Millennium Falcon (Traveller version)

[Tom Kalbfus]

Right, I'm seeing two references for dimensions for the Falcon. Many state a radius of about 13.5 meters and that deckplan I list has 20 meters. Respectively I get 170 dtons and 372 dtons without adding in the cockpit and mandible sections but could add a rounding 30 dtons or 200 and 400 dtons. I can rightly say Tom wants the higher number.

Using Mongoose Traveller rules, it has to be bigger to have the performance and features I want. With a 400 ton hull, it only has 60 dtons of cargo space, this is about the same as a Far Trader, but a Far Trader has Thrust 1 and Jump 2, my Millenium Falcon has Thrust 4 and Jump 4, becauwe its supposed to be a "fast ship", and sorry Thrust 1 just isn't "fast" in the Traveller Universe. Basically this Millenium Falcon is designed for smuggling low volume high value cargo and to evade authorities, it has a deflector shield so it can take a few hits without damage. It is probably safe to assume the deflector shield was likely stolen, it is the equivalent of a black globe.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Here is a more complete version of the Millenium Falcon that I posted earlier. I've corrected the size of the fuel tanks, which take up half the volume of the ship. The deflector shields are spread around the sides of the ship, to be serviced, the crew must either do so from space in a vacc suit or repair it at a starport. Floor plans of the ship are at the bottom of this.

 

[Anonymous]

Wookiepedia gives the dimensions for the Falcon as 35 meters diameter. Looking at my FFG X-wing miniatures, it's less than 3x the length of the T-65 X-wing, which is 12 meters, so it sounds about right. It's also not flat so there's wasted space above and below.

18**2 is 324, so 3x324 = 1000-ish. Adding 10% we have 1100. Multiplying by 3 for the height, we get 3300. I happen to know that 14 * 2.5 is 35, so that thing is smaller than 250 dtons by approximation.

Edit: I get 206 m^3 with a computer, assuming a dton is 14 m^3. I can never remember if it's 14 or 13.5. It might have been 13.5 in an older edition of Traveller.

Edit: Older sources give 27 meters, which would give 177 dtons.

Edit: I never realised how tiny X-wings are. A small fighter like an F-16 is 15 meters to the X-wing's 12.

 

[theodis]

As far as I can tell, the specs for size are way off.

a metric ton is an unit of weight and - if for some reason used to determine volume - generally assumed to be H2O. This means 1m³. A traveller dton is a unit of volume ranging (depending on edition) from 13.5 m³ to 14m³, so 100 metric tons are in fact somewhere between 7.14 and 7.4 dtons.

Beats me why anyone should name such a ship "freighter", though. It's more an armoured courier.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

As far as I can tell, the specs for size are way off.

a metric ton is an unit of weight and - if for some reason used to determine volume - generally assumed to be H2O. This means 1m³. A traveller dton is a unit of volume ranging (depending on edition) from 13.5 m³ to 14m³, so 100 metric tons are in fact somewhere between 7.14 and 7.4 dtons.

Beats me why anyone should name such a ship "freighter", though. It's more an armoured courier.

Traveller measures volume by a metric ton of liquid hydrogen, so I guess the game assumes that starships will have the average density of a tank of liquid hydrogen. Most rockets today are mostly fuel tanks. My version of the Falcon has about 50% of its volume taken up by fuel, and after allowing for the Jump-4 Drive and Maneuver-4 and power plant, we have the equivalent cargo area of a Far Trader. The maneuver drives assume that a starship of a given volume will have the mass of a fuel tank of liquid hydrogen of the same volume. Since The Falcon is maneuver-4, it would generate 1600 tons of thrust to produce that acceleration in the starship.

By the way, I'm not trying to recreate the specs for the Movie version of the Millenium Falcon, it is actually a Traveller starship that is shaped like the Millenium Falcon, and an intelligent machine tried to give it above average acceleration and Jump capability, it still can't do the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, the most it can do is 4 parsecs in a single jump, it would take 3 Jump-4s with 3 refuelings to make 12 parsecs in the Traveller game, which is quite respectable in a starship as versatile as this.

 

[theodis]

By the way, I'm not trying to recreate the specs for the Movie version of the Millenium Falcon, it is actually a Traveller starship that is shaped like the Millenium Falcon, and an intelligent machine tried to give it above average acceleration and Jump capability, it still can't do the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, the most it can do is 4 parsecs in a single jump, it would take 3 Jump-4s with 3 refuelings to make 12 parsecs in the Traveller game, which is quite respectable in a starship as versatile as this.

