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CT Only: 2nd Generation Type-S

Control consoles, workstsions, air locks, grav plates, acceleration compensators, life support, avionics, sensors, comms, heat sinks - 20t all in for 100-1000t starships.
 
Control consoles, workstsions, air locks, grav plates, acceleration compensators, life support, avionics, sensors, comms, heat sinks - 20t all in for 100-1000t starships.

Life support should be per person, which is best represented as part of stateroom tonnage.

Control consoles/workstations should be per crewman, not per ton.

Airlocks will be smaller in size and fewer in number on smaller ships (a100 ton ship could probably make do with a single two-man airlock, for example).

I would consider hear sinks to be part of drive tonnage.

That doesn't leave much left for 20 tons.
 
Unspecified overhead like free airlocks and ship lockers can be subsumed under bridge allocation, especially at two percent of volume.

Life support is basically air and water purification; if it requires an engineering qualification, it may include artificial gravity and inertial compensators.
 
I find my self agreeing with your broad sentiment, but disagreeing with your poo pooing of the idea. Within the LBB2/5 design system there is only the bridge tonnage that is only loosely defined and could thus accomidate the systems I mentioned.
Life support should be per person, which is best represented as part of stateroom tonnage.
Except it isn't. Staterooms can be multi-occupancy, there are common areas, corridors and shared spaces right across the ship. Life support consumables are per stateroom

Control consoles/workstations should be per crewman, not per ton.[/quote}Except once again they are not so derived.

Airlocks will be smaller in size and fewer in number on smaller ships (a100 ton ship could probably make do with a single two-man airlock, for example).
Except they are not, once again they are not included in the design sequence and so are left to the generic bridge allocation handwave.

I would consider hear sinks to be part of drive tonnage.
Except they are not, drive tonnage is pretty specifically allocated.

That doesn't leave much left for 20 tons.
In a design system such as you propose where every one of these components are individually allocated - such as MT, TNE - then the methods you have mentioned make sense. For LBB2/5 I will stick with just subsuming the lot into the bridge tonnage.
 
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Having the life support as part of the bridge doesn't really work. A 100 Dt ship with 1 stateroom and a 1000 Dt ship with 100 staterooms have the exact same 20 Dt bridge, but vastly different life support requirements.

Equipment that is proportional to the number of people aboard have to be part of the stateroom tonnage.
 
Equipment that is proportional to the number of people aboard have to be part of the stateroom tonnage.

Exactly.

Note how most canon deck plans depict a cabin as three tons (typically a 2x3 1.5m grid) but call for four tons per cabin. That "missing ton" gets devoted to LS, corridors, and galley space.

Ditto for the bridge, there's a lot more "stuff" in that 20 tons for the Type-S (and even the X-Boat Tender) that goes along with that small few-tons worth of helm area.
 
Having the life support as part of the bridge doesn't really work. A 100 Dt ship with 1 stateroom and a 1000 Dt ship with 100 staterooms have the exact same 20 Dt bridge, but vastly different life support requirements.

Equipment that is proportional to the number of people aboard have to be part of the stateroom tonnage.
Depends what you mean by life support.

If people are meant to be able to move anywhere on the ship in shirtsleeves or less then the entire enclosed hull need the environmental controls, gravity, etc.
If they are confined to only the control centre and staterooms then you have a case.

Don't forget that those 100 staterooms have a considerable fortnightly cost associated with them.
 
Exactly.

Note how most canon deck plans depict a cabin as three tons (typically a 2x3 1.5m grid) but call for four tons per cabin. That "missing ton" gets devoted to LS, corridors, and galley space.
I agree that it is used for corridors and common space, but where is the life support, environmental controls, gravity regulation for the whole enclosed hull? Only the bridge tonnage covers it.

Ditto for the bridge, there's a lot more "stuff" in that 20 tons for the Type-S (and even the X-Boat Tender) that goes along with that small few-tons worth of helm area.
Avionics, comms, grav plates...
 
Just to add to the confusion, A DT is a 1x2 area on a deck plan. OK that is also 2 squares high, 10'. Those are high ceilings for a space ship. I always drop the ceiling, or raise the floor so the deck is 7 to 8 feet high. The 2 to 3 feet of space I figure is were a lot of the life support ect. goes.
 
Just to add to the confusion, A DT is a 1x2 area on a deck plan. OK that is also 2 squares high, 10'. Those are high ceilings for a space ship. I always drop the ceiling, or raise the floor so the deck is 7 to 8 feet high. The 2 to 3 feet of space I figure is were a lot of the life support ect. goes.

It's also a good place for the machinery for the magic gravity floor plates.
 
Just to add to the confusion, A DT is a 1x2 area on a deck plan. OK that is also 2 squares high, 10'. Those are high ceilings for a space ship. I always drop the ceiling, or raise the floor so the deck is 7 to 8 feet high. The 2 to 3 feet of space I figure is were a lot of the life support ect. goes.

In the crew areas, yes...in areas like the engine room or cargo hold, you'll need that higher ceiling.
 
