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MGT Only: The Sheriff John Brown, scout/courier conversion

The Sheriff John Brown is a heavily modified scout/courier owned by the local subsector branch of the Imperial Ministry of Justice. It began life as the Curies’ Curiosity, a stock scout/courier commissioned by the ISSS, and then sold on to the IMOJ as surplus. It has been modified for use as a prisoner transfer ship, specifically, as a “sleeper ship”, where the prisoners are kept in low berths for the Journey, to reduce the risk of break-outs.

The modifications were extensive, involving changes to large areas of the scout/courier’s hull. One of the staterooms and the existing common area were removed, with the common area being turned into fuel tankage and the stateroom converted to a new common area. The half the ships fuel purifiers were been removed, and the Air/raft hanger was been converted to a small cargo bay, to give the ship a minimal cargo carrying ability as the lower deck bay has been re-purposed.

The lower-level fuel tank was completely removed, as the ship no longer needed the 14 week endurance of the stock design. Instead, the whole lower deck was turned into a low berth deck with 48 standing-type low berths installed back to back.

Entry to the deck is on the port side, where the probe drone hanger would be on a normal Scout/Courier, along with the only access hatch to the upper deck (the starboard side access hatch has been removed for security reasons). This area is partitioned off form the rest of the deck be internal walls, with only a single door leading into the low berth deck, again for added security. Space on the deck is rather tight, with not much room between the rows of low berths. To reduce the risk of prisoners trying to use the narrow confines to their advantage, prisoners are loaded singly, with only one conscious prisoner at any one time, and the next is not allowed on the ship until the previous prisoner is sealed in his low berth and “under”. While in flight, the whole deck is kept de-pressurized, including the entry room.

The ship has a regular crew of four:
Jessica Berthold, pilot, navigator and ships captian.
Robert Berthold, Engineer, 1st officer and Jessica’s husband.
Dr. Karl Urdan, ships medic and legal affairs officer.
And Lt. Justin “Justice” Jones, ships security officer and gunner.

The Bertholds and Dr. Urban are contractors on 4 year contracts the IMOJ, with only Lt Jones being a full time IMOJ employee. Normally, the Bertholds share a stateroom and the other two have one each, but the cabins can all be configured to double occupancy, if there is need to take an extra passenger along. This is sometimes required, normally either and extra security officer escorting an exceptionally dangerous convict, or a witness being taken to give evidence at the prisoners trial at the destination world.

The Sheriff John Brown has a roughly circular run though the subsector, picking up and moving prisoners from system to system as needed. Prisoners may be moved for any number of reasons, but some of the more common are for extradition for crimes committed on another world, and transfer to a off world prison from low-pop worlds without the facilities to administer the mandated punishment. Normally, the John Brown is carrying 24-36 prisoners, and will off-load less than half a dozen prisoners at any given stop, and will gain a similar amount.
 
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ship stats:

Hull, 100 tons, streamlined (2.2 MCr)
Armour: Crystaliron, 4 pts) (5 tons, 0.4 MCr)
Jump Drive A, J2 (10 tons, 10MCr)
Maneuver Drive A, 2G (2 tons, 4 MCr)
Power plant A (4tons, 8 MCr)
Fuel: One Jump 2 pus 4 weeks (24 tons)
Bridge (10 tons, 0.5MCr)
Computer: mod 1 Bis (0.45 MCr)
Programs:
Jump control/2 (0.2 Mcr)
Library/0
Maneuver/0
Electronics: Military sensors (2 tons, 1MCr)
Weapons Triple Turret, 3x Pulse Laser (1 ton, 2.5 MCr)
Fuel processors: 1 ton, 0.05 MCr
3x staterooms (12 tons, 1.5 MCr)
48 Low Berths (25 tons, 1.3Mcr)
Cargo, 4 tons.

Total cost 34.9 MCr. Maintenance costs 2,658 Cr/month Life support 10,800 Cr/month. Monthly mortgage costs 132,917 Cr/Month.

Total per month costs: 146,375 /month under mortgage, 13,408 after mortgage.
Crew: 4 (pilot, engineer, Medic, security officer)
 
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I came up with this design basically to pass time on a long night shift. I keep hearing mention of the scout/courier as one of the most common ships in the 3I, and that many modifcations for it exist, so i thought i would have a go at making one.

