Official deckplans vs. accurate deckplans

[bozzutoman]

Apparently there are several OCD gearheards that have verified a few CT deckplans as incorrect. It appears the plans listed are bigger than they should be.

• 400T Subsidized Merchant (Type R) from Traders and Gunboats
• 200T Far Trader [Empress Marava] (Type A2), from Traders and Gunboats
• 800T Broadsword Mercenary Cruiser from Adventure 7 - Broadsword


This knowledge elicits a few questions:

• Besides those listed above are any other "official" deckplans in error?

• Which websites have accurate deckplans for these incorrect ships?

• Are there any stats for the official deckplans adjusted for their size so they may still be used?

 

[mike wightman]

The free trader in DGP's otherwise excellent Starship Operator's Manual is a bit on the large size too.

http://www.sff.net/people/kitsune/traveller/

and

http://www.sff.net/people/kitsune/traveller/peter/starships.html

are two excellent sites, whose resources I now use a lot.

You mean redesigns of the ships to the correct siz for the deck plan, e.g. the Far Trader deck plans used for a 400t ship?
I don't remember anything official.

An unofficial fudge I've heard from a few people is to assume the grid is 1m per side of square.

 

[TheEngineer]

Usually the assumption, that deck height is slightly(!) different from 3 m fixes overall volume problems in most designs....

 

[Andrew Boulton]

I think the Xboat tender is a bit out, too. Wouldn't surprise me if they were all wrong.

 

[Ran Targas]

^ Another reason I draw my own and count a lot of boxes.

 

[far-trader]

OCD? Ah, Obsessive compulsory disorder. Not the same thing at all

I am borderline OCD (which is odd given other personality aspects) but it has nothing to do with expecting rules to be followed.

• Besides those listed above are any other "official" deckplans in error?

Would it seem harsh if I said NONE of the official deckplans I've EVER seen to the best of my recollection (and I've seen a lot if not all of them) were accurate?

To be fair some are close, others are nowhere near. Oh sure some of them may be close if you apply some voodoo (the SOM type A for example, with it's 10foot long beds) but that's still wrong.

• Which websites have accurate deckplans for these incorrect ships?

In addition to the links above in Sigg's post there have been a few. Unfortunately I lost the bookmarks to some and others are 404. Any of my own should be pretty accurate but they are scattered; across the net, my computers, backup disks, and piles of paper on shelves and in boxes

My own website is still on the list of things to do

• Are there any stats for the official deckplans adjusted for their size so they may still be used?

I was going to say "What's the point?" but I guess I can see it. Just seems like a bass ackwards way of getting what you want. Actually it sounds like a Solomani way of doing things The CT-AM6 Solomani type-AS "free-trader" is J2 and 400tons with only two hardpoints. So there you go, use the deckplans from SOM for the type-AS and make your Solomani giants

Sorry this reply couldn't be more helpful.

 

[TheEngineer]

Folks, You`ve got too much time

 

[Pickles]

What you guys are not seeing is that the ships came first. The nice, round numbers were just tacked on by imperial beurocrats who like to see nice, round zeroes on their ship registry files. So, the floorplans are accurate, it's the specs that are out of kilter ...

 

[far-trader]

I know you're jesting Bromgrev, and believe me I could live with a fudge factor, even as much as the rule allowed +20%. But when the illustration states the scale and then shows a human sized bed that is just short of 3m that's just wrong. Or when the depicted plans for a 200ton ship come out closer to 400ton that's just wrong.

And I'm not saying it's only the artist to blame. Some of this is so obvious that someone who knows the game could see it without much trouble. So either there was no playtesting/editing/proofing done of the deckplans or they slipped up as well.

In the end it's more errata and a waste of my game dollars since I have to go and redo it, on my own time. Time which could be better spent leading me to feel twice ripped off to answer TheEngineer. It's not hard to do it right the first time, unless we are to believe artists can't do simply math.

The real kicker is nobody seems to do official corrections for visual errata so it's left up to the fans who do it for love (and/or sanity, often losing it in the process

).

 

[Starviking]

Originally posted by far-trader:

And I'm not saying it's only the artist to blame. Some of this is so obvious that someone who knows the game could see it without much trouble. So either there was no playtesting/editing/proofing done of the deckplans or they slipped up as well.

I dunno,

speaking only for myself, it was a surprise when the venerable Far Trader was revealed to be twice a big as the official statistics.

