Capitol Ships and Command Posts: How does this make sense?

[drnuncheon]

"As a 4 section ship, Julia's ship required a bridge that takes up (4 x 0.5) 2% of the ship, which is 1500 tons"

Yep, and these 1,500 dtons are for example a space that is 3 m high,
70 m wide and 100 m long.

The original problem was (I thought) that we needed separate bridges (with separate command crew) in each section of the craft, even if it was "just fuel". That's what I was addressing here - they can all be combined together.

As for space, "bridge" includes "basic controls, communications equipment, avionics, scanners, detectors, sensors, and other equipment" according to the main book, so it's not like there's this vast open space with a handful of computer terminals in it.

As for the jump in space required, a 2000 dton hull from the main book needs a 40 dton bridge (2% of its mass). A 4000 dton hull in HG needs two command modules at .5% of mass each, making it...a 40 dton bridge. Holy crow, alert the presses! It's even lower than the main book says it should be!

Now, as it increases…if you've ever been on a really big ship, especially a military ship, they don't just have "the bridge" where everything happens. They've got the bridge, the radar room, the radio room, etc. All of these plus the machinery for them - the radios and laser comms, the radar and lidar, the computer core - plus all the support machinery for that, power converters and cooling and networking and access areas - plus the passages for humans to get around between them - all of this would be lumped under the "command modules" in a capital ship - just like it is on the smaller ships.

And there's the other part of it. SD says "nobody makes us notice that plumbing, piping, etcetera, on smaller ships" but he's wrong - it's built into the bridge there, too.

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

"As a 4 section ship, Julia's ship required a bridge that takes up (4 x 0.5) 2% of the ship, which is 1500 tons"

Yep, and these 1,500 dtons are for example a space that is 3 m high,
70 m wide and 100 m long.

The original problem was (I thought) that we needed separate bridges (with separate command crew) in each section of the craft, even if it was "just fuel". That's what I was addressing here - they can all be combined together.

That's a silly bugger bit, but not my main problem.

As for space, "bridge" includes "basic controls, communications equipment, avionics, scanners, detectors, sensors, and other equipment" according to the main book, so it's not like there's this vast open space with a handful of computer terminals in it.

No ship will need most of the volume of an entire destroyer dedicated to controls, communications, avionics, scanners/detectors/sensors (lolwhut? Why I am spending tonnage and megacredits on sensor systems and signal processing and distributed arrays, then?) and other equipment.

As for the jump in space required, a 2000 dton hull from the main book needs a 40 dton bridge (2% of its mass). A 4000 dton hull in HG needs two command modules at .5% of mass each, making it...a 40 dton bridge. Holy crow, alert the presses! It's even lower than the main book says it should be!

And a 3,000 D-Ton vessel needs 30 D-tons, in the form of two 15-D-Ton command centers, a lower figure, which again, makes no sense whatsoever, and just proves that this was an ill-thought-out slap-job of a rule.

Now, as it increases…if you've ever been on a really big ship, especially a military ship, they don't just have "the bridge" where everything happens. They've got the bridge, the radar room, the radio room, etc. All of these plus the machinery for them - the radios and laser comms, the radar and lidar, the computer core - plus all the support machinery for that, power converters and cooling and networking and access areas - plus the passages for humans to get around between them - all of this would be lumped under the "command modules" in a capital ship - just like it is on the smaller ships.

'Radar' room should be covered in the D-tons and megacredits I spent on sensor systems, not in the command space. Power converters, cooling, whatever, are one of those things assumed to be part of the 'general space' in that every ship system imaginable doesn't take up just the strict space required, but also involves the associated internal connections. There's no reason the bridge space should balloon out, because frankly, the actual stuff required to command a starship won't increase as a function of the ship's overall volume. You can say "fire control room" I say "that's covered in the tonnage spent on bays and turrets." You can say "life support", I say "covered in the tonnage spent on staterooms." There's simply no good reason for the massive ballooning.

And there's the other part of it. SD says "nobody makes us notice that plumbing, piping, etcetera, on smaller ships" but he's wrong - it's built into the bridge there, too.

Really? Then why does that plumbing, etcetera, take up a fixed 20 D-Tons for every hull code between 3 and A? I guess either 300 tonners are real pigs when it comes to their plumbing, or 1,000 tonners are really efficient?

I'm not saying some scaling cost is unreasonable. I'm saying 0.5% multiplied by an arbitrary number of ship sections is.

