Ripley sure did!
House Rules, Starship Design
- Thread starter Vargas
- Start date
Nostromo was used to move giant refactories around. The blueprints book has some really good deck plans and diagrams of all that. it did have some internal cargo but it was pulling a giant asteroid smelter.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
So ... tug+barge ... hauling a LARGE external cargo ...
a really, really large external cargo (as in several 1000x the size/volume of the tug). Not that you actually saw it much in the movie according to the book and special effects (and it has been 30+ years since I saw it so did not even know that until the tech manual/blueprints book came out.So ... tug+barge ... hauling a LARGE external cargo ...
And 2000Td J1/1000Td J2 are the sweet spot from a LBB2 "naval architecture" standpoint, disregarding cargo availability. Someone's going to build a lot of them.
I’m thinking about post-HG OTU. Everyone knows what Ghalalk is, a Tigress, etc. What are the canon commercial equivalents?
We know they are there “in the background” and I get it, naval vessels are more popular because pew-pew is fun. But B7 missed an opportunity to provide Ghalalk-class merchant vessels that get the players from Fledgling Line to Subsector Line… and beyond!
Since it’s post HG, you could have 5K to say 20K ships for Fledgling lines, 20K to 100K ships for Subsector lines, Megacorps with “starships up to a million tons!” But it’s easy to say that in hindsight.
I guess I’ve made my point, and yes I do have such vessels in my MgT TU. And they are AWESOME. A 10K dton freighter converted to a hospital ship to save the population of a dying planet… a 20K ton liner that has so much crew they’re political factions… a 500K ton “Leviathan” that has so many small craft and crew it’s almost a solar system in and of itself…
We know they are there “in the background” and I get it, naval vessels are more popular because pew-pew is fun. But B7 missed an opportunity to provide Ghalalk-class merchant vessels that get the players from Fledgling Line to Subsector Line… and beyond!
Since it’s post HG, you could have 5K to say 20K ships for Fledgling lines, 20K to 100K ships for Subsector lines, Megacorps with “starships up to a million tons!” But it’s easy to say that in hindsight.
I guess I’ve made my point, and yes I do have such vessels in my MgT TU. And they are AWESOME. A 10K dton freighter converted to a hospital ship to save the population of a dying planet… a 20K ton liner that has so much crew they’re political factions… a 500K ton “Leviathan” that has so many small craft and crew it’s almost a solar system in and of itself…
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Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Supercarriers, with crews in the thousands, are called "floating cities" in today's wet navy.
There is no reason to expect extremely large starships with large crews to be much different in that regard.
There is no reason to expect extremely large starships with large crews to be much different in that regard.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
I suspect that while most of us have an instinctive understanding as to how navies work, economics is pretty much made up in Traveller.
Which is one reason that no one has bothered to design Panamax freighters.
Which is one reason that no one has bothered to design Panamax freighters.
Nope. Ripley blew the thing up.
Still, matters not. Emergency disposal protocol differs. Either way, the players can get in over their heads, and fun is had by all!
I actually don't have a house rule, but the one thing I always wanted to implement was a one-ton granularity for jump drives. Such that you didn't have to design ships that were 100 tons, 200 tons, 300 tons and so forth, but could design ships that were ... 112 tons, or 284 tons and so forth. I think it would free up people's imaginations to design more imaginative vessels.
The short answer is you can do that under High Guard, and kinda under Book2. Book2 basic drive increment is 200 tons of performance per whole letter. Thus the jump drive increase could be stated at 40 tons of performance per ton of drive increase. Note there is five tons of overhead on jump drives.
Not easily, from what I recall. The barrier is just the hex based movement across a sector, because you get no benefit from a jump drive designed for a 140 ton ship over one designed for 100 tons. When I was trying to design operational movement rules for another system some 20 years ago, it became apparent that for interstellar travel you needed to measure things in either light years or parsecs depending on the scale of the system.
