A question of style

All Art critics,
I have a new deck plan but a few questions.
* Should a deck plan have large machinery in the engineer spaces or is a note that this room is engineering good enough?
* How about the Low Berth room? a note or filed with symbols?
* Is a deck plan better with a numbered key or with labels?

I have been doing deck plans for 40 years and I must say I have for most of that time done plans with equipment other furnishings, but I am not sure.

 

[whartung]

Yes,the plans should have machinery.

Yes, the low berths should be illustrated as couches or pods, or however you represent low berths.

I've always preferred numbers and a legend.

This one looks nice, just barren.

Love the colors.

 

[Dragoner]

Myself I haven't really grown past the original Traders and Gunboats, FASA deck plans; though I think each deck plan maker should do what makes them happy.

 

[Spinward Flow]

* Should a deck plan have large machinery in the engineer spaces or is a note that this room is engineering good enough?

Depends on the resources you have available to you.
It also depends on the purpose you want to put the deck plans into use for.

Substantially, the point and purpose of deck plans (and the detail level in them) is to make "infantry action" and sight lines for exchanging fires something that makes the job of the Referee easier.

You can TOTALLY abstract things and just draw "empty" compartments if you want. A LOT of the early CT deck plans did precisely this. Even when the "contents" of compartments were ... detailed ... the details were exceptionally sparse and more just there to "hint" at what might be occupying the interior spaces.

LBB A1, p20-21:

As you can see, even in this VERY EARLY publication for CT, labels are kind of "whatever fits the available space" and the machinery spaces for the drives are ... really abstract. Everything else is just walls and doors to partition interior spaces. It's all very simplified and Theater Of The Mind™ type stuff.

* Should a deck plan have large machinery in the engineer spaces or is a note that this room is engineering good enough?

Just labeling a room as "engineering" will often times be "good enough" to get the idea across.
Having the resources available to fill up the "engineering" compartment spaces with machinery helps with immersion and gives a better "feel" for how the contents of the compartment are apportioned. The downside is that things get ... less abstract ... the more detailed and defined you a make them.

If you'll forgive me for tooting my own horn about a deck plan design that I've since abandoned (due to redesigning the naval architect's office spreadsheet particulars), there's this image that I posted in my own research thread (#116):

A quick compare & contrast with the earlier LBB A1 deck plans for the Kinunir posted above shows just HOW DIFFERENT things can get when you aren't just abstractly labeling compartment spaces and are instead aiming for more of a "lived in immersion" level of deck plan detail. However, that heightened sense of realism/immersion that results of increased levels of detailing add a lot of value to the work of deck plans, if you can "afford" to reach for those detailed improvements.

Spoiler alert: I'm still fiddling with the naval architect's office spreadsheet details of the (now) two related starship classes I want to define and build. You can take my Pondering Starship Evolution thread as something of an "open book research" on how to design starships and then craft the deck plans to "fit" what the spreadsheet numbers ought to "mean" when built out into a (working) starship design.

* How about the Low Berth room? a note or filed with symbols?

Either will work, but actually SEEING how the low berths are laid out in the floor plan gives you a better sense of what someone walking into the room would encounter (and where the sight lines are within the compartment).

For example:
Here's how I designed a possible deck plan for a 20 ton Box filled with 40 low berths (Post #345).

Obviously, the "walkable area" within each compartment of 10 low berths is ... cramped ... but it's possible to sidestep shuffle your way around in those tight spaces. Fortunately, the "occupants" of the compartments tend to "not need a whole lot of living space" so having these cramped access walkways inside each compartment works out just fine.

* Is a deck plan better with a numbered key or with labels?

Labels if there's room for them, numbers if not.

I personally do an "interiors decorated" version ... and then copy the original image and take out most of the lettering labels so as to do a number system for each compartment. I then do an accounting of each individual compartment, by numbers, in text, so as to provide additional writing detail for the contents and purpose of each compartment.

It's a lot of additional WORK to do it that way, but you wind up with a much more polished final product which is more satisfying to return to as a point of reference in the future.

If you too want to make use of Traveller Geomporphs as a source of "common visual language components" to populate your deck plans with, I recommend THIS LINK.

 

[kilemall]

Worth interior furnishings for two reasons-

1) tactical play and options
2) making it ‘real’ in the sense the Enterprise, Millenium Falcon, Serenity etc are real places as homes and sets for acting out your stories.

Just figuring out where each character likes to hang out because of who/what is there, or isn’t, is a payoff fleshing them out even if a laser bolt is never fired.

 

[Badenov]

In general, maps should have symbology that adds value to gameplay. If machinery can be used as cover from some angles, can provide circumstantial bonuses, or in otherwise affects gameplay, then absolutely include it. Keep in mind, though, that an aesthetically pleasing map also adds value to gameplay, and symbology that makes it easy at a glance to tell a berthing space from a passageway has value. The question for me is how well does the map designer understand shipboard equipment spaces? They're quite complicated in my experience. Or is it just an attempt to capture a look and feel? That can be good but misleading. RL aircraft can be complicated to move around, with equipment in belowdeck crawl spaces, behind large and obstructing equipment, etc, and I presume spacecraft would be the same.

 

[casquilho]

I tend to pass on deck plans with too much stuff on them. I find the plans with less stuff more useful and easier to see. Having too much junk has caused me to not buy ship books for example.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I tend to pass on deck plans with too much stuff on them. I find the plans with less stuff more useful and easier to see. Having too much junk

There definitely is something to be said for KISS (Keep It Simple Stupid) when it comes to the drawing of deck plans.
Seeing deck plans that are "so chock-a-block full" that a person can barely move around inside the compartment spaces just winds up being "visual noise" that gets hard to look at. So going ... overboard ... on the detail can definitely be a turn off for some people.