Just to add to the confusion, A DT is a 1x2 area on a deck plan. OK that is also 2 squares high, 10'. Those are high ceilings for a space ship. I always drop the ceiling, or raise the floor so the deck is 7 to 8 feet high. The 2 to 3 feet of space I figure is were a lot of the life support ect. goes.

That is entirely canonical from HG'79 and S7.

Illustration from S7 Traders and Gunboats:
mGc4ZxR.png
 
If people are meant to be able to move anywhere on the ship in shirtsleeves or less then the entire enclosed hull need the environmental controls, gravity, etc.
Spacecraft are completely capable of having all of that, for free, without having a bridge, at least if they are less than 100 Dt.


Don't forget that those 100 staterooms have a considerable fortnightly cost associated with them.
Yes, life support costs are based entirely on "stateroom" tonnage, with no fixed cost for the "bridge". Hence life support is a function of the "stateroom" tonnage.


The Bridge is defined as (LBB2, p13):
A. The Bridge: All ships must allocate 2% of their tonnage (minimum 20 tons) to basic controls, communications equipment, avionics, scanners, detectors, sensors, and other equipment for proper operation of the ship.
These are C3I functions, that are basically the same for a 100 Dt ship and a 1000 Dt ship, unlike size or people proportional functions such as life support, internal gravity, or free airlocks.

Note that sensors and communicators with a range of hundreds of thousands of km need to use a lot of power and large antennae, and hence are anything but small or negligible.

The "bridge" is a lot more than just a room with a few workstations, just as "staterooms" are a lot more than just bedrooms.
 
My take is that (at least for ships 100Td+) internal shirtsleeve-conditions access is included with all engineering and electronics displacement allocations, though access passages are sized to accommodate personnel in vacc suits. For example, the 10Td Size A Jump Drive isn't a solid 135m^3 block of machinery, the 10Td includes space for maintenance access. And a computer includes at the very least the floor space to stand in front of a terminal workstation, if not a full console with seating.

Small craft may require maintenance or repairs to be performed from outside through maintenance hatches.
 
Spacecraft are completely capable of having all of that, for free, without having a bridge, at least if they are less than 100 Dt.

Most Small Craft do that without Staterooms, as well...

The simple plug and play of Classic can't be hard-coded for the things it doesn't mention. GDW refused to do so, and we should recognize that.
 
Most Small Craft do that without Staterooms, as well...

The simple plug and play of Classic can't be hard-coded for the things it doesn't mention. GDW refused to do so, and we should recognize that.

The best example of this is the deck plans rule (LBB2 '81, p. 21):
"Finally, a leeway of plus or minus 10% to 20% should be allowed. If the final deck plans com within 20% of the ship's specifications, they should be allowed."

This doesn't mean that just because your Free Trader deckplans look better with the cargo hold taking up 200 1.5m squares (should be 164 for 82Td cargo) that you get to cram another 18 tons of cargo into it!
 
A. The Bridge: All ships must allocate 2% of their tonnage (minimum 20 tons) to basic controls, communications equipment, avionics, scanners, detectors, sensors, and other equipment for proper operation of the ship.
Thank you for providing the quote to prove my point.
'other equipment for proper operation of the ship' with the exception of the life support that is included in stateroom tonnage all other life support, gravitics etc are only accountable within 'bridge'
 
Most Small Craft do that without Staterooms, as well...

The simple plug and play of Classic can't be hard-coded for the things it doesn't mention. GDW refused to do so, and we should recognize that.

Agreed, but we all make assumptions, such as that small craft actually provide a shirt-sleeve environment with artificial gravity at all.

I assume small craft provide a few hours of canned air, unless staterooms or cabins are included, in which case long term life support is provided, but I would not insist that the rules specify that. LBB2 certainly says nothing of the sort.


Artificial gravity (including inertial compensators) are presumably provided in the entire ship, not just living quarters, whether we have a bridge or not, so I assume it is part of the Hull system, just as internal bulkheads and the decks themselves.
 
A. The Bridge: All ships must allocate 2% of their tonnage (minimum 20 tons) to basic controls, communications equipment, avionics, scanners, detectors, sensors, and other equipment for proper operation of the ship.
Thank you for providing the quote to prove my point.
'other equipment for proper operation of the ship' with the exception of the life support that is included in stateroom tonnage all other life support, gravitics etc are only accountable within 'bridge'
Eh, that proves nothing of the sort, any more than it proves that all ships include a sextant.

Note that artificial gravity is not needed to operate the ship, nor is it mentioned in LBB2 at all.

LBB5 and S7 says most ships have artificial gravity, so by implication some don't. I can't see that anything that says that small craft have artificial gravity, even if we all assume so... The requirement for acceleration couches to carry people in small craft actually speaks against it.


Should I take it that you are saying that small craft without a bridge don't have artificial gravity?
 
Perhaps a small craft built with a small craft bridge has artificial gravity and acceleration compensation, while a small craft with no bridge doesn't. I hadn't considered that before but it makes sense of sorts.

Oh, and of course all ships contain a sextant, it gives the navigator something to do other than carry the generate cassette or the jump cassette to the computer...
 
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