Warship Design Rant

Easterner

Mongoose
With the first Solomani Rim novel being published I thought I'd explore a Soli Campaign after I read it. Shadow of the Storm by Dougherty, Martin J.

So I picked up Soli Alien Module and found a Colonial Cruiser, aka the Soli version of a Kinunir.

Now the Kinunir, Annic Nova and Leviathan are the three best starships in TRAV as the designers put thought into what a starship needs to keep the crew at 100%. The vast majority of designs we get are nothing but U-Boats, full of weapons and engineering and nothing else. U-Boats had no heating, air conditioning or refrigeration the crew had to last 30 days then get out. Most TRAV ships are designed to jump one week then crew can unwind at next port. But some ships need to last longer or go through frontier regions where there are no ports to unwind in just empty or down right hostile rocks.

So what do those three have that 95% of subsequent designs left off? Holds for refrigeration, admin offices, metal/electronic workshops, recreation rooms, library, chapel, squad bays, garbage disposals, troop dispersal ramps, proper staffing with ability to stand watches 24/7.

The Independence has no place on the frontier, it lacks above amenities and too small a crew.

Crew needs to show officers and enlisted and Marines in detail.
Should have Officers: Capt, XO, CE, EW Officer, Comp/Admin officer, SolSec officer (to assess various planets more so than as a commissar watching crew) Gunnery Officer, Pilot, Nav, Engineer.
Crew: CPO, 3 medics (ship and two squad corpsmen) 4 engineers, 1 tech, 10-12 gunners (two needed for cutters if armed, they should be) sensor tech, 3 pilots, comp tech, steward, servant (messman) for capt, Marine LT, 2-3 Sgt, 1 comms/comp man, 14 grunts including 2 corporals. Gunners would also serve in Admin or steward capacity when not at battle stations.

What needs doing to deck plan?

Hanger Deck: Add squad bay and access ramp opening rearward (Think Forbidden Planet's C57D's stairs that dropped on landing) to left of the portside cutter.

Quarters Deck: Add Machine/Elec shop leading from aft deadspace corridor near 9 and crew exercise/rec area off opposite deadspace corridor.

Command Deck, eliminate the 'black hole amidships, add double stateroom for capt, XO stateroom, CE stateroom and small double stateroom for SolSec. Add ward room (officers mess), food prep and refrigeration and disposal rooms, 2-3 admin offices, chapel (OPTIONAL), library/study room. Add sickbay aft to right of the #4.

Command Deck OPTION: Upgrade port and starboard guns to fusion or particle accelerators to bring firepower closer to Kinunir.

General: Add any available space: Cleaning Stores (Laundry, good old mops and buckets and cleaning bots to keep the mops and buckets in storage)

This leaves 8 officers staterooms for 12 officers.

10 staterooms for 18-19 Marines on hanger deck. (I'd divide port and starboard into full one room barracks and the tiny room into a store room but that is OPTIONAL).

16 staterooms for 27 crewmen on Quarters Deck.

Lost fuel is fudged into rather generous hull design i.e. the tail fin.

Lastly for MATTHEW SPRANGE


I've probably said it before, but, feel free to send me any starship designs to vet them, after 35 years we should be able to do better than design unhealthy, dirty U-Boats and create gleaming starships with crew amenities and self-cleaning and repair facilities. :D
 
I very much agree with you about the designs. Traveller deckplans have almost always stripped things down to the minimum.

Part of the problem, at least in my mind, is that the ships we see are really the equivalent of small cabin cruisers or freighters. They are tiny things and not really meant to be out there for long periods.

For example, you mention the lack of proper cargo holds to store foodstuffs, general cargo, spares, etc. A ship that is supposed to spend long stretches away from a base would definitely have need for that sort of thing. So lets say there were a couple 10-20 dton cargo bays. That would take care of the space issue, but what about the rest of that equation?