 

[whartung]

So going ... overboard ... on the detail can definitely be a turn off for some people

Arguably, that's a design problem, not a deck plan problem.

A "so chock-a-block full" compartment is what it is! If you don't want it so full, spec a bigger compartment. People are people size and need furnishings to match. The clutter of the deck plan represents the compromise of having to live in the tight spaces of cheap starship operators who refuse to spec more tonnage for staterooms and workspaces.

It would be nice to see a luxury Scout. 150-200 dTon. Whatever is enough to give the folks elbow room. The Yacht should be that, but, apparently, isn't.

 

[kilemall]

Arguably, that's a design problem, not a deck plan problem.

A "so chock-a-block full" compartment is what it is! If you don't want it so full, spec a bigger compartment. People are people size and need furnishings to match. The clutter of the deck plan represents the compromise of having to live in the tight spaces of cheap starship operators who refuse to spec more tonnage for staterooms and workspaces.

It would be nice to see a luxury Scout. 150-200 dTon. Whatever is enough to give the folks elbow room. The Yacht should be that, but, apparently, isn't.

The trick is to use the hunting ship as a yacht and repurpose the animal tanks as luxury facilities.

 

[whartung]

The trick is to use the hunting ship as a yacht and repurpose the animal tanks as luxury facilities.

Quite.

"Is the straw bed normal?"

"Oh, yes. It's quite the thing right now. Tre' Chic. Vegan, all natural..."

"And what about the bucket on the floor?"

"Filled with mineral spring water."

 

[casquilho]

Arguably, that's a design problem, not a deck plan problem.

A "so chock-a-block full" compartment is what it is! If you don't want it so full, spec a bigger compartment. People are people size and need furnishings to match. The clutter of the deck plan represents the compromise of having to live in the tight spaces of cheap starship operators who refuse to spec more tonnage for staterooms and workspaces.

I think we are not talking the same thing. My rejection of the "chock-a-block full" is the visual noise that makes some people's deck plans hard to read. I am not rejecting the small room per say, but I do not need an orange rug and a pink bed with a person in it and a blue desk and yellow chair for example. I am more than capable of imagining the small compartment filled with the crew member's stuff. I want to be able to see the layout itself, not a color blitz of crap. So no, creating a deck plan that is so cluttered it is hard to read is not helpful in my opinion.

 

[Spinward Flow]

I want to be able to see the layout itself, not a color blitz of crap.

To that point, I prefer to use the b/w & greyscale geomorphs as much as possible, while using color only sparingly for things that ought to be colored (such as trees and other greenery).

For me, it's more about the "retro-compatibility" of imagining that what I'm doing could have wound up in a LBB at some point ... hardly any of which used color tones for much of anything (since color was EXPENSIVE in those days!).

 

[Grav_Moped]

For me, it's more about the "retro-compatibility" of imagining that what I'm doing could have wound up in a LBB at some point ... hardly any of which used color tones for much of anything (since color was EXPENSIVE in those days!).

This.

Except I draw in Azhanti High Lightning.

 

[atpollard]

I like the “negative space” deckplans of the newer CT reboot (like Mongoose and Cepheus). The white space that shows the narrow access and the black for machinery surrounding it because who cares exactly which grid is which component that doesn’t work in 3D anyway.

 

[whartung]

Yea, but here's the thing.

Here's that commons room with a 4 ft round table and 4 chairs. Just a chair. No cabinets or counters or anything else.

Just to show how much of that space is taken up by a routine piece of furniture (not to advocate that this is something you'd put there), but anyone who's bought furniture, especially for small rooms, knows how fast it fills up.

Don't need to cram 32 low berths in there like a pack of batteries, but even routine furnishings takes up space.

 

[Spinward Flow]

but even routine furnishings takes up space.

That's one of the downsides of actually playing "interior decorator" of deck plans. You start realizing just how much (floor) space various "taken for granted because they're ordinary" bits of furniture consume.

One of the longest running tropes in well written sci-fi is that crew/passenger accommodations aboard sealed environment craft (submarines, spacecraft, starships, etc.) really amounts to barely "cubicle space/cramped closet" when it comes to notions of privacy. A bunk and barely enough room to sidestep beside it winds up being kind of typical.

When it comes to (open life support) wet navy surface ships, the long running joke is that "steel is cheap and air is free" when crew spaces need to be allocated.

When it comes to (closed life support) submersibles/spacecraft/starships ... hull metal is NOT cheap (especially if streamlined) and displacement is anything BUT "free" (since the more of it you have, the more drives you need to push that displacement around, the more EXPENSIVE the construction costs get!). In a closed life support environment, volume (to put stuff in) is at a PREMIUM ... and crew spaces are no exception to that.

As @whartung demonstrates above, it can be helpful to try "putting stuff into compartments" and see how far you get before you start running out of room/walkable access floor space.

 

[Badenov]

When it comes to (open life support) wet navy surface ships, the long running joke is that "steel is cheap and air is free" when crew spaces need to be allocated.

That may be the joke, but it is not the reality.


This is the reality of Navy living for enlisted. Officers get considerably more room,

but it's still pretty small. "Hull metal is NOT cheap," is true for all vessels even if it's a bit cheaper on the surface.

 

[Dragoner]

I have barracks, and have thought of making ships with open areas (cargo) for PT and games. Just as an idea though. Kind of violate the rules as written.

 

[Condottiere]

Convertible roof would be nice.