Size of Traveller starships

[apoc527]

I present my evidence:

http://www.traveller3d.com/sizechart/index.htm

http://www.merzo.net/index.html

Ok, so unless I'm misunderstanding things, a Tigress class dreadnought--the biggest, baddest, most awesome ship in the Imperial Navy, is roughly the size of the original Enterprise.

Is that right? I mean, I know that Traveller is supposed to be less space opera-y and that 1.6 km long Star Destroyers are perhaps a little too unrealistic, but don't Traveller ships strike you as being really rather puny?

The first link shows that a Boeing 747 is quite a bit longer, at least, than most sub 1,000 ton spacecraft. I guess I'm ok with that. The 747 is a big, frackin' plane, no question. After all, the Space Shuttle can ride on the back of one, but this is unquestionably a "small ship paradigm." But how does a 400 ton Subsidized Merchant carry enough cargo to service a city, let alone a whole planet (which is what they do off the mains)?

Anyway, I'm just a little shocked. B5 ships tend to be oversized, Star Wars ships just vary a bunch, but aren't so bad, Star Trek ships are good-sized but undergunned, and Traveller ships are tiny, but practically bristling with guns. It amuses me to no end to think that a Tigress has thousands of weapon emplacements but is no longer than the original Enterprise (granted, it's a solid sphere of doom, whereas the Enterprise is a saucer attached to a cylinder attached to two more cylinders).

Thoughts?

 

[apoc527]

In GURPS Traveller: Starships, the Tigress is listed as having dimensions of 750' x 500' x 500'. A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, by comparison, is 1,092' long with a beam of 252'.

Once again--TL7 supercarrier floating on water is longer by 300 feet than a TL15 super-mega "space station sized" starship!?!?!?

Why is that in the Warships of B5 sourcebook, even the massive Primus battleship is only 175,000 tons??? By that comparison, (and looking at the Primus on merzo.net), a Tigress ought to be the size of a Trade Federation battleship or something equally huge.

 

[The Chef]

unfortunately i see Traveller ships as too big. to date the largest ship i would allow into a campaign is 10'000 dtons. as most player ships are in the 100-200 dton range, anything bigger than this becomes unnecessary.

That being said a long term project of mine is to design a galactica type ship for traveller.

 

[rust]

Is that right? I mean, I know that Traveller is supposed to be less space opera-y and that 1.6 km long Star Destroyers are perhaps a little too unrealistic, but don't Traveller ships strike you as being really rather puny?

Traveller starships are designed more like aircraft than like ships, and
therefore tend to be somewhat smaller.

This makes sense for all ships that are able to land on planets, because
they obviously have to be able to move through an atmosphere much
like aircraft.

It also makes some sense for small merchant ships, because their size
has to fit in with the size of the commonly available ground installations
of frontier worlds. If they are bigger or carry more cargo than the star-
port can handle, they are out of business.

Whether it makes sense for capital warships depends on the naval doc-
trine. A bigger ship is not necessarily a better ship, in many cases many
smaller ships are a lot more useful than a single big one - which led to
the extinction of battleships on our oceans.

 

[andrew boulton]

IMHO Traveller ships are medium sized. The smallest are bigger than a house, but the largest are dwarfed by the multi-km monsters you get in SW.

An AHL is the size of the Nimitz - seems okay to me.

 

[Mongoose Pete]

Is that right? I mean, I know that Traveller is supposed to be less space opera-y and that 1.6 km long Star Destroyers are perhaps a little too unrealistic, but don't Traveller ships strike you as being really rather puny?

Here's a couple of ideas which may help justification...

First off, Traveller doesn't provide any data on the tensile strength or strength to mass ratios of materials like crystaliron or bonded superdense. If you tried to manufacture a Nimitz in space from Titanium steel and then performed evasive manoeuvres under even 2g of acceleration, it would tear itself apart under the stress.

So from that perspective, smaller warships are more realistic - at least when built from modern or near-modern materials - and from the armour chart crystal iron and bonded superdense are only slightly tougher than Ti steel, at least when viewed as protection. You'd need materials orders of magnitude better than steel to make 1.6 km spaceships which are capable of jigging about under 6g.

Of course, I don't see any problem with manufacturing huge cargo transports as long as they accelerate at sub-g values, or are manufactured from some advanced material.

Secondly, I think (although I could be wrong) there is a disparity in the rules between weaponry and the protection available to counter it. Once armour, screens or ECM match comparative weaponry (in terms of mass/volume) then bigger ships become more viable. Until that time, being small, stealthy and manoeuvrable is the better option.

Nowadays (in the real world) a single missile or torpedo can sink or incapacitate almost any sized craft. So it is no longer worthwhile investing in big weapon platforms, but use the smallest possible vessels which can carry a missile launcher and stay hidden. Hence the trend towards stealthed aircraft and gunboats being the primary attack vehicles in modern navies.

 

[Dave Chase]

Another reason is that the interiors of those made for movies, TV and such are much roomier than those of Traveller.

