Frontier vessel design criteria

[skyth]

One thing to remember about MT is that a jump-4 only uses 25% fuel, not 40%...Jump-4 with a Jump 1 backup would be 35% fuel, not 50%.

MT systems also tend to be more compact (Armor doesn't take up displacement space for instance)

 

[Whipsnade]

bill, iirc its 8 hours of watches in 24, generally broken down to 4 hours on per 12 hours. am i correct there (ie. thats what you mean by 4x8's?).

Shadow,

Exactly. Let me use a 24 hour clock to further illustrate.

Imagine you're on 4x8s. You'll stand watch from 0000-0400, have 0400 to 1200 "off", stand watch again 1200-1600, and then have 1600 to 0000 "off".

if so, is that 8 hours off down time or is that where "work" gets squeezed in as well?

Yes. That "off watch" time is when work, qualifications, eating, sleeping, and what little recreation get done. Someone on 4x8s would be on watch for 8 hours out of 24 and would have many other demands on the 16 hours they have "off".

and finally, bill would you be willing to expand a bit on what would bring about multiple duty sections on different rotations at once?

Those situations are due to manning and qualification levels. You rarely have all the men you should have and they are rarely as qualified as they should be. Let me use M division aboard USS California as an example.

According to the ship's officially promulgated watchbill, each engineroom required M division to man the following nine watches at all times(1): messenger, feed pumps, turbine generator, distilling unit, throttleman, feed control, main engine, charging station, and engineroom supervisor. M division never had enough men to do that however. Two watchstations, turbine generator and distilling unit, were combined and another two watchstations, throttleman and feed control, were given to another division. This meant that six watchstations had to be manned at all times.

Undermanning meant that the pool of watchstanders was limited and other factors limited it further. First, not everyone was always qualified to stand every watch. Time was an important factor. It took ~90 days after arriving onboard simply to finish the basic qualifications that allowed you to start qualifying as a watchstander and qualifying to stand those watches wasn't something done rapidly either. Furthermore, watch qualifications built on previous qualifications; you had to qualify as a messenger before you could begin qualifying for feed pumps.

Next, although qualified some division members didn't stand M division watches. The few senior enlisted, like those E-7 and up, weren't available because they were already standing watch as an engineering watch supervisor. Others were "seconded" to other full time responsibilities like the training division or damage control.

All this meant that M division didn't have enough bodies to provide 4x8 watch rotation for the six watches in both enginerooms. Enough bodies would be assigned to "senior" watches like main engine so that they would stand 4x8s while "junior" watches like feed pumps were stuck standing 6x6s. This was both a seniority perk and an incentive to qualify.

Your ideas regarding maintenance are spot on. Planned or preventive maintenance is a daily (or sometimes hourly) task on ships. You maintain equipment in order to limit the repairs your equipment may require. Much of my work day aboard USS California involved planned maintenance, work I could not physically do while standing watch.

Your thoughts about how systems fail are correct too. Maintained systems will degrade far more often than they actually fail. A properly maintained courier in Traveller isn't simply going to go POOF because it missed annual maintenance by a few weeks. The chance for system degradation will increase.


Regards,
Bill

1 - This was just for normal everyday steaming. During other evolutions like general quarters or maneuvering stations, additional watchstations had to be manned.

 

[rancke]

One thing to remember about MT is that a jump-4 only uses 25% fuel, not 40%...Jump-4 with a Jump 1 backup would be 35% fuel, not 50%.

MT systems also tend to be more compact (Armor doesn't take up displacement space for instance)

One thing to bear in mind is that MT jump consumptions and CT fuel consumptions cannot both be right for the same universe. So if you're using MT jump fuel rates (or CT power plant fuel consumption[*] or TNE maneuver drives or any number of technological variations that has cropped up in the various rules over the years), you're further from the OTU than if you're not.

Note that this has nothing whatsoever to do with being right or wrong; just with being congruous with the OTU or not.


Hans


[*] Oh, all right! A guy can dream, can't he?

 

[skyth]

Well, the OP did say that the ship was for Mega-Traveller.

 

[rancke]

Well, the OP did say that the ship was for Mega-Traveller.

My apologies. I just reacted to the latest post.


Hans

 

[shadowdragon]

thanks bill...out of curiosity, how many divisions did the uss califonia have?

do we happen to have any ex-merchies in our cult...er... interest group i mean.... here? getting an idea of how merchant ships run would be a handy bonus.....

 

[drnuncheon]

Right. That's is why I had a 3k Td hull in mind. I'd hope to have Frontier vessels be small enough that I could make lots, capable enough to defeat an equal-sized opponent one-on-one, and with the legs to allow it to escape from any enemy it can't beat.

Your problem with this is that a generalist ship (which this is) is going to lose to an equal-sized opponent that is specialized in their area of specialty. A ship that doesn't have the non-combat requirements yours does will necessarily have more tonnage to devote to combat-related systems that let it pack more of a punch and take more hits.

