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Post by Kage2020 on Jul 26, 2004 11:21:36 GMT -5
I would point out that the various forms of permission to trade in or out- system are personal grants to a captain. All ships must be registered and operate on a 'charter', whether this is one of the permanent ones mentioned in WD139/140 or one that is 'temporary'. The first being generally the classis mercatilis and the latter the classis civilies where it basically couples with a 'flight plan' (and, indeed, is predicated upon the concept of the 'average warp time'). I would then point out that all trade between sectors and a significant portion of trade within a sector will require a navigator on board the ship. Inter-sector trade, true... but only if subsectors in adjacent sectors are sufficiently wide apart such that the balance of maintaining a Navigator contract outweights the time constraints (consumables, etc.) and that of hiring a Navigator (a rare commodity). Navigators only generally become feasible if you're talking about large-scale operations and the potentials of 'warp convoys'... While the bribes required to obtain a charter might be astronomical and mean that a captain spends a whole life (or in hereditary charters, multiple lifetimes)... Please note the working concept, above. The "Chartist Captains" are, for the most part, the Merchant Fleet. They operate on prescribed routes, etc. Hereditary Free and Free are more of a random element, but must also work along supply/demand. The idea of a trader picking up goods on one side of the Imperium and suffering the 'expense' of carrying it to the other side of the Imperium might not be entirely valid... ...the flag of each ship is the personal colours of the captain, not the shipping line or sector or segmentum. This is more for the Economy thread, also on this board at the moment... Getting a valid system up and running is actually horrendously important to the project at the moment. And I would not over-value the position of the captain here... I'm not entirely sure how corporations (except those controlled by the captain(s)) could control shipping. Simply by controlling the cargo itself, perhaps?
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Post by orangesm on Jul 30, 2004 19:32:29 GMT -5
Thier is a huge amount of fuel needed for any interplanetary trip (given that we are assumed to be using fusion engines - but then of course this goes back to the conversation on portent forums.portent.net/showthread.php?p=2300823#post2300823) So size quickly becomes a question how much fuel does it take a 3000 ton spaceship to do a constant burn out system! To even get to .1c you would need: A Fusion Engine Junk Mass (not even reaction mass just something to super heat) Magnet Accelerators (accelerates junk mass at really fast speeds - say .75c ) Assuming you have systems which can accelerate (a=35g) the ship to .1c in a day (this is of course a rough estimate as you can read in the Logistics post) you can then calculate the mass/time needed to reach .1c over the course of a day in a 3000 ton craft. Using (M+P)/M=e^delta v/C where M - dry mass P - propellant mass C - exhaust velocity e - natural logarithm delta v - change in velocity It will require that you be able to hold 427,892.435 kgs of junk fuel. Now this isnt including the junk fuel for extra manevuering which changes these calcs once again. Any way you slice it you are going to need a ton of fuel to reach .1c - even dropping this (alot of people wanted higher velocities (Ernst amoung them) still requires large amonts of fuel. Even increasing the exit velocity to 1c and dropping the wanted speed to .01c the ship still requires 30,150.5013 kgs of fuel. Now not to bring in an discussion on portent to here but this is more approperate place to discuss than the Imperial Logistics thread. Now once you reach such speeds you only have to fire your engines when you want to manuveur/slow down. Also I agree with the side saying that a warp drive really is one size for all (it just has to tear space time and create a warp rift if all of these are roughly the same size then the same device could create them). Now the device that would vary with the size of the ship would be the Gellar Feild Generator.
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Post by Kage2020 on Aug 1, 2004 2:04:17 GMT -5
Thier is a huge amount of fuel needed for any interplanetary trip... Yep, definitely. ...but then of course this goes back to the conversation on portent... Which is predicated mostly on getting the ships to move to huge proportions of the speed of light. And of course doesn't work an alternative theories, i.e. that the ship never actually slows down! Admittedly, that wouldn't be consistent with the 'fluff'... Assuming you have systems which can accelerate (a=35g) the ship to .1c in a day... I didn't see that post. Could you post the specific link to that one, not just the link to the general thread, which I have no intention of wading my way through! Also I agree with the side saying that a warp drive really is one size for all (it just has to tear space time and create a warp rift if all of these are roughly the same size then the same device could create them). Now the device that would vary with the size of the ship would be the Gellar Feild Generator. I'm going to continue to work on the principle that the volume of the 'drive' in total varies as a function of size of the vessel. Despite the ridiculous analogy, I just have an image of wires stuck into a cup of tea powering Imperium vessels through the warp...
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Post by Dazo on Aug 1, 2004 2:12:37 GMT -5
And yet your willing to suspend disbelief on warp drive in general . Its not the size of the warp drive its how much energy you put into it which will determine the size of the warp rift generated. your livin in the past man, quit livin in the past
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Post by Kage2020 on Aug 1, 2004 4:34:50 GMT -5
your livin in the past man, quit livin in the past Oh, be quiet dazo! I view the 'warp drive' as a series of integrated components which includes the 'computer' (control systems, software for controlling fields, correct sequencing of energy... or whatever), huge quantities of powerbanks/capacitors for storing the energy required to make the transition, the power plant necessary to generate such energy and, of course, the equipment distributed over the ship to generate the "Geller Field" itself. If by the 'warp drives are the same size' approach you're just talking about the control mechanisms, then whatever... It's just a computer and/or enough esoteric equipment to make it work. But without all the other components, it's pointless... And those other components are, for me, related to the size of the volume/displacement of the vessel. Again, however, it is more useful to attempt to model this type of thing in a consistent system rather than discuss numbers entirely abstractly... But there we go.
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Post by orangesm on Aug 1, 2004 12:47:24 GMT -5
Link to the beginning of the .1c discussion. forums.portent.net/showthread.php?t=134339993&page=16&pp=15It is page 16 just incase. Main reason for this speed is it means you can travel a system across a system over the cross of a few days (supported in various fluff), plus calculations passed on this idea.
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