Excel Ship Designer v2025.07.22

[MasterGwydion]

The problem I run into is the fanatical devotion of more than a few to the annual maintenance rules. This was the *only* even close to the rules option I have seen allowing something like long distance exploration without being tied to a class A starport of the appropriate tech level. Mind you, I am playing solo, and can rule whatever I like, but I prefer to stay as close to RAW as I can. I have strong opinions on the situation but I will not voice them here. Frustration level is running redline on the reactor though.

Oh, and I agree about the silliness rating on the "cranes in space" deal. Uh, yeah.

According to the SOM, shipyards are no longer required for maintenance, so this whole thing about being away from shipyards doesn't matter as far as the maintenance is concerned.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Imagine having a ship with a Construction Deck and your Referee still requiring you to go to a shipyard eventhough you are literally carrying a shipyard around with you.

 

[Spartan159]

Imagine having a ship with a Construction Deck and your Referee still requiring you to go to a shipyard eventhough you are literally carrying a shipyard around with you.

Funny enough, the one I am redesigning with the updated designer does.

By chance, could you please point me to the relevant section of SOM?

 

[MasterGwydion]

Funny enough, the one I am redesigning with the updated designer does.

By chance, could you please point me to the relevant section of SOM?

page 124 in the Section entitled "Maintenance and Repair" First page, left side.

It actually says that if you have a Workshop, that you do not need a starport for maintenance.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Imagine having a ship with a Construction Deck and your Referee still requiring you to go to a shipyard eventhough you are literally carrying a shipyard around with you.

If I were GM until such time as you can put your ship inside that "shipyard" you wouldn't get anywhere near full benefit from having it.

 

[MasterGwydion]

If I were GM until such time as you can put your ship inside that "shipyard" you wouldn't get anywhere near full benefit from having it.

Why? How were ships built before shipyards existed? How do you build a shipyard in a highport? Or do you think that they build shipyards double the tonnage of the highport just so they can build a highport? How big is the shipyard that they used to build the Mora Highport? You can also build any parts you need inside of that shipyard and then have the repair drones install them. Where would your penalty come from?

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Building is different from repairing. How do you shut down your power plant to do the over haul on it? You are now in free fall and all your powered equipment is off line (no lights, no gravity, no air etc). They would be fully capable of creating a smaller spacecraft in that construction bay but not of using it for over hauling the ship the bay was part of without a lot of limitations.

Lets assume for a minute that it is a bay that can build 100 ton craft and the ship is 10,000 tons. Even with no limitations on the overhaul efficiency due to being outside the bay it could only do 100 tons at a time so it would take 100 times as long as to overhaul the smaller craft. By the time it was done it might be time for another overhaul.

Look at how SpaceX is building their Starship rocket. Lots of buildings and test stands and so forth and that is on a planet with a breathable atmosphere. They are building a spacecraft Shipyard even if that isn't what they are calling it. It is a lot more than 2 tons of yard / ton of spacecraft.

If they were later to build one in orbit they'd be limited by the size/mass of the items they could lift in one payload.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Building is different from repairing. How do you shut down your power plant to do the over haul on it? You are now in free fall and all your powered equipment is off line (no lights, no gravity, no air etc). They would be fully capable of creating a smaller spacecraft in that construction bay but not of using it for over hauling the ship the bay was part of without a lot of limitations.

How bold of you to assume that the power plant on ships are made up of only one reactor!

Lets assume for a minute that it is a bay that can build 100 ton craft and the ship is 10,000 tons. Even with no limitations on the overhaul efficiency due to being outside the bay it could only do 100 tons at a time so it would take 100 times as long as to overhaul the smaller craft. By the time it was done it might be time for another overhaul.

To fully build a ship, you'd be right. It would take a longer time. Making parts for your ship though and then installing them, is not the same thing.

Look at how SpaceX is building their Starship rocket. Lots of buildings and test stands and so forth and that is on a planet with a breathable atmosphere. They are building a spacecraft Shipyard even if that isn't what they are calling it. It is a lot more than 2 tons of yard / ton of spacecraft.

If they were later to build one in orbit they'd be limited by the size/mass of the items they could lift in one payload.

Yes. Good point. No technological changes have occurred in how ships are constructed over 5+ TLs. We must still build ships the same way we did in the 1600s.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

So tell me how you build your first shipyard in space without first building ships on a planet?

So your ship has how many power plants? How well does it operate when the largest one is shut down for days or or weeks (and the construction bay is power hungry) or even just hours. How do you handle emergencies while it is down?

 

[MasterGwydion]

So tell me how you build your first shipyard in space without first building ships on a planet?

Shipyards in space are built using the shipbuilding rules. So, how do you build a shipyard in space if you don't already have a shipyard in space large enough to construct the space station? You have to assume that it is possible or the whole game doesn't work.

So your ship has how many power plants? How well does it operate when the largest one is shut down for days or or weeks (and the construction bay is power hungry) or even just hours. How do you handle emergencies while it is down?

Look at the Critical Hit rules. How do you reduce a power plant's efficiency by doing damage to it if it is a single unit? It has to be more than one unit or this mechanic would not function as written.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Look at the Critical Hit rules. How do you reduce a power plant's efficiency by doing damage to it if it is a single unit? It has to be more than one unit or this mechanic would not function as written.

Knock out 1 or more of the various lines that take power to different sections. A power plant that powers your whole city takes damage but it need not totally stop generating power but some areas of the city still go black.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Knock out 1 or more of the various lines that take power to different sections. A power plant that powers your whole city takes damage but it need not totally stop generating power but some areas of the city still go black.

