What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

darrell wrote:

psy9o wrote:Also in the case of the Merchant Marine of Manticore there are even more reasons not to install streak drives downsized for merchant use. They already have control over the majority of the wormholes. Wormhole travel is instantaneous whether you use a Streak drive or not, so the advantage it would get is not so big as you would first think.

If they could produce an improved hyper generator without increased cost that is of course another scenario and then it is indeed the only smart thing to do.

Most of the merchant ships in silesea will stay in silesa and won't transit a junction.

Most of the merchant ships in the Haven sector will stay in the Haven sector and won't transit a junction. Those that do, will have a multiple week trip at merchant ship speeds from haven to trevors star.

Ships in the talbot sector need to travel between planets, as well as from planets to the junction.

Planets in the original manticoran alliance (Grayson, Zanzabar, Alizon, etc.) can only be reached by normal hyperspace.

Etc....
Etc....
Etc....

Before and after transiting junctions, as well as travel between junctions, a faster speed means more profit.

There is a lot of science required to create the streak drive. Like advances in computers make calculators smaller, cheeper and better, it it probable that the technology developed for the streak drive would probably make merchant hyper generators better.

The new technology might make a merchant delta band drive smaller, or less expensive, or both. I doubt that many merchants would replace working hyperdrives, but for new construction, or if the hyperdrive is kaput and needs to be relpaced, not just repaired.

The cost of the drive is less important than the size, so a smaller drive that has the same performance is better, even if more expenses.

If the technology that made the streak drive possible makes normal hyperdrives smaller, that means that it is possible that for the same physical size, you might be able to make a drive that could go one or more hyper bands higher. The epsilon band is 33% faster than the delta band, thus an epsilon band merchant could make 4 trips for the time of three, which would be lots of profit.


Hmmm.... since the streak drive is "in some ways a brute force apporach" I wonder if it might make drive activation slightly faster?

psy9o wrote:

darrell wrote:

psy9o wrote:Also in the case of the Merchant Marine of Manticore there are even more reasons not to install streak drives downsized for merchant use. They already have control over the majority of the wormholes. Wormhole travel is instantaneous whether you use a Streak drive or not, so the advantage it would get is not so big as you would first think.

If they could produce an improved hyper generator without increased cost that is of course another scenario and then it is indeed the only smart thing to do.

Most of the merchant ships in silesea will stay in silesa and won't transit a junction.

Most of the merchant ships in the Haven sector will stay in the Haven sector and won't transit a junction. Those that do, will have a multiple week trip at merchant ship speeds from haven to trevors star.

Ships in the talbot sector need to travel between planets, as well as from planets to the junction.

Planets in the original manticoran alliance (Grayson, Zanzabar, Alizon, etc.) can only be reached by normal hyperspace.

Etc....
Etc....
Etc....

Before and after transiting junctions, as well as travel between junctions, a faster speed means more profit.

There is a lot of science required to create the streak drive. Like advances in computers make calculators smaller, cheeper and better, it it probable that the technology developed for the streak drive would probably make merchant hyper generators better.

The new technology might make a merchant delta band drive smaller, or less expensive, or both. I doubt that many merchants would replace working hyperdrives, but for new construction, or if the hyperdrive is kaput and needs to be relpaced, not just repaired.

The cost of the drive is less important than the size, so a smaller drive that has the same performance is better, even if more expenses.

If the technology that made the streak drive possible makes normal hyperdrives smaller, that means that it is possible that for the same physical size, you might be able to make a drive that could go one or more hyper bands higher. The epsilon band is 33% faster than the delta band, thus an epsilon band merchant could make 4 trips for the time of three, which would be lots of profit.


Hmmm.... since the streak drive is "in some ways a brute force apporach" I wonder if it might make drive activation slightly faster?

