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weight ????/ BSG

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dm_dracos

SOC-9
ok, yes its the question junky again, but im trying to add a new vehicle to be carried on a ship i designed, but i cant figure out the vl.-ton conversion can anyone help pleaseeeeeeee, and yes when has this answered thinks im going to scar people, cause is designing the whole setup for MTU Battlestar, and ALL the other ships and vehicles used (and yes is cobbing bits and pieces from all 3 series) at this point has something like 10 designs and might have to add one or two more to round it all out.

As a tea....hint of everything, there is the BS itself(1,000,000 t FBCV (yes that means Fleet Battle Carrier)) the viper fighter(25t), the raptor transport(50 t), a assault scout, the marine landers for both infantry and armor, ohh yes and the battledress for the best of the imperium, as well as something for the battlestar galactica 1988 fans out there (its a surprise) ah and cant forget the Lobo G-Carrier and Banshee MBT, lol, have fun and please remember drool with hurt your computer
Dracos
 
So do you mean the T20 vehicle design sequence chassis size (vl) to the T20 ship design sequence hull size (displacement tons)?

The Handbook says on pg 223 that it's 1400 vl to 1 displacement ton.

The method seems to be to round up when converting. For example the air/raft is listed in the ship section as 5tons while it is designed as 6000vl (~4.3tons).

Hope that helps
 
1VL = 10 litres
=> 1400 VL = 1 dTon
(THB)

1Vl = 5 litres
=> 2800 VL = 1dTon
(TA's)

But don't start the war


Both conversions are VERY fuzzy. I use both, counting as the difference that the first is the space needed to easily store the vehicle, and the second the space taken by the vehicle.

ie. a 14,000 VL vehicle can be stored in a 10 dTon vehicle hutch on a starship. After the vehicle is in the hutch you could store another 70,000 litres of water (or other flowing material) around the vehicle. This makes it extremely difficult to utilise the vehicle on short notice however. Note that the water (under standard temperature and pressure) would weigh 70 Ton, as potentially would the vehicle.

These are rules of thumb, and it is best to use them just as guidelines. The examples in the Starship construction chapter use a different conversion again.

When in doubt use whatever you are happy with. A conversion of 1000VL/dTon also works fine, just declare the extra space as needed for safe operation.

Note that dTon has nothing to do with weight, it is a measure of volume, whereas Vl is a sliding fuzzy unit of both mass and volume.
 
thank you both, and no far trader, had not seen that before so double thank you, just made alotttt more room in my little 25 t fighter with the cycle in it
as gives a hint, lol
 
In CT, we are given that 1 dton = 14 cu m = 14,000 litres, but no mention is made of how that relates to mass. When Book 5 and Striker came out I tried to get my head around this and came up with a simple house rule that still seems to work for me. I figured that starships probably have a density similar to a terrestrial submarine, ie. 1 tonne mass per cubic metre. Therefore 1 dton has a mass of 14 tonnes.
Any vehicle in Striker that floats will fit into cargo space normally.
 
Most MT designs range from 8-15 tons/cubic meter, heavily centered around 10 for civil,, and 15 for navy combatants.

TNE tends to run a little bit higher....
 
Originally posted by Aramis:
Most MT designs range from 8-15 tons/cubic meter, heavily centered around 10 for civil,, and 15 for navy combatants.

TNE tends to run a little bit higher....
Click to expand...
:eek: There must be some pretty heavy armour on those civil craft or exotic stuff in the drives to counterbalance all the empty accommodation space and lightweight fuel and STILL come out with an overall density near that of solid lead!
 
IMTU, starships mass anywhere from 15 tons/dton (overall density is 1.07 tons/cumet) to 22 tons/dton (overall density 1.57 tons/cumet) for heavily armored hulls.

This is because the hullmetal is composed of "island of stability" transuranium elements (atomic number 114, 120, 126, and others). These materials are (A) difficult to make, (B) super-dense, (C) very very tough. They also stop many forms of conventional radiation very effectively, giving even an unarmored ship AF3 versus nuclear attack IMTU. They don't stop mesons; you gotta have meson screens.

</font>
  • is a problem for us bumbling TL 7.25 folks here on Earth. Materials science has SURGED ahead in recent years, but we're a long Long LONG LONG way from even TL9 (see the end of the post). By TL9, techniques to make and work stable transuranium elements have been developed. Higher than TL9, the specific trans-U element being used is different and the ability to work it is improved, which is what makes TL14-15 starship armor so much more efficient, dtonnage-wise.</font>
  • the density of the stuff makes it difficult to use for mere humans. 114-ium (ununquadium?) has a density greater than Osmium, or 22 kg/L, so a suit of chainmail made from it would weigh on the order of three times what a steel suit of chainmail would weigh. It'd be a whole lot tougher for stopping damage, but too heavy to be effective. One could use it for battledress, but the powered suit would sink into quagmires (even muddy ground, maybe) if it wasn't using gravitics.</font>
  • Tough. Rhino tough doesn't even come close. However, starship weapons are designed to pierce it, so no modifications to the rules for starship combat. Vehicular and personal weapons already have a tough time penetrating starship armor (even an FGMP-15 cannot penetrate starship armor: 9d20 - 10d = no damage), so there doesn't need to be any adjustment.</font>
Note: Starship hull can be pierced by powerful-enough personal weapons. An FGMP-15 could carve a man-sized opening in the hullmetal, for example, for a squad of boarding marines. (IMTU, the marines' mottos include the phrase "We Make Our Own Doors!") However, the marines cannot, from the outside, have a reasonable chance to damage internal ship's components. Once they're inside, however, it's a whole 'nother matter!

