Military ships and crew

[Terry Mixon]

What has that got to do with anything I represented? I am well aware that the dt is 14 m³.

Side question. Is it 14m³ or 13.5m³? I can't seem to get in my head which is correct.

Edit: I guess it's roughly 14m³ and exactly 13.5m³ for those that want precision.



Edit 2: Or maybe it's always 14m³?

 

[Sigtrygg]

Mongoose core rules and High Guard define it as 14 cubic metres - the approximate volume of 1000kg of liquid hydrogen.

For some inexplicable reason MegaTraveller and a couple of other iterations adopted the deck plan cube as the standard, 1.5x1.5x1.5, which makes no sense if a displacement ton is meant to be the volume of 1000kg of liquid hydrogen. Before Mr Pedant joins in I am well aware that it is usual to actually stack two cubes for a 1.5x1.5x3 "square"

Why in this day and age of spreadsheets and the like the cubic metre as the standard for volume can't be used is a mystery.

 

[Talon Greyfeather]

Love this you have according to Sigtrygg 10 people in 3 staterooms that’s if the captain have his own. I’d like to see the tonnage breakdown since I’m willing to bet that gunners at the minimum are in the barracks and the common areas are way under sized. It should have 14dt not 4dt that’s one thing that I think also need to be changed you must have on a military ship common areas equal to 1/5 of the quarters and barracks at the minimum. What book is this from?

Traders and Gunboats - pg 56-57

 

[MarcusIII]

Why in this day and age of spreadsheets and the like the cubic metre as the standard for volume can't be used is a mystery.

It would be easy. Like when I'm trying to get the approx size of spherical ship I wish everything was in Cubic Meters so I didn't have to translate between that and 14 cubic meter dTons

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

. We could get the Lab Ship down to 300 Dtons easily if we assume the labs are part of the 4 DTon stateroom allocation rather than a discrete component that needs to be installed.

A lot of things that scientists may be needing to use would be hazardous to have in your sleeping/eating quarters.

As is the ship has 20 labs and 20 staterooms. Assuming one scientist/lab and no double bunking then there is currently no crew quarters so any saved space should go to crew.

 

[tytalan]

Umm, you do know that is the very point I am making. The machinery is hidden in the losft and floor space but is accounted for by the stateroom tonnage?

Actually it you actually read my post you would see yes it is accounted for or are you hall ways and rooms 10 feet tall? If you figure a more reasonable hight than you have the area not part of open space but still part of the tonnage for that machinery.

 

[tytalan]

Why in this day and age of spreadsheets and the like the cubic metre as the standard for volume can't be used is a mystery.

Simple despite your constant attempts to force complexity in the system mongoose understands that many people don’t want to have to resort to spreadsheets and engineering books to play what is essentially a game. Keeping things accessible to everyone helps to keep a broader player base. That’s why going back to FF&S would be a bad thing for the game it would discourage a large segment of the play base.

 

[tytalan]

Traders and Gunboats - pg 56-57

View attachment 7280

Somebody fail common sense designs 101, though it is an easy fix drop the armor to a more reasonable 9 and you have the room to include the needed common area. That or drop the marines down to a company, ie 30 and throw the 6 dt into common areas, still light but if you also drop the armor to 12 you’d have about 15 dt of common area which is much more reasonable.

Though to be honest I’d also drop a couple more energy efficient on the maneuver drive so you can drop a couple of dt from the power plant and add the missing turrets in. The concept is cool but suffers from lack of common sense

 

[tytalan]

@Talon Greyfeather this is quickly done but I think this is closer that what this ship should be. You could play around with it a bit and get the marines back up to 36 but that going to mean coming up with 9dt and since 30 is a company it doesn’t make sense to add the 6 marines.

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, the bigger the ship, the less crew you need.

The unused staterooms and bunks can then be occupied by the Marines.

 

[swordtart]

A lot of things that scientists may be needing to use would be hazardous to have in your sleeping/eating quarters.

I am content with the way MGT2 handles lab space my comment was regarding the subsuming of labs into staterooms in HG1979 but I have been told that is not what the wording means.

As is the ship has 20 labs and 20 staterooms. Assuming one scientist/lab and no double bunking then there is currently no crew quarters so any saved space should go to crew.

I tend to assume double occupancy of at least some staterooms for the MGT2 Type L. The deck plan in CRB has double bunks so there is plenty of accommodation for scientists and crew.

However as the lab ship is a player benefit (and it is doubtful there are 30+ player scientists in the party) we could assume that the intention is that much of the accommodation is for paying passengers and you would organise it to maximise profits (which includes optimising for attracting customers).

With only 3 tons for cargo there is not much scope to accommodate high passengers. The per stateroom return on two basic passengers once life support is taken into consideration is lower than for a single middle passenger. However passenger pricing does not take into account the laboratory facilities and we are not simply talking about moving people around, the ship is providing them with facilities in which to conduct research or work. Charter fees are not set out in MGT2 but under the older edition assumptions it was solely based on passenger and cargo capacity, not additional facilities.

