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Ok first off I'm looking for helpful advice so please no "make it whatever you wish its only fantasy." I care about this and I want a genuine second opinion please. So I'm working on putting together a starship and so far I have this . . .
Transport: Medium Size
Decks: 3
Length: 91.44 meters (300 feet)
Width: 31.7 meters (104 feet)
Height: 12.6 meters (41.34 feet)
Average "Room" size: 3.048 meters (10 foot) per side e.g. 10 x 10 x 10
Average Corridor size: 1.22 meters by 3.048 meters (4 foot by 10 foot)
Now with that information I've been trying to map the rooms onto the ship and I've a 1 x 2 room section I need to put something in. That would be 2 "rooms" one next to the hull adjoining the corridor.
I'm considering putting life support and the computer servers/coms in this section. So you'd have life support and computers/coms each in their on 10' square room. The server is fine you can per the rules minaturize that to fit and coms aren't an issue either. It's life support I'm thinking about is it reasonable to put the life support systems for a whole ship in one 3 meter square room or should I try to place it somewhere larger?
Incidentally in case anyones curious other areas are . . .
Bridge: 30' x 30' x 10'
Arcane Laboratory/Science Lab: 30' x 10' x 10'
HAC: 30' x 50' x 10'
Med Bay: ? (currently trying different configurations)
Tech Lab: ? (currently trying different configurations)
Power/Propulsion: 20' x 50' x 10', 10' x 10' x 10', 10' x 30' x10' (goes over 2 decks)
2 Luxury Quarters: Each 20' x 10' x 10'
2 Good Quarters: Each 10' x 10' x 10'
Bathrooms: Off Luxury quarters 10' x 20' x 10'
Bathrooms: Off Good Quarters 10' x 10' x 10'
Life Boats: 20' x 20' x 10'
Main Cargo Hold: 40' x 50' x 10' has an indent of 20' x 10' x 10' for airlock.
Secondary Cargo Holds: 2 sections each 10' x 20' x 10' with a 1 room indent for power systems.
Galley: 10' x 20' x 10' Currently cooking/eating if I need bigger for life support I'll split this in 2 and have kitchen on 1 side of the central corridor, dining area on the other each 10' x 20' x 10'
Airlock: 10' x 20' x 10'
Armory: 10' x 20' x 10' place to store space suits, player armour and weapons.
Survey Sensors: N/A (fitted in nose of spaceship not a proper room)
Life Support: See question
Server room: See question
Wouldn't life support be built INTO the floor/wall ceiling and reachable via a computer on the bridge rather than something taking up living space?
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Corridor sizes are a bit small (assuming the 10 foot is height). In case of an emergency (or even normal operations) people would constantly be in each others way. You would need to designate one corridor to go towards the front and another one going back exclusively.
Also, the ship would not be fit for being used by large species (which i some situation might be a feature).No idea about life support or propulsion. As those systems are not described anywhere I have no idea what size would be appropriate.
You might be able to remove the kitchen when instead of actually cooking you use a culinary synthesizer to morph UPB into food.
I thought that too they can be easily expanded at this stage they're still getting the 10' square treatment of every room. The 4' by 10 was something I saw for the star trek ship corridors that seem large enough for 3 people to walk down. Then I converted feet to meters and realized its only 1m across which is . . . not so either the values were wrong or they were really good at cinematography back then. Either way I agree they need to be wider 2-3 meters across not 1. Still as I said not a problem I've allowed a fair amount of extra space to account for power and data conduits, access tubes, hulls, etc on top of the fact everything is currently made up by default 10x10x10 room squares that can then be adjusted for realism e.g. I doubt you need a single person bathroom 3 meters by 6 meters in size even if you are putting a bath, shower and other facilities in there. . . maybe a hot tub? Still I really need to look at the lift it looks odd with corridor on all but 1 side because it has to go there to line up properly with the other 2 floors. If I can just figure out something to put in the corner behind it . . . maybe a storage cupboard?
Wouldn't life support be built INTO the floor/wall ceiling and reachable via a computer on the bridge rather than something taking up living space?There would be two parts for life support, the purification and distribution. The latter would be in the walls but you also need a place to recycle air and water, although I do not know how big for example carbon scrubbers are. On the ISS water recycling is part of a laboratory so its probably not that big.
Also with magic and UPBs you can also use some creative solutions. Instead of recycling water just dump it into space and magically create fresh one. A bit wasteful but saves space.
As Ixal said the distributions built into the walls but this is a central facility that controls said distribution based on commands sent from a control terminal (located on the bridge, engineering and captains cabin).
Fair point about magic and UPB's a purification spell's fairly easy to run it through or the old decanter of endless water + bag of devouring redesigned for the modern era. I suppose ships could even have replicators without serious issue food is abstract, replicators convert anything including waste into anything else just keep them early tech where they only do food not weapons, gems and other components. One persons defecation is another persons steak. Then you used to have plenty of create food and water variant spells in pathfinder.
Plenty of options so I suppose a central system can easily fit in a 3 meter cube. Without even touching on null space engineering and objects bigger inside than outside due to having extra dimensions.
but you also need a place to recycle air and water, .
