Hi,
Over the last couple weeks I've been messing around with an idea that I have for a 2000 dton armored warship but using Mongoose Rules. Part of the inspiration for the vessel comes from a desire to better familiarize myself with the Mongoose Rules (and some of the new ideas that they incorporate), and part also comes from a desire to play around with some ideas that I had based on a recent discussion about what some starship weapon types might look like. Also, I had wanted to try my hand at a larger vessel than any I had previously done (the biggest of which was about only 300 dtons), and as I began to mess around with things and ideas about the weapons, it kind of got me interested in an idea that I had a long time ago for a ship vaguely kind of along the lines of an old 'pre-Dreadnought" battleship in space.
For starters, I used Apoc527's spacecraft design worksheet (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42723&highlight=spreadsheet). Two things that I noticed though, was that there may be a circular reference in the spreadsheet when you try and override the number of staterooms, and the spreadsheet appears to limit me to 1/2 the number of screens as I thought would be allowed when you combine the High Guard Rules with the Core Rulebook Rules (though I may be mis-interpreting something here). I've tried to modify the copy of the spreadsheet that I have to adjust for these issues, but I'm not fully sure that I have interprested everything right.
In the end I hope to draw up the final plans in an AutoCAD like program that I have (AcelliCAD), but for now I have found that it was easier to do alot of the initial layouts in EXCEL, by sizing the cells into roughly square shaped elements. The main drawback here being that its not possible to correctly shade partial suares correctly.
Below is some output from EXCEL showing the planned layout of the ship. One thing I discovered in laying out the ship was that, since I had planned to provide alot of armor etc, it was easier to draw up the ship to a size not including the hull armor, lay out the interior spaces, and then assume that the hull and armor would be added outside of those spaces. So the images below do not show all the armor etc, onboard.
Here you can see that the ship has about 4 hull decks, a small double bottom, and three superstructure decks.
The ship's main armament is in four 50 dton bays which are shown a large brown boxes in the images. My thought is that they are kind of like modern Navy modules like on Stanflex and Meko type vessles http://www.amiinter.com/samples/denmark/DA1501.html http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMIII/MMIIIJan18.html.
For my ship though, they will be large, removable boxes with a large, armored, rotating turret atop (or bleow for the lower two mounts).
The Bridge and other Command stuff is shown in Purple, and the ship will be able to embark an Admiral, with a small staff. I have not yet fully layed out the Cammand spaces, but I intend to have a regualar Pilot House area, an Admiral Bridge below, and most of the Fire Control spaces etc below that in a Combat Information Center (CIC) type arrangement.
A relatively small Cargo Bay/Ship's locker is shown in Yellow. (I wanted to make the Cargo Bay bigger, but I began to run out of room).
The drak heavy lines represent bulkheads and reflect some of the 200 dtons of internal space that the rules appear to require for "reinforced structure".
The aft part of the "01" Level is where I intend to have stuff like the Galley, the Mess Deck, Breifing Rooms, and a Laundry/other Life Support equpment space. I have fitting 4 Briefing Rooms to the ship, assuming one for the Admiral & staff, one for the Ship's Officers, one for the crew, and one for ship's troops. The ship is intended to carry a squad of troops (8) and one Officer.
The Bright Blue spaces reflect fuel storage, while the other blue spaces reflect accomodations spaces. (I've tried to preliminarily separate them into Admiral & staff, Ship's Officers, Crew, Emergency Low Berths, and Sick Bay). Although I believe that the rules don't call for a Doctor/Medic on a ship this size, I've added space for a Doctor, a Sick Bay, and a Corpman/Medic since the ship is a warship and carries troops and possibly a Flag Officer. For the Sick Bay (as well as part of the Admiral & Captains Staterooms) I've added a couple tons of "Luxuries" to ensure that I had enough space allocated. I think that the Admiral, the Captain, the Doctor, and some of the other officers have single Staterooms, to allow them to have a small desk etc, but most of the rest of the crew is in double staerooms. I also put the Doctor, the Sick Bay, and one other cabin (for the Corpman/Medic and one other crew man) near the Emergency Low Berths because I figured these spaces may be closely tied together.
