DivineWrath wrote:

I think you have the wrong idea of what ships in Eclipse Phase do. They don't just decide to travel from point A to point B, and burn fuel to get there and burn fuel to stop. They try to set things up so they will orbit around point B so they head back to point A, then orbit around point A and head back to point B again. They let inertia to play its part and allow gravity to change the direction of their ships. They do need to make micro adjustments to their flight path (or they'll miss their target) so they do need to burn fuel, but it would be far less fuel than the alternative.

I agree that the slowest freighters and "hab ships" that use such gravity transport networks, and that this is the majority of interplanetary traffic. But travelling between habs in a local area, loading the slow ships and for anyone who wants to travel faster, they will still burn fuel to accelerate and decelerate. Rockets still see plenty of use.

I don't think people would travel long distances in ships as morphs. Crewed ships in my mind would stick to a local area of the system (The Belt, Inner System, Jovian space, etc). Any ship travelling long distances through the solar system would be better off storing crew as infomorphs in a simluspace server and having synthmorphs available for any physical duties needed. The ship itself would probably be mainly AI controlled with crew only on board for emergency purposes or dealing with loading / unloading the ship (if that). Ship space & mass dedicated to biomorph accommodation is space / mass not being used to generate income (rep or cash based). The main book specifically states that travel between major areas of the system is done via egocasting rather than physical travel. Therefore the price of fuel is kind of a moot point. Ships would be owned by hypercorps or large groups of people (scum swarms). In either case the cost of fuel is a group concern, not really ones I think PC's would be exposed to.

I must point out that the price of fuel will depend on where you are. Antimatter will be downright easy to produce nearer to the sun, because you're tapping the vast torrent of solar energy to create antimatter - the efficiency of the conversion is fucktrocious, but you can't beat the fact that you're tapping a (practically, for all of our purposes,) limitless and, given proximity, extremely powerful, source of energy to bind up a miniscule fraction of that energy in the densest energy storage form yet known to transhumanity. Solar power, for reasons which I hope are obvious, gets weaker the farther from the sun that you are. It's still without practical limit in terms of supply, but the amount of energy harvested per square meter of solar panel takes a nose-dive. The amount of energy you'll get from a tiny solar panel near the sun would take a Gigantor XL solar panel array further out - that's why folks operating rimward tend to prefer fusion to solar for anything that's going to gobble up a kiloassload of energy, like antimatter production, or will seek alternative natural energy sources to tap. You [b]can[/b] get Antimatter if you're rimward, and indeed, one might say that for matters of defense it is vital to do so, but it's going to be a hell of a lot more expensive than if you can park a bunch of Gigantor XLs in orbit of the sun and turn on the taps. There are other ways, of course. If you can dangle a skyhook station in orbit of a gas giant (think "space elevator" without the end point touching ground,) you can suck a lot of that delicious He3 up into the station for fusion generation, which you can use to run an antimatter generator, or just for general power production use. Or you can just use fuel skimmers.

ShadowDragon8685 wrote:

I must point out that the price of fuel will depend on where you are. Antimatter will be downright easy to produce nearer to the sun, because you're tapping the vast torrent of solar energy to create antimatter - the efficiency of the conversion is fucktrocious, but you can't beat the fact that you're tapping a (practically, for all of our purposes,) limitless and, given proximity, extremely powerful, source of energy to bind up a miniscule fraction of that energy in the densest energy storage form yet known to transhumanity. Solar power, for reasons which I hope are obvious, gets weaker the farther from the sun that you are. It's still without practical limit in terms of supply, but the amount of energy harvested per square meter of solar panel takes a nose-dive. The amount of energy you'll get from a tiny solar panel near the sun would take a Gigantor XL solar panel array further out - that's why folks operating rimward tend to prefer fusion to solar for anything that's going to gobble up a kiloassload of energy, like antimatter production, or will seek alternative natural energy sources to tap.

I very much agree. Though I think that rimwards they're more likely to import anti-matter from sunwards than produce it themselves. Anti-matter shouldn't be too expensive to ship, at least if pirates or politics don't get in the way.

Quote:

There are other ways, of course. If you can dangle a skyhook station in orbit of a gas giant (think "space elevator" without the end point touching ground,) you can suck a lot of that delicious He3 up into the station for fusion generation, which you can use to run an antimatter generator, or just for general power production use. Or you can just use fuel skimmers.

I even think there's a mention of Titan having tried to build such an atmosphere sucker.