Ah, ok. Didn't got that.

Just curious. Did also you try to recreate the Falcon as it was represented, tiny cargo hold and all?

 

[Condottiere]

The Millennium Falcon is a half eaten burger, which is why it's not quite one thing nor the other, nor has to respect game mechanics.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

By the way, I'm not trying to recreate the specs for the Movie version of the Millenium Falcon, it is actually a Traveller starship that is shaped like the Millenium Falcon, and an intelligent machine tried to give it above average acceleration and Jump capability, it still can't do the Kessel Run in 12 parsecs, the most it can do is 4 parsecs in a single jump, it would take 3 Jump-4s with 3 refuelings to make 12 parsecs in the Traveller game, which is quite respectable in a starship as versatile as this.

Ah, ok. Didn't got that.

Just curious. Did also you try to recreate the Falcon as it was represented, tiny cargo hold and all?

Tiny percentage wise, but in absolute terms, its still 60 tons, about the same as a 200 ton Far Trader, to have the high performance that the Falcon has, it has to devote more of its space to drives, power plant and fuel, that is just the way the rules of Traveller work to create such a ship. In Star Wars, a spaceship can look anyway you like so long as its cool. Since characters don't spend much time in the cargo hold, it doesn't have to be that big! On the Millennium Falcon, the cargo is underneath the floor boards, the Falcon is just a device that allows the writers to move Star Wars characters about the Galaxy, that is its real purpose, it is more like a Winnebago than a Freighter. Traveller has to follow a consistent set of rules, the cargo holds have to be large enough to make economic sense. If faster drives took up as much space and used as much fuel as the slower drives, there is no reason for ships to have the slower drives. For the Star Wars RPG, the Core Books had to devise a set or rules which were somewhat consistent with what was shown in the movies. The latest movie The Force Awakens raises some new questions that come to the fore.
Spoilers Below:









There is a new "Death Star" that looks like this:

Its called Starkiller Base, it is an artificial planet, that mines its Sun for energy, and then uses that energy to destroy planets that are light years away, it doesn't actually have a hyperdrive or move itself, it just has a long range weapon that can destroy any planet or planets in the galaxy from where it is. An interesting question is what sort of rules do you adapt for this?

Another thing is that Luke Skywalker's blue lightsaber suddenly reappeared, and I thought it was lost when Darth Vader cut off Lukes hand in Cloud City in Bespin. I guess Lando must have recovered it somehow.

 

[theodis]

Best not to delve too deeply into Starkiller Base. Judging by the rate the thing can suck a sun dry, thermodynamics are a non-issue in that universe. ;-)

 

[Meeko100]

Considering how casual space travel is in the star wars universe, the falcon could definitely fall under freighter. At least there.

If some bloke on Tatooine wants a restock of whatever, you could load up enough on the falcon and her type to restock a couple stores. The analogy of free traders->truck drivers is very hard here. And a free trader could just as easily be called a light freighter.

I'd really be interested in a write-up for an X-Wing. Can't find one on the net. Would love to see how someone fits a hyperdrive on it. . If they could do it at all.

 

[Anonymous]

Best not to delve too deeply into Starkiller Base. Judging by the rate the thing can suck a sun dry, thermodynamics are a non-issue in that universe. ;-)

I would be utterly unsurprised if faster-than-light travel violated the 2nd law of thermodynamics (which should really be the first law). We know that any FTL drive would be a time machine, and my intuition is that time machines would violate energy conservation laws.

We have to choose which magics we allow in our games and decide one is acceptable and the other is not, but on the face of it, they are all utter nonsense from a physical point of view.

 

[Tom Kalbfus]

Best not to delve too deeply into Starkiller Base. Judging by the rate the thing can suck a sun dry, thermodynamics are a non-issue in that universe. ;-)

I would be utterly unsurprised if faster-than-light travel violated the 2nd law of thermodynamics (which should really be the first law). We know that any FTL drive would be a time machine, and my intuition is that time machines would violate energy conservation laws.

We have to choose which magics we allow in our games and decide one is acceptable and the other is not, but on the face of it, they are all utter nonsense from a physical point of view.

Traveller has rules which players try to follow consistently, but if Han Solo wants to fly by flapping his arms, and the story writers agree it would make a good story if he did, then he can!

 

[Anonymous]

Traveller has rules which players try to follow consistently, but if Han Solo wants to fly by flapping his arms, and the story writers agree it would make a good story if he did, then he can!

The Imperial Navy, the Solomani, even the Zhodani: They all know they can't beat a Type-S when it's full of PCs.