Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Cruisers: Grand Cruiser

The grand cruiser is a completely made up category from Forty Kay; it's mentioned that it's an older design that has been replaced by the battlecruiser.

By implication, this may have been a better thought out Deutschland class, since it's a larger evolved armoured cruiser with minimally sized battleship armament.

If it existed in the Imperium navy, the grand cruiser would be a feared long range commerce raider, or a comfortable flagship on a distant station, powerful enough to take out any ship fast enough to catch it (except battlecruisers and fast dreadnoughts), and fast enough to avoid those who that outgun it (except the aforesaid categories).

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Beer Goggling, or Pickup Lines of Approach

Earth speeds along merrily at almost thirty kilometres per second.

That means in about eleven and a half hours, it covers a hundred diameters.

You cover a million klicks in six and a half hours at one gee constant.

So if you leave in the trailing direction, I reckon it will take you four and three quarters hours to be clear of the jump shadow.

I guess it should also work the other way, when you jump in just ahead of the jump shadow.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Capital Ships and Feeling the Need

A lot of Imperium warships seem to steam along at six gees constant, with a few at five gees, though these are mostly a compromise between the other three elements of range, firepower and protection. Though i suspect they're really legacies of past Traveller products.

We're told that the line of battle, or at least the Imperium one, is six gees constant; maybe they'll slow down to five to accommodate the stragglers.

If it's a matter of applying the benefits of higher technology to the manoeuvre drive, you could just as easily give them seven gees, at the expense of an extra one and a half percent points; it's interesting to think that boosting it up all the way to nine would require about four and a half percent points.

Part of the equation is if all that speed is really necessary, especially if large engagements are expected to be mostly insystem, or at gas giants.

Modern battlines probably chug along happily at five gees constant, having that extra gee may spell out some tactical advantage Imperium commanders expect to eke out from the performance of their ships.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Cruisers

How would you define a cruiser?

At technological level twelve, it's rather simple. Jump factor three, manoeuvre factor five, and a spinal mount. A starship built around a spinal mount.

The default choice would have to be a seven and a half thousand tonne meson gun.

Engineering and fuel would be a minimum of forty six percent, so the minimum size appears to be fifteen thousand tonnes, on a really spartan design, and I've never seen a good case to build a hull larger than fifteen thousand tonnes, before skipping to twenty five thousand.

So if the cruiser is based around a meson weapon systems, you might as well build it at a comfortable twenty five thousand tonnes, which leaves you around twenty four percent of hull volume to add in armour and other comforts of home, to give you that snuggly feeling of security.

But you might point out that other spinal mount types are minimized at three and a half kay tonnes, which might allow you to try and squeeze them in a seven thousand tonne hull.

Balancing out firepower, protection, maneuverability and range, isn't just a compromise because of the principle of diminishing returns, it's also a way of insuring that what you've invested in, is adequately protected and can be moved to the right place at the right time.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Crafty Dual Use

I've been reminded again that crop dusters can be converted to close support aircraft.

A lot of civilian craft will be bought off the shelf, and converted for a military purpose; the most likely practitioners would be planetary militaries and private military contractors.

Most will be transport and surveillance platforms, but a few will have their hull strengthened and armour added, to act as gunships, in the loose definition of the term. Going by the current design rules, they'll rely on secondary armament generally assigned to the ground forces, as a way to boost firepower and expand the range of optional weapon systems.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Tail landing

 

[Condottiere]

Seems interesting.

 

[Condottiere]

Starwarships: Tiers

If we had tiers, it would be easier to sort them out.

For battleships, we'd have to go downwards from the Tigress. I'd give it an eleven rating.

It's built at technological level fifteen, has the largest meson gun, the best protection, good range, and good speed; that would be enough for ten.

Eleven comes from having an organic fighter group, the equivalent of a fleet carrier.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Escape Capsules

Ensure door opens outwards or sideways.

 

[Condottiere]

Starwarships: Tiers

I think you would have to use the Kokirrak class as the standard Imperium Navy battleship.

It has good range, good speed, good armament and good protection. Plus technological level fifteen.

That should make it tier seven.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Hidden Costs

If you require a registration fee for supposedly operating commercially in Imperium space, according to the Annic Nova entry, is that something that's paid once or annually, and does it cover the entire corporation or per ship?

That might require a recalculation if the player characters are operating at a profit.

 

[wbnc]

Starships: Hidden Costs

If you require a registration fee for supposedly operating commercially in Imperium space, according to the Annic Nova entry, is that something that's paid once or annually, and does it cover the entire corporation or per ship?