And when you have detailed orientated fans who do know their numbers, it makes them (the ships) much bigger than you would think.

Dave Chase

 

[Octagon]

In GURPS Traveller: Starships, the Tigress is listed as having dimensions of 750' x 500' x 500'. A Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, by comparison, is 1,092' long with a beam of 252'.

Once again--TL7 supercarrier floating on water is longer by 300 feet than a TL15 super-mega "space station sized" starship!?!?!?

You do realize that length does not equal volume right?

Five Nimitz class aircraft carriers (the largest warships ever built, internal volume of approx 1.4m cum) could fit inside the volume of one Tigress (internal volume 7m cum).

 

[apoc527]

Yea, I agree that the volume of a Tigress is impressive--it's a sphere of doom after all, but I was really just thinking about how impressive it would look just floating there being "small."

Pete's justification makes sense, and I think I was just perturbed as a matter of taste. I kind of like the size of ships in Alternity/Star*Drive. The largest ships built, fortress ships, are between 3-4km long. So not as insane as super star destroyers (18 km), but still pretty big.

One issue with that game and most of the TV shows is that the numbers tend not to work out. For example, in Alternity, the smallest fighter is 10 "hull points" and the fortress ship is 18,000 hull points. Is the 3 km long ship only 1800 times bigger than the 8m fighter? Not really.

One interesting thing about ship design in Traveller that seems to promote these smaller ships is the relatively small percentage of volume that must be dedicated to m-drives and power plants. In other systems, I've seen more like up to 50% of a hull used up by power and m-drive systems. This creates a need for larger craft and more crew than you'd see in Traveller.

So how many dtons would a Star Destroyer be? A few million at least, I'd think if we're being consistent.

One other issue this small ship revelation brings up: why the huge disparity between vehicle and starship damage and toughness? This begins to make little sense, especially if Pete's justification is right (ie that the materials used aren't supertough). I don't have HG in front of me, but I know there's a table showing how many Hull/Structure small craft have on the character scale. It's a lot less than the Hull/Structure for vehicles designed with the VDS. I'll probably start a new thread about it if my suspicions are correct, but I see very little justification for a x50 modifier.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

The huge disparity between vehicle and ship combat doesn't make a lot of sense.

A 10 ton fighter is smaller than some vehicles today (135 M3). A 100-ton Scout/Courier is about the size of some of the biggest vehicle around, so at the margins, the x10 weapon thing doesn't make sense.

Older versions of Traveller used x5 or (I think) x3 for the damage, which seems more realistic.

But it is a game and honestly, how often do you use a Pulse Laser to attack a car? (Well, a lot actually at least in my games...!)

Also, an MBT should be able to mount a starship grade weapon just like a starship should be able to mount anti-personnel weapons.

Should a FGMP-15 be able to penetrate an unarmoured or lightly armoured starship hull? THAT is the question.

 

[apoc527]

I think we can answer these questions and come up with a decent set of alternate rules. I shall ponder now and pontificate later.

 

[Treebore]

I have never understood why ships like the Super Star Destroyer have to be so big. That ship is larger than most cities on our planet today. Why?

 

[rust]

But how does a 400 ton Subsidized Merchant carry enough cargo to service a city, let alone a whole planet (which is what they do off the mains)?

A 400 dton Subsidized Merchant carries up to 205 dtons of cargo, which is
about 2,870 cubic meters, or a volume of about 20 x 10 x 14 meters - the
size of a comfortable house.

Since the planet in question will most probably be able to produce most of
the goods required by its population, and therefore import only a fraction
of all the goods actually used by its economy, those 2,870 cubic meters
per month for a frontier world with a comparatively low population do not
seem implausible to me.

 

[Nuclear Fridge Magnet]

I have never understood why ships like the Super Star Destroyer have to be so big. That ship is larger than most cities on our planet today. Why?

The old maxim: Da Good Guys Win Coz Dey Use Rusty Junk. Bad Guyz Have Da Cool Gear But Are &%$&* Idiotz... LOL.

SFX inflation, in other words. I mean, the Death Star... WTF? "Let's use the planet-blower-upper gun". So, we get a bigger, better Death Star to close out A Certain Franchise.

I'm biased. I'm sorry. My SF is more Serenity than Star Wars in scale. Big & Dumb lost its appeal for me when I passed 30...

 

[Nuclear Fridge Magnet]

But how does a 400 ton Subsidized Merchant carry enough cargo to service a city, let alone a whole planet (which is what they do off the mains)?

A 400 dton Subsidized Merchant carries up to 205 dtons of cargo, which is
about 2,870 cubic meters, or a volume of about 20 x 10 x 14 meters - the
size of a comfortable house.

Since the planet in question will most probably be able to produce most of
the goods required by its population, and therefore import only a fraction
of all the goods actually used by its economy, those 2,870 cubic meters
per month for a frontier world with a comparatively low population do not
seem implausible to me.

My recent Aramis Subsector campaign had a Type R crew playing on their 'mail contract' small print to drum up custom.