 

[rust]

Now, as it increases…if you've ever been on a really big ship, especially a military ship, they don't just have "the bridge" where everything happens. They've got the bridge, the radar room, the radio room, etc. All of these plus the machinery for them - the radios and laser comms, the radar and lidar, the computer core - plus all the support machinery for that, power converters and cooling and networking and access areas - plus the passages for humans to get around between them - all of this would be lumped under the "command modules" in a capital ship - just like it is on the smaller ships.

Unfortunately the rule as written would enforce exactly the same size of
command space for a 50,000 dton warship and a 50,000 dt ore freighter,
which is very far from convincing me that this is a reasonable rule.

Frankly, I would not buy it, the players of my campaign would not buy
it - so this rule is deleted from my book.

 

[drnuncheon]

No ship will need most of the volume of an entire destroyer dedicated to controls, communications, avionics, scanners/detectors/sensors (lolwhut? Why I am spending tonnage and megacredits on sensor systems and signal processing and distributed arrays, then?) and other equipment.

So exactly how much tonnage are you spending for the standard sensors, before you upgrade or add anything else? (The table is on page 108.)

'Radar' room should be covered in the D-tons and megacredits I spent on sensor systems, not in the command space.

I'm going to go with "included in bridge" like the table says, and say that the extra space you pay for upgraded sensors is the sensor equipment itself.

Power converters, cooling, whatever, are one of those things assumed to be part of the 'general space' in that every ship system imaginable doesn't take up just the strict space required, but also involves the associated internal connections.

Yes, that's exactly my point - and the associated internal connections get more complex and take up more space on a larger ship.

If I compare my home computer to the data center where I work, the volume of the data center is not just the volume of my PC times the number of computers at the center. It's that plus the raised floor plus the gigantic A/C units plus the overhead cable racks plus the access space in front of and behind the server racks plus the disk arrays plus the switches...even if any one of those computers is individually only as powerful as my PC the complexity multiplies the space required far more than simply based on the number of computers.

So consider that a battleship needs a lot more "bridge space" than a 747, even though it's only operating in two dimensions. And when we talk about spacecraft the complexity gets even higher - the only way the space shuttle can operate is by leaving most of its "bridge" back on the planet. Obviously that gets a lot better by the timescale of the 3I.

You can say "fire control room" I say "that's covered in the tonnage spent on bays and turrets." You can say "life support", I say "covered in the tonnage spent on staterooms." There's simply no good reason for the massive ballooning.

But I didn't say either of those things, and the things I did say are explicitly or implicitly backed up in the book.

Really? Then why does that plumbing, etcetera, take up a fixed 20 D-Tons for every hull code between 3 and A? I guess either 300 tonners are real pigs when it comes to their plumbing, or 1,000 tonners are really efficient?

There's a certain amount of fixed space that is required. The pilot doesn't get any smaller when the ship does, so there's a certain minimum level of space that his controls are going to take up, for example. And there's a certain level of granularity in the rules for simplicity's sake - I don't think anyone *really* believes that humans can be separated into 11 distinct levels of strength with no gradations between them, for example.

So what gets bigger as the ship gets bigger? I mean, the pilot's chair isn't going to grow, sure. But a 100,000 dton freighter is going to need more instances of some things than a 200dton Free Trader. It's probably going to need multiple sensor arrays to get full coverage of its area. It's going to need more attitude thrusters to maneuver - sure, the thrusters themselves are covered under the M-Drive, but the controls aren't, they're part of the bridge. It's going to have more things to monitor just because of the increased size of the ship - even something as simple as a pressure sensor so it can detect when to close an iris hatch is going to be multiplied in a larger ship. It's going to need more in the way of computers (and networking equipment) because there are more things to keep track of. They're going to need personnel to take care of the sensors and the computers and the communications equipment and keep it working, and all of those people will need a place to work. (And they're not the same as the engineers, because the number of engineers is dependent on drive/power plant size only.)

Ultimately, though, this comes down to a question of "my made-up numbers are better than yours" since we don't have any real TL12 space warship designers on the boards. I don't think it's perfect but I also don't think it's as massively unreasonable as has been suggested here.

J

 

[BP]

... places in my hull where one could hide an entire frigate hangar for a 1,940 D-Ton frigate that get devoted to ten men and their pub.

Hey - nice little gem - I like that! 8)

 

[BP]

....
we don't have any real TL12 space warship designers on the boards

We don't??? Darn it, someone's been deceiving me - I want to talk to the management! This is in-excusable!

 

[Ishmael]

I dunno..it all seems a bit silly to argue about.
If you don't like a rule, don't use it. But then you accept the fact that ships 'built' without that rule can't be directly compared to ships made with that rule.

