It was good enough for Allan Dean Foster... it's the drive used in the Humanx Commonwealth setting, most noted for the Flinx series.
It does create some interesting issues of deck organization, tho'... tidal stress.
Small ship universe
- Thread starter Old_Dr_Skull
- Start date
It was good enough for Allan Dean Foster... it's the drive used in the Humanx Commonwealth setting, most noted for the Flinx series.
It does create some interesting issues of deck organization, tho'... tidal stress.
Hi,
Here is the plot that I had developed.
PF
Here the points labeled
MCM are mine counter measures ships
SC are surface combatants (like frigates and destroyers, etc)
Des are design studies (that don't really represent ships that have actually been built)
LSD are amphibious type ships like the LSD 49 mentioned previously
WWI are the old battleships mentioned previously
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Double-bunked??? You can't do that! The unions'll have a fit!:rofl:
Leaving aside the rather pertinent point that timeover was explicitly talking about his TU, I think that in the OTU it would be against the law on military ships too. I think the standard life support system is rated for two people per stateroom, so if you bunk four to a stateroom, you'd be exceeding the life support rating. (Unless you have enough officers single-berthing to compensate, which is unlikely and sort of spoils the point a bit.)
At least, that's how I explain the "two to a stateroom on private and military ships" rule.
I'm much more at a loss to explain the "only one per stateroom on commercial ships" rule. It makes no sense at all to me that a ship should not increase its potential customer base by offering 'Economy Passage' in shared staterooms.
Hans
IMTU too. 
As for your Economy Class or two passengers per one stateroom, I always thought that is what Middle Passage meant. So, in MTU that is what Middle Passage gets you, a bunk with another Middle Passenger and no Steward service. It was only much later did I find out that in the OTU Middle just means no Stew and one per stateroom. I am sticking with mine for the Permatic Imperium since it makes more sense to me.
Though now I am thinking about adding a Steerage Passage which stacks four to a room though. It might just be on those Free Trader types. Figuring about KCr 4-6 for price.
So, yeah, I guess he could do it and I might too.
Laterness,
Craig.
Well, I wasn't speaking for the OTU, but MTU too. Though you can stuff four to a stateroom in T5. I have two max per stateroom with an exception for the military vessels currently.
As for your Economy Class or two passengers per one stateroom, I always thought that is what Middle Passage meant. So, in MTU that is what Middle Passage gets you, a bunk with another Middle Passenger and no Steward service. It was only much later did I find out that in the OTU Middle just means no Stew and one per stateroom. I am sticking with mine for the Permatic Imperium since it makes more sense to me.
Though now I am thinking about adding a Steerage Passage which stacks four to a room though. It might just be on those Free Trader types. Figuring about KCr 4-6 for price.
So, yeah, I guess he could do it and I might too.
Laterness,
Craig.
Steerage, at least in terms of minimum costs, would need to be at least KCr3.7 to not be a net loss vs cargo tonnage.
Assuming standard OTU tropes of 2-week cycle and a limit of 4 to a stateroom...
1/480th of a stateroom is around Cr1042. call it Cr641 for 1/4 SR. Call it KCr1 for the cargo ton lost to 1/4 SR. Add another KCr2 for the canonical LS costs.
That gives a steerage relative price of probably KCr4, to allow for markup from the KCr3.6.
It can't, even on a paid off ship ignoring its own requirements, drop below about KCr2 (and that's JUST LS) without shaving time... or starving passengers.
So, really Steerage isn't going to be much of a savings. But I could see my wife and I cramming into a 3x3m room with the kids for a week... for a move for a job, or some such.
Assuming standard OTU tropes of 2-week cycle and a limit of 4 to a stateroom...
1/480th of a stateroom is around Cr1042. call it Cr641 for 1/4 SR. Call it KCr1 for the cargo ton lost to 1/4 SR. Add another KCr2 for the canonical LS costs.
