Reaction Drive Campaign - New Ship Designs

Mithras

Mithras

Banded Mongoose
My non-grav, reaction-drive Solar System game called STL is now under production, and I'm creating vehicles step by step. Working upwards toward the big warships.

First - the ubiquitous lander - the Nomad.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/lord_mithras/nomad1.jpg?t=1246568783

With this sorted, and a couple of other small craft, I can move on to interplanetary craft. I envisage the Nomad riding at the tip of a deep space vehicle (over 400 tons). Like this:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v299/lord_mithras/hpqscan0001.jpg
 
The transport needs redesign, to be honest - counter-rotating accomodation sections would be good, although not required, particularly since the staterooms of the crew make up only a fractional tonnage of the craft. In other words, for counter-rotating sections, you need quite alot of space in gravity, and if you haven't got the requirement - then you just don't need it. Low berths should probably be put in zero-G also.

EDIT: With my current iteration of my STL rules, the Procyon would be accelerating for only an hour or two....

But its the lander I've designed, the Procyon is an old sketch that illustrates the location of the lander on the craft.
 
I like it a lot. A couple of questions though.

If I understand your notes, you gave the lander 30 G/Turns worth of fuel. If I've done my math right, it only needs about 3 G/Turns to take off from the earth, probably less to land (maybe another G/Turn.) It's endurance seems rather high.

Are you assuming the reaction mass is not radioactive?

For the 200 ton ship, I'd love to see a plan of the inside. How do you account for the change in "floor" when the ship is accelerating?

Did you use the Mongoose design rules exclusively, or did you bring in elements of some other system (FF&S maybe)?
 
Very cool, would look right at home in 2300A.D. I'd have the fuel compartment behind the spin habitat for added shielding from the reactor, plus you'd not need to pump fuel through the spindle. Still, it's nice to see people using Traveller to underpin their OTUs.
 
lucasdigital said:
Very cool, would look right at home in 2300A.D.
Click to expand...

The one question I've always had about 2300AD ships... Why does the shutterwarp seem to always have exhaust ports in back of the ship? It doesn't expel reaction mass...
 
I like this ! It this going to be a published setting ? (if not, please consider posting more of your content here).

I recommend you check out the Jovian Chronicles' ships books (they're on Drive Thru' RPG) for similar designs and some good inspiration.

I've long had a similar idea for a landing craft mounted on the nose of a deep space vessel - in fact I redesigned the Traveller Type-S with this in mind (the scout would mount onto a frame that gave it more accommodation space and longer jump range).

One idea you might like to steal - I had a central elevator shaft as the spine of the large ship, and a matching cargo hold in the lander. This allows cargo and passengers to be loaded directly from the hold of the mothership into the hold of the lander.
 
daniel_t said:
The one question I've always had about 2300AD ships... Why does the shutterwarp seem to always have exhaust ports in back of the ship? It doesn't expel reaction mass...
Click to expand...

That is probably and artistic thing. The M-Drive is Traveller doesn't have exhaust either, but they are usually shown with pretty glowy thingies.

Also, why put the drives in the 'back' of the ship. All of the drives and PP don't need to be in the back. The PP would be more efficiently wired if it was in the middle of the ship. The J-Drive and M-Drive would be better protected in the middle of the ship.

Also, why is the Bridge always at the front?

All of these conventions are mostly due to our experience and how we "expect" ships to look based on water craft and airplanes.

Space ships should look really different when they have reactionless drives, but we wouldn't think that they looked right most of the time.
 
I thought my calculations were correct... 2G x 3 thrust-hours x 2.5% of ships' hull (20 ton) = 3 ton fuel. Yes, I think that's right. 2G acceleration with a 3 thrust-hour burn time. Enough for a deorbit burn, descent and then ascent.

I have written up a design document which tweaks High Guard just a tiny amount, generally bringing in things from Comstars Archaic Space Craft and Spacestations.

I will link to the design document later tonight.

daniel_t said:
I like it a lot. A couple of questions though.