The ship in question would not be hand carrying in all that stuff. And if they were doing an underway replenishment they would be looking to move things as quickly as possible. At a minimum you are talking about everything be moved via palletization. But you'd also be looking at small 1,2, or even 3Dton containers that are pre-packed with everything required. So that cargo storage area needs to have properly sized corridors to a properly sized airlock capable of taking in (or removing) cargo of that size. Hell, it's hard to find designs that will have airlocks that are properly sized for moving people inside.

I just don't see a lot of movement though to change anything. Lots of players love to min/max the shit out of their designs. And, to be fair, they should. Naval designers in sci-fi games don't have to worry about that sort of things. But players trying to be the badasses of the spaceways (or avoid the same) do.
 
probably a revamp of fuel usage(amount needed for jumps and in system usage) and the addition of Damage control, Recreation Lab space(to give Dm's for stituations)

each of the engineering spaces probably has some space allocated for DC
figure on a set size for ships under 2000 tons and a added percentage for those over

Cabin space at 4dtons should be 5dton and the extra 1 dton goes to rec/lounge space
 
Standard stateroom space is 4dT but of that, 1dT is given over to recreation and passages.

This is why deck plans typically show staterooms as 6 x 1.5 x 1.5 grid squares = 3dT.
 
I can understand some of the frustration when it comes to brief descriptions, scant or non-existent basic fittings, and facilities aboard starships. I recently finished a book due to be published by Mongoose. And I was surprised at how fast page count builds up.

I had around 100 pages to include descriptions and stat blocks. While I removed pages of information, and descriptions I was sill pressed for space. When you are working with very limited space you have to decide what to include and what you have to drop...sadly its usually a great deal of the information described above.

In a book, or booklet dedicated to say five or ten ships, you can greatly increase the attention to detail paid to each ship. However, if you want to include 20 or so ships, rules, example vessels, NPCs, and scenarios, you have to pare down the information to a very, very basic state.

So, At times you end up with nothing but a paragraph or two on the vessel, and a very limited set of facilities that are detailed in any manner. This leaves a lot of detail to the imagination of the Referee and players.
As I said at the beginning of this, It frustrates me to not have all the little details of a ship. Unfortunately, when I sat down to work on my own work, I discovered the limits imposed by very real concerns. I had to sacrifice details that can be filled in by the Referee and players,to put as much usable material into the book as possible.

In the future I would love to do a few articles, or perhaps supplements that provide the information on the aspects of a starship other than engines, guns, and statistics. But I'd have to be able to convince a publisher that sort of detail was worth their time, effort, and resources, to publish.
 
I was going to say something when I read Gypsy Knights small craft book. I was intrigued when they put it out, but then I looked at the stats. They had 3 different fighters. One was for space superiority , the other for aerospace, and the last was supposed to be an armored tub. Akin to the modern A-10 Warthog. But when I looked at the stats there really wasn't much difference. Just the weapons or a point in armor. There was nothing differentiating o e role from another. I blame the Traveler design system. In D20 there were levels from dispersed structure (no aerodynamics possible), to wedge/cone which could be streamlined, to airframes. All of which gave bonuses to fly in atmosphere. Out of atmosphere you had Agility rating. In part coming from extra power from the engine.
Seems like Traveler glosses over many things. Like every vessel has grav control. So no need to include tonnage & allocate space on a map, or design spin modules. Though 2300ad is coming out with a aerospace engineer's handbook I believe.
Anyways back to amenities. Trillion credit squadron has a whole list in it. Hydroponics, recreation, etc. Is it usable by small ships though?
 
Stay tuned on this. I and another like minded designer are looking at working on some "improvements" and additions.

A fill-in project currently.
 
The deckplans designers should feel free to use the "20% Rule" on deckplans to include these sorts of items that are not specific design points.

Taking some engineering space and dividing it up into several DC lockers, or having proper corridors and airlocks do not come out in the design sequence, nor do I think they should. They come in to play in the DECKPLAN designs. Poor deckplan designs are causing most of your concerns listed above.

