The Best Ship For Traveling Around The Inner Sphere – We Breakdown The Battletech JumpShip
Need to haul your ‘mechs across the Inner Sphere? Then you’ll need to rely on the services of the one ship no one shoots: the JumpShip.
In the world of BattleTech, JumpShips are the key to interstellar travel. They are one of the only ways that you can get between the many planets of the Inner Sphere at any kind of speed. And even then, sometimes you might not end up where you want to go (though that happens rarely).
And during the time of the Succession Wars leading up to the arrival of the Clans, JumpShips were considered LosTech. That is to say, the secret to their manufacture was lost, for the most part, and they could only be maintained, not built anew. This made them off limits. But also a key point of the Inner Sphere.
Battletech’s JumpShip: Driven To Success – Design and Capabilities
At the heart of each JumpShip in the Battletech universe, is a delicate drive capable of faster-than-light travel. Making FTL jumps is the name of the game with these ships. And everything about their design is based around the structure of the specialized Kearny-Fuchida (K-F) drive.
Each JumpShip’s K-F drive was housed within the length of a JumpShip’s fuselage. Accompanying the drive was a Jump Sail, a massive solar sail capable of recharging the K-F drive with energy, making up most of the mass of the ship. So bulky are these engines that JumpShips rarely carry anything else. They don’t have the room.
On a JumpShip you might find crew quarters, a bridge; hydroponics facilities, grav decks for the crew, or even extra cargo space or hangars. And most came with Hardpoints fitted with K-F Field extenders that make the JumpShip’s jump field extend to the many DropShips that would attach to the ship.
A JumpShip could range up to 500,000 tons for civilian craft, which left ample docking hardpoints for DropShips to attach to. JumpShips were primarily carriers, who didn’t even come equipped with thrusters or transit drives much of the time. Instead the JumpShip would jump from jump point to jump point (away from any planetary gravity fields) and wait for people to come to them.
Nobody Attacks a JumpShip
But that is because JumpShips rarely – and we do mean rarely – carried weaponry. Most were completely unarmed, while a small number carried weaponry on the scale of point defense cannons at best. But because they were unarmed, they were spared much of the destruction of the Succession wars.
It helps that JumpShips are one of the key technologies of the era. During the First Succession War, JumpShips and their manufacture were nearly wiped out. And so the Great Houses of the Inner Sphere decided, unilaterally, to move away from the concept of total warfare. Losing the ability to make JumpShips would mean no more interstellar society, and more importantly, no more interstellar warfare.
Like HyperPulse Generators, JumpShips are considered off limits by all but the most desperate or ruthless of people. To destroy one is to invite the wrath of any House.
And so goes Inner Sphere warfare, even to this day. Many a daring escape has been made as DropShips race to the safety of a JumpShip, taking shelter alongside their enemies as they make the jump through hyperspace. But that’s life on a JumpShip for you!
