Drawing ships.

[Dragoner]

I have a destroyer that is a sphere, based off the Starfire one, on the cover of Starfire Empires, honestly, a lot of my spacecraft are based on Starfire ones -

Z Class Destroyer

Z Class Fast Destroyer
Hull 2,000 tons 200 MCr 32 Months Build Time
4,000 1.5 m squares Volume 28,000 m^3
Sphere radius 18.8374945 m diameter 37.675 m circumference 118.359 m
Streamlining 20 MCr

Jump Drive Z 125 tons 240 MCr TL 15 J6
Maneuver Drive Z 47 tons 96 MCr TL 15 M6
Power Plant Z 73 tons 192 MCr TL 15 PP6
Subtotal: 245 tons 528 MCr

Power plant and maneuver fuel 60 tons
Jump Fuel 1,200 tons
Subtotal 1,260 tons

Bridge 40 tons 10 MCr
Computer Model 6 7 tons 55 MCr Capacity 15/35 TL 12
Subtotal 47 tons 65 MCr

Staterooms
9 Single for Heads of Departments 36 tons 4.5 MCr
23 Double 92 tons 11.5 MCr
Low Berths 10 Emergency 10 tons 1 MCr
Subtotal 32 Staterooms 10 E Low 138 tons 17 MCr

Hardpoints 20 2 MCr
Turrets 20 tons Fire Control
10 Triple Beam Laser 40 MCr
8 Triple Missile Rack 26 MCr
10 ton Magazine (200 Missiles)
2 Triple Sandcaster 3.5 MCr
2 ton Magazine (40 Canisters)
Subtotal 32 tons 71.5 MCr

Vehicles
2 Cutters 100 tons 56 MCr
2 Fuel and ATV Modules (60 tons 5.6 MCr)
2 Launches 40 tons 28 MCr
Subtotal: 200 tons 89.6 MCr

Cargo 78 tons w/o Magazines

Crew (20 minimum)
Captain, Executive Officer, 3 Administrative Personnel, 3 Pilots, 3 Navigators, 11 Engineers, 2 Stewards, 3 Medical Personnel, 20 Gunners, 8 Small Craft Pilots
55 total

Subtotal 1,910 w/o cargo 991.1 MCr

Architect's Fees
1% x 901.5 MCr (w/o Small Craft) 9.015 MCr

Total 2,000 tons 1,000.115 MCr Standard Design 900.1035 MCr

Recurring Costs
Fuel 0.126 MCr unrefined/0.63 MCr refined
Life Support 220,000 a month
Maintenance 0.9001035 MCr annually

Link to pdf of the deck plan: https://solisrpg.com/download/file.php?id=26

 

[BackworldTraveller]

I was looking at a paper on water supplies for settlement camps...that suggests that you need 20 litres per person per day. So that is 280 litres per person per 2-week trip time. Thus a stateroom (allowing double occupancy) uses just over 1/2 a cubic metre of water. So 26 staterooms need 1 dTon of fresh water tankage. The steward needs additional water (laundry mostly). As do chefs. A medical Bay needs a massive 300 litres of water per patient per day. That's 4200 litres per patient per jump.

And don't forget that that water has to go somewhere. Sullage and sewerage tanks are needed to take that - so add that to the needed capacity.

Small ships can hide these tanks away, but on larger ships that starts to be come inefficient.

And that is based on the minimum medium term supply needed for drinking, washing, etc. Luxury cabins can run through much more than that!

If you are looking for things to make your players think - try water leaks (Clean) - or water leaks (not so clean). Not only do they start out as a problem in themselves, but they play badly with electrics, electronics, air-supply and circulation. What they do to gravitics could be interesting (the inertial compensators stop working in patches, the artificial gravity doubles by the door of the important passenger's stateroom because the control circuitry is wet). A first-class passenger complaining that the pipes are knocking (or sounding like a strangled crewman). Or the water's cold/hot. Or the pipes are frozen!

Have fun with the designs...now where is the cold water tank to stateroom 43?

 

[whartung]

So 26 staterooms need 1 dTon of fresh water tankage.

Not something to be disregarded, to be sure, but if you have a ship with 26 staterooms (104 tons), 1 ton for water will be found "somewhere".

Also, don't forget that ships have essentially unlimited power, so water and waste reprocessing will scale very well in such situations, and have a very high rate of recovery.