To me it was just one of those barriers thrown up there by virtue of the game's design. More "ideally" systems would have actual interstellar distances put into a map instead of hex based movement. That way you could design a ships that could X, Y and Z instead of making "jump 1" moves across a map, and relying on the next system being one jump away.
I'm not really into it, but it was something I thought of over the years. It just may not be practical due to the added complexity of putting down actual interstellar distances as opposed to hex based distance which is easier to understand in terms of characters getting their ship from A to B.
Oh well. Just a random thought. Don't take it too seriously.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
Extrapolations, mostly: I like to stick to the (design) rules as written, in the naïve belief that they are fair and balanced, and have been published after much soul searching and extensive testing.
I think the most egregious departures would be docking clamps and deconstructing the jump drive.
I think the most egregious departures would be docking clamps and deconstructing the jump drive.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Already ahead of you (in doing that with LBB5.80).
You CAN do a 150 ton starship under LBB2 (for example) ... it's just that you wind up designing it as a 150 ton custom hull and use the 200 ton row for drive letter to number conversions. This is inherently "inefficient" to do, but it does allow some wacky things like needing only 30 tons of fuel for a jump-2 out of a Jump-B drive in a 150 ton hull (instead of the expected 40 tons for a 200 ton starship).
It's one of the reasons why I never cared for LBB2 starship design myself, since it's all organized around Table To Results ... rather than the LBB5 system of Table To Formula For Results which makes hull sizes in increments besides multiples of 10 or 100 tons more useful to contemplate (as I seem to keep doing).
If you're familiar with my posts in The Fleet forum over the past ~4 months or so, you'll have noticed that I keep using 194 ton hulls for things ... not because I set out to use that hull size to the exclusion of all else (as a personal design quirk), but becuase the mathematics of starship design keep gravitating towards that 194 ton hull size in a kind of Strange Attractor sort of way as being the most efficient hull size given what else needs to be stuffed inside of it (drives, fuel, bridge, computer, turret, staterooms, cargo, etc.). Somehow, I keep landing on 194 tons as being a tremendous "sweet spot" for LBB5.80 low end civilian starship designs for a wide variety of reasons.
And oddly enough, I'm working on yet another starship design that is once again modeling out as being 194 tons of hull is the optimal hull size (because 18% of 194 is 34.92 tons worth of drives, meaning you only need 1 engineer per 35 tons of drives if you're going to have any engineers at all). This is "true" not because I want it to be ... but because that's simply what happens with a Jump-3 (4%), Maneuver-2 (5%), Power Plant-3 (9% @ TL=12) starship hull fraction under LBB5.80, and the number to "reach but not go over" is 35 tons of drives due to crew requirements (per LBB2 for starships 1000 tons and under). However, in this case, I might need to scale up to the full 200 tons anyway (and take the hit of needing to provide another stateroom for an extra engineer plus a medic), which you will notice means needing to add 8 tons more to the fixed displacement inside the ship while adding only 6 tons to the hull displacement ... meaning that going from 194 tons to 200 tons of hull size winds up perversely reducing the amount of cargo space available (because the drives and fuel tankage needs to go up too) which really puts the squeeze play on balancing the competing needs of everything that has to go into a starship while still making it all fit. It's just kind of perverse that above 194 tons you have to "overshoot" 200 tons by a good bit in order realize the same amount of cargo capacity (absolute tonnage) that you can achieve at 194 tons (or less, depending on specifics).
LBB2 doesn't give you that kind of mathematical granularity, since everything is predefined (and spoon fed) to you as a starship designer. I've always looked at the LBB2 system as a fine example of premature optimization ... because LBB2 "works" as a set of starship design rules, but it also railroads you into using extremely specific hull sizes for EVERYTHING and penalizes you for deviating from that course of design action.
Yeah, railroading is correct. I'm sure it was done for ease of player use or accessibility and just the ease of game mechanics as I stated in my previous post; i.e. it's easier to move 1 to 6 hexes as opposed to doing some serious math of how far you need to go and how much to crank up your jump drive.
