So, I've been running a Rogue Trader game pretty successfully for a few weeks now, but I've got one question the rules don't seem to cover, at least as far as I've found. Do warp drives need to recharge after a jump? If not, could a ship jump again right away as soon as a new course has been plotted? Does the ship need to burn to another side of the system, say to the coreward side of the system if it was headed towards a coreward destination? Or could it easily jump from right where it is?

Any suggestions, references, ways you've been handling it?

Your ship can jump so long as it is in the area where it may do so without causing problems.

The fuel issue is interesting, though. I imagine they skim hyrdrogen from gas giants or something for plasma, but I am not sure.

I know Navigators allow for jumps thousands of light years long.

AkumaKorgar said:

It depends on the quality of the Warp engine but mechanically, no, there is no game rule that states a warp-drive requiers a cooldown/maintainence period after each jump.

There is some fluff that indicates their should be, Chartist vessels and slow=transports often use rickety systems that need a good overhaul and resanctification at very periodic intervals (such as after each jump) Military vessels with a staff of dedicated Tech-Savants, Enginseers and Machine-Cultists how keep the rituals on a daily basis can probably rejump as soon as a vessel is ready.

A ship can rejump as soon as its clear of a gravity well which means if it leapt into a system it could immediately turn about an rejump, however many systems have designated Jump-points for vessels to arrive via and leave to help maintain a proper flow of traffic and to monitor vessels this may require a long trip across a ssytem to rejump (according to local law)

Finally a Warp-ship does require fuel the novel "Rogue trader" or its sequel goes into the process of replenishing the radioactive fuel-rods in great detail, I suggest giving it a read.

- raith

Apparently warp drives do require a recharge period (according to Execution Hour , a chaos force ambushed a patrol of IN escorts (either Sword-class frigates of Cobra-class destroyers) while they were trapped in-system recharging their warp drives), although there has been nothing published about how long they take to recharge, or how frequently they need to recharge.

This recharging is presumably separate from the refuelling of warp drives (described in Star of Damocles , the warp drive runs on a horribly radioactive fuel, that no-one but the AdMech is prepared to carry except in their ships' fuel bunkers).

Plasma drives could probably be refuelled by skimming gas giants (assuming that they are He3 fusion/fission reaction drives, or similar fusion-based plants), although unless the ship carried a refining plant it'd probably run at a lower fuel efficiency.

As for the questions on navigating a course- it'd probably be dependent upon the warp currents around the system. I'd imagine that if the warp was mostly calm, it wouldn't much matter where in the jump zone you translated, although it may well be easier working to coreward from the coreward edge of a system. If the local warp conditions were particularly turbulent, or if there were simply a particularly strong and stable current, your location in the jump zone at translation may well be critical (certain courses may well be inaccessible without first making a 'tacking' jump out of them maybe a parsec or so, unless you translated at a particularly favourable vortex/eddy)

The preceding two paragraphs are speculation, based on Traveller, and (admittedly slight and wholly theoretical)knowledge of RL sailing techniques, given the whole Age of Sail vibe they've gone for.

In the novel Farseer the navigator determines the point of warp entry (on the edge of the system) on the basis of the local warp currents and which of the major currents would take them closest to their destination; so it seems that some places are better than others.

DW

There are currents in the Warp that make it a lot easier to move in one direction than in another. There is also a "Safe Limit" on how close to a star a ship can emerge from the Warp. Take these two factors together, and you have a plausible reason for why a ship that has just emerged from the Warp can't simply jump back in again if it sees something waiting for it that it doesn't like.

We can assume that the ship will be traveling with the Warp currents rather than fighting against them for as much of the journey as possible. Therefore, in the area where the ship emerges, the currents of the Warp will be carrying the ship towards the star- jumping back in will result in the ship being carried past the safe zone and into the star's area of influence. Such a ship would have to travel across the system to a point where the currents ran away from the system to perform an outbound jump.

This explanation is how I've depicted the "Jump Zones" concept. It means that a raider can make an educated guess about where ships will emerge and stand a good chance of intercepting them before they either reach the planet of destination or escape back into the Warp.

I'd rule that a ship with a Navigator can attempt to ignore the emergence zones and appear somewhere else if it wants, but that this will require a Navigation: Warp roll with negative modifiers. I'm also of the opinion that rather than a hard limit, the safe emergence distance can also be ignored with such a roll. This means that if a ship is in a hurry, they can take a gamble and ask the Navigator to emerge further into the system, cutting days of the travel time in exchange for a roll to avoid seriously damaging the ship, and possibly even burning out the Warp Drive is the roll is failed badly enough.

Tantavalist said:

Thanks for the ideas.

In chapter 5 of "Star of Damocles" they talk about some sort of refuelling.
Apparently only needed rarely for the warp drive though and not explained in detail.
I’ll give it a quick re-read later to see if I can make some senses of it.

The background fluff in the RT sourcebook points out that ships use their main engines in realspace until the system is a glow behind them and debris is below safe levels. It doesn't say exactly what happens if you jump too close to space-dust or a star's gravity, but it can't be pretty.

As for the irregularities of warp travel, I always imagine it as being not so much "Head ten light-years at this bearing, then out. That'll be 100 LY forwards in realspace!" as "If we out here, there's nowhere to out into. Head forwards until our navigator can sense the real universe again"

St. Jimmy said:

The novel 'Farseer' by Bill King actually touches on the matters of warp navigation - and Navigators - in a few places. One of the things mentioned is a phenomenon known as "Probability Wakes" which emerge from a starship's translation point, either into or out of a system, which are noted as being dangerous to get too close to.

I've always imagined those to be waves of 'loose' warp energy that slips into realspace around a translating starship. In such an uncontrolled manner, that wave would disrupt the natural laws of the universe for a fair distance in every direction. Too close to a planet or other celestial body, and it'd be potentially catastrophic as unpredictable warp-spawned fluctuations take place. Out at system's edge, it's less of a worry, and in a starship with its Gellar Fields up, it's of no direct concern, however.