Originally posted by tjoneslo:
It was deliberate. After designing the 24 vehicles in TA3, plus the array of grav vehicles, and the 30 or so boats and watercraft for the next TA's, I found the T20 vehicle conversions to make vehicles too large. It actually gets worse with the larger vehicles.
Good work incidentally, TA3 will be very useful to me; but I'm still having difficulty with the size thing. The canonical wheeled ATV is a massive vehicle (check the 3sq x 5sq plan in Mission to Mithril / Across The Bright Face - and the illustration in TA3 for that matter). 15 deckplan squares, 7.5 dtons; the 8 dton garage is hardly looking oversized.
With drives and staterooms the size is somewhat abstract, and as you point out, it is possible to chop them down a bit to get more circulation/access/service space (the 50% deckplan shrinkage is an exaggeration, though - 75% is more like it, e.g. the classic 2sq x 3sq stateroom). The fresher, incidentally, doesn't seem half so huge if you assume it to contain a shower as well; my bathroom at home is slightly less than 2 deckplan squares and is distinctly cosy. (As an aside, I generally assume that much of the life support etc. is in the floor/ceiling space and hence invisible on a simple deckplan; it helps explain the absence of such things in classic starship designs. All very well till your waste recycling goes wrong and yesterday's lunch starts re-emerging through your cabin floor.)
I think some of the confusion here is that the TA3 values refelct actual volume, whilst I'm more concerned with garaging space, which isn't directly addressed in TA3, but is what the THB seems to be describing. For smaller vehicles the headroom allowed by a starship standard deck height is excessive, and you could design some sneaky ways to take advantage of this - I'm sure those space conscious Solomani naval architects already have. I was hinting at this when I suggested standing a jeep in a fresher on its end - not to mention amusing myself with the image of storing a jeep in a toilet.
To relate this to the real world, the Renault Espace has ground dimensions of 4.51m x 1.81m. The "Van" in TA3, which appears to be a very similar class of vehicle, is listed at 1.1 dtons. Considering its lack of height, that seems fairly reasonable. But I'd say that to allow entry via the vehicle doors, the Espace would need a 2sq x 3sq garage, i.e. 3 dtons.
Even in this light, though, the 4 dton ATV is still problematic, as its height must be approaching a full deck. I can't see the canonical ATV fitting into 4 dtons without it being flat packed, or maybe inflatable.