Having said that, the way I viewed the genre as a whole when I was a yougin' and my "friend" gave me the boxed Starter Edition, the genre had a lot of artistry that touched on real world astronomy and science at the time. That being so I always wondered why there weren't more variants on the basic scout ship, or, more precisely, larger scout ships that had some slight advantages over the old basic design. In other words other designs that had things like a slightly larger cargo capacity, sensors that were a bit more sensitive or powerful, or could carry a weapon or two more, or had "lighter" weapons or gun ports for HEWs and so forth. It just struck me as odd that there weren't more different types of starships in the 100 to 200 ton range.
And so when I tinkered with starship design and saw the limitations of the design system, I just stopped working with it. It was cleat that it was limited by the rule set, and that was kind of that. The Suleiman class seemed like the do-all starship for most things, and there wasn't much point in trying to design something that had an extra ten or twenty tons of space for ... I don't know ... a mobile lab or a field medical unit or ... just something unique that would benefit the players.
Again, it's not a big deal to me. It's more of a curiosity on my part since the game is still around after all these years. IMTU it was a blend of scifi properties; from Star Wars to Starchaser (an SW knockoff), and the starports weren't just crowded with wedged shaped scout ships, but ideally all kinds of configurations of all kinds of tonnages. But that's just my personal take on when I ran the game.
Officially I guess the flying cheese wedge is only rivalled by scout ships from the major empires, so in that respect it might be a kind of pretty bland or boring OTU when it comes to hanging out at the starport watching ships take off and land. It just felt like there would be vessels that were slightly larger that were dedicated to assault or black ops, or some science or research; a botanical lab or geology lab or something ... or looking for hydrocarbons or chemicals in other world's fauna. But, the game emphasizes security scenarios, so the scout ship takes precedence.
I guess if there were a future iteration of the game ... I don't know ... I guess it's clear that interstellar travel is etched in stone, so maybe hull variants could benefit from interplanetary travel somehow, and that could show up in some way in the ship design rules. I don't know, I'm must tossing out ideas. I am pretty much done with the game, but I do still like discussing it as a hobby.
I hope this helps fire some ideas.
Having said that, the way I viewed the genre as a whole when I was a yougin' and my "friend" gave me the boxed Starter Edition, the genre had a lot of artistry that touched on real world astronomy and science at the time. That being so I always wondered why there weren't more variants on the basic scout ship, or, more precisely, larger scout ships that had some slight advantages over the old basic design. In other words other designs that had things like a slightly larger cargo capacity, sensors that were a bit more sensitive or powerful, or could carry a weapon or two more, or had "lighter" weapons or gun ports for HEWs and so forth. It just struck me as odd that there weren't more different types of starships in the 100 to 200 ton range.
And so when I tinkered with starship design and saw the limitations of the design system, I just stopped working with it. It was cleat that it was limited by the rule set, and that was kind of that. The Suleiman class seemed like the do-all starship for most things, and there wasn't much point in trying to design something that had an extra ten or twenty tons of space for ... I don't know ... a mobile lab or a field medical unit or ... just something unique that would benefit the players.
Again, it's not a big deal to me. It's more of a curiosity on my part since the game is still around after all these years. IMTU it was a blend of scifi properties; from Star Wars to Starchaser (an SW knockoff), and the starports weren't just crowded with wedged shaped scout ships, but ideally all kinds of configurations of all kinds of tonnages. But that's just my personal take on when I ran the game.
Officially I guess the flying cheese wedge is only rivalled by scout ships from the major empires, so in that respect it might be a kind of pretty bland or boring OTU when it comes to hanging out at the starport watching ships take off and land. It just felt like there would be vessels that were slightly larger that were dedicated to assault or black ops, or some science or research; a botanical lab or geology lab or something ... or looking for hydrocarbons or chemicals in other world's fauna. But, the game emphasizes security scenarios, so the scout ship takes precedence.
