Bk2 Sliverdart Class Missile Corvette TL13

[plop101]

Tech Level 13 Sliverdart Class Missile Corvette

Using a custom 400 ton hull, the Sliverdart serves in the Colonial Fleets of Efate and Yori. It has Jump Drive H, Maneuver Drive K, and Power Plant K, giving Jump 4 and 5G acceleration. Fuel tankage of 210 tons supports the power plant for 4 weeks and 1 Jump-4. Adjacent to the bridge is a computer Model 7. There are 5 crew staterooms, and 6 low berths. The ship has 4 hardpoints and 4 tons set aside for fire control. 4 triple turrets are installed, carrying 12 missile racks. The Sliverdart carries a 5 ton electronics systems jammer. The ship carries a 10 ton life pod. Two .5 ton Grav Transport Modules are carried and are used for missile loading. 2 tons are set aside as a ships locker. There is a 10 ton missile magazine, and a 10 ton cargo hold. The hull is streamlined.

The Sliverdart has a crew of 10:
1 Commander/Pilot, 1 Executive Officer/Navigator, 3 Engineers, 1 Medics, and 4 Gunners. The ship is configured for double accomadtion. In addition, 6 low berths provide for a frozen watch crew.

The base cost of the ship is MCr 351.199, Architects Fees are MCr 3.512, and it takes 14 months to build.

Other ship names in the Sliverdart class are Shardspike, Glitternail, Crysneedle, Icesplinter, and Sheerbolt.

Lifepod write up, from the OZ:

Lifepod: Using a 10-dton hull the lifepod is capable of 1-G acceleration, carries 1.5 tons of fuel (giving 10 weeks endurance for the power plant) and has a crew of one (in a small craft couch). Six emergency low berths are installed, acting as seats for up to 6 passengers in regular service with life support for all crew and passengers for 24 hours, or acting as low berths for up to 24 passengers for as long as the power plant endurance. The lifepod has no airlock; crew and passengers must embark from/disembark into a pressurized area. The lifepod has no hardpoint and may not mount any weapons. It has a computer Mod/1 to control the craft while the crew and passengers are in suspended animation; the craft may not mount any other computer. The lifepod has no excess space and costs MCr 7.95.

The Sliverdart Missile Corvette--Book 5 complient.
High Guard Statistics:

LM-4245572-000000-00005-0 MCr351.199 400tons
------------------------1 Crew: 10
------------------------1 TL13
Book 2 design Fuel:210tons EP:20 Agility:3
Emergency Agility: 5 Fuel Scoops
Cargo:10tons Missile Magazine:10tons
Ships Locker:2ton Lifepods=1
Grav Transport Modules=2 Frozen Watch=1

Design Notes:
1. The 'Electronics Jammer' comes from the radio jammer listing in Book 4 Mercenary, Page 41. I have listed it as 5 tons and costing MCr1. I don't have any special rules for its use; referee fudging will be used to govern its operation.
2. The 'Grav Tranport Modules' are described in the FASA adventure "Fate of the Sky Raiders", Page16.
3. The 'lifepod' comes from our very own COTI contributor OZ, listed in Classic Traveller forum, Proto-Traveller thread, a post entitled "Book 2 small craft design system, by Steve Osmanski". Folks, if your doing Book 2 ship designs, you should hard copy this document immediatly.
OZ's Book2 Small Craft Design System Link

Referee notes/notions:
I'm sure I've got typo's in here, I always have typo's, so let me know about em as you come across them. I've got three more ships in the slip down at the shipyard, two book 2 ships and a book 5 ship. The bk2 ships are a as yet unnamed TL13 cruiser type (perhaps a battle cruiser) and a attempt at doing the bk 5/sup 7 Dragon SDB in bk2 format. The trick with the later job is of course that bk2 doesn't have rules for armor. But there may be a way to fudge around that. The bk5 ship I'm working on is a bigger version of the Supplement 9 Jump ship, a ship able to carry 6 transport pods internally and 4 pods externally at reduced speed. I don't know if I'm going to go to far with that design though. We'll see. It will be a while before I post anymore designs, Real Life Work-Slave committments will keep me occupied for the next week.

Enjoy! And happy Travelling...

 

[mike wightman]

Nice design, once again

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by plop101:
The trick with the later job is of course that bk2 doesn't have rules for armor.

I've posted a couple of house rule versions I've come up with over the years, and I have another one almost ready to post...

