Since I don't have ICS on me, what's the quote? Does it specifically spell out the fuel carried? What I'm getting at is could it possibly be a reserve stock, a stock for fueling fighters, or just that they might store several seconds of fuel on board in case of the need to suddenly surge the reactor's output and the extraction process might lag?Captain Seafort wrote:I don't have a problem with the theory per se - the issue is that we have definitive statements that ships a) carry fuel and b) it runs out in a few hours.
Honestly that's what I'm getting at, having to refuel and rearm your capital ships midbattle is just nuts. You need the fuel on board to be able to fight an extended engagement.Yes, however the battle wasn't continuous - it was a series of hit-and-run engagements that would have allowed time for both sides to rotate ships out to refuel and rearm (and for the crews to rest).
Or that the reactors have the ability to rapidly increase or decrease their output. If you want to say hyperspace travel uses little power because they can just order it and go then you can say the same about the shields. They flip those up and down in a matter of seconds or less. So either the reactor can spool rapidly or the shields that supposedly stop these incredibly powerful blasts from the weapons require next to no power themselves.We also know that ships can jump to lightspeed with little or no preparation, demonstrating that the energy required is equivalent to only a few minutes or seconds of a ship's reactor output.
Puttering around or not they weren't mothballed. They would have been testing their shields, weapons, and engines from time to time.ISDs that were doing bugger-all. Don't forget that the limit of a few hours only applies at maximum output, not the miniscule fractions of maximum that the ship would usually be operating at.
Yeah, that's an incredibly stupid idea. The moment your opponent realizes you're holding out to try and increase your longevity they go full power and blow you away. If you want to draw out an engagement firing half power isn't the way to do it.Nickswitz wrote:Just throwing this thought out there, maybe they weren't fighting at full power during engagements, I know it sounds like a stupid idea, unless they knew how long they could last at full power and realized that it would be more efficient to use less power in order to hit longer and be able to run afterwards.