Ship Design Philosophy

Starwarships: Armaments and Orbital Lasers | The giant stonking space weapons everyone loves to see in Sci-Fi

Generic greetings and welcome to a palate cleansing video on something silly and fun. Orbital lasers, the giant stonking beams from god that shoot down to broil and fry everything from enemies, to allies, to the world itself in some cases. Whether it be in red, blue or green giant space lasers are always a show, and always fun.




1. For a stationary target, I was thinking laser drill.

2. Adjacent range is one klick.

3. Increased range would be close band, so ten klix.

4. If we have a beam laser barbette, we can have drill laser barbette.

5. Damage could be three dice, presumably nine tenths of a megastarbux in cost.

6. Armour piercing is likely five or six.
 
Spaceships: Modular Cutters and Modules

If modules are a purely interior fixture, why do they need to be streamlined?

Since they have no exterior parts.
 
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Spaceships: Modular Cutters and Modules

If modules are a purely interior fixture, who do they need to be streamlined?

Since they have no exterior parts.
My read was that the section that says modules cost 25k/t overrules any/all of the hull cost modifiers, ie you don't modify it for streamlining or dispersal or planetoid status and it doesn't effect automation cost
 
Options may be added to hull modules as normal.


That part may have more significance, or someone thought so.

Unless host hull configuration has some effect on the module hull configuration.
 
Starships: Lifeboatship

1. Thirty five tonnes streamlined, twenty six and one quarter tonne pod, two seven and a half tonne drop tanks.

2. Lifeboatship pod: streamlined, six tonne (small) bridge, ten tonne Venture (budget) jump drive, half tonne battery, sixty kilogramme drop tank fittings, two one and three quarter tonne docking clamps.

3. Primary hull, eight and three quarters tonnes: two and a half tonne dual cockpit, one tonne manoeuvre drive, two tonne early fusion power plant, one tonne fuel tank, two tonne airlock, quarter tonne fresher; computer/five, manoeuvre, library; sensors, basic; fixed mount.

4. Modular pod: streamlined, nineteen and a half tonne module, two tonne stateroom plus fresher, two tonne airlock, five acceleration seats, quarter tonne cargo.
 
Spaceships: Modular Cutters and Modules

The Fighter Frame is an open frame mounting four six-ton Ultralight Fighters (see page 136) in docking clamps, along with two tons of cargo space. The cutter is not streamlined when equipped with this module.


I assume that the cargo hatches are wide open and spread like wings, or may be they contract into the hull.
 
Starwarships: The fastest way to get your air support to its destination | Battlestar Galactica Lore

Generic greetings and welcome to a video on one of the silliest and coolest moments in Sci-Fi. The adama maneuver. Need to get your air support on target but can't fly them there? Not a problem, simply yeet the carrier there and the issues solved, at least it is in battlestar galactica where teleporting is THE way to travel.




1. You can't jump into a gravity well.

2. You can jump out of a gravity well.

3. Suggest minimum one diameter distance before transition.

4. It's what one shot jump drives are for.

5. Trying to repair the drive post transition is probably not worth it.

6. It would be premeditated, and therefore screwed into a removable pod.

7. However you try to finagle the finances, it's not worth it on a regular basis, only in an emergency

8. A scoutship for the last ditch escape attempt by the planetary dictator.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Manoeuvre Drive Scaling

In the meantime, it looks like the manoeuvre drive factor technological level introduction has been revised from the original edition.

Instead of factor seven at technological level twelve, and nine at technological level thirteen, its now capped at technological level twelve with factor six, thirteen with seven, fourteen with eight, and fifteen with nine.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drive, Vectored Thrust, and Tailsitters

Normally, if you have a manoeuvre drive, you tend to design your spaceship to be a belly lander.

On reflection, if manoeuvre drives are capable of limited vectored thrust, for low factored thrusters, the better idea might be to land and take off on their tail, as then you have full thrust potential, rather than a quartier at ninety degree angles.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drive, Vectored Thrust, and Tailsitters

One eighty degrees is ten percent, ninety degrees is twenty five percent.

Fifty percent at forty five degrees?

Assuming factor two manoeuvre drive at Terran norm, forty degrees should provide lift and some forward movement.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drive, Vectored Thrust, and Tailsitters

Flying saucer platform, or flattened sphere hull configuration, would seem most optimal after the cigar.


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Spaceships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drive, Vectored Thrust, and Tailsitters

Or, you could have the manoeuvre drive on an internal tilting platform.


