CT Only: Fixing the Type T Deck Plans?

[Spinward Flow]

The canon Type T has a flight crew of 10 (Pilot, Navigator, Medic, three Engineers, four gunners) and eight troops for boarding actions. I have no idea how they thought you could fit all 10 of the flight crew into six staterooms, even if the gunners were double-bunked. (Troops got double-bunked on the top deck.)

Staterooms

1. Pilot
2. Navigator
3. Medic
4. Chief Engineer
5. Engineer
6. Engineer
7. Chief Gunner + Gunner
8. Gunner + Gunner
9. Troop + Troop
10. Troop + Troop
11. Troop + Troop
12. Troop + Troop

12 staterooms, the 4 Gunners and 8 Troops all double occupy.
4+8 = 12 / 2 = 6

Pilot, Navigator, Medic, 3x Engineers all single occupy.
1+1+1+3 = 6

6+6 = 12

I'm not seeing the difficulty here.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Forward view for someone at a workstation between the bubbles.

But there are already too many seats (two per bubble)! Pilot, navigator, chief engineer... and an extra seat. That could go to the lead gunner, if we jump ahead to High Guard and consolidate the weapons into batteries. The "extra" gunner (the one who isn't the gunnery officer or the ones operating the laser and missile batteries) is then a floating loader/mechanic instead of manning a turret.

Eh, I wouldn't put any engineer on the bridge.

What do we need? Pilot and Navigator for starter. An optional separate Captain, perhaps? Optional Gunnery Officer sound about right. When ships operate in squadrons we need a Commodore, and a workstation for him? Perhaps even a squadron XO/Commo officer?

Maybe it's just there because someone wanted a window facing forward. (shrugs)

Probably more likely than we'd like to think...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Staterooms

1. Pilot
2. Navigator
3. Medic
4. Chief Engineer
5. Engineer
6. Engineer
7. Chief Gunner + Gunner
8. Gunner + Gunner
9. Troop + Troop
10. Troop + Troop
11. Troop + Troop
12. Troop + Troop

12 staterooms, the 4 Gunners and 8 Troops all double occupy.

Quite, that is what it should have, but the deck plan only has what appears to be six single cabins for the crew and eight bunks for the troops in three cabins. Cabins for e.g. the gunners is apparently missing.

It could be that the eight staterooms for the crew are drawn as six larger cabins, and everyone shares except the two highest ranking?

 

[Grav_Moped]

Annoying image attached. It's the main deck, stretched to match the taper of the deck plans but the lack of a "neck" from the illustration.
Haven't yet added the drives projecting from the aft end.
Haven't even started on rearranging the internal layout.

- Added 7.5m length
- Shifted flight deck 4.5m forward.

Very crude, but it's what that part of the hull ought to look like, mostly.
The flight deck bubbles are shaped wrong for the picture, though. LOL

 

[Grav_Moped]

Quite, that is what it should have, but the deck plan only has what appears to be six single cabins for the crew and eight bunks for the troops in three cabins. Cabins for e.g. the gunners is apparently missing.

It could be that the eight staterooms for the crew are drawn as six larger cabins, and everyone shares except the two highest ranking?

Right. PNMEEE (six single). GGGG (two, each double occ). Troops x 8 (four, each double occ).

Your suggestion isn't a terrible idea for crew bunking arrangements on a military ship. I'll probably work it out to ten smaller cabins (Captain gets a suite that includes a small office, medic is adjacent to med bay) at the same tonnage, a with a few gang washrooms (each cabin gets a sink and a "rather not use it" fold-away toilet).

If I were designing the Type T specification, I'd give the troops some elbow room for exercise and suchlike. Maybe that's what the cargo hold is for?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

If I were designing the Type T specification, I'd give the troops some elbow room for exercise and suchlike. Maybe that's what the cargo hold is for?

At dual occupancy, i.e. 2 Dt ≈ 4 squares ≈ 9 m² ≈ 96 sq.ft. per person it's difficult to get too creative.

