[Space] FTL Ideas/Thoughts

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by ericthered

You learn something every day. This is awesome. Any idea how this fits into power points in spaceships?

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Spaceships can be tricky to work with. It trades flexibility for simplicity. Still working with Ve2 numbers for TL7 RTGs are roughly 6 x massive as comparable Fission reactors for the same output. A ratio of 5 or 6 to 1 tends to remain between RTGs and comparable nuclear power plants at higher TLs.

This would have RTGs producing less than 1 pp per 5% of ship's mass in Spaceships if being fully realistic (which Spaceships isn't always about marginal power plants and drives).

Refreshing my memory the Ve2 rule of thumb was that a RTG's power output dropped 10% per period of 14 years. Old Ve2 hands tended to install RTGs large enough to power the life support systems as emergency/back up power plants.

Not only can rtgs run for long times but they have no moving parts or even much in the way of weakpoints in their structure. They are ideal for long term/emergency uses that don't have high power requirements.

I once gave the PCs a ship that had an RTG that was 120% of what was needed for life support when new. That meant it produced enough power for 42 years. Their ship was older than that though and the back up RTG was only capable of powering 90% of life support. :)