That gives a steerage relative price of probably KCr4, to allow for markup from the KCr3.6.
It can't, even on a paid off ship ignoring its own requirements, drop below about KCr2 (and that's JUST LS) without shaving time... or starving passengers.
So, really Steerage isn't going to be much of a savings. But I could see my wife and I cramming into a 3x3m room with the kids for a week... for a move for a job, or some such.
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There's another reason why the canonical stateroom is bigger than the ones on an oceanliner: there's no deck to sit on and look out to the horizon, there are no balconies, there's no hitting golf balls or launching skeet over the railings!
Your crew and passengers are going to be SEALED UP in that space for weeks at a time, and while it can be argued - based on submarine crew accomodations - that the crew can be packed in shoulder to shoulder, the folks shelling out 30000 bucks for a ticket (based on 3 US$ to the Imperial Credit) sure won't!
Your crew and passengers are going to be SEALED UP in that space for weeks at a time, and while it can be argued - based on submarine crew accomodations - that the crew can be packed in shoulder to shoulder, the folks shelling out 30000 bucks for a ticket (based on 3 US$ to the Imperial Credit) sure won't!
Assuming, of course, that there would be any cargo to carry instead of passengers.
Even assuming that regular passenger liners spends 5 days in port (which they most assurededly don't do IMTU), the passengers only spends 9 days aboard. So if food is a major part of the life support cost (which we all know it can't be, given the canonical costs of food), passengers and crew on liners should consume less in their 9-day trip than crew on deep space trips. And yet, the cost for LS on asteroid miners and the like are the same Cr2000 per fortnight.
Of course, now that MgT has changed the LS costs to Cr2000 per month, I trust that Marc Miller is going to retcon LS costs in all Traveller versions forthwith.
(Cr1000 per fortnight is still a bit high in my opinion, but I guess it's better than Cr2000.)
Anyway, even if double occupancy was no more than, say, Cr1000 cheaper than single, Cr1000 is a tidy sum of money and well worth sharing a stateroom for 9 days to save.
Hans
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
...whether the stateroom is occupied or not.
Yeah, I don't expect Marc to retcon that bit either
I long ago divided it by 10 for MTU (along with a whole air-raft of other "space craft" costs) which I found works much better. Then most of it CAN be food at the base CT prices for food.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
I get around the "legal stateroom" bit by making "Middle Passage" staterooms that are 4x1.5m squares (1.333 dtons) instead of 6x1.5m Squares (2 dtons)... and I reduce the common areas by .33 dtons to end with "3-ton" staterooms for "Middle Passage" staterooms.
I also have "High Passage double staterooms" that are 9{edit: 8}x1.5m squares in the stateroom (3 dtons) but contribute no extra common area, making for "5-ton" staterooms.
I also have "High Passage double staterooms" that are 9{edit: 8}x1.5m squares in the stateroom (3 dtons) but contribute no extra common area, making for "5-ton" staterooms.
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unless you also reduce the ceiling height, that won't work... As normal is 1 Td is 2 squares of 1.5x1.5x3.1m... 4 squares is 2Td, 6squares is 3Td. The CT Type S plans cheat... The rooms aren't rectangular solids, unless reduced to 2.2m tall... Which also makes the rest of the plan make sense, too.
BlackBat242
SOC-14 1K
If you look at the vast majority of floor-plans published for the original Traveller rules... including those published by GDW... and you will see floor-plans showing 6 squares per stateroom, which list the staterooms as being 4 dtons, and also list the same number of passengers as staterooms (indicating those are single-occupancy rooms).
That is what I am going on.
A ceiling height of 2.074m (6' 9.6") matches the 3-square floor-plan dton (14 cubic meters).
This means that ~1 dton per stateroom is in the space above the stateroom (used for "life support"), leaving 1 dton for passageways & common areas.
And yes... that should have been 8 squares, not 9 for the "5-dton" staterooms.
That is what I am going on.
