Deck Plan Commonality with HG Statistics

[ottarrus]

This is taking the deck plan discussion from @Geir 's topic of "But What Does <insert component here> Do?"

There is often a disconnect between the practical at-the-table referees and players and the gearheads who love to design ships. That disconnect is deck plans. Players LOVE deck plans exactly like they love the floor plan of their castles in fantasy games. Their ship's deck plan is their superhero lair, their farmstead, their fortress, and their player home all rolled into one. The note who gets what stateroom, look for ship interior images that match their imaginations, and otherwise just go happily berzerk planning out their groovy singles pad in space.

Let me also be clear here... I'm not talking about capital ships here. I'm talking about the 'Adventure-class' ships that adventurers can reasonably hope to afford. I have other issues and concerns about capitals, but for this I'm keeping it small.

The problem comes when text sources say one thing, the stat sheet says another thing, and the published deck plan says a third thing all in the same book. So the canon guys say 'hey, it's in the book', the gearheads say 'these plans are representative, if you want accurate do it yourself', and the players and referees end up confused. The deck plan and the stat sheet are side by side in High Guard detailing how to design ships. The text is either split between the two sheets or just one page over. And NONE of it matches!

You want an easy example?
- The Type S Suleiman-class Scout/Courier is supposed to have a crew common area. But that common area DOES NOT appear on the deck plans in ANY Mongoose 2nd Edition source.

Some more complicated examples:
- Passenger and crew staterooms and lounges mixed together in MANY deck plans.
- Maneuver Drives that don't vent from the rear of the ship... but jump drives do... and the text says it's a 'reaction drive' [which requires energy nozzles to push the ship] and the jump drive is described as not requiring a nozzle because the J-drive powers a grid instead of 'going to warp speed'.
- Text that describes missiles as explosive warheads but no provision is made for magazine to store said missiles. That's alright, they're in a wall locker right behind turret access....

 

[Terry Mixon]

I don't have a ton of experience making deckplans and I made mistakes in manhandling an upgrade on the Fast Smuggler, but that let me learn more about doing it. I still added too much space for the armory because I thought it was 1 ton for each person rather than 1 ton for five. I was making a custom one for 7 bounty hunters, so I allocated 14 squares when 4 would have been more than enough room. I'll have to fix it someday. He also had peculiar ideas for how a ship was run, so the oddities are intentional There is a conscious 15 intelligence running everything for them. Yep, pricy.

I had it end up in the hands of some bounty hunters and their new boss had money to burn and make it a luxury experience. Then he was murdered, and they have to live with it and the expenses.

EDIT: I fixed the armory mistake I made.

 

[ottarrus]

Another thing that kinda bothers me about some deck plans, now that I think about it...

- How come all the small craft in a given civilization are standard sizes but the deck plans NEVER are? I've seen 'docking spaces' that are shaped nothing like the supposed craft listed on the stat sheet. AND if it's supposed to be a custom designed vehicle just for this model of ship, why isn't the price increase listed? But nope... it's always the standard design 20-ton launch trying to wedge itself in between three unequal triangles.

Please understand me here folks... I'm not trying to talk down on anyone or belittle someone's fun. I'm advocating that the deck plans, the flavor text, and the stat sheets all agree on what is in a standard designed ship. Traveller is nigh-on 50 years old and this problem has existed since 1980.

 

[Arkathan]

While Imperial small craft are standardized, Vargr, Zhodani and Sword Worlders do not necessarily require their shipwrights to comply with that Mil-Spec. Their standardized designs, in the hands of a shipyard foreman, should be as easy to churn out as any other... assuming the text and units translate. Many adventure ships are not based on Imperial military designs, though your gripes above are accurate.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

- How come all the small craft in a given civilization are standard sizes but the deck plans NEVER are?

Are they? I have never seen any such claim in the rules, as far as I recall. It's just a lingering side-effect of LBB2, where there were no small craft design system, so you kind of had to use the few included small craft. LBB5'80 featured a 20 Dt Gig with high performance and a 35 Dt Pinnace, both are of course just as "standard" as their parent ships.

"Standard" designs are just common, not the only design. There are certainly different types of, say, "Free Traders" and "Scouts".

The IN may have standardised on 50 Dt small craft, but the illustrations or deck plans have never been all that similar.

I've seen 'docking spaces' that are shaped nothing like the supposed craft listed on the stat sheet. AND if it's supposed to be a custom designed vehicle just for this model of ship, why isn't the price increase listed?

Why would a Ling Launch be the exact same shape as a General Launch, or a Spinward Launch be the exact shape as a Solomani Rim Launch?

