A 2000 dton Armored Warship

PFVA63

Mongoose
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.

AWS1.jpg


AWS2.jpg


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.

AWS3.jpg


Regards

PF
 
PFVA63 said:
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.

It's not a bad idea to have one but the rules don't really call for much in the way of a Medic. Just One per 120 passengers for average or full crew. Capital ship crews don't mention medical personnel.
 
The basic rules are deficient in regards to minimum medical personnel. It's fine for a small tramp freighter or scout to make do without, but any commercial passenger ship or military vessel is going to need more than "1 medic per 120 passengers". IMHO any ship operating low berths would be required by law to have a medical officer.

The captial ship rules don't specify medical personnel apart from the required Command Section medical officer, but there would usually be additional medical crew in the command section support personnel and the service crew. Per the entry on Frozen Watch, medical personnel should be assigned to operate low berths, though no minimums are given. Realistically, number of crew assigned is going to affect the rate at which revivals can be done, which may be important for in-battle replacements.
 
rinku said:
The basic rules are deficient in regards to minimum medical personnel. It's fine for a small tramp freighter or scout to make do without, but any commercial passenger ship or military vessel is going to need more than "1 medic per 120 passengers". IMHO any ship operating low berths would be required by law to have a medical officer.

Agreed that the rules are deficient in this. Though low berths may not require a medical officer on board as qualified medical personnel may be brought onboard to handle this part.

rinku said:
The captial ship rules don't specify medical personnel apart from the required Command Section medical officer, but there would usually be additional medical crew in the command section support personnel and the service crew. Per the entry on Frozen Watch, medical personnel should be assigned to operate low berths, though no minimums are given. Realistically, number of crew assigned is going to affect the rate at which revivals can be done, which may be important for in-battle replacements.

Yup, hardly saying anything really. No number or anything is given.
 
AndrewW said:
Agreed that the rules are deficient in this. Though low berths may not require a medical officer on board as qualified medical personnel may be brought onboard to handle this part.

Agreed, in general, but I was more concerned about the week in jumpspace and the possibility of equipment malfunction or other emergency that might require in-flight defrosting. Someone should be monitoring the corpsicles :)

In any case, flying any ship without a doctor is just a bad idea...
 
Overall I like the design. I question though. With the low Jump rating is this a ship that would for defense in a small cluster of densely spaced systems?
Otherwise, it would require a ship to carry it in order to keep up with a fleet "on the move".
 
DFW said:
Overall I like the design. I question though. With the low Jump rating is this a ship that would for defense in a small cluster of densely spaced systems?
Otherwise, it would require a ship to carry it in order to keep up with a fleet "on the move".

Hi,

In general I just wanted to try a larger ship than anything I had tried previously so I went with the largest hull in the Core Rule Book, but added the additional rules from High Guard (which is how Apoc's spreadsheet is set up).

In general then, if you prefer a small ship setting (based mostly on the Core Rulebook) it could be a capital type ship.

If you use a large ship setting though I guess it could be an armored gunship type vessel for protecting high values areas (such as maybe near a reserach station, outpost, or a shipyard/depot, etc).

For either setting, it could also be used as a flagship for a Pocket Empire and/or technology Elevated Dictator etc too, especially for non OTU settings.

Anyway just some thoughts.

Thanks for the feedback.

Regards

PF
 
I really need to get around to updating that sheet. I think I fixed the circular reference bug in my version, but haven't uploaded it yet...the reality is that my Traveller game right now doesn't involve starships, so I have little motivation to get the sheet finished. I'm sure I will someday though!
 
The captial ship rules don't specify medical personnel apart from the required Command Section medical officer, but there would usually be additional medical crew in the command section support personnel and the service crew. Per the entry on Frozen Watch, medical personnel should be assigned to operate low berths, though no minimums are given. Realistically, number of crew assigned is going to affect the rate at which revivals can be done, which may be important for in-battle replacements.

We always just went with the '1 per 120 crew' exactly as per passengers. That doesn't seem unreasonable for a warship, which is logically going to have a decent med facility on board if it expects to get into a fight.


I'm not sure all is well with your weapons, by the way.

4 Meson Bays takes up 200 dTons plus 4 dTons fire control. That's less than you've allowed for.

6 Particle Barbettes are 5 dTons each, again plus 1 dTon fire control (never said explicitely but assumed as they are 'like turrets' in all other ways). That's 36 dTons, not 33. You can't have miniaturized them as the upgrades and tonnage reduction are mutually exclusive.

3 Triple Missile Racks are 3 dTons, not 3.3


The ship looks good. Jump-2 is a little short-legged, but Jump-3 or more starts to require unwieldy quantities of fuel per jump, so don't worry about it. Provided the ship is operating in a dense environment, it's fine. As DFW said, you can always produce a 'jump collar' type contraption with a docking clamp and a jump-4 or jump-5 drive if needs be.





