You'd need quite a lot of JDs and power generation for any meaningful fleet movement.
True it can still be built into a stick. There also is no reason each ship couldn't have built in power transfer they just shut off when not connected.
Actually there is only a requirement for 1 jump module and 1 computer it just takes longer to charge. Power is 10000+ 50xnumber of modules.
https://starmadepedia.net/wiki/Jump_Drive_Computer
You could build a stick that is 1Km long and 3 blocks wide. Then you are talking ignoring the inner core of it. 8*1000*50+10000 as power requirement. So then you are talking 410,000 power which is small. When you consider how many ships you could have applying power. You could still have a stick if you build it with a diameter of 5.
Now if you want a way to visualize this think of a shaft 1Km that is 5x5 the entire length. every 5 spaces is a rail under it a single At one end is a core with a jump computer and inner ship connection and an activation module the activation module is connect to all the rails.
now make a cube ship 5x5x5 on the bottom a rail docker on the right, left and top face 1 rail in the center. you put and activator at the bottom rail docker connected to an inverter connected to the left and right rails. What this will do is when the it gets undocked all ships attached to it will also undock.
In side you have 1 power transfer beam aimed down with a compute. so far we used 4 out of the 27 internal blocks.
Just the 4000 directly connected to the stick would provide 960,000 power with those 1 beam per second. Each delivering 240 a tick.
You could stack 200 of these small ships in a single line from end to end on that stick. Then you could layer them
Now fill the stick up 1 layer deep that is 8 *200 = 1600 small craft. 3x3-1=8
2 layers would be 24*200 ; 5x5-1=24
3 layers would be 48*200 ; 7x7-1=48
4 layers would be 80*200 ; 9x9-1=80
You could do other shapes sizes and power levels they don't need to be cubes by any means.
Went ahead and built the guts of the drone I am talking about. It automatically turns power transfer on when docked and turns it off when undocked. 1850 power generation a second for the drone gives nearly an unlimited firing time add 2 power blocks and it will be. Not sure I would count on them lasting that long.
But imagine a thousand of these things attacking. or 16,000 of them in a single stick ship that is layered 4 deep. If you are wondering how many blocks the entire ship would be at a 1 km length. 5x5x1000 for the core 125x16000 for the drones. Total blocks would be 2,025,000 blocks. It would look like a 45x45x1000 stick. Hence the name stick ship.
Drone features.
(2) 5 length Canon x Canon.
Bobbi AI
4 thrusters
Auto transfer power on dock shuts off one undock.
Undocks drones attached to it on undock as well. So undock one undocks many.
You can stack drones on top left and right.
I left the armor off you put what you prefer on it.