I just don't get the assumption that is has to be a room in the living area rather than say, a long series of ducts built into the wall or a tank in the floor with a manhole cover.
For example the filter room on the pool where i worked was 20 feet by 80 feet, but it wasn't taking up pool space. It was under the back deck.
If you have to move all walls 1 feet forward to make room behind them it also cuts into the living space.but you also need a place to recycle air and water, .I just don't get the assumption that is has to be a room in the living area rather than say, a long series of ducts built into the wall or a tank in the floor with a manhole cover.
For example the filter room on the pool where i worked was 20 feet by 80 feet, but it wasn't taking up pool space. It was under the back deck.
Think 3 dimensionally
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Think 3 dimensionallyIf you have to move all walls 1 feet forward to make room behind them it also cuts into the living space.but you also need a place to recycle air and water, .I just don't get the assumption that is has to be a room in the living area rather than say, a long series of ducts built into the wall or a tank in the floor with a manhole cover.
For example the filter room on the pool where i worked was 20 feet by 80 feet, but it wasn't taking up pool space. It was under the back deck.
This is why I added an extra deck in my size calculations to fit things in and around. However I'm putting it in its own dedicated room for easy access. Think of it this way if the ship tells you life support is offline do you want to be crawling around in the walls to access it or do you want the main unit to be in an area that's easy to access for repairs and maintenance. It's currently in the deck with labs and other equipment I'm just debating using the space I've got floating to put it in there.
If it has that much room around it I'm going to put a murphy bed on it and call it another passenger room.
You have the parts that you need to access regularly available to a hallway. You have the rest parked up against the wall. Things you need to access on occasion are accessible via a crawlspace.
This is a space saving measure that almost every vehicle uses. I don't know why a near universal engineering/Feng shui strategy is suddenly unrealistic.
In my experience, think three dimensionally means that in addition to the 10'x10'corridors, you need something like 30-80 square feet per 10'x10' corrdidor of support for those corridors in life support (ductwork, plumbing, electrical, misc), and that's just in a modern day building, not a future spaceship.
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If it has that much room around it I'm going to put a murphy bed on it and call it another passenger room.
You have the parts that you need to access regularly available to a hallway. You have the rest parked up against the wall. Things you need to access on occasion are accessible via a crawlspace.
This is a space saving measure that almost every vehicle uses. I don't know why a near universal engineering/Feng shui strategy is suddenly unrealistic.
I don't think its about realism so much as how we see it. If I'm understanding you right (feel free to correct me if I'm not) you see it as having reached the point of minaturization where all the units/conduits can be spread throughout the ship so there's no need for a central unit because you have a few filters here this wall and a few further along at the next. Possibly because you have more experience with things like planes and other vehicles than me. I on the other hand come from a background where my knowledge of life support is TV shows that have life support rooms ranging from complex machines to hydroponics bays and air conditioners which have large outside and inside units or a complete room on top of a building.
I just personally have a bit of an issue trying to picture a life support system that wouldn't have some centralised system because that's my experience. AC rooms on top of buildings, human lungs, compressors at work so the pressure pushes air out to equipment that uses it. I'm quite happy to adopt a decentralized system if you can help me see how it'll work.
In my experience, think three dimensionally means that in addition to the 10'x10'corridors, you need something like 30-80 square feet per 10'x10' corrdidor of support for those corridors in life support (ductwork, plumbing, electrical, misc), and that's just in a modern day building, not a future spaceship.
Minaturization is a wonderful thing. That said my estimates do allow for that room. To give concrete values so you can see how much space is actually there currently (I am trying to reduce the ships size but I can only do so much without it not looking like the pictures of the model I'm using).
Ship Length: 91.44 Meters.
Room length front to back of ship: 48.76 meters.
Ship Width: 31.7 meters.
Room Width side to side of ship: 15.24 meters.
Middle/Back bulge of ship.
Ship Height: 12.6 meters
Room Height top to bottom of ship: 9.144 meters
Front part of ship.
Ship Height: 9.144 meters
Room Height top to bottom of ship: 6.096 meters
So as you can see I have roughly 30-40 meters front to back of ship (survey sensors do reduce that being in the front of the ship), 5 meters side to side (there are wings which you wouldn't be accessing) and 3 meters above, below and inbetween the actual rooms for systems (power, data, life support, water, access tubes, etc).
Plus as I said individual rooms don't necessarily take up all the space assigned to them. A 10x10x10 room could mean 8' ceiling with 2' of other stuff in there.
Take the luxury quarters they're currently assigned a 4 square block of 20x20x10. However the average bathroom (acccording to google fu) is 7x8-12x8. Which means the bathroom block of 10x10x10 is actually 7x10x8 leaving 3' in one direciton and 2' above it to run other stuff not counting the already existing spare space available. The average bedroom (master) is 12x16x8 leaving 8' in one direction, 4' in another and 2' above the ceiling. Though admitedly some will be taken up by the good quarters next to it.
Edit
Just realized I hadn't mentioned what I was using as my models the interior is being adapted from the tempest in mass effect andromeda (which thinking about it doesn't have a central life support room) and the exterior is based on the J type Nubian Yacht in Star Wars episode 1 (The silver ship they use to travel).