 

[Jame]

Nice one. If you're looking for a cruiser type to either use this to swarm or pit against that cruiser, look for my 3000-ton battle cruiser...

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by plop101:
The trick with the later job is of course that bk2 doesn't have rules for armor.

I've posted a couple of house rule versions I've come up with over the years, and I have another one almost ready to post... </font>[/QUOTE]Me, too....

 

[Ladegard]

Speaking of conversions, does anyone have a good armor conversion for Gurps:Traveller from any other version of Traveller?

- Tom

 

[endersig]

Lets take this book 2 thing a whole step futher. Well, actually, to start it off, I need to get everyones oppinion on one thing: Is Bk2 fair for a navy? What is to stop a civilian from just getting a really beefy ship and naval class stuff? Where does civilian end and military begin? Freelance proposes a good retrofit. Bring back armor, rapid launch facilities, Missiles Bays and Empty Bays. With this knowledge arming you, can we design a good tech 10-12 navy for a colonial force?
We'd need:
A Large Capital Ship
A carrier
a destroyer equivalent
a cruiser equivalent
scouts
patrol boats
Troop Transports
Frigates
SDBs....
We have some ships to fill in these gaps, but not all. I move we pool our resources (Bk2 Wise) and design the ships needed for a colonial navy.

 

[mike wightman]

There's already a more powerful weapon system for naval use - the barbette. It just needs to be adapted to being a platform for different weapons, i.e. lasers, missiles and "torpedos".

The missile special supplement for CT gives hints that larger missiles can be built - torpedos - the barbette is an ideal platform.

Armour is the tricky bit. Should it provide a modifier to being hit, or act as damage reduction?
Should it be ablative or only removed by a criticas hit?

 

[mike wightman]

We also have to decide on the sort of drive performance a military ship should have.
Maximum maneuver plus jump 3, 4?
And don't forget the double fire rule

Looking at the drive potential table and comparing with the TL chart:
</font><blockquote>code:</font><hr /><pre style="font-size:x-small; font-family: monospace;">TL maximum hull size
9 800t
10 1000t
11-12 2000t
13-14 3000t
15 5000t</pre>[/QUOTE]These large hulls have two drawbacks:
lack of drive performance
limited amount of hit capacity.

They have the advantage of being able to carry a lot of fuel, small craft, and/or troops.

 

[endersig]

I like freelance's solution: Multiple engines (they have to be the same size of course). It just gives way to the huge banks of engines you see on the Tantive IV in A New Hope, or those big blue thrusters out of the backend of Star Destroyers. This also prevents instant crippling on 5kt Ships.
Another quick question. Power Fuel in Bk2? Why is it the same drive can vary fuel amount based on hull size? Anyone rectify this?

 

[mike wightman]

Evolution of the Navy through the TLs IMTU(short version):

TL9

workhorse 200t J3, M4

transport 800t J1, M1

TL10

workhorse 400t J3, M4

battle wagon 800t J2, M2

transport 1000t J1, M1

TL11

workhorse 400t J3, M5

battle wagon 1000t J2, M2

transport 2000t J1, M1

TL12

workhorse 400t J3, M6, dbl fr

cruiser 800t J3, M3, dbl fr

battle wagon 1000t J2, M2, dbl fr

transport 2000t J1, M1

TL13

workhorse 400t J3, M6, dbl fr

cruiser 800t J3, M3, dbl fr

battle wagon 1000t J3, M2, dbl fr

transport 3000t J1, M1

TL14

workhorse 600t J4, M6, dbl fr

frigate 800t J4, M4, dbl fr

battle cruiser 1000t J3, M3, dbl fr

transport 3000t J1, M1

TL15

workhorse 800t J4, M6, dbl fr

frigate 1000t J4, M6, dbl fr; J5, M6, dbl fr

cruiser 2000t J4, M6; J6, M6

battle cruiser 3000t J4, M4

carrier 4000t J3, M3

transport 5000t J2, M2

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by endersig:
I like freelance's solution: Multiple engines (they have to be the same size of course). It just gives way to the huge banks of engines you see on the Tantive IV in A New Hope, or those big blue thrusters out of the backend of Star Destroyers. This also prevents instant crippling on 5kt Ships.
Another quick question. Power Fuel in Bk2? Why is it the same drive can vary fuel amount based on hull size? Anyone rectify this?