 

[spinwardpirate]

thanks bill...out of curiosity, how many divisions did the uss califonia have?

do we happen to have any ex-merchies in our cult...er... interest group i mean.... here? getting an idea of how merchant ships run would be a handy bonus.....

I spent 10 days at sea on a survey ship. They ran it pretty much straight-forward Navy style. As a guest, they left the option to me to either do it that way, or work the traditional 8 hour day. I went with the 8 hour day. Also, some jobs on board lent themselves to longer days, e.g., survey launch work. We dropped the boat first thing in the morning, and stayed out for as long as we could.

 

[Major B]

Your problem with this is that a generalist ship (which this is) is going to lose to an equal-sized opponent that is specialized in their area of specialty. A ship that doesn't have the non-combat requirements yours does will necessarily have more tonnage to devote to combat-related systems that let it pack more of a punch and take more hits.

I see your point, but wonder if a specialist ship is really the most likely opponent a Frontier vessel should be prepared to face. Should a frontier vessel be designed to face pirates/privateers or enemy combatants?

Maybe it would be better to stipulate a 50-50 mix between offensive and defensive weapons if the expected enemy is a combatant, then use the saved power to ensure the vessel has the agility to evade and/or escape.

I'm not sure what the "right" answer is - any recommendations?

 

[Major B]

Thanks very much for the insights everyone.

1 - This was just for normal everyday steaming. During other evolutions like general quarters or maneuvering stations, additional watchstations had to be manned.

Bill, I was assuming that for GQ, everyone would be at their duty position but this appears to mean that may not be the case. Now that you have me thinking about it, I remember reading something from WWII about sailors from various division on a ship manning AA guns or having other duties during GQ that took them away from the area they worked on normal watches. Am I tracking with you here?

Also, your description of the required watch stations seems like the key to figuring out what number of crew with various qualifications are going to be required. Can you extrapolate what watchstations might be required for a vessel with a J3 or J4 drive, dual 2G M-drives (for 4G total), and an oversized power plant needed to run it and provide agility 4?

 

[Major B]

Keeping the overall tech level of the ship low allows for more ports to be used as servicing places, i tend to go J2 M2/4 P4, with fuel for J4 (maybe 3)(more to allow travel along the XBoat lanes than anything else) the maneuver being tied to agility requirements. Use of energy weapons allows for less need for reprovisioning of missiles, sand etc. Tend to go best TL comp and a fiber optic back up to satisfy jump/ship size requirements, and forgoe the nuc damper entirely, but then try n get like armor 4-6 (HG).

Maccat, you hit on one of the ideas I have kicked back and forth without yet reaching a decision. Keeping the vessel TL low seems like a good idea for the reasons you mention, but pushing the highest possible TL for the vessel would help keep it survivable, allow you to fit more capability into a smaller hull, and in some areas make the design cheaper to build.

When I drafted the straw man specs in the OP, I was leaning toward a higher TL design with the additional maintenance and engineering personnel added to allow the ship to better maintain itself between periodic returns to a port capable of doing refits. Any thought or recommendations on which line of thought is better?

I'm also struggling with your point on energy weapons versus those requiring ammo stores. Since the MT designs require very large power plants to provide agility, I was hoping to use missiles for at least part of the offensive armament and sandcasters for defensive armamnet in order to reduce overall power plant size. Another tradeoff where I'm not sure what would be better. Any thoughts?

 

[Whipsnade]

I was assuming that for GQ, everyone would be at their duty position but this appears to mean that may not be the case. Now that you have me thinking about it, I remeber reading something from WWII about sailors from various division on a ship manning AA guns or having other duties during GQ that took them away from the area they worked on normal watches. Am I tracking with you here?

Major B,

Yes, you're tracking.

Any ship will have something called a "watchstanding and evolution bill". It lists all the different manning conditions a ship could expect and will then list where everyone is supposed to be during those conditions. People from various divisions can and are scattered from hell to breakfast during any given condition.

Take GQ or battle stations. I worked in the enginerooms, but my GQ post for a few years was in a repair locker handling damage control tasks. Before and after being assigned to that repair locker, I stood GQ watches in an engineroom.

If memory serves, some of the manning conditions(1) were normal steaming, GQ, maneuvering, condition 3 or wartime steaming, and man overboard. There were others I'm sure I've forgotten.

Also, your description of the requied watch stations seems like the key to figuring out what number of crew with various qualifications are going to be required.

I think it's the other way around.

The rules tell us how many people are required for so many dTons of equipment. I think we need to take that number and then figure out what they're doing, not the other way around.

I say this because we've no earthly idea what really constitutes a jump drive, a power plant, or a maneuver drive in the 57th Century. We don't know how they operate or how they're controlled specifically enough to state "We'll need a watchstander monitoring the frommitz boards".

