BattleTech Spacecraft

This page is about Spacecraft in the BattleTech universe. In general BattleTech space travel is mostly fairly well grounded. From a narrative perspective, Spacecraft in the BattleTech universe generally takes a secondary role to combat on the ground with BattleMechs, Elementals and similar. Never the less, it is fairly well explored.

Systems

Kearny-Fuchida Drive

FTL Travel in Battletech is achieved thanks to Kearny Fuchida Drive (KF Drive or Jump Drive for short). Developed in the early 22nd century by the Deimos Project it made it's first jump in 2108, it opened up space to human colonization shortly afterwards. After that there has been some incremental refinements but the basic system have not changed much since then.

To Jump from system to system, you need a lot of power and that power takes a long time to build up. Then you need a Jump Point, typically these are zones of space above the North and South Poles of a Star which are the preferred points but there are other spots to jump from called Pirate Points which are riskier. It takes a bit of time to spin things up even when the Drive is fully charged but once the timer reaches zero, you are effectively instantly transported to your destination, another Jump Point within 30 LY of where you started from. Jump Drives release a lot of light and radiation when they Jump, meaning that a stealthy arrival is not really possible. They are also rather pricey pieces of hardware.

Occasionally things go wrong: a ship missjumps and ends up far off course, arrives badly damaged, blows up or simply disappears. The risk goes up if you don't calculate things right and there is less fudge factor with Pirate Points. Even so while it is kind of clunky, it's a generally safe way to get from Point A to Point B across interstellar distances (at least in comparison to the inherent risks of Space Travel), they can last for centuries and of course you are not literally taking a detour through Fucking Hell.

Artificial Gravity

Either comes from thrust while the ship is under acceleration or rotating centrifugal sections

Weapons

• Lasers
• Particle Projector Cannons
• Missiles
• Gauss Cannons
• Nukes

JumpShips

A Ship with a Jump Drive is called a JumpShip. Typically the Ship is built around the Jump Drive, with up to 95% of the total volume of a typical JumpShip being dedicated to that specific mechanism and it's ancillary systems. They are also typically large. The smallest JumpShip was the Bug-Eye, a 129 meter long 6,100 tonne specialized surveillance craft and it's rare to find one under 100,000 tonnes.

Civilian JumpShips as a rule can't do much more than Jump, having only minimal STL fusion drives they spend most of their days skipping from point to point ferrying STL ships which latch onto their Jump Points, only occasionally coming into port.

DropShips

== Notable