On 05Oct2017 1612, Evyn MacDude wrote:
>
> I have been pondering the whole Contragravity vs thrust idea.
>
>
> Consider the implications of of Contragravity as a shield from gravity
> model, for ship operations.
>
> 1st off all space flight becomes straight line paths for the most part,
> with gravity becoming a choice instead of the law. Near planet
> operations are much simpler.
>
> 2nd Take-offs and landings are much simpler, streamlining becomes
> optional. Primarily it is for ships that do lots of high speed lower
> atmospheric maneuvering. (Hint, if a balloon can reach orbit so can a
> unstreamlined ship).

If you have reactionless thrusters and thus effectively unlimited fuel
and they give more thrust than the local gravity you have the same
effect, excepting that the ship has to have it thrusters facing closer
to directly downwards. The contra-grav equipped ship will be more agile
(all else equal), but otherwise there's not a lot of difference for
high-acceleration ships. The real difference is for ships with only
marginally more acceleration than the local gravity - without
contra-grav they'll be accelerating slowly and almost directly upwards
and landing very cautiously. With C-G they'll have far more choices (and
don't even need excess acceleration - all their acceleration is 'excess').

This really is how most Traveller sources seem to treat ship operations,
aside from insisting that non-streamlined ships can't enter atmospheres
- which is a somewhat reasonable from a safety and 'not getting all your
aerials stripped off' point of view.

In my current campaign the PCs have a hot little ship that happens to
have no C-G system, but lots of thrust (4G manoeuvre). She's a
streamlined cone, and a tail-lander. The lack of C-G is a source of
irritation to them, because it makes landing a lot less casual
especially as IMTU thrusters still throw out a fair bit of heat and in
an atmosphere they also push air rewards, so landing on one's tail means
blasting quite hot air all over the ground at your landing site and
means you can't really just sit 'on your jets' if you don't trust the
ground to hold your ship's weight.

Extra 'features':

As the ship was intended as a courier/VIP transport, she's not well
equipped when it comes to cargo handling (small cargo hold, very little
in the way of cargo-handling gear, cargo hatch halfway up her side).

Likewise, the primary airlocks are intended to mate with a passenger
terminal, so at sites that lack such facilities her crew and passengers
have to use a high (and steep) access ladder or use the emergency lock
that's in her base. This lock is in the bottom of the engineering
compartment and internal access to it is quite tight and not at all
suitable for day-to-day operations (quite aside from the undesirability
of having all and sundry going to and fro past delicate parts of the
ship's drives).

*I* like the design, my players are more ambivalent.

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>
Chief Assistant to the Assistant Chief