Jumpship (BattleTech)

=Description= In the [Battletech] universe, the term Jumpship refers to a ship capable of interstellar travel, but which lacks the large thrusters necessary for travel within a star system. General construction consists of a bulbous bridge and living quarters section at the front, a long narrow spine that dropships dock to, which also houses the massive capacitor bank, and the engineering section, which houses the Kearny-Fuchida FTL drive (KF Drive) and the fusion engine. In order to generate the enormous amount of power the K-F drive needs to execute an FTL jump, the jumpship deploys a thin metallic solar array, known as a "jump sail." The jump sail is only about a milimeter thick, but can have a diameter of several kilometers. During a jump, the sail is retracted and stored in the engineering section. The crew section usually has at least spinning centrifuge used to create artificial gravity, known as a "gravity deck" or "grav deck" for short. Larger jumpships also sometimes carry hydroponic gardens attached to the crew section to grow food for the crew on long voyages.

=Operation= The K-F drive's maximum jump range is approximately 30 light years. Generally, jumpships arrive in a solar system at either its zenith or nadir points, a point at the very edge of a star's gravational influence, directly above one of the star's two poles. A skilled navigator can also enter a system at a "pirate point", much closer to the system's planets, but due to the complexity of calculating pirate points this can be a dangerous procedure.

Because they only carry station-keeping drives, jumpships rely on dropships to ferry cargo between the jumpship and planets within a system. The number of dropship docking rings a jumpship has varies from one to nine, depending on the size of the jumpship. Depending on the size of a system, the time needed for a trip from a jumpship to a system's habitable zone can be anywhere from a few days to a month.

Typically, during this "turn-around" time, a jumpship will deploy its jump sail to recharge its K-F drive using the local system's star. The time needed to recharge the K-F drive depends on the intensity of the system's star and the ship's distance from it, but can range in time from a few days to a month. Some more advanced jumpships carry lithium-fusion batteries which can store an extra charge for the K-F drive, allowing a jumpship to either make a round-trip between two systems without recharging or make two FTL jumps in rapid succession, effectively extending the ship's range to 60 light years. Unfortunately, recharging the lithium fusion battery doubles the amount of recharge time a jumpship requires, limiting its flexibility somewhat.

=Scarcity= The Succession Wars created a shortage of jumpships in the Inner Sphere, directly threatening the backbone of interstellar civilization. During the 1st and 2nd Succession Wars, most of the orbital construction facilities used to build jumpships were destroyed, and the fragile, slow, poorly armored jumpships were vulnerable targets.

As the pace and scope of warfare gradually narrowed during the 3rd Succession War, Jumpships came to be seen as lostech, generally regarded as off limits to all combat save boarding actions, and actions directed at the solar sail. Destruction of a Jumpship in combat is met with varying degrees of punishments ranging from increased rates to complete bans on their use by the destroying party.