Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Cockpits and Ejections

Cockpits should be configured as life pods and ejectable.

Life support in this variant remains the same, which is twenty four hours total.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Cockpits and Ejections

Cockpits should be configured as life pods and ejectable.

Life support in this variant remains the same, which is twenty four hours total.

makes sense for small craft such as fighters. I know they have played around with the idea a few times IRL.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Minimum Tonnage

It's basically ten tonnes.

This gives you one firmpoint; this would be the hard limit to get a firmpoint, as any volume lower than that would be limited to non spaceship sized weaponry. This is similar to the limitations imposed on ninety nine tonne vessels, as compared to hundred tonne ones.

Spaceships below ten tonnes would be minicraft, those below one tonne would be microcraft; for our purposes, anything below one hull point in value can't really be considered, though torpedoes would be microcraft, and if you pursue this further, canisters and missiles are nanocraft.

If we assume what makes a normal spacecraft is one hull point, the default volume would be two and a half tonnes, to a minimum two and a quarter if you reinforce it.

So, how large is the Mercury capsule?

Or, is designing it as part of a breakaway hull the clear loophole?

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Minimum Tonnage

Are re-entry capsules and pods spaceships?

If they can survive re-entry, yes, though with supposedly rudimentary controls. How do we know that? Assault capsules, like paratroopers, need to be placed within a certain circular error of probability to be effectively deployed, and a one tonne pod is a glider.

That means, a half tonne minicraft is a spaceship, even with no hull points.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Minimum Tonnage

Re-entry Pod

A one tonne automated capsule with a gliding surface; apparently, if you are skilled in flying, presumably with level one, you can override the computer and take direct control, though I suspect you could do that at zero or no skill, though it might not be such a great idea. Or if you assume a smaller half tonne cockpit, there might be a penalty for the more squeezed conditions.

It could be, that you can use flyer skill to pilot spacecraft, or at least, while they're within a gravity well and/or atmosphere.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Minimum Tonnage

Even hull points may not be an ultimate indicator of what's feasibly a spacecraft or not.

A ten tonne light hulled dispersely structured configuration is three point two hull points.

Let's reciprolocate that, and we end up with eight tonnes.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls, Engineering, and Atmospheric Operations

Heat shielding protects the ship against the heat of re–entry or other heat sources such as proximity to a star. A ship without a functioning gravitic drive attempting re–entry without heat shielding will burn up.

A streamlined ship is designed to enter a planetary atmosphere, and can function like a conventional aircraft. Pilot checks are required in high winds and other extreme weather. Partial streamlining allows a ship to skim gas giants and enter Atmosphere codes of three or less, acting in the same way as streamlined ships. In other atmospheres, the ship will be ponderous and unresponsive, reliant on its thrusters to keep it aloft. All Pilot checks will be made with Dice Modifier of minus two.

So what are spaceship gravitic drives?

 

[Condottiere]

I don't have the current copy of Vehicles, but I do know a default air/raft costs a cool quarter of a million schmuckers.

What are the odds there is a spaceship out there with a better performance whose off the shelf cost comes in at below this price tag?

Besides a hollowed out rock, since it does need to have some atmospheric capability.

 

[Condottiere]

Maybe not, but it still looks really attractive, especially if you apply the ten percent discount.

There are some constraints through minimum tonnage that might not apply if you increase the size.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Terminology

flintstone - a ten tonne planetoid that functions as a spaceship; the Vilani don't get it

rockstar - a flintsone that has been optimized for speed

car/pet/rock - widely accepted term for a flintsone

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Air Resistance and car/pet/rock

As I like pointing out, I'm not an engineer.

The issue with non-streamlined objects, or even semi ones is air resistance; so you need to figure out exactly at what speed does control problems kick in, because before that, turbulence shouldn't effect it significantly.

It's not supersonic, I think even streamlined planes have problems at eighty percent mach, though less if they can become transonic; I assume it's sound waves interference, and leaving them behind once you break the barrier.

Even propeller planes encounter problems trying to even reach that speed, mostly due to the blades, and sort of stuck at a speed band below that, with powerful enough engines.

I don't think you can get a rock to fly smoothly at Great Patriotic War speeds, though you could streamline it by just melting off all those edges; if you did that, it's sort of semi-streamlined, and I don't see any restrictions on adding aerofins to a planetoid. This would be pretty much up in the air as to feasibility.

Current attack helicopters can reach three hundred kilometres per hour.

Great war biplanes hover at around one hundred fifty to two hundred fifty kilometres.

Zeppelins should be able to hit a hundred kilometres, so that should be viable for a floating rock.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Air Resistance and car/pet/rock

Now that I think about it, air resistance lessens the higher up you go, so heading for orbit means the car/pet/rock can accelerate, and if you're floating down, you have to decrease your terminal velocity to a hundred klicks per hour at sea level.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Buoyancy and car/pet/rock

If a solid ten tonne nickel iron planetoid landed on water, it would sink down to the bottom.

But if it's eighty percent hollowed out, would it?

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Range and car/pet\rock

As I recall, air/raft relies on batteries, though not when they need to be recharged.

A fusion motor would give a car/pet\rock practically indefinite range at a cost of an expensive engine and an unneeded tonne of fuel.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hull, Flooring and Gravitational Axis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gJ9BHGX58vQ

What you have is a double decker, but the gravity plates are embedded in the central divider, so that gravitation on both decks is one eighty degrees, or completely opposite from each other.

You won't need stairs, since going to the other deck just pivots you through the doorway, where the gravitational plates are angled at a right angle to the the decks.

 

[h1ro]

Condotierre et al

What's the smallest ship you can effectively mount the three different bay sizes to?

(Thought this was a good question for this thread, I can repost in the forum if you prefer)

 

[Condottiere]

Depends.

If you're happy with three fifty tonne ones, that would be a three hundred tonner, though technically it would be a boat, since I'll assume you would want a decent real space performance and armour.

Technical level would dictate how much juice you can squeeze out of the engines to power the spacecraft and it's weapon systems, and missile and torpedo variants tend to substitute space saved on power plants with magazines containing reloads.

Three bays would optimize your design towards an attack ship, and will probably need escorts.

 

[h1ro]

Would you say bays follow the rule in 2e that no spinal can be more than 50% of the ship's tonnage? And that 3 bays of either size would work as a good starting point?

I've written a spread sheet for ships in 2e. It's bigger than I want it to be so I'm looking at breaking it down into a few different size ranges. I've normally been a small ships universe kinda guy but with the same sequence for all, it's pretty easy to do ships from 500dT to 10s of thousands. I don't see myself going bigger than that for warships, bulk container ships maybe but I don't need to worry about bays and spinal mounts for civvie ships.

I've very little experience with ships this size so I'm looking for general ideas on what works at what size.

 

[AndrewW]

Would you say bays follow the rule in 2e that no spinal can be more than 50% of the ship's tonnage? And that 3 bays of either size would work as a good starting point?

Nope, that rule only applies to spinal mounts. For the earlier edition there are some <100 ton craft with a 50 ton bay.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

What's the smallest ship you can effectively mount the three different bay sizes to?

You can squeeze in a medium missile bay reduced to 70 dT into a 100 dT hull.

You can squeeze in a large missile bay reduced to 350 dT into a 400 dT hull, but you need 5 hardpoints, so 500 dT hull.

An effective ship would be far larger, of course...