Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Planetoids, and Modularization

A. Supergluing together various pieces of existing hull sections, may actually be the cheapest.

B. Sunk cost, and all that.

C. Or, is it grafting?

D. You could consider them, permanent pods.

E. Since it's implied that it's done on external surfaces.

F. You could also weld them to internal surfaces.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Planetoids, and Modularization

G. Not an engineer, but I would think that the placement of the manoeuvre drive would take into account centre of mass.

H. So, I would find stick stuff around the hull segment containing the manoeuvre drive.

I. Or, the reactionary rockets.

J. Chances are, once you've resolved that, you can attach anything else everywhere.

K.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

1. It really sounds like getting hold of a spacecraft junkyard is a good idea.

2. Encourage recycling.

3. Ideally, get paid for disposing spacecraft.

4. If, not, trying paying the minimum.

5. Suck up to Scout and Navy procurement personnel.

6. Identify both critical components, and ones you can sell for a hefty mark up.

7. Of course, the idea is to construct spacecraft from free scrap.

8. You might want to employ illegal Vargr.

9. Ensure your lawyer adds the caveat, at buyer's risk.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

A. One obvious distinction would be, each hull section attached has it's own hull armour factor.

B. This is not a case where dispersed hull configuration dictates the how much percentage, overall, is required for each armour factor.

C. In that sense, you'd treat each hull section like breakaway hulls.

D. Except, permanently attached.

E. Drilling plumbing and accessways through the armour requires more time, and presumably, cost.

F. Going by the rules, you can't retroactively add hull armour.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

G. And yet, you can cement on hull sections.

H. I suppose you could cheat, weld on a heavily armour factored hull section to the external skin of the primary hull.

I. It would be double hull armour, since you'd have to penetrate two layers of it, left and right.

J. Could even be considered spaced armour, since the first penetration expands into an open interior.

K. Or, you could fill it up with fluid, which is in itself protection.

 

[Condottiere]

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

L. At this point, someone might have an epiphany.

M. Making junk, right out of the gate, to sell to consumers, is a valid business plan.

N. You could weld on a hull section to a smallcraft, that has a jump drive.

O. And another one, with a fuel tank.

P. You get the required tonnage, and don't need to have separate control centres.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

Q. Of course. as a (now) dispersed configurated hull, you're going to have issued with an atmospheric reentry.

R. However, you only need to add a jump drive to your spacecraft, when it's financially convenient for you to do so.

S. In that sense, you could also increase (engineering) performance, without gutting your spacecraft.

T. The obvious beneficiaries would be pirates.

U. They can just cut off the parts of the (captured) spacecraft that they find useful, and glue it on to theirs.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

V. If the hull sections were preplanned, you could snap them together.

W. The manoeuvre drive section would be the primary section, where everything else is welded to.

X. If it were linear, the manoeuvre drive would be the last one.

Y. Then the power plant one.

Z. And in front of that, the jump drive.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

1. At the Referee’s discretion, very large ships can be built in a modular fashion allowing simultaneous construction.

2. This means the total construction time can be reduced by up to 90%.

3. This is typically done only on ships exceeding 50,000 tons.

4. Atypical, would seem to be for spacecraft below fifty kilotonnes.

5. Though, I suppose we'd descend from discrete to need to know basis at a hundred tonnes.

6. Anyway, if we're willing to be subject to dispersed structure hull configuration limitations, pasting hull sections together could be considered a lower form of (external) modular construction.

7. Whether simultaneous, or not.

8. Since you could just mass produce hull sections on a production line.

9. And then switch to another, related one.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

A. Instead of a bridge, ships of 50 tons or less may install a cockpit.

B. And, apparently, two kilotonnes.

C. Though, you could, in theory, install a cockpit on a Tigress.

D. The question, would be, could you manoeuvre it, and oversee spacecraft operations from it?

E. Probably, just not effectively.

F. In theory, you could just install an engine order telegraph in the cockpit, and have those lazy guys down there do the heavy lifting.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Hulls, Dispersion, and Junk

G. If it's preplanned, you'd have to decide if it's a specific tonnage, or, a more wide ranging family.

H. Hull sections would not only have a specified tonnage, but also be able to accommodate ship components.

I. Anything where personnel interact, have to have high and wide enough corridors and rooms.

J. Engineering components might have specific ratios and dimensions.

K. Not just split up all over the place.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Engineering and the Venture Drive

1. The Venture Drive is a ten tonne jump drive.

2. Distinguished by being the cheapest jump drive.

3. Outside the one shot jump drive.

4. Using the budget option of inflated size, overall manufacturing cost is discounted by twenty five percent.

5. By deflating the volume back to minimum allowable, performance is sacrificed by forty percent.

6. Overhead is five eighths of volume.

7. Jump core is three eighths of volume.

8. Jump capacitors, overall, remain one fifth of volume.

9. But are reduced to eighty percent from default capacity.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Engineering and the Venture Drive

A. We could call the one shot drive, the Wonton Engine.

B. 引擎馄饨, I would think.

C. Though, more accurately, it's still a Tenton Drive.

D. However, it can actually be used multiple times.

E. Just that each subsequent use doubles the penalty for a misjump.

F. And no, commercially it doesn't make sense.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Engineering and the Venture Drive

G. Abraham Tenton was not the inventor of the jump drive.

H. He, however, was the one that refined it to it's lowest common denominator.

I. Basically, the technological level nine, default, ten tonne drive.

J. Thus, it's referred to as the Tenton Drive.

K. Widely seen in most monojump two hundred tonne commercial starships.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Engineering and the Venture Drive

L. The Wanton Drive was originally the result of industrial espionage.

M. Combination of deliberately sabotaged blueprints, loss in translation, and corner cutting.

N. The corner cutting was required to ensure allocated funds were widely distributed to the politically connected power blocks, and the need to expedite the project.

O. Initial microjump test runs were successful.

P. However, the actual outsystem jump is suspected to have misjumped, due to the accumulated penalties, and the starship, nor it's crew, have never been found.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: The Last Starfighter [HD]

1. Well, that's one way to train.

2. And recruit pilots.

3. Mechanic/zero.

3. Career - Headhunter.

4. June.

5. Gunner-turret/five?

6. Excalibur test - sword in stone?

7. Xenos laser torture.

8. Save the whales, not the universe.

9.

A. Alex, I want you to know it was for the greatest good I brought you back.

B. Of course, it never hurts to be rich.

C. We die.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Engineering and the Venture Drive

L. The one shot drive deflates by eighty percent, and discounts by three quarters.

M. However, the minimum volume remains ten tonnes.

N. You inflate the volume by twenty five percent, and discount by a quarter.

O. Twenty percent deflation drops that back to ten tonnes, and it remains at two hundred parsec tonnes.

P. Eleven and a quarter megastarbux becomes 2.8125 megastarbux.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Engineering and the Venture Drive

Q. You could one shot a highly technologized deflated jump drive.

R. Your performance would increase from forty to 71.42857142857143 parsec tonnes.

S. Deflated jump drives are the only ones that are permitted under the ten tonne minimum.

T. Total tonnage consumed is reduced by 20% (the minimum of 10 tons still applies)

U. I can't recall where that was stated, and it's quite possible that exemption has been removed, by the update.

 

[Condottiere]

Startrucks: Engineering and the Venture Drive

V. Found it - it's still valid.

W. This can take the drive below the minimum size of 10 tons.

X. The safe assumption would be a minimum of seven tonnes.

Y. Rather than dropping a further twenty percent, to five and three fifths tonnes.

Z. And you will have to account for the difference in the overhead tonnage, by adding more jump core.