You could make a similar argument for RL container ships arriving in Boston or Singapore. Shipments of shoes? Who can turn a profit on those?

If you're getting hung up on the financial minutiae that much, you could always apply to Tukera Lines' Hostile Takeover & Deniable Interventions Section (aka 'Customer Services').

It's just a game at the end of the day.

 

[andrew boulton]

A Tigress is nearly the height of the Eiffel Tower. If it was needle config it would be 1.4km long. That ain't small.

 

[nats]

I have never understood why ships like the Super Star Destroyer have to be so big. That ship is larger than most cities on our planet today. Why?

To look very impressive next to the Star Destroyers, which in turn looked very impressive on a close tracking shot at the opening of Star Wars. These ships arent designed out of practicality. You wouldnt actually build a Super Star Destroyer in reality. I mean they have what - no major weapons just large turrets. You can disable them with one shot. And a single kamikazi can take out the whole bridge? They just dont make any sense.

Personally I like the Traveller ships far more they are far more realistic - more like the Dreadnaughts of WW1. But you wouldnt want to lose many of the capital ships just like in WW1 - most of them would be kept in port in case they met a fleet of small fast missile cruisers. The smaller ships might be sent out on lone commerce raiding missions - such as the Ashanti High Lighting.

I dont think we have seen any capital ship operation essays have we other than one quite good one about commerce rading in Freelance Traveller magazine. Would be interesting to discuss how thes super large ships would be used in reality if at all.

 

[kristof65]

I think a large part of it has to do with the difference in perception of a number and actual size. I mean, a 100 ft cliff doesn't sound that impressive in size. Until you're standing at the top or bottom of it. Then it's pretty darn impressive. Not as impressive as a 1,000 ft cliff, of course - but when confronted with something large visually, most people can't tell the numerical difference between 500 ft and 1000 ft with any accuracy.

It's also hard for people to actually relate to something's size without a visual reference to something else they're familiar with. While not applying to starships specifically, look at the aliens in the movie Avatar. You really have a hard time perceiving how big Pandora's lifeforms are until you see them in relation to normal people. The flying creatures are a great example - the first few times they appear in the movie, you have only the size of the blue aliens to compare them to. But later in the film, when the flying creatures are battling the human gunships, you get a true sense of awe at how big they are.

So you have these movie and film writer's needing to make their vessels sound impressive in size as well. And don't forget that they're showing them way out of whack on a cosmic scale on the visual side as well - take at look at most of the scenes in the original Star Trek where the Enterprise is orbiting a planet. Here are scenes where you have a 300m long ship orbiting planets that are 5000km or more in diameter. In most of those shots, the Enterprise should be a black dot, or the planet should fill the screen. Yet instead you have this skewed image of a planet sized space ship actually changing angle as it "orbits" the planet.

And don't forget, many of those movies/TV shows go the opposite way at the other end of the spectrum - An X-Wing is only about 2/3rds of the size of an F14 Tomcat, while many Star Trek Federation shuttles aren't much bigger than a Volkswagen Beetle - the Galileo shuttle from the original Star Trek is about the size of a one car garage.

In summary, movie and TV (and some written) sci-fi ships are "designed" from a visual standpoint first. They have to look and sound impressive, all the actual size and deckplan details come afterwards.

Since Traveller was built the other way way around - a semi-scientific approach to how they work first, then the actual ship designs using those build rules, of course you end up with smaller - but IMO - more "realistic" capital ships. And likewise, bigger small ships. For the record, I think someone could actually use the ships as designed in Traveller and make a pretty impressive looking movie - those other sci-fi movies and shows really don't need the outrageous sizes they have, except to the movie makers who have to design large camera friendly sets.

 

[rust]

For the record, I think someone could actually use the ships as designed in Traveller and make a pretty impressive looking movie ...

Andrew Boulton, for example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GsX4e7sZ_Ek&feature=related

 

[nats]

I find a lot of the Traveller ships are actually pretty unattractive in a film use sense. The only ships I really like are the Scout (Classic design - Mongoose one is terrible), Far Trader (Classic design), Subsidised Trader - (Classic again) Mongoose one misses out the most important bit the launch which looked great in the classic design), Free Trader, Safari Ship, Merc Cruiser, System Defense Boat (Classic Design - it had a great gig and missile bays) and the Gazelle (very Victor-ish). Most of the others mostly large ships are pretty awful in my view and I hate that Dreadnaught shaped like a big ball - so unimaginative. I suppose they are quite alien so pretty realistic but for me the Babylon 5 ships, Star Trek Ships and Star Wars ships beat the pants off the Traveller ones. Ive always wanted to design a Millenium Falcon type for example or a similar Star Trek saucer type design. Maybe a will get around to it sometime.

By the way has anyone mentioned ever about the Classic Traveller Far Trader being overly massive compared to its 200 ton mass. I think this is why the Mongoose variety looks so weedy next to the Classic one. But if you look at the Classic Traveller Far Trader in Traders and Gunboats it must surely be at least 500 tons in size in reality - they cheated a bit there I feel! But it looks brilliant mind.