I like to tinker withn old ship designs. I started out using the older designs to test the accuracy of my naval architech spreadsheets, only to find flaws in the older designs. Some I was able to find what the errors were. Some were in total disreguard of the rules. Have other people spotted these errors? Or have you "tweeked" an old design to do the job a little better? Post these updates here so we all can enjoy them.
New updates for old ships
- Thread starter JAFARR
- Start date
Loren has stated several times previously that the ships in the core rules of Traveller did not necessarily follow the rules of starship design.
My assumption is that some of the original ships were created with an earlier version of the system, and then never changed. Once published, GDW decided to support the printed stats over the system, which is their perogative as the publishers of the game.
Personally, I'd rather build my own for my worlds, just because everyone is on the same page.
It's just a matter of finding the time to do so that's the hard part.
Hope this helps,
Flynn
My assumption is that some of the original ships were created with an earlier version of the system, and then never changed. Once published, GDW decided to support the printed stats over the system, which is their perogative as the publishers of the game.
Personally, I'd rather build my own for my worlds, just because everyone is on the same page.
It's just a matter of finding the time to do so that's the hard part.
Hope this helps,
Flynn
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Hi Andy, I know you are looking for designs like I did over the weekend away from CotI but for my own reasons I have posted it in it's own thread. You can check it out here:
Type FF Fleet Courier redesigns
Type FF Fleet Courier redesigns
Thanks to all,
What I really was looking for was ideas like the nesting of vehicles in the small craft that Employee 2-4601 (where did that name come from anyway?) used in several of his designs, and how someone may have fine tuned the old standard craft.
Here are some of the tweeks I use.
Traveller tweaks
1. Magazine autoloaders: Based on Striker rules, I allow autoloaders for turret weapons. Of course this implies using magazines. Per HG and the missiles special supplement, a ton of magazine will hold 135 missiles and/or sand canisters. Autoloaders reduce this to 100 per ton. For CT & HG, assume that turret power also powers the autoloader. For MT use .1 as power consumption and weight. Cost 10,000 KCr. all systems. Minimum size magazine to install an autoloader is .5 tons.
2. Popup turrets: Normally installed on “Q” ships used in anti-piracy operations. Uses 1 additional ton per turret (13.5Kl), uses .1EP (25 kW in MT)to operate, costs .1MCr and for MT, multiplies total turret weight by 1.5.
3. Re-configurable batteries: At TL 13+ it is possible to re-configure which turrets are in which batteries. Basically this consists of adding 1000 CR in extra switches during installation. Uses no energy and adds no weight or volume.
4. Re-configurable hanger: At TL 14+ dispersed structure configuration ships can re-configure their hanger connections to facilitate carrying a wider variety of attached craft. (Similar to auto transporters today). Doesn’t cost anything or add to the weight, but must be specified at construction.
5. Due to the disparity in volume needed for hanger space between small craft and big craft, small craft are carried at 130% of volume or volume + 10 tons which ever is smaller. (Basically any small craft between 34 and 99 tons uses 10 tons of hanger space.) This is based on the fact that a 100-ton large craft is carried at 110% of its volume. The extra 10% equals 10 tons, so I reason that 10 tons is enough extra volume for anything smaller than 100 tons also.
I need to credit the popup turrets to an old adventure I saw years ago IIRC it was named "Q Ship"
What I really was looking for was ideas like the nesting of vehicles in the small craft that Employee 2-4601 (where did that name come from anyway?) used in several of his designs, and how someone may have fine tuned the old standard craft.
Here are some of the tweeks I use.
Traveller tweaks
1. Magazine autoloaders: Based on Striker rules, I allow autoloaders for turret weapons. Of course this implies using magazines. Per HG and the missiles special supplement, a ton of magazine will hold 135 missiles and/or sand canisters. Autoloaders reduce this to 100 per ton. For CT & HG, assume that turret power also powers the autoloader. For MT use .1 as power consumption and weight. Cost 10,000 KCr. all systems. Minimum size magazine to install an autoloader is .5 tons.
2. Popup turrets: Normally installed on “Q” ships used in anti-piracy operations. Uses 1 additional ton per turret (13.5Kl), uses .1EP (25 kW in MT)to operate, costs .1MCr and for MT, multiplies total turret weight by 1.5.
3. Re-configurable batteries: At TL 13+ it is possible to re-configure which turrets are in which batteries. Basically this consists of adding 1000 CR in extra switches during installation. Uses no energy and adds no weight or volume.
