Small ship or Big ship?

[Stofsk]

I've recently been thinking about this question, and I wanted to ask the guys here what they think.

In your traveller universe, do you have Big Ships or Small Ships? Some of the canon battleships exceed 100K dtons, even heavy cruisers approach a 100K. What do you prefer?

For you, when is 'Big' too big? How big does a ship need to be before you go "Why would you build a ship that size?" Or do you like big ships?

Note also that space stations would be considered for the purposes of this discussion. How big should a Class A Highport be in your eyes?

I guess the reason why I'm asking is because I was reminded today of B5, which is 5 miles long, and how it stacks up in comparison to warships like the Omega (which are smaller, but still big). It occurs to me that if you can build an O'Neil space colony like B5 is supposed to be, you can build fairly large warships too - hence why you've got Omegas and Nova Dreadnoughts (my favourite!).

What do people think? I like the Mass Effect way of looking at it: you've got small frigates designed to patrol space, medium cruisers that are the workhorses, and Dreadnoughts that are big and tough but small in number. This is pretty much the OTU as far as I can tell, but some people might have different ideas as to how big a ship should be/needs to be.

 

[alex_greene]

Small ships are fine for small cargo handlers, but they're not profitable. 200 dton Free Traders in Traveller are the equivalent of VW camper vans; if you want to make a profit hauling cargo, you need a thousand tonner with big cargo space.

IMTU, I have colonies of people living in 500 kdton travelling ships. They have a J-1 drive and fuel for three J-1, but no manoeuvre drive - they have solar panels, solar sails and a fleet of tugs to adjust their orbit, and they typically Jump into a system in the same orbit as the system's mainworld, only about two days behind it.

Each family unit has a small module, about 50 tons, with a small craft - typically 20 tons. When the ship arrives, it spreads its panels out and the modules extend outwards on long articulated arms, like some big flower opening and displaying its stamens.

When prepping for Jump, the solar panels close up, the modules come together around the central axis and the reinforced solar sails fold up around the whole thing. The whole ship looks like a great big silver bud.

Welcome to The Snowflower Fleet.

 

[EDG]

Why shouldn't there be big ships?

 

[rust]

In my current setting most of the ships are comparatively small, ranging
in size from 100 dtons to about 2,000 dtons, with the most common long
distance trader at 1,000 dtons (and, thanks to the hyperdrive, 780 dtons
of cargo space) and the most common military patrol ship at 800 dtons.
However, these are the ships of the frontier region of the setting's univer-
se, and I think that the ships used at its core for the trade between well
developed worlds would be much bigger, including giant jump tugs of
10,000 dtons and more.

 

[Infojunky]

I've recently been thinking about this question, and I wanted to ask the guys here what they think.

In your traveller universe, do you have Big Ships or Small Ships? Some of the canon battleships exceed 100K dtons, even heavy cruisers approach a 100K. What do you prefer?

For you, when is 'Big' too big? How big does a ship need to be before you go "Why would you build a ship that size?" Or do you like big ships?

Ok I am a firm believer in the a small ship sorta game. The largest ships are commercial High-liners in the 10k-30k range these tend to be limited to high-pop to high-pop maximum jump runs.

I tend to give out freetraders and small para-military ships in the 600 to 1000 dton range. While these seem kinda large in a "small" ship game they seem to work better than some of the "Standards".

Note also that space stations would be considered for the purposes of this discussion. How big should a Class A Highport be in your eyes?

How much traffic flows through the system? How much of the system is productively populated? And the big question how do you treat a systems port rating? is it the cumulative of everything in system or is it one large port of entry?

For me it is the capability of the entire system. with orbital transhipment volume being something like a cubic meter or so of volume per person of population....

It occurs to me that if you can build an O'Neil space colony like B5 is supposed to be, you can build fairly large warships too - hence why you've got Omegas and Nova Dreadnoughts (my favourite!).

That is kinda a apples and oranges comparison. Stations and ships are pretty much different critters from a engineering standpoint. Stations are all about static forces, while starships ans especially warships are all about dynamic forces.

What do people think? I like the Mass Effect way of looking at it: you've got small frigates designed to patrol space, medium cruisers that are the workhorses, and Dreadnoughts that are big and tough but small in number. This is pretty much the OTU as far as I can tell, but some people might have different ideas as to how big a ship should be/needs to be.

I tend to not use navel terms when describing ships any more. Though I don't have a good solid replacement nomenclature yet, I have been thinking about lifting the one use in Transhuman Space.

