Hi,
I hope I'm not getting too off track from the original intent of the thread.
To Blue Ghost (& Aramis), no offense taken, I appreciate the feedback. I realize that everyone has different ideas of how they view what things might look like. The deck plans that I recently posted are mods to something I actually started putting togeher a couple years ago (I think). If I am recalling correctly, at the time I wanted to try and see if I could make a ship close to the correct volume, and then lay out its internal deck plans close to what the rules call for.
In general, I think that I came up with a hull that is within 4-5% of my 100dton target. In laying out the deck plans though, I've assumed two 1.5 x 1.5 m deck squares, with a deck height of 3m, as being equal to 1dton, which gives me a small margin on laying out spaces.
In doing the original deck plans and hullform I started with a notional design that Robject posted on the public T5 board as an example of a ship designed to the then current draft T5 rules. I thought the vessel, which he called a Pocket Trader, was an interesting idea, so I used his draft specs, to draw a ship around. However, since the original vessel was drawn up using a draft version of unpublished rules, I later I converted my drawings over to the Mongoose Traveller, so that others could use them if they wanted.
The current sketches that I posted were just a quick alteration to match the original LBB2 rules for a Scout/courier as an example of a non-wedge shaped design.
My initial thoughts on the hull was to try and maybe do something like NASA's X-24A lifting body test craft from the 1960's, which appears to have an almost elliptical cross-section, with a flattened bottom.
As I began to mess around with the hull and possible internal arrangments though, I began to realize that for a merchant ship, the planform and profile view taper of a vessel like the X-24A wasn't that efficient for internal layout. As such, I tried to keep the flattened elliptical cross section but ended up stretching out the hull, adding a parallel midbdy, with a tapered nose and blunt aft end.
In the end I noticed that the nose was a bit more blunt than I had originally intended but since the volumes and deck layout appear to work OK, I decided to leave it as is.
As atpollard noted, the stubby wings and tail (plus the flap at the aft end) are all kind of meant to provide stability when operating in the atmosphere, while the stub wings also house the aft landing gear, and the vertical tail can house some of the machinery and/or fire control arrays for if/when a turret is fitted.
I've also been going back and forth on whether I should add side windows, as initially I thought that in jump space they wouldn't have any use, but then I realized that while maneuvering and/or orbiting they might be a nice addition.
Overall, I realize that it might not be a design that everyone likes but to me I kind of like it and it kind of reminds me a little like maybe a VW bus in space.
Regards
PF
I can see them coming off the production line in a big string.
