cthia wrote:Wouldn't that 'several weeks' endurance rating be at nominal power? Akin to the battery life of laptops given at nominal power which doesn't include the screen brightness dialed all the way up, surfing, game playing, apps in the background, all simultaneously. Full power draw.
I was considering scenarios like the conditions a drone would be up against if they were dropped in a system where wargames were about to take place and ships are being sent all over the place. Friendlies hypering in all of the time. LACs all over the place.
IOW, a Ghost Rider drone finding itself in a hornet's nest. Probably rare but certainly not out of the question. Which would probably decrease those "weeks" to days.
"Oh my, they didn't program me for this!"
As a last resort contingency, I imagine they are programmed to eat a cyanide capsule. LOL
Yes. I probably wasn't clear enough, but my "a day and to several weeks" wasn't intended to be a statement of a wide uncertainty band, but rather that their endurance would be drastically different under different operating conditions.
As you said at nominal power, just drifting there listening, they're probably good for several weeks; maybe as much as a month or two.
At high power, chasing all over the system with stealth fields active more like a day or two max (possibly less).
Even with the siphon effect of their wedge providing a fair bit of their power it still takes a lot of energy to maintain even a standby wedge, much less go charging around at up to 5000 gees!