A ceiling height of 2.074m (6' 9.6") matches the 3-square floor-plan dton (14 cubic meters).
This means that ~1 dton per stateroom is in the space above the stateroom (used for "life support"), leaving 1 dton for passageways & common areas.
And yes... that should have been 8 squares, not 9 for the "5-dton" staterooms.
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I'm willing to bet that the rest of those deckplan do not conform to that interpretation, with bridges and engineering rooms etc. taking up 3 squares per dT.
Just because the publishers were incapable of following their own rules doesn't mean we can't. :devil:
Hans
That's assuming that the drive creates a "virtual" mass in front of the ship, which then exerts a normal gravitational field whose intensity drops off with the square of the distance.
If, on the other hand, the drive skips the virtual mass and just creates a gravitational field directly (which I presume that it must - if gravitics relied on virtual masses, they would be effectively unusable anywhere other than deep space due to the virtual mass attracting random objects in the area), then that field can be uniform. Uniform pseudo-gravitational field = uniform acceleration of everything within the field = no tidal stress.
And that is as good as any other way of doing it, some sort of fusion thruster is just as unrealistic. I mentioned a fusion thruster to a couple of propulsion engineers from Armstrong hall and they said it will never happen, no material for the combustion chamber and that the process would kill the crew through irradiation.
far-trader
SOC-14 10K
Agreed, however this is science fiction (equal parts ideally but for Traveller it leans more to the fiction end) and in Traveller we have:
Focused Gravitics to solve the combustion chamber material issue. As in gravitics keep the fusion stream focused (your nozzle) and well away from materials that would melt etc.
Nuclear Damper Fields to keep the radiation away from the crew.
Those two are minor compared to some of the many other elements in Traveller that seem to be blithely accepted
Personally I find a fusion torch drive a little more realistic and believable than some magic virtual mass generation propagation device
Plus it's just cooler 
mike wightman
SOC-14 10K
Maybe understanding of the Higgs field allows inertial mass to be partially reduced or completely negated.
A small multirole fusion engine, plasma drive or ion engine could then be used for actual velocity.
A small multirole fusion engine, plasma drive or ion engine could then be used for actual velocity.
Agreed, however this is science fiction (equal parts ideally but for Traveller it leans more to the fiction end) and in Traveller we have:
Focused Gravitics to solve the combustion chamber material issue. As in gravitics keep the fusion stream focused (your nozzle) and well away from materials that would melt etc.
Nuclear Damper Fields to keep the radiation away from the crew.
Those two are minor compared to some of the many other elements in Traveller that seem to be blithely accepted
Personally I find a fusion torch drive a little more realistic and believable than some magic virtual mass generation propagation device
Whatever makes you happy, I was just stating what I learned from experts, some of Purdue is roving around on Mars as I write this (a grad student even has written a smartphone app to track it).
IMTU, I use MPDT supercharged with a grav ring and superconductance with gigawatts of wonderfully clean fusion power. Space truckin'.
I would think you would want some space below the staterooms to put the gravitic generators and inertial compensators into...
~~~~~ On a less serious note:
And, you've talked me into it, dangit! I'm gonna have to put lab space for the magic users into my ships so they can make more Wands of Fireballs. I was going to strap magic users onto the back of the ships with said wands and have them shoot fireballs to push the ship in normal space! Or, they can be in vacc suits in an aft bay space...
[huggles his TL 10 anti-grav drives goodbye. Walks away lamenting the future loss of TL 11 reactionless thruster technology.]
~~~~~ On a less serious note:
And, you've talked me into it, dangit! I'm gonna have to put lab space for the magic users into my ships so they can make more Wands of Fireballs. I was going to strap magic users onto the back of the ships with said wands and have them shoot fireballs to push the ship in normal space!
Or, they can be in vacc suits in an aft bay space...[huggles his TL 10 anti-grav drives goodbye. Walks away lamenting the future loss of TL 11 reactionless thruster technology.]