You will almost never actually have to roll Pilot: Spacecraft. Spacecraft departures from an orbit to another orbit are almost never going to be a rushed thing. This is (perhaps sadly, perhaps not,) not Star Wars, nor Star Trek. You will never (at least, not in the default setting,) have to plot a hyperspace jump against the clock with a Jovian Star Destroyer pumping turbolaser blasts up your aft, or punch the light-hugging impulse engine up to full to try and evade the Consortium Bird-of-Prey reaching out to try and lasso you back in with a tractor beam*. As long as you have a minimum roll of 40 (ProTip: don't ever let anyone who can't muster 40 Pilot: Spacecraft pilot your spacecraft! Any muse or piloting AI should be able to do that with a skillsoft you can download from the mesh,) you can take extra time to plot your orbit. Per the rules on page 117 of [i]Eclipse Phase, 4th Printing,[/i], once you've pushed your target number above 99, the GM may (and probably should) waive the dice roll and grant an automatic success. For a Task Action (which plotting your orbit almost certainly is,) this will take 400% as long as normal. I can't find a timeframe for plotting a course, but given that it's essentially just math, and that it isn't as if they have to work it out on graph paper with pencil and calculator, I'd give it a timeframe of one turn for a standard action. So, three seconds to plot a course, nine more to triple-check it, and bob's your uncle. You may or may not want to roll, to see if you can get above a 30, but since it should be obvious if your projected course is not optimal before you burn, I'd just automatically give an excellent success. *If you are in range of enemy weapons fire, you will not escape that range by plotting a course and initiating a long burn. They will be able to reach out and touch you for far longer than you will survive, as you will be presenting an obvious target so easy to predict that I would make their incoming attacks Simple Success rolls, and you'd be better off using that Δv to make erratic movements and hopefully throw their targeting off. As for the outer system importing Antimatter from Sunward, there's basically less than a snowball's chance in hell of that. Antimatter has two primary uses: making things go fast, and making things blow the fuck up. [i]Possibly[/i] also antimatter-initiated fusion, but regular fusion suffices far more than enough for most people's power consumption purposes, and antimatter is rare enough that nobody would want to annihilate it just to liberate its energy as electrical power. The Consortium would definitely not sell antimatter to its enemies (the Junta, the Alliance, or the Titanians (who are part of the Alliance.)) They wouldn't sell to Brinkers or the Ultimates, either, for the obvious reason that you don't want to sell guns to people who may then turn around and use those guns on you. Plus, you know, the densest form of portable energy know to Transhumanity - sounds like a great target for piracy if ever I heard of one.

I think the AA has an antimatter facility sunward buts its very small and heavily guarded. I think pilot space craft could be used if you want to plot a smuggling route rather than a least time intercept or a most fuel efficient intercept

Like LatwPIAT says, piloting skills mostly come into effect for small-scale maneuvers. It is a REF-based skill after all and not a COG one. I assume this mostly happens when flying around in Earth orbit or asteriod clusters as well as when docking. As for the price of fuel, I have absolutely no idea. What is it that has motivated the question?

Evilnerf wrote:

Eh, I stand by what I said. If if this situation came up in my game. This is how I'd handle it.

I must admit that would make the skill more interesting in a game that features long-distance space travel.

If the character has invested CP into owning a spacecraft, I would probably rule it so that the refueling costs are covered in the trait. They have basically diminished their character through buying it, instead of buying credits or rep that could be used for several space travels. So yeah, my advice would be to simply inform your player that all travel costs are paid for and let them have fun! Unless you are running a Serenity/Traveller type campaign you really won't be reducing the quality of your story.

Using an OTV to transfer from a cycler orbit isn't that easy because it puts the shuttle on the same trajectory as the cycler. In cannon ep ships Do use high energy hohman orbits and even brachistochron trajectories. The bulk carrier has a deltaV budget of 80km/s. The passenger liner has a DV of 400 ! Those are fusion torches. So, yep, if you have an antimater ship you pretty much count on the gravity of the sun and fly a sgraight shot to where ever you want to go inside the orbit of Jupiter. IIRC all of the torch ships in the book have a propellant mass ratio of less than 4 so the hydrogen is not prohibitively expensive or those ships would not exist, even given torch drive technology, if it were. One way to decide in a price for anti-mater and hydrogen is to calculate the revenue from all the passengers on a passenger ship then spend 80% of that on the fuel and propellant. That will do wierd things to your ecconomy but there is no rational ecconomics in the game anyway.