Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and Inertiated Jump Drives

Gravity waves have a significantly more effect in jumpspace.

Starships with deactivated or no inertial compensators, with experience occasionally a rolling motion or turbulence, creating the possibility that passengers and crew may develop motion sickness.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Wear and Tear, Rebuild and Repair

Apparently, in TNE this option was available, in that ships depreciated depending on the actual wear of their components, and that this increases the possibility of a breakdown, but can be minimized or eliminated by preventative maintenance, and probably increased supervision. At least, temporarily.

Probably too much book keeping for most parties, but I foresee it becoming part of the game when it's computerized and the ship becomes Tamagotchi Maru, that you have to care and feed for.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Orbital Escape/Skyjumping

Instead of an escape capsule, when you have to get off the ship in a hurry, you grab a grav floater and fall to earth.

Could also be a sport.

this is a grav Bike I use for one of my characters.I have used t for an improvised Orbit to surface transport on a couple of occasions.


Grav bike , 50000 base
enclosed +10%
Sealed +20%
life support +20%
autopilot 3000
weapons mount Pgmp 12
Heavy Armor +20% +5 Armor
computer/4 Tl-13, 1500
Data Display and recorder 5,000
intelligent interface rating 1, Cr 100
Intellect/1
Expert Navigation 2 10,000
Styling 2,000
Total Price 225450

expansive for a bike.....but it's an, enclosed, life support equipped, armored, armed, surface to orbit, combat Bike. that ca drive itself and answer my radio call to come pick me up....Batcycle cant fly, and cant survive entry.....so it can kiss my former marine turned merchant butt

 

[Condottiere]

Nicely equipped, but expensive.

You may want to add in some form of reactive anti-missile defence.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Minimum Crews

If you don't have someone qualified as an engineer, you'll need a working diagnostic programme to warn you of any problems, which would give you a bonus to prevent a malfunction or breakdown, assuming you take appropriate measures to nurse it along, until you can a specialist to take a look at it.

You probably need an astrogation skill to get certified to command a starship, and a pilot one in order to fly any spaceship.

 

[wbnc]

Nicely equipped, but expensive.

You may want to add in some form of reactive anti-missile defence.

Thought about that but the GM was beginning to look at me strangely. Looking at me strangely and picking up his dice......I decided not to tweak it anymore.

I gave a few grav floater the same treatment once. stashed a couple near where our crew was working so they had a way out if the Guy on the ships boat had trouble reaching us. 50Kph may not seem that fast but when you are usingit straigth line through, uup and over a city....its plenty..


By the way You do not want to see what a 20 ton armed gig can do to a grav sedan being used in a car chase....By landing on it....its like dropping a piano on a beercan.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Jump Drives and Sensors

Should be dependent on the amount of energy expended by the ship's jump drive, so that in the case of a very long jump and a super dreadnought, the energy burst should be a lot more than that of a monojump by a freetrader.

 

[Subzero001]

Could someone write up a first edition traveller version of the "Collectors" so it can be added to alternate Jump sources. It sounds like the jump ships in battletech from my understanding 'doesn't have a HG2ed'

thx

 

[Condottiere]

As I understand it, the Collector is a power plant that substitutes for the ten percent fuel requirement; you still need another power source for the normal functioning of the starship, as well as a jump drive.

It seems to be twice the size of the jump drive they are meant to power, or if that formula changed, five percent per jump factor, plus ten tonnes. Available at tech level fourteen, jump factor two at tech level fifteen. You can't accelerate with it (and if you do, it depreciates ten potential charges), and you can use it only in space.

It takes a week to charge up, about one percent every one hundred forty four minutes, and retains it while deployed.

It takes an hour to deploy, and about ten plus hours to stow away.

You have one hundred charges, after which each additional use requires an extra day each for each use over hundred.

A new canopy costs fifty two and a half million schmuckers.

I probably missed out on the costs for the part that's in the ship, and the cost factor adjusted by size. If not, I'd stick it on megaton freighters.

Okay, I've found it.

It's half a million schmuckers per tonne, and the canopy costs half that to replace.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Most Hijacked

Probably the Scout.

You'd think Freetrader, but a Scout is half the size, they're all over the place, and once through the chopshop, the most likely customers, Belters, who aren't the most well-off of folks, won't ask too many questions as to the origin of cut-rate spare parts.

Also the Vargr, but that's another story.

 

[Askold]

Starships: Most Hijacked

Probably the Scout.

You'd think Freetrader, but a Scout is half the size, they're all over the place, and once through the chopshop, the most likely customers, Belters, who aren't the most well-off of folks, won't ask too many questions as to the origin of cut-rate spare parts.