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



You could always designate those areas as modular hull, then. This would up your cost by 10.2%, but you could refit the ship as needed:

Any basic directed energy weapon bay would be useable.

Any railgun or missile bay would be useable provided you took a tonnage reduction upgrade (to allow space for ammo)

A standard hangar (allowing maintenance) for 4 10 dTon light fighters or a single 40 dTon small craft

A scientific facility - 11 dTons cargo, 5 laboratories and 5 staterooms

A troop transport facility - a briefing room, two armouries, barracks for 20 soldiers and 3 dTons of general stores.

etc, etc.
 
Howdy,

The added displacement of the Bays and Missile Turrets is due to them having Armored Bulkheads. However, I'm not sure whay the Barbettes only have a displacement fo 33 instead of 36 (or more). I had intended for them to also have Armored Bulkheads, but it appears that I did not include the 1 dton for Fire Control for them. I better doulble check my calcs.

Thanks for catching that.

Regards

PF

PS. In the deck plans the space for the barbettes and bays come up a little less than there allocated size in part because I intend to add a heavy turreted structure in the final drawing that should make up for the missing space.
 
Fire Control tonnage is a bit confusing.

In the TMB it states that you have to include FC tonnage for each hardpoint, but in the Turret Size table (TMB Page 111), it states that the listed tonnage includes the Fire Control Tonnage. SO a turret is 1 ton with fire control.

It should be possible to use that as your baseline and assume that a 5 ton Barbette and a 50 or 100 ton bay also includes the 1 ton of fire control, once installed.

Most of the ship designs from Mongoose do not reflect this, but the rules seem to imply it (again based on the Turret Tonnage Table).

Personnaly, I allow the tonnages of the turrets, barbettes and bays to include the 1-dton of Fire Control when installed. If there are unused hardpoints (which a civilian ship might have), then they need to allocate 1-dton of fire control even though no weapon is installed.
 
Rikki Tikki Traveller said:
Fire Control tonnage is a bit confusing.

It should be possible to use that as your baseline and assume that a 5 ton Barbette and a 50 or 100 ton bay also includes the 1 ton of fire control, once installed.

Most of the ship designs from Mongoose do not reflect this, but the rules seem to imply it (again based on the Turret Tonnage Table).

Personnaly, I allow the tonnages of the turrets, barbettes and bays to include the 1-dton of Fire Control when installed. If there are unused hardpoints (which a civilian ship might have), then they need to allocate 1-dton of fire control even though no weapon is installed.

Traveller Core Rulebook said:
Bay weapons are much larger than turrets, and take up 50 tons of space and one hard point, as well as one ton of space for fire control.

It's not clear if Barbettes include fire control or not in their tonnage. Looking at existing specs from Mongoose Publishing they already include the fire control, if that is correct or not is a mystery.
 
Bays specifically require extra fire control (basic p.111).

Barbettes don't specifically mention fire control, but the description of their tonnage requirements mentions "targetting mechanisms", so I'd read that as fire control as included in their 5 tons.
 
locarno24 said:
You could always designate those areas as modular hull, then. This would up your cost by 10.2%, but you could refit the ship as needed:

Any basic directed energy weapon bay would be useable.

Any railgun or missile bay would be useable provided you took a tonnage reduction upgrade (to allow space for ammo)

A standard hangar (allowing maintenance) for 4 10 dTon light fighters or a single 40 dTon small craft

A scientific facility - 11 dTons cargo, 5 laboratories and 5 staterooms

A troop transport facility - a briefing room, two armouries, barracks for 20 soldiers and 3 dTons of general stores.

etc, etc.

Hi,

I kind of like that idea. I've found a couple errors so far in my design (I'm still kind of learning the Mongoose rules), so hopefully when I get around to redesigning it, I'll look into may maodularizeing it.

Thanks for the suggestion.

Regards

PF
 
Here are some revised deckplans, correcting some errors and incorporating changes reflecting stuff in the High Guard Errata posted on the Mongoose website.

In general the Screens are a little smaller than I had previously calculated allowing for additional cargo and a couple extra staterooms, which ended up pushing some of the other accommodations down a bit. I decided to relocate the Admiral's stateroom, the Capt's stateroom, and the Executive Officers's stateroom up near the bridge, and now have the Sick Bay and Doctor's stateroom near the rest of the Officers. I also added in a space for the repair drone(s) aft.

Regards

PF

AWSA.jpg


AWSB.jpg
 
Here are some updated images, that I translated over to AcceliCAD (an AutoCAD clone).

Hopefully, once I get everything sorted out, I'll add some writeup and sort out the scale and maybe try and make a PDF out of it.

Regards

PF

Prof1.jpg


Dks1.jpg


Dks2.jpg


Dks3.jpg


Dks4.jpg
 
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