The cargo hold should work well as general space when empty as long as you like bare metal walls and floors. Even so it's not all that large: 50 Dt ≈ 100 squares ≈ 225 m² ≈ 2400 sq.ft., large for one person, not all that large for ten people. Not even enough for a tennis court, much less a team sport.

 

[Jame]

....It's part of the (insert technobabble) which controls the fission going on inside the main reactor (the oval gray thingy). Boy, you Imperial really need to brush up on your Innerempire Tech....

You guys rely on FISSION now? O how the mighty have fallen!

 

[Grav_Moped]

At dual occupancy, i.e. 2 Dt ≈ 4 squares ≈ 9 m² ≈ 96 sq.ft. per person it's difficult to get too creative.

The cargo hold should work well as general space when empty as long as you like bare metal walls and floors. Even so it's not all that large: 50 Dt ≈ 100 squares ≈ 225 m² ≈ 2400 sq.ft., large for one person, not all that large for ten people. Not even enough for a tennis court, much less a team sport.

The bay's big enough for the troops to do PT except for running, and I figure there's a few tons set aside for exercise equipment.

 

[kilemall]

You guys rely on FISSION now? O how the mighty have fallen!

Imperium hogging all the muonium plays hell on the subsector ship power plant budget.

 

[whartung]

Paraphrasing one of the pioneers of the hobby, a successful flight was one where the plane crashed in a different spot than it would have without the radio control.

Funny, this (sorta) reminds me of a comment from a falconer. "A successful day is when you let your bird out to hunt and they come back."

And I can see how that worked. We visited couple that shared their birds with people. And the falcon they were showing, he was but a small spec far away. At least a 1/2 mile. Yet they were able to bring him back.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Annoying image attached. It's the main deck, stretched to match the taper of the deck plans but the lack of a "neck" from the illustration.
Haven't yet added the drives projecting from the aft end.
Haven't even started on rearranging the internal layout.

- Added 7.5m length
- Shifted flight deck 4.5m forward.

Very crude, but it's what that part of the hull ought to look like, mostly.
The flight deck bubbles are shaped wrong for the picture, though. LOL

And it kind of explains the "missing" staterooms. If the hull kept the same taper going forward (as in my crude revision to match the illustration) there'd be another 6Td or so added in behind the flight deck -- less because of the hull contour, but close. Move the low berths forward, put staterooms in the "office" and "chartroom" spaces, and put the office and chartoom in the present "low berths" space. There's your missing two staterooms.

Really, the low berths ought to be near or in the cargo hold or the ship's troops' barracks, but I get the feeling this is meant as an unwritten scenario hook rather than being a carefully-reasoned placement. It's a good place for the Mod/3 computer, though, which gets moved back from being ahead of the flight deck.

The missing "bridge tonnage" gets parceled out to the nose cone and the winglets in the form of sensors and antennae (and to some extent, it already was).

Next up: trying to figure out the (relative) dimensions of the side view.

 

[Grav_Moped]

In the illustration below, if you assume that what's at Arrow A is the port-side drive unit, and Arrow B is halfway down the side of the starboard-side drive unit, then Arrow C indicates the midpoint between the centers of the two drive units.

Thus the blue line is the hull (or at least main-deck) centerline.

The trailing edge of the tip fins are conveniently vertical, providing an orientation for reference lines between points on the hull and the hull centerline.

Drop those to the hull centerline, take them off (yellow vertical lines) to a horizontal (also yellow) reference line, and at least it provides proportional distances.

Edit to add: There's something going on above the aft centerline point: the sort of triangle between the fin and the back of the (clamshell?). The deck plans don't show that, but it looks to me as though the upper deck doesn't go all the way to the rear. If the lighter strip at the fin's trailing edge isn't just there to highlight the fin against the drive unit, that could be the starboard corner of the aft edge of the middle deck...

 

[Grav_Moped]

Now that I've got the main hull length (or at least an estimate of it) I need to figure out how far the drives stick out behind the aft end of the wing roots.

ETA: was trying to take a line between the upper fin tip trailing edge corners to get a horizontal line perpendicular to the centerline, but there's an amusing perspective error. It might be trying to simulate parallax, but little else on the drawing does that -- the only line of the ones it should be parallel to, is the forward edge of the "clamshell". The rest of the upper surface transverse lines are roughly parallel to each other.

