How the Bayern flies up to 15.4 LY

Introduction

Over the years, this has been a frequently asked question on the 2300AD mailing list.
 

A review of stutterwarp drive operations:

1. An online running drive builds up a charge, and will irradiate the ship ( killing her crew and destroying her drive) after traveling more than 7.7 LY without discharging.
2. An online, but not running, drive will also build up a charge, just by being in the proximity of a second online drive which is itself running.
3. An offline drive will not build up a charge.
4. A drive must be completely discharged before it can be taken offline.
5. Switching drives online/offline is risky, see page 67 of the 2300AD Director's Guide for the task descriptions.
    

The flight of the Bayern:

The Bayern has 4 stutterwarp drives ( see page 14), lets call them A, B, C, and D.  Drive A is online, and the other three are kept offline, so they won't build up a charge also ( Rules 2 & 3).

The Bayern is able to cross one gap of ( 7.8 to 15.4 LY) outbound to the Pleiades and one on return by doing the following:

1. Outbound trip uses Drive A for 7.7 LY legs until it encounters a larger gap.

2. They then use Drive A to travel the first 7.7 LY across the gap, and then they jettison it so it won't irradiate the ship ( they cannot switch it offline because of rule #4).

3. They then bring Drive B online, and use it to travel up to 7.7 more light-years ( so you can cross a total gap of 7.7 + 7.7 = 15.4 LY).

4. You now discharge Drive B in you destination solar system, and can now continue using Drive B to reach the Pleiades.

5. When exploration at the Pleiades is finished, then return back along the same route to the gap above.

6. This time they use Drive B to travel the first 7.7LY across the gap, and then throw it away, bring Drive C online and cross the rest of the gap.  They then use Drive C the rest of the way to Earth.

About now you are asking "why have Drive D"?  Well it is a spare drive, in case Drive A, B, or C was damaged.

Also on the return voyage, if the Bayern was forced to take a different route home, by discarding first B, then later C, then they could cross two 15.4 LY gaps ( or discarding both to cross one 23.10 LY gap).  This would definitely cut into their safety margin, as they would then only have just Drive D to see them the rest of the way home safely.
 

An overlooked problem

The problem that the author of Bayern overlooked, is that there are more than just four stutterwarp drives carried by the ship -- some of the carried craft/remotes have their own stutterwarp drives.

The Bayern carries two landers, two spaceplanes, and five EVA pods, but none of them appear to have stutterwarp drives ( based on their descriptions/write-ups on pages 16-18 in Bayern).

Stutterwarps are found on:

• The Reisende-class Interstellar drones can be sent to another system and return, so they must have a stutterwarp drive.  The Bayern carries ten.
• The Suche-class Remote landers may have a stutterwarp to travel insystem to the target planet ( the description is not clear).  The Bayern carries five.
• The Telegrafieren-class Message drones are stutterwarp capable, as they are intended to carry status reports back to Earth ( but the description does not say if each drone has one or two drives -- if only one, then it would not be able to cross gaps of more than 7.7 LY).  The Bayern carries twelve of these.

Just counting the Reisende and Telegrafieren drones, that is 22 more stutterwarp drives, which must be carried with the drives in an offline state.  If any of these 22 drives is online while crossing a gap, they would irradiate the ship, and explode/melt when the total distance traveled reached 7.8 LY or higher.

The safest and easiest way to solve the problem, is to carry them for the whole voyage in the offline state, until you need them.

When you need one, the best ( highest skilled) engineer brings that drone's drive online, and then you immediately launch it ( or at least before the Bayern travels more than 7.7LY without discharging).
 

Conclusion

That basically covers it.  Don't hesitate to ask if you have any questions, or if I wasn't clear enough above.