Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Docking Clamps

1. Docking clamps might benefit from being allowed to accessorize, including increasing their reach, adding various forms of cargo, fuel, energy, data and personnel transfer.

2. One-ton clamps always seemed a free lunch, if they included the capability of personnel transfer.

3. Going by the twenty-ton clamp capacity ratio of one to hundred, the fifty-ton clamp has a maximum tonnage capacity of five thousand tons.

4. Really large tonnage is handled by a group of clamps, though I've a hard time imagining a thousand-ton clamp lifting a hundred thousand ton battlecruiser.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Launch Facilities

Cargo Crane: Built into the ceilings of cargo holds, these overhead gantry cranes are designed to shift shipping containers in and out of a ship. The crane’s mechanism moves about the bay on a sliding jig and can extend beyond the cargo hatch door on a gibbet to deposit freight directly onto docksides or vehicles. The crane is strong enough to lift fully loaded 32 and 64 dton containers and can couple to most types of pallets or crates. The traversing lift mechanism of a Cargo Crane takes up a base 2.25 tons but the gantry jigs require a further 0.25 tons per 150 tons of the hold.

If you install them into a hangar located on either the side or the rear of the spaceship, and extend the jigs into space, it would simplify recovery, as the smallcraft do not have to actually attempt to land into the hangar. Just hook onto the crane, and be mechanically moved into the hangar.

Launching the craft through the crane is possible, simpler on the sides, as the onboard motors can then be lit off, in the rear, the craft could just be dropped off. In front, would probably need a dropdown blast shield to prevent heat damage to the spaceship.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Solar sails

This speed would be achievable if a laser or magnetic beam transmitter were attached to the spacecraft to give it a constant flow of photons once it passes Jupiter and the solar wind decreases. Otherwise, the top speed is about 56 miles per second, 10 times faster than the shuttle's orbit.

Anyone know the Traveller G-speed rate for solar sails?

I'm thinking that you could spread out the sails, and use a widely focussed beam laser to provide propulsion.

 

[Reynard]

This sounds like a perpetual motion machine. I think the laws of physics prevents this.

A solar sail has a Thrust of 0. It takes days or weeks to change course or speed. Takes 5% of ship tonnage when stowed and can't be deployed at Jump time. Not practical.

 

[Condottiere]

I doubt that, since the beam laser would be powered by the ship's fusion plant, which needs refuelling, and probably more energy gets dissipated than arrives to push the sails.

Also, zero thrust is too vague for me to calculate velocity; would that be 0.1 or 0.01?

 

[Reynard]

They describe it as days and weeks to change course and speed. It is VERY slow. The original point of a solar sail is you get free, inexhaustible power from a sun in large quantities compared to a piddily laser trying to cover a huge volume (dozens of kilometers across) of sail.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

As far as I know, there are no Tractor/Pressor beams in Traveller. You did give me inspiration to check Space Stations and that's where I remember the big grappling arms called Docking Arms that deal with starships.

Under MGT there is not, but in the CT version of HG, there was. It was used mostly as a defensive weapon, something I felt got short shift as it could have been used in a lot of other interesting ways.

It was a gravity-based weapon.

 

[Reynard]

Oh yeah, the Repulsors! 50 and 100 ton bay focused anti-grav projectors against missles. Interesting.

 

[Condottiere]

The Aslan have a TL14 gravity spear, which has a focussed gravity lance.

So it's possible in Mongoose.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Modular Hull

1. Modules should have the option for armour, since you might want to match it with the rest of the hull.

2. Armour for the primary hull should be pro rata, since you only need to protect those areas. Unless the idea is to put an armoured layer between the main hull and the modules.

3. Modules aren't subject to the hundred tons per hardpoint rule, so basically a bunch of ten ton modules could each possess a hardpoint.

4. Same with launch facilities; you could place a hangar in each module and have a more or less simultaneous launch.

 

[Reynard]

Don't remember a gravity spear in any edition of Traveller but, then again, that's a lot of material to sort through. Where is it located? Hate to meet up with that while we're pirating in aslan space.

 

[Condottiere]

Aslan, page seventy-two.

Mention is made of repulsors.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Modular Hull

1. Modules should have the option for armour, since you might want to match it with the rest of the hull.

2. Armour for the primary hull should be pro rata, since you only need to protect those areas. Unless the idea is to put an armoured layer between the main hull and the modules.

3. Modules aren't subject to the hundred tons per hardpoint rule, so basically a bunch of ten ton modules could each possess a hardpoint.

