numbers for our own solar system. I'll play around with the Truane's Star system. I'm not sure there has been much offical on it.
I'm curious in that PC in a game I run are possible about to take a chem engine slow boat to New Pale. What we know is that both planets are within the inhabitable zone . the star is Orange/yellow so the question is what is the temperature of an orange yellow star and how big of an inhabitable zone is that? If I dont have good number I'll just fudge the journey i guess. Although I'd rather not I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
April 23, 2020 - 7:48am | Zeb's has Truane's Star listed as a G7 star. So it would be slightly cooler than our sun (G2) ~5500K vs ~5800K. So maybe a bit closer of a HZ? Say 0.9AU to 1.6 AU for the conservative HZ. (I am not an astronomer, only a geek relying heavily on my Google-Fu) |
April 23, 2020 - 9:07am | If you use something like the average distance between Venus and Earth (17,000 hexes) as a base for distance between habitable planets, system ship will need to carry a tremendous amount of fuel to travel as quickly as possible. I think that would get extremely expensive, particularly for larger ships. I've been thinking a good number of ADF points of fuel a chemical engine ship could internally carry would be 25. Using that number, a system ship could use 12 ADF accelerating from the station and then coast for about 1400 turns heading toward the destination planet, turn around and decelerate another 12 ADF and still leave 1 ADF of fuel for docking at the station. Overall, that "slow boat" would take about 12 days. If the system ship gave up some cargo space to carry fuel, or carried something like an external tank, the trip could go faster) (my math may be way off - that was just working some numbers on a notepad) |
April 23, 2020 - 10:49pm | What about sling-shotting? I mean, what if the ship does a few orbits to pick up speed and possibly also picks up some speed from other planets/moons on the way? Also, I've assumed that chem engines in SF are waaaaaaaay better than what we have here currently on Earth, so you might be able to have quite a bit of wiggle room. |
 April 28, 2020 - 1:36am | Traveller handled this so much better than SF did. Sadly, canon system ships have about as little description for game use as space stations do. Check out the Adventures in History proejct, particularly Rise of the MegaCorps section...it's a game I've been working on entailing system ships. I whipped up some Chem Drive/Fuel Usage rules there. |
May 19, 2020 - 4:57pm | This is cool |
 October 13, 2020 - 1:03pm | I'm late to this discussion because I've been off the site for quite a while... I like the idea of trying to revise the chemical engines... If you think about it, the cost of fuel -- 250xHS Cr. -- is rather cheap when it comes to fueling Frontier ground vehicles. For example, if you have a hover cycle with its type I parabattery, it would cost you 2,500 Credits just to recharge it. (type I parabattery = 500 SEUs. Each SEU = 5 Credits) I'd at least double the chem fuel cost for "one load" -- whatever that is and how much volume that may be... Don't get me started about how cheap the starship weapons seem to be compared to much shorter range ground weapons... Sorry if I don't have any other useful feedback. Joe Cabadas |
October 13, 2020 - 4:46pm | I'm late to this discussion because I've been off the site for quite a while... I like the idea of trying to revise the chemical engines... If you think about it, the cost of fuel -- 250xHS Cr. -- is rather cheap when it comes to fueling Frontier ground vehicles.
For example, if you have a hover cycle with its type I parabattery, it would cost you 2,500 Credits just to recharge it. (type I parabattery = 500 SEUs. Each SEU = 5 Credits) I'd at least double the chem fuel cost for "one load" -- whatever that is and how much volume that may be... Don't get me started about how cheap the starship weapons seem to be compared to much shorter range ground weapons... Sorry if I don't have any other useful feedback. Wow in an energy economy the cost of rocket fuel is clearly way off. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 26, 2020 - 6:00am | Or SEUs are overpriced - and this cost is a glitch in the rules - which seems more likely. |
October 26, 2020 - 11:23am | Or SEUs are overpriced - and this cost is a glitch in the rules - which seems more likely.
Agreed. Joe Cabadas |
October 27, 2020 - 5:57am | Or SEUs are overpriced - and this cost is a glitch in the rules - which seems more likely.
Agreed. Its a megacorp plot to manipulate SEU prices. There is probably some insider trading going on too. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
October 27, 2020 - 1:02pm | As SEU aren't a finite resource, speculative trading would be kinda pointless ;) |
