Shuttles - using the Federation shuttle (~ 4.5x7 m) it looks like using a 5.5x7.5 box will give enough room for two decks crew working on it without crowding another shuttle in the bay (hopefully this also covers the majority of size-one fighters). An HTS should fit in a 8x8 box (and cover size-2 fighters). Oversized fighters should add at least 1.5 meters in both directions (7x9, 9.5x9.5).
[Preliminary numbers only]

Shuttle Bay Items -

Floorspace for an additional shuttle (two if the bay normally handles 4 or more) [J1.641].
Maintenance area either adjacent to or under the bay (with elevators if under the bay and usually with the spare shuttle).
Bay walls/doors be vacuum rated.
Ensure the bay doors can handle the double-sized shuttles!

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, September 01, 2012 - 03:53 am: Edit

Stewart,

Airlock / docking port is the first line under ITEMS NOT ON SSD.

For shuttles, I've tried to allow 10x10 (at least 8x8) per shuttle. The cargo rules say a shuttle ready for flight takes 50 cargo-points, and one that's in storage takes 25. A standard cargo box is 50 points. Ergo, I made the two-SSD-box cargo bay 10x20 meters, if for no other reason than it's a nice round number to work with.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, September 02, 2012 - 02:58 am: Edit

Somebody email me a reminder to put the snipe on the list on the resources page and a sample deck with "armor" units.

Reminder sent

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, September 03, 2012 - 08:46 am: Edit

Something Stupid I know.

SVC mentioned that only large Federation ships have dentists. I would expect that those species that are apex predators (for a quick example in Alpha, Carnivon, Gorn, Kzinti, Lyran.) would have dentists on all their ships, since teeth are so important to survival, combined with the fact that larger canine like teeth are broken more easily than molars.

As already stated I know it's stupid for a game, but it has stuck in my head since it was mentioned.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, September 06, 2012 - 05:39 pm: Edit

Several have mentioned they want to be sure that I can read their plan formats.

To speed things up, I suggest you do some very simple plan such as "the room you are sitting in" and send that and we'll see if I can read the format.

I am talking about something this simple.

adb deck plan.pdf adb_deck_plan.pdf (3 k)

By George Duffy (Sentinal) on Sunday, September 30, 2012 - 05:57 pm: Edit

More about the dentists

Just what department would they fall under. Remembering the movie "The Marathon Man", an arguement can be made for either 'Security' or even 'Prime Team' (for intelligence/counter-ntellegence)

By Patrick H. Dillman (Patrick) on Monday, October 01, 2012 - 12:21 am: Edit

Security, the Barber is always an Honorary Prime Team member.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Thursday, April 11, 2013 - 07:56 pm: Edit

Was there ever a formula figured out that a ship displaces x tons and would have x squares of space? I've seen one for Classic Traveller, does one exist for Mongoose Traveller or has something been written for the SFU?

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Thursday, April 11, 2013 - 08:06 pm: Edit

Is there a displacement formula for SFU size classes or docking points? Example a ship is y docking points or x size class and it displaces between z1 and z2 dtons?

By Stewart W Frazier (Frazikar2) on Thursday, April 11, 2013 - 08:30 pm: Edit

Shawn, while there are docking points on the MSC, displacement tonnage isn't listed...

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Thursday, April 11, 2013 - 08:49 pm: Edit

Stewart, I am aware of that. Displacement isn't needed for SFB, but displacement and Deck plans are great for Prime Directive.

I wonder if there is something about cargo points? I wonder how much a cargo point displaces or how much space it would take?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, April 11, 2013 - 11:47 pm: Edit

Shawn, in the "real world", I would presume that a space ship would be built much like a submarine. A space ship would not need to be, but subs are designed to be neutrally buoyant and thus have a displacement of about 1 metric ton per cubic meter.

You can get a fair estimate of this by using 3 tons per square meter of deck space (this assumes a three meter ceiling height), and then add perhaps 10% - 15% to account for the unusable spaces in the curved hull areas.

I know that one game system (Traveler??) uses 14 cubic meters per ton because they base it off liquid hydrogen instead of water.


Garth L. Getgen

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Friday, April 12, 2013 - 10:16 am: Edit

Garth:

WWII Surface warships have a density of around 0.5 to 0.6, when most of their mass was armor and heavy machinery.

Modern jets, if you made them completely water-tight, would have a density of about 0.2 to 0.4. (Your car, if made perfectly water-tight, is around density 0.33)

I strongly suspect that submarine density is too high for spaceships. They don't need to maintain neutral buoyancy in a fluid.

In AV:T, I made volume per ton average out to 0.25 tons per cubic meter, which is about what a modern jet liner averages. It also mapped out well to using armor made of metal-matrix carbon composites with appropriate void spaces for crew and working spaces.

Traveller uses 14 cubic meters per ton, or a density of about 0.071 cubic meters per ton, and at that low of a density, you're talking about a ship that's, on average, half the density of balsa wood.

Starship density is something SF authors and game settings mess up a lot...usually by assuming mass goes up linearly with length of a ship, rather than cubically with volume.

As a convenience, and the real decider for the AV:T sensity:

One AV:T hull space is 25 metric tons. One AV:T hull space is 100 cubic meters.

One standard 53' shipping container/semi trailer is about 3 cubic meters shy of being an AV:T hull space, and usually 1.5 metric tons under the weight. So I can tell someone "So, that size 4 laser? That's 4 semi-trailers."

One cubic meter works out nicely to 36 cubic feet. If you picture your floor grid as made of up 1'x1' kitchen tiles, and give 9' ceilings (which gives you a foot for overhead cable runs, lighting fixtures, and such), one cubic meter is 4 kitchen tiles.