4. Same with launch facilities; you could place a hangar in each module and have a more or less simultaneous launch.

As it was explained to e while writing for mongoose....an independent module attached to a ship by docking clamps is treated as a separate vehicle/vessel. It is not included in the tonnage of the parent vessel but it does decrease Jump range and Thrust values as per rules under the docking clamps.

Normal modules such as those mounted on modular cutters, or modular star ships become part of the vessel, taking up hull tonnage and requiring power/life support from the parent vessel. They cant be used to side step weapons restrictions and provide more weapons than the ship would normally carry....although they do allow a ship to swap out combat systems quickly.



Specifically I was told to build an independent self powered Module for star ships as if they were small craft without drives, or a bridge/cockpit...if you want to add independent weapons a , power source, bridge/cockpit, and a computer as well as required fire control systems.
Using an independent module would allow you to mount more weapons than would be allowed by the rules..however...it would affect the thrust of a ship, and it's jump range. the tonnage of the parent vessel, and all attached modules is added together and rounded to the next highest 100 ton break on the drive/reactor tables....

Example: a 100 ton vessel with 75 tons of modules would count as a 200 ton vessel. it's thrust and jump range would be calculated for a 200 ton vessel with the same drives as the 100 ton carrier vessel.

You could conceivably include a 60 ton module with a 50 ton weapons bay, ammo storage, cockpit and a small reactor/fuel tank....then equip a 100 ton ship with a docking clamp and end up with a 160 ton ( 200 tons for thrust and jump) ship with a hard point and weapons bay...although to mount an energy bay would require a small craft type G reactor...

3 tons for reactor
1.5 ton for fuel ( 2 weeks)
1.5 tons for cockpit
leaving 4 tons for ammo or crew stateroom.

 

[Reynard]

Thanks for the location for the Gravity spear! So much info over so many books and never enough time to read every page.

 

[Condottiere]

I tend to concentrate on sifting for ship components, and browse through equipment lists.

Speaking of which.


Spaceships: Hydroponics

Is this covered, and where? (Preferably Mongoose.)


Spaceships: Modular Hulls

In Mongoose terms, an independent module would follow standard hull building rules, and unless there's some form of energy and data linkage, would need to be controlled and powered locally.

A modular hull allows a more intrinsic connection, limited by the power available, though that could be supplied locally, if you go for a more distributed power system.

The clamps increase tonnage in relation to performance, the modular hull already has that calculated in.

The rules leave a possibility to install a bay regardless of tonnage and power plant factor, though in the case of the module, that would be a necessity in order to bypass restrictions on the primary power plant.

You'll need a control centre on the independent module/hull, even if you control the ship systems directly from somewhere else, that's not necessarily the case for an intrinsic module, though you have to wonder about data and control linkages, if you bypass the issue of the power linkage.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Solar Panels and Sailing

What on earth does minimal manoeuvring mean? One quarter gee, one tenth gee, or one hundredth gee?

It doesn't include long periods at full thrust; but does that include three gee for ten rounds, five rounds, or one round?

Have solar panels sufficient to power factor one power plants, who can then feed the grav drives, for however long a short period is defined as, and you have a very fast space yacht, since presumably the process can be repeated periodically.

 

[Reynard]

Solar panels are a power source reducing the fuel use of the main power supply or, if the only power source, produce infinite power for station keeping, turns and no active sensors. If you have a 200 to ship with Thrust two and only solar panels, you aren't really going anywhere. Essentially they want this to be the hybrid car of ships.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Solar Panels and Sailing

Anything that gets me a quarter or even a tenth thrust is a gain over solar sails, though Space Stations may provide an answer there once I consider the implications.

But the words infinite power and the vaguely defined short period of thrust, combined with a separate power source, probably a battery for an occasional sensor sweep, would make this a viable form of cruising or even coasting comparable to sailing.

And if solar panels need extending, might actual look like it.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Jump Drives

1. I thought it might be an interesting option to have jump drives with differing efficiencies, whether in the amount of energy that's required from the power plant, to fuel required per parsec.

2. The problem that higher factor starships would actually have more use could be resolved by accelerating costs based on the factor of the drive, which means it becomes prohibitively expensive even for the Imperium Navy, except for them to maintain some high priority factor six courier ships. Or maybe a factor seven prototype.

3. On the other hand a factor one jump drive can afford to be inefficient in fuel usage, and be significantly cheaper in compensation.


Starships: Jump Bubbles

1. However, that does raise an interesting question as to the nature of the jump bubble, since a one parsec jump would ventilate a great deal less hydrogen than a factor six jump, based on the same tonnage.

2. So, is the jump bubble smaller, or is the atmosphere within the jump bubble less dense?