I dunno, whenever I've done designs, the larger ships have ample free space. In the small ships it can be tight, but the larger ones are hard to fill up.
type 23 Corvette
- Thread starter Xerxeskingofking
- Start date
I dunno, whenever I've done designs, the larger ships have ample free space. In the small ships it can be tight, but the larger ones are hard to fill up.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
BRJN
SOC-12
One ship in the convoy is a large government-owned/operated freighter (or a typical subsidized merchant if it is important to not stick out like a sore thumb) which carries supplies that the escorts likely need.
Dilbert (mostly) beat me to it.
I was thinking of a WWII photo from Ulithi Atoll: supply ships as far as the camera can see, waiting for Third / Fifth Fleet to come back for a re-load.
Also work for a Dark Sun (D&D) session involving a merchant caravan. The porters (this is a cheapskate shoestring effort) can carry more cargo if they are not also carrying their own survival rations. Therefore a chuck wagon is part of the mix.
yep.
(smiles brightly and nods vigorously)
it's cheaper, sure. so long as the fleet sticks together, so long as the fleet train isn't broken up. otherwise it starts costing entire ships (for want of a nail and all that).
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=567014&postcount=26
http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showpost.php?p=567015&postcount=27
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If you are finding that, look to reduce the tonnage and have more ships and more spinal mounts instead. Empty space costs you more per weapon to jump, maneuver and armor.
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AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Build smaller cheaper transports, that way you get the flexibility to get the right amount of payload at the right time without wasting ships or running half-full ships.
That was quite a lot of house rules at the same time. At around GCr 10 it is quite expensive, especially for its limited cargo capacity.
This is actually a regulation LBB5 design that can be built at TL-10:
Using LBB2 Z drives it has Jump-4 and Man-4 with 1200 + 100 Dt cargo. MCr 600 as a standard design.
Code:
QT-C644442-000000-00000-0 MCr 594 3 000 Dton
bearing Crew=19
batteries TL=10
Cargo=1201 Fuel=60 EP=108 Agility=3 DropT=1200
Dual Occupancy 1 201 739
USP # Dton Cost
Hull, Streamlined Custom A 1 800
Configuration Flattened Sphe 6 144
Scoops Streamlined 2
Drop Tanks 1 200 Dton 1
Total tonnage 3 000 Dton
Jump Drive Z 4 1 125 240
Manoeuvre D Z 4 1 47 96
Power Plant Z 4 1 73 192
Fuel, #J, #weeks J-4, 4 weeks 4 60
Purifier 1 50 0
Bridge 1 36 9
Computer m/4 4 1 4 30
Staterooms 16 64 8
Cargo 1 201
Collapsible Tanks 1 300 Dton 1 13 1
Bay Empty 1 100 1
Gig 20 Dton 1 26 15
Nominal Cost MCr 738,94 Sum: 1 201 739
Class Cost MCr 152,03 Valid ≥0 ≥0
Ship Cost MCr 594,15
Crew & High 0 Crew Bridge 10
Passengers Mid 0 19 Engineers 3
Low 0 Gunners 0
Extra SR 0 Frozen Service 6
# Frozen W 0 0 Flight 0
Marines 0 Marines 0It is cheap enough to be permanently attached to a destroyer, or shuttle back and forth to a larger formation. The empty bay allows it to carry a variety of cargo or small craft, including standard Imperial 50 Dt craft, such as the Cutter, or even a Heavy Fighter.
With 16 staterooms for 19 crew it has plenty of space for gunners or supernumeraries.
Filling the collapsible tanks in the cargo hold it can do two jump-4 without refuelling, still carrying 100 Dt cargo in the empty bay. That would e.g. take it from Regina to beleaguered Jewell with some crucial cargo and passengers.
Build it at TL-12 with a m/6 computer and it can even do J-6 w/o external tanks. Quite usable as a naval scout or courier.
using tcs rules I calculated the spinward marches' naval budget vs it's yard capacity and found that the imperium has more money than it can spend - the limitation is yard space, not credits.
with yard space at a premium, this allows yards like junidy and porozlo to contribute to the strategic fleets - porozlo the ships and junidy the modules.
your light second may vary.
I was thinking more strategic movement with a fleet rather than coastal ops.
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I may have missed something, but are the Size Z drives (TL 15) imported? Wouldn't be a bad idea to build a LBB2 ship this way, as it frees up yard space at the higher TL world.
If not, there's a problem:
At TL 10 the largest available drives are Size H. They won't move even an 1800Td hull, let alone a 3000Td one.
At TL 12 the largest available drives are Size N. Without drop tanks, you're describing an 1800Td hull; intermediate sizes are rated as next-listed-hull-up, and a "N" drive provides a rating of 1 in a 2000Td hull or a "-" in a 3000Td one (and really, without the tanks you could do that with a Size J unit).
The TL limits for LBB2 drive letter sizes also apply to Maneuver Drives. Yes, it's incompatible with everything else Traveller; and no, it doesn't make sense to me either.
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Add (Cr245,000 * number of Jumps needed to get from the TL 15 world to the building shipyard) to the cost -- it's a rounding error compared to the cost of the drives themselves. Sustainment logistics are a separate matter.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
TCS does not produce a scarcity of shipyard capacity. The Imperial part of the Spinward Marches has a yearly TCS budget of about TCr 138 and a shipyard capacity of about 40 MDton at TL-15 or 128 MDton at TL-10+ in .
