Topic: Vacuum Gen question?

[markc]

1) I was wondering if on a starship you would allow a small crafts Vacuum Power Plant to be plugged into the ships main power system and provide its extra power to the starship?
 (I got this idea from a cartoon and I swing both ways to allow it and to not allow it.)


MDC

[providence13]

Is there any reason that you wouldn't use the extra power plant that's just sitting in the bay?
It's not burning fuel or emitting pollutants. Unless vacuum power makes you more likely to show up on scanners.
I don't recall the rules..

[markc]

 I do not know. But I would also assume that you would need connections on the ship and the ships bay to allow the power to flow.
 Some like the idea and some do not but since it is electricity IMHO you would just need a way to channel that greater power to where you need it.


Thanks
MDC

[Defendi]

I don't think it's practical for the reason stated above . . . why not just get another (or a bigger) generator.  To do it this way you would need the power stucture to be in place to support this.  In addition, some systems would need to either go offline (which ones?) or operate under reduced power when the ships weren't plugged in.  Most systems in the world in general aren't specifically designed to work well on "half power".  It's usually all or nothing.  I suspect making this work would require more money, spread throughout the design of the ship, than just having the amount of power you want to begin with.

Maybe it would make sense to allow ships to be plugged into a bigger ship to create a tertiary power backup system, as long as they all added up to put out the power the ship would normally use.

[markc]

 I was thinking of having the extra power for the engines but then if the ship was underpowered you could allocate the power as you see fit.
 I could see under powered ships in a merchant fleet that were suddenly up-gunned for Naval duty, but then they would probably add a second power plant to power the ships weapons.


 On the cartoon front I was very surprised to see the main ship have not power plant but instead use the Mech's power plants to move. But then the Mechs and the ship were always a work in progress. Being constantly upgraded and planed from the beginning to be upgraded.


 I think the other front is also maintenance as small ships engine's would need more maintenance than a large ships engine's. That is going from todays tec and projecting forward. But then maybe they have nano's floating around in the system to constantly repair the problems and report any signs of wear. I sort of like that use of nano's if I do say so my self.


MDC

[Marc R]

"Artoo, shift power to the forward deflector screens!"

[providence13]

The more I think about it, the more I like the idea.
When all of the ship's boats are on board, there is a power surplus. After launching the away teams, satellites and all shuttle craft, you have just enough power to maintain minimum operation; movement, limited weapons, manufacturing, etc.
I could see it.

[Defendi]

I still think that in a realistically designed ship, that would be more expensive than just having the extra power all the time.  Even the engines likely aren't designed to have variable amounts of power input (output, yes, but high tech systems react very badly to brown outs as a rule).

[Defendi]

None of my comments here are official, however.  You can certainly do it according to RAW, I just think it would violate most realistic settings.