Having said that....
Because its an abstract rule, it has to be described in some fashion which gives various rationalizations; ref's take their pick. To expect a FFS1 level of detailed volume allocation is silly. You either go with extreme detailed vehicle rules, or you accept some wriggle room and rationalizations from abstract rules.

It seems to me from the discussion here that "bridge" and "command section" probably mean 2 different things. A command section might very well be dozens or hundreds of small volumes which hold various bits of control equipment, spaces used to maintain them and even NCO offices. Enough volume might be used that pulling them all out of a large ship and placing them in one spot might give a space as big as a smallish frigate. The bridge ( or bridges, if you include auxiliary and cic and dcc and other control spaces ) is something else completely.
This seems fine with me and appears to fit in some fashion with my experience being stationed on a large navy ship. The idea of men having to watch a fuel tank is fine too ( been there, done that...except I had to spend a few midwatches monitoring freezer temperatures and log them in a book ). Standing watch over a fuel system and monitoring pressures, temps and flow rates might be comparable to standing what on a switchboard ( been there, done that, too )

There will be more cables than just fiber optics.
Look at Traveller's power requirements for various equipment, then check the sizes of cable you'd need to supply that at various voltages and amperages... even with superconductors.

btw, for comparison, the battleship Yamato was about 10,000dtons, so the example using 500,000 has 50 times the volume of the Yamato. The USS Nimitz is about 18,000dtons, the example has nearly 28 times the volume of the 500,000dton example.

This link might shed some light on this.
( compare against a SDB without jump drives or jump fuel )
note that the spaces figured that would fall under 'bridge' or command sections is between 2%-3% ( I did not include comms or passageways in my quick/dirty check ).

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=15369

I don't find this rule that bad except for the apparent breakpoint at 2000dtons.

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

Even with a flag staff of fifty full-bird officers aboard, I find it incredulous that the combined space of the entire officer's country (if that is indeed, what 'Bridge' requries - in which case, why the hell am I directed to install breifing rooms and staterooms for them?!) equals that of a small contemporary destroyer, or more than the Yamato!

As for making men stand watch over the fuel, I can imagine a navy being anal enough to do that. I can't imagine them being anal enough to make a full-ranked Commander pull that duty. I mean, really... "Congratulations. You're now one rank below the commanding officer of this vessel. Here's a job that on all sane ships is given to a midshipman. Enjoy."

I'd expect a mutiny in short order if I made a habit of doing that.

 

[Ishmael]

Even with a flag staff of fifty full-bird officers aboard, I find it incredulous that the combined space of the entire officer's country (if that is indeed, what 'Bridge' requries - in which case, why the hell am I directed to install breifing rooms and staterooms for them?!) equals that of a small contemporary destroyer, or more than the Yamato!

Which is what leads me to believe that "bridge" is different than 'command section' and that the bridge is just part of a single command section. TheYamato is only 2% of your example ship and I can imagine that the total volume used is around that, although certainly not in one humongous space. It all depends on how you interpret those terms within an abstract design sequence ( as opposed to a very detailed, almost blueprint level design sequence ).

As for making men stand watch over the fuel, I can imagine a navy being anal enough to do that. I can't imagine them being anal enough to make a full-ranked Commander pull that duty. I mean, really... "Congratulations. You're now one rank below the commanding officer of this vessel. Here's a job that on all sane ships is given to a midshipman. Enjoy."

I'd expect a mutiny in short order if I made a habit of doing that.

I wouldn't think it anal to keep an eye on a couple of million cubic meters of a fuel thats highly explosive and that the ship depended on it for power.
My Engineering officer was a Commander and one of his responsibilities was for the fuel on the ship...he just delegated the task ( one of many ) down the chain of command... hence an enlisted guy ( like me ) would ultimately be the one doing the actual watching. But make no mistake, he was ultimately responsible for it. Why would the navy in Trav be any different?

 

[ShadowDragon8685]

Even with a flag staff of fifty full-bird officers aboard, I find it incredulous that the combined space of the entire officer's country (if that is indeed, what 'Bridge' requries - in which case, why the hell am I directed to install breifing rooms and staterooms for them?!) equals that of a small contemporary destroyer, or more than the Yamato!

Which is what leads me to believe that "bridge" is different than 'command section' and that the bridge is just part of a single command section. TheYamato is only 2% of your example ship and I can imagine that the total volume used is around that, although certainly not in one humongous space. It all depends on how you interpret those terms within an abstract design sequence ( as opposed to a very detailed, almost blueprint level design sequence ).

