Nemesis, ship design & Xboats...

[zanwot]

Looking at the very cool 100 ton Nemesis class Pursuit ship from Spica, I got to thinking that for a bounty hunter, especially a skip tracer (I mean the guy who tracks down ships), it would be critical to gain even one level of jump over the standard jump 2.

So I got to modyfing the design, and realised that by getting rid of one of the staterooms, the spinner, two of the low berths, and most of the cargo, by replacing the power plant, Mdrive and Jdrive by B ratings, you can get a ship with 4G thrust, jump4, and fuel for one jump 4 and 2 weeks running (must be carefull when doing a jump 4 as little reserve). As the techlevel has gone up anyway you would definitly move to bonded superdense armor while you were at it, and probably improve computers somehow.

Finaly you get a shiny TL14 jump 4 very capable 100 ton spaceship, must say I like it. Not best for "dirt side" bounty hunter because of the lack of vehicule, only 2 low berths, etc, but just right for hunting ships (if you want to stick to 100 tons). It is quite expensive though...

Anyway, that seems to be in contradiction with the good old Xboat, which is supposed to do jump 4 but has to sacrifice Mdrive to do so, no? I don't have the book that contains it's specs for MGT, so bare with me. This got me wondering: Am I doing something wrong? Or does the X boat have a higher jump, or some excess cargo, or has it gained a Mdrive in MGT?

Also, I think in some old version of Traveller there was a "control points" system that was used to determine the number of necessary crew members depending on the computers. I regret that, does anybody know which Traveller that was?

 

[AndrewW]

Express Boat, Type X (Xboat) has no manoeuvre drive, 5.25 tons of cargo. Though fuel is 6 weeks of operation (52 tons).

 

[Vile]

the very cool 100 ton Nemesis class Pursuit ship from Spica

Why, thank you, zanwot. 8)

The Nemesis seems to lend itself to modification. The layout was deliberately designed to place the bulk of the fuel in the nose cone so that there was some design flexibility - move the bulkhead back or forward depending on your fuel needs, and the rest of the layout is unaffected. Another board member, rust, created a hyperdrive version for one of his colonisation settings.

The Nemesis was designed as it was for a number of reasons. TL-12 is above average, but not too high, because that makes it usable in a bigger range of settings. Even in the OTU, higher TLs are not common, and maintenance on small ships like this are a problem - no in-flight access space, and not that many crew. High acceleration (she does 6G) gives a huge advantage in normal space over most ships, and at least matches every other vessel under the MGT rules. As you say, the vehicle gives dirtside flexibility - as any Strontium Dog fan knows, a lot of time tracking down bad guys is on remote planets in the wild west! Finally, the small cargo bay with the big hatch allows a lot of flexibility - extra low berths, another vehicle, another stateroom ...

All of the above is intended to make the Nemesis as useful as possible to as wide a range of potential customers as possible. That is not to say that variants couldn't or shouldn't exist, in fact they are almost bound to. I see this in two ways:

1: In-game - This means the Nemesis is a production model, and variants are based on feasible alterations to the ship as-is. You can swap out components for others, or for higher-tech versions of the same. You can upgrade weaponry. You can increase or decrease crew space. There are limits - you can't really alter the hull too much, and you're pretty much stuck with the engines you have unless you want to make them smaller. But still, there's a lot of room for modification, and this is the approach which has been taken in the book by the three different crews which are detailed.

2: By setting: This is a more comprehensive re-design by the referee before using the ship in his universe. This gives you quite a lot more flexibility (while still giving you a set of deckplans and some rather nice artwork by Mr. Beech), as you and rust have discovered. As you say, a skip tracer may not be as hands-on as a bounty hunter, so they can probably make do with a smaller crew and no vehicle. Change the base TL, and you have a whole raft of options under High Guard.

How about posting the stats for your version here? Maybe rust could do the same?