TCr 138/year means a total fleet of TCr 1 380 or about 1 380 MDton warship at MCr1/Dton. With a replacement rate of 40 years that is ~35 MDton warship built per year, well within the capacity.
Note that according to canon the Imperium does not maintain anything like that large fleets.
We should presumably build tenders and auxiliaries at lower TLs, to preserve TL-15 yard capacity for warships.
The drop tanks are generally retained, just like a Gazelle. Hence the 1800 Dton ship with 1200 Dton tanks jumps as a 3000 Dton ship, having J-4 with a Z-drive, not J-6 as it would have if it dropped the tank.
No logistical problem since the tanks are not dropped, and hence don't need replacing.
The ship is still fully streamlined with tanks, so can refuel itself, or act as a tanker scooping 2.5 kDt fuel per skim.
It will fall apart under fire, just as any other unarmoured ship. That is hardly a problem in CT where we can screen the ships with escorts, so that they will never come under fire enven while accompanying a fleet.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Yes, as is allowed in both LBB2 and LBB5.
Note that the presented ship is a LBB5 ship.
Not sure it's explicitly allowed in either, though it's implied in LBB2. "Any class A starport has a shipyard that can build any kind of ship, including a starship with jump drives..." (LBB2:'81, p.12). The drive TLs are in LBB3, Technological Levels Table, p. 14-15. Since LBB2 drives are standardized, it's not bending the rules much to allow construction with imported drives if you can plausibly get them from somewhere else. That "somewhere else" really should have a Class A starport though (if strictly LBB2; HG allows military starship sourcing from worlds without Class A starports). And building the drives should count against that world's shipyard capacity (for the drives only, not the entire hull)...
LBB5:'80 isn't quite as generous.
"The technological level of the building shipyard determines the the technological level of the ship being constructed (a class A shipyard on a tech level 14 world constructs a tech level 14 ship). Equipment and components of a starship may always be equal to or less than the ship's tech level" (p. 20).
On the other hand, it does describe LBB2 drives as "... using off-the-shelf components" (p. 18), so maybe they're commodity items if you house-rule it?
The closest text I can find that explicitly allows it is the Refitting Ships rules in TCS:
"...jump drives may be refitted only at A starports" (TCS, p. 34). [Note: No TL requirement specified here.]
"Changes in power plant, maneuver drive, or jump drive are major changes. They cost 1.5 times the amount the new system would cost in a new ship; the time required to install major changes is one fourth the time required to build a new ship (from the construction time table)" (ibid).
In effect, you're building the ship without drives, and "refitting" it with the imported drives as it's being built.
It's a really useful house rule, though -- and I think we're all in agreement here that it should be allowed. But rules as written don't get you all the way there except by an unconventional interpretation of a TCS rule. (Taken literally, it would mean buying and building HG drives of the same tonnage as each of the LBB2 drives, then discarding them before retrofitting the LBB2 drives, even if -- for example -- it resulted in a jump drive with a rating above the available TL and that the power plant might not be able to support.)
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AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
LBB2 is, as far as I can see, clear: Ships don't have TLs and any ship can be built by any class A starport.
Drives and other components are standardised and can be assembled anywhere, like current PCs.
Actually it seems to be:
LBB5'80 said:
Specifically custom (LBB5) drives are limited by TL, but standard (LBB2) drives seems to not be.
See JTAS#10, p39 for the Wasp class, a published TL-12 LBB5 ship with LBB2 Z-drives (presumably produced at TL-15).
So, no house rule and no torturing TCS.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Starporting within Imperium space involves certification, so basically at a Class Alpha you can be sure you get what you pay for, and the full spectrum of goods and services.
Everywhere else, buyer beware.
However, that doesn't mean that you couldn't build or repair a starship in some backwoods garage, otherwise you miss out on all those tropes where some kid builds a spaceship on his own by picking up parts from the nearest junkyard.
Everywhere else, buyer beware.
However, that doesn't mean that you couldn't build or repair a starship in some backwoods garage, otherwise you miss out on all those tropes where some kid builds a spaceship on his own by picking up parts from the nearest junkyard.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Very dependent on the actual rules set edition you're using.
My interpretation is lowest common denominator for jump drives, centre of gravity for motivational ones.
Power plants depend on not overloading the grid, since it's really consumable energy creation.
My interpretation is lowest common denominator for jump drives, centre of gravity for motivational ones.
Power plants depend on not overloading the grid, since it's really consumable energy creation.
LBB2 ships have TLs, at least when they're in Supp 9. (More on this at the end.)
But the drives have to be manufactured somewhere. If they're imported, shipping costs (Cr1000/ton per jump) and perhaps arbitrage (trade and commerce rules) apply. Lead time and supply chain issues also apply. They may be commodity items, but except on Industrial worlds (and maybe not even then) there isn't going to be a warehouse full of Size Z Jump Drives you can just "Buy Now" on FutureAmazon.com. Size A-D, sure, maybe up to J...
Specifically, LBB2 drive availability is limited by TL, in accordance with LBB3's TL table. Drive letter and computer model are pretty much the only TL-constrained ship design elements before LBB5. The drive TL numbers simply weren't duplicated in LBB2.
Also, the way a 47 Td Size Z maneuver drive pushes a 3KTd hull to 4G is different from how 330 Td of LBB5 maneuver drive does it. That difference is the difference between TL 8 and TL 15, and probably includes things like hull structure and advanced artificial gravity compensation that might not be fully understood at a lower TL shipyard.
