Non OTU: Ye Olde Shipyard

This is where I take my oldest drawings and attempt to make them into something usable. It's also the place were ships of the one off variety come. You'll see as we go along. I will also be narrating in Character as your tour guide, showing the ships to some Imperium buyers. This shipyard by the way is in unlined space between the Imperium and The Innerempires, which are Coreward/Spinward of Traveller space. We are talking about Proto-Imperium here. The Sectors from the time of the Little Black Books.

I hope this will be come a series as I update my oldest Drawings. So here we Go...

"Welcome." The 1.8 meter tall man with the short peppered black hair and gray eyes smiled. "My name is Maxamilian Granger, you can call me Max."

He speaks Galactican. Imperial Intelligence linguistic specialist did not prepare you for his accent. He then shakes the three members of your team hands. Clearly, he knows something about Solomani customs. He then picks up four PDA (Personal Data Assistants) and hands them out. With a smile on his face, he points towards the backdoor and says. "Shall we take a look."

"The PDA's I've given you will give you the details on each ship we look at." He walks toward the first ship in line. "This Gentlemen, is a C1 Dral."

This is the first time you notice he has a limp.

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"Dral is a major corporation within the Innerempires. It manufactures all sorts of things from bathtubs to starships. Their ships are also know for their reliability and durability. Those engines are a tried and trusted design dating back centuries and refined as time goes by." He chuckles. "The one thing everyone who has own one, says about them is they have there quirks."

BACKSTORY: I design this ship back in my early days of designing. It basically one of my versions of a runabout. Dral was a name that I plucked out of thin air and it stuck to these sorts of Ugly Duckling ships. There crew size is also small because I couldn't find enough players to run a game. As far as the Quirks go, think of your first car and the little things that were wrong with it. (Wouldn't start, had to giggle the key in the ignition or, that odor you could never get rid of when you turn on the AC. All those little horror stories you've heard from family and friends.)

"This next one we got from a government yard sale." His eyes smile as your group is confused by the usage of his words. "I meant to say a Government sale of impounded goods. Where the ship was impounded and fines and or tariffs were not paid."

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BACKSTORY: This was a ship I ran my first adventure with. Basically, a ship has crashed somewhere on approach to the starport. You the adventurer, are sent out to find it. After discovering the ship, you find it infested with nasties and a little girl is unaccounted for. So you have to enter the ship to find the little girl, fight nasties and all sorts of other dangers involving a crashed starship. I also did a modified version of this as well. It also became the ship of the 'insert evil Megacorporation'.

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"And here is a ship only a rich man can afford." He scowled. "It has no cargo hold so you can't make money as a side hustle."

BACKSTORY: I often complete one ship and get ideas for another while working on it. This is such a ship. While converting the C1 Dral, I decide to see how small I could build a ship and this was it.

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I'm going to end it here for the moment. I want to see how well this is recieved and answer any of your questions.

 

[Rigel Stardin]

Sorry for the delay. I do feel guilt for not keeping my word. So here is the next installment.

The five of you move on to the next ship. Max sighed, "This is another example of a Dral design. The cargo bay is 4.5 meters tall."

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Backstory: I never finished this ship. I had laid out the lower deck with a very old style 'stamps' and it just sat on my hard drive through 3 computers.

You move on to the next ship. Max turns to the group and says. "Here is an example of a tanker common in use in this sector. It is not hyperspace capable. It's equipped with a fuel scoop and purification plant. With these installed, it has they ability to scoop it own fuel and provide a customer with refined fuel. They are usually station in close proximity of the Gas Giant but if necessary can travel up to two an half days away from the planet to prove ships low on fuel the necessary amount to continue on there journey or go back to work. They can also provide fuel for refueling stations through out the system."

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Backstory and my thoughts on Tankers: There was a discussion about tanker and fuel barges on the forum and I decide to build this. I was, and still am, building a large ship that doesn't have the capability to refuel itself. SO building a tanker showed me what was need in the way of fuel necessary to fuel the beast. I may need to build a larger one in the future.
As far as the range goes, it doesn't really reflect how I would handle such a ship if I was still GM games. If it went off to refuel a small ship without fuel, or travel to a fueling station in an asteroid belt most of it's time would be spent coasting between locations only need to burn the 115 Tons of Fuel when arriving or leaving the station, escaping the gas giant's gravity or matching the stranded ship course and rendezvous with the ship.
The refining plant on board, allows the ship to earn, 300,000 credits a trip (500cr per ton of Fuel) as long as it doesn't burn into the 600 tons of fuel it's carries. If it's just doing 'daily runs' between the gas giant and a refuel station in orbit around the Gas Giant. I figure it could make the trip in two day. It would go something like this: Arrive at station and off load 600 tons of fuel, leaves station and does an aerobraking maneuver though the upper atmosphere of the planet to scoop the fuel, match speed an orbit of the station then return. Using oil rigs as an example of their work schedule, two weeks on and off. It wouldn't be an easy job either. Just take a look at latest pictures of Jupiter to see how the cloud are swirling and you just have to imagine the turbulence they would encounter. The job would pay pretty damn good to because, they would need skilled pilots to do it.

As you round the ship you see ship that has been causing the Imperial Naval problem. Max smiles. "I present the Kavalla."

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He see the animosity in your eyes. "You don't like this ship very much, do you? It wouldn't have anything to do with the amazing speed it has displayed or the Gravtronic maneuvers it has pulled while running one of your blockades or perhaps, encounters with patrol cruiser has demonstrated it's ruggedness?"

He wait for a response that doesn't come then chuckles. "You needn't worry about this one my friends. The Mariusan Government doesn't sell those on the open market. They are strictly used by Mariusan that seek to aid their people or their friends. Of course, there are those merchants of Mariusan Blood that seek a profit from smuggling. The Mariusan authorities frown up on such activities."

He smiles. "Any Questions?"

Backstory: This ship is from my gaming days. The concepts I hope to explain were strictly given to this race/government as a gimmick to make them stand out from the other two political fraction in the Innerempire.

What do I mean about 'Amazing speed and Gravtronic maneuvers'? Let's state with speed first. I reasoned if you could reduce the weight of the ship using gravitronics to land, why not in flight? Since the ship thruster (input Energy to the propulsion system, out comes thrust) could push the ship up to 3 Gs, what would happen if you coupled that to the Gravitronic lift engine. You've reduced the mass those thrusters had to push against. In theory, you could add an additional 3 Gs to your speed. Therefore, getting 6 Gs out of a thrusters rated at 3 Gs. This came at cost of fuel and power load on the ship. Like I said, it was a Gimmick.

This might be a hard one to grasp but has anyone given any thought about True Gravitronic Flight? If it were possible, you could move right, left, up or down at right angles. Of course, the ship would need to be designed to handle the stress of doing these maneuvers in the atmosphere but in space, there would be no such concerns. Avoiding incoming fire would be a breeze because you didn't to vector thruster or aerodynamic control surfaces. Add an evade program and you'd have a pretty hard target to hit.

I'm ending it here. afraid I might hit the word count on the forum. Any questions please direct them to the Thread I posted in the Play by Post part of this forum. I really would like to keep this post 'clean' so it reflects the 'Traveller Art Section.'