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Just adding after some playing around anda looking at rooms from the perspective of my main room in relation to what the measurements would mean I've reduced the overall ship dimensions to . . .
Ship Length: 71.44 Meters.
Room length front to back of ship: 39.624 meters.
Rear of ship to front of cockpit: 21,336
Ship Width: 25.7 meters.
Room Width side to side of ship: 15.24 meters.
Middle/Back bulge of ship.
Ship Height: 12.6 meters
Room Height top to bottom of ship: 9.144 meters
Front part of ship.
Ship Height: 9.144 meters
Room Height top to bottom of ship: 6.096 meters
I'm not entirely happy with the new room placement for example the lifts between the 2nd and 3rd deck has a room space behind them but I can stick stuff in there that isn't schematic worthy (the old power runs, data lines, access tubes, etc) and the bridge is too big but if I move the lift further across its in the corridor.
Its not a matter of miniaturization. Your ship needs some systems. Your ship needs walls. You can combine the two. This is how we build things now. A boiler "room" has a hallway with a boiler built into the wall, the control module for a fan is a computer, if you need to mess with the fan itself you sent the skinny guy into the air duct.
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Its not a matter of miniaturization. Your ship needs some systems. Your ship needs walls. You can combine the two. This is how we build things now. A boiler "room" has a hallway with a boiler built into the wall, the control module for a fan is a computer, if you need to mess with the fan itself you sent the skinny guy into the air duct.
The minaturization comment was aimed Garretmander's saying for X room you need Y support (water pipes, power lines, air conditioning, etc) not your comments about turning life support into a distributed system.
I can do that, in fact its part of how I got the size down to 76 meters by eliminating the life support room and distributing it along with moving the computer server room up to behind the bridge as well as reducing the labs by a third. Does seem like more maintenance as you now need to monitor/check/replace multiple filters spread across the ship vs all the processing in one spot.
I'm about to try reducing it further by giving the lift a seperate lift into the engine room moving it further back to the rear of the ship allowing me to reduce the length while still matching the nubian ships look.
As for your systems in the walls I do have plenty of space for the corridors considering their assigned a 10x10x10 room currently and I haven't touched them yet. If I made it say .5m of behind the panel systems and a 2m corridor I might even get a nice hexagonal shape while still reducing size by half a meter.
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One last update on ship size as I think this is as much as I can reduce the size before running into problems.
Length: 46.74 meters (153.35 feet)
Width: 23.37 meters (76.67 feet)
Height: 12.6 meters (41.34 feet)
Interior rooms per deck, not adjusted i.e. all these room sizes are calculated based on 3m, 10' square rooms and that obviously wont remain constant e.g. corridors will lose space to systems in the walls/floor/ceiling.
The HAC located near the front of the ship is 2 "rooms" narrower than most of the ship. General dimensions allowing for the fact these rooms haven't been adjusted e.g. corridor is not 10 x 10 x 10 in size.
Deck 1: 9.144 x 3.048 x 3.048, 30 x 10 x 10 feet.
HAC: 9.144 x 9.144 x 6.096 meters, 30 x 30 x 20 feet.
Upper Deck not counting HAC: 30.48 x 15.24 x 3.048 meters, 100 x 50 x 10 feet.
Lower Deck not counting HAC: 30.48 x 15.24 x 3.048 meters, 100 x 50 x 10 feet.
HAC and engineering span decks 2 and 3.
HAC is not accessable from deck 2.
Lifts connect deck 1 and 2, deck 2 and 3, medbay and cargo hold airlock (I can't connect it to the airlock in the crew quarters and the medbay without engaging in non-euclidean geometry so I went with the cargo hold as the greater danger as that'll see more use outside stations).
Deck 1 (Bridge)
Bridge, Computer Core.
Deck 2 (Crew Quarters, Medical and Engineering)
HAC, Life Boats, Airlock, Armory, Crew Quarters, Galley, Medbay, Engineering (Tech lab, power and propulsion)
Deck 3 (Operations and Cargo)
HAC, Arcane Laboratory, Science Lab (General), Airlock, Cargo Hold.
I can do that, in fact its part of how I got the size down to 76 meters by eliminating the life support room and distributing it along with moving the computer server room up to behind the bridge as well as reducing the labs by a third. Does seem like more maintenance as you now need to monitor/check/replace multiple filters spread across the ship vs all the processing in one spot.
Well, any kind of life support is by definition going to be distributed some... you're going to have water pipes and air ducts (which are genre contracted to be big enough for prisoners to hide in)
You're going to want some walls in between you and the waste reclamation tank.
The filters would be monitored via central computer (we can do that now) But spreading them out has a lot of advantages: you don't have to blow dirt from the front of your ship all the way to the middle, one lucky torpedo can't take out all of your air filters, you can pop one out of the wall to work on it and still breathe, you have 10 5 pound filters instead of 1 40 pound filter to lift etc.
I don't even think the expanse game gets into this kind of nitty gritty of ship design. Its several layers of fuggetaboutit from starfinder magitech get out there and have fun design.