Kargash Light Cruiser

[Reynard]

Speaking about LBB5 High Guard page 20, "The technological level of the building shipyard determines the technology level of the ship being constructed (a class A starport on a tech level 14 world constructs a tech level 14 ship)." So the world's TL is very important when building ships in its yard. Also, "The Imperial Navy procure ships at tech levels 10 through 14." Not just TL 15 it seems. Hmm.

High Guard 2e: "Unless the referee states otherwise, it can be assumed that the Tech Level of the ship and its components will be the same as the shipyard in which it is being constructed. However, you may always install components of a lower Tech Level if you wish, perhaps in an effort to cut costs." Yeah, there's that money issue everyone refuse to believe and why the IN procures at 10 through 14 too. Two things I have routinely seen in a variety of Traveller products featuring large scale economies, battles and war is there's never enough money for all the ships your dream to have and your not so humongous fleets can't be everywhere on a war theater. Large scale simulations such as Fifth Frontier War focuses on the largest fleets and most important battles. More detailed games such as Pocket Empires and Starships get down to the micro-management of ship procurement showing what economies are like especially for warship production rather than creating grand fleets on unlimited budgets.

Going through Starports, Space Stations and High Guard 2e, I see no current mention how Station TL is determined except the reference above. There is mention about station TL and planetary TL affecting crew procurement and a summary about construction and materials normally from the host world with some bringing in those things from other systems at cost and time. 3rd Imperium Starports doesn't mention tech level parameters but I followed their description of the StarPort Authority as the Imperial arm and representative of any and every starport in Imperial space but the station itself is not normally built by or owned by the Imperium so a starport does not automatically become the Imperial technology max. Like the worlds under it's rule and protection, station tech level also varies. The ONLY thing I would need to consider a rule about a station is Class A ports have to be at least TL 9 or there's no point meaning it must have construction under an organization other than the world if lower than TL 9. This could mean outside pre-fab construction from outside the system. Same might go for B and C with a minimum TL 7 or 8 if only reaction drives are used and world TL is less than 7.

 

[Reynard]

One more small analogy between this discussion and modern non-Traveller Earth. During the cold war, the United States was considered technologically advanced compared with the Soviet Union yet we still feared how a conventional war would go. Apply the arguments on this thread and the Warsaw Pact would lose hands down simply because they were lower tech level. Why were they still a threat? Quantity over quality. The US was building very expensive units and that meant less on the field while the Warsaw Pact made sure there was a lot of units out there for similar costs. They'll lose units but many guns and missiles will rack up losses against cost efficient targets.

Closest I ever got to experiencing it was many games for GDW's Combine Arms. My friend always took the superior Abrams while I loaded up on T-72s and T-80s.

 

[PsiTraveller]

re: Putting lower tech into ships. Certain modules are a Tech level: If you have TL 11 you cannot put in the TL 12 Improved sensors. So you put in the TL 10 Military Grade Sensors.

Are there rules for making the sensors a little cheaper at TL 11?

In the computer section you get Core 60 at TL 11. If you want TL 15 gear Core you spend 130 MCr and get Core 100. Can you make a TL 15 Core 60 computer? This would give you a TL 15 attack computer for EW and weapons control. Would it cost the same? more? Or is TL 11 the minimum tech you need to MAKE a Core 60 computer? Could you make a TL 11 Core 40 computer? (regularly TL 9).

I will pay the same price for the higher tech evaluation. This is important for EW, hacking attempts, targeting.

Hmm, having just re-read the line about installing lower tech level to lower costs my idea seems off. Which still leaves the question what exactly makes a ship the tech level declared. If you build a TL 9 ship but put in a TL 14 barbette and TL 15 computer, what TL is the ship?

 

[mancerbear]

Hmm, having just re-read the line about installing lower tech level to lower costs my idea seems off. Which still leaves the question what exactly makes a ship the tech level declared. If you build a TL 9 ship but put in a TL 14 barbette and TL 15 computer, what TL is the ship?

IMHO, the ship would still be TL9, but to get the barbette and computer maintained, you'd need to visit a TL 14 and TL 15 port respectively. This would then make it easier for you to keep the tech on your ship all at the same level, for no other reason by ease of maintenance/repairs. Of course, there's nothing stopping you from going to a TL 15 port for all your needs, but they aren't all that common and will likely restrict your ability to travel. In fact, the same would go for the IN fleet needing to visit TL 15 ports for their needs. Mind, the IN Fleet will be geared up for J-3 or 4, which is a tad better than J-1 or 2 of most merchants

Again, just my opinion, which in reality amounts to very little.

 

[PsiTraveller]

I think one of the first TL ships built will be a repair ship built at TL15 that has a Construction Deck.
"Primarily used on very large civilian vessels, this facility is effectively a mobile shipyard that can repair and even construct smaller ships. A construction yard can build a ship of tonnage equal to half the tonnage of the construction deck at a TL equal to the ship the construction deck is on."

