800 ton Merc Cruiser deck plan

[ShawnDriscoll]

I happen to like that ships in the 57th century are money pits. Like boats are in 2015's real life. One alien artifact, that actually works for a change, will pay for a new ship. So get rid of the 200-year old hunk of junk (i.e. that Firefly).

Anyway, here is my mercenary cruiser, Jak.
http://shawndriscollcg.blogspot.com/2015/09/cg-broadsword-animation-test.html

Can't wait to see how yours turns out.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Greetings,
Referee's Aid 3: Far Trader has some great ideas and guidelines regarding chartering ships. Sure, it's mainly meant for traders, but what if we apply the same thinking to mercenaries and their ships?

Assume the job is worth 100,000 cr, as noted earlier in the thread. Now add the 'plus expenses' part. Hire a craftsman today and you'll most likely find that the job costs X, then there's materials and travels and the final price is thus higher than X.

If you hire mercenaries to do something for 100,000 cr, they'll need to get to the planet in question, and perhaps acquire some special gear to carry out the mission. Ok, the gear part might be up to the mercenaries, but transportation... Let's say the client needs to either provide transport or pay the mercenaries to use their own craft. using the charter rules from RA3 the additional fee would be 900 per cargo ton and 2,500 per stateroom, per parsec travelled.

900x77 + 2,500x25 = 131,800

J1 = 131,800
J2 = 263 600
J3 = 395,400

Suddenly the mercenary situation looks brighter

Perhaps those exact fees might not be applicable, but something along those lines does sound reasonable in my mind... After all, that's the price someone has to pay (client or mercenary) to ferry the unit to the planet in question in order to carry out the 100,000 cr mission, if not using their own ship...



As an almost unrelated sidenote, when it comes to Mercenary Cruisers I have a weak spot for the Ares Dragon class From DB Game Design...

 

[Condottiere]

It's basically the unholy offspring of the Nemesis and the USS Sulaco.

Two dropships, at least two ATVs, seventy seven tonnes of cargo (Core Book) and twenty seven man (with twenty five percent female) platoon.

 

[phavoc]

No, actually. It was a complete miss. Go back and actually read the comment including the quoted material for context. I was saying that for those who care about the financial aspects of the game money-pit ships like the merc cruiser are every bit as annoying as things that violate real world physics. So I was in fact chiding someone for "dismiss(ing) people who point out inconsistencies in the rules".

You are correct. My apologies.

Greetings,
Referee's Aid 3: Far Trader has some great ideas and guidelines regarding chartering ships. Sure, it's mainly meant for traders, but what if we apply the same thinking to mercenaries and their ships?

Assume the job is worth 100,000 cr, as noted earlier in the thread. Now add the 'plus expenses' part. Hire a craftsman today and you'll most likely find that the job costs X, then there's materials and travels and the final price is thus higher than X.

If you hire mercenaries to do something for 100,000 cr, they'll need to get to the planet in question, and perhaps acquire some special gear to carry out the mission. Ok, the gear part might be up to the mercenaries, but transportation... Let's say the client needs to either provide transport or pay the mercenaries to use their own craft. using the charter rules from RA3 the additional fee would be 900 per cargo ton and 2,500 per stateroom, per parsec travelled.

900x77 + 2,500x25 = 131,800

J1 = 131,800
J2 = 263 600
J3 = 395,400

Suddenly the mercenary situation looks brighter

Perhaps those exact fees might not be applicable, but something along those lines does sound reasonable in my mind... After all, that's the price someone has to pay (client or mercenary) to ferry the unit to the planet in question in order to carry out the 100,000 cr mission, if not using their own ship...

Yes, the example ticket listed in Mercenary-2 for a small unit like could be carried on a Merc cruiser postulates Cr100,000 w/o transport costs included. It also assumes a relatively easy and peaceful job. Which is why I inflated the costs to Cr700,000 to try and come up with a book-listed way to reconcile the cost structure. Which I could not. My costs didn't even factor in the price of fuel to travel, just what it costs every month somebody owns a Merc cruiser and has it fully staffed. I left out the things like equipment (original purchase and replacement), bonus shares for a completed mission, etc. There's lot more costs but for simplicity I would assume that could be taken care of by the patron hiring the unit. Less to worry about as a ref or player that way.

