My thoughts on deckplan design

[Golan2072]

Back to the topic...
I usually try to break away from the standard bilateral/linear designs; these have their base on RL sea-going ships, and might be realistic for streamlined starships, but a non-streamlined starship could be, practically, in any shape, configuartion and deck arrangement as will be efficient, easily defensible and/or imaginative. Armored ships would probably be more compact than their unarmored counterparts (less surface area=easier to defend), but even this doesn't preclude the use of several connected modules.

Just look at the Nostromo (from Alien), for example - most rooms have a radial symmetry rather than a bilateral one, even the bridge. The refinery it tows is even less cubistic - it doesn't have to cross an atmosphere, after all.

 

[BetterThanLife]

I am 2m in height. And I am, while tall, too short to play basketball.

Low Gravity worlds will tend to produce taller people. In most normal construction buildings, today, the doorways are taller than 2m. Most doorways are on the order of 2.13M. Most ceilings in the average house are on the order of 2.44M-2.75M (8-9 feet) with many quite a bit higher. If you are going to be shut up in something for a week at a time, with no windows, low ceilings are definitely going to make anyone a bit claustrophobic. It will be someplace that you don't want to spend lots of time in. (Even if you aren't my height.) In those circumstances I would definitely recommend at least a 2.75M ceiling height. Normal height recommended for Basement ceilings if you are going to finish or later finish them. It may sound like uneeded space and having doorframes that high may sound silly, however I did live in a house where the house was beautifully remodeled, it was very pleasantly laid out, etc. BUt the thing that sticks out in my mind, 10 years later, is that some moron lowered the doorframes to 6'3". (1.9M) It gets really annoying to have to duck to go through a doorframe.

Originally posted by Scarecrow:
That's fair enough. I do often feel 2m is just a tad too low, even for utilitarian ships. I'm quite a short person so 2 metres seems quite extravagant to me =)

Crow

 

[aramis]

Actually, there are good reasons for tri- and quadrilateral symetry along the thrust axis: to keep the main drive thrust on axis, when the thurster components are not.

Most traveller starships, especially the ones with deckplans, tend towards streamlined designs.

Ones without streamlining probably should have trilateral or quadrilateral symmetry...

If one isn't having to land, there is absolutely NO GOOD REASON to have the bridge "in the nose".

In fact, it could be argued the best place for a visual bridge is the underbelly of a streamlined ship... preferably with the pilot inverted... to maximize runway view.

Now, on unstreamlined vessels, the best mechanical arrangement is with as much inside the engines as possible, to keep as much of the weight near the center of thrust as possible. Hence long spindles...

The most material efficient designs are spheres...
The best compromise is a cylinder.
The easiest designs to manufacture are boxes.
(Octogonal extrusions are not bad, either.)

dispersed structures really are not going to be thrust nor material efficient for a thrust-based drive system.

 

[TheEngineer]

Hi !

Originally posted by Aramis:

Now, on unstreamlined vessels, the best mechanical arrangement is with as much inside the engines as possible, to keep as much of the weight near the center of thrust as possible. Hence long spindles...

The most material efficient designs are spheres...
The best compromise is a cylinder.
The easiest designs to manufacture are boxes.
(Octogonal extrusions are not bad, either.)

dispersed structures really are not going to be thrust nor material efficient for a thrust-based drive system.

I would like to add the factor purpose here again.
High TL surely will enable to rank purpose higher than material or mechanical requirements.

In order to do something slightly different, I would like to design a "mobile" jump and maneuver capable industrial site (perhaps a mining site/refinery...?) as a highly dispersed purpose oriented structure....

Regards,

Mert V.

 

[RandyT0001]

An important aspect of deckplan design for me is drawing plans that closely match the design tonnage. I try to get the deckplan tonnage within one or two percent of the design tonnage for smaller ships, those less than 5000 dtons. For larger ships the margin would be even smaller. For published plans, if you accept the "20 percent allowance" in the rules for deckplans then you repeat what happened with the Kinunir.

IIRC, in the original, 1st printing of Adventure One, the Kinunir was a Book 2 design of 1000 dtons. For some reason the deckplans provided utilized the "20% allowance" and depicted a ship of 1200 dtons. When Supplement 9, FSotI, came out the design tonnage of the Kinunir had been changed to 1250 dtons. To me this is an example of how a poorly designed deckplans leads to redefining what the ship's design is. That's backwards to me.

For non-published, personal use an allowance of 20% difference between design tonnage and deckplan tonnage is understandable and acceptable. For published deckplans that become part of "canon" that allowance should be much smaller.

 

[GypsyComet]

I actually played Kinunir shortly after it came out, and I don't recall it being 1000 tons then. My own copy is a UK edition from 1979, and states 1200 tons.

The other (and rather likely) explanation is the advent of High Guard between the printings. Book 2 did not have 1200 ton hulls or much in the way of rules to interpolate for custom sizes.

In defense of the 20% variance, even those of us who slow down enough to do deckplans are interested in finishing them at some point, and the vast majority do not, for some reason, hold degrees in starship architecture...

 

[Fritz_Brown]

As far as wet navy ships go (I have been a contractor with the US Navy), most have pretty high ceilings, actually. But there is an awful lot of crap that runs up there, as well: cable, conduit, air ducts, water pipes, etc.