I use multiple maneuver drives to get better performance for the big ships IMTU, but the jump drive is limited to Z. So the biggest ship possible IMTU is 12000t.

Oz has a nice way of handling fuel for LBB2 power plants, I'll go find the link...

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by endersig:
Another quick question. Power Fuel in Bk2? Why is it the same drive can vary fuel amount based on hull size? Anyone rectify this?

I did it with two house rules:

1. Power plants did not have to equal the larger of Jump drive or Maneuver drive; power plants just had to be the same size or larger than the Maneuver drive letter. As Sigg will tell you, this is actually returning to how things worked in the original edition of Book 2. Given how big Bk2 Jump drives are, I thought it a good change.

2. Power plant fuel was dependent on the size of the powerplant. An "A" powerplant required 10 dtons of fuel per month, a "B" powerplant needed 20 dtons, a "C" powerplant needed 30 dtons, with the fuel requirement going up by 10 dtons per letter, so that a "Z" powerplant required 240 dtons per month (remember than letters I and O were not used in the drive tables).

If you do decide to allow "stacking" drives for increased performance, watch out for misuse of the "A" maneuver drive. It is the only drive that allows you to stack drives and save space in the process. Two "A" drives take up less space than a "B" drive but would (in theory) give the same performance.

I would recommend some limits: no more than 6 drives per ship, and each drive must be capable of producing at least 1G acceleration (or a factor-1 powerplant, or Jump-1, if you let players stack jump drives) in that size ship. Perhaps ships with "stacked" drives need more engineers to maintain them? This would be a really good reason why merchant ships would not use "stacked" drives.

I also agree with Sigg: I wouldn't allow "stacking" jump drives to keep the big ships from being as mobile as smaller vessels. Of course, this would really require adding rules for armor and other stuff (like allowing extra weaponry) so that those big warships have something to spend all their extra tonnage on.

 

[mike wightman]

Thanks for posting Oz, it saved me tracking it down

I agree that returning to the 1st edition system of needing a power plant for the maneuver drive makes a lot of sense for a couple of reasons:
the fact that the jump drive is a tonnage hog, with a large fuel requirement to boot;
and
it allows the x-boat concept to remain in LBB2 based navies.

 

[Piper]

Originally posted by The Oz:

If you do decide to allow "stacking" drives for increased performance, watch out for misuse of the "A" maneuver drive. It is the only drive that allows you to stack drives and save space in the process. Two "A" drives take up less space than a "B" drive but would (in theory) give the same performance.

One suggestion for dealing with this would be to require additional cost and tonnage for linking the stacked systems. Maybe 10% rounded down, (minimum 1 ton) of the drive volume and cost?

 

[endersig]

Originally posted by The Oz:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by endersig:
Another quick question. Power Fuel in Bk2? Why is it the same drive can vary fuel amount based on hull size? Anyone rectify this?

I did it with two house rules:

I also agree with Sigg: I wouldn't allow "stacking" jump drives to keep the big ships from being as mobile as smaller vessels. </font>[/QUOTE]I couldn't agree more. It bothered me that huge ships of the Line could acutally go FASTER than the smaller ships. the only problem, with LBB2 combat that is, is that a 5000 ton, 10000 ton ship can, in theory, take one hit and be rendered useless (powerplant). Stacking drives is just nicer than building 24 more drives

 

[The Oz]

Originally posted by endersig:
I couldn't agree more. It bothered me that huge ships of the Line could acutally go FASTER than the smaller ships. the only problem, with LBB2 combat that is, is that a 5000 ton, 10000 ton ship can, in theory, take one hit and be rendered useless (powerplant). Stacking drives is just nicer than building 24 more drives

Stacking powerplants would be allowed and I think needed/required to run all the weaponry you'd expect a big battlewagon to have, and to power stacked maneuver drives. As for the crippling that would occur when the non-stacked jump drive was hit, well, that's the risk you take building big ships. You could put extra jump drives in to use as backup jump drives under the HG/TCS rules for backups. Also, I would interpret the rules as saying that a Z-jump drive in a 12,000 dton battlewagon (being a J-1 drive in such a ship) isn't destroyed when it's hit once, just reduced to a Y-drive which doesn't produce any jump in such a ship, but the drive is still there and can be repaired through damage control. To fully destroy a Z-drive you have to hit it 24 times, or get a Jump drive critical hit. And I would give ships with big crews extra damage control rolls in Bk 2 combat.