A few more ship design questions

[Tom Schoene]

1) It looks as though all small craft are now required to have bridges, which require 20% of their volume. However, the section on small craft crew implies that bridges are optional. Which is correct? I'd certainly prefer not to need bridges on all small craft. (HG required a bridge or a computer, but not both.)

2) How many missiles do missile bays launch and how many reloads to they carry? Also, do they fire standard missies or something else? (ISTR a CT reference that bays fire heavy "bay missiles" or torpedoes instead of the standard turret missiles.) You need this info to work out reload magazines for missile bays.

 

[Ben W Bell]

I'm not sure about the first question, but as for the second I know that bay missiles are a lot heavier and larger than turret missiles, you just need to look at the damage codes to see that. As a result bay missiles and turret missiles are not interchangable.

I think the number of missiles that a bay fires is 3 at a time I believe. As for reloads that depends on how much space you allocate for ammo storage and how many you buy.

 

[Liam Devlin]

Missiles for bays ARE larger than Turrets' missiles, Ben is correct.

for ideas on the # of missiles and bays, heres Ken Pick's HighGuard Fix frome
www.downport.com/freelance traveller/shipyard

"How many missiles?
Here's the rest under the Freelance Trav Shipyard HG2 fixes section:

HG2 Retrofit: Missile Bays
A giant missile turret, firing enlarged heavy missiles or "torpedoes". Before the introduction of nuclear dampers and meson guns at TL12, the primary ship-killing weapon. (Retrofitted to the original CT starship design system from High Guard 2.)

50-ton Missile Bay
Size -- 50 tons
Cost -- MCr 12.5
Crew -- 2
Capacity -- 50 heavy missiles, can fire 5/turn

100-ton Missile Bay
Size -- 100 tons
Cost -- MCr 21
Crew -- 2
Capacity -- 100 heavy missiles, can fire 10/turn

Heavy Missile
An enlarged missile fired from Missile Bays. Commonly called a "torpedo" or "bay missile" to distinguish it from the smaller "turret missiles".

Size --1 ton/round
Cost/round -- 5 x standard turret missile
Damage --1D x 1D hits"

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Hope that helps!

heretically yours,

 

[Tom Schoene]

Liam:

Thanks. I'm sure I'd seen that before; it's probaby where I got "bay missile" from.

I think there are some changes needed, though. In that version, bays don't seem to have any actual launcher space; a 50ton bay has 50 1-ton missiles. By comparison, a missile rack (Essentially 1/3 ton) has only 3 ready missiles --about half its volume. The rest is launcher and fire control stuff. I'd expect bays to be about the same proportion. Reducing the size of the missile seems to achieve the desired effect. A 0.5 ton bay missile is big enough, still ten times the size of a turret missile. Five times the cost is probably OK, since a lot of the expensive stuff will be the same in both types.

I think that's what I'll be using.

(May I suggest that this rule, or someting like it, apppear in the TA on the Imperial Navy?)