The Heavy Freighter

[Mithras]

I've not seen this in any Classic Traveller books, so I'm thinking it may be a Mega Traveller design, or maybe something new? Whatever - I am liking it alot! I love the total dedication to cargo space, I love the aircraft carrier-like design, with a cargo 'through deck' with superstructure and drives side mounted, and the bridge mounted high and forward, allowing total visuial observation of loading and unloading procedures.

I want a better definition deckplan, though. Its one of thoserare deckplans for me, where I can 'see' what is there as my eyes wander down corridors and across cargo decks. Much of the latter I imagine to look much like the carvernous cargo bay of the Sulaco.

I'd be interested in knowing if the plansfeature in some other publication!

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

It's a new design, which I think is an excellent idea. I'm sure if people want a CT HG/MT/TNE/T4/T20/GT version that it could/would be converted across.

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

Larger size freighters have always been hinted at or mentioned in a limited way in previous versions, but AFAIK, no-one (until now) has ever published a larger design for a freighter.

 

[District268]

FASA produced some deck plans for large freighters, I think they had displacements of 1000 tons as well but I would need to check.

The Traveller Adventure has a heavy merchant freighter with a 5000 ton dipslacement, sadly though, no deck plans.[/url][/u]

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

The Traveller Adventure has a heavy merchant freighter with a 5000 ton dipslacement, sadly though, no deck plans.

Yah, indeed - in the CT Traveller Adventure book, between the different shipping lines there are a reasonable variety of larger ships but, again, no deckplans:

Tukera:
3,000 ton freighter (Type AT, J-4, M-1)

Imperiallines:
2,000 ton frontier transport (Type TI, J-2, M-2)
2,000 ton frontier transport (Type TJ, J-6, M-6 = super-mega-zoomy ship that allows *certain imperial persons* to move about the 3I incognito)

Akerut:
5,000 ton heavy merchant (Type AH, J-1, M-1)

Oberlindes:
1,000 ton cargo carrier (Type CT, J-3, M-1)

 

[Mithras]

Yes, these things should out-number the free-traders 10:1.

I'm surprised we don't see more of them, I can't really see a goodreason for military deckplans (how do you get on board?!), but these huge cargo carriers are the key to plenty of adventures, from stealing cargos to surepticiously switching some important cargo, hijacking, contaminating, tracing a lost artefact ... the list ofadventure ideas is long. And deckplans are a must.

 

[Klaus Kipling]

Yeah! Cargo ships, liners, colony carriers, freelance scout craft - that's what I want to see in deckplans, not endless military or paramilitary craft. And Traveller has a dearth of ship types even in the ones that have been covered.

Is there really only one design for a free trader, far trader, etc etc, in all of known space.

Ideally there should be at least 6 types of trader in the 200-600dTon range, jump 1-2.

 

[Marc]

Yes, these things should out-number the free-traders 10:1.

I'm surprised we don't see more of them, I can't really see a goodreason for military deckplans (how do you get on board?!), but these huge cargo carriers are the key to plenty of adventures, from stealing cargos to surepticiously switching some important cargo, hijacking, contaminating, tracing a lost artefact ... the list ofadventure ideas is long. And deckplans are a must.

Actually, I disagree.
For exactly the same real world reasons that there are much fewer(by orders of magnitude) Super-Frieghters than there are small cargo vessels. The truth is that a superfrieghter will carry a great deal and reduce the costs of shipping a large number of items to once place(or a small number of common places) however try doing a milk man's route in one and watch your costs skyrocket(no pun intended).

The truth is that a limited number (even in so a vast setting as TheThird Imperium) of super frieghter routes move Mega-Tonnage from large ports to large ports. In these ports litteral armies need weeks(if not months) to off load them. Then those Mega-Cargo loads are broken out to lesser transports and carried to still further "break down points" and few are sold in that system(albet at a vastly reduced cost if you can get there).

The Mega-Loads have to be broken down to smaller craft capable of either delivering the items to markets by their "onesies and twosies" or taking them from place to place for speculation...

Could you imagine having to pay the bills of a superfrieghter to go up and down the African coast trying to sell handfuls of speculative cargo at each small port? You'd be bankrupt in weeks from the fuel alone

One of the best things Traveller has done since its release is keep things at a "Dinner table" level for most Merchant type players. THe basic question of where the cash for the fuel is going to come frmo has to be asked every time.
Show up with a J-4 MegaFrieghter and you have limited options...
(and J-4 is the smallest Jump for true interstellar hauling)
You need to fill 40% of that ship's displacement(Classic Trav stat) by:
1) Empty the C Class(Classic Trav stat) Starport of all their ship fuel if they have enough...
2) Spending weeks in one system sending shuttles out to skim a gas giant and then churning that all through your filtration system(with luck, they attached a reclaimation unit and you can sell the pollutants you filter out)
3) Limping from system to system on only jump 1 because you can not get enough fuel to jump further...
4) Becoming stranded because local resources simply can not produce anough fuel for you to get out...

And the cost if you mis-jumped??

Yikes!

Marc

 

[Mithras]

Are you saying Marc, that you think the ratio would be 10:1 in favour of free/tramp freighters?

I like the modern model: I don't consider a vessel of 1000 tons to be a superfreighter, but in a High Guard universe I consider something like a 10,000 to ship to be a superfreighter.

