Ship Construction Times

[robject]

By accident I happened upon an old post talking about how one Traveller player calculates ship construction times.

And I opened up High Guard, and The Traveller Book, and started back-calculating.

He suggests some invariant time for controls and life support, then a scale based on tonnage. I think that these estimates would include drive and sensor installation, inspection and shakedown flight. I also think that weapons are installed by the purchaser after delivery.

At any rate, I take High Guard's rule and extend it, since ships as small as 1,000 tons take 30 weeks to complete. That factoid allows me to adjust the rule to fit the ACS divide:

1. Ships 2,500 tons and over require from 24 to 60 months to complete, based on conditions, volume of orders, and the degree of haste desired by the ordering government.

Now for ACS, I want to approximate Book 2 custom-hull data. There's two ways to do this.

Way 1. Break it down and interpolate into the Book 2 table.

100	200	300	400	500	600	700	800	900	1000	1100	1200	1300	1400	1500	1600	1700	1800	1900	2000	2100	2200	2300	2400
10	12	14	16	22	24	26	28	29	30	30	30	30	31	31	31	31	31	31	32	32	32	32	32

Way 2. Normalize the curve and set weeks = (Hull/100) + 10. It's close enough, to the point where the difference just doesn't matter. Note the price skew in the middle tonnages. Nobody really cares. The Burrito Principle dictates that Good Enough is indeed sufficient. The resulting table is:

100	200	300	400	500	600	700	800	900	1000	1100	1200	1300	1400	1500	1600	1700	1800	1900	2000	2100	2200	2300	2400
11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24	25	26	27	28	29	30	31	32	33	34

Missing. Neither solution accommodate differing hull configurations. Again, it probably doesn't matter.

 

[Condottiere]

On average, assume that it takes one day per million Credits to build a spacecraft at an average commercial shipyard. At the Referee’s discretion, very large ships can be built in a modular fashion allowing simultaneous construction. This means the total construction time can be reduced by up to 90%. This is typically done only on ships exceeding 50,000 tons.

High-tech shipyards have superior automation and faster-working processes, reducing construction and customisation times. See the Construction Time Reduction table for the multiple for each Tech Level.

 

[robject]

I really like the modular construction rule there!

 

[RogerD]

Interesting that this wasn't addressed in T5. I tend to like formulae when possible vs. tables personally, so I'd use the second version. It's worth noting that Book 2 construction times are months, not weeks.

I could potentially see using the hull config's cost factor as a multiplier for the construction time. For planetoid hulls, you'd have to work out the rate of mining through the planetoid (or to keep it simple, just make it a multiplier of 1?) For a cluster or braced cluster ship I'd expect each pod or barge to be constructed in parallel (and possibly at different times).

In Trillion Credit Squadron (p.33), ship construction times match up with Book 2 for the low end of the scale and then vary more like the log of the size past 5000 tons, though it isn't quite that either. In any case, that table seems to cover modularity for large ships well enough for me.

 

[robject]

I *think* it's this way: Marc doesn't think that construction times affect the role-playing aspect of the game enough to define it.

I know that sounds a bit silly at first, since T5 is wide-ranging, and its maker rules nail down lots of things... we could make Venn diagrams over who thinks what is important to the game.

I also suspect that construction times are a BCS thing... e.g. wargame and strategy.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Marc doesn't think that construction times affect the role-playing aspect of the game enough to define it.

To be fair ... no one is going to "pause the game" for months of real time while the ship gets built.
How long a ship takes to get built is a bookkeeping/accounting exercise that happens in the background (as setting), not a roleplaying one that happens in the foreground (as face time).

Of course, the same lack of attention to details applies to interstellar trade rules in Traveller (because the game isn't meant to be an economics simulator either).

 

[robject]

Of course, the same lack of attention to details applies to interstellar trade rules in Traveller (because the game isn't meant to be an economics simulator either).

QUOTED FOR TRUTH. But well-meaning gentlemen do disagree. I happen to agree.

 

[McPerth]

At any rate, I take High Guard's rule and extend it, since ships as small as 1,000 tons take 30 weeks to complete. That factoid allows me to adjust the rule to fit the ACS divide:

30 weeks is about 7.5 months...

That makes the times given in LBB2 wrong, as the times given there (or at least in TTB) are:

• Type S scour: 9 months
• Type A free trader: 11 months
• Type R subsidized trader: 14 months
• Type M subsidized liner: 22 months
• Type Y yacht: 11 months
• Type C mercenary cruiser: 25 months
• Type T patrol cruiser: 16 months
• Type L laboratory ship: 14 months
• Type K safary ship: 11 months

So, it seems that a 100 dton ship takes 9 months, a 200 dton one 11 months, and larger ones may vary (as a 400 dton one can be 14 or 16 months). And the 800 dton ship given here enters in the low end of the time frames for a 2500+ dtons ship...

I'm not sure there's a consistent system on it, at least for those standard designs...

 

[AnotherDilbert]

30 weeks is about 7.5 months...

That makes the times given in LBB2 wrong, as the times given there (or at least in TTB) are:

It's worth noting that Book 2 construction times are months, not weeks.

