Ship Design - Deck plans
- Thread starter PVernon
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AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
The stuff that goes between the decks.
Air ducts, ventilation, AC, CO₂ scrubbers, air cleaning and recycling.
Water pipes, waste pipes, water purification and recycling.
No need to allocate squares for it, just include it into living spaces and assume it is hidden between the decks.
Air ducts, ventilation, AC, CO₂ scrubbers, air cleaning and recycling.
Water pipes, waste pipes, water purification and recycling.
No need to allocate squares for it, just include it into living spaces and assume it is hidden between the decks.
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
It's what keeps the crew and passengers alive.
I suspect in previous editions it's take for granted, and it's still rather vague in the MongoVerse, but going by suffocation rules, you could turn it off and live off the fumes for a while, I think six months?
I'd pack a stillsuit, though.
I suspect in previous editions it's take for granted, and it's still rather vague in the MongoVerse, but going by suffocation rules, you could turn it off and live off the fumes for a while, I think six months?
I'd pack a stillsuit, though.
Life Support, Standard, Luxury, Adaptable do occupy tonnage and squares and they can be subject to damage by incoming hits on the Hit Location table for that vessel.
Luxury Life Support is required for High Passengers
Adaptable Life Support is required for distinctly non-Human Passengers
Extended Life Support allows for large crews or long-term smaller crews
Life Support appears on deckplans is is not subject to handwaving them in Starship Construction.
Luxury Life Support is required for High Passengers
Adaptable Life Support is required for distinctly non-Human Passengers
Extended Life Support allows for large crews or long-term smaller crews
Life Support appears on deckplans is is not subject to handwaving them in Starship Construction.
Luxury life support can be things such as individual thermostats in the rooms, quiet pipes in the walls, "instant" hot water, more hot water at the station in the stateroom, baffles to make the air flow quieter, better dispersion, better filters, etc.
"In mid passage the A/C blasts right on top of my head while I'm trying to sleep. I swear I'm going to wake up with pneumonia one day."
"In mid passage the A/C blasts right on top of my head while I'm trying to sleep. I swear I'm going to wake up with pneumonia one day."
You can put in a "water heater closet" if you want, but not necessary. The real dilemma is how you allocate quarters tonnage between room squares and passageways.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Is it a real dilemma though?
A starship stateroom is 4 tons.
1.5m2 deck plans are 2 squares per ton ... so a 4 ton stateroom = 8 squares of total deck space.
You can go with a 3x2 room and a 1x2 corridor outside the room (for a 4x2 deck plan space total) ... or do a 2x2 room and have 4 squares left over for corridor and "common room" shared living spaces outside the individual room.
Deck plans like the Type-S Scout/Courier (LBB S7 p17) allocate a 5x6 area of deck plan to 4 staterooms with a common corridor between them, which is 30 deck square or 15 out of 16 tons ... so strictly speaking there ought to be another 2 squares of deck plan allocated to common area elsewhere (of course, there's more than that). However, the excuse for this is easily accounted for by the fact that the bridge (proper) is a mere 5 squares with an additional 4 squares forward of the bridge for avionics, while the forward sensor position is another 8 squares of deck space (total 17). Obviously, 17 squares of deck space is only 8.5 tons out of 20 allocated for the bridge, leaving another 23 squares (plus the unspent 2 squares from the staterooms) remaining, so 25 squares of deck plan remaining for "common areas" onboard the starship (and the actually labeled common area is 4x5, so that's most of it right there).
I guess it really comes down to a question of whether or not you consider corridor spaces to be "free tonnage" or not in your deck plans.
I have always assumed that ducting, wires, thermostats, fans, grav plates, water lines, local HAVC units, water heater/cooling units, ect. are between the floors and are not part of the deck plan as such. In T5 we have, for the first time, a life support calculation that generates dtonns of stuff in two categories. Could this be food supplies? O2 tanks or hydroponics?
As far as stateroom drawing and square allocation is concerned that is a different question all together.
As far as stateroom drawing and square allocation is concerned that is a different question all together.
And it could be assumed that some of the engineering spaces could have life support as well.
In general though I've also assumed that a good chunk of the life support exists above/below the decks since we don't have 3m ceilings (except in the cargo bay apparently).
Anyway, now to actually, you know, read the T5 section on life support to see what it actually says in there.
In general though I've also assumed that a good chunk of the life support exists above/below the decks since we don't have 3m ceilings (except in the cargo bay apparently).
Anyway, now to actually, you know, read the T5 section on life support to see what it actually says in there.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
It's not really a problem in T5, since we allocate staterooms (or equivalents), common areas, and even freshers separately already in the design stage.
"Common areas" are defined as "For movement and recreation", so should include corridors.
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
As Life Support determines mission duration, it would have to include all human consumables, e.g. food, water, air, and scrubber supplies as well as recycling machinery.
As Traveller ships generally does not have very long mission durations, but are assumed to resupply every few weeks, shipboard hydroponics are generally not included. It's presumably specialised equipment for specialised circumstances?