I'm running a small-ship Traveller game, and 1-5k ton ships shouldn't break the High Port warehousing facilities.

 

[District268]

I agree with what Klaus had to say. There should be a plethora of "standard" small merchant ships in the 200 to 600 ton range, all doing a similar job but each one with its own quirks to add a little colour to the game.

 

[Vile]

And I'll second that. It has always stretched my disbelief suspenders that there is only one type of each of the basic designs. Different shipyards will have different designs. They'll do the same thing, more or less, but their configuration can be as different as you like.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Yeah! Cargo ships, liners, colony carriers, freelance scout craft - that's what I want to see in deckplans, not endless military or paramilitary craft. And Traveller has a dearth of ship types even in the ones that have been covered.

Is there really only one design for a free trader, far trader, etc etc, in all of known space.

Ideally there should be at least 6 types of trader in the 200-600dTon range, jump 1-2.

Sounds like a good OGL product! Four or five designs for each of the "classic" ships would be very cool. It would really be a deckplan thing more than a ship design thing. VERY good idea!

 

[Klaus Kipling]

It would essentially depend on the deckplans. There's little you can really do with a trader design in terms of features and stats.

Some will have a few more staterooms, some a few less. Apart from J-range that's going to be it in terms of design differences.

So the deckplan will be where the differences count, and that can really change the potential for games.

I want to see more corridors in my ships. In all the space TV we like most of the action goes on in the corridors.

 

[rust]

It would essentially depend on the deckplans. There's little you can really do with a trader design in terms of features and stats.

Not necessarily. In my setting some traders have "aquafitting", which
means they have a hydrodynamic hull, special communicators and sen-
sors, cargo hatches above the waterline, special cargo handling equip-
ment, sometimes a moonpool airlock, an aquaskimmer as a small ve-
hicle, and so on, for operations on water worlds.
Once you begin to design ships for specific trade routes between spe-
cific, detailed planets, you are soon likely to come up with lots of dif-
ferent specialized design features and designs.

 

[District268]

Another thing you could do as I said earlier is to give each ship its own little quirks. For example in the origonal design for the S Type Scout, the air purifcation system didn't work properly and the air began to smell after a couple of weeks.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

Lies! All Lies!

Ling Standard Products takes great pride in our quality and design departments. The air purificatio problem was slander by our competitors in a vain attempt to influence an upcoming contract with the IISS.

We have searched through thousands of mission reports regarding the Type S design and the incidences of failure of the air purification system are within 1.2% of the overall MTBT (Mean Time Between Failure) for this class of vessel.

If you continue to spread this false alligations against our products, we we be forced to take legal "Cease and Desist" action against you, your family and your homeworld.

Thank You,

The Management of LSP

Seriously, those types of things are built into the "quirks" for used starships, but can certainly be expanded.

I personally would love to see 4-5 deckplans for the Free Trader. All using the same Ship Stats, but just having different layouts. I doubt a Vilani influenced design would be the same as a Sylean design, or a Solomani design, or a Vargr design.

FASA did some work back in the mid-80s with the Aslan designs.

For example, the Aslan designs all included a "Shrine of Heros" taken from Stateroom space.

I also cannot believe that every single 100 ton Seeker/Miner ship is a wedge. I would expect most of them to be Unstreamlined or Planetoids. THAT would be a cool suppliment/OGL product. It doesn't have to be tied to the OTU, just variations of the basic designs considering a variety of design styles and tech levels.

 

[District268]

Lies! All Lies!

Ling Standard Products takes great pride in our quality and design departments. The air purificatio problem was slander by our competitors in a vain attempt to influence an upcoming contract with the IISS.

We have searched through thousands of mission reports regarding the Type S design and the incidences of failure of the air purification system are within 1.2% of the overall MTBT (Mean Time Between Failure) for this class of vessel.

If you continue to spread this false alligations against our products, we we be forced to take legal "Cease and Desist" action against you, your family and your homeworld.

Thank You,

The Management of LSP

.

Well it made me laugh. :lol:

I personally would love to see 4-5 deckplans for the Free Trader. All using the same Ship Stats, but just having different layouts. I doubt a Vilani influenced design would be the same as a Sylean design, or a Solomani design, or a Vargr design.

Good point.

 

[Xoph]

I always saw this as similar to the 40k standard plans thing where standardized designs put out with most every colony and library program. Then after the long night technology from many worlds would be based on these standard templates. So everywhere you go you see modified versions of standard designs, sometimes used for interesting applications. Such as the standard tractor design being used to create a tank, the seeker & scout being the same design, or a standard tram design being turn into a tunnel crawler.

 

[GypsyComet]

"Type A" is a performance spec.

"Hero" is a class of Type A.

 

[Matrix Cypher]

One way to look at the starship sizes is to link it too real world equivalents.

Starhip tonnage real world equivalant
100-600 merchants Delivery Truck
1000-6000 super merchants Tractor Trailers (semis)
10000+ mega merchants Trains Shipping frieght

The first two pretty much serve the same pourpose. The smaller trucks just tend to handle smaller quanties and harder to reach areas that are not realy on the main routes or economic for larger trucks.

Hope this helps putting in a bit better perspective.