Note 2: TL9, remember, includes: man-portable laser rifles, ablat, air/rafts (actually TL8) therefore gravitic technology, fusion power plants (actually TL8), and Jump-1, among a great many other things we can't even imagine doing yet.
 
1 dTon = 14 cubic meters
1 cubic meter is 1,000 liters
therefore 1 dTon is 14,000 liters.

If T20 has a conversion of 1: 1,400 then it's a typo.

Hopefully the typo is Far Traders.

As far as mass per volume, TNE is the only system where this can really be benchmarked. Most civilian designs tend to run 6-12 Tons per dTon (Density ~0.4 to 0.9 tons/cubic meter) and military designs run from ~8 to 18 tons/dTon (Density of 0.6 to 1.2 Tons per cubic meter)

Most designs will float on water, the only real exceptions being heavily armoured slugs, and/or ships with really low fuel reserves.

Scott Martin
 
No Scott, far-trader is correct.

T20 invented a unit of convenience called the "volume" or vl for short - it does not mean litre.

1 vl = 10 litres.

In the Travellers'Aids dealing with vehicles, and the vehicle catalgue, the value of 1 vl was changed to be:

1vl = 5 litres

It's a bit of a mess really.
 
Originally posted by Scott Martin:
1 dTon = 14 cubic meters
1 cubic meter is 1,000 liters
therefore 1 dTon is 14,000 liters.

If T20 has a conversion of 1: 1,400 then it's a typo.

Hopefully the typo is Far Traders.
Click to expand...
Nope no typo, just a missing step in your list:

10 liters = 1vl

But T20 "vl" are not exactly volume or mass but a kind of mass/volume concept (which is vague and confusing I agree) to make the design system simple (I think?) which given the questions raised over it (continually) begs the question if it was the right way to go.

To further complicate the issue T20 then uses 13.5 cubic meters per dton everywhere else.

EDIT: Ah I see Sigg beat me to the button by a minute but he hit an extra point so I guess I can't complain ;)
 
I can find a conversion factor of multiply by 1.35 to give weight in metric tons - page 254, but on page 279 under creating deckplans it again mentions a 14 cubic metre displacement ton...
 
OK, from three places it seems, but more inferred than spelled out and perhaps wrong as I can't recall just what the weight of a dton of Hydrogen actually is but have long had it pegged at about 13.5mtons (emphasis and asterisk comments mine):

Pg 254 - Hull Weight:

"To determine the weight of a ship simply multiply by 1.35... in metric tons... (multiply by 1350 to determine the weight in kilograms)."

Pg 257 - Hull:

"The displacement tonnage of the ship if immersed in liquid hydrogen."

Pg 279 - Creating Deckplans:

"One ton of displacement on a ship is based on the weight of Hydrogen (not water), and is equal to approximately 14 cubic meters. One 'map square' (1.5 meters by 1.5 meters x 3 meters) is approximately* 6.75 cubic meters, thus two map squares equals one ton on a ship.

* should be "exactly" shouldn't it?
 
Originally posted by Sigg Oddra:
...but on page 279 under creating deckplans it again mentions a 14 cubic metre displacement ton...
Click to expand...
Yes, but it says approximately in that instance and then goes on to calculate an exact figure that comes to 13.5 (and calls that approximately as well :rolleyes: )

:confused:
 
70.99 grams of liquid hydrogen occupies a liter of space. That's a physical constant that can be looked up, and relates to a density of 0.07099 g/mL = 0.07099 kg/L = 0.07099 mt/cumet.

The inverse of 0.07099 = 14.09 cubic meters per metric ton of L-hyd, or 14.09 cumets per dton, usually rounded to 14. (What's a 6 parts per thousand error among friends? Well, in a modern sailing ship, that's "the ship capsizes" or "the ship sinks," but we'll suspend our disbelief like good players and GMs.)

I'm assuming here that the authors said the 1.5x1.5x3 m tactical square is approximate because that's approximately one dton and not exactly one. (It is in fact FORTY-ONE parts per thousand error...but rounding it off into pseudo-5 foot squares to match the rest of the d20 system works fine.)

I fudge all my ship layouts by whatever percent the HG/MT rules allowed (was it 10%? 20%?). If they're close, they're golden. This might mean my layout of an Empress Marava actually is a 210 dton ship and my layout of a Type R Subbie is 375 dtons, but no harm, no foul. The specifications for the Type R say it can carry X dtons of cargo, and if the map only seems to allow X-15 dtons, I ignore it.

To put that another way, it is the ship specifications that govern what internal space is available on a given ship, not the map. The map is a guide to shipboard combats and layout only.

To put that another way, if any part of the system, be it map or specifications, gets in the way of my story, it gets cycled out the airlock without mercy. If the story demands that they can squeeze the Serpent-class scout into the Type R's cargo bay, then they can. I might make them make T/Engng rolls to unhinge the doors to get it in there or something, but it'll happen...to a point, of course. A Sulemein with its wedge design ain't going in there without a whole lot of plasma cutting...
 
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