How do you get hull length?
- Thread starter vader125
- Start date
DaveShayne
SOC-12
The old school way of doing it involves drawing deck plans that match the tonnage and configuration and then measuring.
HTH
DaveShayne
SOC-12
Or as a rule of thumb: Get the mathematic formula which best describes the form of the ship (ahem...) then calculate different possibilities until the volume fits...
This way, you don't have to drav the whole plans...</font>[/QUOTE]That was the TNE/T4 solution. Both of the FFSs have charts and formula to make the calculations easier. It certainly works better for those monster dreadnaught ships but for PC sized ships I prefer the deckplan method. YMMV.
GypsyComet
SOC-14 1K
Sadly, the T4 Big Book of Hulls seems to have vanished from the Net. While most of its content wouldn't be useful for T20, the lengths for common hull sizes up to 5000 dtons in all the configurations (in T4 anyway) were part of the table.
If you are feeling math-capable, the method is actually fairly simple. Calculate the diameter (in meters) of a sphere of the desired tonnage (using either 13.5 or 14 cubic meters per displacement ton, depending on which version of Traveller this is for). This number is then multiplied by a factor that depends on the stated configuration. The factor ranges from 1 for the sphere and cube, to 3.5 or 4 for Dispersed/Open Hulls.
If you already have TNE or T4 ship design systems, you already have those numbers. The final length is only worth getting anal about for TNE, in which the length of the hull also set the maximum aperature for sensors, and the maximum length for spinal mounts. In any other edition, the number can (and should) be freely tweaked according to the "TLAR Principle"(1). Under normal circumstances, any factor above 3 produces an attenuated-looking hull, particularly as the hull size gets smaller.
As a guideline, here are the ranges you probably want to operate with:
Needle 3.25 to 2.75 (HG config 1)
Wedge 2.75 to 2.25 (HG config 2)
Cylinder 2.25 to 1.75 (HG config 3)
Box 1.5 to 1.0 (HG Config 5, effectively)
Sphere 1 to 1.1 or so (for variety; also Config 5)
Dome/Disk 1.6 to 1.4 (HG Config 6)
Close Structure 2.0 to 1.5 (HG Config 4)
Open/Dispersed 3.25 to 4.0 (HG config 7)
Planetoids and buffered planetoids should, for drawing purposes, be in the Sphere to Box range most of the time unless you want a particular look for your rock...
(1) - That Looks About Right
If you are feeling math-capable, the method is actually fairly simple. Calculate the diameter (in meters) of a sphere of the desired tonnage (using either 13.5 or 14 cubic meters per displacement ton, depending on which version of Traveller this is for). This number is then multiplied by a factor that depends on the stated configuration. The factor ranges from 1 for the sphere and cube, to 3.5 or 4 for Dispersed/Open Hulls.
If you already have TNE or T4 ship design systems, you already have those numbers. The final length is only worth getting anal about for TNE, in which the length of the hull also set the maximum aperature for sensors, and the maximum length for spinal mounts. In any other edition, the number can (and should) be freely tweaked according to the "TLAR Principle"(1). Under normal circumstances, any factor above 3 produces an attenuated-looking hull, particularly as the hull size gets smaller.
As a guideline, here are the ranges you probably want to operate with:
Needle 3.25 to 2.75 (HG config 1)
Wedge 2.75 to 2.25 (HG config 2)
Cylinder 2.25 to 1.75 (HG config 3)
Box 1.5 to 1.0 (HG Config 5, effectively)
Sphere 1 to 1.1 or so (for variety; also Config 5)
Dome/Disk 1.6 to 1.4 (HG Config 6)
Close Structure 2.0 to 1.5 (HG Config 4)
Open/Dispersed 3.25 to 4.0 (HG config 7)
Planetoids and buffered planetoids should, for drawing purposes, be in the Sphere to Box range most of the time unless you want a particular look for your rock...
(1) - That Looks About Right
Liam Devlin
SOC-14 5K
Good Job GypsyComet! Ya beat me to em. (sets down his FF&S). 
Tom Schoene
SOC-12
No it hasn't. It's on the BITS site these days; I just picked it up last week.
QSDS Big Book of Hulls (900K PDF download)
Tom Schoene
SOC-12
Hmm, I hope that's not what it really says. One ship displacement ton should be equal to the volume of one tonne of liquid hydrogen, which turns out to be around 14 cubic meters. That's been the definition since the early days of Traveller.
Sometimes it's also given as 13.5 cubic meters, which is convenient for deck plans (1.5m x 3m x 3m = 13.5 m^3) but not so close to the volume of a tonne of LHyd.
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