CT Only: Fixing the Type T Deck Plans?

[Swiftbrook]

I agree, but if we are making deck plans for the existing illustration of the Type T, our hands are tied: internal hangar it is.

Slinging the boat under the ship has disadvantages when landed, especially in water. Slinging the boat(s) on top allows them to launch even while landed.

I made this a few years ago:

Dual boats in "power bulges" on the top of the ship. Still internal, but doesn't steal too much space from the decks. Works fairly well.

Found It! The Flaming Eye.
The Patrol Cruiser has a ship's boat on top of it's long neck!

 

[Swiftbrook]

I really like this art.

A couple of notes: There are two projections half way between the forward turrets and the ships main body that could be grappling arms for a ships boat. At the rear of the ship, there is a sensor array (?) between the maneuver drive thrusters. An interesting detail I haven't seen in other art. The extending gangway shows where an airlock should be as well.

Edit: I just noticed that the rear protrusion is also on the art in my post above.

 

[whartung]

I think this ship needs to seriously consider some manner of external or partially external docking of the small craft.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Found It! The Flaming Eye.
The Patrol Cruiser has a ship's boat on top of it's long neck!

View attachment 2610

Too small for me to see much of anything clearly, but it does look like a common Type T.

Take a look at the original art and deck plan in the first post; clearly an internal boat hangar.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I think this ship needs to seriously consider some manner of external or partially external docking of the small craft.

Sure, that would be convenient for the deck plan, but not the original Type T.

Warships have a point with internal craft for protection, but since the Type T is completely unprotected itself I don't know if that if much use. Internal hangars also have advantages with handling loading in a shirtsleeve environment.

We could make a non-standard small craft that is shorter and fatter, perhaps with an ellipsoid cross-section to make it a more useful wider and less tall configuration, so it can fit on a single deck.

 

[coliver988]

Looking at the T5 deck plans, the ships boat is external for the corvette. Winged and similar to the cruiser thematically.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Yikes! What a mess!

Yes, it is isn't it?

With a pre-determined hull form and a standard small craft I don't have much choice in the placement of the hangar, it has to be in the centre of the ship ± a few metres. Later illustrations are a bit chunkier in the aft section, so perhaps a bit easier to layout.

But I have given some basic consideration of how to get people, cargo, and vehicles to and from the small craft and cargo hold, unlike your ship. How do you plan to get a standard cargo container into the hold of your ship, with no other connection than narrow corridor and a personnel iris valve? There does not seem to be any connection to the cutter module, so I guess it has to be launched and loaded by EVA? Btw, where are vacc suits stored, there is no storage anywhere near the airlocks? Have you considered emergency access between decks when the power fades and the elevators stop working?

You managed to make something longer than I did (64.5m vs my 60m) which is thinner at the nose (1.5m vs my 4.5m) and wider at the stern (21m vs my 19.5m) and still wind up with a ship architecture that needs a lot more improvement before it ought to become usable/habitable.

It is interesting though that we both wound up in relatively close accord on dimensions the way we both did.

I guess we are starting with the same art work, so it's not all that surprising.

THAT. THEY. ARE.

I'm going to try a second draft of my own deck plans I did yesterday, testing to see if lengthening and narrowing the fuselage to make a better "lawn dart" shape will help any. However, in order to do that, I'm going to need to extend my graph paper out left/right to give myself more than just 40 squares to work with for deck space.

An even longer and narrower hull is unlikely to make it easier to make decent deck plans.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Looking at the T5 deck plans, the ships boat is external for the corvette. Winged and similar to the cruiser thematically.

The Daring class (B2 p46) is hardly a Type T, more of a hi-tech evolution. It is also quite a bit larger, with a 400 Dt hull with added wings, fighters, and boat hanging off of it. It should be somewhere around 400 + 20 + 2×10 + 30 ≈ 470 Dt?

The Type E Corvette on B2 p41 is more like the CT Type T, but lacks detail and has no small craft or vehicles specified.

Given the extra space required for small craft hangars in T5, it saves quite some space to add craft in external grapples.

