System Control Ship

I've seen higher TL components on ships without making the whole thing a higher TL...

(P.S. - see above post - Meson can be lower tonnage than Particles...)
 
DFW said:
BFalcon said:
(was hoping to keep it low-ish tech to make it more easy to refit and repair) and go for the Type B, which is smaller and more powerful, but TL12.

No need. A TL 13 ship can be repaired & annual maint at a TL 11 Class B port.

Ah, cool thanks - where does it say that?? I musta missed that one...
 
BFalcon said:
DFW said:
BFalcon said:
(was hoping to keep it low-ish tech to make it more easy to refit and repair) and go for the Type B, which is smaller and more powerful, but TL12.

No need. A TL 13 ship can be repaired & annual maint at a TL 11 Class B port.

Ah, cool thanks - where does it say that?? I musta missed that one...


Look at the rules for repairs at Type A & B ports. Only TL restriction is for building ships from ground up.

Also, Imp Navel bases are just that, Imperial Bases set up on whatever world is needed. It is Imperial Tech not, world tech. Much like foreign soil US Naval bases...
 
Yeah - there are no TL requirements for port types - actually the other way around (world gen - TL DMs).

The TL of a port can, like other things (bases as DFW stated), be completely different from the world/system TL. More relevantly, spare parts don't have to be produced locally - and probably often aren't.

In the RW, I can by parts for computers/cars (low tech that ;) ) locally, yet they are almost entirely produced out of country and most lack the knowledge (and skills and tools) to repair the parts, but can install and maintain them.
 
BFalcon said:
BP: Ah ok - I thought those options were purely for the spacecraft (ie 100 to sub-5,000 tons)...

Well, 2,001+ are defined as capital ships with MGT.

It only lists the power plant one under capital ships, but you might notice it's the same as the TL reductions for power plants for the spacecraft as well.

Yes, you can use the TL reductions across the board (small craft, spacecraft, capital ships).
 
AndrewW said:
BFalcon said:
BP: Ah ok - I thought those options were purely for the spacecraft (ie 100 to sub-5,000 tons)...

Well, 2,001+ are defined as capital ships with MGT.

It only lists the power plant one under capital ships, but you might notice it's the same as the TL reductions for power plants for the spacecraft as well.

Yes, you can use the TL reductions across the board (small craft, spacecraft, capital ships).

Yeah, wrote that 5000t bit when I wasn't paying full attention...

I'm starting to wish that they'd used the capital ship design process for all the ships now - it'd make life easier than keep swapping back and forth between different books and pages trying to track down options.

Maybe one day they'll release a design book(let) with all the rules in or, better, a computer program so we don't have to remember all this... :(

My head's starting to hurt :)

I think some time away from this and the computer I'm repairing for some grub...
 
BFalcon said:
I'm starting to wish that they'd used the capital ship design process for all the ships now - it'd make life easier than keep swapping back and forth between different books and pages trying to track down options.

Wouldn't really help, most options apply to all three of the systems so you still end up flipping between pages and books.
 
I'd drop the jump level. Thrust needs to stay as is; 3G is kind of a minimum acceptible value to be able to run down anything hostile.

Jump-2, by comparison, is about all you'd need for a ship which should rarely need to relocate.

Particle Spinal seems a bit overkill, but what the hey. Personally I'd take a few hundred dTons, buy Large Bays and plan them as a single block, claiming it's a triple mount - doesn't affect anything in the rules, just feels more appropriate.

You wouldn't be the first to lament the lack of the 500 dTon bay...
 
In the computer RTS game "Homeworld" there was a force called the tarannic raiders who had a kind of warship that combined a "spinal mount" weapon with carrier abilities. it looked good on paper, but...


The "lord" class attack carrier was less than half the size of a full carrier which made it maneuverable and fast. it carried a powerful ion cannon forward cannon and could support a small compliment of fighters. It had numerous good elements that when combined worked against and neutralized each other, making it an ineffective vessel.

The Ion cannon gave it a potent punch against large vessels, but it had to close in with them to use it, which was not good for a carrier to do. The ion cannon also robbed the lord's defensive turrets of power, making the ship vulnerable to attacks from attack craft too small and fast for the ion cannon to engage. The ship's maneuverability made it easy for it to target large units with it's ion cannon but hard for it's fighters to land to rearm and refuel.

All in all the lord was a failure of a vessel that had tried to be innovative and original. While it was an innovative design, it was not a good one.

Just something to keep in mind here. A design might look great on paper and the concept may sound fine, but you have to see how it works.

Here's a link to a review of the Lord attack carrier that might give you some tasty food for thought.

http://shipyards.relicnews.com/turanic/c_carrier.htm

I'm not trying to dump on you or your idea, but when I read it it reminded me a lot of the Lord carrier and I thought considering it's flaws might help your design process.
 