Sometimes we tend to look too deeply into the setting. The materials weren't written to support that level analysis. It's like Hal's many attempts to wrinkle out naval budgets from a paltry handful of facts. We just don't know enough and we'll never know enough. It's a game and not a detailed manning guide to Far Future warships.

It'll be broad brush strokes only and nowhere as precise as "three frommitz board watches per 100dTon of jump drive". Sorry.

Can you extrapolate what watchstations might be required for a vessel with a J3 or J4 drive, dual 2G M-drives (for 4G total), and an oversized power plant needed to run it and provide agility 4?

Give me the engineering department numbers for such a vessel and I'll take a stab at it. It will be a WAG however. And remember, size counts. You can build a 100dTon courier with that performance and you can build a 100,000dTons dreadnought with that performance too.


Regards,
Bill

1 - By manning conditions I'm not referring to those various physical hatch conditions like X-ray or Circle William aboard a ship. I'm referring to where everyone is supposed to be during certain evolutions.

 

[Major B]

Give me the engineering department numbers for such a vessel and I'll take a stab at it. It will be a WAG however. And remember, size counts. You can build a 100dTon courier with that performance and you can build a 100,000dTons dreadnought with that performance too.

The only example I could give you now would be the redone Kinunir I posted recently - but it's fitting since that project prompted this whole line of questions.

When I did the Kinunir, I first only intended to see if I could take a CT design and "make it work" using the MT design sequence. After that I decided to flesh it out as a setting for an adventure episode. The problems with this were many. The original Kinunir was lacking in a number of ways, and my redesign only fixed some of the minor problems (and created some new ones that were by-products of doing a conversion). That is why I want to design a ship from scratch and see how well I can match a ship to the mission it is intended for.

IIRC, we discussed the large crew required for the black globe generator. That was one of the problems the conversion presented. I tried to explain it by devising four subdivisions for the black globe crew - one for Field Generation and Maintenance, another for operating the Field Interrupt (flicker), another for Energy Management (diverting or bleeding off the absorbed energy) and finally a supervisory section that oversaw the other three (and backed them up). But I did that without any thought for what the watch rotation for the screens division might be.

Probably too much background, but I wanted to explain a little of what got me thinking along these lines and wanting to get a plausible picture of how the crew really worked.

Back on subject. The converted Kinunir displaces 1250 tons, has 192 tons of power plant (only 23 tons constitute the normal manuever power that must run constantly, the rest is for combat weapons or maneuver), 138 tons of maneuver drive (63 tons of that are used for normal daily operation), and 63 tons of jump drive. The design sequence gives a total engineering crew of 4 (that I broke down as an E7, E5, E3, and E2 and then added one officer from the command crew who was dual-hatted as the engineer and logistics officer). When I derived the MOS (or ratings) for the four engineers I made the E2 an 11H Propulsion Systems Tech, the E3 a 11G Jump Systems Tech, the E5 a 11F Power Systems Tech, and the E7 an 11E Engineering CPO) (MOS codes are MTU, not from MT). Does that make sense to you or should I have made them all generalists so they could man a varied watch schedule?

 

[Maccat]

RE Frontier Escort(s)

Low tech Level:
Allows extended operation (including refit) in frontier areas of operation.
Prevents loss of high tech advantage through capture.
Has an aspect of "blending in" to the areas ships and capabilities.
One's opposing forces are *also* low TL, will be an ~even fight.
Imperium disallows PAs, mesons, nuclear missiles (even dampers/screens?!)
maybe having a nuc damper "hidden" in the ship as an ace.
Allows client states/aspiring members/secondary ports to make ships.
Works well with merchant/escort roles, often J1, 2.
Has a "Q Ship" feel.
Aspect of (in HG) ship size limited by computer, hence TL, so a big ship "alone" *is* high TL.
I tend to like the lower TL stuff anyhow, it's personal YMMV.

Manning versus backup drives...
I could see the extra manning working fine, the back-up drives comes from that leviathan, (sorta) from the T4 pocket empires, where operational range is extremely limited by TL (hence jump), and LBB2 where one can have high jump ability for some (smaller) ships at lower than HG tech levels. Mostly i just figure, *especially* for a scout/exploration mission (arguement could be made for system survey/resurvey), a dual set of drives allows for definite drive survival 1 year out, 1 year back. Added bonus of battlefield survivability, vague potential to sell (!) the extra drives. Using a set of back-up drives *dramatically* limits your ship's capabilities (using HG). This prevents the M6 Ag6 unhittable "super" ships (another reason why i favor lower TL and/or lower ship capabilities)