You should not underestimate the advantages of Manticore control of the wormholes. If you read ART then it becomes immediately clear that there are a lot more junctions then RFC has told us about in previous books. The reason the MWHJ is so important is because it is so massive. Most wormhole junctions only have 1 or 2 wormholes, but in ART it is established that this wormhole network is pretty big

darrell wrote:It all comes down to economics. If the ammount of increased cargo you can carry is greater than the cost of the smaller or faster hyperdrive, many owners or builders will elect to do so. The Questions I have, which only DW could answer is could a merchant quality streak drive be made either smaller or faster than a standard hyperdrive.

Jonathan_S wrote:

darrell wrote:It all comes down to economics. If the ammount of increased cargo you can carry is greater than the cost of the smaller or faster hyperdrive, many owners or builders will elect to do so. The Questions I have, which only DW could answer is could a merchant quality streak drive be made either smaller or faster than a standard hyperdrive.

I agree it all comes down to economics, but I don't think hyperdrive size is as much of an issue as you're making it.

Honorverse cargo ships are vast beyond belief. They dwarf SDs in size, and even a military SD hypergenerator is only around the size of a dispatch boat (recent MWW post). Even doubling the dimension of a hyper drive would shave fairly small amounts of cargo space.

Captial cost (initial purchase price) would be an issue, but I think not a big one. You've got lot years to recover that and ships are damn expensive in the first place.

Ongoing costs through, that's were merchants make their tradeoff. That'd include:
* Energy use (largely irrelivant while in a grav wave, but since we learned that ships routinely keep their hyper generators running while in hyper the energy it takes while between waves is hydrogen you'll have to replace)
* Maintenance. More mainteance is more in part, more in labor, quite likey extra crew, less time in use. That adds up fast

Werrf wrote:All very logical and sensible, but the same logic has always applied, and merchant skippers have nonetheless chosen the cheaper, lower bands of hyperspace. The streak drive isn't necessarily going to change that - all we KNOW is that it allows access to the iota and kappa bands. We don't know anything else that it might do to make lower bands safer or cheaper to travel for merchant ships (not saying it doesn't mind - just saying we don't know).

Vince wrote:

Werrf wrote:All very logical and sensible, but the same logic has always applied, and merchant skippers have nonetheless chosen the cheaper, lower bands of hyperspace. The streak drive isn't necessarily going to change that - all we KNOW is that it allows access to the iota and kappa bands. We don't know anything else that it might do to make lower bands safer or cheaper to travel for merchant ships (not saying it doesn't mind - just saying we don't know).

For merchant shipping, it all comes down to economics. What set of equipment for a ship will make the most money for the amount invested?

Jonathan_S wrote:

darrell wrote:It all comes down to economics. If the ammount of increased cargo you can carry is greater than the cost of the smaller or faster hyperdrive, many owners or builders will elect to do so. The Questions I have, which only DW could answer is could a merchant quality streak drive be made either smaller or faster than a standard hyperdrive.

I agree it all comes down to economics, but I don't think hyperdrive size is as much of an issue as you're making it.

Honorverse cargo ships are vast beyond belief. They dwarf SDs in size, and even a military SD hypergenerator is only around the size of a dispatch boat (recent MWW post). Even doubling the dimension of a hyper drive would shave fairly small amounts of cargo space.

Captial cost (initial purchase price) would be an issue, but I think not a big one. You've got lot years to recover that and ships are damn expensive in the first place.

Ongoing costs through, that's were merchants make their tradeoff. That'd include:
* Energy use (largely irrelivant while in a grav wave, but since we learned that ships routinely keep their hyper generators running while in hyper the energy it takes while between waves is hydrogen you'll have to replace)
* Maintenance. More mainteance is more in part, more in labor, quite likey extra crew, less time in use. That adds up fast

Charles83 wrote:So when Wodan mention that mesa's streak drive was made without the microfusion bottle technlogy and etc, the real meaning is the full set of technologies that are behind the development of those technologies, like i say better shielding materials, better capacitors, better miniaturization, better cooling systems, etc etc.