Senior's Thruster Talk

[SeniorScore]

Thrusters, you love them. They make ships go places. But what do they do for you and your roleplay?
I have a basic outline for attempting to make thrusters, and their interactions with pilots and engineering more interactive, and give skills more range to be expressed while influencing rounds.
I have verified nothing against current thrusters beyond occasional questions to people in discord.
I will be wrong on something.
I will not apologize.


But why though?

I feel this could be used to add more depth to engineering/piloting, and by extension the plans for contracts in NBT2. The Blood Diamond might need changes, or additions to its thrusters, and most importantly of all, maintenance of what it has. Giving more variety in the thruster system also gives more variety in the potential for repairing them for contracting work on different vessels that may be happening across the Spur.
This also makes piloting and pre-flight checks by support personnel a lot more important! Replacing parts before a ship flies out is a lot easier than trying to sort out how to recover a ship currently adrift because its nozzles failed from disrepair and neglect, and even if it does, it can add complications to otherwise straightforward scenarios.


1 - THRUSTER DIVERSIFICATION
Thrusters in real life can range in complexity, fuel sources, and speed. All we have for the Horizon and just about any other vessel to my knowledge would be considered a ‘cold gas thruster’ system. Going forward, I’m going to dictate a work-in-progress system of categorization of thrusters into three classes.

Class A - Basic Baby stuff even the most green of engineers could hammer out in an evening, and pilots are frequently kept up to date on the maintenance of these as they are frequently back-up systems for the more performance-minded classes. Class A Thrusters get you places. Not very fast, but they do get you there.

Cold Gas Thruster - As simple as a thruster can get, no ignition element, all it does is dispense pressurized gas in a desired direction. This is how we know thrusters today, with our current method of flinging carbon dioxide into space the shuttle everything around. Maintenance and parts reflect this. A few pipes, the nozzle itself, and a sensor or two just to relay back to the controls what exactly it is doing.

Chemical/’Hot Gas’ Thruster - The traditional rocket ship locomotion method- more energetic than cold gas, and just as fuel intensive for the benefit. The fuel can vary, but it’s more specialized than just inert gases being pressurized and increased maintenance demand due to the intense heating. The only addition from the cold gas thruster would be an igniter.

Solar Sails - Less of a thruster- but it makes a ship move so we’re including it. Can come in a few variations but from reading them I can’t see there being much practical distinction when it comes to our needs. All they need as opposed to fuel, is a small and continuous electrical charge to excite the right fields or wires to get the desired deflection and thrust as a result. Additionally, it requires a lot of space and clear space on either side of the ‘thruster’ to generate any movement.  Would chiefly be wires, cells, sensors and capacitors as parts go. Low cost and low maintenance, very low speed as a result.

Electrostatic-Ion Thruster - Propellant cost is minimal with xenon being the norm, ion thrusters are power hungry but intensely low maintenance, operating for years continually with little servicing. They mark the transition from reliable, cheap back up (as not every vessel is going to have the power to sustain them) to more powerful, and demanding thrusters that can be used in more demanding applications(read: military, typically). Parts would consist of pipes, wire, capacitors and cells and sensors.

Class B - Now getting to proper thrusters that require more than an SMES or a gas canister, and instead require consistent power production, or fuel supply systems. In addition to other systems needed to support consistent operation, they also require greater engineering skill to maintain the thrusters themselves. Still attainable of a knowledge set by more veteran pilots, and very dedicated hangar techs.

 

Fusion Thruster - a staple of modern ship travel for sub-light maneuvering on vessels larger than corvettes. Helium-3 is fused to deuterium, the energy is used to propel the newly fused matter and push the ship. Support systems needed are heavy radiation shielding, and cooling. Fuel efficient, but constant monitoring and maintenance are important for smooth operation. 

Fission-Fragment Thruster - Older, and more prevalent in areas like the coalition, or on older, backline ships. Fissile material is arranged in discs on a rod, set to pass through a reactor core which expels excited particles out. Associated weight with the reactor designs make the acceleration less favorable, when coupled with the accompanying radiation shielding and cooling.
Vacuum Arc Thruster - Typically used in applications where nuclear waste or tragedy is desired to be avoided, freighters frequently near atmospheres in populated systems are occasionally outfitted with these. Metal plasma is produced by an electrical current through a cathode. No fuel consumption, but energy intensive, and maintenance heavy. Cathodes are frequently replaced parts.

Class C - Downright magical, if the scientists weren’t heavily discouraging the use of that word. Most of these are as much theory as they are practice. Working knowledge of them is limited, and so is their application outside of research labs dedicated to unravelling their secrets.

Phoron Rocket Thruster - A ‘hot gas’ thruster, but infinitely more energy efficient with its fuel, deceptively powerful for its weight, and only properly built after phoron scarcity was starting to come into full swing. Gaseous phoron is the standard for this, cooling is done before its fed into the fuel systems for both space efficiency, and to delay any potential run away reactions.

Supermatter Shard Thruster - An excited supermatter shard is used to generate gas, which is expelled directly out of the thruster. Immense care needs to be taken in monitoring the shard’s status. Essentially limitless fuel capacity, as long as cooling and electricity are maintained to keep the shard’s stability in check.

 

2 - A PRACTICAL EXERCISE

To paint a better picture of how thrusters might enhance gameplay, I will go through a potential scenario for a contract that Blood Diamond might accept to help restore a thruster system on a medium sized vessel.

After accepting the contract to assist the Good Tomorrow, an independent cargo vessel in the same system Blood Diamond finds themselves on this adventure, Urist McPipes has to first evaluate, what does the Good Tomorrow have and have need of!
- It’s an older vessel, so they’re using fission-fragment thrusters. Does Urist even have the skills to properly diagnose this? This is at its core a nuclear reactor. Your typical engineer should be familiar enough for repair, but rebuilding systems from scratch may be too much.

- Cold Gas for this instance, would be the most straightforward, and simplistic to build. Gets them reliable sub-light movement, but has the consideration to be had: Do they have the gas to do this? An important question, especially if the were not previously using cold gas thrusters. Does the Blood Diamond have any to spare to satisfy the needs of the Good Tomorrow
- Does the power generation have enough output for a Vacuum Arc Thruster? Does the Blood Diamond feel comfortable using what are definitely more expensive materials in this venture, for less of a profit on contract completion?
- If they have the power generation, but the resource cost of a VAT is too much, maybe an electrostatic-ion thruster would be the solution. An easier thrust to make, lower maintenance for the crew, and no immediate fuel concerns after its creation.

Once the ship has verified this thruster solution is valid against its issues (I have no idea how this would be verified but stay with me), contract is completed and hopefully they don’t notice anything that the freelancers had stolen in the meantime.
If this was done with the current iteration of thrusters, you print a thruster circuit board, get a full stack of wire and 2 pipes, and tada you have a thruster. You may have to set up some atmospherics piping to the thruster in question after the fact. This hopefully illustrates how this could deepen engineering as a role in the future.

Very interested in the thoughts people might have on this, any glaring flaws or obvious additions that should be made.