 

[Spinward Flow]

How do you plan to get a standard cargo container into the hold of your ship, with no other connection than narrow corridor and a personnel iris valve?

I was still learning how to do what I did, so I left some things as implied ... like where the BIG DOORS went.
Answer to your question is fore and aft of the hold big doors that I didn't yet have the skill/practice to mark out.

Since yesterday, I've "changed my brand" (of graph size) so as to be able to just simply lift assets from Starship Geomorphs 2.0, crop them, clean them up and then creatively assemble them however I need to.

There does not seem to be any connection to the cutter module

Iris valve access into the hangar ... ramp in the hangar to the standard access port ... it's nowhere near as complicated as you're trying to make it out to be.

Btw, where are vacc suits stored, there is no storage anywhere near the airlocks?

Because I was just roughing things out to see if any of it would work, rather than trying to account for every 1m³ on my first attempt.

Have you considered emergency access between decks when the power fades and the elevators stop working?

You mean like ... stairs?

 

[SpaceBadger]

Out of curiousity, what tool did you use for your outline? Notably, how did you fill it with squares.

I don't have AutoCAD as Swiftbrook used, but this can be accomplished in GIMP rather simply by adding a blank layer under the plan layer, then filling that blank layer with a Grid and sizing it so that the squares match properly with the plan. (I recall some tricky bits in making sure that the plan stayed the size I wanted while the grid got sized as wanted, but I know I eventually worked it out.)

EDIT: Oh yes, this also assumes that you are using a transparent layer to draw your plan, so that other layers are visible underneath it. Might even be simplest to just start off with three layers before you even draw a single line or curve: 1) bottom layer plain white; 2) middle layer transparent with visible Grid; 3) top layer transparent for you to draw your deckplan on. That way the Grid can help you in spacing and alignment in your deckplan, just like drawing w pencil on a sheet of graph-paper. That would certainly help in avoiding those "tricky bits" I mentioned above in trying to fit the grid into place =after= doing a lot of the main drawing!

 

[Grav_Moped]

There are eight cabins for naval crew, and a single barracks for troops. Generally the gunners have to share cabins. The cabins are quite small, to free space for common areas. There are two crew lounges, separated by a short corridor and closed doors, so everyone doesn't need to rub elbows 24 hours a day. Troops have their own common area and galley.

Consider giving the naval crew (including gunners) 10 nominal cabins but only allocate 32Td for them and the associated common areas (8SR of space). That is, on paper the gunners are double-occupancy, but in practice everyone just gets a smaller cabin and they have 2 common-use bathrooms. (Maybe the Pilot gets a suite with an attached office.) Troops get 16Td (4 SR) total as barracks and a common-use bathroom.

Each cabin has a fold-away basic 0-G toilet and sink, but those toilets are considered a last-resort option as they are inconvenient to use and have no privacy from within the cabin.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Given the extra space required for small craft hangars in T5, it saves quite some space to add craft in external grapples.

Which brings up the whole Tons/Displacement Tons thing again, kind of.

Maybe in LBB2 a 30 ton ship's boat either masses 30,000 kg (unlikely) or occupies 30Td of bay space rather than having an internal volume of 30Td (as with the usual representations of the canon air/raft, but I'm not sure I buy that either).

I think the easiest way to handle the "free" storage of small craft in LBB2 (and small ships in LBB5) is by using the +/- 10-20% fudge factor to provide space for the bay. Not all of it, of course; some needs to be allocated to landing gear and miscellaneous overages.

On the other hand, since it's a LBB2 design, carrying the Ship's Boat externally doesn't change the parent ship's performance even with the craft absent -- it'd be a 370Td hull, but would still be on the 400Td row of the Drive Performance Table. I'm ok with that...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Which brings up the whole Tons/Displacement Tons thing again, kind of.

Maybe in LBB2 a 30 ton ship's boat either masses 30,000 kg (unlikely) or occupies 30Td of bay space rather than having an internal volume of 30Td (as with the usual representations of the canon air/raft, but I'm not sure I buy that either).

I suspect they started with 30 tons of mass, and slid into displacement volume as the system evolved. LBB2'77 can easily be read as a mass based system, with a few quirks, but by the end of CT the Dton as a measurement of volume was well established.

