Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Possible

N. Going by the current armouring scheme, basic systems only need to cover non wastage volume, so for a hundred tonne hull, that would be eighty tonnes, at most.

O. So depending on what size primary hull turns out to be optimal, whether forty nine, a hundred or hundred and twenty tonnes, basic systems default/minimum for a degravitated hull, 3.92/1.86, 8/4, and 9.6/4.8 power points.

P. Basically, artificial gravity consumes five power points per hundred tonnes.

Q. A one tonne budgetted/increased size early fusion reactor would have an output of eight power points, which would be enough to cover basic system requirements for a hundred tonne planetoid, minus artificial gravity.

R. If we kept the manoeuvre drive switched on for a budgetted/increased size one tonne manoeuvre drive, for a hundred tonne hull, that would be another eight power points.

S. So in tailsitter configuration, that gives eighty percent Terran norm gravity, even in jumpspace.

T. In a way, it would be a killing two birds with one stone, the manoeuvre drive creates onboard artificial gravity, as long as it continues to thrust.

U. So that does indicate a two tonne early fusion budgetted/increased size reactor, for three fifths megastarbux.

V. That would brings us up to ten megastarbux so far, in costs.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Possible

W. One reason I wouldn't try to go for a manoeuvre drive factor greater than one is that you'd need technological level ten technology.

X. Presumably, a high burn thruster might be added, but the author has seemingly refused to detail costs, performance or weight in the new High Guard.

Y. A one tonne manoeuvre drive, budgetted/increased size, eighty thrust tonnes, one and one fifth megastarbux, should be enough for our project.

Z. So, eleven and one fifth megastarbux.

 

[Condottiere]

It occurs to me that using a manoeuvre drive still creates an inertial compensation field, which you'd have to switch off.

I wonder if the option exists of constructing a manoeuvre drive without one, and how much money would you save.

Remarks about reactionary rockets seem to indicate that you can't separate the inertial compensation field aspect from the manoeuvre drive.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Possible

What's left is a computer/five (thirty kilostarbux), jump/one (hundred kilostarbux), and basic sensors.

I don't think we need to arm it, and it has an organic factor two hull armour.

What's left is accommodations, which can be multiples of ten tonne stables, which can be partitioned into larger sleeper quarters and/or cargo holds.

Or not.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Possible

At twenty five kilostarbux per tonne, not including mounting, I'll think I'll keep fuel internal, where it costs me nothing (plus, I think, eighteen hundred seventy five per tonne).

Instead of drop tanks, the extra twenty tonnes could be an external spacecraft, or external cargo mount, which costs a kilostarbux per tonne.

So far, small bridge, six tonnes, engineering, thirteen tonnes, jump fuel, twelve tonnes, power fuel, one tonne, equals thirty two, twenty tonnes wastage for hundred tonne hull, fifty two.

Empty forty eight tonnes; upto four stables, twelve staterooms.

You probably want half a tonne of common area per human onboard.

You're unlikely to be able to charge standard passenger prices, the question would be, how much of a discount.

I think you also have to add in a one tonne acceleration bench per four humans, to keep them in place during periods of non acceleration, like during docking at a starport.

 

[Condottiere]

Starwarships: How to Defeat the Deadliest Ship in the Galactic Republic Navy

The Venator Class Star Destroyer has several layers of defense, we take a look at how to properly engage this assault carrier and capture it.

Now we have a use for that stealth coating.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Possible

Stables cost twenty five hundred starbux per tonne, minimum ten tonnes, so you could turn all of the remaining forty eight tonnes to stables.

In theory, you could stuff in ninety six humans, but that wouldn't be a good idea, outside of the fact it's rather dependent on the amount of usual traffic you have between two systems.

It's likely that Travellers who have High Passages, with turn up their noses to what's on offer here, the solution would be Middle Passage tickets, discounted.

You could divide up the tonnage by two tonnes per human, so that's forty eight, which means also twelve one tonne benches.

At zero to zero point eight thrust, I don't think it even needs to be acceleration benches, just something to keep the passengers in place before launch. If you give them their own private two tonne room, you probably could just strap them to their beds.

 

[Condottiere]

Starwarships: Why the Acclamator was a RIDICULOUSLY Overpowered Warship (Why was it so Underused?)

