Ship Building IYTU

[far-trader]

OK, the general published designs of ships tends to be across all TL's and varying budget and feature choices but it seems most player's and GM's I run into want the best of everything in one kick-butt ship and never mind the budget. Could be I'm sampling a small pool or its just the nature of a limited amount of time to devote to a homebuilt ship leads to making it the best possible. So on to the poll...

 

[Father Fletch]

I like your poll. One thing I think of more is building to the performance specs instead of the cost. For merchant craft building for passengers and cargo means that there is less in the way of weapons, agility, jump and maneuver, overall, which tends to keep the cost down since those are all expensive things.
With military craft I figure that government budgets will often pay for expensive toys, and given that a military craft is usually much more, ton-for-ton, than a merchant craft, I don't worry about the price.
Tech level and performance are much more important in a design that has to fight. Merchants, so long as they stay below J2 and M2 seem to stay reasonable.

 

[Falkayn]

Interesting poll ...

IMTU I mostly design military vessels, hence the lack of interest in budget and the use of higher tech levels (although even then my second-line stuff is TL-13, and most first-line stuff is TL-14 with bits that are TL-15).

Civilian vessels I design are usually one-offs (racing yachts, MASSIVE Jump-3 ferries) and so I've rarely worried about budget. In fact the OTU is so nebulous about economic matters that its a impossible to know how many MCr is too much for a particular design. I gauge my budgets by playing with the design and seeing how much the price goes down when I change stuff versus how much functionality/performance is lost.

 

[trader jim]

well...that was fun....wonder if every told the truth???...me?...I think i screwed up the tonnage!!!

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by trader jim:
well...that was fun....wonder if every told the truth???...me?...I think i screwed up the tonnage!!!

Now how am I supposed to get an accurate sample of what the opposition has and the customers want if you go an skew the poll TJ? Why you'd think I was trying to cut into your CJ market or some... thing... hmmm... note to self

Hey but thanks for playing! Glad you enjoyed it

I'm sure everybody told the whole truth, they wouldn't lie to lil ol me would they?

 

[far-trader]

Hey Father Fletch, long time no see, or have I just missed some posts? Thanks for the kudos and insights. I kind of agree about the budget deal so I kept it worded vaguely and offered the easy out. For myself I like to have a ballpark figure in mind when I go to design, based on:

Function - commercial (will it make money), civilian (is it affordable for the market, usually Nobles) or military (easily 2-4 times the previous)

Tonnage - a general feel for the gross cost

Perfomance - naturally a simple free-trader is going to be less than a similar tonnage far-trader but the far-trader may have more oppurtunity for special contracts

Sticking to the budget helps keep me from runaway mightaswell syndrome. And if I do go over budget I just throw in a couple quirks to bring it back down, like the insulation between the engineering coolant exhaust and the cargo hold is substandard so if the drives are run at peak performance it gets very, very warm in the back of the hold

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Falkayn:
Interesting poll ...

Thanks

Hmm... unless he means interesting as in what a warped brain I have? Nah

Besides that'd still be a compliment in my reality so thanks again

Originally posted by Falkayn:
IMTU I mostly design military vessels, hence the lack of interest in budget and the use of higher tech levels (although even then my second-line stuff is TL-13, and most first-line stuff is TL-14 with bits that are TL-15).

Sounds a lot like my military philosophy, let me guess, you grew up in the post FW SM too

Originally posted by Falkayn:
Civilian vessels I design are usually one-offs (racing yachts, MASSIVE Jump-3 ferries) and so I've rarely worried about budget. In fact the OTU is so nebulous about economic matters that its a impossible to know how many MCr is too much for a particular design. I gauge my budgets by playing with the design and seeing how much the price goes down when I change stuff versus how much functionality/performance is lost.

Pretty valid point. I usually like to come up with some vague idea of what the market will bear. Either as economically viable for a route or within the disposable income level of Nobles. Of course playing with your spreadsheet(?) lets you tweak at will, eh?

 

[trader jim]

How many tons are those new FAT TRADERS???...Thats how i screwed up the tonnage.

 

[Jame]

Hey! I was gonna post this same topic in "the Fleet!" How dare you!

Actually, I was gonna focus on the technical side of it, so I suppose it's okay... Nice post!

I voted as if I were to design ships, not that I have yet. If I were to design them, I'd concentrate on 100 to 10,000 ton ships (though I had a few ships designed, one at 50k and another at 100k, the rest at about 10k). All tech levels were 12+, although _if_ I were to have more designed I'd do it at tl10+. Gotta be spaceworthy, don'cha know!

 

[Vargas]

All that time dabbling with Trillion Credit Squadron when it first came out, ('eh? what's that sonny?'), really pushed the average tonnage of ship designed *way* up!

 

[trader jim]

YAAAAAA....another OLD GEEZER!!!!
finally came outtta the "closet"???eh sonny!!
welcom to the gray hair club!!!