One thing the mass based system does not work for is Staterooms. From the ship's perspective a stateroom is basically empty space with very little mass, yet we say it takes 4 tons "of space" = volume.

I have experimented a bit with pure mass based systems, in the hope that people accommodations would be "cheaper" and therefore could be less cramped, but it does not really work out that well. You can easily see the effect in TNE: If you increase the accommodations, the ship get lighter, you need smaller drives, you get more space over for more people, etc...

I think the easiest way to handle the "free" storage of small craft in LBB2 (and small ships in LBB5) is by using the +/- 10-20% fudge factor to provide space for the bay. Not all of it, of course; some needs to be allocated to landing gear and miscellaneous overages.

The LBB2 way is: Don't worry about it, it's a tiny detail out of the systems scope...

On the other hand, since it's a LBB2 design, carrying the Ship's Boat externally doesn't change the parent ship's performance even with the craft absent -- it'd be a 370Td hull, but would still be on the 400Td row of the Drive Performance Table. I'm ok with that...

LBB2 is very simple: There are just carried craft, regardless how, and they are part of the total ship, the "hull". A Subbie is 400 Dt with a Launch, when the Launch is, eh, launched, it is still a 400 Dt ship. There is absolutely no game mechanical difference between internal hangar and external grapples. The details are up to the artists and the deck plan designers.

The concept of hull size differing from total ship size was introduced with LBB5 and drop tanks [and drop tanks alone] (and the old school still hates drop tanks).

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Consider giving the naval crew (including gunners) 10 nominal cabins but only allocate 32Td for them and the associated common areas (8SR of space). That is, on paper the gunners are double-occupancy, but in practice everyone just gets a smaller cabin and they have 2 common-use bathrooms. (Maybe the Pilot gets a suite with an attached office.)

I considered it; they are naval crew, not marine animals, after all. But I basically ran out of space, and I generally prefer the flexibility of a dual-capable stateroom. The crew requirement is fine, but as actually sailed, I expect the number of people onboard is going to fluctuate. As is, you can bump some troops, bunk the gunners in the animal cage, and free up a pair of decent cabins. Or just double bunk the rest of the crew, or... Flexibility is good, shit happens.

Troops get 16Td (4 SR) total as barracks and a common-use bathroom.

With a bit more space, or perhaps a bit more time to fiddle with it, I would have given them standard cabins too, again for flexibility. Or perhaps four-person cabins, just for variety?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I was still learning how to do what I did, so I left some things as implied ... like where the BIG DOORS went.
Answer to your question is fore and aft of the hold big doors that I didn't yet have the skill/practice to mark out.
...
Iris valve access into the hangar ... ramp in the hangar to the standard access port ... it's nowhere near as complicated as you're trying to make it out to be.

Complicated? No, not in the slightest, but it should be considered. The cargo hatches are somewhere specific, and sooner or later it will bite the players in the ass as they try to cram something just too big through the hatch, or they landed in mud and realise the cargo hatch is buried in the mud.

Putting the cargo hold in one end of the ship and small craft in the other end is easy, but without any path for cargo, problematical. How do you load/unload the ship via the small craft? How do you embark vehicles to the surface?

Or something simple, that I didn't consider in my example, is how do we get missile reloads from the hold to the missile turrets? Let's see: Cargo hold, cargo elevator into the EVA Hall, through an iris valve into the corridor off the crew commons, through an iris valve into the turret. Not very good, but not TOO bad...

Because I was just roughing things out to see if any of it would work, rather than trying to account for every 1m³ on my first attempt.

Ok, but you presented it as a finished product, that you were quite pleased with, not just a first draft.

You were using the normal level of abstraction, with just a few "staterooms" and no details, such as e.g. storage cabinets. Most deck plans never bother with such detail.

You mean like ... stairs?

The Traveller standard is a mechanical hatch and a ladder, but a flight of stains would work. Stairs works better in gravity, but ladders presumably work just as well in 0-G, when the power failed.