Adding a Wardroom etc. should come out of Stateroom space, as should Recreation and Galley space (even stowage). As mentioned above, 3Dtons of actual stateroom and 1Dton for food and recreation makes perfect sense.

I blame the layout designers.

Of course, there is nothing wrong with changing the layout with minimal design changes (I agree about your weapons choices btw).
 
I believe the design problem comes from unfamiliarity with ships and the incredible mundane things aboard them to keep them efficiently running. Big ships are indeed small cities with Ice Cream/candy sales (Gedunk), post office, laundry, (much smaller in TRAV with disposable clothes and a clothing machine but not everything is disposable and self cleaning probably has limits), CiC on warships, freezers and supply lockers for food, machine shops, elec shops, parts storage, Air tanks for depressurization (not added even once to any Trav design I've seen) H2O storage for drinking and cleaning, cleaning bots, garbage disposals, spare freshers scattered about larger ships, captains in-port/at sea cabins aka jump space/normal space cabin.
 
You would be surprised at how little space the basic facilities of a small vessel take up. Most of them can fit within the unwritten 10% rule, and have almost no impact on the total cost of a vessel.

while it would be nice to have all these fun little items detailed...as I mentioned earlier space runs out fast when your having fun. There is the very practical limitation of page count when working up designs, deck plans, etc...

Some information:
The average European uses approximately 50 gallows of water a day.

Which means for every ten crewman the ship would need 500 gallons of fresh water a day.

Or 3500 gallons per week, this includes baths/showers, washing, and drinking water.

One displacement ton of water (14 Cubic meters) contains 3698 gallons..so one displacement ton will supply a crew of ten for a week.

A 20x15x8ft room takes up 20.6 cubic meters, a little under 1.5 Displacement tons.

Allowing for a 10% variance from listed volumes for a 100 ship would give you 10 displacement tons to allow for water, food, utility room, and kitchen/pantry.

2 tons for water
6 tons for kitchen/galley
2 tons for food and supply storage.
this would supply 10 people for 2 weeks....the average duration of a star ship flight, It is also conveniently 10% of the ships volume...since most ships do not have a crew//passenger ration of 10 people per 100 displacement tons, you would have plenty of room in the hull for all the little bits that make life livable.

for an idea of the space taken up by basic facilities.
crmi-300_300_gallon_portable_water_tank.jpg

this tank can hold roughly enough water for a person to drink, cook, and clean with for a week. With recycling, and water management you can make due with less.

cook.jpg

this small part of a large galley could serve ten people without much trouble. On a five man work/Supply boat we had basically a walk in closet to cook, and do laundry in....the storage area was where ever we could shove something....under counters, in spare bunks,in the passageway, etc...( try eating cheerios that just spent the last week in the engine room, Diesel fumes will get into any container no matter how tightly sealed..)
 
5lb of food a day needed too. Water can be lessened on small ships with sonic/hand wavium showers.

Another thing is Hi tech. J-Drive and PP should half in size every 2 TL over 9 but increase in price 50%. Or something similar. That would free up extra space. It would also show the tech difference visible today. Merchant ships are no faster now than in ww2 (only tankers and refrigerated ships were built for high speed) as it's not cost effective to add modern engine designs to a ship for profit. Warships are paid for by the government and get the latest all the time so the tech chasm from merchants to warships is fairly high now
 
wbnc said:
A 20x15x8ft room takes up 20.6 cubic meters, a little under 1.5 Displacement tons.

Math!

20x15x8ft=2400 cubic feet

or

67.96 cubic meters, 68 cubic meters rounding, thus 5 dTons.


With that I am not refuting the point you are trying to make, just isolating an arithmetic error.
 
Infojunky said:
wbnc said:
A 20x15x8ft room takes up 20.6 cubic meters, a little under 1.5 Displacement tons.

Math!

20x15x8ft=2400 cubic feet

or

67.96 cubic meters, 68 cubic meters rounding, thus 5 dTons.


