Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Starships: Stargates and jump bubbling

The starship, the term used loosely since the vessel wouldn't need an integral jump drive nor the bunkerage, passes through a ring with the jump drive technology that punches a hole into hyperspace and creates a customized bubble at the moment of entry, that will allow the starship to glide to the stated direction.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and the Unbearable Lightness of Being

You could feed the fusion reactor with Helium Three; of course, then you have explain exactly why hydrogen is relevant in opening up the rabbit hole.

 

[wbnc]

Starships: Engineering and the Unbearable Lightness of Being

You could feed the fusion reactor with Helium Three; of course, then you have explain exactly why hydrogen is relevant in opening up the rabbit hole.

Hydrogen has a few advantage.It's much more abundant, easier to crack from ice and water, and had a superior expansion rate when converted from liquid state to a gas or charged plasma. Using He3 for jump gases is a bit like making household wiring out of gold, very efficient but a bit of an extravagance.

 

[Condottiere]

Having liquid hydrogen doing everything seems over simplification for accounting purposes.

If you can squeeze more juice out of helium three, it would be a substitute for a long endurance fission reactor, and presumably a lot cheaper than a megaschmucker for the radioactive materials. You can still turbine through liquid hydrogen to punch through that rabbit hole and create the condom effect.

 

[wbnc]

Having liquid hydrogen doing everything seems over simplification for accounting purposes.

If you can squeeze more juice out of helium three, it would be a substitute for a long endurance fission reactor, and presumably a lot cheaper than a megaschmucker for the radioactive materials. You can still turbine through liquid hydrogen to punch through that rabbit hole and create the condom effect.

That system would be fairly efficient. The reactor burns very little fuel to sustain fusion. but Lh is used for plasma generation and maintaining the jump bubble.

 

[Condottiere]

How do you maintain a jump bubble, when the jump drive is turned off?

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and New's Scoop

Who says fuel scooping is limited to gas giants?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwrOZE1224E

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Hulls and New's Scoop

Who says fuel scooping is limited to gas giants?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwrOZE1224E

I sw that video the other night

My only thought was...how the heck are they pulling those scoops.....the drag would be insane. to trp the water vapor you have to trap the air it is suspended in, and there is a LOT more air than water vapor...the drag could rip the tail off the aircraft.

I am also questioning the wisdom of dogfighting while dragging a parachute behind you.....any cloud skimmer would handle like a buss. yu would need one skimmer and one escort if you were expecting trouble.

Animation was fantastic though beautifully done.

 

[Condottiere]

Considering the pony power of starships, drag isn't a problem, though ropes and the wind sack are going to have to be built to stand the strain.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and Housing Bubble

On interesting issue is, at least for Mongoose Second, why the hydrogen bubble doesn't disperse after the starship goes down the rabbit hole.

You can assume that the pressure in the hyperspace universe is greater, so that the bubble maintains it's cohesion.

However ...

The jump drive draws no power, and unlike the Heart of Gold, the universe does not revolve around the starship, it moves forward to it's plotted destination, and without some form of attraction, the hydrogen bubble is going to be left behind.

 

[wbnc]

Starships: Engineering and Housing Bubble

On interesting issue is, at least for Mongoose Second, why the hydrogen bubble doesn't disperse after the starship goes down the rabbit hole.

You can assume that the pressure in the hyperspace universe is greater, so that the bubble maintains it's cohesion.

However ...

The jump drive draws no power, and unlike the Heart of Gold, the universe does not revolve around the starship, it moves forward to it's plotted destination, and without some form of attraction, the hydrogen bubble is going to be left behind.

I have always imagined that the jump drive establishes a sort of tunnel from point a to point be. not an actual wormhole but something in the process establishes an anchor at the far end and the ship is propelled toward the anchor point.

Either that or it works a bit like bouncing a ping pong ball int a cup, the forces at play cause it to skip "landing"at the desired point.

The third option is that once the bubble forms jump space is constantly trying to crush the bubble or force it back into normal space. the configuration of the bubble, amount of volume, and energy expended during formatio of the bubble deternine where the bubble is finally ejected back into normal space.