Skipping the civilian section, I think the Navy would use something like it to allow TL 15 repairs in the field.

The other option is a TL 15 ship with repair Drones programmed with schematics of all the ships in the fleet. The Drones could do repairs out of combat and keep the fleet repaired.

Large amounts of supplies and Spare Parts are in order.

Or a TL 15 processor and manufacturing ship that can make spare parts. The ultimate in bringing it all with you. The Navy already supplies fuel from wherever it happens to find anything from a gas giant to an ice ball, why not make spare parts as needed?

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Mobile shipyards are expensive. I made an attempt here: http://forum.mongoosepublishing.com/viewtopic.php?p=899945#p899945
Basically a mobile shipyard that can service a BatRon and escorts is about as expensive as the warships. Probably nor worth it unless a maintenance yard is so far away you spend half the year shuttling back and forth to annual maintenance. If you want to advance several sectors into enemy territory it might be necessary though.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Are there rules for making the sensors a little cheaper at TL 11?

Not in MgT2 that I am aware of. There were in MgT1 HG.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

We’re getting to the point where ships may be able to replace any given part from raw materials alone; starports only required when so much structural damage has occurred that you need a frame to hold the ship together while repairs are made on it. The ISS is currently experimenting with 3D printing spares so that they don’t have to waste space keeping kinds of spares they may never need on hand, when they could just keep smaller and lighter supplies of raw filament or powder. If that trend continues, a ship might well be able to completely remanufacture any given part, or even any given unit. Starports as a place for ship repair may be strictly the last resort of a desperate crew.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Well T5 has introduced makers... and they are mentioned in Agent of the Imperium too.

 

[phavoc]

I think one of the first TL ships built will be a repair ship built at TL15 that has a Construction Deck.
"Primarily used on very large civilian vessels, this facility is effectively a mobile shipyard that can repair and even construct smaller ships. A construction yard can build a ship of tonnage equal to half the tonnage of the construction deck at a TL equal to the ship the construction deck is on."

Skipping the civilian section, I think the Navy would use something like it to allow TL 15 repairs in the field.

The other option is a TL 15 ship with repair Drones programmed with schematics of all the ships in the fleet. The Drones could do repairs out of combat and keep the fleet repaired.

Large amounts of supplies and Spare Parts are in order.

Or a TL 15 processor and manufacturing ship that can make spare parts. The ultimate in bringing it all with you. The Navy already supplies fuel from wherever it happens to find anything from a gas giant to an ice ball, why not make spare parts as needed?

While a mobile repair base might be capable of constructing a star ship (with or without assembly of prefabricated pieces), the real question would be one of efficiency. Mobile repair ships, even FRD's, have been around for quite some time. However they do not approach the efficiency of a full-blown shipyard. The rules could probably use some clarification betwixt the two. Sure, your mobile construction yards could tag along with fleets and consume asteroids or whatever and build you new missiles, sensors, etc. But they should do so inefficiently compared to dedicated facilities located on a station/planet.

It would probably be much faster to replace rather than try to construct a new part. Some assembly might be done, but spares would be the norm - at least if we take the assumption that like the rest of today's society, the 52nd century has more gee-whiz to it but fundamentally remains the same. 3D printing sounds really cool, but for some items you cannot replicate say forging of metal vs. printing it. I'd assume there would be similar limitations in the future that wouldn't be overcome (still have piracy, slavery, war, hunger, etc, etc... might as well keep the rest, eh?).

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

There are, admittedly, limitations, however, that may be more a matter of the technology being new, and our not having found all the applications and working materials for it yet.

Boeing, for instance, is already manufacturing certain jet engine parts in laser-sintered 3D printed metal. If it’s reliable enough for Boeing to put in a jet engine, it’s reliable enough for space ships.

Parts that can be 3D printed will be viable for any part that:
1. Can be printed faster than a replacement part can be sent out for
2. Costs considerably less to print than the necessary shipping
3. Does not need a technician of an extraordinary level of expertise, or a large crew of experienced technicians, to install

To me, this sounds like most, but certainly not all, things. The one place 3D printing won’t win is in production speed; assembly lines will still be better at that, on the whole. But if you’ve got a whole bunch of time on your hands, might as well print something, if it’s useful.

Also, there’s bound to be lots of recycling of old materials; materials will be color-coded for their original applications so that, when the material gets recycled, you add a dye for the new application; the new blended color tells you where the material that was recycled for the new application came from, so you can’t recycle weaker plastic into a “first-use only” application. Eventually, you’ll wind up with a bunch of muddy-colored plastic unfit for all but the most trivial uses of scrap...

