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Scout Explorer Starship Art Needed

Swiftbrook

Swiftbrook

SOC-12
Admin Award
I'm looking for a piece of Traveller type art to create a starship's stats and deckplan around. My concept is for an exploration/survey type ship, beyond the border. The ship will be mediumly armed. It will have extensive spare parts and high TL sensors and low TL drives for easy mainenace & repair. Jump 4 and Maneuver 2 seem to be a resonable minimum. Ship size seems to be in the 500t to 1500t range.

Mission profile is that the ship enters a system, refuels and orbits the primary planet/belt. Two 20t survey launches to carry out basic system mapping and data collection. Two 40t pinnances are used for dirtside exploration and surveys. A cutter or other type of boat is used for errands to support the four survey teams (2 system and 2 dirtside). After about 3 weeks of data collection, the ship jumps to the next system. While in jumpspace, the data is coalated and a final report is generated.

Based on the art, the ship may have an open hanger to support the small craft - and allow easy reconfiguration of mission profile including light carrier in war time. Or deticated grapples and slips for specific small craft.

Any help you can give me, even product name and page #, would be greatly appriciated. I'll post here when I would up the ship.

Thanks!

-Swiftbrook
 
Are you looking for a piece of art you have seen before, or are you looking for some one to draw a ship you designed?

If the latter it may help to stat the ship up first and then see if you can find an artist to do the job. 500 to 1500 tonnes is quite a spread.

R
 
Rover said:
Are you looking for a piece of art you have seen before, or are you looking for some one to draw a ship you designed?

If the latter it may help to stat the ship up first and then see if you can find an artist to do the job. 500 to 1500 tonnes is quite a spread.

R
Click to expand...

Sorry I wasn't clear. I'm looking for something new. Looking for inspiration. If the art showed lots of turrets, I'd design the ship around it. If it showed a large cavornous bay, I'd design it like that. I have an idea, I'm just looking for a piece of art to focus and define the ship.
 
Neato.

I might just have to break out my art tools again and whip something up.

Right after I do the ten other things I have to do, but seriously I just might do one up in a day or two, might have some time at work, plus lots of blank, scratch paper and pens....

Hmmmm, 1500 tons you say? I might have an idea...will post in the Imperial Art Museum if something comes to paper.
 
Magnus Thornwood said:
I might just have to break out my art tools again and whip something up.

Right after I do the ten other things I have to do, but seriously I just might do one up in a day or two, might have some time at work, plus lots of blank, scratch paper and pens....

Hmmmm, 1500 tons you say? I might have an idea...will post in the Imperial Art Museum if something comes to paper.
Click to expand...

Wow. Now that would be cool.

OK then some quick calculations.

Drives & PP say 15%
Jump 4 fuel 40% (actually I'm using MT so it would be 25% but this ship should have reserve fuel)
Bridge, Crew area, etc 25%
Weapons 5%

with small craft at about 200t, that means about 20% or so.

All in all, a ship size of 1000t to 1200t. With MT design rules I might be able to drop to 800t.

Maybe I'll warm up my Lotus 123 and start my design.

I think I want it to be at least partially streamlined. It just seem too dangerous for a ship with this purpose that can't land on some planet and can't refuel without subcraft.

more latter

-Swiftbrook
 
Really, sir.

We here at DDB streamline or better all our starships unless there is a customer or pure mission driven reason to not do so.
 
Update:

Aside ... My old Lotus sheet is a little buggy so it took longer than I wanted.

Looks like it's 1200t. No I don't want a Kinunir or Leviathan variant.

When I have more time I'm going to try to knock it down to 1000t. I'll have to give something up.

OK, spent some more time at it. Corrected my PP size (way too small), increased computer power which knocked down crew size. I got it in at 1000t. A nice size.

2 launches
2 pinances
1 cutter + 1 extra mod.

Thanks!

-Swiftbrook
 
Swiftbrook,

Walt Smith has a very nice 600dTon Sextant survey ship complete with deckplans on his site here along with some other great designs. It may fit your needs.

Note: Sorry, it seems that the link on Walt's page for that one design are broken. :( Perhaps if you contacted Walt?


Regards,
Bill
 
Swiftbrook said:
All in all, a ship size of 1000t to 1200t. With MT design rules I might be able to drop to 800t.
Click to expand...

From your mission profile/spec, I am thinking that you are looking to build something just a level above a Donosev in capabilities.

The main obstacle I see for you is the combination of Jump 4 and "low" TL for the drives; sticking with general OTU canon, you are looking at a minimum TL of 13, "above average Imperial" and certainly not too common on the frontier.

I would suggest you consider a Jump 3+1, or even a Jump 2+2 configuration -- lower-rated drives plus additional fuel tankage -- to push the TL down a bit.

As a fallback, you could take a lesson from the Leviathan and install some lower-rated, backup drives you could limp back to civilization with in a crunch. They would only need to be rated a level-1, which could knock their TL down as far as 10 in theory.

Considering other options, I think GT has rules for installing repair bays, but I do not have any relevant books on hand.

The only other alternative I can concoct would be to devolve to CT LBB2; I can get you a J-4, TL12, 600-dton hull there (with 20%+ of her displacement available for payload), and as a design exercise I have crammed a Donosev variant all the way down to TL11 with my mentioned-elsewhere-on-these-boards Mighty Hammer™.

Finding the balance between TL and performance is the main architectural issue before you in the spec you are mulling over...
 
Ah...umm.

My Noble Cousin Aramis,

While your most gracious render of our flat picture, seems to have missed a few fine details, which I will briefly point out in case you decided to do another round, which seemed probable what with the missing turrets line.

1. The section done up white in your initial render is actually part of the main ship. It contains the drive sections.

2. There is a line from the bottom of the bridge that runs to the aft root of the wings that is a dropable cargo/utility pod that can be used as a dirtside workshop/lab/base and that is actually what the feet are supporting, I figured when it wasn't attached, there would be secondary landing gear in the smallcraft pods and drive section or something...

3. And of course the turrets and doors to the cargo pod are missing. :p

Thanks again, it is much better looking in three dimensions. Someday, I got to learn that 3d computer art thing, or get the CrImps to start paying one.

(had to teach my computer the slang term "CrImps", from "Credits, Imperial" for the etymology crowd. :)
 
I like the art. It's not what I was imagining, but that's OK. I wanted some other ideas.

I'm not sure that the two 'cutter pods' work. They seem like a weak link in the wings of the ship. Is there a lot of structural integrity in a hollow tube in the middle of the wing. I could see them as engine and sensor pods, or shift them down under the wing and have cutters/pinnances/boats in a hanging graple attachment.

The name "Swiftbrook Scout" has got to go. Something much more vast or exploritive is in order. Swiftbrook is too much a D&D Greyhawk name :-).

Remember I envision the ship has a home base to many smaller survey teams in-system at one time. I was actually thinking of making it slightly bigger by doubling the number of dirtside survey boats (pinnances in my original design).

Thanks for all the ideas and art!

-Swiftbrook
 
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