Best Ship Design Rules?

[Orion Shipyards]

Wow... Thank you all so much. For a first real interaction with the forum, you sure have shown yourself as a great community. I hope to spend more time here in the future.

Is FF&S2... When I look for that at, say, Drivethrough, it looks like the same cover as the one I have, but the wiki says the one I have is first edition... Is that the MMT version of FF&S?

I do like the good ol' CT rules in HIgh Guard, and see the points made about them having time for customization, but part of me thinks "If I have to do all that much customization, why not just create my own system from the ground up?" -- I don't have -that- much free time, and, really, there's this sense I can't quite identify about wanting there to be an extant system I only have to modify a little ('cause a campaign universe as old as mine (and probably yours!) has plenty of house blend ship rules, but I still don't wanna start from scratch)

Flykiller - I mostly do the designs, but, when I have the time, I also do technical illustrations, 3D models/renderings, and some deck plans.

Mike Wightman - GURPS Traveller... I cried real tears when I saw the announcement on their website with the old dialog, and the new ending, "Hang in there Beowulf. Help is on the way." (hell, I got chills typing that.) I'd loved GURPS as a master system (most of my game mechanics are still based on it) and this was just too good to be true. I was a little... Nonplussed when I saw everything was in imperial units and the displacement of a ton of Lhyd was rounded off. >.>;; Due to home renovations, all my old gaming books are in boxes right now, but I'm going to look for GT:ISW, and if I don't have it, buy it, based on your recommendations (and my long-standing love for GURPS), though.

I love Steampunk, but I have an unhealthy obsession with Dieselpunk, and fear it may seek a restraining order. Limited time means most of what I've done about either is Google art that's labeled as being in those genres, but I'm excited about it and seeking more free time.

And, finally -

I really, really enjoy ship design as a hobby unto itself. I use it to showcase Traveller...

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One thing to note is that T5 steps back into the Book 2 mold: ship design is primarily for adventures. Ships larger than 2400 tons are only implicitly supported. That said, my program supports ships up to 2.6 million tons.

Ah... You're my kind of people.

I'm worried about the size issues, but only a little, and I assume that can always be scaled up by GM customization, because some few of the ships I design are just ridiculously large. It's largely a naval campaign. Super Dreadnaughts make frequent appearances.

For instance, Orion builds a transport called the Neptune class - it was originally a fleet fuel tender, but got re-purposed as a terraforming ship as well, literally just for dumping millions of gallons of liquid water onto a planet. I need to get onto an old computer for the drawings and spreadsheet, but it had a spine that was essentially a jump tender, and then snap-on tanks with baffles that held a bajillion gallons / cubes of hydrogen or water each. Each tank had engines and M-drives on it, and then there were launch-sized piloting modules that would snap into each tank, and fly it as an individual tender / flying bambi-bucket.

Part of the original idea was just to see exactly how outrageously large a ship I could design that would still have some sense of a justifiable mission. On the original design table, that mission was as a jump tender to get naval ships across the Great Rift.

Anyway... Thank you. I emailed you.

 

[cuTTer]

Book 2.

It works.

 

[robject]

Part of the original idea was just to see exactly how outrageously large a ship I could design that would still have some sense of a justifiable mission.

That's an interesting theoretical Traveller exercise.

You can design a 50 billion ton jump-capable planetoid... but I define "starship" as requiring a rather specific mission, a rather mission-focused population (rather than a settlement-style population) and distinct from things which require "planetary assault tactics" to attack, so beyond a certain point, it's no longer really a "starship".

At least a million tons, as a tender, of course.

Is two million tons justifiable? An even bigger tender?

Three million? Five?

There is a ceiling for Traveller. I'm not sure what it is.

 

[Spartan159]

That's an interesting theoretical Traveller exercise.

You can design a 50 billion ton jump-capable planetoid... but I define "starship" as requiring a rather specific mission, a rather mission-focused population (rather than a settlement-style population) and distinct from things which require "planetary assault tactics" to attack, so beyond a certain point, it's no longer really a "starship".

At least a million tons, as a tender, of course.

Is two million tons justifiable? An even bigger tender?

Three million? Five?

There is a ceiling for Traveller. I'm not sure what it is.