ETA2: It almost seems like the tail, fins, and up to the front of the clamshell was done in two-point perspective, the middle also done in two-point perspective with a different vanishing point, and the nose with yet a third one.

 

[Grav_Moped]

And here's the side view centerline section. Haven't done any math on it though.

 

[Grav_Moped]

And here's the side view centerline section. Haven't done any math on it though.

This was an in-work scribble, just to figure out how it all fit together -- particularly the Ship's Boat and the weird "front window" between the flight deck bubbles.

There are two suspect bits. The first is the drive extensions vs the "fantail" (that is, what appears to be top aft edge of the "middle deck" visible between the starboard fin and the curve of the top deck "clamshell"). The "fantail" is only possible if the drive extensions are 3m long instead of 4.5m. The second bit is that I think I could improve the vertical placement of the "bubble canopies".

Also, I think I want to add a lower deck (perhaps part or all of the Jump Drive can go in there) that's split by the Ship's Boat -- basically a pair of drive nacelles. Might not need to be a full 3m in height, though. Depends on how the numbers look after I lay out the transverse cross-sections and calculate volume.

 

[Spinward Flow]

And here's the side view centerline section

This actually helped me tremendously with my own deck plan. It gave me more confidence that I was on the right path to completion. The trickiest part was figuring out the "right" (or at least, close enough) hull taper off centerline for a nice CLEAN 2D cone/triangle cross section through the main deck. I needed something that was long and narrow, yet wide enough to put stuff into (like staterooms and corridors and so on) in order to accommodate everything and still "feel right" overall.

I started from the aft engine room and worked my way forward ... guessing at when the internal spaces would narrow by another deck square to port/starboard in order to achieve the necessary tapering towards the nose. I actually got all the way from stem to stern in a 58 deck squares (87m) hull form and was wondering if I'd managed to get the taper angle even approximately right, since the deck plan looked more like a triangle forward stuck on a rectangle at the back. However, the artwork shows a taper that runs the entire length of the hull, so the deck plan wound up looking "not quite right" and my "bridge bubbles" weren't quite large enough.

And then I just drew a straight line along the side from 2 squares wide (3m) immediately behind the nose all the way back to being 12 squares wide (18m) at the aft end of the engine room (my engine room was only 8 squares wide or 12m) and found that I had gotten REALLY CLOSE to the taper shape I had wanted to achieve almost by accident while trying to shoehorn everything into the main hull using a single deck (with the small craft and cargo spaces located above and below the main deck, respectively.

So I started over yet again, using larger "bridge bubbles" that worked out as being a 5 square major axis/3 square semi-major axis ellipse shape that I could offset from each other by 1 square of corridor space through the middle. and cutaway the inside part of the ellipse for a wide port/starboard access 3 squares wide (rather than just 1) but with the 1 square fore/aft corridor space accounted for.

The next problem point was deciding how far back along the hull to put the bridge bubbles, and that's where your analysis came in really handy @Grav_Moped because I was basically doing what you were doing (measuring on the screen) to try and get the proportions even approximately right. I actually wound up with computer space both forward and aft of the bridge bubbles (to account for the 8 tons of a model/4fib computer in my Patrol Corvette updated redesign).

With a continuous taper from stem to stern going on, I also realized that I needed to relocate my fuel purification plants so they weren't amidships where I had previously been locating them. Turns out that moving them to the aft end of engine room "fit best" with the overall hull taper line I was wanting to work within ... and gave me the incentive to redesign my engine room somewhat (yet again) to tighten up the form factor of the drives to allow more access space "around them" out by the bulkheads so as to then put the fuel purification plant(s) "inside" the drive room at the very back. This then made a bit more sense as it helped sell the notion that the fuel purification system would also be "in-line" to filter fuel for high quality prior to pouring it into the fusion power plant as a part of routine operations, not just as a matter of purifying fuel chemistry after a wilderness refueling run. One of those quality of life/quality control features.