I orginally planned to fluff it as the "Easyjet of the 3I", a low-budget mass passenger carrier, running a fixed, 1 or 2 jump route between a pair of high pop worlds for those who can't afford better passage. However, after designing it, i realised that, unless I'd done my sums wrong, the ship isn't commerically viable (it'd need to conistantly move something like 120-150 passengers every month to break even on its monthly costs and mortgage, not counting crew salaries).

So, the ship i'd just designed had to by someone who could afford to run it at a loss. That means a non-profit organisation, that had need to move a significant number of people interstellar distances and wasn't to bothered about the living conditions of those people.

And so it became a prisoner tranfer ship. I didn't want to tie it to a proper, planned out route (mainly cos that is a lot more work than i was willing to do for something i wasn't planning on using in a adventure), hence why i didn't say which subsector the ship had it's run in.


I think the next step would be a Free trader conversion. that could carry quite a large number of people. (196, if you kept the existing low berths and converted the entire cargo bay to low berths. more if you strip out staterooms). haven't run the numbers for that, but i think that may be able to break even. I've statted up a non-jump, in-sstem version, that can carry 130 in low berths. while i orignally planned that to be a scout/courier conversion as well I couldn't see how i could squeeze that many low berths into a S/C hull, so I'm gonna fluff that as a seperate, purpose built ship.

so... yhea. thats what i did last night. Any questions, Queries, commets, complaints?

ps a internet cookie for the person who can guess who or what the Sheriff John Brown is named after.
 
John Brown was a wealthy Providence merchant, and prominent socially. In addition to his merchant endeavors, John Brown had in 1771 and again in May of 1772, been appointed the sheriff of Bristol County. [Records of the Colony of Rhode Island].
http://www.gaspee.info/raiders/Brown_John.htm

History of the Coahoma County Sheriff’s Office (Mississippi)
Sheriff John Brown
Term: 1874 - 1875
http://www.coahomacountysheriff.com/page.php?id=7
Note that he was the second person to hold the office of Sheriff of Coahoma County.

January 17, 2014 By Frederick N. Rasmussen, The Baltimore Sun

John H. Brown, who headed the Baltimore Police Department's mounted patrol for more than a decade and later became Carroll County sheriff, died Jan. 11 of heart failure at his Uniontown home. He was 85.
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2014-01-17/news/bs-md-ob-john-brown-20140117_1_police-work-monroe-street-city-police-officer
 
well, kinda dresspessing that the one liner at the end seems to have got more attention than the ship design or the flavour text......


for the record, i named after the Sheriff John Brown from "I shot the sheriff", as atpollard has just quoted below......
 
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.

All around in my home town
They're trying to track me down.
They say they want to bring me in guilty
For the killing of a deputy,
For the life of a deputy.
But I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense.
I shot the sheriff, and they say it is a capital offense.

Sheriff John Brown always hated me;
For what I don't know.
Every time that I plant a seed
He said, "Kill it before it grows."
He said, "Kill it before it grows."
I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense.
I shot the sheriff, but I swear it was in self-defense.

Freedom came my way one day
And I started out of town.
All of a sudden I see sheriff John Brown
Aiming to shoot me down.
So I shot, I shot him down.
I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy.

Reflexes got the better of me
And what is to be must be.
Every day the bucket goes to the well,
But one day the bottom will drop out,
Yes, one day the bottom will drop out.
But I say:

I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy, oh no.
I shot the sheriff, but I did not shoot the deputy, oh no.

[EDIT] The Bob Marley version or the Eric Clapton version? :)
 
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ship stats:

Hull, 100 tons, streamlined (2.2 MCr)
Armour: Crystaliron, 4 pts) (5 tons, 0.4 MCr)
Jump Drive A, J2 (10 tons, 10MCr)
Maneuver Drive A, 2G (2 tons, 4 MCr)
Power plant A (4tons, 8 MCr)
Fuel: One Jump 2 pus 4 weeks (24 tons)
Bridge (10 tons, 0.5MCr)
Computer: mod 1 Bis (0.45 MCr)
Programs:
Jump control/2 (0.2 Mcr)
Library/0
Maneuver/0
Electronics: Military sensors (2 tons, 1MCr)
Weapons Triple Turret, 3x Pulse Laser (1 ton, 2.5 MCr)
Fuel processors: 1 ton, 0.05 MCr
3x staterooms (12 tons, 1.5 MCr)
48 Low Berths (25 tons, 1.3Mcr)
Cargo, 4 tons.

