Design Lineages

[Ran Targas]

A while back I came across a deckplan for a Serpent class scout (100dT) and another for a 150dT version (the name escapes now). It dawned on me that this is one of the few cases of multiple tonnage hulls built along the same style. Why is that?

I drew up my own version of the Type S Sulieman scout in MSPaint several years ago; it's really easy to make changes and modify the deckplan. So using that as a base, I easily laid out a 200dT J2 version, sort of a scout leader, still retaining the wedge shape and general floorplan of the 100dT version. Now I'm working on a 1000dT scout cruiser version built to rescue and recover a Type S in an internal bay.

I just recently finished a 200dT version of the Imperiallines Frontier Trader; figured it needed a little sister.

The canon designs for freighters show several very distinct styles; shouldn't there be big and little siblings for these designs? It seems that each was developed by a different design company without any follow on designs; did they go bankrupt? After all that hard work and development costs wouldn't they want to extend their designs into larger hulls with greater range or cargo capacity? Why not a whole line of ships based on the same hull form? 100dT-1000dT Far Traders? Look at what Boeing does with its 700 series.

Just a thought, hoping someone else maybe thought the same thing too.

 

[Major B]

RT, I think you're following the same logical line I think is plausible and that I use when designing.

 

[Peter Schutze]

> Look at what Boeing does with its 700 series.

I think you are mistaking variants and upgrades for new families of vehicles.

Its not actually much easier to fix the overengineering* caused by scaling up than it is to start from scratch

it does kind of make sense since traveller canon relies on standard components for what you're saying though especially when things like drive sizes are fairly linear

* overengineering .... builting a 200MW fission reactor doesnt mean doubling all the components of a 100MW design. In many cases you cant actually double the size of bits

 

[Ran Targas]

Pete,

There are lots things that a design line gets you; for starters ...

1. Same design staff (familiarity with design process, available resources, tools of the trade, government regulations, etc.)

And guaranteed the design team had thoughts about "how much easier it would if ...". I've seen substantial design improvements discarded due to coming to light too late in the development process

2. Field tested solutions to similar design issues (past problem history); here's where the "what if's" can be included

3. Same or similar supplier base (and their experienced with meeting your requirements)

4. Easier to adapt the latest technology to a known platform or series of platforms than developing something new from scratch

5. Manufacturing sites are already familiar with a similar designs (this is a huge advantage in manufacturing with tooling and assembly fixtures, assembly sequencing, man power requirements, etc.)

6. Brand name recognition; even a designer has fans and life long customers. Car designers like Shelby, DeLorean, Ferrari, Porsche, and even Ford have established themselves as name brands. The aviation industry has the likes of Donald Douglas, Howard Hughes, Kelly Johnson (Lockheeds Skunkworks) and Igor Sikorsky. These guys all started with one successful design, building on their successes and creating not only companies but in some cases institutions and dynasties.

Although you can turn a profit building someone else's mouse traps, there's more money in owning the patent and licensing the design. Just ask Bill Gates.

So again, what is so different in the 3I that there are so few designs and they all appear to be one of's? Somebody must want to build a bigger and better Far Trader. Even if there's just 1 in a billion, there's a lot of innovative starship engineers producing improved designs in the OTU.

 

[rancke]

So again, what is so different in the 3I that there are so few designs and they all appear to be one of's? Somebody must want to build a bigger and better Far Trader.

It's a illusion brought about by a very small sample. Every ship design that we've seen published has been deliberately selected for (among other things) being different. I've always assumed that even the same designs actually differed at least a little bit from production run to production run, let alone from shipyard to shipyard. But the publishers have always assumed that their customers would prefer totally new designs, so that's what they've given us.

Actually, the GT deckplans do include several variations of the Type S. And (to toot my own horn a bit) I wrote up a set of three 400T merchants for JTAS Online, all with the same outer hull but with respectively jump-1, jump-2, and jump-3 (and with the concomittant interior design differences). The Placid Ox, Golden Gryphon and Soaring Eagle classes are all built by the same shipyard, Ancker Shipyards of Regina. Ancker also has plans for a jump-4 version on file, but so far no one has ordered one.


Hans

 

[robject]

I also think that smaller starships may tend to be a bit less modular, and perhaps a bit more distinctive, with maybe a "stretched" version, but often not.

Some starships just scream out for modularity and re-use of parts across different-sized "variations". 10,000 ton cargoliners for example, or LASH freighters, or some kinds of scientific or utility craft, or hospital ships. Habitats, even tho they're not strictly starships.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I'm sure there are other ships based on the Ghalalk cruiser.

 

[boomslang]

A while back I came across a deckplan for a Serpent class scout (100dT) and another for a 150dT version (the name escapes now).

The "stretched" version of the Serpent class is the Wind class, BTW... viz. Donald Rapp's not-quite-canonical Narapoia PBM campaign...

 

[BlackBat242]

Check the Paranoia Press LBB Merchants and Merchandise.

It has the "space shuttle-like" 100dton Serpent class Scout, the 150dton Wind class extended scout, and a 200dton Avian class far trader.

The classic example of a "family of related ships".

 

[carlparl]

I did some families of related ships a while back, when I was more active in this. I think they were all LBB2 designs, maxing out at 5,000t, but I'm not positive. The designs worked like this:

The largest classes of ships:
Battleship: Balanced weapons, armor, drives
Battlecruiser: Bigger drives, same weapons, reduced armor
Dreadnaught: Bigger weapons and armor, reduced drives
Heavy Transport: Drives and cargo space, minimal weapons and armor.

I also had a middling class of ships, Cruiser, Light Cruiser, Heavy Cruiser, Med. Transport (to list them in the same order as above) and a small class, Corvette, Frigate, Destroyer, Lt. Transport.

Each class was built on the same hull, the idea being to cause confusion in identifying the type if possible. The Germans did it in WW2 - the sillhouette of their big BBs (Bismarck and Tirpitz) looked like their cruisers (Prinz Eugen). It made identification that much more difficult.

I have the stats around here somewhere, but never got around to doing deckplans. Maybe some day....