With that I am not refuting the point you are trying to make, just isolating an arithmetic error.

Yeah i thought I did that wrong...teaches me to post before coffee...


Now as to most ship designs at least as far as any boat I ever worked on...You only get what you need to do your job...Nothing more, and often less.A week long run on a boat designed for a three day run at best can get pretty miserable.....that luxury shower every other day, or every three days goes right out the window.

and Naval vessels are often designed on the same principal. They get just what their mission calls for...the more missions a ship has to fulfill means that they get the bare minimum, crammed in a space not meant to be used for the gear shoved into it.
 
Revised Deck Plans and Crewing
Exterior hull is unchanged
Some material incorporated from SHADOW OF THE STORM by Martin Dougherty so is not
necessarily canon.

TRAVCSSIndependence2_zpsf2e549e1.png


TRAVCssIndependence1_zps94c90f30.png


Expanded Crew


Officers
Capt (Cmndr)
SolSec Officer (LCmndr) (Per SHADOW OF THE STORM)
XO (LCmndr)
CE (LCmndr)
Ops
Guns
Comm/EW
Sensor
Pilot
Nav
BEO (Bridge Engineering Officer Per SHADOW OF THE STORM)
Medical (Optional)

Specialists

Science (1-3 scientists are sometimes carried on frontier)

PO
1 CPO Ops
1 CPO Engr
2 WO Pilot

Starmen
12 Gunners (2 for cutter)(8 Steward trained/4 Clerks)
3 Medics (Trained as Corpsmen for Ground Operations)
3 Pilots
5 Engineers
2 Mechs
1 Elec
1 Runner (Capt valet/steward) OPTIONAL

Marines
1 LT (optional)
1 Patoon Sgt
1 Comm Tech

2 Sgt
2 Corporals
12 Enlisted

42 Crew
19 Marines
Additional crew attached as mission requires

Staterooms
14 officer bunks
34 enlisted bunks
23 Marine Bunks

Per SHADOW OF THE STORM by Martin Dougherty
Naval uniform is black with black hat
SolSec Naval uniform is grey with grey hat

SolSec starts as naval officer trains as SolSec later (Sideways) or starts as SolSec transfers to navy.
Advises captain, must concur on major orders. They can sensor comms or override orders from their console. May replace Captain and become the captain. A SolSec officer must concur on medals and commendations.

Called 'wrong colored hats, greys suits or 2nd captain' in conversation.
 
You know what, I'm going to throw this out here. With the talk about wanting and making better and more detailed ship designs and fluff, I'm going to say that I'm open to the idea of paying $5 to $10 on a book that might cover 5 or so ships in great detail. I would pick one up just to see what could be done if that was the focuse. I'm looking for quality, not pages filled with hard to read deck plans with half a page write up (if that).
 
DivineWrath said:
You know what, I'm going to throw this out here. With the talk about wanting and making better and more detailed ship designs and fluff, I'm going to say that I'm open to the idea of paying $5 to $10 on a book that might cover 5 or so ships in great detail. I would pick one up just to see what could be done if that was the focuse. I'm looking for quality, not pages filled with hard to read deck plans with half a page write up (if that).

The primary issue with this is that the basic design system that has been clung to from the Original Traveller is the problem. If you make them more realistic, which about half the players seem to like, the other half will cry foul because they aren't super simple ("cause who cares how big a stateroom is, or where the galley is?? We just wanna blow shit up")

A High Guard 2.0 design manual is required that looks at the entire ship building process and resolves all these issues and fixes the problems that have been carried forward for the past 30+ years.

T5 was SUPPOSED to fix this... but damn did that just become a horrible thing...
 
Easterner said:
The problem is they won't be top notch if the current landlubbers do the design work.