I guess if there were a future iteration of the game ... I don't know ... I guess it's clear that interstellar travel is etched in stone, so maybe hull variants could benefit from interplanetary travel somehow, and that could show up in some way in the ship design rules. I don't know, I'm must tossing out ideas. I am pretty much done with the game, but I do still like discussing it as a hobby.
I hope this helps fire some ideas.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
When you only have about 2-3 pages of LBB space to spend detailing standard starship designs, there isn't going to be a huge amount of variety in starships defined for you within the setting. LBB S7 and S9 did a good job of providing all of the OTHER starship designs to encounter in the setting beyond the basic few in LBB2, and LBB S4 added a couple more to the list as mustering out benefits, but in CT that was pretty much the extent of it (aside from LBB S5 of course). LBB A5 was the invitation for people to design their own fleets of ships and fighters, while LBB A1 detailed the Kinunir class ... and LBB DA1 had the Annic Nova, of course.
Thing is that the LBB format, being printed books (rather than wiki pages on a site), meant that the amount of space to detail the wealth of possible starship designs was necessarily limited ... and LBB1-3 were about as bare bones as you could get within their respective formats. So the impulse towards premature optimization made a lot of sense for LBB2, but that sensibility got overtaken by LBB5 and the more robust space construction system released in that book, which just simply more "powerful" of a custom design tool (imnsho).
Thing is that the LBB format, being printed books (rather than wiki pages on a site), meant that the amount of space to detail the wealth of possible starship designs was necessarily limited ... and LBB1-3 were about as bare bones as you could get within their respective formats. So the impulse towards premature optimization made a lot of sense for LBB2, but that sensibility got overtaken by LBB5 and the more robust space construction system released in that book, which just simply more "powerful" of a custom design tool (imnsho).
I want to point out very few vehicles use custom designed engines or drivetrains or electronics Etc.etc. Which is one of the reasons Book2 is a fine example Basic design with plenty of room for player and GM ideas to expand upon it.
Now a lot of people get fixated on absolute volume when it comes to ships, when there a bunch of invisible space that is generated in the production deckplans. Thus all volume is relative in what is the final expression of the design.
A final comment is I love the mini-game that is Starships, but we need to see the difference of a ship for a RPG and one for a Wargame.
Now a lot of people get fixated on absolute volume when it comes to ships, when there a bunch of invisible space that is generated in the production deckplans. Thus all volume is relative in what is the final expression of the design.
A final comment is I love the mini-game that is Starships, but we need to see the difference of a ship for a RPG and one for a Wargame.
That's what I'm talking about. You can turn LBB2's drive tables into formulae. They're slightly complicated, but there is a set of formulae that underlie the tables (with one rounding-up exception at Rating=1 at 1000Td, and a whole bunch for the TL-15 Size W-Z drives that let the table work without having to use drive letters beyond Z -- and the maneuver drive formula breaks down below 200G-tons thrust).
Those for Jump Drives need their variables controlled to force them to resolve to integer performance values (why build a Jump 1.5 ship when worlds are spaced in 1-parsec increments?) In LBB2 (especially if you're trying to track energy points), intermediate drive ratings such as Pn=3.5 or 2.5Gs ought to be perfectly reasonable. In High Guard, they can't be, because those rules work in integer units.
The "invisible space" point is important in drawing LBB2 and HG starships. The "on paper" stats say what the ship can do and what fits into it, in a very loose manner. The rest is up to artistic license. Your ship has four staterooms? You get 32 or so 1.5m deck plan squares for them. Make it 4 rooms of 4 squares each and 16 squares of "common area" and you're good. This doesn't mean you can then subdivide that "common area" and add another few staterooms to the official tally. (Well, you can but they're half-staterooms that can't be used for passengers...)
One issue with the "difference between 'RPG' and 'wargame' construction rules" is that LBB2 and HG are built to optimize for their respective combat rules. LBB2's construction rules (specifically power plant fuel and maneuver drive size) are distorted by the (ahem) "counterintuitive" maneuver fuel use paradigm from the '77 version of LBB2, and were never properly corrected.
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