I also allocated space for Escape Pods, and to accommodate them, each deck area where there is regular berthing has a small Airlock/Escape Area, to faciliate the ability to make an emergency escape.
Vertical access in the forward main accommodations areas of the ship is via two small lifts, but in the aft accommodations area I fitted an inclined ladder well (to ensure a means of access if power is lost, etc). These are shown in Grey, and there is a secondary lift forward toaccess the upper Bridge/Command areas.
The Olive Green space near amidships will be the Jump Drive machinery, and I hope to better detail it later. The brighter green stuff aft of that (outboard the aft bays) are the powerplant machinery. Both of these machinery spaces extend over two deck heights. The light spaces forward in the lower Power Plant space represent the fuel processors, and the blue/green stuff aft represent the maneuver drives.
The light orange boxes are magazines for the Sand Casters (and I just realized I may have to adjust the aft one to better provide access to it), while the medium orange boxes are magazines for the missile turrests. The darker orange boxes, amidships, will be barbette weapons and I hope to better detail them out later.
Finally the big red boxes (which are two decks high) represent the machinery for the ship's screens (and I hope to also better detail them later as well).
Overall, I had hoped that in laying out a larger ship, I wouldn't have as much trouble getting stuff (especially the accommodations) to fit in its allocated space. However, since overything was so distributed over the ship's length, in some of my initial layouts I had trouble making this happen (as I often needed some long accessway/passages). In the end I tried to reconfigure then ship so that some related spaces could be accessed via other spaces (such as the barbettes being accessed through the screen spaces, etc). In the end (if I assume that the spaces through the bulkheads are part of the bulkheads and the lifts through the bridge are part of the bridge, then I came reasonably close (I think).
Right now I am not showing the ship's boats (which will go outboard the superstructure, or the repair drone yet, but I hope to have them done shortly.
Below is a listing of the ship from Apoc's spreadsheet.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this, if anyone is interested.
Regards
PF
Over the last couple weeks I've been messing around with an idea that I have for a 2000 dton armored warship but using Mongoose Rules. Part of the inspiration for the vessel comes from a desire to better familiarize myself with the Mongoose Rules (and some of the new ideas that they incorporate), and part also comes from a desire to play around with some ideas that I had based on a recent discussion about what some starship weapon types might look like. Also, I had wanted to try my hand at a larger vessel than any I had previously done (the biggest of which was about only 300 dtons), and as I began to mess around with things and ideas about the weapons, it kind of got me interested in an idea that I had a long time ago for a ship vaguely kind of along the lines of an old 'pre-Dreadnought" battleship in space.
For starters, I used Apoc527's spacecraft design worksheet (http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=42723&highlight=spreadsheet). Two things that I noticed though, was that there may be a circular reference in the spreadsheet when you try and override the number of staterooms, and the spreadsheet appears to limit me to 1/2 the number of screens as I thought would be allowed when you combine the High Guard Rules with the Core Rulebook Rules (though I may be mis-interpreting something here). I've tried to modify the copy of the spreadsheet that I have to adjust for these issues, but I'm not fully sure that I have interprested everything right.
In the end I hope to draw up the final plans in an AutoCAD like program that I have (AcelliCAD), but for now I have found that it was easier to do alot of the initial layouts in EXCEL, by sizing the cells into roughly square shaped elements. The main drawback here being that its not possible to correctly shade partial suares correctly.
Below is some output from EXCEL showing the planned layout of the ship. One thing I discovered in laying out the ship was that, since I had planned to provide alot of armor etc, it was easier to draw up the ship to a size not including the hull armor, lay out the interior spaces, and then assume that the hull and armor would be added outside of those spaces. So the images below do not show all the armor etc, onboard.
Here you can see that the ship has about 4 hull decks, a small double bottom, and three superstructure decks.
The ship's main armament is in four 50 dton bays which are shown a large brown boxes in the images. My thought is that they are kind of like modern Navy modules like on Stanflex and Meko type vessles http://www.amiinter.com/samples/denmark/DA1501.html http://www.marinelog.com/DOCS/NEWSMMIII/MMIIIJan18.html.
