| Tom Kalbfus |
Here is something we might consider doing until the game officially comes out. Never mind the rules, this is about looks and floor plans. We can figure out how these starships fit into the game once the rules come out. We can give a general description of what the capabilities of a starship is, what sort of weapons we'd imagine it would have. There are no rules for starship design other than it looks good. We can vote on which starship design, other than our own, that we like best. Does this sound like fun?
| Torbyne |
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This isnt even a contest really without some sort of scope on how the setting works. Whats to stop someone from saying a ship is powered by a zero point energy collector and its main weapons are "gravimetric singularity projectors" that create black holes inside any targeted ship? Someone is going to just drop the wookiepeedia stats for the suncrusher... Or if its aethetics than how should we proceed, links to a off site image hosting?
| Torbyne |
I've always been partial to magnetically accelerated missiles, basically a rail gun that launches a missile that continues to accelerate and course correct instead of just being an unguided kinetic punch. I have been wondering if we will get massive "spinal" weapon emplacements like that out of this system. but for actualy ship aesthetics i have been getting mildly conflicting notions about how ships work. Vesk and Alliance ships look to be heavily armored in the nature of something that will be trading blows back and forth like a classic battleship where as Shirren/swarm ships look to have lots of void spaces and fewer but larger fixed weapons. Eoxian ships... i am not even sure they are technological at all and might just be massively bonecrafted necro ships.
Its hard to think up something that fits in with all of this without a little more detail on how targeting, movement, armor and weapons all interact but i would try to find a place for an old idea i posted when these forums first popped up, a fighter piloted more like a racing bike, a ducati or something, small and nimble with no single thruster pushing it and instead using a lot of small thrusters on articulated arms constantly re-positioning during flight.
| Lemartes |
Or just model something up in 3D and make up stats for it afterwards.
Anyone have any rough criteria or guidelines on what the various ships would be like from any given race or faction/alliance? Say size, style, any bio ships?
Also, the Pact worlds...I missed the memo on that one. :(
| Tom Kalbfus |
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I am thinking of standard technological ships, maybe loosely categorized after those in Traveller perhaps, but not an exact copy. Traveller ships are measured by tons of displacement of liquid hydrogen, a ton of liquid hydrogen takes up 14 cubic meters of space.
Assume each deck is 3 meters from floor to ceiling, a square is 1.5 meters or 5 feet. 2 squares of deck space is 3 meters by 1.5 meters by 3 meters = 13.5 cubic meters. So we'll go with 1 ton of hull displacement = 2 squares of deck space. The types of ships used in Traveller are the following:
Scout/Courier 100 tons (200 squares)
Seeker (mining ship) 100 (200 squares)
Far Trader/ Free Trader 200 tons (400 squares)
Safari Ship 200 tons (400 squares)
System Defense Boat (No FTL Drive) 200 tons (400 squares)
Yacht 200 tons (400 squares)
Corsair (Pirate vessel) 400 tons (800 squares)
Laboratory Ship 400 tons (800 squares)
Patrol Cruiser 400 tons (800 squares)
Subsidized Merchant 400 tons (800 squares)
Subsidized Liner 600 tons (1200 squares)
Mercenary Cruiser 800 tons (1600 squares)
Light Freighter 1000 tons (2000 squares)
Medium Freighter 2000 tons (4000 squares)
Heavy Freighter 3000 tons (6000 squares)
Shuttle 100 tons (200 squares)
Fighter 15 tons (30 squares)
2 person Fighter 30 tons (60 squares)
Modular Cutter 50 tons (100 squares)
Slow Pinnace 40 tons (80 squares)
Pinnace 40 tons (80 squares)
Slow Boat 30 tons (60 squares)
Boat 30 tons (60 squares)
Launch 20 tons (40 squares)
| The Sideromancer |
I am thinking of standard technological ships, maybe loosely categorized after those in Traveller perhaps, but not an exact copy. Traveller ships are measured by tons of displacement of liquid hydrogen, a ton of liquid hydrogen takes up 14 cubic meters of space.
Assume each deck is 3 meters from floor to ceiling, a square is 1.5 meters or 5 feet. 2 squares of deck space is 3 meters by 1.5 meters by 3 meters = 13.5 cubic meters. So we'll go with 1 ton of hull displacement = 2 squares of deck space.
To be pedantic, the term you are looking for is tonnes, i.e. 1000 kilograms. 1 imperial ton of liquid H is only 13 cubic metres.
To be more pedantic, displacement is a function of the weight of the ship rather than it's volume (provided the ship floats). In other words, displacement tonnage is a pretty useless quality for spaceships. Normal tonnage refers to volume, but only Gross tonnage is the entire volume, Net tonnage refers only to the cargo space (which may be significantly less than the total ship volume).
| 0-hr |
I like to use register tons to specify the volume of my starships.
1 register ton is 100 cubic feet.
| Tom Kalbfus |
Scout Ship
Design Specifications
Installed Components Squares
200 Square Hull +200
Bridge - 40
Drift Drive 2 - 6
Drift Fuel - 40
Sublight Drive 2 - 10
Power Plant - 12
Power Plant Fuel - 8
Double Turret
Flying Car - 10
4 Staterooms - 32
Csrgo - 40
Total 2
This is the specifications for a scout ship, It takes the items from the Traveller Scout/Courier, but I'll just draw up different floor plans to make it unique.
| Fardragon |
The Traveller scout/courier design I would consider iconic in it's simplicty.
When it comes to the player's ship, there isn't really that much room for variation. It's going to have a bridge, an engine room, a cargo bay, cabin capacity for up to 8, a med bay, maybe a workshop, a couple of gun turrets an a missile bay. The Ebon Hawk (KotOR) is probably fairly typical. Also see: Serenity, The Ghost.
| Torbyne |
The Traveller scout/courier design I would consider iconic in it's simplicty.
When it comes to the player's ship, there isn't really that much room for variation. It's going to have a bridge, an engine room, a cargo bay, cabin capacity for up to 8, a med bay, maybe a workshop, a couple of gun turrets an a missile bay. The Ebon Hawk (KotOR) is probably fairly typical. Also see: Serenity, The Ghost.
Very True, the player's ship is usually also their home and base of operations so you end up with flying apartments with bedrooms, a common room and then the dressings of a ship, the bridge and engineering spaces and a hold. You can add the Mass Effect ships to the list and even in Star Trek you dont see too many spaces aboard ship other than these ones, maybe holo-decks and a random lab or two. I havent seen season 2 yet but the Roci from Expanse seems to be about the same size and set up as well.
I'd be very interested to see a slight shift around with the players being based out of a larger ship that they fly fighters or shuttles out of. Give them something a little more robust feeling than the gun ship or freighter we usually see.
| Tom Kalbfus |
There is this ship it is only part of one deck, it includes a lot of life boats, that are fully functional spaceships in their own right, the only thing they are not capable of is going faster than the speed of light. Above deck is a hangar with an assortment of ships, below deck are fuel tanks, the engine is to the aft. The PCs acquire this by defeating all the foes within it, it is a dungeon. A magic portal is activate leading to it, so the Pcs conduct a boarding action from their homeworld, the ship is orbiting a planet in the Cyrannus System, which I've detailed elsewhere, it is a pirate base, the ship is not fully functional, its drift drive needs repair, and its sublight engines need some work as well, for now it serves as a pirate base for the pirates the PCs hav to defeat to acquire this ship.