Total cost 34.9 MCr. Maintenance costs 2,658 Cr/month Life support 10,800 Cr/month. Monthly mortgage costs 132,917 Cr/Month.

Total per month costs: 146,375 /month under mortgage, 13,408 after mortgage.
Crew: 4 (pilot, engineer, Medic, security officer)
So which rules version was this designed with?
Mongoose Traveller? (Since Classic Traveller doesn't have 10 dT bridges).
 
I would question either the 4 person crew or the three staterooms as being "standard IMOJ design". IMO, each crewman needs a stateroom in the design (even if a married couple choose to share a stateroom on this ship).

You state that the commons and 1 stateroom were converted to fuel tankage. Was a new commons constructed? Where?

I wonder if 3xPulse Laser is the best turret load out. Lots of offense, but less defense. I just don't know for sure - one way or another - and wonder if anyone else has any thoughts. If offense is really the goal, would there be a better weapon available as a barbette?
 
For a cheaper passenger version, what about a former Scout, former Seeker (POS) converted to a beat up old passenger ship (for the desperate) by installing low berths in the ore bays?

After 80+ years of service, depreciation might make the mortgage payments affordable even if maintenance became a significant expense.
 
So which rules version was this designed with?
Mongoose Traveller? (Since Classic Traveller doesn't have 10 dT bridges).

It uses letter drives - so it's one of CT, MGT, or T5
The computer takes no tonnage, so it's not CT.
It lacks the electronics details of T5 designs.

Note that TNE and T4 could also generate 10Td bridges... but not with letter drives.
 
it's a MgT design, which is why i tagged the thread as MgT. I suppose i should have put that into the text as well.


I would question either the 4 person crew or the three staterooms as being "standard IMOJ design". IMO, each crewman needs a stateroom in the design (even if a married couple choose to share a stateroom on this ship).

You state that the commons and 1 stateroom were converted to fuel tankage. Was a new commons constructed? Where?

the common area was converted to tanks, but the 4th stateroom was made into a new common area.

I didn't plan it to be a standard design, but a conversion of an existing ship being surplused out of the ISSS. I could have just worked out what the costs of the changes were and paid that off as a mortgage, but i felt that would be cheating.

I wonder if 3xPulse Laser is the best turret load out. Lots of offense, but less defense. I just don't know for sure - one way or another - and wonder if anyone else has any thoughts. If offense is really the goal, would there be a better weapon available as a barbette?

i wasn't planning on optimising the design, i just felt that it needed a bit of a kikc to deter highjacking and prison break attempts. I was also trying to keep the costs and tonnage down, and Pluse lasers cost half as much as beam lasers, and things like missles eat up space that could be better spent on low berths.

For a cheaper passenger version, what about a former Scout, former Seeker (POS) converted to a beat up old passenger ship (for the desperate) by installing low berths in the ore bays?

After 80+ years of service, depreciation might make the mortgage payments affordable even if maintenance became a significant expense.

don't know what the loan length is in CT, but in Mgt the standard loan duration is 40 years, so you could skip a stage and still avoid the loan.

I suppose i could go on and work out what the rough costs of conversion would be, and see if the ship could be commerically viable at that rate of mortgage.
 
We have a ship carrying up to 48 dangerous prisoner's, protection one triple turret, and a crew of four. I can see this ship being the frequent target of Pirate's or Organised crime groups needing to "recruit" new crew to replace those KIA or deserted to safer lines of work.
 