30 months is 2.5 years...
Standard hulls are quicker, e.g. 9 months for a 100 Dt standard hull like a Scout.

 

[McPerth]

Well, Robject specified 30 weeks, not months, and he points HG, not LBB2...

In any case, I'm not sure to what HG he referes, as the one I have (1980, I think) says:

Construction Times: Ships of 5,000 tons or less can be completed in 36 months or less by any competent shipyard. Ships over 5,000 tons require from 24 to 60 months to complete, based on conditions, volume of orders, and the degree of haste desired by the ordering government.

As the time for up to 5000 dtons is said to be 36 months or less, this does not rule out the times given in LBB2...

 

[robject]

Dangit, it does read months, not weeks. That's me not paying attention.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

HG isn't very detailed, but TCS, p33 says:

That can be significantly reduced by pouring money into the ship...

 

[Timerover51]

I posted this a while back in the Cepheus Engine thread, but as it concerns ship construction times, it would apply here.

First, the ships take way to long to build. A 5000 dTon ship is listed as taking 428 weeks to build. Converting that into standard Earth years of 52 weeks, that ship is taking over eight years to build, eight times fifty-two equalling 416 weeks. Now, 5000 Traveller dTons equates to about 25,000 Gross Register Tons for a nautical vessel. A World War 2 Liberty Ship, about the equivalent of 1420 Traveller dTons took an average of 9 months to build, in terms of man-hours, the shipyards ranged from 400,000 to 800.000, with the $2 Million price based on 600.000 man-hours. A larger ship does not take proportionately more time to build, as the larger ship allows for more workers to work on it. A 25,000 Gross Register Ton hull might take less than two years to build if a bulk carrier to 3 or so if a warship. Before someone says that the star ships have to be stronger than a nautical ship, consider that a merchant ship has to be able to survive the beating of a gale in the North Atlantic during the winter. The G-loads measured by research and weather hips can be quite impressive. So the cost of the hull should be proportionate to the increase in dimensions and ship volume, not simply jumping by an arbitrary number for every 100 tons of increased hull size.

There should also be a major difference in construction times for civilian verses military ships. Military ships are designed for combat, or at least they should be. Civilian ships are designed to carry cargo and/or passengers. They are vastly different in how they are built. A cargo ship can be based a moveable box for hauling stuff. A passenger ship is a moving hotel, with the rooms being quite capable of prefabrication in large numbers for installation. Those construction times should be far less for the same size hull as a warship. A cargo ship with a few passengers compartment should be viewed as comparable to the Liberty Ship. In other words, a 1000 to 1500 Traveller dTon hull of a merchant ship should take somewhere between 9 and 12 months if it is primarily carrying cargo. A Liberty Ship could haul up to 10,000 Long Tons of cargo.

The fastest construction time for a much smaller WW2 frigate was about 9 months. The frigate would go about 1500 displacement tons. That is roughly one-tenth the size of the Liberty ship.

 

[kilemall]

If I were to create a formula for this, big variable for me is jump drive/starship increasing needed time.

As an example, the monitor from Imperium.

 

[kilemall]

I posted this a while back in the Cepheus Engine thread, but as it concerns ship construction times, it would apply here.



There should also be a major difference in construction times for civilian verses military ships. Military ships are designed for combat, or at least they should be. Civilian ships are designed to carry cargo and/or passengers. They are vastly different in how they are built. A cargo ship can be based a moveable box for hauling stuff. A passenger ship is a moving hotel, with the rooms being quite capable of prefabrication in large numbers for installation. Those construction times should be far less for the same size hull as a warship. A cargo ship with a few passengers compartment should be viewed as comparable to the Liberty Ship. In other words, a 1000 to 1500 Traveller dTon hull of a merchant ship should take somewhere between 9 and 12 months if it is primarily carrying cargo. A Liberty Ship could haul up to 10,000 Long Tons of cargo.

The fastest construction time for a much smaller WW2 frigate was about 9 months. The frigate would go about 1500 displacement tons. That is roughly one-tenth the size of the Liberty ship.

I would agree if the ship combat resolution system has civilian ships resolve as more fragile. Something like Starfire’s collapsing cargo damage.

Should be cheaper and faster to build.

 

[Condottiere]

It seems to me, that a lot of alphabet components were off the shelf, and only needed assembly.

 

[infojunky]

As mentioned before the is a vast difference between military and commercial ships it terms of construction. Largely it comes down tho the complexity of the equipment installed in either type of hull. But armored hulls take longer than unarmored hulls to construct due to materials assembly process.

With that I would base constructions on a base of gross size of the hull in question and the complexity of equipment installation.

In that I would set the base as xWeeks x (cube root of (volume/100)), which then would modified by the amount of installed equipment (i.e weapons in general).

But to be honest I am kinda a math geek so complex-ish number don't really bother me. But all of the above is easily displayed in a table as well.

 

[mike wightman]

Look at the build time for boomers and nuclear carriers...

 

[infojunky]

Look at the build time for boomers and nuclear carriers...

Compare and contrast those with the EEE class container ships.

 

[Dragoner]

The big ships are drag and drop pretty much, modular in that they build most of the components other places and bring them in. I was reading on it a while back. One of my sons is a marine engineer.