I'd like to see deck plans for all the Police ships - I think they're more likely to be used in the RPG.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, April 02, 2005 - 12:34 pm: Edit

I give that a stab for ya SVC. First, small scale on full 11x17 so there is no separation (naturally).

Playable maps could be:

All of Deck 1: Bridge

All of Deck 2: Offices and Breifing (this is a small deck so you get a lot out of it.

On Deck 5: Med Lab area and Aux Con.
On Deck 5: Engineering and as much of the surrounding areas and can fit.

All of Deck 7: Shuttle Deck

Misc. Rooms page: An Officers Quarters, typical stateroom, transporter room (s).

Without seeing how everything lays out a sweeping hall off to the side might be good. Most other things appear to not be too hard to replicate.

The thickest paper possible would be nice.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, April 02, 2005 - 01:27 pm: Edit

You need a bar room so you can have a brawl like on Station K-7 (the Tribbles episode).


Garth L. Getgen

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, April 02, 2005 - 02:15 pm: Edit

The thing is that the mess areas are just large open spaces with lots of tables and chairs. It can be sketched out on paper pretty fast if actually needed.

OTOH, ADB could just do really small mini's!

By Spencer Rathbun (Spencerr) on Saturday, April 02, 2005 - 02:40 pm: Edit

I would if I had the Fed ff which is on the list of next purchase when funds become available. It's hard to do stuff like this when your trying to buy up back products on a shoe string. Any chance of fire sale of captain's logs? I'm the GM of this small group. The adventure I'm doing right now has 1 player because its my first and I don't want it too hectic. The player actually didn't want to play until he saw the free trader deck plans. I used it so we knew what rooms he could check out while on board. The problem with deck plans is that the SFU has so many races and each race has a lot of different ships. And not everyone wants the same things.

What I had in mind for the page with a hex grid on it was to have a template. A GM could copy that on a copy machine had slice it up into rooms and hallways with a pencil from the ship's deck plans and scale. That way the ships weren't enourmous and you still had a hex grid. Common rooms would be good to have pre built but I'd want an empty one for copying. The room description would be a kind of disguised instruction set for drawing the room in.

Yet again, this was one of my half baked ideas. so feel free to ignore it.

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Saturday, April 02, 2005 - 08:34 pm: Edit

I've seen pads of hex paper in gaming stores for years. I've bought at least a dozen of them, including some of the nice 11x17 25mm scale ones done by Judges Guild about a zillion years ago.

Actually, those would make a good product, Steve. No cutting or binding, just shrink-wrap.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, April 02, 2005 - 10:12 pm: Edit

Long ago I printed square grids on clear plasic (I had also printed some SSDs as an experiment). It was with a copier (no inkjets in those days) but they make such a thing now, IIRC.

Anyway, one could print a clear hex overlay for use with deck plans. I'd bet SVC's copy machine could do that too but the problem would be that you can't fold it so it would be hard to package.

A hex grid on paper could be supplied with the plans and player allowed to copy it for their gaming use.

By Dwight Lillibridge (Nostromo) on Sunday, April 03, 2005 - 01:10 am: Edit

honestly I would like to see just a book or some other reference with playable rooms, instead of a whole ship just do the rooms which are basically used on every ship then all you need is a simple floor plan reference for where what rooms go for individual ships.

By William F. Hostman (Aramis) on Sunday, April 03, 2005 - 04:49 am: Edit

My ideal as a GM for a ship is small scale overview (Showing halls, walls, and doors) and some detail selections with much the same info as Loren asked for in either 15mm or 25mm with full details.

Include a properly scaled pair of 8.5x11 transparency hex grids, and package as a shrink wrap...

Sudden brain-engage: put one 11x17 hex grid transparency outside the cover (and inside the shrink wrap)... it will have a curve, but a week under an SFB rulebook should cure that.

As for hex-paper: it's getting harder to find locally... not much demand for it. What I do find is usually about 7mm face-to-face.