That depends. First off, theirs the trade-off of the value of the crew picked up vs the damage done to you as you take the ship. second, whats to stop the crew just turning off the low berths and killing all the prisoners? they're about to lose the ship, and most likey thier lives, anyway. and the fact they would do this might have some deterrant value agianst someone trying to spring a comrade (hell, if they knew which convict it was, they could just threaten his life alone).

that said, your right in that the ship could be compromised or overpowered, but thats unavoidable for a 100 ton ship. the only way to avoid it would be to beef it up to something like, say. kiloton, where it could shrug off a smaller corsair, but such a ship would be capable transporting thousands of prisoners (which i can't see their being a need to move thousands over interstellar distances), be built like, and cost as much as, a normal warship,

Maybe have the ship sail with a dedicated escourt of some kind?
 
That depends. First off, theirs the trade-off of the value of the crew picked up vs the damage done to you as you take the ship. second, whats to stop the crew just turning off the low berths and killing all the prisoners? they're about to lose the ship, and most likey thier lives, anyway. and the fact they would do this might have some deterrant value agianst someone trying to spring a comrade (hell, if they knew which convict it was, they could just threaten his life alone).
There could be laws against killing prisoners. I remember reading a scene in a Tom Clancy novel where a captured terrorist gets freed and his whole escort slaughtered and thinking that the prisoner escort should have put a bullet in the terrorist's brain when the attack began. However, that would have been against the law.


Hans
 
There could be laws against killing prisoners. I remember reading a scene in a Tom Clancy novel where a captured terrorist gets freed and his whole escort slaughtered and thinking that the prisoner escort should have put a bullet in the terrorist's brain when the attack began. However, that would have been against the law.

Hans

That's a slippery slope but, if terrorists knew a government would sanction it, I can see it as a deterrent. On the other hand, if you wanted someone in custody killed...:devil:
 
Oh, i agree that it's a slippary slope, and most likey not something the IMOJ would sanction. But it's an option, in theory. I guess it really depends how dark you like your 3I.

Plus, thiers room for things like switcheroos with the PC ship ("we've fed a known mole that Important Criminal X is going to be transports on the Sheriff John Brown. In fact, we're putting a double on the Brown, and transporting the criminal on your ship, with two bodyguards. we have reason to believe his comrades may attack the Brown, so it will travel with an escort, while you travel independantly and sneak under their radar, so to speak...." sounds like a plot hook to me.)
 
I would question either the 4 person crew or the three staterooms as being "standard IMOJ design". IMO, each crewman needs a stateroom in the design (even if a married couple choose to share a stateroom on this ship).

I wonder if 3xPulse Laser is the best turret load out. Lots of offense, but less defense. I just don't know for sure - one way or another - and wonder if anyone else has any thoughts. If offense is really the goal, would there be a better weapon available as a barbette?

I would tend to agree, but the MoJ might expect crew to share (especially junior crew), I would tend to give the pilot/navigator & doctor individual staterooms and the other 2 crew share, but that's my take.

Pulse Laser's aren't terribly accurate, I would probably have gone for Beam Laser's (more expensive). A Particle Barbette would not work as the power plant is too small.

Regards

David
 
I didn't plan it to be a standard design, but a conversion of an existing ship being surplused out of the ISSS. I could have just worked out what the costs of the changes were and paid that off as a mortgage, but i felt that would be cheating.

i wasn't planning on optimising the design, i just felt that it needed a bit of a kikc to deter highjacking and prison break attempts. I was also trying to keep the costs and tonnage down, and Pluse lasers cost half as much as beam lasers, and things like missles eat up space that could be better spent on low berths.

I suppose i could go on and work out what the rough costs of conversion would be, and see if the ship could be commerically viable at that rate of mortgage.

Losing the stateroom saves 0.5 MCr, 48 low berths cost 2.4 MCr, triple Pulse turret costs 2.5 MCr, 4.4 MCr less what you sell the double turret & air/raft for,

Regards

David
 
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48 low berths sounds like an awful lot. At the maximum Passenger Traffic Value (see p. Core:161) you get 9D6 low passengers -- an average of 31.5 and a maximum of 54, only 6 more than 48. I don't see this ship filling its low berths very often.

I can't find the rules for working out the Passenger Traffic Value, but my guess is that 4 or 5 D6 low passengers would be more likely, provided the captain takes care what worlds he visits. So 16 or possibly 24 low berths seems more reasonable to me.


Hans
 
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