An interesting supply for starships will be supplies of "essential minerals" to be mixed with reprocessed, distilled water to make it more palatable for drinking. Not there there would be a lot (not dTons of it), but something more for the "list of supplies".

The water I drink contains 130 milligrams/liter of assorted minerals (Calcium, Chloride, Magnesium, salt, etc.). This is not "electrolyte" water, just "mineral water from mountain springs!".

So that's 130 grams per dTon of water. Nothing crazy, but not nothing. You'll need to be bringing a bag or so every couple months to dump in the water conditioner.

I've heard of pizzerias that artificially create "New York Water" to make their doughs in, like, Arizona.

 

[vegascat]

I have been creating starships since I bought the Little black Box back in 77, same year Star Wars came out. Started drawing deck plans before completely reading the rules. I was taking architecture classes in high school back then. The first ships were 1 deck with 4 times the turrets, I saw a DTon as a 5 ft cube. I drew hundreds of ships before I found Book 5. I did the percentages using a pocket calculator and hull shapes using volume math and Calculus to fit what I designed into the ship. When I found the 10 percent rule, the ships in sup 7 made a lot more sense. At that time, I was in an Architecture college in Iowa, a very long way from ocean going ships to screw with my preconceptions. I hit a phase designing armored fighters with buffered planetoid hulls at tech 15 with an additional 15 points of TL15 armor. It could fly down a spinal mount at 6G firing twin fusion guns. Being inside the enemy ship, I saw no reason to ship through the ship hull.

Looking at the drawings in the books and designing houses in class, I found plenty of space between ceiling and floor to run all utilities with regular access hatches and color-coded systems. Feed water, Grey water, Air in, Air out, Power conduits, Control line Conduits. Communication lines, Security panels, Computer access panels, Utility control panels, types of hatches, ladder rungs for different gravity orientations, Ships locker, Gun locker, ammo locker, Bridge controls, different turrets, bays, and spinal mounts.
I found the Air National Guard by then was a good way to pay for college. Life decided I needed to go Regular Air Force and spent 22 years seeing the world, one country at a time. Met many new people who looked, worshiped, ate, dressed, spoke and thought different than I did. Learned many new skills and ways to communicate with the locals. I learned to really appreciate how lawyers are a better way than settling disagreements with bullets or blades. A couple tours in Germany helped me learn other RPGs and the local SCA group taught me better skills and differences in fighting with muscle powered weapons and proper fitting armor can make a guy feel near invulnerable. Playing in real castles was a bonus. It helped me learn how other countries love to do similar things. My Traveller games had a very mercenary background then. Use the groups ship to go to a new planet, recon/spy the targets, find their blind spot and run with the loot. Settle arguments any way that worked. The group found a dozen sets of battle dress that was their dream. What wasn't their dream was the Zhodani still inhabiting the suits. Creative use of terrain, explosives, rumors, planted evidence and nasty traps helped the Zhodani realize they wanted to be elsewhere. They captured 6 suits of Zhodani battledress, but had to clean the previous occupants out, and cannibalize the suits to make 4 usable suits. There was one NPC in the group that had the skill to rework the suits. Turned out he was in the pay of the Zhodani so it took several weeks to get the suits to operate at all. Everyone wondered why the Zhodani patrol ships were so plentiful. The battledress ended up in a tunnel in a rocky asteroid. Created several Zhodani ships, Vargr corsairs, Aslan, Darrian and Swordy ships, each with different shapes. Running from the Zhodani led them to ice mine the rings of a few gas giants in different systems.
I lost most of the ship plans I created in a box that arrived after a slow ocean voyage. The cargo ship took on some water in the hold my household shipment was stored in. Everything in the bottom of the wood crates was wet and moldy. I did put important books in large Ziplock bags. Had to throw out several thousand hours of RPG notes, designs, characters and military records.
Still designing ships, usually using Paint. Still do the ship stats first, then the floor plans.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

I started out hand drawing Deckplans around 1981 and changed over to Computer around 1994-1997. Since then I haven't drawn anything by hand. Every thing has been done on the computer since then. So that makes it 27- 24 years ish, I've been doing this as a hobby? That means I have 1,557 Files, in 22 Folders. Most of the files are junk but I probably some where around 200ish completed designs. God, I don't know how many ideas I started and never finish. SO yeah, I've been busy over the last 40 years.

