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[Chiefwaffles]

FULL DISCLOSURE: This is another fairly soft standard space opera genre thing. If you're looking for unique WH40k or Dune or whatever-like settings, they're not present here. See my many other space-related forum games if you want to know what it's like.
Oh, and not all easily-accessible information will be automatically given to the character. I may mention that there's a map nearby, or heavily hint there's something that can be helpful nearby and that would be easily accessed with little consequence, but I'm not going to present the information that could be gained from it to you without an action from people to do so.

Anyhow.
Suggestion game. In space. The genre would best be described as "chief's typical space opera setting."

"Hyperjump complete."
Hah.
Yup.
You could definitely say that, you think to yourself as you look again in rather stunned confusion at your navscreen. You remember something some unnamed person explained back at the academy. Hyperjumps do not mix well with Federation reactor meltdown bursts.

Oh well.
You start to actually focus your attention on the navscreen. Where it should be giving you your precise location, it's instead displaying a large red "ERROR" notification that seems to be slowly flashing in and out on top of a black screen.

You hit a combination of physical buttons in the cockpit to force the navscreen to restart in debug mode.

United Federation Pathfinder System
B129.5

Starting up core system processes... Done.
Checking for hardware dependencies... Done.
Performing routine hardware diagnostic... Done.
Performing routine software diagnostic... Done.
All systems are functional.


Determining current location.
Checking for galactic index updates... Could not locate update source. Aborting.
Using current downloaded galactic index.

Checking for local navigational drone... Error.
Could not locate local navigational drone. Aborting.

Checking origin... Done.
Origin found. Valid location.
Checking hyperjump routes... ERROR.
Unable to determine hyperjump route.

Could not determine current location.
Aborting.

Huh. Stellar Navigation is not going to be of any help until you figure out your location through some other source. All you know about where this place is in the galaxy is that the intended jump was essentially pointed towards the various Occupier systems. If you're remembering how this kind of thing works, then that means you were probably catapulted much deeper into enemy lines than you intended.

You briefly look at the summary presented by the systems overview screen, where it faintly displays a list of the important systems located in the assault craft.
Hyperdrive is offline and extremely damaged.
Engines are badly damaged and are minimum capacity.
Life support is luckily completely functional.
Sensors are working at around of 60% of max capacity and took some damage, but are still operational.
Hull is badly damaged.
Shields are completely offline after extreme damage.
Weapons are online, luckily.

There is one very big problem though. The reactor isn't working and the capacitor, while fully operational, won't hold out for long. Power's being drawn from the capacitor by Life Support, Sensors, Engines, and Weapons. Something has to change fast or the ship is going to completely run out of power. And no power means no life support or additional thrust.


You've got to do something fast. Power is just one of the many issues here. Even if you fix it, you know you're going to have to deal with the fact that you are stranded among the planets and stars of the enemy of your people.

[crazyabe]

First Thoughts:
Landing on the nearest planet capable of supporting life would be a good first choice, if our ship is Landing Capable and not likely to explode.
Attempting to get power working is a good idea if option 1 is imposible.
If we can't fix anything we can always try going after unarmed Ships and loot the parts we need.

[Dustan Hache]

Shut off weapons and engines for now, keep sensors at minimal power, and start work on that reactor before it has a meltdown or something.

[NRDL]

Shut off weapons and engines for now, keep sensors at minimal power, and start work on that reactor before it has a meltdown or something.

+1

[ShadowHammer]

Shut off weapons and engines for now, keep sensors at minimal power, and start work on that reactor before it has a meltdown or something.

+1

+1

[VoidSlayer]

Check backup power generators, if we are in a system with a star we might be able to coast on solar power to keep life support up if we get closer.

Do a full sensors sweep before turning them down so we know what we are working with.

[Dustan Hache]

Check backup power generators, if we are in a system with a star we might be able to coast on solar power to keep life support up if we get closer.

Do a full sensors sweep before turning them down so we know what we are working with.

we don't have backup generators. we have a capacitor, which is essentially a built-in car battery for emergencies. we can't solar power ourselves, and we have minimal thruster function anyway.

[Chiefwaffles]

I take actions as follows in the spoiler. Nothing major - just standard support-based stuff.

Spoiler: Action Stuff (click to show/hide)

1.) If the action has any support from others (i.e. +1s) and is not controversial (i.e. -1s), it's taken.
2.) If the action has any support from others but is controversial, it's only taken if the support is greater than the dissent. Depending on how major the action is, I may wait for a bigger advantage for the action until I take it.
3.) If the action has no support other than the person suggesting it, but also no dissent, then it depends on the severity and consequences of the action.
3a.) If the action has any sort of potential consequences, then I'll likely just address it - explain any related information that the character may know, etc.
3b.) If the action doesn't have any sort of potential consequences (e.g. "Look at ___", etc.), then it's taken regardless.
4.) If the action is the only action given and not completely insane, then it's taken.

Backup generators.
Sure would be nice if you had those. Unfortunately the LAC-310 fighter doesn't have any backup generators. It's not really meant for this kind of use. You're pretty sure that the idea was that the ship could easily return to its origin if the reactor ceased function in any case.

Solar power is a no-go as well. As you previously concluded, it's really not in the purview of the LAC-310's goal. This ship is designed for fairly short operations near planetary bodies or in-atmosphere. Not for expeditions or long-term travel.


You decide that the best course of action is to probably conserve power. To at least lower your chances of suffocation. But before you do that, you take a look at the sensors. You look at the sensor screen. You switch it to log mode and activate it for an area sweep. After a couple of seconds, entries start to appear on the terminal.

