Spaceships series: Electrical Batteries module?

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Are some of these systems dependent on external oxygen?

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The bottom three are. Fuel cells include all necessary ingredients, I believe.

The Fuel Cell and MHD both use a Hydrogen-Oxygen mix as fuel, and thus don't need external oxygen.

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

The Fuel Cell and MHD both use a Hydrogen-Oxygen mix as fuel, and thus don't need external oxygen.

Oh, whoops. I mixed up which issue the MHD was in. I thought it was in the alternate rules one with all the planet-side tech.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Oh, whoops. I mixed up which issue the MHD was in. I thought it was in the alternate rules one with all the planet-side tech.

Does this explain the discrepancy?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

Does this explain the discrepancy?

As in why the ICE gives so much bang for its buck? I would say so.

[Kax]

To answer the original poster: basic: make a battery pack as big as you like using E-Cells, add 5% cost and weight for infrastructure (mounts, cables, power control circuitry, cooling).
This works for things like the battery pack in a Tesla and so on. For milspec, add 10% cost and weight.

This is also useful for a ship (or vehicle or fortress) that doesn't have enough power for all systems all the time, but does need it all occasionally.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Kax

To answer the original poster: basic: make a battery pack as big as you like using E-Cells, add 5% cost and weight for infrastructure (mounts, cables, power control circuitry, cooling).
This works for things like the battery pack in a Tesla and so on. For milspec, add 10% cost and weight.

This is also useful for a ship (or vehicle or fortress) that doesn't have enough power for all systems all the time, but does need it all occasionally.

Unfortunately, in 4e Spaceships there's no stated correlation between Power Points and the power cells presented in UT. It was simple with VE2, which had all power sources listed in kW (kWs for batteries). Until the VDS comes out, we're stuck with fudging such numbers.

[Flyndaran]

That was true until they used a real world technology and fuel; hydrocarbon and internal combustion engines.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

That was true until they used a real world technology and fuel; hydrocarbon and internal combustion engines.

Right. Well, I still feel the numbers we've come up with are at best a guess. The SS design system is just not very transparent. And remember that the actual amount of energy represented by one power point isn't necessarily fixed from TL to TL. Going by the numbers in the blaster design system, power cell capacity doubles per TL, but power drain of weapons also goes up. In SS all powered weapons draw the same number of PP, which implies that higher-TL Power Points represent more raw power.

I guess that's a roundabout way of saying, "There's no one right answer, so do what you like."

[Flyndaran]

So it's more of a not only does God play dice, roll them where you can't see, but he also uses varying types from d4s to d(ain't gonna' tell yas)?

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

So it's more of a not only does God play dice, roll them where you can't see, but he also uses varying types from d4s to d(ain't gonna' tell yas)?

Yep. Especially annoying when he rolls ∏di.