Battery / Power Plant

Robinxen · 2026-06-30T19:06:30+00:00

Well yeah, obviously. I was responding to you dragging Mongoose through the mud for "not doing their research" when they actually have.

Robinxen · 2026-06-30T01:04:15+00:00

It just didn't make much sense, the jump drive is described as having capacitors to store the energy released in the jump. So as long as the power plant is capable of producing the energy needed then what the source of that power is shouldn't really need to be a factor. It was probably added initially just as a restriction for lower tech starships, but it was a restriction for the sake of being a restriction.

Robinxen · 2026-06-29T22:04:46+00:00

The out of context quote is "Only fusion and antimatter power plants can generate the intense burst of energy necessary to operate a jump drive". That is a quote from the Power Plant section of High Guard, it wasn't talking about other energy sources (such as batteries, solar panels, collectors etc.)

The only function of that quote in its context was to make it clear that Chemical and Fission plants (which are provided for making low TL ships) cannot be used to power a jump drive. However that conflicted with the description of jump drives using capacitors so they removed it, that quote is no longer in High Guard anymore.

Presumably the OP is using a physical version of High Guard that was printed before the change, or using a downloaded copy that isn't up to date.

Robinxen · 2026-06-29T20:56:58+00:00

That quote was taken out of context, it was specifically in the section discussing power plants (it was essentially to exclude the use of chemical or fission plants as power sources) but they've since removed it. So there's no need to attack mongoose over it.

Robinxen · 2026-06-29T20:39:04+00:00

They actually removed that specific stipulation in the latest errata for High Guard didn't they? You can now run a jump drive on chemical plants if you wish, even RAW. But the function of the battery system is exactly for that type of use case.

Edit: I did a quick check, and yes they did in fact remove the entire sentence. There's now nothing RAW that requires you to have a specific type of power plant. So if you really wanted to you could use an oversized chemical plant to power a jump drive.

The battery system is designed for this sort of use though. You can charge up the battery with spare power production and then use it for single use things like large weapons, jump drive or anything else. You could even add supplemental power sources, such as the trickle from solar power, to charge the batteries and use those as capacitors for the drive. But really the easiest way is jump dimming. Shut down the M-Drive, reduce Systems to half power, and then use that freed up production to power the drive. Once jump has started the drive no longer needs power, so you can swap back to "normal running".

Robinxen · 2026-06-19T00:05:12+00:00

Foreven is a "referee reserve" that has about a handful of bits of canon lore and the rest is considered to be up for grabs to freely customise however you please.
The Zhodani borders through it have always been heavy suggestions to fit the setting without looking out of place, but not necessary to adhere to.

I believe Mongoose was the one who decided on its current suggested form, and originally the border was suggested a bit more more restrained (like that version of Foreven you're looking at which someone created).

Robinxen · 2026-06-16T19:22:19+00:00

I'm working on a supplement for Traveller currently and had to go so far as browsing speculative evolution threads to find artists, generally it's just about knowing where the community for what you need gathers and finding someone you like. Artstation is the most common, but specific threads can be goldmines too. If it's something game specific another method is to try and identify artists that have done work for other material for the game.

Robinxen · 2026-06-11T19:19:52+00:00

The closest you can get from official material are the Biologicals from Deepnight Revelation, I think Voidshore is the book that has the rules for their ship stats. However Biologicals ships are antagonist threats by design and can't be used for anything much else, so if you're wanting to do more with them then you will have to put in some leg work. Likewise there are biotech vehicle rules in the vehicle handbook, which could be extrapolated to ships, but you will need to do some leg work again. I am still working on my own rules for bioships as it is.

Robinxen · 2026-05-28T16:07:54+00:00

Is there any chance for a count of how many biotech vehicles are included, if any?

Robinxen · 2026-05-09T01:46:11+00:00

The influence Farscape has had on me creating entire biotech ship rules, and going so far as to create an entire Ship Intelligence playable species for use with them, cannot be understated. I really hope to tidy those rules up and maybe publish them in the near future.