I pretty much have abandoned the OTU, as outside of it's traditional settings/location/timeframe the little broken bits start to catch my eye and distract me.....

 

[Madarin Dude]

I tend towards smaller ships myself. Large freighters would go between high pop worlds with bulk cargo small freighters would do those runs too with smaller specialty cargoes. I think for many worlds in backwater sections a freighter in excess of 10Kton is overkill you would operate at a loss because if the population is only a few hundred thousand or so then why do they need so much stuff.

Also ships will be a bit smaller to try to keep from having an all your eggs in one basket approach to cargo making them a largish ship where efficiencies of scale are optimal maybe 2Kton.

Warships would be a different matter patrol ships would be small because there is just so much to patrol. But dedicated warships would be large as necessary to deliver decisive results. (that is probably 20K ton) There might be a few ego boosting oversize ships in the navy and plying the high pop worlds. They would be the exception rather than the rule.

I guess everyone has their own take.

 

[Jame Rowe]

I think I'm a smaller-midsized ships guy myself, with ships going up to 100,000 tons - and those being superfreighters. Warships would be up to 20,000 tons, because larger ships are too expensive in terms of materials (given how ships can be extensively automated beginning at TL 11, crewing costs are largely negated).

Though thinking about this did bring to mind a method of rewriting the computer rules to give small ships model/7 to model/9 computers which aren't cores. Maybe I'll send it to S&P.

 

[Mithras]

I'm a small ship man, living on the frontier where a patrol cruiser should be scary. You never see a battle cruiser.

You can spend 6 months in the same subsector, and meet the same ships and crews over and over.

 

[Woas]

I'm a small ship man, living on the frontier where a patrol cruiser should be scary. You never see a battle cruiser.

You can spend 6 months in the same subsector, and meet the same ships and crews over and over.

Same here. For MTU "big" ships are 1,000 dT. Honestly instead of seeing ships get bigger into the multi-hundred thousand dT hull range, I'd rather see ships get smaller with sub-100 dT Jump capable ships.

 

[BP]

All kinds! To me Traveller is about diversity. I prefer players to generally have small ships (otherwise the details can bog down roleplay) - but large ships can provide places for adventure as well as motivations (Falcon taking on a Star Destroyer and trying to not get squashed like a bitty bug).

The size and presence of starships helps define a system -

• Low wealth/pop. systems might not have any large vessels, or hardly any vessels at all if low TL.

• Agriculture systems might not have large military presence, but huge freighter vessels.

• Border systems might have massive military vessels to deter insurgents along jump route.

• Secret bases/labs might have one massive fleet vessel lingering in system.

• High pop worlds on J1 routes might be overflowing with small independent merchants and smugglers

Plus, if the players are getting out of hand, one can always bring out the big boys to bring them in line... :twisted:

 

[Stofsk]

I'm a small ship man, living on the frontier where a patrol cruiser should be scary. You never see a battle cruiser.

It depends on the kind of campaign you run. If you run a more Firefly type of game, then a 400dton patrol cruiser or SDB will look pretty scary when you're in a 200dton A1 or A2. For that matter, a 400dton Corsair will also look scary.

But if your game is more grander and epic, then those sort of sizes may not necessarily fit the sort of scale you have in mind. Imagine a game where the PCs are involved in the middle of a Frontier War, with Batrons and Crurons blasting each other to irradiated scrap. Picture something like the opening of Star Wars Episode 3 or the Battle of Endor with the PCs in a 'heavily modified' Scout/Courier, flying with a wing of fighters making a last-ditch, desperate attack run against an unstoppable Zhodani Superdreadnought.

You can spend 6 months in the same subsector, and meet the same ships and crews over and over.

True enough.

 

[Infojunky]

Same here. For MTU "big" ships are 1,000 dT. Honestly instead of seeing ships get bigger into the multi-hundred thousand dT hull range, I'd rather see ships get smaller with sub-100 dT Jump capable ships.

I can so totally see that.....

One Idea I have been kicking around is to cut the basic ships design in half, i.e. the minimum jump hull starting at 50 tons or so....

 

[EDG]

I never understood this "big ship vs small ship" thing... is there any particular reason why "big ships" wouldn't be built? If not, then the setting necessarily has to be one where both big and small ships exist, with all the consequences that entails.

If however there is some strange engineering reason why "big ships" couldn't be built, then the setting necessarily has to be one where only small ships are present.

