I found a set of deckplans I drew up back in the mid-80s for a Type S as a tailsitter 2:1 prolate spheroid.
Basically, most of the bridge and all of the living quarters and the engine room were a cylinder along the main axis inside the spheroid. Made the math a little easier.
Mis-remembered it (was thinking of a different design). Bridge, crew quarters, and cargo (cargo bay and Air/Raft) were on full-diameter decks. I think I'll keep that.
Main bits of weirdness were that it had way too much cargo space (I think I was using LBB5 power plant fuel allocation) and that I made the double turret into two half-ton single turrets to ensure 360-degree coverage. For some reason I thought that was important, but it threw me off when I saw it again decades later, since I didn't remember whether I was using LBB2/HG or my ref's house rules to do the design.
Turns out it was absolutely the ref's house rules. Two computers, two actual turrets, six staterooms, and a bizarrely small fuel tank (except it wasn't fuel -- the house rules used atomic batteries of some sort). I'm sure it made sense at the time...
I don't have image posting privileges and don't have a file-hosting service so you'll just have to use your imagination. It's probably better that way -- I was a fair draftsman, but I could do a lot better today.
I figured out how to post images, and I can do better,
and am working on it right now.
...Except I'm working with MS Paint, so it might take a while. :rant:
And I'm running into the usual tailsitter issues. The cargo bay, main personnel airlock, and Air/Raft niche are 12m off the ground when the ship is parked. The dirtside personnel entrance is 6M off the ground with a ladder down one of the landing gear legs... (either that or people walk in through the drive bay, but that'd just be weird).
Also, I'm trying to decide how to lay out the crew quarters. If the ship was designed for Scout Service work, there's no reason not to put all the staterooms on a single deck since the crew is trustworthy. If it's for nominally commercial service, it might be preferable to move some of the Bridge tonnage into the upper crew deck and displace a couple of staterooms into the next deck down, so there's a bulkhead and a lockable hatch between the passengers and the flight crew quarters/bridge. Neither version makes for an interesting batteground for
Snapshot or the
AHL combat rules -- really short fields of fire, limited cover, and few alternate routes to sneak around through.
Then there's the question of whether I draw it as though there is artificial gravity available. If it's available and reliable, elevators might not be needed -- just ladder shafts kept at 0.1G while the rest of the ship is at 1G. If it's not, how does the Air/Raft even work? Maybe it's a ground car or helicopter instead, which means you've got to hoist it up to its parking space...