Energy weapons vs Agility...
Not familiar with the MT design stuff, use LBB2, HG, or the hgs software, (or T4) so caveat. in T4 the imperium started/formed with TL C/12. HG combat really favors either missiles or spinals, and fighters can be really (REALLY) hard to hit. TCS doesn't count ammo costs. From the missiles supplement, a Nuc warhead for a missile is 1MCr minumum or somesuch, so all these volleys of nuclear missiles cost a LOT of MCr. a PA bay mount has radiation effects, no ammo cost (or carriage), and is "Imperium Only". Pulse lasers allow better effect vis armor.
I use usually /2 computers (no EP rqt) for small craft, mayyybe up to a /4 for super high tech (and expensive!) ones, thereby it's possible for a starship to have a high enough computer advantage to be able to hit a fighter without excessive battery size requirements. Maneuver 4 lets fighters at least be able to hit each other...For Starships proper i use ~kts:M, ~1000nm rg:J1, meaning Turbinia destroyer 40kts=M4 2000nm range would be J1 w/ fuel for 2 jumps. This limits agility, and fights are more about fleet deployment, sheer tonnage advantage, and i favor more defensive batteries (like repulsors!) than most.

All that said, results in (a lot!) of compromises, half the fun! some examples genned with hgs of the stuff i'm talking about (also search in fleet for TL7 DB / TL9 DE Tarantas Class):

For the BCS/TCS thread:
uses double occupancy (boo!) no marines (double boo!) only a G-Carrier (grrr!) no frozen watch...

Shiner Class
Type: Light Escort

USP
LE-6433452-440000-20003-0 MCr 549.909 600 Tons
Bat Bear 3 1 1 Crew: 23
Bat 3 1 1 TL: 12

Cargo: 11.000 Fuel: 264.000 EP: 24.000 Agility: 3 Shipboard Security Detail: 1 Pulse Lasers
Craft: 1 x 8T G-Carrier
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification
Backups: 1 x Jump 2 Drive

Architects Fee: MCr 5.499 Cost in Quantity: MCr 439.927

Back up drive example, P3 for (some) agility, single occupancy (yay!) a platoon of marines (yay yay!) no armor (urk!) no frozen watch, only a boat, 2t (!) cargo... Fuel for J4/J3 plus damageable. Factor 5s on the BL n msl crit those 400t corsairs...

Type: Frontier Escort TLB

USP
FE-A122352-060000-50005-0 MCr 1,892.014 1.8 KTons
Bat Bear 2 1 1 Crew: 70
Bat 2 1 1 TL: 11

Cargo: 2.000 Fuel: 774.000 EP: 54.000 Agility: 2 Shipboard Security Detail: 2 Marines: 42
Craft: 1 x 30T Ship's Boat
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification
Backups: 1 x 2G Maneuver Drive 1 x Jump 2 Drive 1 x Factor 3 Power Plant 1 x Model/3fib Computer

Architects Fee: MCr 18.920 Cost in Quantity: MCr 1,513.611

Same compromising, has Armor 4, only P2, J3 fuel, some cargo, like it more
Type: Frontier EscB TLB

USP
FE-A122252-460000-50005-0 MCr 1,756.980 1.8 KTons
Bat Bear 2 1 1 Crew: 69
Bat 2 1 1 TL: 11

Cargo: 45.000 Fuel: 576.000 EP: 36.000 Agility: 1 Shipboard Security Detail: 2 Marines: 42
Craft: 1 x 30T Ship's Boat
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification
Backups: 1 x 2G Maneuver Drive 1 x Jump 2 Drive 1 x Factor 2 Power Plant 1 x Model/3fib Computer

Architects Fee: MCr 17.570 Cost in Quantity: MCr 1,405.584

Example of a bay PA, J4 fuel, no back up drives, no boats (some cargo for it possible) crew standard stats, marines (Company!) double occupancy, 2x watches (163 low). Agility? we have a PA! this (sorta) for the 20BCS thread

Ship: FrigatePA

USP
FP-C433363-450000-00805-0 MCr 2,043.658 3 KTons
Bat Bear 4 1 2 Crew: 163
Bat 4 1 2 TL: 12

Cargo: 66.500 Frozen Watch (x2) Fuel: 1,290.000 EP: 90.000 Agility: 0 Shipboard Security Detail: 3 Marines: 127
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification
Backups: 1 x Model/3fib Computer

Architects Fee: MCr 20.437 Cost in Quantity: MCr 1,634.926

said tarantas, J2 fuel, J1, mix of TL7/9 my "archetypical" frontier ship skimming the TL9 boundry to outback in the wilds
Tarantas Class Destroyer Escort
DB A2122B2 440000 40007 0 MCr 728.429 1500 Tons
bat 2 1 1 TL=9
Crew=25
pp=3 low=36 Marines=42 Cargo=77 Fuel=390 Ag=1 2xSboat
EAg=2 Frozen Watch=1 (30EP)

(eek! this got long sorry all!) hope this helps!