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Leviathan Deckplans

M

Mithras

SOC-14 1K
Just spent a pleasant hour mentally touring this ship with these deckplans. I am impressed, they are the most logical, thorough and well thought out plans I've come across. Lots of lovely touches that ring true. What a great ship for extended advenures a la Star Trek. Wonderful.

Are the IISS Ship File deckplans, also by the old Games Workshop crew, up to the same standard? Is it worth buying I wonder?
 
I particularly like the 'alien-ness' of the Vargr design. Totally different layout than humaniti ships.
 
OK I'm lost other than Adv4 and what's on War Dogs site. Where are other variations of the Leviathan deckplans? :confused:
 
agorski is referring to the different ship designs in the independent supplement "IISS Ship Files". They aren't Leviathan related.
 
Leviathan plans are good but does contain flaws.

1) Crew size is astronomical, outfitted to Navy standards, No merchant is going to pay deck hands, stewards and gunners but would intermingle those jobs. Same with boat crews. Easily cut crew to 24 minimum to 44 max.

2) Cargo capacity laughable 70 tons with about 30 tons scattered through design for crew needs (That is excellent) but 70 is smaller than 200t free traders, ludicrous on 1800 toner when 1000t ships have over 500t of cargo space. Even the 200t pod doesn't allow for economy of scale so ship better suited for Scout/military rather than merchant use though there must be limited demand for this type in frontiers i.e. Outrim Void and Foreven sectors.

3) Poor use of void spaces, several hundred tons of space contain nothing. Worst is Deck F in which aft central corridor does not connect to forward central requiring going up and down a deck to cross 15' gap. Worse the Well deck is open over the pinnace wasting potential cargo space in short haul ships or recreation space i.e. ball court/pool for year long missions.

4) STARSHIP TROOPER drop tubes utterly worthless with no less than 4 boats who needs system to drop 4 people in isolation?

5) Air raft wastes cargo space, easily moved to Deck G or Deck F if that wasn't missing.

1 & 5 easily fixed. Others less so.
 
Agreed. I like some of the 'circulation' spaces. I imagine them getting filled with stuff that won't go elsewhere.

And the cargo? Screams scout-survey-exploration ship to me, not a merchant explorer. So I'd turn some of those crew positions into scientist-scouts, and some of the freed-up staterooms into labs.

Guess that's what the IISS did with the two Leviathans they purchased...
 
Mithras said:
Just spent a pleasant hour mentally touring this ship with these deckplans. I am impressed, they are the most logical, thorough and well thought out plans I've come across. Lots of lovely touches that ring true. What a great ship for extended advenures a la Star Trek. Wonderful.

Are the IISS Ship File deckplans, also by the old Games Workshop crew, up to the same standard? Is it worth buying I wonder?
Click to expand...

I used to own IISS and unfortunately sold it and I wish I hadn't now. It was probably the best ship plans book for Traveller I have ever had except for Traders and Gunboats. Not only were there some great plans in the book - I really liked the Mercenary ship - it also has these little pinned notes throughout the text that infer plots relating to the various ships which I found really inspiring. Its a great book but its quite expensive when it comes up on Ebay. Well worth buying though - gave me loads of ideas for drawing my own ship plans as they are also the best illustrations of shiops Ive ever found anywhere - I particularly liked the way the plans show where all the computer terminals are - used that concept in my own plans several times.
 
nats said:
I used to own IISS and unfortunately sold it and I wish I hadn't now. It was probably the best ship plans book for Traveller I have ever had except for Traders and Gunboats. Not only were there some great plans in the book - I really liked the Mercenary ship - it also has these little pinned notes throughout the text that infer plots relating to the various ships which I found really inspiring. Its a great book but its quite expensive when it comes up on Ebay. Well worth buying though - gave me loads of ideas for drawing my own ship plans as they are also the best illustrations of shiops Ive ever found anywhere - I particularly liked the way the plans show where all the computer terminals are - used that concept in my own plans several times.
Click to expand...
It does come up on eBay. I got my copy in October for under $12 with shipping.
 
Haven't posted anything in a long time. I hope revisiting this topic doesn't upset anyone.
I'm nearly finished redrawing these deck plans in CAD. I've made some decisions on certain changes (aligning bulkheads deck to deck, for instance) and generally just having fun. But, once again I am frustrating myself over the subtle, or not so subtle, disparity in the ancient way the game does, "math."
Drawing shapes around each full deck (including what appears to be "empty," space) the CAD calculated volume of all the decks taken together comes out nearly 400dt short of 1800.
Errrrr
 
Add the missing tonnage to fuel or cargo spaces. If that isn't to your liking, then express it by saying the equipment spaces doesn't shown real weight of the equipment as depicted by the floorspace. The last option is to just say they are apart of the ship invisible to the player; structural members, the ship's frame, conduits, under the floor spaces and other systems that needed to be to connected the computer system. Those don't always need to be expressed in deck plans. Just remember, players are going to ask what part of the decking they are going to needs to be torn up to repair battle damage or repair the computer network in order to make the ship work properly again. 😅
 
From these suggestions I found a quick easy fix. I am going to add a 1.5 meter "mechanical space," between some decks and incorporate the following changes
Eliminate the life boat on deck H since it is unclear how this boat exists the ship (through the floor?)
Eliminate the shuttle and pinnacle
G deck is now a engineering deck
F deck is crew quarters and cargo hold(this old merchant trader is being converted to a special purpose hospital ship)
E and D are medical facilities
C is now operations/computers/labs
B and A stay about the same
 
Terquem said:
the life boat on deck H since it is unclear how this boat exists the ship (through the floor?)
Click to expand...
That's the only viable option. And, really, it kind of makes sense. Doesn't seem to be called out on the plans or description, though.
 
Just going back through this.

Not the way I'd have built it, but I appreciate its design aesthetic. It's a nicely science-fictional design. Those J-torps break the OTU (as a minimum, the implications of them do), though.

It's maybe what the IISS would build if they were in it for the money rather than FOR SCIENCE! Maybe.

Someone complained about the small cargo space. That's been hashed out over the years. In-game, it's small because it's just for hauling sample trade goods rather than large lots of cargo -- it's not meant to turn a profit on the exploration cruise, just to find markets. Profits come from the follow-up missions. Out-of-universe, it's camouflage for the broken cargo tables in LBB2. If the ship were just J-3 without all the small craft and backup systems, it'd be obvious that there's no way to fill the resulting hold out in the boonies using those rules... then players start asking awkward questions and we don't want that.
 
Grav_Moped said:
Someone complained about the small cargo space. That's been hashed out over the years. In-game, it's small because it's just for hauling sample trade goods rather than large lots of cargo -- it's not meant to turn a profit on the exploration cruise, just to find markets. Profits come from the follow-up missions. Out-of-universe, it's camouflage for the broken cargo tables in LBB2. If the ship were just J-3 without all the small craft and backup systems, it'd be obvious that there's no way to fill the resulting hold out in the boonies using those rules... then players start asking awkward questions and we don't want that.
Click to expand...
:unsure:
 
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