CT S7 T&G, p7:

 

[Spinward Flow]

The Traveller standard is a mechanical hatch and a ladder, but a flight of stains would work. Stairs works better in gravity, but ladders presumably work just as well in 0-G, when the power failed.

Grav Lift (Traveller wiki, Interstellar Period Technologies):

TL:10-18: Gravity Control Technology allows the Grav Lift, which becomes a significant trend in starship architecture. Most Grav Lifts are backed up with wall-mounted ladders for conditions under which loss of power occurs.

So if you've got a Grav Lift, you ALSO need to have a backup separate vertical iris valve or hatch because ONLY THOSE have ladders!
(points at picture and smirks)

Except in published deck plans featuring lifts (such as LBB S7, for example) you don't always see redundant vertical access points between decks as a backup to the grav lift in case power fails. Now why might that be ...?

(checks Express Tender, just to be sure)

Yup, there it is.
3 out of 5 decks shown have no redundant vertical access other than ... a second grav lift.
Guess they're SOL if they ever lose power, eh?

Let's see, the only other deck plan featuring a grav lift in that book is the Marava Far Trader, and it uses a redundant vertical access hatch to the passenger area from ... immediately behind the bridge.

Ok, but you presented it as a finished product, that you were quite pleased with, not just a first draft.

I was quite pleased with how my first ever attempt at drawing deck plans turned out.
I was simply trying to present an approximation that could be used as a springboard for saying "you can make it work like THIS" rather than being a definitive be all/end all "this can never be improved upon by anyone ever!" statement.

I was trying to illustrate a notion in a way that provided an alternative ... not create a touchstone reference to be used in perpetuity of immaculate workmanship. I was simply trying to demonstrate that you can make everything fit if you alter the planform of the hull slightly (as opposed to radically).

How do you load/unload the ship via the small craft?

Zero-G transfer from the small craft to the hold with the small craft outside the ship and the door open.
How do you do it?

How do you embark vehicles to the surface?

By ... getting ... into ... them ...?
A grav vehicle merely needs an egress point. It's a GRAV vehicle ... it can move in all 3 axes without requiring aerodynamic flow in order to do so. If the grav vehicle is positioned to exit the craft simply by opening an exterior door, that's all that's needed ... whether that exterior door is at a planetary surface or in space. Interior access happens ... well ... from the, you know ... interior spaces.

So the vehicle berth is essentially just a big airlock with the vehicle stored inside of it (basically).

 

[AnotherDilbert]

So if you've got a Grav Lift, you ALSO need to have a backup separate vertical iris valve or hatch because ONLY THOSE have ladders!
(points at picture and smirks)

(points to picture and smirks)

My design could of course be criticised for having the main emergency ladder-and-hatch too close to the lift shaft. In case of e.g. combat damage they might both be disabled simultaneously. But there are other emergency hatches, enough that the design could be criticised for having too many external hatches, making it too easy to break in.

Except in published deck plans featuring lifts (such as LBB S7, for example) you don't always see redundant vertical access points between decks as a backup to the grav lift in case power fails.

Whoever said all published designs are good designs? They are mostly silly, ruled by the power of cool, just like the Type T: There is no reason to make it so long and thin, especially with the winglets interfering with landing. It's not a practical design, it just looks cool, very cool.

(checks Express Tender, just to be sure)

Yup, there it is.
3 out of 5 decks shown have no redundant vertical access other than ... a second grav lift.

And I would call that bad, too. There is an iris valve between the top two decks, that might be forced open in an emergency.

The Marava on the other hand has plenty of hatches, both between decks, and out of the ship. I could wish for a hatch, not just three iris valves between the Engineering decks.

Zero-G transfer from the small craft to the hold with the small craft outside the ship and the door open.
How do you do it?

So, you must stop the ship accelerating, EVA, and manually push 50 tonne containers into space, manhandle them (against 50 tonnes of inertia) into the cargo hold as they suddenly regain weight as they enter the ship. That sounds convenient...

I would dock the small craft, open the cargo hatch, push the container horizontally onto the cargo elevator (using a 53rd century fork lift), lower it to the hold, and push the container into place in the hold, all in a shirt-sleeve environment, while the ship is manoeuvring at will. Somehow that seems simpler and less accident-prone to me...