A Launch is just small, slow, and cheap.

But, I agree it should be a reasonable shape of docking space...

Please understand me here folks... I'm not trying to talk down on anyone or belittle someone's fun. I'm advocating that the deck plans, the flavor text, and the stat sheets all agree on what is in a standard designed ship. Traveller is nigh-on 50 years old and this problem has existed since 1980.

I agree they should ideally be in the same ball-park, but they never have, probably because people starting drawing deck plans before the size of a "displacement ton" was defined.


Overall, we don't have enough deckplans, at least outside MgT, and we should not make it harder to make more of them by demanding perfection. The CT Traders & Gunboats deckplans were generally quite silly, but that never stopped me from using them.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I have lower expectations of deck plans. I would be happy if the hulls were approximately the right size and the decks were inside the hulls, but that is often not the case... If, as a cherry on top, the crew spaces were roughly the specified size, I would be ecstatic.

See the MgT2'22 Ship's Boat (30 Dt) where the 3D hull is close to 60 Dt, to make the 2D interior deck plan 40 Dt.

Or the Scout, where the cargo hold is still, after 40 years, outside the hull... At least the crew spaces are in the right ballpark now, if perhaps, as traditional, not inside the hull.


None of that stops me from using the deckplans, of course.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

You want an easy example?
- The Type S Suleiman-class Scout/Courier is supposed to have a crew common area. But that common area DOES NOT appear on the deck plans in ANY Mongoose 2nd Edition source.

Don't take that too literally. Common area is just extra crew space, it could just as well be larger cabins or corridors as a lounge.

"Staterooms" is just a code word for living spaces (including corridors), organised into cabins as you feel appropriate. You can have large sleeping cabins and small to no lounges, or the reverse. And a bigger cabin for the Captain. It's all good. (At least if you are roughly close to specified tonnage.)

 

[Condottiere]

It's pretty obvious.

The ones that draw deckplans are rarely the ones that write the text.

It takes a conscious effort to coordinate that.

One reason I homogenize the Confederation Navy.

 

[ottarrus]

It's pretty obvious.

The ones that draw deckplans are rarely the ones that write the text.

It takes a conscious effort to coordinate that.

One reason I homogenize the Confederation Navy.

And this is all I'm asking for... conscious effort. I just want the flavor text, the stat sheet and the deck plan to show the equipment that is supposed to be on the ship.

Insofar as the 'staterooms and common areas are just placeholders for tonnage spent', this is the same argument fantasy players get from people that want to load the dungeon with every conceivable nasty critter in the book, but don't want to actually draw the dungeon plan. From here on out just put a squiggly blob where you want the engines to be and leave it at that.

I'm not asking for plans to be exact down to the square dton. That's a pain and it really doesn't add a lot of monetary value to the end product. But if the deck plans are going to be a guess at best, then why waste our time with it at all? Why waste time with any artwork at all if the artwork doesn't reflect the conditions of the game? The plain fact is that players love deck plans and it would seem worth everyone's while to put a little continuity work into getting the information presented [the text, the math, and the artwork] to reflect each other.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Insofar as the 'staterooms and common areas are just placeholders for tonnage spent', this is the same argument fantasy players get from people that want to load the dungeon with every conceivable nasty critter in the book, but don't want to actually draw the dungeon plan.

It may be fantasy, but it's also traditional RAW:

LBB5'80, p33:
Staterooms require four tons at a cost of Cr500,000 per stateroom. Staterooms actually average about two tons, but the additional tonnage is used to provide corridors and access ways, as well as galley and recreation areas.

LBB2'81, p21:
When allocating space within the ship for deck plans, assume that only a portion of stateroom tonnage must actually be in staterooms; the remainder should be used for common areas and other accomodations for the crew.

CT TCS, Rules & Rulings, p15:
Dual occupancy staterooms are computed at MCr0.25 and 2 tons per person. It is not necessary to purchase an entire stateroom just to accomodate an odd number of crewmembers; a half-stateroom or large triple-occupancy stateroom can be built.

CT Alien 02, K'kree, p25:
Staterooms: Each ship allows 48 tons (cost: MCr 1) per individual aboard, although all living areas are joint.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

There is no direct one-to-one connection between line items in the design and rooms on the deck plan intended or implied.

You want your single lettered drive to be drawn as two separate machines, in two separate rooms, that's fine:

CT Subbie, M-drive and Jump drive shown.

Just keep the tonnage about right and you can draw as many rooms as you like.