For my ship though, they will be large, removable boxes with a large, armored, rotating turret atop (or bleow for the lower two mounts).
The Bridge and other Command stuff is shown in Purple, and the ship will be able to embark an Admiral, with a small staff. I have not yet fully layed out the Cammand spaces, but I intend to have a regualar Pilot House area, an Admiral Bridge below, and most of the Fire Control spaces etc below that in a Combat Information Center (CIC) type arrangement.
A relatively small Cargo Bay/Ship's locker is shown in Yellow. (I wanted to make the Cargo Bay bigger, but I began to run out of room).
The drak heavy lines represent bulkheads and reflect some of the 200 dtons of internal space that the rules appear to require for "reinforced structure".
The aft part of the "01" Level is where I intend to have stuff like the Galley, the Mess Deck, Breifing Rooms, and a Laundry/other Life Support equpment space. I have fitting 4 Briefing Rooms to the ship, assuming one for the Admiral & staff, one for the Ship's Officers, one for the crew, and one for ship's troops. The ship is intended to carry a squad of troops (8) and one Officer.
The Bright Blue spaces reflect fuel storage, while the other blue spaces reflect accomodations spaces. (I've tried to preliminarily separate them into Admiral & staff, Ship's Officers, Crew, Emergency Low Berths, and Sick Bay). Although I believe that the rules don't call for a Doctor/Medic on a ship this size, I've added space for a Doctor, a Sick Bay, and a Corpman/Medic since the ship is a warship and carries troops and possibly a Flag Officer. For the Sick Bay (as well as part of the Admiral & Captains Staterooms) I've added a couple tons of "Luxuries" to ensure that I had enough space allocated. I think that the Admiral, the Captain, the Doctor, and some of the other officers have single Staterooms, to allow them to have a small desk etc, but most of the rest of the crew is in double staerooms. I also put the Doctor, the Sick Bay, and one other cabin (for the Corpman/Medic and one other crew man) near the Emergency Low Berths because I figured these spaces may be closely tied together.
I also allocated space for Escape Pods, and to accommodate them, each deck area where there is regular berthing has a small Airlock/Escape Area, to faciliate the ability to make an emergency escape.
Vertical access in the forward main accommodations areas of the ship is via two small lifts, but in the aft accommodations area I fitted an inclined ladder well (to ensure a means of access if power is lost, etc). These are shown in Grey, and there is a secondary lift forward toaccess the upper Bridge/Command areas.
The Olive Green space near amidships will be the Jump Drive machinery, and I hope to better detail it later. The brighter green stuff aft of that (outboard the aft bays) are the powerplant machinery. Both of these machinery spaces extend over two deck heights. The light spaces forward in the lower Power Plant space represent the fuel processors, and the blue/green stuff aft represent the maneuver drives.
The light orange boxes are magazines for the Sand Casters (and I just realized I may have to adjust the aft one to better provide access to it), while the medium orange boxes are magazines for the missile turrests. The darker orange boxes, amidships, will be barbette weapons and I hope to better detail them out later.
Finally the big red boxes (which are two decks high) represent the machinery for the ship's screens (and I hope to also better detail them later as well).
Overall, I had hoped that in laying out a larger ship, I wouldn't have as much trouble getting stuff (especially the accommodations) to fit in its allocated space. However, since overything was so distributed over the ship's length, in some of my initial layouts I had trouble making this happen (as I often needed some long accessway/passages). In the end I tried to reconfigure then ship so that some related spaces could be accessed via other spaces (such as the barbettes being accessed through the screen spaces, etc). In the end (if I assume that the spaces through the bulkheads are part of the bulkheads and the lifts through the bridge are part of the bridge, then I came reasonably close (I think).
Right now I am not showing the ship's boats (which will go outboard the superstructure, or the repair drone yet, but I hope to have them done shortly.
Below is a listing of the ship from Apoc's spreadsheet.
Anyway, I just wanted to share this, if anyone is interested.
Regards
PF