So the only thing I can thing to make this would would be to increase the baseline pricing for hiring a mercenary unit. Or perhaps a VERY hefty surcharge to pay for anyone who brings their own ship and orbital fire support. But the ticket pricing will be wildly skewed from what's in the book in setting guidelines.

Naval support wasn't covered in Mercenary-2. You can use it for ground troops and such, but ships and small craft totally blow the model. Previous supplements and modules prominently featured space-based mercs with their own escorts, light carriers and such. The Merc cruiser bridges both concepts. I haven't a clue if it was a miss to include it in Mercenary-2, or if there is something else planned to cover it. I've always been a fan of the Merc cruiser or similar ships since it lets a campaign participate in small-scale ground and space combat while keeping the players more or less in control of their own fate.

 

[middenface]

One day I will try a deck plan.

 

[phavoc]

There really needs to be a Like button for somethings.

Great work there (as usual) middenface!

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Working on it... Will try to have a working deck plan by the end of September, including cross sections etc... Working on 2 projects in construction as we speak and 1 in the final stages of CD's right now so my time is limited.

Nice animation Shawn Driscoll!

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

Thanks. Here's another one. Lens was off a bit. But you get the idea.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8LgnEmf0Lc

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Worked on laying out the basic diameters fore each deck, and the cross section, late last night, but...
I think I want to wait and read the new beta rules this weekend before I advance any further. There was a hint by AndrewW that the ship design rules may have changed some.

 

[AndrewW]

There was a hint by AndrewW that the ship design rules may have changed some.

Now that it's up. Yes they have changed, however you'll have to wait a little longer for the ship design rules.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

As a small-unit transport, the designed ship fails at delivering a unit economically. It would be far better to design a ship without the added cutters and devote more space to troop bays, armored vehicles and cargo (for ammunition, supplies, the stuff a fighter might need yanno).

Plus the added cost of the extra small craft would weigh very heavily on the finances of a private merc outfit. A government or megacorp would have deep enough pockets, but a company purely running off jobs would be hard-pressed to pay for all that with the current rates. Unless hazard pay was involved, which means more risk to damages to your ship and casualties to your troops.

And for small unit insertions, who wouldn't want to actually land on the planet??

Still, would be interesting to see what you have coming.

Why can't you land a Mercenary Cruiser? The ship looks like it can land, it has legs, and its floor plans are designed to align with the surface it lands on. When you have a ship that looks like a giant lander, what do you need the cutters for? Why not just keep the cargo space to hold more Armored Fighting Vehicles, grav tanks and other stuff like that?

 

[AndrewW]

Why can't you land a Mercenary Cruiser? The ship looks like it can land, it has legs, and its floor plans are designed to align with the surface it lands on. When you have a ship that looks like a giant lander, what do you need the cutters for? Why not just keep the cargo space to hold more Armored Fighting Vehicles, grav tanks and other stuff like that?

It's not always desirable to land your valuable ship in a hot LZ.

 

[phavoc]

You can land this ship on a planet. However if you do you cannot take off in the modular cutters or access the modules stored onboard. With anti-grav it's possible to land any (non-distributed) ship. It just takes a little more effort for ones like this.

The original idea for the cutters was to transport troops and gear to a planet, and I suppose for the ship itself to provide overwatch fire support while in orbit. Though against small teams it would be a challenge to do so.

The design works, but I think it would be better off to have a more generic design to carry more troops, vehicles and gear as opposed to the 260 tons set aside for the cutters and their spare modules. The one place that the Mercenary cruiser would do well is for space-based missions. Having the cutters for extra fire power is nice (though would you be better off with 10 smaller 10 ton fighters vs. 2 50 ton cutters?).

 

[Anonymous]

would you be better off with 10 smaller 10 ton fighters vs. 2 50 ton cutters?