That won't reduce the amount of power being generated. It doesn't say, available power reduced, it says power reduced. Also notice that no matter how severe your critical hit, you can never destroy the power plant? That also tells me that the power generation is too distributed to be able to be destroyed without destroying the hull points of the entire ship.

You can run it how you want at your table, obviously, but My way of doing seems to fit the available facts better than yours.

 

[Endie]

I find @Fluffy Bunny Feet’s argument convincing. Skyhooks are usually tricky things so fitting the ship inside its own bay and using a turned-off power system to power maintenance on itself both have a few, teensy issues.

It’s also bad for a campaign. Unless you’re running the Deepnight campaign (for which this ridiculous, one-off handwave was made up on the spur of the moment with the author’s traditional contempt for wider consequences) then reducing the reasons that players have for interacting with the people and places around them is A Bad Thing. Neurodiversity will pull at many peoples’ shoulder and whisper “imagine: you could shut yourself in your ship and never have to speak to anyone or meet loud strangers!” but that’s personal fantasy, not good game design.

 

[Spartan159]

Might want to take a look at distributed power along with local fusion+ units. While there is probably some penalties to using the construction dock, it's surely less than only having a stateroom sized workshop?

Also, size matters, the 75,000 ton exploration
(Hah! More like Spy ship at need) cruiser I am working on has a 200dTon dock. Yeah, drive might be massive, but I can make 100dTon parts at need. Replying from my phone ATM, but I seem to recall that it has multiple workshops, much like WWII large ships, damage control donchaknow.

Just my 0.02 credits worth.

 

[Endie]

That’s IYTU and it sounds like very fun head canon. Not a great thing for providing hooks for external engagement, from which adventure easily flows, though, since it’s one less interaction with the world outside the ship.

 

[J. L. Brown]

I find @Fluffy Bunny Feet’s argument convincing. Skyhooks are usually tricky things so fitting the ship inside its own bay and using a turned-off power system to power maintenance on itself both have a few, teensy issues.

I do not. As someone who worked aboard maritime vessels, I find the idea of having only a single power plant to be insanely irresponsible and unsafe. Having more than one (even if they are routinely all running at the same time) allows at least one to be taken out of service for upkeep -- filter changes, fluid changes, replacement of other minor parts, inspection, and etc.

 

[EccentRick]

I don't use it as it is poorly written and poorly implemented garbage.

What gravity are the repair bots pulling against that they require derricks on the outside of the ship to accomplish it?

I can accomplish the same thing as this, by the rules, with 1% of the hull dedicated to Repair Drones or Repair Bots and a workshop. Way cheaper and way less complicated.

Scaffolding would be a better term. Even in a microgravity position when dealing with bulky, massive, and damage-sensitive components in precision locations free-handing a shift in position might not be best practice. When inertia is a pain, it strikes at least 4 times.

According to the SOM, shipyards are no longer required for maintenance, so this whole thing about being away from shipyards doesn't matter as far as the maintenance is concerned.

Yay! Annual always seemed too frequent for the level of invasiveness.

Deepnight Revelation might still have both of these modifications, but it’s expected to be operating alone for decades in unknown circumstances. The increased SU requirement seems a nice reflection of the non-standard maintenance situation. A bit abstract by necessity, but I would not be surprised if it appeared on other very long-range designs. The other modification needs a relabel; it’s not self-maintenance, it’s self-overhaul. It only gets pulled out for these crazy “let’s skinny-jump off the known map for a decade or more” projects.

 

[Endie]

I do not. As someone who worked aboard maritime vessels, I find the idea of having only a single power plant to be insanely irresponsible and unsafe. Having more than one (even if they are routinely all running at the same time) allows at least one to be taken out of service for upkeep -- filter changes, fluid changes, replacement of other minor parts, inspection, and etc.

And the bit you missed out (to me the key element) about the wisdom or otherwise of removing sources of interaction with the game universe in the course of running the game?

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

How many of those power plants will actually power the whole ship?

For the construction bay you need 1 pt per ton and of course the ship as a whole needs power points = to 20% of the whole ships tonnage. So with the 10,000 ton ship with the 200 ton construction bay that is 2200 points of power at minimum.

Assume TL 15 power plants producing 20pt/ton you need 110 tons minimum. So lets give you another 10 tons so you can overhaul a 10 ton sub plant at a time you now have 120 tons of power plant..

So it would take 12 sessions to overhaul the plant. Each unit is 10x2MCr so 20 MCr assuming you can overhaul 10 times as fast as the nominal 1 MCr/day to manufacture that become 2 days/power plant times 12 power plant or 24 days. Now to over haul the other 9880 tons (lets call that .5 MCr/ton so 4940 MCr) given that assumed price that is another 494 days total =518 days or about 1 year and 5 months going nowhere and vulnerable. This doesn't of course explain how the Construction bay overhauls itself.

 

[Arkathan]

I do not. As someone who worked aboard maritime vessels, I find the idea of having only a single power plant to be insanely irresponsible and unsafe. Having more than one (even if they are routinely all running at the same time) allows at least one to be taken out of service for upkeep -- filter changes, fluid changes, replacement of other minor parts, inspection, and etc.

I think modules should be able to contain a power plant that powers the included equipment.
When I draw deck plans, I frequently split the total tonnage into two or more separated units. The total power production is per HG/Core but the physical arrangement allows one plant to provide Hull/Basic power while the other is being worked on.
But we SHOULD have the option for multiple or dedicated plants.