0:00 Introduction
0:46 The Start of a Navy
3:14 The Acclamator
6:30 Superior Design
8:56 Outro

1. It's problem is critical lack of charisma.

2. I'm thinking Viking longship.

3. Assault cruiser, though sixteen thousand troopers is pretty high.

4. Could have made it modular, exchanging components to fit a certain subcategory, such as carrier or armoured cruiser (in the presumption that armoured cruisers can substitute for predreadnoughts in the line).

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Possible

One tonne of stable allotment per passenger, plus half a tonne of common area, the goal being a better profit margin than a kilostarbux per cargo tonne shipped.

The stable tonne costs twenty five hundred starbux, the half tonne common area fifty kilostarbux; the smart thing might be to allot more stable area, since common area is forty times more expensive.

That would be thirty two stable tonnes, and sixteen tonnes common area, for thirty two passengers and crew, with life support for sixty four humans.

There's probably three default toilets for thirty two tonnes; it's more a question of integrated plumbing.

Life support would be a committed cost of eight kilostarbux per month, since it's probably all or nothing.

That should be an additional two and two fifths megastarbux to cost, total now is probably 13'730'000 starbux.

Ten percent discount12,357,000 starbux.

Forty year mortgage at five percent I think is 59'585.03 per month

​

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Possible

I don't think anyone except someone who has access to a hundred million starbux can afford a new starship on his own.

And in our terms, not necessarily Jeff Bezos, but certainly a semibillionaire.

And while you could probably cover running costs, occasional repairs, and annual maintenance, I think you're screwed if you have to make monthly payments on the mortgage.

And five percent over forty years is what, times two and one fifth over the cash price tag?

I assume five percent is the going interest rate for a spacecraft mortgage.

So, how much is a ship share worth, in terms of cash and age of a starship?

 

[NOLATrav]

Can’t confirm at the moment but I believe ship shares are worth 1MCr each towards a mortgage.

You can use them to reduce the length of the mortgage or refinance at forty years for lower monthly payments.

Ostensibly older ships are cheaper due to their “character” so shares have a better value in that case.

 

[Condottiere]

Probably not enough.

I think I've done due diligence in deconstructing costs in designing the cheapest possible starship.

Double budgetting isn't an option, so nine megastarbux remains the minimum cost of a jump drive, and almost three quarters of the bill of materials.

You can tinker around with turning parts of the cargo hold into common areas, whether screwing in a hot tub, or installing microwave ovens, that bypasses the costs associated with common areas, while maintaining the same facilities.

The last part of the exercise would be tweaking the jump drive into exactly hundred parsec tonnes at even a lower overall cost, but that may require an extensive examination of Tee Five's starship design.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Viable

I think we now move on to two hundred tonne hulls.

Default ten tonne jump drive with two hundred parsec tonnes, and default ten tonne bridge at one megastarbux cost.

19

Millennium Falcon

35 m

-

1,716 m3

122.5714285714286 tonnes, so one hundred twenty tonnes would be about right, but unlikely to make the Kessel Run in less than twenty four weeks.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Viable

In a way, the free trader template takes about the same costs as the scoutship, and either doubles them, or halves performance.

Budgetted/increased size jump drive variant would be overhead six and a quarter tonnes, plus twelve and a half tonnes, which would get us to eighteen and three quarter tonnes at 16.875 megastarbux, for four hundred parsec tonnes.

However, economies of scale does have to have somewhere to kick in, and potentially, more actual power would be available, so you can increase the required power points to kickstart the jump drive, so you still have a ten tonne jump drive, at eleven and a quarter megastarbux, but require thirty percent more energy, which from twenty to twenty six points isn't that bad.

In theory, you could have done that with the hundred tonne hull, but the point there was to get as close as possible to hundred parsec tonnes.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheapest Viable

The default bridge for a two hundred tonne hull is the default minimum size for a starship, and costs a megastarbux.

And then you turn the free trader into a jump shuttle.

Two and a half percent for a kilotonne, plus five, is thirty tonnes; add hundred tonnes of jump fuel.

One twenty tonne docking clamp, and you can attach yourself like a flea on the back of an eight hundred tonne shipping container.

Arguably, one might ask, shouldn't the bridge costs five times more?