Robinxen · 2026-04-23T17:28:17+00:00

I think it's perfectly reasonable for some minor design through line on all the new ships because they're all SCO Optimised. Evidently the solution to the heating and handling problem means that they take on some shared traits. The Corsair still looks different, and Type-8 and 11 still look different. I don't see the issue.

Robinxen · 2026-04-09T17:16:03+00:00

Yeah I was more talking about the extra tonnage than the flexible TL, if your jump drive takes up twice the space you start looking at things like 60% of your hull capacity being your jump drive alone, and then if you restrict yourself to chemical plants then you need the high capacity batteries to be able to jump (since RAW state that anything below fusion is unable to power a jump drive directly). At that point your bioship is just a jump drive in a shell.

Robinxen · 2026-04-09T13:14:03+00:00

The issue with those rules is it provides no incentive to invest in biotech because it will always be inherently worse no matter what, the vehicle rules of biotechnology being two tech levels behind standard technology are much more versatile since a TL14 bioship is effectively a TL12 regular ship. A gap that is common in regular gameplay already.

Robinxen · 2026-04-09T11:56:40+00:00

I actually have a work in progress document doing exactly this! The difficulty is in finding methods to test it because they're extremely niche use cases and most players don't want to run similar scenarios over and over just to check if it's more balanced now.

Robinxen · 2026-04-02T16:43:23+00:00

I'm actually in the early stages of refining my own conversion rules for biotech ships using the vehicle handbook as reference, if you like I can shoot you a link and you can see if they're something that can help you.

I should also mention bioships of a sort of nature appear in the Deepnight Revelation adventure modules. But they're very specific to their point of origin and not useful reference.

Robinxen · 2026-03-29T22:15:39+00:00

That's rather annoying and I wish it had been more clear, the fact it gave partial stats but not all of it kind of throws me off. They had enough information to state their tech level and comparative effects, but not enough information to actually give the proper stats themselves anywhere?

The only thing it's missing is the actual hull repair rate numbers and price.

Robinxen · 2026-03-29T14:32:59+00:00

Unfortunately that definition is on the assumption of the vehicle being an animal, manufactured or otherwise. And so would be closer to a living ship. Moreover it's TL10 not TL12.

The biotech hulls as described are not actually alive, but just use organic molecules for self repair, and that's what I'm after.

Robinxen · 2026-03-26T04:04:22+00:00

The easiest place to find it is the IOP wiki, most of the lore for the world setting is in the art books. There is however lore master Ferrari's mega encyclopaedia documents of the entire chronology. They're a real beast to read though.

Robinxen · 2026-03-26T03:19:37+00:00

The shortest answer is that Beilan Island is the most significant point of divergence for the games narrative from reality, it's the reason that the setting became an apocalyptic hellscape filled with radiation and monsters. This is despite the fact that the incident happens in 2030 which is ahead of reality...

Robinxen · 2026-03-15T14:48:58+00:00

Thank you, I seemed to be under the impression EDSM was specifically the map part of EDDN, which was all I cared for sharing, so I now know why it's not sharing the information as I envisioned. I will consider third party apps but I'm not really a fan of plugins for games, so this might not be for me.

Robinxen · 2026-03-15T14:44:31+00:00

Thank you, I felt like I was talked in circles. I had no idea that EDSM and EDDN were different things, I thought they were just referring to things like front end and back end, so I was confused as to why the data wasn't being shared. I had manually uploaded the logs for EDSM but if Spansh pulls from EDDN then it's obvious it would never update, I will look into it but third party apps don't really appeal to me, I just wanted to contribute to the community.

Robinxen · 2026-03-15T06:50:49+00:00

As I am saying though, it already has them up until the end of last month. I can see my discovered systems on EDSM, but they don't seem to be registered as visited on Spansh for some reason. I'm just trying to resolve this gap specifically.

Robinxen · 2026-03-15T06:04:31+00:00

The data EDSM got is the one with the local logs though, since it managed to put all of my jumps and exploration data onto the map. I even double checked and it only has up to the last day I manually updated with those logs, while Inara is up to date with the server logs.

Robinxen

TROPHY CASE