 

[rust]

I never understood this "big ship vs small ship" thing... is there any particular reason why "big ships" wouldn't be built?

It probably depends on the specific setting's economy and on the military
doctrine of its major powers.
If huge quantities of raw materials and other bulk goods are transported
between the planets, then big ships are necessary. If only blueprints and
other data and some low berths passengers have to be transported, big
ships make no sense.
Likewise, if the interstellar navies are "frigate navies", they will not spend
any money on anything bigger than a small fighter carrier, but if they are
"dreadnought navies", they will want really big ships.

To use a real world example, Germany's shipyards build huge container
ships and tankers, because our economy needs them, but the biggest
warships of our navy are frigate sized, because the admirals see no need
to have anything bigger than that.
So, our shipyards could doubtless build battleships and carriers, and our
economy could finance at least some of them - but we do not want them.

In the end, it does not depend on whether there is a particular reason why
"big ships" wouldn't be built, it needs a particular reason to build big ships
to have them in a setting. :wink:

 

[alex_greene]

I'm for the concept of the large commercial tender, hauling a lot of Free Traders who book passage on the ship the same way as individual people board a Free Trader, so that the tender can give the Free Traders access to parts of the universe they could not reach at J-1, or even J-2. Places such as clusters on the far side of minor rifts, etc.

Sort of like passenger ferries these days, making money by hauling cars and trucks as much as individual foot passengers.

 

[AndrewW]

To use a real world example, Germany's shipyards build huge container
ships and tankers, because our economy needs them, but the biggest
warships of our navy are frigate sized, because the admirals see no need
to have anything bigger than that.
So, our shipyards could doubtless build battleships and carriers, and our
economy could finance at least some of them - but we do not want them.

Could be the admirals want them but the politicians wont give them to them.

Another possible reason for a particular navy only having smaller ships could be treaty limits, such as the Treaty of Versailles for an example.

 

[rust]

Could be the admirals want them but the politicians wont give them to them.

Well, our navy's experiences with "big ships" were quite painful. They we-
re monstrously expensive and never achieved much, and if they were not
sunk by someone else, we had to sink them ourselves during or after the
war.
So the first admiral seriously asking for a "big ship" would most probably
be promoted to become the proud commander of a rowboat on the Da-
nube ... :lol:

 

[Mithras]

If I'm president of the Solomon Islands, I don't need a battleship or a mile long oil tanker.

In a little cluster of worlds, there is no requirement for huge warships or vast heighliners. I think the 3i needs these things, and could not really function without them. But in a small-scale, restricted setting, small ships work well and make more sense. And of course its on a PC scale that matches the small scale of the game universe.

I never understood this "big ship vs small ship" thing... is there any particular reason why "big ships" wouldn't be built? If not, then the setting necessarily has to be one where both big and small ships exist, with all the consequences that entails.

 

[Da Boss]

Could be the admirals want them but the politicians wont give them to them.

Well, our navy's experiences with "big ships" were quite painful. They we-
re monstrously expensive and never achieved much, and if they were not
sunk by someone else, we had to sink them ourselves during or after the
war.
So the first admiral seriously asking for a "big ship" would most probably
be promoted to become the proud commander of a rowboat on the Da-
nube ... :lol:

Wasn't that because Germany didn't have enough of them (and probably the wrong ones - not enough carriers planned) and the UK / US/ Allies had an awful lot more. IIRC the Z plan was aimed at having enough by 1945?

so its not the big ships that were wrong but the planning, execution and types?

 

[rust]

so its not the big ships that were wrong but the planning, execution and types?

It was a bit more complicated.

Before WWII Germany made only a half hearted attempt to create a "big
ship navy" because of the recent experiences during WWI, when Germa-
ny had a rather impressive navy that took a significant part of the natio-
nal budget to build, contributed nothing to the war effort, sank itself after
the war at Scapa Flow - and whose sailors started the revolution that sent
the Kaiser into exile (a nice irony, because the navy was that Kaiser's fa-
vourite "white elephant" toy).

With all that in mind, the NS regime did not exactly like and trust the na-
vy (except the submariners), so only a few big ships were ordered, and
fewer of them built.
And in this case the regime leaders in my view surprisingly made a wise
decision, because battleships make rather expensive commerce raiders,
and since Germany had no overseas territories and no sea routes to de-
fend, commerce raiding was the only sensible mission for a German war-
ship.