Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Lightning Class Cruisers and Condominiums

If and when this adventure ever gets a workover, you could have each ship in the class be customized, and not only have a set of common deckplans, but include variations on them, since the high rise concept lends itself easily to this, as each deck is constrained to a manageable size, and if you don't have the time to design each individual floor, you could just sandwich in pre-constructed templates where and when needed.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

tl;dr

Any ship get designed yet?

 

[Condottiere]

Not much point, at this point in time.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Engineering and Placement

Not a really unique design feature, but it dawned on me while I was watching Battlefront, that the engines are remarkably close to the centre.

Why is this significant?

Two reasons, really. The first is that you can centralize engineering, meaning that the jump bubble is centred from the middle of the ship, if you assume that the power plant should stay in close contact with both the jump drives and thrusters.

The second is the all or nothing armour concept, where you construct a heavily armoured citadel around the most important components of a battleship, including the magazines, meaning that the chances are the battleship will be able to continue to fight even after a number of what would have been significant hits or damage, at the cost of allowing the rest of the ship to be perforated.

For the original maritime variant, water tight compartment would ensure the ship would continue to float; in space, this is not an issue.

The battleship would in any case have thirtyish to fortyish percent of it's volume be designated bunkerage, so it's really the capability to keep control of the the weapon systems on the hull and ensure they are supplied with energy.

After the battle, the fuel tanks could be patched up, as well as other areas deemed to be non vital, and thereby outside the citadel.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Lost In Translation and Static Electricity

Once no power is fed to the jump drives after transition< I suppose that the capacitors might not be totally drained, and carry enough of a static electrical charge to keep the jump bubble in tact for the next week or so.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Garbage Scow

I bet you're wondering who'd go to the expense of shipping garbage to another system, when it's cheaper to do it insystem or just launch it towards the sun?

Really hazardous waste and contaminated material; and you drop them mid-flight into jumpspace in small lots to avoid disrupting the jump bubble, through the thermal exhaust port.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Inside Turn and Slingshotting

I wonder if our manoeuvre one merchantmen can take advantage of the planetary gravity and slingshot their way faster to the jump point?

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Inside Turn and Slingshotting

I wonder if our manoeuvre one merchantmen can take advantage of the planetary gravity and slingshot their way faster to the jump point?

I imagine so. Moving away from the planet . Then dive back toward it at max acceleration and you get a boost. You have to calculate the parabola fairly precisely.

 

[Condottiere]

Depends on how much of a boost; I imagine an Indy racetrack and then going off on the right tangent.

 

[wbnc]

Depends on how much of a boost; I imagine an Indy racetrack and then going off on the right tangent.

yeah you have to balance thrust and tightness of the arc, to avoid being thrown out of the flight path, or get pulled in by the gravity well.

 

[Condottiere]

Instead of the slingshot, I wonder if the starport just builds a large enough launch tube to catapult the slow Chinese boats.

 

[wbnc]

Instead of the slingshot, I wonder if the starport just builds a large enough launch tube to catapult the slow Chinese boats.

That would work, the engineering would have to be clever to adapt to various hull shapes/volumes, but it would work.

 

[Condottiere]

We tend to take thrusters for granted, but assuming the new rules make reactive engines extremely cheap, that would be a solution to minimize fuel usage.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: High Reguarding Refueling

Alien seas of sand. But seriously:

If true, those guys should have been mining Europe for water, instead of Ceres, which apparently has far less ice than estimated; or even one of the gas giants, since they could skim the atmosphere, and with some oxygen, turn hydrogen to water.

Militarily, if you equip with ships to skim milk or suck water, you could avoid the risk of getting ambushed by lurking SDBs, lying doggo in the gas clouds, though there is a chance they could have embedded a deep meson site on the obitting moon; in either case, the system defence would be split, possibly any number of times by gas giants and orbitting moons with water.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Hard Points and Drop Tanks

Starships, since it's unlikely you'd design thrusted boats with drop tanks.

Rulesticly, drop tanks don't count towards the number of hard points a starship accrues.

Theoretically, they could, if the drop tank is a more decked out variant, instead of an empty can.

While the drop tank could still be a basic shell, it would be structured to suppot a hardpoint, at less than a hundred tonnes, it would use the smallcraft features, otherwise it would be that of a normal spacecraft.

It would be treated like a subsidiary but detachable hull, and while it could be set up that power is fed from the power plant from the primary hull, it could also have a separate independent power source. It would need a cockpit or a bridge to control the (ship) systems, but linkages could also be made to the primary bridge. Naturally, you still need to include the fuel pumps whose size are directly in relationship o actual fuel capacity to be transferred, whereas the mechanism attaching them to the primary hull would be sized to the actual volume of the drop tank.

The drop tank would have the option to be armoured and structurally reinforced with bulkheads.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Transitioning and Quantum Mechanics

Whereas jump control factor one programmes are available at tech level nine, the question that comes to mind is, really?

Even assuming humans are only smart enough to programme it in a century's time, why couldn't I take my tech level eight US stick, and digitally copy it, and then run it through my retrotech tech level seven Model One? Which actually appears to have happened.

So a tech level seven Model One (which is what, a MacIntosh?) can calculate a jump factor one course through another dimension.

I would have thought you'd need a quantum computer, which becomes when available? Possibly tech level nine?

In the meantime, you get a couple of math prodigies to create the equations that the Model One computers can digest.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Hopping, Skipping and Jumping

Actually, hopping.

One alternative could be to make jumping foolproof, but your jump drive is oversized though super efficient, but being carefully calibrated, it can only do short hops, but that also allows fuel consumption to be super efficient.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cheap and Cheerful

Most starships, and conurbations, don't need bleeding edge technology to function, the electorate isn't that keen to pay through their taxes for expensive infrastructure, and aldermen would want to cut corners to pocket the difference.

On the micro level, if you're comfortable and the starship reliably and economically gets you to where you want to go, it doesn't matter if the hull is made of titanium steel, crystaliron or superdense.

In fact, I'm going to bet that superdense, especially really thick superdense plating that's meant to be used as armour, is a painstakingly long and expensive process to actually produce, even the zero percentage null armour paperthin variant.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: X-Boats and Power Plants

It occurs to me, that the original design is essentially correct if the jump drive requires no further input from the power plant after transition.

All you need are large enough fuel cell banks.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Power Plants and Skin of the Teeth Scaling

It would appear the default energy output for a fusion plant is fifteen whatever per tonne, directly, rather than having an indirect one tonne overhead, possibly representing shielding, cabling, controls and fixtures.

In theory, that would mean you could have a power plant running at ten Scotts to push a hundred tonne Scout into a monoparsec jump, which would be a one tonne fusion plant with fifteen Scott output.

Using Striker scale efficiencies, a minimum sized power plant of 0.4285714285714286 semi Schrodinger Siamese volume equals to 6.428571428571429 Scotts, but would have to be halved to 3.214285714285714 Scotts.

Basic ship systems are one per five tonnes, so you could have 2.214285714285714 Scotts left over for propulsion.

That's enough for twenty two tonnes thrust.