By F. Douglas Wall (Knarf) on Monday, April 04, 2005 - 02:25 am: Edit

I solved my hexmap problems a while ago. SJGames did a map set called "The Great Salt Flats." Of course, they were being facetious. It was about 5 or 6 good size sheets with hexes on one side and squares on the other. I laminated two of them, and still have 3 or so collecting dust somewhere.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Wednesday, April 20, 2005 - 11:52 pm: Edit

Okay, I sat down and carefully measured (using a set of vernier calipers) the minis for the Free Trader, Fed Police Cutter, Orion LR Privateer, CR Radier and CA Marauder.

From the deck plans in GPD, the FT measures 66 meters long in body, 82 meters overall, 50 meters wide and 10 meters thick.

When I measured the mini, I found that the porportions were close save for the thickness. It's 20mm long (24.75mm overall), 17mm wide and 4.75mm thick. Using the length to base a ratio on, it comes out as 3.300 meters per one mm. The width is a little wide -- it should be only 15.15mm. But the mini is about half again thicker than it should be. {shrug} I just figure that at 3mm the mini might have been too thin to keep it from bending.

At any rate, the other minis measured out at:

POL: Length = 32mm, Width (diameter of aft hull) = 8.5mm (19mm overall including warp drives), Thickness (forward hull) = 4.25mm. Using the same 3.3 m/mm ratio, the POL comes out as be 105.5m x 28m (63m) x 14m. If we allow for a +/- 10% error in scale between the various minis, it could be anywhere from 95m x 25m (56m) x 12.5m to 116m x 31m (69m) x 15.5m.

LR: L = 27mm (30mm including warp drives), W = 7.5mm (18.25mm including wings), T = 2.75mm; making the LR 89m (99m) x 25m (60m) x 9m, +/- 10%.

CR: L = 27mm (30.5mm), W = 10mm (21mm), T = 3.5mm; making the CR 89m (101m) x 33m (69m) x 11.5m, +/- 10%.

CA: L = 35mm (40.25mm), W = 15.7mm (28.25mm), T = 5mm; making the CA 115.5m (133m) x 52m (93m) x 16.5m, +/- 10%.


Garth L. Getgen

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Saturday, April 23, 2005 - 12:50 am: Edit

For the light raider, those proportions are different from the R-section picture of the light raider. The book version is longer/skinnier while the miniature version seems to be a bit "stubbier".

Oh well, that just made me want to draw it so I came up with a nice three view that is somewhere in between the mini and book picture that would be good for basing a set of deck plans on. GRIN.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, April 23, 2005 - 01:34 pm: Edit

Nick, I guess you could go with +10% longer and -10% as wide. Also, see my post dated in this topic dated 23 April 2004.


Regarding the POL, here's how I describe it in a story I'm writing:

~~~~~~~~~~~~
“My, my, my. Looks like we’re having a convention,” commented Lieutenant Ryan Kingsley, Magnum’s second-in-command. Isenberg followed his gaze and noted four Patrol Cutters, sister-ships to his own, looking small and vulnerable close in by the base. The cutter had two distinct halves: the aft portion was a lengthwise cylinder roughly twenty-seven meters in diameter with warp drive engine mounted to either side, the forward section was as wide but only dozen meters thick, with beveled sides and pointed bow. End to end, the entire ship was a little longer than the saucer-shaped Frigate but had half the deck space.

Isenberg had forgotten how awkward they appeared on the outside, looking like a roll of paper with a garden tool sticking out one end and often described as ‘the ugliest ship you’ll ever love’, but he’d been the skipper of this one long enough to know that while one might grow to love the ship, it was the people that made the assignment special. Close quarters and a small crew made conditions ripe for forming close friendships.
~~~~~~~~~~~


Garth L. Getgen

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Saturday, April 23, 2005 - 09:47 pm: Edit

Garth, here are the dimensions after looking up my original drawings in the computer.