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Spaceships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drive, Solar Panelling, and Pulsing

1. Solar panels only provide energy when they are deployed.

2. Deployment requires one space-combat turn (six minutes).

3. The ship cannot accelerate during deployment or when the panels are extended without doing critical damage to the array.

4. Energy efficient manoeuvre drive (twenty five percent) factor one would require default two and a half tonnes, per hundred tonnes of hull, with advanced technological level twelve solar panelling.

5. First turn, extend panels; second turn, collect energy, third turn, distribute it (to the battery) fourth turn, retract panels, continue to distribute energy; fifth turn, turn on manoeuvre drive for a turn; sixth turn, switch off manoeuvre drive, extend panels.

6. A system that is cut off from its source of solar energy only provides power for one additional turn.
 
Spaceships: Engineering, Manoeuvre Drive, and Solar Sailing

1. Solar sails are made of a flexible synthetic fabric that has limited self-repair capabilities.

2. Particles emitted by the sun (the solar wind) are caught by the sail and provide a minuscule amount of thrust.

3. Solar sails have the advantage that they require no power or reaction mass but result in very slow ships and high technology civilisations tend to regard them as useless for anything other than automated cargo ships and pleasure yachts.

4. A deployed solar sail covers an area dozens of kilometres across.

5. A ship using a solar sail as its primary method of propulsion has effective Thrust 0 and requires several days to change course or speed.

6. Give it a solar sail outfitted spacecraft a running start, say, through a launch tube.

7. No acceleration is stated, though I'd say that the use of solar sail would be as a steering mechanism, and a parachute brake.

8. As an emergency measure, maybe braking rockets, to prevent overshoots.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Alternative Solutions

1. Green energy - yellow sun.

2. Solar sails - radiation pressure.

3. Jump drive -not really.

4. Most importantly is energy generation.

5. You can cover forty percent of your spacecraft with a solar coating, but at best, that's eight energy points per hundred tonnes, against a nominal twenty energy points for basic spacecraft systems.

6. Difference can be made up by a six tonne solar array for the remaining twelve energy points.

7. A two tonne early fusion reactor creates the same base load at technological level eight, compared to technological level twelve.

8. Cost would be one megastarbux against eighteen and two fifths megastarbux for forty six units.

9. So in the MongoVerse, solar power at least for spacecraft, would be for very specific niche cases.
 
To give a specific example of solar sail speed, LightSail 2's 32-square-meter sails accelerate it at just 0.058 mm/s². In one month of constant sunlight, the spacecraft's speed would increase by a total of 549 kilometers per hour, roughly the speed of a jet airliner at cruising speed.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Alternative Solutions

A. There's some leeway for basic spacecraft systems draw, being a minimum of half, or ten power points per hundred tonnes to keep everything running.

B. Non gravitated hulls only require half of that, so if you remove artificial gravitation, or the power for that, you get a minimum of five power points per hundred tonnes to keep life support and anything else considered basic spacecraft systems going.

C. For a forty percent solar coating covering, that leaves three power points that could be diverted to a manoeuvre drive.

D. You could have reactionary rockets, but that's not sustainable beyond a couple of hours of burn.

E. Since we're at technological level twelve, a highly technologized factor one manoeuvre drive with triple energy efficiency would require two and a half power points per hundred tonnes.

F. So you could have a factor one manoeuvre drive create a one gravity area in a non gravitated tailsitter, powered entirely by a forty percent solar coated spacecraft.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Alternative Solutions

G. You can't coat tonnage specified as solar panels.

H. You're paying double and reducing energy output to one tenth.

I. In theory, it seems inefficient to coat a planetoid.

J. But if it isn't, since usable volume is only eighty percent, you only need four power points for basic spacecraft systems per hundred tonnes, if you switch off artificial gravity.

K. In theory - planetoid engineering doesn't really make sense.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Alternative Solutions

L. Since jump drives need only a single charge at the beginning of the transition, you only need to jump start them once.

M. Easily achievable with a large enough battery.

N. The problem starts once you're in jumpspace.

O. Since there's no sunlight there for the solar panels, and/or coating, to leech off on.

P. And by default, you can't really carry enough batteries to keep the starship's basic systems functioning for a week.
 
Spaceships: Engineering and Alternative Solutions

Q. In theory, you could start shutting down every starship basic system you don't need.

R. Route power only to staterooms that provide life support.

S. Engineering space that has a power plant located there.

T. The bridge, just in case.

U. And if for some reason the rules don't permit such specificity, then harden those systems, which would prioritize power distribution to them.
 
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