Iron Warrior. said:
I'm not trying to dump on you or your idea, but when I read it it reminded me a lot of the Lord carrier and I thought considering it's flaws might help your design process.

Not my idea - that was a direct quote from the Sector Fleet book I bought... (well, PDF actually, after this lot twisted my arm to go buy it...) :lol:

BTW Sector Fleet is on DTRPG for around 4 quid for the next couple of days - might be worth grabbing a copy, guys...

I see the SCS as a "random searches" ship to stop smugglers and wanted felons from making use of the space lanes, while (at the same time) making sure that any raiders are quickly seen off and pursued to the point where they'll not risk raiding the system while it's there. I'm also designing it with excellent sensors so that it can detect ships from a long way off - with an eye to intercepting any fast-moving incoming ships on the grounds that fast-movers may be a raider, so should (at the least) be interrogated.

One question: Should I stealth the hull on the reasoning that they could then sneak up on ships until well inside the range of their spinal weapon? Or would that be against the Imperial Navy way of doing things do you think?

As for the carrier and the spinal elements being counter-productive, I see the carrier element as providing a picket line and a means of boarding the ships being investigated without risking the entire ship and the fighters would be launched immediately upon a ship being found to be hostile, possibly long before even coming into range of weapons.

One piece of equipment I'd have liked to have seen for this ship would be a fake ID transmitter - so it could pretend to be a bulk freighter until such time as the inquiring ship was inside a range to find out otherwise... by that time the SCS's crew would know it was a pirate and they'd be inside the range (by the time they stopped and turned around or deflected enough not to close the range any more) of the Spinal Cannon. :)
 
BFalcon said:
One question: Should I stealth the hull on the reasoning that they could then sneak up on ships until well inside the range of their spinal weapon?
A stealth hull would not fit in with your idea of a Q ship, I think. As far as
I remember, Imperial warships do have the technology to send different
transponder signals, including civilian ones, so this should work - but in
this case I would add the option to modify the ship's exterior somewhat.
 
rust said:
BFalcon said:
One question: Should I stealth the hull on the reasoning that they could then sneak up on ships until well inside the range of their spinal weapon?
A stealth hull would not fit in with your idea of a Q ship, I think. As far as
I remember, Imperial warships do have the technology to send different
transponder signals, including civilian ones, so this should work - but in
this case I would add the option to modify the ship's exterior somewhat.

No, the Q-ship and stealth ship ideas were separate... it wouldn't be helpful to have a ship that looked like a freighter if nobody saw it, would it? :lol:

Pirate: "We could always go raid that freighter..."
Other pirate looking at sensors: "what freighter???"
Pirate: "Erm... ok... that's a little dodgy... ok, we'll just fly by nice and calm..." :)

No, I meant the Stealth as a "We got a distress call from a freighter over here... let's sneak up until we're inside the spinal cannon's optimal range and then announce ourselves..." kind of ship - basically meaning that by the time the pirates knew of it being there, it would already be too late.
 
BFalcon said:
No, I meant the Stealth as a "We got a distress call from a freighter over here... let's sneak up until we're inside the spinal cannon's optimal range and then announce ourselves..." kind of ship - basically meaning that by the time the pirates knew of it being there, it would already be too late.
I think for this kind of job I would prefer a small craft with a stealth hull
and armed with a torpedo or two. A big stealth ship may not show up on
the active sensors, but in many passive sensors (visual, infrared ...) it
would still appear as a "moving black spot" that blocks the entire back-
ground radiation. Even a dumb pirate should be clever enough to buy
a computer program able to recognize this.
 
Rust: you're right - I'll just do a basic hull rather than stealth.

I do like the fighters and spinal though - it allows the ships to spread out and patrol the various corridors without the main ship having to constantly travel. I'm designing it with solar panels - that'll let it sit for long periods at a LaGrange point and still be able to patrol the system.

Another question - can you fit small craft with a fuel scoop? I was thinking of possibly fitting a scoop to each of the cutters so that they could fetch back fuel for processing into fuel for the fighters and cutters, allowing the ship to maintain position.
 
BFalcon said:
Another question - can you fit small craft with a fuel scoop? I was thinking of possibly fitting a scoop to each of the cutters so that they could fetch back fuel for processing into fuel for the fighters and cutters, allowing the ship to maintain position.

Yup, if the small craft are streamlined they automatically have fuel scoops, but if not they can still be added to small craft.
 
Thrust 4 should be the bare minimum considering that a Pirate Cruiser has a thrust rating of 4.

I would nix the spinal mount in favor of 2 particle weapon bays. A spinal mount is just overkill.

I would start with something like this:

Space Control Ship:
2000 tons
Thrust 4+
2 Hvy Particle Bays
1 Nuclear Damper


.
 
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