A standard D&D square is 25 kitchen tiles, or 4.25 cubic meters in this metric, and 6 of them is about 10% more than a 53' shipping container.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - 04:08 pm: Edit

T5 CD-Rom quotes- "Talking Range= T is the typical distance for conversations with one other, or with a small group. With a typical distance of 1.5 meters, Range= T is also the size of a typical deck plan square."

"...squares and starship design cubes. One Cube (1.5 meters on a side) is one-quarter-ton. Four Cubes (arranged in any reasonable fashion) is one ton (= 13.5 cubic meters)."

"Designed in Tons. Ships are designed in hull volume Tons which then easily translate into volumetric cubes and deck plan squares."

"Sq Squares notes the deck plan squares the mechanism requires. If not specified, one Ton requires two Squares. The number of Squares per ton may also vary for ships designed for non-humans."

"Total Squares indicates the total expected deck squares(each 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters) for the ship when creating deck plans. Total Cubes provides the total expected Cubes
(one-fourth ton; 1.5 meters cubed)."

"Deck Plans For Starships It is possible to create deck plans for starships based on their tonnage.
Deck Squares. One ton equals two deck squares when creating deck plans (with a 3 meter deck separation).
Deck Cubes. One cube is 0.25 tons. One ton equals four 1.5 meter cubes."

This pretty much sounds the same as previous versions of Traveller. Does Mongoose Traveller use the same formula?

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - 11:27 pm: Edit

From what I can find, Mongoose Traveller uses the same formula and the small ship deck plans are essentially the same as their classic counterparts.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Thursday, April 25, 2013 - 12:01 am: Edit

---

Quote:

One AV:T hull space is 25 metric tons. One AV:T hull space is 100 cubic meters.

---

---

Quote:

T5 CD-Rom: "One Cube (1.5 meters on a side) is one-quarter-ton"

---

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Thursday, April 25, 2013 - 05:03 am: Edit

The classic Traveler ton is actually a unit of volume, specifically the volume of one metric ton of liquid hydrogen. The "Fire Fusion & Steel ship design guide from the old system gives factors for converting these volumetric tons to actual mass for various kinds of equipment.

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Thursday, April 25, 2013 - 11:42 am: Edit

more T5 quotes- "THE BASIS OF THE TON A ton is the volume of 1,000 kilograms of liquid hydrogen and equal to approximately 13.5 cubic meters. Maritime Tons. In classic waterbased shipbuilding, a ton is the volume of 1,000 kilograms of water. A ship with a displacement of 1 ton afloat in water displaces one ton of water. Theoretically, a 100-ton ship submerged in liquid hydrogen displaces 1350 cubic meters (100 tons)of liquid hydrogen. A cubic ton is 2.4 meters on a side, but tons are more typically shown as a rectangular volume 3 meters high, 3 meters long, and 1.5 meters wide."

"THE LEGACY TON
The values used for the ton in some previous editions varied slightly from traditional values. Historians call this value the Legacy Ton.
One Ton= 14 cubic meters.
Deck Square= 2 x 2 meters
Deck Height= 3.5 meters.
Dimensions= 2m x 2m x 3.5 m"

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, April 26, 2013 - 05:25 am: Edit

If I measured correctly and crunched the numbers right, the Federation Police Cutter is about 3200 - 3250 tons, and the Burke-class Frigate is about 5000 - 5200 tons, should anyone care.


Garth L. Getgen

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, April 26, 2013 - 10:54 am: Edit

Garth-How did you measure and then figure that? Could you run through it step by step please?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, April 26, 2013 - 02:51 pm: Edit

Shawn,

For the Police Cutter, my drafting program lets me measure Areas, so I made a total for each deck. I included the high-bays (cargo / shuttle bay / impulse engines) and also the warp nacelles.

For the Frigate, I had calculated the floor space using PI*R^2, but I had to take a guess on how much to add for the warp drive.

Once I had the total areas in square-meters, I simply divided by 4.5 to get tons. One ton is two squares, and each square is 1.5 meters squared, or 2.25 square-meters.


Garth L. Getgen

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, April 26, 2013 - 06:51 pm: Edit

Garth- Okay so if I follow you. You measured the Pol with calipers, then multiplied by the scale and figured the volume. Then figured the height was so many decks and made an outline of the ship in you cad program and try to keep the are of the deck plans close to the area you calculated the model to be? How was the area figured for the other deck plans already published done?

By Shawn Hantke (Shantke) on Friday, April 26, 2013 - 06:58 pm: Edit

Starline 2400 ships are 1/3788 and Starline 2500 ships are 1/3200. what were the scale of the Elite minis?

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Friday, April 26, 2013 - 07:11 pm: Edit

Shawn: The Elite minis are somewhere between 1:6700 (the Hydrans and Gorns) to about 1:8000 (The undersized Feds and Klingons).

I generally consider them 1:7400 as a range, they're a bit smaller than my company's 1:7200 Traveller and Squadron Strike ships.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Friday, April 26, 2013 - 10:42 pm: Edit

Shawn, the Starline 2500 series scale is 1:3125 officially, and I can verify that the Fed CA mini is at that scale. That said, if I were to do deck plans based on any other 2500-mini, I would allow for any scale between 1:3000 to 1:3250 (plus/minus four percent), as long as the same scaled is used for all measurements (i.e., don't use x3000 for length and x3250 for width) and allow for adding up to one more deck's worth of thickness.

I'm drafting the POL deck plans, or rather re-drafting because the new 2500-series mini made my previous deck plans obsolete. I based the size off the prototype while the mini was under development (and I had a hand in setting its size). I never went back to verify based of the final production mini other than to verify the body length it right.


Garth L. Getgen