4. Re-configurable hanger: At TL 14+ dispersed structure configuration ships can re-configure their hanger connections to facilitate carrying a wider variety of attached craft. (Similar to auto transporters today). Doesn’t cost anything or add to the weight, but must be specified at construction.
5. Due to the disparity in volume needed for hanger space between small craft and big craft, small craft are carried at 130% of volume or volume + 10 tons which ever is smaller. (Basically any small craft between 34 and 99 tons uses 10 tons of hanger space.) This is based on the fact that a 100-ton large craft is carried at 110% of its volume. The extra 10% equals 10 tons, so I reason that 10 tons is enough extra volume for anything smaller than 100 tons also.
I need to credit the popup turrets to an old adventure I saw years ago IIRC it was named "Q Ship"
My names comes from the "employee number" given to the Hacker, the protagonist of the System Shock computer game (you could choose a name at gamestart, but your "employer" Rebecca Lansing refers to you as "Employee #2-4601"). By extention, it was the prisoner number of Jean Valjan (sp?) in Les Miserables (IIRC).
About nested vehicles in small craft, this ISN'T my invention - CT-LBB2 has such things, for example in the Yacht. It was also, ofcourse, influenced by Aliens, even that there the APC was stored outside of the Dropship (but then again, the Sulaco has SO MUCH OPEN SPACE to store things in, I guess that they never had budget cuts in their hull-producing budgets in that universe
About missile volume, 1 turret missile is IIRC 15cm by 15cm by 1m (and is treated as a box rather than a cylinder due to packaging and the fact the cylinders take a little more space to store together than their actual size). That means that 1 turret missile is 0.0225 M^3. 1dton is 14 M^3 (in CT and Striker), so it will hold 622 missiles. An autoloader should reduce this to 500 (a round number, isn't it?) and cost Cr10,000 per dton.
I like this idea
Reasonable, and should be doable at lower TLs IMHO, but should add 5% to computer cost.
Also see my Solomani redesigns.
Employee 2-4601,
Not arguing with your numbers, but for civilan purposes .5 tons with 50 missles should be more than enough to fight off a pirate, etc. As well as the cost of stocking your 500 missles in a half ton - 10MCr for standard missles. However, it's YTU do what you like.
Not arguing with your numbers, but for civilan purposes .5 tons with 50 missles should be more than enough to fight off a pirate, etc. As well as the cost of stocking your 500 missles in a half ton - 10MCr for standard missles. However, it's YTU do what you like.
I'm conceptually OK with the notion of robot engineers, just so long as you include a few extras to do the maintenance and upkeep on the rest of them (so the sophont Engineers don't have to; although perhaps that could be the Grease Monkeys' only function: fixing the machines that in turn fix the ship), but if you link a robot to a weapon system and let it pick its own targets and decide when to pull the trigger, you have turned your spaceship into a de facto warbot, which might (unless you're in Hiver space) very well run afoul of the unwritten part of the Imperial Rules of War that frowns upon such things.
Plus, the "dusters" at the various starports you visit might have a disparaging view of robots taking sophonts' jobs, and provide sub-standard service, inexplicable delays in delivery of parts, find the need for "unexpected" and expensive repairs in otherwise perfectly-functional systems, et cetera in harassing retaliation. (Negative reaction roll modofiers and all that.)
I've always figured that, at least in Imperial space, the crew requirements, much like the 4 weeks' of powerplant fuel requirements and (CT) cargo haulage rates, are fixed more-or-less by regulations rather than simple practical need...
Or Solomani - they tend to be far more progressive in the use of genetics, robotics and cybertech (though not Psionics - they were still part of the Imperium when the Supressions/"psychohistory" experiments were done).
Also IMTU (which isn't the OTU) the highest TL is 12 and robots are typcally dumb; so the menial labourer is replaced by a robot-handler (on the same Cr600 per month salary in the Solar Triumvirate) who gets a few-month training to get his Robot Ops-1.
P
Pickles
Guest
Heh, that bring good old Red Dwarf to mind - IIRC, that was Rimmer's only function. Second-to-lowest on the crew ranking, I believe ...
There's a joke in modern Air Forces that the aircraft of the future will require as crew only one person and a dog: the person is aboard to feed the dog, and the dog is aboard to bite the person if he tries to touch the aircraft controls...Originally posted by Bromgrev:
Heh, that bring good old Red Dwarf to mind - IIRC, that was Rimmer's only function. Second-to-lowest on the crew ranking, I believe ...