FED FF Deck Diameters

Deck 1: 20 meters
Deck 2: 29 meters (length), 15 meters (width)
Deck 3: 65 meters
Deck 4: 95 meters (does not include impulse deck)
Deck 5: 92 meters (does not include impulse deck)
Deck 6: 45 meters
Deck 7: 35 meters

By Randy O. Green (Hollywood750) on Saturday, April 23, 2005 - 11:06 pm: Edit

Garth, the base must have the only doughnut shop in the quadrant. ;)

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, April 23, 2005 - 11:51 pm: Edit

Nick, until you come up with something more solid (and SVC approves it), for the story I'm writing I'm going with a Cutter that measures roughly 100 or 105 meters length (ie, "slightly longer then an FF's hull") by 25 to 27.5 meters wide (body). The forward hull will be 12 to 14 meters thick. At this point, I don't need to be exactly specific. Unless you or SVC tells me otherwise, there will be four decks forward, eight decks aft. The Aux Con doubles as the main Sensor room; the Emergency Bridge is co-located with main Engineering / Warp Drive control.

I am curious as to what size you made the LR. I, too, was messing around with some ideas for its deskplans. Didn't get very far, but some ideas I had included making the wings thick enough to allow a person to walk upright (or nearly so) in them. Also, most of the crew do not get private rooms ... they get a bunk along the wall and should be happy they don't have to hot-bunk.


Randy, I have a logical reason for having five Cutters there at once. I actually thought of having seven, but threw in a few more APTs instead.


Garth L. Getgen

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Sunday, April 24, 2005 - 10:47 am: Edit

Garth, for the LR I used your dimensions of height and width (9 meters, 25 meters (60 with wings).

Nine meters tall makes room for 3 decks, the wings project from the middle deck and are themsleves one deck tall, part of that middle deck. I made it 108 long, 123 meters from nose to end of the engines. I haven't drawn any of the inside yet, but I did position the items shown in the book (bridge, sensors, tractors, passive sensors, wing option mounts, phasers, shuttlebay, impulse engines). Then I added to the underside the nose option mount, landing legs, and cargo loading hatches. If I do the inside and find I need more space, I can always make it a bit longer, approaching the dimensions shown in the Orion R-section of the rules. How much of the ship are you describing in your story?

I might have made the Pol cutter smaller than you are talking, but I'm not sure how, so what you are doing probably makes sense. You need room for the shuttlebay in the cylinder aft hull above the wedge shaped forward section and that usually requires a deck and a half to two decks for the space for the shuttle to land and lift off. Maybe I would have done three decks through the middle of the cylinder and the wedge, but maybe when you draw it out it comes to four decks as you say.

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Sunday, April 24, 2005 - 10:50 am: Edit

Actually, comparing those POL dimensions to the LR, it makes sense. The cylinder at 25 meters diameter is the same as the width of the LR hull (minus wings), and that "looks" right to me. Eight decks seems like too much, but that is what 25 vertical meters works out too and it is a smallish cylinder really, so it's not that much space after all, especially for the upper and lower deck.

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Sunday, April 24, 2005 - 10:51 am: Edit

If I can get the three view of the Orion LR into the computer I can send it to you to show you what I have done.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, April 24, 2005 - 12:06 pm: Edit

Nick, I don't have any LR's in my story. At least, none planned for yet.

(I do have another story in mind about a POL and LR playing a slow-maneuvere game of cat-&-mouse for several hours in a "class eleven" asteroid field. The main character in that story is a very competent but very, very tightly wound sensor tech who gets a rude awakening when she realizes who the LR captain is. But that's for another time.)

I originally had the POL at 82M long, 22M wide, and 9M thick forward hull. This gave it seven decks aft, three deck forward. I got the shuttles in, but it was a tight fit. The cargo bay was 8M x 16M, which is also tight but fits four shuttles. I ran into problems trying to fit all the living quarters in, now that the crew size was bumped from 60 to 100 in the Y2K rules.

By making it a bit larger and adding another deck, it gives some elbow room in the shuttle deck and increases the cargo bay to a nice, round 10x20M area.

Regarding the LR being 9M thick, I came up with three deck, too. But the upper deck is 2.75M tall to allow for the shuttle craft, making the lower two decks only 2.00M tall. Guess your don't find many basketball playing pirates.


Garth L. Getgen

By Gary Plana (Garyplana) on Sunday, April 24, 2005 - 12:38 pm: Edit

If that's the case, then I'd suggest you change the dimensions to give the larger races a little more headroom.