Starviking

 

[far-trader]

Probably because, like me early on, you accepted that it had been properly done. Once aware that something is wrong with it all you need to do is count the squares across the vertical and horizontal and multiply. The surprise is very understandable since such an easy check was not done before it was accepted for publication.

Of course there is the possibility it was checked and a simple error was made. Easy enough to do and it could explain it, IF it was only the odd design and IF each was only checked ONCE. But it's not just one design, and at the very least each design should have been checked TWICE, once by the illustrator and once by someone else.

All the convuluted "fixes" and imaginitive "explanations" aside, it was just wrong. And annoyingly I don't recall it ever being officially acknowledged as such, but maybe I missed that.

 

[Andrew Boulton]

Marc is aware of the problem, and hopes (but doesn't promise) to have corrected plans of the classic ships in T5.

 

[parmasson]

"speaking only for myself, it was a surprise when the venerable Far Trader was revealed to be twice a big as the official statistics.
Starviking"

What about juat making it a 400 ton Far Trader + ? Ummm, well, perhaps not :-(

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
Marc is aware of the problem, and hopes (but doesn't promise) to have corrected plans of the classic ships in T5.

All he has to do is endorse some of the fan created ones that are already out there.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Andrew Boulton:
Marc is aware of the problem, and hopes (but doesn't promise) to have corrected plans of the classic ships in T5.

All he has to do is endorse some of the fan created ones that are already out there. </font>[/QUOTE]Quite! A simple open call for submissions would have a number of choices on his way in no time. Most of us would probably be happy to contribute just for the mention and a comp copy. Some of us would do it for less. But...

The above probably applies to any or every rule set but T5. How different is the T5 architecture going to be? What kind of impact will that have on the deckplans? Many of them are already corrected several times over, for each rules iteration. I for one am getting tired of that old dance. And I left the T5 "discussions" long ago because it seemed a waste of time (but I won't go into that here, check that forum for those thoughts). It gives me no confidence to hear Marc may fix the deckplans for T5. Sadly it just doesn't interest me.

 

[bryan gibson]

personally, for myself, I have never understood what all the heartburn is. Either its a representation ( which is fine for me) or its a source of gameplay mapping for combat, in which such grim detail has never yet proved needed or useful.

The enourmous grief people seem to get from the deckplans "inaccuracies" strike me as being far over any fun factor that might be otherwise be applied.

Just my take, anyway.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Fat Trader? My own count (on the March Hare in Traveller Adventure, among others) actually puts this one much closer to stated than either of the standard 200 tonners.

The enourmous grief people seem to get from the deckplans "inaccuracies" strike me as being far over any fun factor that might be otherwise be applied.

Part of the fun does actually derive from analyzing provided examples. This is all part of the second game within Traveller: the solo "Building stuff" game.

 

[GypsyComet]

The Marava hull got a TNE revision in "Guilded Lilly" that is very close to correct, if a bit different. TNE detractors aside, that IS official.

The Free Trader in T4 Starships is also the right size, though the hull form is quite different.

The folks at Seeker Systems (a company with a tendency to fade in and out of J-Space unpredictably) did a 400-ton re-write of the Marava hull, dunno if they're cannon this week or not...

I also did a 400-ton Marava re-write, but mine differed quite a bit. Mine is also not official by any stretch...

 

[Ran Targas]

As a pseudo-gearhead I must admit I'm not the best ship designer but I do it because I feel absolutely depressed about the lack of variety in the OTU. I know I'm speaking in extreme generalizations here but having traditionally only one (official) 100dT sized ship for your characters to run around it seems pretty unimaginative. I'm particularly depressed in the fact that there is really no variation across human or even alien space, only upgrades by TL to the same boring hulls. Is the Dark Night over yet?

Sure all cars and boats and airplanes are basically the same, sharing the same general forms, but they don't all look the same; different designers and manufacturers add their own aesthetic based on function and flair. Ex-Soviet aircraft are easily distinguishable from U.S. and Brit built; particularly in the field of military aircraft. But not in Traveller; a Type S is a Type S is a Type S. Yawn!

So much for this year's new model, the Imperial Starways Seeker XLV; redesigned with new curved lines for better atmospheric handling, an improved sensor package good to 2 light minutes, an upgraded M-drive for better fuel economy, and a new powerplant, fully automated for ease of operation!

 

[mike wightman]

There were at least two other semi official versions of the scout - the Intrepid class from Snapshot and the Serpent class from Paranoia Press which also made it into JTAS.

I can understand the Vilani megacorporations standardising designs across the Imperium, but I agree that local shipyards would produce many different versions across charted space.