I'm currently trying to figure out a design for an armed customs cutter, but have hit a bit of a brick wall. How big is the standard Traveller socket turret mount, in terms of radius and length in meters? Is there an official answer written somewhere or a consensus that people generally agree on? Any help would be appreciated.
Turret Size?
- Thread starter daibaka
- Start date
Fair enough - I'm about to start running a T20 game, so lets assume that's the system. I'm actually more interested in the actual volume and "physical" space that a standard turret takes up than the minutiae of whichever ship design system that was used to create it
! My design at the minute is very speculative and still in the realm of the graphical, rather than the numerical! 
On a related note - does anyone know if the displacement tons and volumes listed for Traveller ships are their absolute external displacement or just the usable volume within the hull? I always thought it was the absolute value...
On a related note - does anyone know if the displacement tons and volumes listed for Traveller ships are their absolute external displacement or just the usable volume within the hull? I always thought it was the absolute value...
T20 standadard turrets follow the High Guard notation; They hold 3 displacement tons, or about 42 cubic meters, or 84,000vl.
Like Mr. Thrash said, this is even more dependent upon the system. T20 (using HG) would imply the volume for the craft are for the absolute external displacement.
Hahaha! True enough Zutroi, especially in the land of imaginary spaceships! Thanks for all the responses guys. I had a quick look through my T4 SSDS and at the 3-ton liferaft in the RC: Equipment Guide last night and came up with the numbers given above by tjoneslo - 42 cubic metres volume. My (admittedly dubious) mathematical workings indicate this to equate to a cylinder around 3 metres in diameter and 5.75 metres in length.
This is detailed enough for my purposes at the moment - which is, as mentioned previously, a graphical design of a light customs cutter. As the turret will be quite noticeable on such a small craft, I felt it was important to try and get the proportions at least somewhere near. Heh, the fun continues, because I was considering trying to shoehorn in a missile bay as well, which will need figuring out. Can anyone tell me if bays are custom built or supplied as standard fittings in the manner of turrets? I seem to remember them being custom built, but with standard displacement values.
This is detailed enough for my purposes at the moment - which is, as mentioned previously, a graphical design of a light customs cutter. As the turret will be quite noticeable on such a small craft, I felt it was important to try and get the proportions at least somewhere near. Heh, the fun continues, because I was considering trying to shoehorn in a missile bay as well, which will need figuring out. Can anyone tell me if bays are custom built or supplied as standard fittings in the manner of turrets? I seem to remember them being custom built, but with standard displacement values.
T20 bays weapons use a "Bay Space", which is either 50dtons or 100dtons. This is space simply allocated to the weapon. HG (and T20) states if you don't mount the weapon in the bay you have a large empty space in your hull. Which can be used for cargo or vehicles. The text of HG implies that you can swap bay weapons around, meaning they are modular in nature.
Thanks tjoneslo. Looks like I'll have to rethink my plans for the missile bay and come up with some sort of more customised installation rather than using a handy, standard fit "plug and play" bay. Although it could be argued that they aren't needed on a customs cutter. I just thought they might be nice to give a bit of punch for frontier deployments. The kind of vessel I'm aiming towards is based loosely on the modular cutter, but modified for customs duties (armed, better sensors, uprated engines and room for a squad of troops or customs inspectors and hopefully still streamlined!) and operating in pairs, most likely. The reason for the weapons is so that they pose a credible threat to the average far or free trader, to "encourage" the crews to stop and behave themselves while an inspection goes on.
I also quite liked the idea of a pair of 1 shot sandcasters on either flank, but I'm not quite sure how that would work yet.
For this kind of work I'd probably design a non-jump ship in the 200-400 ton range. Give them armor in the 5-10 range, making the ship nigh-invulnerable to the weaponry a free/far trader can mount (and even some pirate..err ethically challenged merchants). Mount triple turrets of all lasers or all missiles to get the extra +1 USP. Give them 6G so they can chase anything down, or run away if need be.
