Thread: Jump Distance
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Old 06-06-2021, 09:54 PM   #26
cptbutton
 
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Join Date: Jul 2007
Default Re: Jump Distance

Quote:
Originally Posted by DangerousThing View Post
Then most designs should use metallic hydrogen.

I think that you have to consider why the original Traveller rules made the decisions that they did.

The jump drives and the need to constantly refuel force the players to interact with planets, rather than using a warp drive to travel from system A to system B without having encounters. Most of the fun in these games involves this sort of encounter.
I suspect that the writers knew that nuclear fusion was much more energy dense than chemical combustion, but thought that meant it was 100 or 1000 times better, when it is more like 1,000,000 times better.

If the jump drives are using that much hydrogen, you need a lot of hand-waving to explain why any world with a grounded Beowulf doesn't have effectively unlimited energy too cheap to meter.
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