 

[phavoc]

It seems that bobble heads are great for 3D printing, guns not so much.

I think the salvage/recycling of starship materials would definitely play a part. For a repair ship, space will remain at a premium, thus the amount of machinery dedicated to manufacture would be limited. In an ideal world they would stock the more complicated parts or the ones that are used the most, and then use onboard resources to top off their inventory or as the primary resource for things that can be quickly made and thus not take up valuable cargo space.

There is an interesting Gizmodo article here (http://gizmodo.com/why-3d-printing-is-overhyped-i-should-know-i-do-it-fo-508176750) that provides some insight into advantages/disadvantages of 3D printing (like mixing multiple materials in a single print).

I found some articles referencing Boeing's usage of printing parts (here - http://www.gereports.com/jet-engine-with-3d-printed-parts-powers-next-gen-boeing-737-max-for-the-first-time/) and here - http://www.businessinsider.com/boeing-uses-3d-printers-for-airplane-parts-2013-6).

Maybe we'll get better at it as the technology matures, or perhaps it will remain limited. Or we'll just have to wait for the replicators from ST to show up.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Most 3D printed guns are printed in plastic, and are of very limited use. You have to 3D print in metal to get good results with guns, because the pressure within the combustion chamber is immense; it’s the single contributing factor to the weight of a modern gun! But, as Boeing themselves are proving, 3D printed metal can do a useful job in a high pressure combustion chamber. So don’t write 3D printed guns off just yet! Also, if a 3D printed gun works pretty well in plastic, the metal version will be pretty damn reliable.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

About that 3D printing Gizmodo article...

It’s 3 years old... things are a lot different now, including:
Additional consumer filaments with different properties (Conducting! Magnetic! Metal and Wood finishes!)
Multiple print heads! (A little yellow here, a little blue here, a little conducting here...)
Printing in metal (Technically not new, as of the article’s publishing date; he just neglected to mention it)!
It seems to be consumer focused, as opposed to industry focused...
It appears to be written by someone who spends most of his time printing knick-knacks than functional items...

Very good on the whole, but a little dated. Good advice when it comes to the plastic parts, so long as he isn’t talking about limitations due to filament. But the 3D printed metal is arguably way more important for campaign stuff, and he neglects the whole thing.

 

[Condottiere]

If you can encourage the item to grow itself on some form of skeletal platform or crystal.

Floating spacedocks are more likely on the spot repair facilities.

 

[PsiTraveller]

If we take the Rules as written and are inspired by the paragraph in High Guard

At some point, it is very likely that a Traveller will start
wondering whether they can put a space station module
within a ship or give a space station an option that is
normally found on board ships. The answer is, subject to
the referee’s approval, yes, ships and space station can
be viewed as interchangeable. There is no reason why a
large enough ship could not, for example, have a deck
dedicated to mining and refining ore from asteroids.
Fundamentally, a space station is a ship that lacks any
real motive system. Aside from its purpose within the
universe in which it is created, that is the only real
difference between a space station and a ship.

So let's look at what we need to make advanced missiles close to the front. A Kargash cruiser throws 4o tons an hour, so a squadron after a battle will need a lot of replacement missiles. There are no rules for what components are in a missile so I will be making up numbers out of thin air.

Assumptions:
1: Let's say that the inefficiency of a spaceship based processor means that there are no tech level increases to production.
2: Advanced weapons need 25 tons of module for 1 ton of output. We want 10 tons a day so we need 250 tons of Advanced modules.
3: To make the components for the Advanced missiles we need 5 tons of Basic Electronics: that is 50 tons of Basic module
4: We need 5 tons of Manufactured Goods per 10 tons of output of missiles so take 50 tons of Basic modules
5: We will need 5 tons of Advanced Electronics and take 125 tons of Advanced Modules.


Total Module tonnage 475 tons of modules to produce 10 tons of missiles per day. I am assuming 15 tons of manufactured goods and electronics to produce 10 tons of missiles.

To make the basic raw materials I admit my imagination is failing at the moment. A TL 13 smelter of 50 tons can process 100 tons of ore per day and produce 50 tons of Common Ore, 15 tons of Uncommon Ore, 15 tons Crystals and Gems and 5 tons precious metals.
Smelting the Common Ore will make Common Raw materials which could be converted to the common goods through the basic modules. The Uncommon raw materials could be used to make the advanced materials. This is all pure guesswork. The precious metals could provide the electronics needed etc.

So it would take hundreds of tons of space to produce 10 tons of missiles per day. Is it worth it? I think it might be, expecially if you allow the added modules to produce some armour and spare parts needed for ships.

