Space Opera Semi-Psuedovelocity Drives

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Zeta Blaze

What happens when a ship mounts
a Semi-Reactionless and a Reactionless drive?

This is what space transports (ships between fighter and capital ship; think Millennium Falcon) do - reactionless works better for very short distances (and combat, if it comes to that), but semi-reactionless is much better for long distances. You simply use the one that matches the current mission best.

Originally Posted by Zeta Blaze

What happens if you turn both on at the same time?

In theory, you'd handle the pseudovelocity gained from each separately - when a space transport is interdicted by a small (that is, not large enough to interdict the reactionless drive) fighter, you could have a case where the transport's semi-reactionless drive is interdicted, eliminating any pseudovelocity that came from it, but the reactionless drive isn't.
In practice, they'd probably get hit by the largest book I had at hand.

Originally Posted by Seneschal

This might not fit your fluff, or the aesthetics of how you imagine space fights, but maybe you could solve this by having combat/travel space instead of combat/travel speed; i.e., the energy fields projected by the drive create "bubbles" of inflated space.

Doesn't fit, requires too much superscience, and is way too complicated. I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad idea, but I think it would end up causing headaches.

...

I've actually decided it's probably going to work out best if I make the drives into essentially boost drives (fluff-wise, they actually just have such high acceleration they can reach top speed in a fraction of a second). Otherwise, the tactical implications of interdicting a squadron of fighters basically mean that unless you manage to approach your target from directly in front of it, it can reliably escape you via interdiction - and I most certainly do not like this. This is going to require a total rehashing of the way they work, unfortunately.

After a lot of work and thought, here's how I intend to have it work out. Both reactionless and semi-reactionless have two modes - travel and combat. Travel with reactionless has a top speed of 1000 mps per drive, which requires 90 PP per drive. Efficiency can be increased up to 5-fold by decreasing speed by the same factor, for a cruising speed of 200 mps per drive, requiring only 3.6 PP per drive. In-between speeds use in-between efficiencies - divide needed PP by the square of the reduction factor. Semi-reactionless is similar - top speed is 200 mps per drive and burns through 0.75 PP per drive, and cruising speed is 40 mps per drive and burns through 0.03 PP per drive. For every PPh of energy used, 1% of a fuel tank of hydrogen is expelled as reaction mass. If the vessel experiences a collision while moving at travel speeds (with pseudovelocity), treat it as though it had an actual velocity in yards per second equal to mps/20 (that is, at 1000 mps treat it as though it were moving at Move 50; and 40 mps, as though it were moving at Move 2).

Things are simpler in combat - there's no change in efficiency. Rather, reactionless drives have Move 10/50 per drive and require 18 PP per drive, while semi-reactionless drives have Move 2/10 per drive and require 0.15 PP per drive (again, every PPh of energy corresponds to 1% of a fuel tank of hydrogen).

Transferring between travel and combat speeds is handled via the interdiction scheme I outlined in previous posts. Use the vessel's collision velocity to determine what speed it starts out at (so a 4-drive fighter cruising at 800 mps starts at Move 40, a 10-drive missile going all out at 10,000 mps starts at Move 500, a 2-drive carrier moving at 40 mps starts at Move 2, and so forth).

Originally Posted by Seneschal

That's not that strange, provided you justify it.

Lack of nuclear energy and genetic engineering is mostly the result of fear-mongering and a bit of history. For the first, many of the original colonists weren't very pronuclear to start with, and they got really paranoid and thought Earth had destroyed itself (with nukes, naturally) when they lost contact for a few decades early in the journey. Earth eventually reestablished contact, but was now under new management (due in part to a partial nuclear war) and demanded the fleet do the unthinkable and turn around, abandoning their colonization effort. Most of the colonists refused, but one of the generation ships decided* to turn around after all, and its crew tried to convince the others to do the same. Not wanting to turn around, a pilot from one of the other ships loaded up his own ship (which was used for mining asteroids and the like for raw materials) with a nuke and flew it into the "traitor," destroying both. Having lost an eighth of their potential population, it's no real surprise they gained such an aversion. For genetic engineering, there was already quite a movement against the practice on Earth (and thus within the original colonists), and the spacers are either opposed to it on religious grounds or due to fear of "unmaking" the human race and replacing it with something else.

As for general lack of AI, I personally don't see intelligent/sapient/whatever AI as inevitable, so that combined with a bit of fear of it is enough to keep it at bay. Probably the most advanced AI available serves to control weapon turrets - which legally can only be equipped with ion cannons (which disrupt electronics without blowing up ships) and can typically only be used in space (as in atmosphere disabling an aircraft is likely to result in a fatal crash).

*History is conflicted here; the above is the version put forth by the Earth Caliphate, its allies, and some of the secular nations. Some of the other nations tell a very different story, of a hijacked generation ship trying to ram the rest of the fleet and a brave pilot sacrificing himself by crashing into the ship's fusion plant. Most aren't certain which is true.