Challenge accepted. Calculate the dTonnage for a size 10 planet then make a Tender that can carry 8 to 10 of them

 

[atpollard]

Challenge accepted. Calculate the dTonnage for a size 10 planet then make a Tender that can carry 8 to 10 of them

If I just make the core of a Gas Giant Jump Capable, then the fleet can refuel itself.

 

[GypsyComet]

Is FF&S2... When I look for that at, say, Drivethrough, it looks like the same cover as the one I have, but the wiki says the one I have is first edition... Is that the MMT version of FF&S?

Black cover is the T4/MMT version. I have no idea if the current PDF is improved, but it was rushed to print back in the day so the actual book is a mess.

The cover with the GDW imprint and full art is from TNE. "Dense" is the best word to describe it, but it does work. It does, however, operate on different tech assumptions: fusion power is VERY fuel efficient, but the maneuver drives suck up reaction mass at an alarming rate. Turrets are bigger by default, and there are no bay mounts as such.

MegaTraveller, TNE, T4/MMT, and T5 do not assume a unified "Bridge" black box, but instead build ship's controls and infrastructure in detail. You can get away with paper for TNE, T4 and T5, but get a spreadsheet for MT; the control panels process in MT is mildly recursive.

Despite the differences, there are a lot of components that can be borrowed across editions. TNE openly accepts the idea that externally docked subcraft are different than those in internal slips, and provides details for both. T4 boils those down a bit, but retains the concepts. T4 and T20 approach drives in a creatively liberating way, and breaks down the Bridge black box a little without requiring more work. T5 introduces refueling mechanisms beyond simple scoops. Mongoose v1 scattershot new and occasionally useful ship components over much of the line, which hopefully v2 will unite.

 

[Vargas]

The cover with the GDW imprint and full art is from TNE. "Dense" is the best word to describe it . . .

Degenerate matter is dense, TNE FF&S is worse than that.

 

[mike wightman]

The biggest ship I have designed is a GSV Magnificent Obsession for my Traveller Culture campaign - it's 100km long and has a total displacement of 1.75x10^13 dtn

 

[whartung]

Degenerate matter is dense, TNE FF&S is worse than that.

Nonsense.

T4's FF&S2 is at a glance undecipherable because of their printing problems (I don't know if the downloaded versions fixed, I fear they haven't).

There is a lot of material in FF&S.

MOST of it has nothing directly to do with ship design. Unless you want a pintle mounted Autocannon near the air lock (and, I mean, who doesn't...).

The only place FF&S bogs down is creating the larger weapons, notably spinals.

If you want "bay" weapons, design a meson, or PA that consume 50 or 100 tons. Do that once and cut and paste away in future designs.

In the back, there's a stock list of Sandcaster, Missile and Laser turrets that fit the standard socket.

Most everything else is picking off of a list, and in fact, picking off a very short list. Most will use the best gear available given the TL of the design, so find your TL, and cross reference.

Brilliant Lances has a tech booklet which basically just contains the ship design rules, so it condenses it a bit. But the rules are effectively the same.

Once you have some standard weapons designed, or built a couple of spinals, you'll get the hang of it and the rest flows much like High Guard. Bolt on stuff until you run out of volume or surface area.

Just takes some practice. It looks worse than it is.

 

[David Johansen]

I've done a couple ships in T5. I've Spent more time on weapons, armor, and vehicles. Ship design is basically book II with lots of additional bells and whistles. It's not always clearly presented and there's lots of crazy stuff for designing custom hulls and drives and such. But it does work okay. I'm not so thrilled with the hit location charts on the ship sheets. They seem a bit skewed by the curve. I love the concept but I need to play some starship combats out. As a result I've gotten back to painting my old RAFM ships.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

How about MgT2 High Guard? Somewhat like CT High Guard but with more bells and whistles.

Thankfully absolutely no drive tables, but simple drive formulas.

 

[robject]

If I just make the core of a Gas Giant Jump Capable, then the fleet can refuel itself.

By reducing the argument a bit, I think you're helping make my point. We could also gravitically levitate a gigantic jump drive around the star and we'll jump the whole damn system.

My point is that "ship" doesn't do it justice. It's a star system, not a ship - and you don't interact with it the way you'd interact with a million-ton tender.