Take a 25 000 ton asteroid ship, Turn 4000 tons of it into processing space and you produce 40 tons of missiles a day, plus 20 tons of spare parts, 20 tons of armour a day. For The Drop Tank afficianados your ship produces Drop Tanks of varying sizes to keep the fleet moving forward. The ship lumber along after the fleet feeding supply ships. Once in a system it would process the material from captured/destroyed ships and from mining drone returns. Install a construction/repair deck and you can keep a fleet repaired quite well.

I have not done the ship construction yet. I am waiting for the new High Guard.

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Wow, that’s... a really conservative approach, right there. Here’s a more realistically conservative approach...

All components can be 3D printed in appropriate manufacturing units that are 8 times larger than the volume of a rectangular box that could perfectly contain said component.
Motors, depending on type, may well be printed into the Missile Body as the Missile Body is printed. The printing process may pause for small electronics packages to be inserted at one moment or another (or just leave a hole to be plugged with a module). The printing time for a single Missile Body is going to be the main chokepoint in production. This can be reduced by going to cast parts, but the Motor will have to be cast separately. So maybe 16x the volume for a cast Missile Body, and 16x the volume of the Motor for a cast Missile Motor. Casting production of the Body & Motor costs about 3 times the volume of printed production, but is at least 5 times faster (probably way more).
Electronics for missiles are going to be just as hardened as any electronics board on the ship, and, therefore, use the same materials, but will likely be a simpler to make board. Whatever the futuristic version of a “pick & place” machine is, it can go faster than usual on account of less required precision.

Only thing missing so far, I think, are the warhead and the propulsion fuel. I’ll defer to an explosives expert on how best to mix explosives from component elements and compounds, and how to then print them.

 

[PsiTraveller]

I figured if I went conservative I would avoid the magic box of goodness and wealth that may pop up. I hope it happens in real life and 3D printing can make useful items for a lot of people.

Well we could handwave and look to the Automated Fabrication Facility. http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/Automatic_Factory
I am skipping the non tech approach and the technoforges it may offer and looking at a manufacturing of components and an assembly plant inside a ship for a specific item, missiles in this case. If a GM wants to allow more varied production then they run into the concept of traders just buying raw materials and setting up shop around low tech planets and selling high end items. Or players asking for the latest in TL 15 weapons for their characters. "I want the Open Source TL 15 laser rifle!"
Heck we have the Ghost gunner milling machine now to freak out folks with the ability to turn an 80 percent unit into an AR 15. Imagine that with TL 15 and nanotech.

if we go with a TL 15 3d printer that can make anything... that would solve logistical issues for anything from weapons to plastic cutlery and plates. You could end up the universal factory and land of the lotus eaters.

I forgot to mention in my precious post that the nuclear material would be brought with, although any found while mining would be used of course. Given the size of the missiles you would not need a lot of material per ton of missiles.

One ton per day of advance weapons is how many rifles or how many suits of powered armour?

 

[Tenacious-Techhunter]

Yeah, balance is a tricky thing. This is another one of those cases where I argue that Traveller really needs to be reinvented from the ground up in order to meet modern expectations, but I’m not about to digress on it.

The body of a missile is a largely inert thing. A motor is mostly a reaction chamber with a bunch of modules stuck into it; another largely inert thing. Maybe some moving linkages for the missile’s atmospheric control surfaces, but we’re already doing that now. It’s really the electronics that are the fancy bit with all the brains, but there’s plenty in the way of automation there too (I stuck to old-school for that). So a missile, the way I proposed it, is doable.

A Laser Rifle, on the other hand, that’s a whole other thing. It’s got lots of precise control electronics, which are a good deal different than the one-off disposable electronics in a missile (a dud missile is no big deal; you fire another one; a dud Rifle, on the other hand...), although not different than the other electronics boards on a starship; the specialized components might be a problem. It’s also got some very fancy power control electronics, to handle the output from the power cartridge; once again, the specialized components might be a problem. Then you have the stimulation laser and the gain medium... which probably have to be matched very precisely... A stimulation laser probably has to be sourced from a manufacturer, rather than merely printed; it probably has to be tested to performance tolerances, too. The gain medium, at least in modern day examples, is usually a big fancy ultra-pure crystal; you probably wouldn’t get good results growing big crystals on a starship; too much to go wrong. Admittedly, these reasons are rather setting-based. You could argue them away with some plausible handwaves, or not. But, in what might one day be the words of an old codger from the future, “Just because it can fit in the printer, that doesn’t mean the printer can print it.”.

 

[Sigtrygg]

No need to update Traveller. It is already there in the form of makers.

In his novel, Agent of the Imperium, Marc has an IN fleet scrub a world. They do this in part by building maneuver drives onto asteroids using their makers to construct the parts needed to make the engines. The asteroids are then used to bombard the world. They also manufacture KK missiles IIRC.

Sci-fi enough for you?

Oh, the same novel has human memories and personalities recordable to wafers, which can then be used to temporarily possess a host fitted with a data jack.