 

[Vormaerin]

The big rocket looking bits at the back side of ships exist because artists think that makes the ship look better. It has nothing to do with how Traveller drives work (except in the Heplar era of T:NE). The current iteration of M-Drives is that they push off themselves, essentially. There's certainly no reaction mass getting ejected.

Traveller's deckplans aren't flawless, but overall I find them more easily used than most games' ship plans.

 

[Condottiere]

You could customize accommodations.

Staterooms are a convenient standard, since you know their installation cost, life support cost, and given volume.

In terms of passages, so do the passengers.

 

[MongooseMatt]

And the current High Guard actively encourages 10% 'wiggle room' on deck plans - the whole idea is not to constrain Referees, and to acknowledge that different shipyards on different worlds build ships in different ways (without getting into the nitty gritty of individual technologies).

 

[MasterGwydion]

This is taking the deck plan discussion from @Geir 's topic of "But What Does <insert component here> Do?"

There is often a disconnect between the practical at-the-table referees and players and the gearheads who love to design ships. That disconnect is deck plans. Players LOVE deck plans exactly like they love the floor plan of their castles in fantasy games. Their ship's deck plan is their superhero lair, their farmstead, their fortress, and their player home all rolled into one. The note who gets what stateroom, look for ship interior images that match their imaginations, and otherwise just go happily berzerk planning out their groovy singles pad in space.

Let me also be clear here... I'm not talking about capital ships here. I'm talking about the 'Adventure-class' ships that adventurers can reasonably hope to afford. I have other issues and concerns about capitals, but for this I'm keeping it small.

The problem comes when text sources say one thing, the stat sheet says another thing, and the published deck plan says a third thing all in the same book. So the canon guys say 'hey, it's in the book', the gearheads say 'these plans are representative, if you want accurate do it yourself', and the players and referees end up confused. The deck plan and the stat sheet are side by side in High Guard detailing how to design ships. The text is either split between the two sheets or just one page over. And NONE of it matches!

You want an easy example?
- The Type S Suleiman-class Scout/Courier is supposed to have a crew common area. But that common area DOES NOT appear on the deck plans in ANY Mongoose 2nd Edition source.

Some more complicated examples:
- Passenger and crew staterooms and lounges mixed together in MANY deck plans.
- Maneuver Drives that don't vent from the rear of the ship... but jump drives do... and the text says it's a 'reaction drive' [which requires energy nozzles to push the ship] and the jump drive is described as not requiring a nozzle because the J-drive powers a grid instead of 'going to warp speed'.
- Text that describes missiles as explosive warheads but no provision is made for magazine to store said missiles. That's alright, they're in a wall locker right behind turret access....

I don't use deck plans in My games. Mongoose Traveller is not enough of a wargame to make it worth the extra effort. In 3rd Ed D&D, you had all kinds of positional modifiers that make having a map valuable. Traveller doesn't really have those things, so I never bothered with deckplans. I can switch Stations during combat using 1 round. It doesn't matter where on the ship that station is. Therefore, the rules do not take deckplans into account, so why use them?

I understand that a certain type of gamer has a near fetish with maps and deckplans of all kinds. I am not one of them...lol... Maps I like, deckplans and blueprints, not so much.

 

[Arkathan]

Deckplans are good for prison breaks, boarding actions and bug hunts. If you are doing repo-man style bounty hunting, like my group has reverted to time and again for decades, deckplans are close to mandatory. In fact, the only time they repo'd a ship without a deckplan was when they planned a block party for the docking bay, bribed the dock workers to look the other way, and made numerous difficult chained social checks to get most of the crew off the ship. I was a bit miffed as it was a 2000 ton starship that carried two SDB's in a half-docked half breakaway hull configuration, and I had drawn out all of it. (That was a pre-Mongoose campaign. Actually it was pre-MegaTraveller)
But they were thinking outside the box, accepted the difficulties enthusiastically and had fun.

 

[Vormaerin]

Can't say that I've used deckplans as battlemaps ever (outside of Azhanti High Lightning ), but I find a lot of use for them in description and giving the players a sense of their actual ship. And just orientating me. As long as the art and the floorplan are not radically different, I can generally square the circle in my theater of the mind.

 

[Seffix]

Once I started thinking of Traveller deckplans as schematics rather than blueprints -- a problem going back to Snapshot -- my life got easier.

 

[shirgall]

- How come all the small craft in a given civilization are standard sizes but the deck plans NEVER are?

As much as Ling Standard Products would like a monopoly with their efficient cylindrical designs and modular cutters, they have a lot of competition. Theyare more popular than others because of the ease of modifying their little space trucks for purpose.