A grav vehicle merely needs an egress point. It's a GRAV vehicle ... it can move in all 3 axes without requiring aerodynamic flow in order to do so. If the grav vehicle is positioned to exit the craft simply by opening an exterior door, that's all that's needed ... whether that exterior door is at a planetary surface or in space. Interior access happens ... well ... from the, you know ... interior spaces.

Yes, an air/raft can be kicked out in orbit and deorbit itself in a few hours, putting the passengers into vacuum.

Or, you could load the air/raft into the provided small craft, seat the passengers into comfy seats, serve them drinks that they barely have time to drink, as you deorbit in a few minutes, all in a shirt-sleeve environment.

Or, since it's a military ship, the small craft can perform a quick combat drop in minutes, deposit troops and vehicles on top of the objective, protected by basic space armour, instead of having a GCarrier slowly descend in hours, a sitting duck for any defensive fire.

The vehicle in question might also be an ATV, less able to deorbit itself in one piece.


A small craft is all about convenience, it should be convenient to use it instead of the ship itself, to transport people or cargo as needed. To transport people and cargo between ships, stations, and space ports without exposing anyone or anything to vacuum, without having to dock or land the ship itself.

 

[Spinward Flow]

So, you must stop the ship accelerating, EVA, and manually push 50 tonne containers into space, manhandle them (against 50 tonnes of inertia) into the cargo hold as they suddenly regain weight as they enter the ship. That sounds convenient...

Uh, the cargo hold can be set to zero-G too you know.
Also, most cargo transfers get made when NOT accelerating under combat conditions requiring evasion.
If you want to take the wet navy precedent of underway replenishment, that involves ... matching course and speed to make the transfers.

A small craft is all about convenience, it should be convenient to use it instead of the ship itself, to transport people or cargo as needed. To transport people and cargo between ships, stations, and space ports without exposing anyone or anything to vacuum, without having to dock or land the ship itself.

Already ahead of you.
A 20 ton 6G LSP Armored Fighter can maneuver tow a 30 modular cargo module at 2G through an atmospheric entry and landing. The module is the container for the cargo to deliver, not break bulk carried in a big net.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Uh, the cargo hold can be set to zero-G too you know.

Yes, letting the rest of the cargo float freely as we manoeuvre multi-tonne cargo containers around manually seems like a splendid idea. What could possibly go wrong?

Also, most cargo transfers get made when NOT accelerating under combat conditions requiring evasion.

Who said anything about combat or evasion? Constant acceleration is the way ships normally move.

If you want to take the wet navy precedent of underway replenishment, ...

No, why would I?

... that involves ... matching course and speed to make the transfers.

Yes, ship-to-ship docking, something we don't have to do with small craft involved.

Using a small craft (that can dock to load) for the transfer would be like using a helicopter to transfer between ships, as both ships go their merry way without having to heave to.

Already ahead of you.
A 20 ton 6G LSP Armored Fighter can maneuver tow a 30 modular cargo module at 2G through an atmospheric entry and landing.

In your dream world perhaps, but not in the OTU with the design systems in CT.

Even by your own house rules, the craft would become config 7 Dispersed while carrying a module, and hence unstreamlined.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Even by your own house rules, the craft would become config 7 Dispersed while carrying a module, and hence unstreamlined.

WRONG.

2+ modules simultaneously ... that becomes an unstreamlined dispersed structure configuration (docking at right angles to the longtitudinal axis of the hull tends to do that).

1 module only can be trailed in line with the longitudinal axis of the small craft, NOT breaking the overall streamlining.

The 20 ton fighter can tow up to 4x 30 ton modules in a X pattern at right angles to the hull, plus 1 trailing in line with the hull (total 5).
The 30 ton fighter can tow up to 6x 30 ton modules in a hex pattern at right angles to the hull, plus 1 trailing in line with the hull (total 7).

I would say more, but board rules prohibit the necessary {redacted} deserved for such an obvious (deliberate?) misunderstanding of what has been clearly written and explained. You have impuned my honor and insulted my integrity with your false and misleading statement (and this is merely the latest time, not the first).