The question would be why does it need to, since it's embedded in a two hundred tonne hull?

 

[Condottiere]

Breakaway Hulls: A ship can be designed so it can operate as two or more independent vessels, breaking or splitting away from one another. Each section must have an appropriate bridge and power plant to operate it. Manoeuvre drive, jump drive, sensors, weapons, screens and so forth are all options that can (and, under normal circumstances, should) be included in each section. While the sections are together, drives, power plants and weapons can all be combined when calculating performance. This whole process consumes 2% of the combined hull tonnage for the extra bulkheads and connections needed, and costs MCr2 per ton consumed. Hull points of each section will be proportionate to the total Hull points of the ship.


1. I was looking for examples for what is a qualified bridge size for a given volume, not specifically a given hull.

2. As I recall as to how I designed it previously, one breakaway hull had to have a large enough bridge to control the totality.

3. It doesn't mention that bridges are combined when calculating performance.

4. I think that the Element family of cruisers does calculate in pods as part of the totality in bridge control.

5. In theory, breakaway hulls are even more intimate with each other, than a pod and the primary hull.

6. Hull points should be appropriate to the hull size of each individual breakaway hull.

7. Hardpoints don't matter, since it's rigidly one hundred tonnes per.

8. Firmpoints do, since they scale up and down from five to thirty four tonnes, thirty five to sixty nine tonnes, and seventy to ninety nine tonnes.

9. Which means that if you have twenty five tonne breakaway hulls and a one hundred tonne breakaway hull, the totality has twenty firmpoints and one hardpoint.

 

[Condottiere]

A. In theory, you only need to wire up each section of the hull totality one, and it all costs the same, default a semimegastarbux per hundred tonnes.

B. Except, in the cases of cockpits and smaller bridges.

C. At a minimum, those sections of the hull would fall under lowest common denominator.

D. If you have multiple bridges in a hull, your costs indicate multiple redundancy in wiring up the hull.

E. Breakaway costs indicate that while connections are made, there is no redundancy by default.

F. Next question would be if there is sufficient bridge tonnage for the totality.

G. I think the assumption could be made that connectivity does provide that, assuming all, or sufficient tonnage, of bridges are in working order.

H. Only one computer can be in control, at any one time.

I. Exception would be if one or more parts of the hull are isolated from the current primary bridge.

 

[Condottiere]

J. The backup computer rule could be specific to that a lower factored backup computer is attached to the current controlling computer, allowing a seemless handoff in the event of some form of downtime or downgrade.

K. You can have similar factored primary computers on the other bridges, but let's assume there's a lag in handoff.

L. Virtuality does seem to throw in unwanted complications.

M. Virtuality does indicate that bridge size doesn't matter, performance being more important.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armour and Diminishing Returns

It may look like I'm skipping around the new High Guard, and I am, reading prioritized by what I'm interested in at that moment, and the fact that it seems ninety percent of the text is the same, possibly higher.

Smallcraft hull armour has always been off, since we no longer measure it in millimetres or centimetres; or metres.

Should we continue to armour plate our smallcraft? It's an option we should retain, considering that you probably need assault shuttles.

Five to fifteen tonnes requires quadruple percentage of volume for the same factor of armour of a hundred plus tonne spaceship; sixteen to twenty five times three; and twenty six to ninety nine double.

This applies to spacecraft that requires armour, but if you have a standardized hull size, it seems that the light fighter probably now starts at sixteen tonnes.

Medium fighter wouldn't matter, since thirty five is within the double percentage envelope.

Twenty six tonnes is probably the size of next military smallcraft, but I think for my purposes I'd ignore it.

So, Confederation Navy ultralite fighter/smallcraft starts at five tonnes, light fighter/smallcraft at sixteen tonnes, and medium fighter/smallcraft remains at thirty five tonnes.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments and Customization


Size Reduction: This reduces the tonnage consumed by the weapon by 10%. Not applicable to turret weapons.

...

Increased Size: This increases the tonnage consumed by the weapon by 20%.


Okay.


What was my point? Oh yeah, what about missiles, and presumably torpedoes, since they're also bay weapons?

First I thought it a question of magazine capacity, which like slug throwers, is flexible, but whether ballooning in weight or shrunk, you'd have to adjust the launchers, making them incompatible with those that aren't.