If I understand your notes, you gave the lander 30 G/Turns worth of fuel. If I've done my math right, it only needs about 3 G/Turns to take off from the earth, probably less to land (maybe another G/Turn.) It's endurance seems rather high.

Are you assuming the reaction mass is not radioactive?

For the 200 ton ship, I'd love to see a plan of the inside. How do you account for the change in "floor" when the ship is accelerating?

Did you use the Mongoose design rules exclusively, or did you bring in elements of some other system (FF&S maybe)?
Click to expand...
 
Here is my Reaction Drive Traveller High Guard design guide. http://www.geocities.com/zozergames/mongoose-stl-rulesrewrite.doc

Its the nuts and bolts, I'll be adding lots more.
 
Mithras said:
I thought my calculations were correct... 2G x 3 thrust-hours x 2.5% of ships' hull (20 ton) = 3 ton fuel. Yes, I think that's right. 2G acceleration with a 3 thrust-hour burn time. Enough for a deorbit burn, descent and then ascent.
Click to expand...

I'm getting different numbers... According to www.projectrho.com a 2 G drive needs 12477.65 m/s delta-V or about 3.5 g-turns to enter earth's orbit. (Here is a spreadsheet to do the calculation http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/Planets_Rockets_v1.xls) That's about 11 minutes at 2g.

Gurps spaceships says 7.5 minutes at 2g will get your ship into orbit which is 2.5 g-turns total.

Using projectrho's numbers and doubling it for one landing and one launch, and you need 7 g-turns of fuel, add a few of g-turns for safety, let's say you have 10 g-turns of fuel or one-half hour of maximum burn. That's only 1/2 ton.
 
Daniel, thanks for the calculations. I must admit my math skill is not great; because of that I am trying to marry High Guard rules with Trans Human Space data, to create something inbetween. I dare not dip my toes into actual orbital math! I will just embaress myself.

I've looked again, however, and have made some amendments, increasing reaction fuel by quite a lot, and reducing down the thrust-hours called for by Comstar's Archaic Spacecraft, to more realistic fractions of thrust-hours - just as you have done. This is starting to bring my fuel consumptions more in line with yours.

I want it to feel real, but obviously, to only reproduce that feeling through Mongoose's Traveller game rules.
 
Mithras said:
Daniel, thanks for the calculations. I must admit my math skill is not great...
Click to expand...

Consider yourself lucky. I can do the math, but coming up with pictures and deck plans is hard for me.
 
I'm just wondering if Mithras did any more work on this setting ?

I've recently acquired the Disaspora game, and the assumed setting is very similar to the STL setting here - large ships with reaction drives. I'd be interested to see any more design sketches because I liked the two presented here.

Diaspora uses the FATE engine (as used in Spirit of the Century). Diaspora, I believe, originally started as 'Spirit of the Far Future', which was essentially a straight conversion of Traveller to FATE, but it was reworked because of the obvious licensing problems. It's really worth looking at, especially if you like a harder-SF feel, but the game engine might confuse you if you're used to more crunchy, old-school systems. I personally love FATE as a system, it hands a lot of power to the players, and has mechanism built into the system to ensure that everybody is having a fun time around the table. Anyway, I digress !
 
I've done nothing but work on it since this thread opened!

I call it STL - The Solar System Traveller, it comes with a full set of MgT ship design rules (only gentle tweaks from the core rules), , conversions of the standard designs (Scout, Liner, Patrol Cruiser etc) into nuclear thermal drive, spin gravity ships, and a setting.

The setting is a hundred year old Cold War waged between the Earth Union and Luna. Both have colonies or independant allies, and have competed to leapfrog one another in exploiting the resources of the Solar System.

The setting requires quite a bit of writing. I have several deckplans of zero-G ships, but they are all hand-drawn!

SElling this would be great, I have 6 published books to my name (including GURPS Atomic Horror), but I'd need art, deckplans, etc.

Currently I have borrowed images from the web including several 2300AD renders, but it is for my own use.

I was planning to release it for free with acknowledgements for all the artwork that I borrowed.

Would anyone be interested in taking a look at the STL package? PLease PM me you email address.
 
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