LOCAL AREA SWEEP
Notable Objects
- Space Debris [Large - Likely Station; No FoF signal; No life signs]
- Large Hyperjump signature detected at current location. Age: 1 minute.

Planetary Bodies
- Star [Giant]
- - Barren Planet [Hostile Atmosphere - Low oxygen levels]
- - - Moon [No Atmosphere]
- - Gas Giant [??? Composition]
- - Barren Planet [Hostile Atmosphere - Hostile gases]

Really, you're lucky they even included this level of sensors in the ship. A smaller fighter would just have basic proximity tracking in it.

"WARNING: CAPACITOR CHARGE AT: 60%"
Looks like that sweep took some of the juice left in the battery. Though chances are most of the depletion is from the ship running the systems before you came to. Enough is enough, and you quickly toggle the systems. Engines and Weapons are toggled offline, with Sensors set to the minimum possible range.
It looks like it should last a while. Definitely not long enough for you to repair the hyperdrive and reactor even if you had all required materials and tools. But a while.


You open the systems diagnostic menu and navigate to the Reactor. It's not pretty.

REACTOR STATUS
- Reaction chamber containment breach.
- Fuel cell connection ruptured.
- Power Regulator missing.
- Internal Circuitry heavily damaged.

What the computer is saying is that the reactor's more or less permanently fried in this situation. Sure, with actual tools and a drydock and materials, but there's no way in hell you could jury rig the reactor back to full capacity with scavenged materials. Unless you find a dry dock at some point, you're going to be needing to look elsewhere for power. At least the automated safeties worked and shut down the reactor before the full containment breach occurred.

If you were to repair the reactor, you'd be best off entirely replacing the thing. As it happens, they don't cover Advanced Fusion Reactor Circuitry 101 in the Pilot's Academy. Though you could potentially get lucky and get the reactor partially working if you completely replaced the Internal Circuitry, the Fuel Loader, the Power Regulator, and got some kind of material to repair the chamber.
But that's almost impossible. You'd have better luck with literally any other method of acquiring power generation for the ship.

[VoidSlayer]

Moving to the space debris station seems like the best bet, quick burn to start moving then silent low power running until we drift there, at least to find a working power source we can jury rig into the ship.

We might want to move either way because if we can detect the hyper drive signal so can they.  Unless we want to try and surrender as a prisoner.

Review what we were briefed about this system, our mission and the enemy.

[Chiefwaffles]

Well, you have no idea where you are. The navigation system would help here, if it was working, that is.

But glaring menacingly at the navscreen doesn't seem to help, and you start trying to remember any relevant pieces of information. The enemy is gradually winning the war, but not particularly fast. You were participating in the battle with the current ship to fend off hostile enemy bombers from your carrier. A couple minutes later, the order was given to independently retreat and regroup later, and the rest is pretty hazy.
Based on what little of it you can remember and what you've seen since you woke up, it's almost certainly from the primary reactor on a nearby federation ship going critical just as you started the hyperjump.

Considering that you haven't detected any Occupier patrols yet hopefully mean that this system is mostly uninhabited. But it's hard to be sure without fully operational sensors. For all you know they could be tracking you from outside your own tracking range.

[TheBiggerFish]

Can we try to fix the navigation system?

[Dustan Hache]

What are our other options for power, with the reactor in it's current state?

[_DivideByZero_]

Do stations run on the same type of reactor as we do?

We could try to find parts there to fix the reactor.

Also quick question about the barren planet: Low oxygen or No oxygen? Because low oxygen implies life and a biosphere. Could be moderately helpful.

[Chiefwaffles]

Well. Fixing the navigation system isn't really something you think you can do.
Ships more oriented towards actual travel and a non-extremely short deployment time such as every ship that's bigger than this one would probably have much more advanced navigation systems based around gathering data and extrapolating the location.
But yours is to the advanced systems as an etch-a-sketch is to a computer.

This nav system gains your location via one of two ways. Method number one is the navdata downloading. It looks for a nearby source of navigational data and downloads everything it needs, including the current location in the galaxy, from that source. Method number 2 is tracking your route from the location where navdata was last downloaded.
It's not particularly complex.


Now, power...
Not great either.
You don't have much engineering experience, so it's not like you're going to be able to make a new reactor from existing parts. You'd need a lot of new complex parts (the ones you thought of earlier) to repair the reactor. But really, that's unlikely. Finding another power source intact to some degree and taping it onto your ship could theoretically work. And the capacitor can be charged externally if you find a federation hangar.

You have no idea what the maybe-station could actually be. If it's a federation station, the power source could be one of many things based on the station. You know of a couple common power sources for stations. Some older stations have simple fission reactors, and some smaller ones work with solar panel. There's fusion power, and there's this newfangled "Pearl" reactor thing.
Fusion power is the most common type of power source. You think. Though there are definitely two types. A larger more advanced and efficient process found on larger ships and most stations, and the more miniaturized fuel-cell based kind of reactor present in your ship. The former has the biggest chance to be on any given station. And the pearl power generation method has only been put in much newer (large) ships and stations, after finished your technical training.

So yeah. The answer to the question you posed in your mind would probably be a "No." But it's possible.


And you look at your sensor log again. Specifically at the barren planet.
Seems to say "Low oxygen." Probably means low oxygen levels.

But you expand the entry and double check the actual levels. It's really best to say "trace amounts of oxygen" in this case, really. As far as you know, this planet probably lives up to its classification.

[Dustan Hache]

In other words, we have no options. We can't replace the parts, we can't navigate to the place that has them, and there are no alternative power souces.
Welp, time to give up unless we can find the needed parts or a way to navigate without the navigations systems.

(but seriously chiefwaffles, give us something to work with.)