My concept of robot gunners is not quite the same as yours seems to be. On a civilian ship, they would be assigned their target and could only fire when ordered to to do so. For example, "Gunner 1, blast that pirate while I get us out of here intact. Gunner 2 fire in anti- missle mode." If a civilian ship gets in a fire fight with multiple hostiles, she usually is done for unless she can jump away or makes a critical hit early on to wittle down the odds. Which is another reason to go robot. Your gunner calls the shots, but your robot has high enough gunnery skill to target things like engines, turrets, etc while overcoming the negative mods to hit a specified componet of the tatget. At least that is my view of things.
Ah, but then the question becomes: why does anyone ever bother with sophont Gunners in the first place, given that robots are so much more efficient?
Indeed, robots are more (cost-)efficient at pretty much every crew position.
(One could buy a whole crew of Pilotbots and Navbots and Engineerbots and so on, and otherwise run one's entire starship without leaving the comfort of one's bunk.)
And I'm back to thinking it's probably some sort of right-to-work regulatory thing that keeps the use of robot spacehands from being widespread, at least in the 3I... 'cause otherwise, it makes too much sense not to be a widespread practice...
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
I had a theory a while back that skill level 4 dumbots are built into every ship system anyway.
[If this robotic/computer assist is missing then all rolls become harder with that sub-system - e.g. the m-drive "computer" takes a hit so the engineer has to go without all the diagnostic aids and auto fix suggestions, etc.]
A sophont provides that bit of intuition that the processing capability of the computer/robot can't match.
Putting another robot in charge of a robotic system doesn't help because only the highest bonus is used anyway.
Well, that's how I got round this problem IMTU, but under the rules as written, build lots of skill level 4 robots to operate your ships...
[If this robotic/computer assist is missing then all rolls become harder with that sub-system - e.g. the m-drive "computer" takes a hit so the engineer has to go without all the diagnostic aids and auto fix suggestions, etc.]
A sophont provides that bit of intuition that the processing capability of the computer/robot can't match.
Putting another robot in charge of a robotic system doesn't help because only the highest bonus is used anyway.
Well, that's how I got round this problem IMTU, but under the rules as written, build lots of skill level 4 robots to operate your ships...
Yeah, IMTU I presume level-0 dumbots are in everything as well. This is particularly necessitated by the practice, again IMTU, of not allowing "free flight" of vessels in controlled aerospace. The higher-tech (and higher-pop/higher-LL) a planet, the more likely it is that flying under manual control is prohibited. Even computerless small craft have smart autopilots that are capable of networking with traffic control on the ground and directing a vehicle along a prescribed & negotiated flight path, with manual override used only in emergencies.
To get around the whole issue of expert systems IMTU, I just go with an idea similar to yours that anything above level-0 skill just isn't achievable in a robotic system. But again, that's an MTU thing, not an OTU our YTU thing...
Sigg, you nailed it on the head. Dumbots! Just because gunnery or mechanical or what have you is at level 4, making the operating system for the robot capable of replacing a human becomes cost prohibitive. They still require human direction.
Example from real life: I was stationed on the USS Enterprise. We had two valves in the reactor/engineering spaces that were murder to get to in order to operate (fortunantly they only had to be operated very infrequently.) Problem was we had 1 man on the entire ship who was 1. qualified to operate them, and 2. physically skinny enough to get to them.
That is where a small engineering robot would have been extreamly usefull. "Go cycle valve XYZ" or what ever other command was it programmed to obey. Problem solved, evolution accomplished, and no need to find Hartz, find a temporary replacemen if he was on watch, etc.
IMTU, dumbots are basicly smart tools. Relativly expensive tools, but still tools.
Example from real life: I was stationed on the USS Enterprise. We had two valves in the reactor/engineering spaces that were murder to get to in order to operate (fortunantly they only had to be operated very infrequently.) Problem was we had 1 man on the entire ship who was 1. qualified to operate them, and 2. physically skinny enough to get to them.
That is where a small engineering robot would have been extreamly usefull. "Go cycle valve XYZ" or what ever other command was it programmed to obey. Problem solved, evolution accomplished, and no need to find Hartz, find a temporary replacemen if he was on watch, etc.
IMTU, dumbots are basicly smart tools. Relativly expensive tools, but still tools.
