Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Passengers

Only for the set design and an usual spaceship hull configuration.

The spiral design would be dispersed configuration. I think one advantage would be you could add as many arms as passenger traffic would justify.

Though it brings to mind the Guggenheim Museum, and the continuous floor.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Light Fighter Bomber

A light fighter bomber has only one firmpoint, and by the descriptor, rather forced to dedicate that to missiles.

Your freebie missile rack is limited to four missiles on hand, though one presumes if you dedicate ammunition storage to it, you could easily stuff in a couple of dozen.

The primary role of a fighter bomber is to avoid or be able to fight through a light screen to their targets; my interpretation of the rules as printed is that missiles are at best close range, which puts them into dogfight range. While that eliminates the smart trait, it does allow the missile launcher to pump out one missile every six seconds.

So load up with ortillery missiles, and statistically, you should get a hit on one of the larger warships, before the battleline.

Just keep enough normal missiles to be able to fight your way through the escorting fighters.

 

[Condottiere]

Dogfighting Ring: Illegal

The most scary scenario must be having a Tigress pointing that spinal mount directly at you, and the Captain shouting, "It's dog fighting time."

That's a rate of fire of sixty shots per six minutes or six hundred per hour.

I'd don't think the power plants can produce more than four hundred and forty kay scotts over six minutes, and every shot from the primary meson gun needs ten thousand scotts, not counting manoeuvre drive and life support.

With missiles, it's probably okay to pump out them out every six seconds; energy weapons probably violate some law of thermodynamics.

 

[Condottiere]

Dogfighting Ring: Illegal

I think that the intent was to give it a cinematic feel, ala Star Wars.

If so, the rules would need to add an additional column for each weapon indicating rate of fire; outside of running out of juice, the energy guns are bound to overheat.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

The reasonable assumption is that space combat weapons actually fire more often than once per space combat round, as is explicit in TNE. They just don't have very high hit chances at long ranges.

At visual range, such as in "dogfights" and personal combat they have much higher hit chances and hence get to roll attack rolls more often.

Ammo should be used at different rates though.

 

[Condottiere]

Once you have specific output, you can figure how much energy the motors are actually producing.

I don't know how that compares to that of dirtside vehicles, but I'll bet you'll start getting massive discrepancies.

Certainly, commercial ships will suddenly have shrinking power plants, since with an increased output, moving them in either real space or opening up the rabbit hole has the same energy requirements.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Short Range Missiles

If you're at close, or even short range, a six gee missile will hit immediately.

Half of the missile is the warhead, possibly batteries, and electronics.

Thrust six reaction rockets requires twelve percent of volume, and a default fifteen percent fuel tank for sixty thrust turns.

However, you really only need one turn's worth of fuel, so that's one and a half percent, default; that's a total of thirteen and a half percent.

Fifty eight and a half percent of one twelfth of a tonne, which equals to 0.04875 tonnes.

This seems small enough to have twenty missiles per tonne.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Doctor Who Oxygen

The Doctor, Bill and an angry Nardole travel in the TARDIS follow a distress call to a deep-space mining station. When the TARDIS is jettisoned by the station's computers, the trio are forced to wear "smartsuits", robotic spacesuits capable of independent operation tied to the station. The suits are also the only source of oxygen, as the mining company does not provide an oxygen atmosphere inside the station, and every activity is measured in breaths. The surviving crew warn them that some suits have received instructions to "deactivate" their "organic components", killing the wearer via an electrical discharge but remaining autonomous. This signal can be carried by touch, which has caused most of the crew to be turned into zombies, enslaved to the suits' programming. The Doctor and the others plan to walk outside the station to an uncompleted portion not updated in the computer systems to hide. Bill's suit malfunctions during depressurisation and forces her to remove her helmet. To save her, the Doctor gives her his helmet as they spacewalk. He survives the vacuum of space, but has gone blind from the ordeal.
The computer discovers their location, and Bill's suit again malfunctions and will not move as they flee. The Doctor leaves her behind, assuring her she will not die, but she is electrocuted when they touch her. The Doctor reveals the limit of breaths is an algorithm to stop people "wasting" oxygen, part of the company's automated profit-making system; killing the wearers was just the logical endpoint of corporate profit over human life. He hacks the station's systems to cause the station to self-destruct if they are killed, and convinces the others this is a "good death" and revenge against the corporation. The computers recognise this threat and recalculates the suits' programming, and the zombies turn over their oxygen supplies to the survivors.

