Planetoid Starbase

[Bardicheart]

1. Hydroponic farm: saves on life support and logistics.

2. If you had sent gnomes, they'd take four months and present you with a new blueprint which shows how they altered the layout so it's more efficient.

3. I'm fairly sure hundred ton hulls are 3D printed.

:lol:

I keep hearing the gnome voice from the "Majesty" computer game "but I'm just a gnome." An while the new design is more efficient, watch out for low ceilings... Aslan would HATE the place (but on the upside, Aslan boarding parties would be at a -6 DM to do anything).

I'm actually thinking of pulling out T4 and looking at the life support rules there for self contained, self supporting life support systems as a point of inspiration when I get that far.

 

[phavoc]

Did a little digging this evening on RW ship construction and came up with the following.

The Oasis of the Seas, currently the worlds largest ship is (as best as I can determine based on her dimensions and some VERY rough calculations) about 100,000 dT in size in Traveller terms.

It took 8 years to build her, vs a Traveller ship of about the same size and a new design taking only 4 yrs (HG p55; I guess advances in automation can account for that).

It took a total over about 8,000 laborers to build her, with somewhere in the neighborhood of 3,200 at any given time.

There were 241 km of piping used, 5,310 km of electrical wiring and 600,000 liters of paint! (Not really relevant, but I thought it was kinda cool to know)

A total of 181 "grand blocks" were used each weighing around 600 metric tons! I get a back ache just thinking about that LOL

Okay so working backwards using the 100,000 dT and 3,200 laborers, that's at least one "machinist" for every 31.25 dT Or we could round that off to 1 machinist / worker per 25 dT.

Using that as a base, a 5,000 dT shipyard would need 200 such machinist and 200 "spaces" of workshops at 6 dT each (Engineering workshop, p83 - Supplement 10 - Merchants & Cruisers: Repair Ship; seemed a reasonable example of a well equipped machine / fabrication shop) for a grand total of ...

1,200 dT of workshops and 800 dT of staterooms for the 200 workers just for the shipyard.

An yeah, I realize the above is making HUGE over generalizations and such, but this is Traveller, not NASA and all I really need is something that looks reasonably realistic on paper. Sound reasonable?

I think Oasis is closer to 263,000 Dtons. She's 361m long by 60m wide by 82m tall (there's some rounding in there, plus the width is variable). That's 1,776,120 cubic meters, and taking the Dton of 6.75, comes out to 263k Dtons (I think I got that math right...).

And keep in mind it's a civilian ship, not a military one. Military ships have more compartmentalization. It might be better to consider the new Ford class carrier (coming in at a heftier 300k Dtons). It's keel was laid in 2009, and it "launched" in 2013, but it's still got another 2 years ahead of it. So it's taking about six years to build. I'm sure they could get that down to five if they built them regularly or in quantity. And there's 19,000 workers at the shipyard, though obviously not all of them work specifically on the ship. The Hampton Roads shipyard also does other work.

 

[Bardicheart]

Traveller dT is 14 m3 though (Traveller Core p105; always has been far as I can recall.).

Using that the rough measurements give us 126,865.7 dT, BUT, thats for a cube (well rectangle) and the ship isn't so I made a rough guesstimate on carving out for the bow of the ship, curve of the hull, etc. (I really did not feel like trying to figure out the exact shape and volume LOL). If anything 100,000 dT was probably being overly generous. Like I said, I'm not trying to get uber precise here, just a some good ballpark numbers.

Also, with the Oasis, the worker numbers were specific to that ship, somewhere between 3,200 to 4000 at any given time. Another 4000 were specialist that only worked on certain parts and included things like artist hired to do custom sculptures and paintings, interior decorators, and so forth. I looked for an example specifically like that for that very reason, to try an get a clearer idea what it takes to build a ship like that.

I did look at some reports on US naval ship yards, which got depressing, apparently the US doesn't compete very well. At one point of 3,000 large hulls being built world wide, only 3 were being built in the US. China is so cheap you can build an entire ship for LESS than the US can purchase just the materials to build the same ship. But that's some interesting info to file away for future use. Maybe there should be ship cost adjustments for shipyard type, world size, standards of living, etc. That is a thriving industrial world with Pop A and a reasonable standard of living might build ships at the listed cost, while a small world with a class B might cost double list cost for the same ship due to economic effects. Take that same industrial world and give it a very high standard of living and costs might soar (pretty much the problem the US is facing, worker pay, benefits, etc. drive labor costs up it makes it impossible to be competitive). Government / Law levels might be worth considering too... though not sure at the moment how to factor that in.

Point taken about military ships, but then I think HG kind of reflects that by custom / prototype designs vs established designs (which seem to take about half the time to build plus cost 10% less). Cruise ships would all be custom, heh, they're pretty much the definition of customized luxury. Pretty impressive too looking at the photos; makes me think Traveller needs more luxury ships. Gotta love traveling in style!

BTW, that was another thing I liked about Pirates of Drinax was the description of the Harrier and the Floating Palace. I definitely approve of Gareth's tastes! Makes me feel like doing some "high tech steampunk in space" art.

 

[phavoc]

Oops, Oasis comes out to 126k Dtons, and the Ford would be more like 144k Dtons. This is why doing math in my head is a bad thing.

And yeah, the Oasis is streamlined, not to mention it has a large area between the rear upper cabin deck that is open/hollow (where else do you put the park and zipline?). So it's Trav tonnage would be considerably less than what it's correct measurements come out to be.

US military shipyards work to different standards than say the Chinese yard building a 100k DWT container ship. Not to mention that only the French and British really have any experience in building large warships. The type 089 carrier the Chinese are trying to build (their current ones were all purchased elsewhere) is still something they are figuring out. Their type 071 LPD comes in at 28,000 tons (DWT). This is similar to the US San Antonio class LPD.

It's tough to compare the actual 'costs' because we aren't comparing apples to apples. Chinese yards are state-industry owned, and their costs are in the yuan. US yards operate as for-profit entities and are paid in dollars. The entire supply chain in the US is for-profit, while that's not the case for the Chinese. And then there is China's currency manipulation, and since it's not free-floating, we don't have enough info to really make a market-based comparison.

As far as building costs between systems, that's going to put you in the same boat. Different planets potentially have their own currencies, and while the Imperial Credit is the standard for all interplanetary trade, some systems will have governments like the Chinese where the costs are controlled. But you also would have to take into account quality as well. And who wants all that un-fun complexity added to the game.

I am willing to take my spreadsheets into space only so far!

 

[Bardicheart]

I am willing to take my spreadsheets into space only so far!

Amen to that! :lol:

If I could figure out a fairly simple rule for adjusting prices based on planetary code, something that could be done more or less at a glance, that would be workable (and maybe even a nice addition to the trade rules). Anything beyond that is more headache than I need.