Had to make a few more changes to the layout here and there as things shifted around inside the redefined hull space, but I'm quite happy with how the main deck turned out on this 4th (5th? 6th?) draft of the deck plan.



Now I just need to finish up with making the upper and lower decks and I'll have a nice geomorph "pretty" deck plan to put to my ship's LBB2.81/LBB5.80 design specifications.

I was even able to figure out how big the wing fuel tanks would need to be in order to host 160 tons of fuel (or really really close to it.

There's a few extra deck squares for fuel around the drive room to account for, but the wingspan wound up being a trapezoid 18 squares outboard from the fuel scoop in each wing root. The wing chord from fore to aft was 14 squares at the wing root (outboard of the fuel scoop again) and 2 squares at the wing tip. This gave the wings a visually pleasing rear sweep of 18 wide, 8 long on the leading edge ... an 18 wide, 2 squares long rectangle for the winglets ... and an 18 wide, 4 squares long forward sweep to the trailing edge. Adding in the extra squares left over in the wing root and each wing holds 157.5 squares worth of fuel, which is within 2.5 squares of being 160 deck squares for each wing (and at 2 squares per ton with 2 wings, that's really close to the 160 tons of fuel called for). I figure that any remaining fuel tonnage is squirreled away in various otherwise "wasted space" of the tapered hull form here and there.

Hopefully I'll be able to finish everything and get it all posted tomorrow.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I managed to work out the bounding boxes for the significant transverse hull slices. That is, how far out they'd go if they didn't have the corners beveled off.

Except that I didn't save when closing Paint and lost it. *rages*
Still have the scaled top view sketch, so it'll be easy to reconstruct my work -- not a total loss, just annoying.

Then I can start calculating the volume. One interesting bit is that it really doesn't look like there'd be room for a ship's boat in the spot that the FASA plans say it's supposed to be, due to the way the top deck slopes aft and its sides slope inward. And the top deck isn't full-width in any case, despite what the plans show.

ETA: Top view sketch. Note the light parallel lines from about amidships to the aft end -- that's the limit for the upper deck area.
I considered adding a couple of 1.5m x 1.5m sponsons on either side of the Ship's Boat to somewhat mirror the top deck shape (these would hold landing gear and provide access to the ship's boat's airlock) but it's only an extra 7Td and I'm not sure whether it's worth the effort.

Also, doing the sectional slice at the flight deck bubbles shows that there's easily room for three-across seating. Pilot, navigator, Chief Engineer (or, if we're doing High Guard -- sorta -- manning, swap the Gunnery Officer for the Chief Engineer). That explains the weird front windshield between the bubbles.

 

[Spinward Flow]

One interesting bit is that it really doesn't look like there'd be room for a ship's boat in the spot that the FASA plans say it's supposed to be, due to the way the top deck slopes aft and its sides slope inward. And the top deck isn't full-width in any case, despite what the plans show.

That's what happens when you're drawing without 3D modelling being available to you. You just sort of "guess" and go with whatever "looks good" for the 2D art.

Also, doing the sectional slice at the flight deck bubbles shows that there's easily room for three-across seating. Pilot, navigator, Chief Engineer (or, if we're doing High Guard -- sorta -- manning, swap the Gunnery Officer for the Chief Engineer). That explains the weird front windshield between the bubbles.

If you do a 3 across arrangement like that, where are you going to put the access hallway/crawlspace/Jeffries Tube up into the nose cone to have access to the computer/avionics equipment forward of the bridge?

Also, from a practical standpoint, even if you put a workstation right up against those windows on the centerline ... what would you be able to see out of them?

Short answer ... almost nothing useful for where the ship is going.

Why?
Because the sight line out of them would be basically worse than a Concorde with the nose in the "up" position.
You would basically need to have another set of windows in the "floor" in order to see "down" through them towards any landings you might want to be doing.

Here, let me take your Side Slice 2 image and do a bit of markup on what you would be able to see out of those black markings between the bridge bubbles.

That is some MIGHTY POOR VISIBILITY for anything having to do with anything akin to a visual landing (let alone a precision landing).