Ummm I've spent more than a little time on smaller ships and work boats...not exactly unfamiliar with living and working on small ships.And I am one of the guys doing work for mongoose :D

Look I can understand wanting more detail in the descriptions of ships.. And I can understand being disatisfied with the material included on some descriptions...But having been on the other side of the production process you often find that there isn't enough space in a book to put everything You want...and doing a realistic deckplan that includes more then just the basics is a serious problem when you try to cram it into a book... if you put too much detail on the image it gets cluttered. and people cant make out the details...if you make them large enough to show all the glorious detail you include....you have to cut material from other sections to make everything fit into the page count the book has been allotted.

SO, you end up with something a little like this....for a description. this isn't exact bt it isa good idea of how it's laid out.

Section title
[[illustration]]
[[statblock]]
100 ton "Mosquito" Fast Courier
Unarmed and lightly armoured the Mosquito class courier relies on its speed, countermeasures and advanced computer assisted systems to evade and outrun pursuit. A single pilot can operate the vessel with the computer system running sensors, and advising the pilot on evasive manoeuvres to evade enemy fire. This makes the Mosquito a difficult target ensuring the safety of it's small high value cargoes without the need for heavy firepower.
With a standard Jump 2 drive the Mosquito does not have the range to reach some systems. However, The Mosquito class courier is sometimes modified for long range jumps and used as a dispatch carrier by military forces, and local governments. Even with it's standard Jump two drives the Mosquito is still capable of serving as a high speed courier within most clusters of worlds.
One of the features of Mosquito are its wings, while useless in space flight the airfoil structures are a part of the ships gravitic drives. By moving gravitic thrusters further from the centre of the ship it allows the use of smaller thruster units ad improves the agility of the craft. In addition, the wings are adapted to improve atmospheric flight performance, and atmospheric entry characteristics of the vessel.

Interior:
A mosquito is small and cramped but there has been some effort to make the vessel more livable. a small kitchenette and basic entertainment system have been installed as well as a better than average air filtration and environmental control system was fitted to avoid "the funk" that often marks small purely commercial vessels. The Mosquito also has one of the more comfortable control couches on the market, often fitted on more expensive yachts, which has helped compensate for the fact that crewman often find their heads encountering low equipment and electronics racks as they move about the ship.

Technical:
The mosquito has a significant issue with access to it's drives and power plants. they are only accessible through a small crawl way that passes through the ships cryogenic hydrogen tanks. This is usually a nuisance level problem, unless the ship sustains damage. the tunnel often become flooded with fuel , requiring the passage be vented to hard vacuum to remove the potential explosion hazard.
In addition the crewman servicing the engines usually has to wear at least some form of EVA or hazard suit to navigate the crawl way or risk contacting extremely cold metal surfaces which can lead to painful injuries from frost burns.
[[deckplan]]



[[stat block]]
100 Ton Gnat class J-6 Express Mail Courier
The Gnat is based on the Mosquitoes hull, and secondary systems. It is fitted with larger jump drives and hardpoints for Drop tanks. the Gnat is a dispatch, and high priority mail boat, designed to be able to quickly cover vast distances, and evade any hostile intercept once it arrives at the destination. With it's on board fuel stores it can make an emergency jump after using up it's drop tank fuel.
When operating without jump tanks the Gnat can make shorter jumps, refuel from a convenient gas giant, and continue onward. Often taking much longer to return to it's based out of operation than it took to reach it's primary destination. A number of commercial mail services have began to establish a network of tenders near major communications, and trading hubs to allow their private mail boats to jump to a hub, drop off it's mail packet, top off it's tanks, and jump to the next hub in the network.