I haven't kept up with the Doctor in a long time, but rumours of this storyline made it irresistible.

So what you do is just turn off life support, and live if not continuously, mostly in your spacesuit.

That pesky overhead goes mostly away, and you only have to pay for what is actually used.

Half the savings could be used to discount the passages.

 

[h1ro]

How do you change your own nappy? (Diaper I think you might call them). I guess you're plumbed into the suit and there's an option to expel waste fluids/solids. More advanced suits might recycle/reuse human waste. Mmm, that's chewy...

Life in a suit with no physical contact might increase the chance of psychosis.

Heaven help you if you need to scratch an itch...

 

[Spartan159]

How do you change your own nappy? (Diaper I think you might call them). I guess you're plumbed into the suit and there's an option to expel waste fluids/solids. More advanced suits might recycle/reuse human waste. Mmm, that's chewy...

Life in a suit with no physical contact might increase the chance of psychosis.

Heaven help you if you need to scratch an itch...

That's a TL 16 option. " ... Now with acu-scratch technology! Guide your on-board AI with simple commands such as up, down, left a hair and Ahhh!"

 

[Condottiere]

or

I'm told that jetfighter pilots wear them.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Short Range Missiles

Let's take the multi warhead missile apart, and you end up with three warheads, each of which should be about eighteen percent of volume.

That would mean about eighteen percent of one twelfth tonne, or 0.015 tonne warhead with three dee damage potential.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Short Range Missiles

Since ten rounds is the default time limit, missiles with six gee performance would have twelve percent volume of reactor rockets, or one eighth, and fifteen percent fuel tank.

That would give an ortillery missile a default warhead of seventy three percent, or 0.0608333333333333 tonnes. Just short of three quarters.

This warhead inflicts a damage potential of one double dutch damage dice, but with a minus six hit modifier against moving target due to it's slow speed, supposedly.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Long Range Missile

An interesting aspect of the long range missile is that it has a thrust of fifteen,and I'm guessing an infinite amount of fuel?

The long range missile is available technological level eight, but a quick check confirms that the fastest motor available then has six gees.

While the usual endurance is ten rounds, that would mean the engines would normally take up, at technological level eleven thirty percent, and the fuel tank thirty seven and a half percent.

Since a three dee warhead can be eighteen percent, you could probably squeeze in another five turns of acceleration.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Medium Endurance Missiles

Since half the missiles go off to do their own thing after five turns, or more precisely, at the end of five turns, you can get the fuel in half to give them an endurance of five turns.

I thought to term this medium range, but this a specific time based phenomenon.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Medium Endurance Missiles

The missile flight times table states that a thrust ten missile takes four turns to reach a target from very long range.

After five turns, half the missile salvo tends to wander off somewhere else.

Therefore, with the exception of long range and ortillery missiles, all other variants optimalrange to be launched is at very long range, with a four turn flight time.

That means, you can half the fuel tank and make missiles about fifteen percent smaller.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: High Speed Missiles

Ever notice that despite being technological level twenty, antimatter missiles don't do faster than fifteen gees; and torpedoes limit themselves to ten gees.

Could that mean there's an absolute limit on acceleration?

At technological level twenty, I certainly wouldn't want to give my opponent much chance to shoot down what by then must be a very slowpokey missile; or torpedo.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ortillery Missiles and Torpedoes

While it's mentioned that they're supposed to be launched from orbit, no real range is mentioned, which is why you have to assume that they have ten times six gee turns of fuel in their tanks.

They also have a dice modifier of minus six when used against moving targets, though if you increase their acceleration to ten, would this still apply?

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Decoy missiles

What really intrigues me about decoy missiles are the decoy pods. Can they be reprogrammed to simulate spaceships? You could pack them into canisters.

Also, if they can simulate other missiles or torpedoes, because I'd gladly enlarge either one to stuff them in, which gets you a better chance to hit with a more effective missile.

Then how small a warhead volume does a potential two dice occupy; if they're small enough, you can turn a torpedo into a cluster munitions delivery system.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Standard and Multiwarhead Torpedoes

In theory, standard torpedoes are just four times larger versions of standard missiles, but more robust and not easily distractable.

Multiwarhead variants, though, only have three dee four warheads, whereas you'd think you could squeeze in four.

Or maybe just three multiwarhead missile warheads, which split once, then split again.