In space yes, definitely better with the amassed weapons of 10 fighters and increased manoeuvrability. In support of ground troops I'd go with a third option of grav tanks/APCs. They can drop troops to the ground then support them as needed. A larger number of grav vehicles presents more targets and reduces potential losses.

Hopefully the new rules give better direction on the blurring between grav vehicles and small craft.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

You can land this ship on a planet. However if you do you cannot take off in the modular cutters or access the modules stored onboard. With anti-grav it's possible to land any (non-distributed) ship. It just takes a little more effort for ones like this.

The original idea for the cutters was to transport troops and gear to a planet, and I suppose for the ship itself to provide overwatch fire support while in orbit. Though against small teams it would be a challenge to do so.

The design works, but I think it would be better off to have a more generic design to carry more troops, vehicles and gear as opposed to the 260 tons set aside for the cutters and their spare modules. The one place that the Mercenary cruiser would do well is for space-based missions. Having the cutters for extra fire power is nice (though would you be better off with 10 smaller 10 ton fighters vs. 2 50 ton cutters?).

Suppose you wanted to use a ship of this sort to conduct a large scale planetary invasion, sort of a space age equivalent to the D-Day Normandy invasion? Suppose you wanted to land 1 million troops for example, and these Merc Cruisers were the landing craft. Lets say you have a tech level 7 planet, and an Interstellar Empire decided it wanted this planet, it has uses for the native population, which is in the billions of people, the planet hasn't been previously contacted, and the Imperium does not have so many people that it can simply overwhelm with numbers, but it doesn't want to use destructive nukes either, so it has 1 million troops, and decides to conduct an invasion with conventional but high tech weapons in a shock and awe campaign.

 

[phavoc]

Well, I suppose one could do that. A TL7 world wouldn't able to mount planetary defense very well (though technically missile are just TL6, so they could conceivably be shooting at you with ground-based missile defenses).

A Broadsword-class cruisers carries 24 ground troops. So if you were trying to deliver 1 millin men, that would take (carry the 1, nought, nought...Jethro Bodine calculators are sloooow...)

41,666 ships, give or take. I think that could be classified as an armada. Assuming you had ATV's or ground-based armored vehicles in your cutter modules, that would be about 80k armored vehicles to be delivered.

There are more efficient ways to deliver troops, not to mention you'd need a ton of supplies to maintain and re-arm with. Still, anything is possible!

 

[Condottiere]

It's a jack of all trades, and if I recall correctly, at the time of it's creation was the upper range of the then ship designs.

 

[Askold]

I would see the Broadswords used as the first ships to land that create a semi-safe landing zone and after that troops start arriving in shuttles from dedicated transport ships. (Perhaps some of the bigger cargo ships with much of the cargo space modified into barracks or even cryoberths from which the infantry is getting thawed out to fill the landing ships.)

 

[Jak Nazryth]

Was on the Family farm without internet access over the long labor day weekend here in the States, so my first chance to reconnect. I did get to skim through the new rule book a bit and noticed that the Merc Cruiser I had just been talking about has been redesigned. We won't know the design mechanics until the new High Guard is released, but it seems the new design has address some of the issues from the original mongoose design. Maybe my job has already been done. I know it might seem like a small detail, but the "old" cylindrical style 50 ton cutter simply works much better than the "flat" cutter from Mongoose 1.0 core book. I will continue to rearrange the deck plans so that the cutters are parallel to the ground when the Cruiser lands on the ground. That way you can still launch and retrieve a cutter no matter if the cruiser is in orbit or landed in a hot zone, warm zone, or what ever. To me, that has always been the one nagging issue with me and the original design. The core/cannon will always be the "default" design, but I'll try and create a couple of variants, but don't really want to make a "complete" layout until I get a look at the new high guard.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

I would see the Broadswords used as the first ships to land that create a semi-safe landing zone and after that troops start arriving in shuttles from dedicated transport ships. (Perhaps some of the bigger cargo ships with much of the cargo space modified into barracks or even cryoberths from which the infantry is getting thawed out to fill the landing ships.)

Don't they look something like the Trade Federation Ships from Star Wars Attack of the Clones?