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Jame:
Hey! I was gonna post this same topic in "the Fleet!" How dare you!

Hehe, gots there first, nyah nyah

Originally posted by Jame:
Actually, I was gonna focus on the technical side of it, so I suppose it's okay... Nice post!

Thanks, I had a peek at your topic and its my next stop. Wish I'd thought of it

Originally posted by Jame:
I voted as if I were to design ships, not that I have yet. If I were to design them, I'd concentrate on 100 to 10,000 ton ships (though I had a few ships designed, one at 50k and another at 100k, the rest at about 10k). All tech levels were 12+, although _if_ I were to have more designed I'd do it at tl10+. Gotta be spaceworthy, don'cha know!

No problem, though that was why I put the None choice in number built. I shoulda made it clearer, like "None yet". Of course now everyone will be anxiously awaiting your designs

 

[aravain]

Are the questions for a GM or the players? As a player, I've found that the GM overcharges me from what the book says, as well as decreasing the available TL to almost nothing. To her, a refrigerator crate surrounded by plastic wrap and duct tape should suffice as a starting spot for a ship design for our crew!

As a GM, I think a crew should roll to see if duct tape is available!

Either way, the point of view could cause your poll's results to be er,.....off a few decimals

 

[far-trader]

Evening Aravain, I don't know who's more evil, you or your GM but it sounds like any game would be fun <eg>

I didn't consider there might be two sides to the issue. Except that PC's will want all the bell's and whistles, right now, customized and oh yeah it should be free. So that and a couple other points in the questions I might have made better may skew things but its providing some interesting feedback anyway.

So long as 'you' (anyone) has looked at the design system for any version of Traveller with a thought to designing a ship, you may be a gearhead

and you're more than welcome to participate in this little census. Thanks for dropping by and playing.

 

[Jame]

Now that I've been committed, maybe I'll look at the GURPS design system (or the T4 system, while it's on hand). I'll have to take a while, though, I have a landgrab and an adventure to write up.

 

[Father Fletch]

Far-Trader
I have been posting a bit. Just look under my Recent Posts at This Link
I have been a busy boy

 

[far-trader]

My oversight, either I was half asleep reading some of those or my memory is really going of late

I did read some of those topics, at least up to a point. Its possible I just missed your contributions. Thanks for making it easy to catch up.

 

[Hecateus]

In case you missed this in the other related thread:
> Legos in Space <

 

[Stormraven]

Originally posted by far-trader:
OK, the general published designs of ships tends to be across all TL's and varying budget and feature choices but it seems most player's and GM's I run into want the best of everything in one kick-butt ship and never mind the budget. Could be I'm sampling a small pool or its just the nature of a limited amount of time to devote to a homebuilt ship leads to making it the best possible. So on to the poll...

Bit of a problem with your poll, sir. It requires answers to the last three questions even if you answer #1 'no'.

For the record, I do not - and have never - designed ships in Traveller. I've looked the ship design over, but it's never made any sense to me. Frankly, I've never really found a design sequence in any game that made sense. Hero comes close, but what you have to do to make a reasonable ship gets silly. GURPS and Traveller (all the versions I've seen) are next to impossible - at least for me. Obviously, some people understand them.

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Stormraven:
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by far-trader:
OK, the general published designs of ships tends to be across all TL's and varying budget and feature choices but it seems most player's and GM's I run into want the best of everything in one kick-butt ship and never mind the budget. Could be I'm sampling a small pool or its just the nature of a limited amount of time to devote to a homebuilt ship leads to making it the best possible. So on to the poll...

Bit of a problem with your poll, sir. It requires answers to the last three questions even if you answer #1 'no'.</font>[/QUOTE]Yep, I could've worded it better. The "None" was meant for people who wanted to participate with the rest of the poll but had not actually designed any ships themselves. They could answer the rest based on how the GM or other gearhead in their group does it, or how they would or will do it. As no one has yet clicked that choice I should have made it clearer and the reuslts are hence a little skewed.

As for the rest, there used to be this really easy to use java script based ship design tool for T4, all web based so no download. I think you would have enjoyed it but it disappeared a couple years back. I've always wanted to build my own program that would just let you, the builder, pick parts from a graphic library and drop them into a rough hull, add some features and voila out comes the stats and a deckplan. Unfortunately just when I'm getting the hang of a design system and my limited programming talents along comes a new design system and/or programing language/environment

I do agree that most if not all of the design systems require a bit of foresight when building or they tend to not make a lot of sense or be easy to use. For example most want you to provide a (single) power plant before you know your total required power because weapons are chosen later in the design. My easy fixes for this are to either look ahead and figure about how much power I want, move the choice of power plant to after all the power using systems, or just plug in a power plant specific to each system that uses power as it comes up in the design. If I use the last method then at the end I can just total up all the seperate powerplants if the system requires a single powerplant for the game mechnics. Just one way I simplify.