Ships coming in for a landing...

[rust]

Besides, I don't really see any mega-freighters actually landing on a planet. Though I honestly don't have a cutoff on what size freighter gets to be too large to actually land. I'm thinking around 10k Dtons is a good place to start... though I personally wouldn't classify that as a megafreighter.

According to Traveller New Era even a Type S has a mass of 600+ tons,
and a loaded Subsidized Merchant would have a mass of 4,000+ tons. I
find it difficult to imagine that a ship with considerably more mass than
that could land anywhere else than on bedrock without ruining the pad
or sinking into the ground.

 

[far-trader]

A "rudimentary" pad is less well engineered, but gives a -2DM to landings as a result.

So starships landing "in the wilds" now have an automatic -2 DM ? :shock:

Seems reasonable, or even generous imo You want a really good pilot if you have to set down in an unmarked, unsurveyed, unlighted, wild overgrown outback of nowhere piece of real estate.

As for delivery of cargo in the "wild"... hmmm... I'd have to say that really large ships (say 10k Dtons or over) would never set down anywhere but in prepared stations.

I'd say anything 1Ktons and bigger myself.

Small ships like scouts and free traders are meant for rough areas, and therefore their landing gear is designed with lots of ability to compensate for bad terrain (within the ref's reason).

As well as not being as heavy and requiring as solid a footing and having that footing not be so large as to require as big and as level a spot of unobstructed surface.

...I don't really see any mega-freighters actually landing on a planet. Though I honestly don't have a cutoff on what size freighter gets to be too large to actually land. I'm thinking around 10k Dtons is a good place to start...

It's not a bad cut-off. I've used 5Ktons for years based on the old CT B2/HG 'small ship/big ship' paradigm. I've also seen calculations for materials, shape, gravity, etc. that places the average limitation at about 15Ktons. There will be those who argue you can land a 1Mton ship anywhere you like

 

[BFalcon]

A "rudimentary" pad is less well engineered, but gives a -2DM to landings as a result.

So starships landing "in the wilds" now have an automatic -2 DM ? :shock:

I'd call it more than that, to be honest - maybe a -3 or -4 unless he's got a detailed survey of the landing site - the rudmentary site has been cleared and checked to make sure it's solid, possibly with rough tarmac or concrete slabs layed over bare earth if there's a risk of excessive rain. In the wild, you could be trying to land in a wind tunnel, the earth could be soft from burrowing creatures, recent rainfall or subsidence... there could be large roots or rock formations that won't compress when your skids hit like the earth around them... a whole load of reasons.

Of course, for a normal landing, you'll just take your time and you'll be fine - I think that most of the DM will come in when you get other reasons for throwing DMs into the mix - high wind or rain, fog, mist etc. Remember the Rudmentary pad also doesn't have a beacon, so no accurate method for telling just how far your skids are off the pad, except your own instruments, so that might come into it. In the wild, you won't even have a port beacon (in even a class E, I'd expect a radio beacon to help you work out just where the port actually is, given the low cost of such a thing, even if it doesn't help you land).

A failure? Probably just "bumpy landing - xxxxx just spilled coffee all down their front" or "your landing skid just broke - your ship is now leaning a bit because one of the hydraulic dampers just snapped after you tried to land the whole ship on it when it hit that buried rock outcrop... you'll need to break out some spares and try to fix it."

Only if your pilot works for free.

Wages for a ground grav pilot are probably not that great, to be honest... he doesn't need any of the skills an orbital pilot would (not least vacc suite training) and if your cargo isn't going to worry about the time taken, it'll be just as good shipping via a slow ship, in which case you'll be taking far more than just the one cargo at the same time (ore doesn't go off, so unless you need it yesterday...).

There's also the possibility that your cargo could be shipped via a rail system, or via a grav-train (a grav vehicle with multiple grav-trailers) in which case wages will decrease per cargo shipped.

 

[BFalcon]

Besides, I don't really see any mega-freighters actually landing on a planet. Though I honestly don't have a cutoff on what size freighter gets to be too large to actually land. I'm thinking around 10k Dtons is a good place to start... though I personally wouldn't classify that as a megafreighter.

According to Traveller New Era even a Type S has a mass of 600+ tons,
and a loaded Subsidized Merchant would have a mass of 4,000+ tons. I
find it difficult to imagine that a ship with considerably more mass than
that could land anywhere else than on bedrock without ruining the pad
or sinking into the ground.

That's actually good to know... could you PM me any more masses you know of please, rust? It'll be a good bit of information to keep hold of. Particularly for an unladen Free Trader...

"In the wild" I'd suggest the Capital Ship limit and say that 2,000 tons would be the largest possible ship to land in the wild, but would probably add a seperate -1DM for every full 500dt of ship that you're trying to land at the least... maybe -1DM per 200dt. There's a reason why scouts are small...

 

[phavoc]

Besides, I don't really see any mega-freighters actually landing on a planet. Though I honestly don't have a cutoff on what size freighter gets to be too large to actually land. I'm thinking around 10k Dtons is a good place to start... though I personally wouldn't classify that as a megafreighter.

According to Traveller New Era even a Type S has a mass of 600+ tons,
and a loaded Subsidized Merchant would have a mass of 4,000+ tons. I
find it difficult to imagine that a ship with considerably more mass than
that could land anywhere else than on bedrock without ruining the pad
or sinking into the ground.

Hmm, well I can see this being the case if you don't have a properly prepared landing zone. But from the little I know of materials science and engineering, just plain ol dirt is wonderfully resistant to pressure. A ship is going to have 3-4 landing skids at a minimum, and even with tech today we can prepare ground sites to withstand that sort of weight easy.. and that's not adding in anything like concrete or anything else more advanced. The more mass a ship has, the more landing skids it will most likely have to distribute it's mass equally.

 

[BFalcon]

phavoc: if it's prepared, it would become a Class E port, presumably... complete with portacabin office and bulldozed landing pad...