Even with a Concorde style "nose drop" your lateral visibility range is going to be mightily impaired for any kind of VTOL, especially if the ship is oriented more or less "deck planes level" for a landing because of where the windows are between the bubbles.

I know the ship will have gravitic maneuvering control, so you could potentially do a "lawn dart" maneuver of aft up/nose down towards the ground to see where you're going for a visual landing (so more of a nose sitter than a tail sitter) before holding the nose steady while pitching the aft end down 90º before descending the last 10-20 meters or so to settle into a VTOL spot in a gravity well ... but I can't imagine wanting to attempt such a maneuver more than once!

After all, if you mess it up ... ... NONE of the failure modes are going to be pretty (or graceful) ...

This is why I prefer the idea that the bridge bubbles (port/starboard) are where the actual bridge workstations are located, and that the upper surface of the bubbles has a retractable hull shield to reveal with windows on the upper surface for visual control situations. You also wind up with a visibility range more like this with the dome shields retracted:

It's basically the difference between a bubble canopy for a fighter jet and a concorde cockpit with blinkers on the side windows.
The bubble canopy has LOTS of visibility.
The cockpit with barely 2 windows has almost NO visibility aside from a "soda straw" almost directly forward (where if you can see something and it isn't moving in your field of view on approach, that means you're on a collision course).

I figure the two black triangles we see on the art between the bridge bubbles are just "standard fixed windows" carried over from ships like the Type-S Scout/Courier which are intended for use as emergency backup (in case ALL ELSE FAILS!) rather than as the primary windows to be used during all visual approaches as a matter of standard operating procedure with the work stations directly behind/under them along the ship's centerline.

The bridge bubbles, on the other hand, are large enough to host a large 3D holographic display (or two) and a pair of acceleration couches for work stations in each bubble. That would give you 4 bridge stations (2 in each bubble) that could be set up to host the Pilot, Navigator and Chief Gunner ... along with the fourth station "available" for the Chief Engineer (when present on the bridge). That way, high level "fight the ship" commands and coordination between bridge officers can be done verbally across the bridge space, rather than needing to use intercoms to remote workstations elsewhere in the ship during "red alert" combat situations.



At least, that's my thinking on the notion.

 

[Grav_Moped]

First, this is SciFi. Second, I'm working within the confines of an already-existing drawing.

The center position doesn't really need to have outward vision (if it's the chief engineer), it's just a nice-to-have. And to be honest, none of them do -- space combat takes place far beyond visual range anyhow. But this is SciFi, not a simulation.

I'm seeing the bubbles as each basically containing a swiveling (perhaps on gimbals for 360 degree rotation?) seat on an arm sitting out in the middle of the bubble. Each seat has controls in the armrests, and there's a heads-up or holographic display projected onto the inside of the bubbles. (They'd be great remote battery director consoles under High Guard rules!)

Even if the seats are relatively fixed positionally, think in terms of helicopter cockpits.

Access to the nose (which, in the illustration rather than in the original deck plans, is almost too small for any personnel access) would be through an access panel under the "dashboard" instead of an iris valve. (From a tactical perspective, one person could hide in that space.)
Really crude sketch of the section through the flight deck:



The iris valve depicted is the one between the flight deck and the rest of the ship.
The inverted-T bits under the chairs are footrests.

 

[Spinward Flow]

think in terms of helicopter cockpits.

So ... excellent visibility for VTOL ...?

space combat takes place far beyond visual range anyhow.

Space combat will all basically take place WELL BEYOND visual range.

But there are going to be times when direct Mark 1 Eyeball views of things would come in VERY handy. Things like docking with other craft (for insert reasons here), including maneuvering into and out of orbital berths (cue Galaxy Quest scraping the ship on the way out of space dock) and of course, wilderness VTOL on terrestrial surfaces or on liquid lakes/oceans.

Yes, you'll have computer assistance for such maneuvers, but being able to "get a visual" for such precision maneuvers would be extremely beneficial, even if the direct visuals are just a backup (so if your instruments flake out on you at a bad moment you aren't helpless as a pilot).

But this is SciFi, not a simulation.

Uh ... the whole point of deck plans is to facilitate immersion in the simulation ...