Airlocks

[themink]

on page 278 it says
"At least one Airlock is required in any small craft or starship, and more than one is usually installed allowing for passengers to emb...One airlock is provided on every hull built at no additional charge but takes up the normal 3 tons of space within the hull itself. Any airlocks beyond this first must be bought and installed seperately."

This seems very clear. None of the sample craft pay this 3 tons for theior "first" airlock.

I am deliberately misreading it to say that the One airlock is free (both cost and space) per 1,000 dt of hull (or part there off)

Is this errata, do the standard crafts need changing, am I readin it wrong?

 

[Libris]

I am of the opinion that airlocks should be free.

Main Airlocks
All ships have a Main Airlock capacity of 0.25%,of displacement, or 1 ton (whichever is less) free. Every ton of airlock can handle two people. Main airlocks have fully opening doors with ramps or lifts for access if required and can handle any airlock operation including cargo and vehicles. The minimum size of a main airlock is one ton. The mimimum number of main airlocks depends on displacement.
</font>

• Minimum
  Displacent Main Airlocks
  100-999 1
  1000-4999 2
  5000-9999 3
  10000-49999 4
  50000-99999 5
  100000-499999 6
  500000+ 7</font>

Auxiliary Airlocks
These are generally smaller than main airlocks and will only cope with personell or very small cargo. They have no vehicle handling capability. Every vessel has auxiliary airlock capacity equal to half it's main airlock capacity.
Exampe A 100 ton vessel has a 1 ton main airlock (2 man)and a 0.5 ton auxiliary airlock (1 man)
Example The 50,000 ton Strike Cruiser 'Kommarii' has 125 tons of airlocks. It must have 5. So it has two 50 ton airlocks, two ten ton airlocks and a 5 ton airlock. It could just as easily have had 5 25 ton airlocks. It also has 125-man (62.5tons) capacity of auxiliary airlocks.

For continuity (of a sort) with HG things like machineshops and the like can be assumed under 'bridge'. However, some sort of canonical list would need to be drawn up to state just what is and what is not assumed to be onboard a vessel of a particular size.

 

[themink]

So you think that it belongs in errata also?

 

[Libris]

More of an "Addendum" really.

I like the detail stuff but more in the case of detailing what is already there than adding more stuff for the sake of it.

The airlock rule would be like, "Well of course your ship has airlocks, they're assumed under bridge size."
"How many and what size are they?"
"Well, that's in the addendum."
It's not that important from the point of view of the rules but the detail is there if you need it.

 

[themink]

So the question is, is the statement "One airlock is provided on every hull built at no additional charge but takes up the normal 3 tons of space within the hull itself" an error or are the standard designs all errors.

It must be either one or the other unless I am reading it wrong.

 

[Tom Schoene]

I read that text as meaining that all ships have one airlock incuded in either the bridge or the acommodations volume that does not need to eb accounted for separately. Wehn drawing frloorplns, this airlock should occupy about 3 tons (probably including spacesuit lockers outside the lock proper.)

However, I agree it's a silly rule. No ship should ever be designed with only one airlock (an invitation to a single-point failure if I ever saw one) and charging for the fairly common half-ton and one-ton locks is just silly. So I would tend to ignore the rule and draw ships with air locks as appropriate, with their volume counting against engineering, accomodation, and bridge space if you really feel it's necessary to keep track that precisely.