The relative merits, chain drives versus regular jump drives

[Panpiper]

So I've got a very large ship. Titanesque would describe it. It's meant to be a workhorse, a ship I will be flying a lot. It's a world eating, pirate busting battleship of a battleminer. It will be my go to ship for everything short of all out faction war with titans. In addition to being well armed and well defended, it has to have great thrust to weight and easy jumping, and I am perfectly willing to make the tradeoffs necessary to achieve that. Piling on the thrusters, no problem, but then I am left looking at the half million jump modules I would have to put on this thing to get it's recharge rate to something I could live with and I am left to wonder...

Might I be better off using a chain drive?

The pirates on my server have jump inhibitors. They are not big, but they are plentiful. It will be a royal pain to have to wait minutes for a chaindrive to recharge every time I run into them. Just how vulnerable are chain drives to such things?

The policy on my server is that chain drives are allowed, but if you get into trouble using one, the admins will not help you. What kind of trouble can one get into using a chain drive?

I've looked at the few public postings of chain drives thus far and have no clue really as to how to install and use one. Just how difficult are they for the logic challenged to put in a ship and operate?

Jump drives are quite straight forward. Pile on enough jump modules and you can recharge in ten seconds, half of which is accomplished while jumping. The only downside is that having such a jump drive requires ten percent of your ship be jump modules. (Small ships can be built that can recharge completely 'while' jumping.) How does that compare to the issues of a chain drive?

 

[KiloZulu]

My understanding is that if the enemy has more inhibitor juice than your jump drive, you don't jump at all. If you have more jump drive, then your charge rate is slowed by the amount of inhibitor. Given that, I think you want to have at least one drive that can overpower the best inhibitor among the pirates. Perhaps you don't have that one hooked up to the chain system, but keep it as an emergency back-up.

 

[Jaaskinal]

Chain drives have their pros and their cons, and you have to balance them all to make your decision.

Pros:
•Incredibly space efficient (10% of your ship needed for a decent JD, vs maybe 1k blocks for a really fancy chain drive.)
•Different control methods (You can set up your controls for it to constantly jump, to jump once, to charge constantly while not in use.)
•Easier to armor, because of the size difference.

Now, these sound great, there's these tiny little things that are significantly more efficient and have more options, amazing! Now, let's look at the cons.

Cons:
•Any damage may severely cripple the system beyond repair.
•Jump inhibitors larger than two blocks will be able to completely nullify any chain drive.
•Lag severely increases charge time of chain drives.
•Lag can cause severe control issues with chain drives. (Think of constantly jumping without being able to stop.)
•Engineering one.

Yeesh... sure they're efficient, but they are incredibly fragile... and what's that about engineering? Well, making them is rather difficult. Sure there are some on CC, and using them is good. However, I'm not really putting out another version of mine any time soon, so next time it breaks, it's gone. In addition, there aren't really any other people constantly updating their chain drives on CC, Alterintel has some great ones, but they will break sometime, and I don't know that he'll update them. All of this means you should really build your own to be safe.

If you want, I can make some templates for the types of logic necessary to make a chain drive, and all the different interesting things I can think of doing with it.

 

[nightrune]

Chain drives are usually built with a single module per drive, and if I remember correctly it takes two jump inhibitors per jump module to drain completely. So an off the shelf chain drive is very susceptible. You could simply add quite a few modules to it. Then it becomes a function of your clock speed I believe. Jaaskinal might be able to comment more.
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Chain drives are usually built with a single module per drive, and if I remember correctly it takes two jump inhibitors per jump module to drain completely. So an off the shelf chain drive is very susceptible. You could simply add quite a few modules to it. Then it becomes a function of your clock speed I believe. Jaaskinal might be able to comment more.

Ha, she already did

 

[KiloZulu]

I've never used a chain drive, either. What constitutes a chain drive? Is it any more than a series of one-block jump drives hooked up to logic clocks?