If you did want to redesign it to reduce the accommodation overhead and increase profits junior lab assistants could be put in barracks since they are not crew (and could credibly be students), scientists could share staterooms and only senior scientists would rate single occupancy. Since they have labs to spread out in during their working shift the common room requirement should be lower than if they were confined solely to their accommodation and the common spaces.

Personally if it was received as a player benefit, I'd recommend selling it and get something with a lower mortgage and maintenance overhead or converting the majority of labs into something more profitable. As presented, it has a very low revenue to cost ratio and is simply a money pit.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Actually it you actually read my post you would see yes it is accounted for or are you hall ways and rooms 10 feet tall? If you figure a more reasonable hight than you have the area not part of open space but still part of the tonnage for that machinery.

The standard deckplan dimensions are two stacked 1.5m of a side cubes giving you "1 square" being 1.5x1.5x3. So yes, every corridor, room, bridge space, engineering room "square" has these dimensions unless you specify otherwise. The ceiling and the floor spaces subtract from that 3m - 2.5m vertical distance allows for 0.5m to be split between the machinery spaces above and below.

Where are you accounting for hallways? They again are taken from stateroom floor area. You can use a box of 4 squares for the stateroom, which gives 4 squares to allocate to common area and corridors. Mongoose at least allows for common room to be added but it is not mandatory, you can still sketch a deck plan that has a common areaeven though you have not allocated a single dt to it during the construction design sequence.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Simple despite your constant attempts to force complexity in the system mongoose understands that many people don’t want to have to resort to spreadsheets and engineering books to play what is essentially a game.

In which case stick with the abstract and stop looking for details that are not supported except as referee fiat.

Keeping things accessible to everyone helps to keep a broader player base. That’s why going back to FF&S would be a bad thing for the game it would discourage a large segment of the play base.

I very much doubt that is the case, why do you think they put ship construction back in the core rulebook after the debacle of its removal in 2016?

 

[Terry Mixon]

The standard deckplan dimensions are two stacked 1.5m of a side cubes giving you "1 square" being 1.5x1.5x3. So yes, every corridor, room, bridge space, engineering room "square" has these dimensions unless you specify otherwise. The ceiling and the floor spaces subtract from that 3m - 2.5m vertical distance allows for 0.5m to be split between the machinery spaces above and below.

Where are you accounting for hallways? They again are taken from stateroom floor area. You can use a box of 4 squares for the stateroom, which gives 4 squares to allocate to common area and corridors. Mongoose at least allows for common room to be added but it is not mandatory, you can still sketch a deck plan that has a common areaeven though you have not allocated a single dt to it during the construction design sequence.

As stated earlier by someone else, part of that height won’t be usable because of conduits and pipes above. Likely life support ducts as well. The occupied space might loose half a meter. That’s my opinion as well, and I realize the rules don’t explicitly state it.

 

[Endie]

Mongoose core rules and High Guard define it as 14 cubic metres - the approximate volume of 1000kg of liquid hydrogen.

For some inexplicable reason MegaTraveller and a couple of other iterations adopted the deck plan cube as the standard, 1.5x1.5x1.5, which makes no sense if a displacement ton is meant to be the volume of 1000kg of liquid hydrogen. Before Mr Pedant joins in I am well aware that it is usual to actually stack two cubes for a 1.5x1.5x3 "square"

Why in this day and age of spreadsheets and the like the cubic metre as the standard for volume can't be used is a mystery.

I totally agree. Using cubic metres would solve so many misunderstandings and confusions: you can tell a new player that a far trader carries 81 dtons and if you're lucky theyll just have no clue what that means. If you're unlucky they'll think "oh it can carry 81 tons of stuff."

Then they'll find a free trader with five crates each holding 200 cubic metre tanks of something (let's say water for ease of the example) and they are offended that you're trying to tardis your 1000 tons of water into an 81 ton hold.

 

[tytalan]

In which case stick with the abstract and stop looking for details that are not supported except as referee fiat.

details that you are pushing to support your counter argument

 

[tytalan]

I very much doubt that is the case, why do you think they put ship construction back in the core rulebook after the debacle of its removal in 2016?

why so you think they have rejected techies like you bring back FF&S

 

[Condottiere]

In theory, a ten tonne jump drive includes accessways into it, and through it.

Otherwise, it would be mentioned you'd have to include corridors through it, or beside it.

 

[swordtart]

Even in very detailed systems you start tripping over things because engineering is compromise. You can systemise the design process up the ying-yang but you won't be able to come up with something fully coherent unless you start from the ground up. If you do that it will take forever to achieve anything and you'll be making most of it up anyway since this stuff doesn't really exist.

All I need is for things to be internally consistent. You can base ships designs on the volume of a Tonne of marmite for all I care. Just make sure that when you say a cabin is 75 MTonnes you make it clear exactly what that entails.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm trying to recall if I ever had the misfortune of tasting it. I think it was Horlicks.

But, if you're looking for an appropriate condiment, it should be jam.

Space Jam.