Also the Vargr, but that's another story.

You can also fit that 100Dt ship inside the pirate vessel's cargo hold (like the Corsair from the core book which has been designed for this kind of jobs) much easier than a Heavy freighter or something... So even if the Scout fought back and the ship is disabled you can just pick it up and run. Otherwise you would need to keep the target ship intact enough to fly, stop the crew from sabotaging it, have enough crew to fly it AND if it didn't have enough fuel for jump you would have to somehow refuel it first... Unless of course you are only after cargo, which most pirates would probably prefer anyway, but when hijacking a ship the kind of ships that you just grab and carry are the easiest ones.

Although I would like to protest that mining ships are probably even more likely victims of hijackers. Seeker Mining ship is the same size, a variation of the Scout design in fact, but it is likely to carry valuable ores and mining drones in cargo hold and is less likely to have offensive weapons. In fact, reselling a mining ship is also quite easy and plenty of desperate belters would be willing to buy such a ship (or the spare parts if the ship was damaged beyond repair during the capture) even if it does come from a shady source. And it's not like seeing a mining ship that is really old and has been extensively repaired and modified during its life time would be unusual.

 

[Condottiere]

Fast turnover, twice. Good business is where you can find it. Or finds you.

Also, can clamp the Scout, or upto whatever tonnage rating the clamp has, and then scoot.

 

[Condottiere]

Starships: Engineering and the smallest possible Power Plant

So fission nuclear plants are out, since they can't be overclocked fast enough, and a hundred tonne starship would need ten energy points, which I suppose a tech level nine one-tonne fusion power plant can provide. Which brings the circle back to Striker.

And of course, now I'm thinking how to use this as modules for the Adventure Class types.

Yoke them together like a bunch of huskies. Mush!

 

[AndrewW]

Starships: Engineering and the smallest possible Power Plant

So fission nuclear plants are out, since they can't be overclocked fast enough, and a hundred tonne starship would need ten energy points, which I suppose a tech level nine one-tonne fusion power plant can provide. Which brings the circle back to Striker.

A 1 ton TL8 fusion plant is 10.
A 1 ton TL12 fusion plant is 15.
A 1 ton TL15 fusion plant is 20.

Basic ship systems for a 100 ton ship requires 20 power points.

Without counting anything more then basic sensors or any jump drive.

 

[Condottiere]

Don't really want to lay all my cards on table, especially since I'm operating on imperfect information and enlightened guesswork.

In previous modelling, I did lay out the concept of combining the jump drive and the power plant as one module, and since it now seems that you only need it to power up the jump drive for six minutes before a jump, you could siphon off the energy to keep the rest of the manoeuvre thrusters humming, assuming that it is one gee. In this case, a sort of a switchover, since you won't need to manoeuvre during a transition, and in fact it's probably a bad idea since it would throw off astrogation calculations.

I think you do need a power plant safety margin, but if you don't, you have two more one tonne power plants providing the energy for the basic systems, which gives you twenty energy points. In theory, during transition, if you were powering the entire ship, you could run the power plant attached to the drives, and drop one of auxiliaries.

I'm not sure if you need to power the engine compartment, but if you limit it to the bridge and one half stateroom, that's twelve tonnes and two point four energy points.

 

[AndrewW]

In previous modelling, I did lay out the concept of combining the jump drive and the power plant as one module, and since it now seems that you only need it to power up the jump drive for six minutes before a jump, you could siphon off the energy to keep the rest of the manoeuvre thrusters humming, assuming that it is one gee. In this case, a sort of a switchover, since you won't need to manoeuvre during a transition, and in fact it's probably a bad idea since it would throw off astrogation calculations.

You could size the power plant slightly over what you need for the basic systems and use a battery to store the excess power (which is why you need the power plant a little over) then use the power in the battery for the jump drive.

 

[Condottiere]

I calculate about 0.1 tonnes of batteries, assuming it gets carried over from one edition to the next.

But, while capacitors have been mentioned, they're only supposed to have a very limited time in holding a charge.

Also, it would qualify fission plants as jump drive power sources.

 

[AndrewW]

I calculate about 0.1 tonnes of batteries, assuming it gets carried over from one edition to the next.

40 points of power per ton, or 60 points for TL12 batteries.

 

[Condottiere]

I read that as holding forty energy points, which means that a quarter tonne can expend it's entire ten energy points capacity in one six minute round.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Launch Facilities and Vacuuming

Considering how much quantity and rapidity the jump drive has to pump through fuel prior to transition, pumping out the air should take a minute at most.