 

[Jaaskinal]

I've never used a chain drive, either. What constitutes a chain drive? Is it any more than a series of one-block jump drives hooked up to logic clocks?

In essence, that's all it is. It's very easy to make it significantly more complex though.

 

[Panpiper]

If you want, I can make some templates for the types of logic necessary to make a chain drive, and all the different interesting things I can think of doing with it.

I strongly suspect that I would not be the only one interested in such templates, and definitely all the 'interesting' things one could do with it.

I would not stand a prayer of creating something like that without said blueprints. Though at this point I am tempted to include the ten percent of mass in jump modules anyway, and throw in the chaindrive as a novelty experiment.

 

[Brokengauge]

I was under the impression that regardless of the number of jump modules connected to the computer in a chain drive, it always charged at the same rate.

I believe my understanding of them is fundamentally flawed lol.

I'm...I'm not a clever man

 

[Edymnion]

In essence, that's all it is. It's very easy to make it significantly more complex though.

I've never actually built one, anyone got an example of just the basic drive setup on community content so that we could see how to build it?

 

[Panpiper]

I'm...I'm not a clever man

Perhaps not, but it takes wisdom to know that.

 

[Edymnion]

Found this:

Some info on installing one from the dock, but no real info on how to build it.

 

[Batavium]

Large regular jump drives for the win!

People that cross my path with a chain drive usualy don't fair so well.

Large jump drive inhibitors for a double win! Pew pew.

To scout around i tend to use a perma jumper. They are way more reliable. Some can even radar jam and cloak at the same time. And if you need to gogogo then you can. No need to wait until that chain drive loads up again.

 

[Edymnion]

Oh I always have a real jump drive installed.

I'm thinking about adding a small drive like this not for chain driving but as an auto-charging emergency drive in case I fall out of warp on a star.

 

[Scypio]

In essence, that's all it is. It's very easy to make it significantly more complex though.

Do not forget to say that there is enough computers to perma jump with it. There can be only one jump at a time so every others will wait for the current jump to finish and start the next one and so on.

 

[Shaker]

Jump drive problems ive encountered as an admin:

●Auto jumping, ship was blueprinted in, proceeded to jump without a pilot...

●Lag inducing, the charging pulse was pulsing faster than the normal tick, so much so that it causes considerable lag.

●Almost server crash, like the above but ticked so hard that it disconnected the player.

●Ship lost, disconnected while multi jumping

●Damage drive, in combat and took a hit straight into the drive and couldnt turn it off.

Hopefully you can figure out it out without using shootout rails or spinning cores, it seems the safer option

 

[Jaaskinal]

Here's a thing
Chaindrive explanations.

 

[Sachys]

I've never actually built one, anyone got an example of just the basic drive setup on community content so that we could see how to build it?

OR / NOT / DELAY repeat clock.

Activation block linked to NOT (for manual on / off of clock).

NOT linked to JUMP computers (each with a single block)

DELAY linked to some lights, so you know its working.

INNER SHIP REMOTE connected to NOT signal for on / off on weapons bar (name it!!!).

That should do you (though I may have fubar'd a little - good prices on wine right near me tonight! :D).

Edit: Keep the first jump drive comp (or a few) visible to SHIFT+V should all go bollocks and you get stuck in a jump loop - or keep the NOT signal between flashing lights so its obvious to delete.

 

[kingreol]

for now with chain drives being a thing. when i install a normal jump drive, its Purely for combat situations running into jump inhibitors. not for casually jumping and trying to get its charge fast enough to tolerate..so i utilize both in most of my ships. eventually we will be left Without the chaindrive. and i sure hope that day is when jumping gets revamped completely.
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Here's a thing
Chaindrive explanations.

I imagine like you sat there and made this is 5 minutes. Like you have reached Logic lvl 5 where you dont even think about it anymore

 

[alterintel]

Here is a link to a video I did that goes into a bit of detail of how chain drive works and how to build one
I hope it helps:

This is a more basic video on a single rail clock:

Spoiler: Single Rail Clock