 March 25, 2009 - 1:07am | Couple of questions here power usage on the parabattery for robots? I dont beleive the rules address this so any ideas? house rules? while on topic power usage by vehicles? I think I remember something about a 1000 mile range on one fully charge battery. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 March 25, 2009 - 3:37am | I would probably say 1SEU per minute of operation for a robot, not counting any weapons, defensive screens, or miscellaneous equipment that could be hooked up to the main power supply. |
March 25, 2009 - 8:11am | That would be 1200 SEU in a 20 hour day or 732 SEU if you shut him down for 8 hrs/day A type 1 battery has 500 SEU and type 2 has 1000 SEU I had been thinking 20 SEU (though it sounds to little) would be a good amount at it tempts players to hot wire power clips into a robot to get another day out of it and a type 1 battery would give 25 days usage 20 Seu/ hour would be 25 hours opperation or rughly 3 days 70SEu / day would give you a week 5 Seu / hour would give you 100 continuous hours opperation or 5 days back in civilization you could get frequent recharges and most robots would be programed to plug in daily. but this would nix ever using them in the field which probably goes agains the spirit of the setting/genre unless the answer is a solar power collector that could generate recharge power that attaches to a robot's back like a back pack. Say d10 SEU / hour collected only during sunlight hours. the d10 mechanic would put in a random factor to account for the position of the robot and cloud cover. I think that the power usage should also have a high likelihood to outstrip that generated by the power collector. forcing players to do power management. With a d10 mechanic for determining power collection and maybe 3 power settings for a robot: Off= no power cost/hour SLEEP= 1 Seu/ hour (robot is aware of surroundings and can come to life if a change in conditions meet a programed response- robot is on sentry monitoring a 20m diameter area in sleep mode when a large animal enters the sentry location it would then come to Full and deal with the animal as per its programing) Full= 7 SEU/hour for full capabilities. of course a solar power collector opens the possibilties of in field power back pack recharge you could try to limit that by making them bulky & heavy, fragile and expensive. Subspace radio is 100 Kg, type 1 battery is 25 Kg, and hvy laser is 20 Kg so a power collector should be somewhere between subspace radio and a parabattery or it could be a spray on coating that collects power - I saw some news clips on this is being developed today the limiting factor is that damage to the robot reduces its effectiveness. the robot can be fixed in field but not the coating. The coating only generates 10SEU power per hour for every hour of sunlight. Every 10 points of laser Damage it drops 1SEU generated and for 25 or 30 points of damage from any other source will drop it 1 SEU generated. Lasers overload and destroy the coating and it cant be combined with an albedo coating but a albedo screen could be used. With OFF, SLEEP, and FULL settings plus an albedo screen and only a 500 SEU capacity battery there could be serious power management issues especially once damage has happened. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
