[Spaceships] Alcubierre-class forward jump station

[Michael Thayne]

I've been reading up on scientifically-plausible superscience, including the "Orion's Arm" setting, but it's interesting to think about where things could go. And eventually got inspired to make this. The exophase lightspeed drive is intended to represent the Alcubierre Drive variant that drops into a pocket universe to travel at near-light speeds—what Orion's Arm calls a Void Ship. Feedback on the concept would be very much appreciated.

Alcubierre-class Forward Jump Station (TL 11^)

This starship is intended to act as the mobile counterpart to a Labyrinth-class jump station (see Spaceships 5, p. 27). It has a control room with short-term life support, but is usually controlled by AIs. Once it reaches the target system, it uses the magsail to "brake", cancelling most of the differences in velocity between the home system and the target system. Colonists may then immediately come through the gate and begin converting it into a Labyrinth-class station. It uses an SM +14 (1,000,000 ton) unstreamlined hull.

Front Hull
[1] Advanced Metallic Laminate Armor
[2] Science Array.
[3!] Magsail.
[4-6!] Jump Gate
[core] Control Room

Central Hull
[1] Advanced Metallic Laminate Armor
[2!] Medium Battery (3 turrets with 10 GJ rapid fire X-ray lasers).
[3-6!] Jump Gate
[core] Super Fusion Reactors (four Power Points each).

Rear Hull
[1] Advanced Metallic Laminate Armor
[2!] Lightspeed Drive
[3-5!] Jump Gate
[6] Super Fusion Reactor (four Power Points).

It has artificial gravity and a setting-standard exophase drive field (no additional cost).

[ericthered]

What size is this ship intended to be?

Any particular reason you armed it? its generally either able to bring in protection from else where or will be in light speed travel, which will make it difficult to hit or to fire back.

Will the single light speed drive be sufficient? That depends on setting fluff, but make sure you're happy with drives that take up 1/20th of the mass of the ship.

Why is the hull so expensive? You probably don't need all that DR...

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by ericthered

What size is this ship intended to be?

Whoops, edited to add that.

Any particular reason you armed it? its generally either able to bring in protection from else where or will be in light speed travel, which will make it difficult to hit or to fire back.

True. I was ambivalent about arming it, but the Labyrinth-class stations are also armed so I armed this design for symmetry.

Will the single light speed drive be sufficient? That depends on setting fluff, but make sure you're happy with drives that take up 1/20th of the mass of the ship.

This is admittedly odd. I deliberately tried to constrain myself by going with RAW Spaceships 7, because that presented me with enough options as it is without trying to invent my own rules for lightspeed drives.

Why is the hull so expensive? You probably don't need all that DR...

The hull only costs slightly more than 1% of the gate the hull is protecting. I figured there was a strong case for "just to be on the safe side". Plus debating making it part of the setting fluff that carrying a wormhole inside a ship can subject the ship to significant structural stress, and the materials needed to withstand that could be represented as advanced metallic laminate.

[munin]

Originally Posted by Michael Thayne

[3-6!] Jump Gate
[core] Super Fusion Reactors (four Power Points each)

Did you mean:

[3-5!] Jump Gate
[6,core] Super Fusion Reactors (four Power Points each)

Because as it was you didn't have enough reactors to run all three jump gates at once, this was a different sized jump gate than the others, and there was that weird pluralization.