Traveller as a Spaceship Modeling Hobby

[Condottiere]

Depends on how much time you want to spend on them; formulaic solutions in abstract tend to exist, and I think that engine compartments were addressed in Classic, pretty much as I believe that propulsion units have to be carefully positioned.

Internet of Things will likely keep track of what's removed from compartments, and who's doing the removing.

While I personally prefer using my own bathroom at home, I thought it might be efficient to have a central bathroom on the ship, and arrange everything around that; or everyone wears Depends.

I've also had fun with crew accommodations, especially on Solomani military ships.

 

[Pyromancer]

At least they are addressing that point, even if the answer is just handwavium that the food and supplies are stored elsewhere and don’t take up cargo space.

Always bothered me when a capital ship has something along the lines of 1,000 crewmembers and less than 200 ton of cargo room. It still does both me, but at leas pt we can says its been addressed in the rulebooks. :?

Roughly speaking, 1m³ of supplies is enough to feed one crewman for a year, so eight dtons of supplies will feed 1,000 crewmembers for a month.

 

[WingedCat]

I've tried to make sure the ships I make have at least 1% of their volume set aside for ship's stores: food, minor replaceable items, and so on. They might not be separately labeled as such, but on non-cargo ships (including passenger ships after deducting luggage allowance), that's what they're there for.

Food prep/clothes washing/etc. comes out of crew commons, on my designs, and said commons are always at least 1/4 the space of the staterooms. Any commons left after such equipment is simply the lounge.

As for running back to staterooms for bathroom access - even on the biggest crewed ships I've made deckplans for, it's not that far. Granted, this is (so far) under 10,000 tons.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

I've tried to make sure the ships I make have at least 1% of their volume set aside for ship's stores ...

I use the same, but for extended range. If you can count on resupply every two weeks or so, you can skip it.

As for running back to staterooms for bathroom access - even on the biggest crewed ships I've made deckplans for, it's not that far. Granted, this is (so far) under 10,000 tons.

There is such a thing as too much detail.

Keeping track of every head and every bog roll in every supply locker is too much detail IMHO.

 

[Old School]

Roughly speaking, 1m³ of supplies is enough to feed one crewman for a year, so eight dtons of supplies will feed 1,000 crewmembers for a month.

I assume you're basing that on some practical experience. What are we talking about in terms of food? Dehydrated MRE’s? Nutrient paste? It aint fresh fruits and veggies.

 

[Pyromancer]

Roughly speaking, 1m³ of supplies is enough to feed one crewman for a year, so eight dtons of supplies will feed 1,000 crewmembers for a month.

I assume you're basing that on some practical experience. What are we talking about in terms of food? Dehydrated MRE’s? Nutrient paste? It aint fresh fruits and veggies.

The number's from GURPS Space, but it passes a reality check. That's a block measuring 10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm per person per day. If you are a single person, that's room enough to have some "normal" canned food alongside the nutrient paste and vitamin pills. If you pool this volume for a thousand persons, and you have a galley and some cooks, you can instead pack sacks of rice and flour and sugar (and high-TL super ingredients), and even a few slabs of meat and crates of apples, for Sundays.

 

[Old School]

Fair enough, thanks.

 

[Pyromancer]

I calculated the calories for a 10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm block of natural ingredients, just to be sure:
Butter: 22,000 kcal
Sugar: 12,000 kcal
Rice: 8,500 kcal
Flour: 6,000 kcal

Back in my army days, we got ~4,000 kcal a day under normal circumstances, but serving on a highly automated ship surely needs less energy. So there should be plenty of room for high fiber/low calories stuff like vegetables and fruits.

 

[WingedCat]

There is such a thing as too much detail.

Keeping track of every head and every bog roll in every supply locker is too much detail IMHO.

Every bog roll, sure, but I try to show every head and bunk, since the positions may possibly matter for scenes played out in staterooms.

 

[Condottiere]

I'm sure iron rations can be more calorie dense.

And water can be recycled.

 

[Old School]

I calculated the calories for a 10 cm x 10 cm x 30 cm block of natural ingredients, just to be sure:
Butter: 22,000 kcal
Sugar: 12,000 kcal
Rice: 8,500 kcal
Flour: 6,000 kcal

Back in my army days, we got ~4,000 kcal a day under normal circumstances, but serving on a highly automated ship surely needs less energy. So there should be plenty of room for high fiber/low calories stuff like vegetables and fruits.

Sugar, butter and flour, huh? So there’s plenty of room as long as the diet consists of cake and icing. Sounds good.

 

[Pyromancer]

Sugar, butter and flour, huh? So there’s plenty of room as long as the diet consists of cake and icing. Sounds good.