Pirates like to have lots of the larger races aboard for their boarding parties! You wouldn't want them to become grumpy, right?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, April 24, 2005 - 12:51 pm: Edit

Gimley wasn't very tall, yet he put up a good fight in Lord of the Rings.


Garth L. Getgen

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 09:20 pm: Edit

Well, I just re-did the deck plans for the standard small freighter. They existed in paper hard-copy from previous Prime Directive products, but the original electronic copy was long gone in the mists of time and outdated computer storage methods. Now they can be republished sometime. In CL would be nice if Steve wants to use them.

I did in fact look at doing a skid. Skids are weird though. They are as wide and tall as the pod (40 meters diameter), but only three meters long. Basically a disk, or coin shape, 40 meters in diameter, but relatively thin.

This means if you have it divided into decks four meters tall like the pod is, you get 10 decks four meters tall (the deck height), three meters wide (front wall to back wall), and anywhere from forty meters long (middle decks of the skid) to under ten meters long (top and bottom decks of the skid). For those paying attention to the deck plans these are essentially the dimensions of elevator shafts: long rooms standard deck height and three meters wide. Difficult to actually use rooms like this.

Also, skids have to hold a shuttle. They are more like four meters wide, or in other words too big to fit, if you tried to land one the engine nacelles would be scoured off as you came in through the shuttle hatch.

The solution I came up with (which maybe what was intended all along for all I know) is to instead of dividing the skid into standard decks/rooms as above in the traditional sense, put the artificial grav plating all along one 40 meter diameter wall of the skid (i.e. 90 degrees different from the other parts of the ship). This effectively turns the skid into one big room 3 meters tall (which is pretty much a standard deck height for my other plans so far) and 40 meters in diameter.

Such a room has many more possibilities for how you can divide up its space into smaller rooms. You can have several large rooms, some smaller rooms, etc, and they don't all have to be the shape of elevator shafts. You could even have a skid that was one big room if you wanted (special cargo that always stays with the freighter), if you tried that with the normal gravity orientation it would be mostly wasted space.

Also, the shuttle or shuttles can now fit since they are generaly just (barely) under three meters tall. They just have to orient themselves 90 degrees on their side relative to the freighter itself before (carefully) landing in the skid.

Then where the skid corridors connect to the pod and frighter corridors, you put in the skid small transfer rooms with zero-g for the crew to reorient themselves when passing from one space to the other.

So you would have:

......CARGO POD DECKS......skid..command pod
==========================[][][]========
deck 1||||||||||||||||||||[]--[]||||||||
==========================[]--[]========
deck 2||||||||||||||||||||[]--[]||||||||
==========================[]--[]========
deck 3||||||||||||||||||||[]--[]||||||||
==========================[]--[]========
deck 4||||||||||||||||||||[]--[]||||||||
==========================[]--[]========
deck 5||||||||||||||||||||[]--[]||||||||
==========================[][][]========

and so on through deck 10.

the marks "||||" show the normal up-down gravity of the pod and freighter decks

the marks "--" show the "sideways" gravity of the skid.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 10:11 pm: Edit

Nick: Instead of the 0-G thing, which would difficult to deal with routinely, how about a smal, elevator sized room that twists. Gravity would never change and all it does is you go in one door, it closes, the room rotates 90 degrees, and the other door opens. No losing your lunch on those days you have to go back and forth a lot.


Also, skids would have a center tube that was access to the freighter modules, right?

By Nick G. Blank (Nickgb) on Saturday, June 18, 2005 - 11:16 pm: Edit

There are a couple of places where the command pod has access points into the cargo pod. These points become natural access points for the skid as well. Also the zero-G room would be annoying if you were going from the command pod to the cargo pod, you would have to pass through it (and risk losing your lunch) everytime you went through the 3 meters of the skid.

A special rotating room could be done, but may not be necessary:

There are also a couple of accessways for elevator cars between the command section, cargo pod, and engineering section, so the elevator goes through the skid. Perhaps the elevator car itself can turn 90 degrees at such points to permit entry to the skid. You use the elevator when going back and forth a lot so you don't notice the transition. You have the open air transfer point(s) as well for when the elevator is down for whatever reason, or for the more adventurous crewmembers to use: "true spacers aren't bothered by changing gravity conditions...".