That might require a recalculation if the player characters are operating at a profit.

fairly sure it would be a fee for each ship and any small craft being used for commercial purposes.

 

[Condottiere]

Typical fee is a hundred thousand Credit Imperiale for six hundred tonnes.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering, or She Cannae Take It

In theory, a jump drive is only kickstarted just shortly before a transition, and the starship should be at a complete stop.

That means, any engineers you have servicing the manoeuvre drives, can be leveraged over to watch the jump drive, which deactivates the moment after you go down the rabbit hole.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Fuel Me Once, or Do Me A Solid

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1qitm5fteL0

For nearly 100 years, scientists have dreamed of turning the lightest of all the elements, hydrogen, into a metal.

Now, in a stunning act of modern-day alchemy, scientists at Harvard University have finally succeeded in creating a tiny amount of what is the rarest, and possibly most valuable, material on the planet, they reported in the journal Science.

For metallic hydrogen could theoretically revolutionise technology, enabling the creation of super-fast computers, high-speed levitating trains and ultra-efficient vehicles and dramatically improving almost anything involving electricity.

And it could also allow humanity to explore outer space as never before.

But the prospect of this bright future could be at risk if the scientists’ next step – to establish whether the metal is stable at normal pressures and temperatures – fails to go as hoped.

Professor Isaac Silvera, who made the breakthrough with Dr Ranga Dias, said: “This is the holy grail of high-pressure physics.

“It's the first-ever sample of metallic hydrogen on Earth, so when you're looking at it, you're looking at something that’s never existed before.”

At the moment the tiny piece of metal can only be seen through two diamonds that were used to crush liquid hydrogen at a temperature far below freezing.

The amount of pressure needed was immense – more than is found at the centre of the Earth.

The sample has remained trapped in this astonishing grip, but sometime in the next few weeks, the researchers plan to carefully ease the pressure.

According to one theory, metallic hydrogen will be stable at room temperature – a prediction that Professor Silvera said was “very important”.

“That means if you take the pressure off, it will stay metallic, similar to the way diamonds form from graphite under intense heat and pressure, but remains a diamond when that pressure and heat is removed,” he said.

If this is true, then its properties a super-conductor could dramatically improve anything that uses electricity.

“As much as 15 per cent of energy is lost to dissipation during transmission, so if you could make wires from this material and use them in the electrical grid, it could change that story,” the scientist said.

And metallic hydrogen could also transform humanity’s efforts to explore our solar system by providing a form of rocket fuel nearly four times more powerful than the best available today.

“It takes a tremendous amount of energy to make metallic hydrogen,” Professor Silvera said.

“And if you convert it back to molecular hydrogen, all that energy is released, so it would make it the most powerful rocket propellant known to man, and could revolutionize rocketry.

“That would easily allow you to explore the outer planets.

“We would be able to put rockets into orbit with only one stage, versus two, and could send up larger payloads, so it could be very important.”

However some scientists have theorised that metallic hydrogen will be unstable on its surface and so would gradually decay.

Asked what he thought would happen, Professor Silvera said: “I don’t want to guess, I want to do the experiment.”

But it could be a moment almost as exciting as the time the researchers first realised what they had created.

“Ranga was running the experiment, and we thought we might get there, but when he called me and said, ‘The sample is shining’, I went running down there, and it was metallic hydrogen.

“I immediately said we have to make the measurements to confirm it, so we rearranged the lab ... and that's what we did.

“It's a tremendous achievement, and even if it only exists in this diamond anvil cell at high pressure, it's a very fundamental and transformative discovery.”

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/hydrogen-metal-revolution-technology-space-rockets-superconductor-harvard-university-a7548221.html

 

[locarno24]

If it is stable once metallicised (is that a word?), that'll be incredible. Plus, makes LHyd Storage a lot more efficient....

 

[wbnc]

If it is stable once metallicised (is that a word?), that'll be incredible. Plus, makes LHyd Storage a lot more efficient....

I just wouldn't want to be around if you zapped a Dton of metallic hydrogen with a particle beam...it might get...interesting.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceship: Rescue Ball

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AMhuC-WoA2k

Complete with LED boots for increased visibility.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Acceleration Couching

Notice business class seating; you can really stretch your legs and not have to hop over anyone on your way to the facilities.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Acceleration Couching
Notice business class seating; you can really stretch your legs and not have to hop over anyone on your way to the facilities.

kind of cozy for a red eye special