Also, I have noticed that wet navy ships have a lot more holes than you normally find on a starship deck plan. All kinds of scuttles and hatches from one space to another. Little holes way up high for fiber to run through. Places where the deck steps up so you can run secure lines from one side of the passageway to the other. Basically, as nice as your deck plan may look, there should be room for all the stuff that comes from retrofitting, needing easy access to pipes/conduits, etc.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

BTW, by "pretty high" I mean up to 3 meters, or so. High enough to put three coffin bunks on top of each other, and still have .7-1 meter above them.

 

[Falkayn]

Originally posted by Fritz88:
Also, I have noticed that wet navy ships have a lot more holes than you normally find on a starship deck plan. All kinds of scuttles and hatches from one space to another. Little holes way up high for fiber to run through. Places where the deck steps up so you can run secure lines from one side of the passageway to the other. Basically, as nice as your deck plan may look, there should be room for all the stuff that comes from retrofitting, needing easy access to pipes/conduits, etc.

I figure a lot of that is covered for by:

1. Higher tech design - less room needed for conduits etc, ability to have small robots wire cables for you.

2. Holes are BAD in space, especially in bulkheads.

3. Accessibility should be covered properly. That's why my Lanthium Petal class has access shown for ALL of the fuel spaces, and for every electronic/mechanical system shown on the plan.

4. Most deckplans are used for gaming purposes, and so simply show the sort of detail a housebuilder might show on a plan for a new house, i.e. lots of extra stuff gets jammed in ther eby the people actually using it - perhaps including weird cabling solutions etc.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Holes are bad in water ships, as well. (You are right of course, in one sense, because air goes through a hole a LOT faster than water.) Navy ships are broken up into sections, and the sections are fairly watertight. Within the sections, though, you might be screwed.

As far as "gaming purposes", sometimes all those extra holes, retrofitted conduit, scuttles, etc. are very useful. There might be a way (not on the standard deckplan in the ship's comp, of course) to move between spaces in a ship, there might be extra wire/fiber in those conduits (out of miles of cable/fiber in a ship, about 1/3 of it is unused - cut off at either end, and left because it would be too much trouble to "un-run" it), there might be a painted-over access panel that lets you into the drive space.

All this is just to say, that if you have a chance to visit a navy ship (like the USS Wisconsin, here in Virginia Beach), go and look at the details. It might give you some great ideas for deck plans, as well as some things to make your adventure/campaign better.

Oh yeah, also remember that different ship types will have different levels of what I have mentioned. Cruise liners have very little conduit in the passageways on the passenger decks. Navy ships hide almost nothing from view, except in the Captain's quarters and the officers' wardrooms. Merchant ships will be whatever costs least (with a lot of continual cursing of the designers and their mothers).

 

[Fritz_Brown]

One other item that gets lost in many deck plans - plumbing. I blame it on the tendency to suspend play when a player needs to visit the little gamer's room. But, there is all kinds of plumbing necessary, and there is always a little room behind pipes, insulation around the hot water pipes, etc. Again, if you think your players could benefit, add it in!

 

[Drakon]

The thing that has always bugged me is life support. The air aboard ship has to be moved, as well as scrubbed (of CO2) and burned (of H2, CO and other contaminants) This requires some hefty equipment. I know tech level will mitigate this to some extent, but come on.

And the plumbing is a great point. When you flush the fresher, where does the waste go? Do you evacuate it from the ship immediately? Or does it go into a tank, for release/pump down later?

I like to see ships made as realistic as possible. Part of this is I am used to this world, and it is easier to figure out how to do things in the game world. And part of it is the joy I get out of anal retentive details.

 

[Ran Targas]

^ They do it all with Ionic Breeze machines

 

[vutpakdi]

Other things that tend to be missing are washer-dryer units, galleys, food storage and and other simple storage space.

Some of that can assumed to be built into the walls, but, even the walls tend to be a little too thin.

Ron

 

[rvatsaas]

I am proposing a laser incineration toilet. When the lid is closed, powerful lasers sweep over the interior of the bowl, water is evaporated and reclaimed, solids are reduced to dust and sucked into a vacuumm pipe. all pathogens are eliminated.

Makes fixing a clog a whole lot less messy.

an and added feature is a self-contained artificial gravity assist, useful for those times when floor plates are offline, or the autochef is out of calibration and providing insufficient fibre.

 

[Falkayn]

So flushing someone's head in the toilet is now a really nasty thing to do?

Remember than there is at least 0.5m of 'other stuff' assumed to lie between decks in your standard Traveller deckplan - a lot of this stuff is assumed to be shoved 'down/up there'.

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Egapillar: Actually, I think it might make a clog a whole lot messier!

Falkayn: You are right. It could make for some interesting gameplay when folks start thinking of what is shoved where.
(I have knocked my noggin and knees significantly more in three years riding ships, than I did in six years of flying planes.)

Also consider the "Don't put your hand there!" element. Relay boxes and old equipment in odd places, etc.

I swear the longer I ride ships, the scarier space travel becomes....

 

[rvatsaas]

So flushing someone's head in the toilet is now a really nasty thing to do?

Interstellar law edicts that giving a fellow spacehand a swirly is a capital offense.