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
Sounds like an excellent candidate for an allocation as a Workshop: Life Support Recycling.
Could even borrow the "1 steward per 8 high passengers" rule as a precedent, such that you need 1 Workshop per 8 staterooms as a way to extend life support endurance (and defray replenishment costs) if you were so inclined ...
AnotherDilbert
SOC-14 1K
Life Support, of which there are several types, has a specified duration in man-days. If you want longer duration just include more life support tonnage. For longer durations, it can presumably include hydroponics to recycle food, instead of more food storage.Sounds like an excellent candidate for an allocation as a Workshop: Life Support Recycling.
Could even borrow the "1 steward per 8 high passengers" rule as a precedent, such that you need 1 Workshop per 8 staterooms as a way to extend life support endurance (and defray replenishment costs) if you were so inclined ...
Workshops would be useful to repair life support equipment for really long durations?
MichaelSTee
SOC-12
I've always thought that paying 500KCr for a stateroom (CT) was off. I can see it if there was only one stateroom and saying the price includes life support, but then making 4 staterooms cost 2MCr? There should be an economy of scale in life support. I am leaning more towards the GT standards: buy life support (so many man-days of support with a certain amount of space), then staterooms cost about 50KCr or even less (luxury costs more, of course). Life support space is for machinery for heating/cooling, water recycling, air scrubbing, food storage, etc, even storage space for housecleaning bots.
MichaelSTee
SOC-12
Oopsie. You know, I didn’t realize this was the T5 subforum, thought it was general ship building stuff. Ignore what I wrote above if you like.
Yes.
As the name implies, "Life Support" is that which "Supports life". As noted, there is "Standard" Life support (without which you die quickly and includes all of those pesky thinks needed to avoid boiling or freezing or suffocating in space (mostly mechanical) and "Luxury" which includes those enhancements expected with your Grey Poupon Mustard.
As stated by The Pakkrat, "Extended Life Support allows for large crews or long-term smaller crews" ... and could take many forms.
So if your ship has a rack of MREs, that area would be part of the "Life Support". So would a hydroponic garden or a machine to make bars of Soylent Green. So are the air scrubbers and the heating and cooling system.
Just like "What is a Stateroom?" or "What is a Bridge?", the details belong to your imagination. The rules paint the "performance guidelines".
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Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
While different forms of life support, which aren't documented, may have different costs, as presented, thousand credits per person, plus thousand credits per occupied stateroom, seems a tad high.
A month's worth of groceries plus oxygen production and water recycling don't strike me as costing ten thousand bux per passenger, adjusted for inflation.
A month's worth of groceries plus oxygen production and water recycling don't strike me as costing ten thousand bux per passenger, adjusted for inflation.
Spinward Flow
SOC-14 5K
The Cr 2000 per 2 weeks per stateroom has always seemed a bit high to me as well, particularly since that's functionally equivalent to the crew salary scale of an Engineer ... at Cr 4000 per month (4 weeks).
Basically, life support costs more than crew salaries on a weekly basis for Stewards, Medics and Gunners under LBB2 prices.
Only Pilots and Navigators have crew salaries that exceed the cost of their life support bills.
That feels ... weird ... to have life support be more expensive than crew salaries for more than half the crew position types.
Other hand, Cr 100 per low berth definitely feels right and appropriate for a suspended animation module.
So the weird thing is that staterooms cost Cr 500 per ton (4 tons each) and low berths cost Cr 200 per ton (0.5 tons each), which ton for ton starts finally making sense (live occupants require 2.5x life support services of "frozen" life support per ton of ship). So when you drill down far enough, it does start making sense. it's just still strange that there are crew positions with a lower salary than their life support sustainment costs.
This could open the door to a dark Imperium that operates on indentured servitude. Kind of like the mining towns of the old American West…
”Here’s your pay, good work in the turret last week. But you still owe us for life support so I’ll just tack that on your bill.”
Condottiere
SOC-14 5K
It's probably counter productive to deny life support to onboard crew.
The Twelfth Doctor, Bill and an angry Nardole travel in the TARDIS to follow a distress call to a deep-space mining station. When the TARDIS is jettisoned by the station's computers, the trio are forced to wear "smartsuits", robotic spacesuits capable of independent operation tied to the station. The suits are also the only source of oxygen, as the mining company does not provide an oxygen atmosphere inside the station, and every activity is measured in breaths.
Temperature control, artificial gravity and energy use are calculated separately as part of the overhead, so it really does come down to how much it costs to produce or regenerate oxygen and recycle water.
The Twelfth Doctor, Bill and an angry Nardole travel in the TARDIS to follow a distress call to a deep-space mining station. When the TARDIS is jettisoned by the station's computers, the trio are forced to wear "smartsuits", robotic spacesuits capable of independent operation tied to the station. The suits are also the only source of oxygen, as the mining company does not provide an oxygen atmosphere inside the station, and every activity is measured in breaths.
Temperature control, artificial gravity and energy use are calculated separately as part of the overhead, so it really does come down to how much it costs to produce or regenerate oxygen and recycle water.