I'll restate it. A planet with a jump drive (and we know they existed) is not a starship. It's a planet that can jump. The definition we use to differentiate spaceships from starships doesn't work with planets, solar systems, or Loeskalth Planetoid Ships. Or bases, for that matter!

After a certain point, in other words, I think "base" or "world" are better terms to describe megascale-constructs-with-or-without-jump-drives, according to meaningful definitions in Traveller. Note that asteroid mainworlds are treated like worlds (and not bases) for a reason -- they're more like a world than anything else. Presumably, they are larger than bases, and so I assume there is a size hierarchy:

Small Craft (<100t)
Ship (100t to millions of tons?)
Base (overlaps with ships, but can range into the billions of tons)
World (100 billion tons and up?) - depends on what the volume of planetoid mainworlds can be... Ceres is 421 million cubic kilometers... Perhaps it becomes a "world" when you cease to measure it by volume and instead just resort to mass...

This goes for how we stage assaults, as well. Assaulting a starship involves taking out its power plant and/or key defenses and weapons and then docking for a boarding action. Those terms don't work very well when you're talking planetary scale: we tend to say planetary assault and cannot consider taking out its power plant as if there's a single point of failure.

So after a certain point -- and I think that point is somehow related to population and volume -- the structure is a world, or a base, but no longer usefully considered a ship, even if it's a construct and even if it has a jump drive.

 

[aramis]

If we set "World" at size 1 minimal, 1600km diameter (roughly the self-rounding estimate...

((4/3)(Pi)(R^2))/14... 2144660584850632000 Td (roughly) ... 2.145e18 Td. 2.14 QUINTILLION tons (US meaning) 2.14 ExaTd

if we instead set it to 100km smallest dimension... 95,238,095,238,095.23... 95 trillion tons. 95 Teratons

 

[whartung]

If we set "World" at size 1 minimal, 1600km diameter (roughly the self-rounding estimate...

((4/3)(Pi)(R^2))/14... 2144660584850632000 Td (roughly) ... 2.145e18 Td. 2.14 QUINTILLION tons (US meaning) 2.14 ExaTd

if we instead set it to 100km smallest dimension... 95,238,095,238,095.23... 95 trillion tons. 95 Teratons

Just think, each Jump will knock 1 point off of the Hydrographic Percentage factor of the world.

 

[Condottiere]

You'll solve sea level rising and urban overcrowding.

 

[GypsyComet]

You'll solve sea level rising and urban overcrowding.

At 10% of the volume per parsec, you would also solve habitability, assuming you saw being habitable as a problem. One jump would slurp up every bit of water on the planet, including the deep reserves, hydrated minerals, and atmospheric moisture.

Then it would denature every organic molecule on the planet by stripping the hydrogen.

No, you'll need to import your jump fuel. A fuel bladder bigger than the Moon...

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To return to the original topic: The best ship design system is the one you'll use.

 

[Condottiere]

Coincidental arrival of several ice asteroids.

 

[GypsyComet]

Ten percent of a Size A world's volume is about the size of Mars...

 

[aramis]

Just think, each Jump will knock 1 point off of the Hydrographic Percentage factor of the world.

Well more than that. Average ocean depth on Earth is about 2.3 miles. of a radius of 7917 or so miles diameter, and 70% coverage.

So, a shell of that depth ...

Enclosing sphere vol:	259824773358.58374
Exclusion sphere vol:	259372139917.66235
Shell volume:	452633440.9213867
water volume, at 71% coverage:	321369743.05418456
Water volume as percentage world surface:	0.12368710608309191%
Vol with the needed 150 miles of atmosphere:	290494880614.89154
Water Volume as percentage of Atmospheric world:	0.11062836714159647%

Jump 1 of a planet would use all of the atmosphere and all of the liquid water and STILL come up short.

 

[Spartan159]

Hmm, I seem to recall reading somewhere about an ancients portal sitting inside a gas giant sucking up fuel. I was gonna ask about how you dock a planet but silly me, advanced gravitics. Planet probably still thinks it's in orbit somewhere. That rosette at Tireen makes an interesting case in point, I'd bet there is one or more former gas giants stripped down to a core (of what? mineable?) somewhere, possibly in a pocket universe.