And with 15,000 kcal a day we don't even come near starvation level! :twisted:

 

[WingedCat]

Sugar, butter and flour, huh? So there’s plenty of room as long as the diet consists of cake and icing. Sounds good.

But of course. One could make an entire Noble/Administrator career out of the naval logistics of letting them eat cake.

 

[steve98052]

Back to the main topic, I started the "Form follows function" topic because I was thinking about doing a bunch of designs that are meant to conform to a common vision.

 

[paltrysum]

Keeping us focused is like herding cats!

A few considerations:

• Engine location–As you mentioned, where should the drives go? Should there be any uniformity to it? I would think that jump drives and power plants should be more or less adjacent and located as close to the core of the ship as possible to render the length of the required connections, piping, wiring, etc. to be as uniform as possible. As for the maneuver drives, well we can argue ad nauseum about what "reactionless" means and I'd probably lose the debate, but I like my STL drives to have thrusters with exhaust ports, so somehow they do IMTU.
• The bridge needn't be on the fore of the ship with forward-facing viewing portals...but it should be! Traveller emulates 60s-70s sci-fi and the ships should be more like airplanes than the type of craft we'll probably go to Mars with some day (e.g., a cylinder with 2-3 toruses on it). The romance of the setting urges us to have the bridge on the front like the cockpit of an aircraft.
• Cargo holds should be on the bottom unless the ship is only designed to land at orbitals. They can be forward or aft, but they should be on the belly to make the transfer of cargos efficient.
• Armor should be distributed evenly throughout the exterior of the ship. Unlike a tank or an APC, you can't rely on a greater likelihood of being hit on the front or sides. You could be stricken anywhere along your hull. We rarely illustrate armor on deck plans, but we should. Thicker black lines would do the trick. Currently I use 3-pixel-wide lines for bulkheads. For armored ships, I should be multiplying that by the armor value (or at least adding a pixel per point, whichever looks better).
• Turrets should be centrally placed to ensure full firing arcs. Missile launchers do not require a firing arc since they have their own thrust, but are traditionally faced forward.
• Fuel tanks should generally be kept as far away from personnel-carrying portions of the ship as possible. This is very difficult when the fuel tanks are large, but an attempt should be made. When that L-Hyd explodes, you want to be as far away as possible.
• Low berths are and should be given short shrift. It's flying coach but 10 times worse and yes, you should be stashed next to the baggage compartment (a.k.a., the cargo hold).
• Fuel purification plants should be adjacent to the fuel tank, and ideally near the skimmers themselves.
• Always consider landing gear with your design if you intend to land your ship.
• Sensors are traditionally placed in the nose of the ship along with the avionics.

How's that?

 

[Condottiere]

I donno: packing Vargr?

 

[Old School]

Whatever you do, don't design your laser turrets so they can only be accessed via the fuel tanks (I'm looking at you, MgT1 Vargr).

The whole wings on a spaceship thing irritates me more than the jump drives in the back or the bridge in the front. They are useless unless you add control surfaces - you don't need lift when you have grav drives), and an incredible waste of surface area.

I've spent very little time on deck plans, but when I have I'm thinking streamlined ships would be more wedge or bullet shaped for effeciency sake, although the beach ball look (Merc Cruiser and Tigress) could work as well. Plenty of designs that more or less conform to this, and plenty that don't.

As far as the drives and power, I too like the design of our reactionless thrust coming form the back of the ship. We've thrown physics out the window, but it's as a good a place as any. Power needs to be near the drives, and therefore the jump drives are located there as well.

Bridges - sure, you don't need viewports for space travel or combat beyond dogfighting (its own can of worms), but they'd certainly be nice for docking and landing, and putting the bridge in the front also serves to control access.

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

Whatever you do, don't design your laser turrets so they can only be accessed via the fuel tanks (I'm looking at you, MgT1 Vargr).

Are you referring to the Corsair? Sure they can only be accessed from the outside, but they do have dedicated gunnery stations within the main hull - just forward of the common area on the main deck.

 

[Pyromancer]

The whole wings on a spaceship thing irritates me more than the jump drives in the back or the bridge in the front. They are useless unless you add control surfaces - you don't need lift when you have grav drives), and an incredible waste of surface area.

Au contraire. "Realistically" speaking, all Traveller spaceships have far, far too less surface area, and would need much, much more. Not for aerodynamic reasons, but for thermodynamic reasons. In space, you need radiators to get rid of waste heat. Even the ISS has a few hundred m² of radiators, and they don't operate even a tiny fusion reactor up there.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Traveller has to have a hidden magic technology - I call it gravitic heat sink technology.

Otherwise ships will need huge radiator sails to disipate the gigawatts of waste heat generated.