Ship Hull Type Question

[elofgren]

What does the USP code for each type of hull mean?

I can find no use for it, as the USP code for the ship is determined by the tonnage, not hull type.

Additionally, why wouldn't almost all ships be Spheres? I can't see any reason a cylinder is better than a sphere, and is more expensive.

 

[themink]

a sphere is very easy to target with a meson gun - in fact the way the rules work - basically you are paying for "meson gun armour" if you have a ship with the same streamlining but a "better" base shape.

ie a needle is better than a flattened sphere.

Also if you "upgrade" the streamlining from the base shape, I believe you need an improved avionics computer.

All my streamlined civvy ships and all my streamlines small mil ships are flattened spheres. It makes the deckplans easier, they don;t really care how good they are against meson guns and they don;t need to upgrade their computer (which is expensive). I particularly like the "manta" although "flying wing" is also fairly popular.

 

[Falkayn]

Originally posted by CrazyIvan:
What does the USP code for each type of hull mean?

I can find no use for it, as the USP code for the ship is determined by the tonnage, not hull type.

Additionally, why wouldn't almost all ships be Spheres? I can't see any reason a cylinder is better than a sphere, and is more expensive.

The answer to your first question is that it ties the design rules back into those used in previous versions of Traveller ... basically it gives you a single number that represent how big your ship is. Otherwise I see no use for it either.

The answer to ship shape is found in a table on p.157. As shown, a sphere has a -4 to AC vs Meson Guns compared to a cylinder. Not much of a matter for merchant vessels, but a big deal for military ships.

Personally, IMTU that table should be used to affect the AC of a ship all the time, although some of the values might not make as much sense against a vector based attack versus the point/area attack of a meson gun.