I draw my ships before I figure out tonnage. Then adapt the fuel tanks to the needs of the design. I love wings and external fuel tanks. It's a quirk of mine.

 

[Shadowrunner]

External fuel tanks make sense, protect what's inside.

One thing I do in designing a ship is try to not have any "dead ends". So exploration is always moving forward and both players and npc's have opportunities. Sometimes that might just be a hatch or iris valve to another deck, but it's good to make the movement flow.

 

[kilemall]

Let me suggest a computer game called HardspaceShipbreaker. It’s about a literal contract slave doing ship tear down for parts. Problem is there are live reactors and chemicals and power on these things that can kill you, so the order and speed you do tear downs with matter Very Much.

Point is you get some great visualizations for ship systems and the way they can go sideways.

OP are you familiar with the starship geomorphs?

 

[coliver988]

Let me suggest a computer game called HardspaceShipbreaker. It’s about a literal contract slave doing ship tear down for parts. Problem is there are live reactors and chemicals and power on these things that can kill you, so the order and speed you do tear downs with matter Very Much.

Point is you get some great visualizations for ship systems and the way they can go sideways.

OP are you familiar with the starship geomorphs?

the geomorphs are an excellent resource: http://travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-starship-geomorphs-book-if-finally.html

 

[Spinward Flow]

the geomorphs are an excellent resource: http://travellerrpgblog.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-starship-geomorphs-book-if-finally.html

When tonnage is not an issue, they're certainly fantastic.
So many of them are either 20x20 deck squares (200 tons!) or 10x20 deck squares (100 tons!) that they're really useful for larger ships and space station habitats, but not so much for starships under 1000 tons (which is most ACS).
But for Big Stuff™ they are excellent.

 

[coliver988]

When tonnage is not an issue, they're certainly fantastic.
So many of them are either 20x20 deck squares (200 tons!) or 10x20 deck squares (100 tons!) that they're really useful for larger ships and space station habitats, but not so much for starships under 1000 tons (which is most ACS).
But for Big Stuff™ they are excellent.

there is always crop & paste - I did that to pull out things I needed.

think outside and less of the box

 

[Spinward Flow]

there is always crop & paste

Yes there is ... but no everyone is going to go that far.
Still, it is a DIY option.

 

[robject]

When I was younger I drew ships then made them fit the rules. In that it was the things in my head shapeded the the ships I Drew. Book2 basics, in that what do you need to fight a ship? What do you need to visually think about it.

Sounds normal. Marc certainly did it this way in the early days, (which is why we have some incompatible ships). I think GDW also did that with the Mercenary Cruiser, mimicking (on a small scale) the ships from Piper's Star Viking series.

 

[Terquem]

May I not seriously suggest actively working on the D&D (not that D&D) of a type 2 nuclear facility.
I have a headache and all we set out to do today was identify the drawings that will be affected by removal of dry pipe fire protection systems.
Sure, it's a 7 acre building, but come on, 53 drawings!

 

[Spinward Flow]

May I not seriously suggest actively working on the D&D (not that D&D)

Destruction & Demolition ...?

 

[Dragoner]

Yeah, working on the deck plan for the 2,000 ton CA/CVL from Cepheus, there definitely are good and bad things about moving to affinity.

 

[GypsyComet]

Driven by Snapshot, the old Judges Guild set, and the Gazelle (I started when JTAS #3 was on game store shelves), I was doing deckplans almost immediately. *Ugly* deckplans in many cases. I would do sphere volumes the hard way. I stacked weird curvy decks until I got to a volume I liked, then figure out what sort of oddball shape I had created. A couple designs were super-tanker inspired, and would now be right at home in a Sword Worlds fleet.

It was a fun time. I need to find all that graph paper again.

 

[Dragoner]

I found a deck plan I made in 1982 the other day, I plan on using it in an adventure, waste not, want not.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I found a deck plan I made in 1982 the other day, I plan on using it in an adventure, waste not, want not.

My prolate-spheroid Type S (linked elsewhere) was a re-work of something I drew up in the mid-80s.

 

[Dragoner]

My prolate-spheroid Type S (linked elsewhere) was a re-work of something I drew up in the mid-80s.

This one says it's a shuttle, though the outline looks like I took it from an Imperium counter.