Yes, but Yamato was 10,000 D-Tons, whereas the Bridge space I am required to allocate is 12,500.

As for making men stand watch over the fuel, I can imagine a navy being anal enough to do that. I can't imagine them being anal enough to make a full-ranked Commander pull that duty. I mean, really... "Congratulations. You're now one rank below the commanding officer of this vessel. Here's a job that on all sane ships is given to a midshipman. Enjoy."

I'd expect a mutiny in short order if I made a habit of doing that.

I wouldn't think it anal to keep an eye on a couple of million cubic meters of a fuel thats highly explosive and that the ship depended on it for power.
My Engineering officer was a Commander and one of his responsibilities was for the fuel on the ship...he just delegated the task ( one of many ) down the chain of command... hence an enlisted guy ( like me ) would ultimately be the one doing the actual watching. But make no mistake, he was ultimately responsible for it. Why would the navy in Trav be any different?

The ship's chief engineer will most likely be a commander, and it will be one of his responsibilities. But this directs me to make five sub-bridges, each in one section of the ship, and two sections of the ship are little more than a thin skin with connecting lines through and fuel tanks.

So you have two commanders (the minimum I would say would be in charge of a 'command post') just watching the fuel.

 

[Ishmael]

Play it as you like, obviously.

But based on my interpretation of "bridge" , "command section" and their volume requirements...
And based on my real-world experience on a naval ship
And based on the analysis of the space allocation for a couple of naval ships....

I feel the example where 2.5% of a ship's total volume is needed for command and control of a ship passes a reasonable reality check for military ships.

I'm looking into determining command/control volumes based on crew requirements to obtain better results for non-military ships and that 'sections' should be based on crew functions with the size being proportional to the number of crewmen within that section.
(modifed by computer rating?...more powerful computer=more automation?....hmmmm )
That's closer to how MT/ FFS1 does things.

 

[lurker]

A large passenger liner might have several backup 'manuaul' gauges for each stateroom (air pressure, contaminants, power, gravity, fire sensors, security sensors...).

You would still have to explain why a passenger liner of 1,900 dtons does
not need such systems while a passenger liner of 2,100 dtons does need
them - and this is exactly what I mean with the "OTU Game", trying to
write sense into something that simply does not make sense.

Who says a smaller vessel does not need similar manual gauges and controls? The core rulebook says a 1100 - 2000 ton ship requires a 40 ton bridge. This is approx 2% to 3.6%. I believe the OP gave an example of HG where the command post took 2.5%. To me, this seams to be similar... Difference being that larger ships don't have to have everything consolidated on a single bridge?

 

[drnuncheon]

[But this directs me to make five sub-bridges, each in one section of the ship,

Didn't we already go over this? The example shows that there don't have to be sub-bridges in each section, and the sample deckplans bear that out too.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

I think a simple house-rule would be ton to not count tonnage for fuel or cargo.

So a civilian ship would have a much smaller command and control requirement than a military one.

If you put all your fuel in one section, then you can, but you are asking for trouble when a fight starts up, since I guarentee you the enemy will be targetting that section. Without fuel, you are DEAD.

I was stationed on a nuclear submarine, which was a bit under 6000 Dtons. Since it used a fission reactor, it didn't have a big fuel tank, so figure it might have been 10,000 Dtons in Traveller terms.

On that ship we had 3 watertight (airtight) sections. Fwd Section, Missile Section and Engineering.

Each section had it's own "Command and Control" area monitored by officers and enlisted people at all times. The main bridge was in the Fwd Section and was the largest, but the Missile Section and the Engineering section both had manned areas.

The numbers in the book are reasonable as a first order approximation. Dropping fuel and cargo from the calculation seems to be a reasonable modification.

 

[BP]

This is something very puzzling to me, and very frustrating.
...
In High Guard, we get told that you need 0.5% of a ship's volume for a command post, instead of, you know, using one of the established bridge sizes from earlier. We also get told that you need one of these per ship section, itself an arbitrary and frustrating distinction. This has lead to a ridiculous and frankly insulting "This much space is obligatorialy fined from you for having a large vessel" 'balancing' mechanism, rather than anything reasonably resembling "this is the place where you drive the ship from."

A quick read and it appears this post is based on reading into the rules things that are simply not there (at least in my ‘edition’).
(Finally got my copy of Mongoose High Guard – hurray!)

It is, however, understandable that this happened – the book lacks consistent distinctive separation of sub-topics, explicit labeling of tables, and term use (not that this wasn’t an issue with the original) [And I still love it!]

