Space Opera Semi-Psuedovelocity Drives

Varyon · 12-03-2014, 01:13 PM

I'm trying to come up with a drive system (actually, a series of them) for spaceships in a Space Opera setting. As with most Space Opera, the idea is to recreate WWII-style combat, but IN SPAAACE.

First off, I should note that power plants in this setting are limited. Power generation is primarily provided by TL 10 Fuel Cells and MHD Turbines, both of which have the option of using HEDM instead (slightly higher cost, double endurance, Volatile System), and by capacitors (same price as a Fuel Cell, holds 6 PPh). Capital ships often have retractable (carried as cargo) solar panel arrays for recharging (they use it to power a refinery to recover fuel). Nothing else is available to spaceships.

As it currently stands, the idea is for capital ships to use semi-reactionless drives. These utilize hydrogen as reaction mass, but get far more efficiency than is realistically possible. They are slow, but steady. They generate mostly pseudovelocity, but do not have pseudoatmospheric handling.

Fighters, on the other hand, use purely reactionless drives. These burn up far more power, requiring capacitors (which I allow to discharge arbitrarily fast) to keep up, but give much greater speed than the semi-reactionless drives of capital ships. They generate mostly pseudovelocity, and they have pseudoatmospheric handling.

The oddity of these drives is that I want them to have travel-relevant accelerations and top speeds while traveling between planets (they enter hyperspace to travel between systems), but have accelerations and top speeds more like WWII vehicles in atmosphere and during combat. For example, a capital ship might cruise at around 100 mps (going from Earth to Mars in under a week), but in combat may only have Move 2/20 (much like the USS Enterprise CV-6). As noted above, the superscience drives produce mostly psuedovelocity, but the velocity in combat is real. That is, when a fighter booking along at 250 yards per second in combat crashes into a stationary asteroid, it (and the asteroid) suffer the effects of a Move 250 collision.

This oddity is the cause of my first problem - what causes the change from "travel speed" to "combat speed?" The main idea I had was that the drives, when powered up, generate some sort of energy field. When two (or more) such fields interact, they interfere with the operation of the drives, eliminating the pseudovelocity component. Unfortunately, that would also mean you can't have allied vessels traveling within "combat range" of each other - unless there's some way to synch up the fields so they no longer interfere. And yet, if this is possible, should it not be possible to synch up with hostile fields in order to make a daring, high-speed escape? And with the advantages inherent in moving far faster, why wouldn't all ships simply synch up, thereby eliminating the possibility of WWII-style combat? Blargh.

The other problems I'm running into come down, quite simply, to numbers. What should "combat range" (that is, the range at which pseudovelocity shuts down) be - and does the size of the vessels involved influence this? What sort of acceleration, top speed, and power drain (and in the case of semi-reactionless, delta-V) should the drives have? I'd also like there to be a "cruising speed," where the vessel continues moving without having to continuously burn energy (and reaction mass) - what should this be? What sort of relationship should exist between psuedovelocity and true velocity? That is, if a vessel is flying around at travel velocity but then comes within range for combat, what velocity does it start with? Similarly, if a vessel rams into an asteroid while traveling, what is its actual velocity for determining the effects of the collision? I have worked out possible answers to these, which I'll list in the next post, but I'd really like some opinions on how well they are likely to work - and if there are any hidden problems I should be aware of.

12-03-2014, 01:13 PM	#1
Varyon Join Date: Jun 2013	Space Opera Semi-Psuedovelocity Drives I'm trying to come up with a drive system (actually, a series of them) for spaceships in a Space Opera setting. As with most Space Opera, the idea is to recreate WWII-style combat, but IN SPAAACE. First off, I should note that power plants in this setting are limited. Power generation is primarily provided by TL 10 Fuel Cells and MHD Turbines, both of which have the option of using HEDM instead (slightly higher cost, double endurance, Volatile System), and by capacitors (same price as a Fuel Cell, holds 6 PPh). Capital ships often have retractable (carried as cargo) solar panel arrays for recharging (they use it to power a refinery to recover fuel). Nothing else is available to spaceships. As it currently stands, the idea is for capital ships to use semi-reactionless drives. These utilize hydrogen as reaction mass, but get far more efficiency than is realistically possible. They are slow, but steady. They generate mostly pseudovelocity, but do not have pseudoatmospheric handling. Fighters, on the other hand, use purely reactionless drives. These burn up far more power, requiring capacitors (which I allow to discharge arbitrarily fast) to keep up, but give much greater speed than the semi-reactionless drives of capital ships. They generate mostly pseudovelocity, and they have pseudoatmospheric handling. The oddity of these drives is that I want them to have travel-relevant accelerations and top speeds while traveling between planets (they enter hyperspace to travel between systems), but have accelerations and top speeds more like WWII vehicles in atmosphere and during combat. For example, a capital ship might cruise at around 100 mps (going from Earth to Mars in under a week), but in combat may only have Move 2/20 (much like the USS Enterprise CV-6). As noted above, the superscience drives produce mostly psuedovelocity, but the velocity in combat is real. That is, when a fighter booking along at 250 yards per second in combat crashes into a stationary asteroid, it (and the asteroid) suffer the effects of a Move 250 collision. This oddity is the cause of my first problem - what causes the change from "travel speed" to "combat speed?" The main idea I had was that the drives, when powered up, generate some sort of energy field. When two (or more) such fields interact, they interfere with the operation of the drives, eliminating the pseudovelocity component. Unfortunately, that would also mean you can't have allied vessels traveling within "combat range" of each other - unless there's some way to synch up the fields so they no longer interfere. And yet, if this is possible, should it not be possible to synch up with hostile fields in order to make a daring, high-speed escape? And with the advantages inherent in moving far faster, why wouldn't all ships simply synch up, thereby eliminating the possibility of WWII-style combat? Blargh. The other problems I'm running into come down, quite simply, to numbers. What should "combat range" (that is, the range at which pseudovelocity shuts down) be - and does the size of the vessels involved influence this? What sort of acceleration, top speed, and power drain (and in the case of semi-reactionless, delta-V) should the drives have? I'd also like there to be a "cruising speed," where the vessel continues moving without having to continuously burn energy (and reaction mass) - what should this be? What sort of relationship should exist between psuedovelocity and true velocity? That is, if a vessel is flying around at travel velocity but then comes within range for combat, what velocity does it start with? Similarly, if a vessel rams into an asteroid while traveling, what is its actual velocity for determining the effects of the collision? I have worked out possible answers to these, which I'll list in the next post, but I'd really like some opinions on how well they are likely to work - and if there are any hidden problems I should be aware of.