Notes: the Gnat is restricted to Jump 2 when not carrying drop tanks. It also requires all of it's computing power while preparing for it's long range jump which precludes using evasion and pilot assist software.
Upkeep: Cr 7.192
Life support: Cr 3000
Fuel: Cr 20,000
Payments(new) Mcr 0.359625

[[stat block]]
Hornet Pursuit Boat
The Hornet is a swift, agile, well protected vessel designed to pursue vessels which are attempting to evade authorities, or carry priority alerts to systems ahead of a fleeing vessel to allow local forces to prepare for the possible arrival of a criminal or suspect vehicle.
In some cases the Hornet can attempt to engage, and disable, a fleeing vessel by jumping to a system ahead of the fleeing vessel and waiting for it to emerge from jump space. This requires multiple Hornets working together to cover multiple systems. If the vessel is armed often pairs of hornets will deploy increasing the chance of a successful intercept, but requiring larger squadrons of Hornets to cover possible escape routes.
Hornets also make use of Jump tanks to increase their range. In some cases hornets can make use of X-boat tenders, commercial mail boat stations, and commercial tankers, to refuel and re-equip drop tanks for longer range missions.


Game Use:
The mosquito, and it's sister ships, are not a vessel for regular use by a party, due to the fact it is not well suited to making a profit. However, as part of a scout, or military campaign Players could be assigned to a Mosquito Flotilla, or a Mosquito could be assigned to the players Unit.

In civilian campaigns pilots, former scouts, and former naval personnel could find work supporting or piloting a Mosquito or Gnat. These sorts of adventures would be largely played out to avoid or sidestep difficulties, and threats in an unarmed vessel.
Armed Mosquito variants can be useful for players in military or mercenary careers, in this case they could be part of a squadron of pursuit boats, or escort craft operating in tandem. these small craft could be used for patrols, pursuit and capture of wanted fugitives, or carrying high value goods, and Mail between worlds in less settled regions.
The Mosquitoes can be modified with additional staterooms to serve as a fast second vessel for groups that already own a larger more expensive to operate vessel. using it in situations where the need a vessel that's fast enough to avoid trouble, or dash past slower enforcement vessels.

Now, that is a pretty scant description and write up of a vessel.

But that's considerably more than most source books give.... assuming in the final version I don't have to trim off something to save page count.

now, find something in there you would feel comfortable clipping out to include details on the laundry room, ship workshop, or where the food and water are stored...because if I include anything more..I have to drop something listed above. that is a practical consideration writers and designers have to deal with... we have limits on space, size of illustrations, and the amount of detail we can include.

It took me several tries to find the room to include this little guy. The fact I was able to include more than two or three paragraphs for such a small, minor ship meant I had to trim larger vessels and drop a few vessels from my original line up...but I liked these little ships, I thought they added some depth to the setting by including small relatively minor vessels.

Now I can tell you the write ups for a 500 ton merchant/liner, and a 800 ton corvette are even more space consuming...and even harder to find space to include all the little details.

What does this have to do with more details deck plans..plenty... more detailed deck plans take up more space. Add time to a project, and would increase my overhead in aspirin and coffee.... I can either include ore detail in the written descriptions, and leave it to the Referee to add the small details on his own..Or, give you a book filled with nothing but deck plans, and stat blocks.
 
wbnc said:
What does this have to do with more details deck plans..plenty... more detailed deck plans take up more space. Add time to a project, and would increase my overhead in aspirin and coffee.... I can either include ore detail in the written descriptions, and leave it to the Referee to add the small details on his own..Or, give you a book filled with nothing but deck plans, and stat blocks.

This is where leveraging the magic of the interwebz comes in. Assuming you cannot cram everything you want into the book, additional information, 'bonus' deckplans, etc, can be made available for free via a webpage and a pdf.

You also can potentially create 'bonus' versions of the pdf by including more content, more deckplans, all the things that make a ship come to life rather than be nothing more than a set of stats. But that's also a change in thinking in how publishing works. I have been an avid fan of the Bits and Mortar project that MGT is a party too. I have also purchased a number of supplements from on-line vendors in pure pdf form. I know that while I prefer both types for different reasons, I also collect many materials from various gaming systems specifically for the 'feel' and 'taste' of the backgrounds, the writing and the illustrations.

So yeah, there is definitely a market out there to be tapped. Just like the internet (and before that catalogs, and before that the telephone), digital media allows companies to further tap into hidden markets and new lines of revenue with less of a sunk cost in production and inventory.
 
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