 

[Condottiere]

I think it's singularity based, considering that almost everything in Traveller revolves around the understanding and control of gravity.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Hard Bargains and Firm Principles

1. You can only have a hardpoint per a full hundred tonnes of hull volume.

2. If you have a hundred and ten tonne hull, you can add a firmpoint to the hardpoint; two firmpoints at a hundred and thirty five tonnes, and three at a hundred and seventy tonnes.

3. You can exchange a hardpoint for four firmpoints. Are you getting something for nothing? No, since smallcraft weapon limitations would still hold for firmpoints, even if they happen to be installed in a hundred tonne plus spacecraft.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Hard Bargains and Firm Principles

Energy weapons have the edge on kinetic weapons when it comes to design, you just have to ensure that the weapon system is plugged in to the mains, and don't have to worry about storage and feeding equipment.

Since firmpoints have supposedly four missiles allocated in any event, let's just cut the umbilical cord and designate them missile packs with four missiles each, requiring a half a tonne of volume per pack, per firmpoint; that also makes missile barbettes on smallcraft irrelevant.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Hard Bargains and Firm Principles

When I started to tackle the issue of firmpoint turrets, I took the basic half tonne workstation, and seventy five percent of one eight of a tonne to reflect the reduced power output of the weapon system, and I got to a tad under zero point six tonnes of volume.

Point six tonnes is awkward, especially if you want to turn it into the standard generic weight, like the one tonne turret for hardpoints.

So what we do is make the firmpoint turret cramped, not sufficient to put off their aim, but enough that the gunners feel uncomfortable being stationed there for any extended period of time.

That would make half tonne firmpoint turrets possible.

To be clear, no extra missiles are stored within the volume of the firmpoint turret, beyond one that might be loaded into the (mini) launcher.

Smallcraft missiles can cost the same per bushel, but are seventy five percent smaller and fit sixteen into one tonne of volume.

Smallcraft firmpoint missile packs would be able to squeeze in six missiles.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Hard Bargains and Firm Principles

It may be a mistake to just give away free hardpoints, which may simplify accounting, but doesn't make much sense.

Shipyards will have to reinforce portions of the hull in order to be able to mount weapon systems, which will cost money, more if it's done as a refit.

Each type of armament class, fixed mount, turret, barbette, small bay, medium bay, and large bay, not to mention spinal mounts, have increasingly larger costs to reinforce the hull and/or ship structure, in order to accommodate them

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Potatoes and Buffered the Empire Failure

1. Out of curiosity, I calculated the tensile strength of nickel iron at seven and a half percent per armour point, three times weaker than titanium steel; the five percent balance are the nooks and crannies of the asteroid.

2. Trying to figure the cost of inertial compensators and artificial plates is a pointless exercise, since the costs neither add up nor make sense in relation to normal hulls.

3. Hull costs should be based more on usable volume, since it costs five thousand schmuckers per usable volume for planetoids, and sixty one hundred fifty four schmuckers per tonne of usable volume for the buffered variant,

 

[Condottiere]

Worldships: Deep Fried Mesons

Now that we've confirmed there is no meson weapon upto technological level fifteen that's smaller than six thousand tonnes, it retcons out of existence Solomani submarine sandwiches with bay variants.

 

[Condottiere]

Walkers: (In)Vader is Coming

So we take three heavy grappling arms, with a total load of thirty tonnes (I'd do four, but then you have Imperial Walkers):

or, even two:

with a load of twenty tonnes.

Heavily armour them up, add a fusion reactor and one or two turrets or a barbette; not too sure about ground speed.

 

[wbnc]

Walkers: (In)Vader is Coming

So we take three heavy grappling arms, with a total load of thirty tonnes (I'd do four, but then you have Imperial Walkers):

or, even two:

with a load of twenty tonnes.

Heavily armour them up, add a fusion reactor and one or two turrets or a barbette; not too sure about ground speed.

Thrust Zero...or damn near it. bloody useless against a fighter or gunship but man would they be hard on infantry light vehicles.

you could build the chicken walker with the vehicles handbook but something Like a Martian War Machine of AT-AT which are so massive man-portable weapons are a waste of time, and they can reduce infantry platoon to scorch marks on the ground with a casual attack...yeah starship scale.