…one of these per ship section, itself an arbitrary and frustrating distinction…

This is the ‘problem’ – the rules are not explicit on the definition of the word ‘section’ – and , instead are inconsistent and ambiguous in its use (hello editor).

... Engineering … Forward … Main … (Upper/Lower) Amidships … Aft…pg 63

This page states that capital ships have 2-6 sections, but that the names are ‘sample names’ and are for the purposes of using the Section Hit Tables…

… requires one command module per section … pg 65

The exact meaning of ‘sections’ is not defined here. In fact, I rather expect it was left as up to the designer… but this precedes discussion of the crewed sections of the ship and should probably read ‘one command module per crewed section’.

… Command Section … Engineering Section … Gunnery Section … Flight Section … pg 67

Page 67 lists sections by name (4 explicitly called sections), including a table with a column labeled ‘Section’. Above the table there is the ‘… may have a requirement for other sections … security, maintenance, food service …’.
What these have in common is they are referring to crewed areas – and the ‘sections’ where dedicated space not already allocated for people to work would be needed. This makes sense.

Then page 68 contains the Section Hit Tables – but this is not the ‘sections’ already referred to (since the names don't match).

Most notably - there is no explicit mention of Fuel as a section!
In the Section Hit Tables there is a ‘Type A Components’ which includes under ‘Internal’ Bay, Fuel and Hold. But again, this is not related to crew and the use of the word ‘Section’ in the ‘Section Hit Tables’ title should probably be differentiated from the ‘sections’ referring to crew and command sections. Also the section naming is a sample only and even then not necessarily related directly to physical location (i.e. Forward could mean on top, while other sections could physically lie far forward of such)

As for the 0.5% per command section – this seems reasonable (and fits nicely with CT HG’s 2% bridge). And HG does state that one of the sections ‘must be designated the ship’s bridge’.

In a nutshell, you are responsible for deciding what to call a ‘section’ and where it is placed (or distributed) – giving you the flexibility, but stating percentage, crew requirements and cost so you have a fairly balanced framework to work from - and this is consistent with the entire design process!

Hope this makes sense - I know its not clear, unfortunately neither is the book - I think if the words 'crewed section' and the label of 'Section Components' were used things would be clearer - if still a bit hokey on the Secion Hit Tables (that's another issue)

 

[Walker]

Now, as it increases…if you've ever been on a really big ship, especially a military ship, they don't just have "the bridge" where everything happens. They've got the bridge, the radar room, the radio room, etc. All of these plus the machinery for them - the radios and laser comms, the radar and lidar, the computer core - plus all the support machinery for that, power converters and cooling and networking and access areas - plus the passages for humans to get around between them - all of this would be lumped under the "command modules" in a capital ship - just like it is on the smaller ships.

Unfortunately the rule as written would enforce exactly the same size of
command space for a 50,000 dton warship and a 50,000 dt ore freighter,
which is very far from convincing me that this is a reasonable rule.

Frankly, I would not buy it, the players of my campaign would not buy
it - so this rule is deleted from my book.

I agree that the rule seems flawed with regard to forcing the same level of command and control as a warship on a freighter of the same size.

However, the concept of multiple not-bridge command posts on a warship is completely reasonable and RW.

Your average modern capitol ship (Cruiser or Carrier) will have, at a minimum:

- Bridge
- Flag Bridge
- Combat Information Center
- Auxiliary Bridge
- Engineering Central
- Damage Control Central
- Flight Operations (either of on board helicopters or the carrier wing)

A carrier will in addition have an operations room for each embarked squadron (5 to 7).

While I don't know exactly how much space each of these, and their attendant control runs, electronics, wiring, communications, etc. require, I can easily envisage it taking up the equivalent tonnage of a smaller ship.

 

[Vile]

I think BP has hit the nail on the head in his post, above. Just apply it to crewed sections of the ship, and ignore fuel tanks or (possibly) cargo. I make the case for ignoring cargo because any actual handling would presumably be by port crew, not ship crew - a cargo bay should need very little active control during flight. This way you can distinguish between military and civilian vessels, by choosing your sections as you see fit. I actually like this flexibility, because it means you can design your ships as you see fit:

"The Starburst class is a remarkably efficient vessel, with controls for all sections crammed into a tiny, three-seat bridge. The Liberator, on the other hand, while certainly more comfortable, is incredibly profligate in its allocation of command space."

Still, on reading ShadowDragon's original post, there might be a simpler explanation:

It's painfully self-evident as [...] a way of punishing him for deciding to make a large vessel.

SLAP! That's for trying to escalate out of a small-ship-universe! Proto Traveller forever! 8)