A note that the Cargo Bay is not hardened for vacuum might help. It was built by the lowest bidder, and likely not to military specifications.

That way, if they really need to open the bay in PD or a published scenario they can depressurize the entire ship, everyone just needs space suits.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Saturday, July 20, 2019 - 09:31 pm: Edit

Steve, this label is on the deck plans, so it can't get too wordy. Of course, the "real" ship will have large, red lettered WARNING signs and red/green indicator lights, exactly for the reason you described. If someone manages to open the cargo bay space doors, they risk putting the entire Deck Eight into vacuum, as well as the Food Pantries on Deck Seven.

It may seem like a design flaw, and perhaps it is, but I need to prevent someone from turning the cargo bay into a second shuttle bay. So it's either this or get rid of the space doors completely, meaning that anything going into the cargo bay would have to be Transported in. I like that idea even less.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Saturday, July 20, 2019 - 10:49 pm: Edit

Well... (playing devils advocate here...)

What about access doors between the cargo bay and the shuttle bay?

Is it possible to land a shuttle in the shuttle bay, and THEN unload to shuttle directly to the cargo bay? That means all access to the cargo bay is through the shuttle bay.

In ***theory*** there shouldn't be unlimited access to the cargo bay from the inhabited parts of the ship for those time hazardous cargo is aboard. (Such as two 20th century humpback whales are aboard...) you wouldn't want some E1 trainee to open the wrong hatch and flood the crew areas with tons of sea water....

Really, the only time cargo should be touched is when it is stowed in the cargo bay, or when it's loaded back on the shuttles for delivery.

(Of course, that runs counter to those occasions when rescue or search and rescue operations are staged out of the cargo bay for FEMA duties...)

Guess this might have other implications.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 08:13 am: Edit

Considering that the shuttle bay is on Deck One and the cargo bay is on Deck Eight of an eight-deck ship......


Garth L. Getgen

By Jason E. Schaff (Jschaff297061) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 08:50 am: Edit

If you want to prevent cargo becoming an emergency shuttle bay, how about changing the size/shape of the external cargo hatch so that a shuttle won't fit through it?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 11:14 am: Edit

Well, no, because it should be able to take up to four shuttles as cargo to resupply a forward base.


Garth L. Getgen

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 02:58 pm: Edit

Big enough for a shuttle with the engines removed? The cargo bay doesn't have facilities for maintaining fueled and powered warp cores, so engines and thrusters and the like have to be unloaded and safed.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 06:18 pm: Edit

As of right now:

The full-size Franz Joseph shuttlecraft are 475-cm wide. These were used on the Masterson-class boats and were phased out before the Callahan-class was designed.
The FJ shuttles were replaced by the mid-size ADB shuttlecraft, which are 400-cm wide.

The Masterson shuttle hatch is 700-cm wide.
The Callahan shuttle hatch is 650-cm wide.

The cargo bay hatch on either ship is 500-cm wide. (I just changed it, down from 675-cm.)

So, it would be tricky but not impossible to fly a shuttle into the cargo hatch, especially for the older FJ shuttles. The shuttle bay has a reinforced floor and a landing target / low-power tractor beam. The cargo bay has neither, so it would be very unsafe to try to fly/land a shuttle into the cargo bay. Still, I don't want anyone to use the deck plans as some sort of backdoor to justify changes in SFB/FedCmdr, to try to claim the POL should be able to launch four shuttles (five counting the spare).


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 09:11 pm: Edit

Still devils advocating here... there is the real world examples of the U.S.S Langley and the CV 2&3 (Lexington sarotaga carriers) that had cargo holds for crated aircraft. Not flyable, but when needed they used a crane to hoist the aircraft from low storage.

Useless during battle or emergencies, but provided enough actual aircraft to offset the horrible attrition from normal flight operations.

Is there room to install removable decking between decks 1 and 8 for a cargo handling shaft? Not saying redesign anything, just asking if all 8 decks have corridors in the same general area that you coul pull up some deck plates and use the light tractors in the shuttle bay to hoist crated fighters from deck 8 cargo area?

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 10:51 pm: Edit

Between the shuttle bay on deck 1 and cargo hold on deck 8: shuttle handing systems on deck 2 (one-meter crawl space), sick bay on deck 3, crew quarters on decks 4+5+6 including center-line for-aft turbolift corridors on deck 4+5.

Between spare shuttle storage on deck 1 and cargo transporter on deck 8: T-bombs and aft Transporter on deck 2, sick bay / crew quarters as above, chow hall kitchen on deck 7.

Can't be done. Besides, we don't want someone writing to Petrick to change the number of spare shuttles from one to five, do we??


Garth L. Getgen

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Sunday, July 21, 2019 - 11:37 pm: Edit

Slidarian Corporal;

Sounds like something Jeff would absolutely love to do.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, July 22, 2019 - 09:48 am: Edit

I imagine that a Petrick gets requests from lots of players wanting changes...

I am not responsible for ALL of the crazy, insane, and wildly implausible things that Petrick has to deal with.

Just the ones I submitted. GRIN!

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, July 28, 2019 - 11:10 am: Edit

I had someone review / sanity-check the cutter plans. There was a bit of confusion about Decks One & Two. The problem is Deck One has three different tiers (which gives Deck Two three different ceiling heights). Perhaps a visual aid is in order.

Cut-away side view
Cross-section views

There have been minor little changes since I made these images, so I do need to clean them up a bit. However, the main point is to show how the Shuttle Bay [section 'B'] on Deck One is the lower (thus widest) tier, the spare shuttle hanger is on the mid-tier [section 'C'], and the parts locker / later Drone Rack is on the higher / narrow tier [section 'D'], above the gymnasium.

Is that at all helpful? Does it make sense to anyone else besides me?


P.S> Jeff, this is why you can't move shuttles from the cargo hold on Deck Eight up to the shuttle bay on Deck One. {grin}


Garth L. Getgen

By Jack Bohn (Jackbohn) on Sunday, July 28, 2019 - 07:17 pm: Edit

Back in Naval engine rooms, floorplans are arranged around the major machine installations, sometimes with greater spacing, or offset to reach the machinery. If they are not in line with the decks of the rest of the ship, they are seperately numbered as "levels." There's an echo of this in TOS in a scrap of dialog about "all decks and engineering levels."

As the decks in the forward and aft hulls are mostly continuous, you could just leave it as Deck 1 on different tiers. If you find it more convenient to differentiate them, you might label them as Levels 1, 2, and 3, or invent A, B, and C as the standard for starships.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, July 29, 2019 - 05:37 pm: Edit

garth, No problem. normally there is no need to move shuttles between cargo hold and shuttle bay... but there must be a way short of using transporter rooms to move cargo to and from the shuttle bays.

even if the amount of the cargo moved were a maximum of 0.35 of a single cargo box, there may be times the POL must deliver cargo. at the maximum capacity of the Admin Shuttles, it will take most of three flights of the shuttles to deliver ONE cargo box equivalent. (0.35*3=1.05 cargo boxes)

as it is, it appears you require the use of the turbo lifts...so are you going to use a human chain/bucket brigade to hand transfer the cargo up to the lowest level serviced by the turbolifts?

if it is, this must count as a serious design flaw as you have previeously stated that part of the cargo can/does include emergency supplies{rations, blankets, medical supplies, surgical suites etc.)

and if you need to move the palletized medical stores and equipment to another ship outside of being docked at a base, does that mean you have to depreaserize deck 8?

you could probably justify the current layout for smaller items... but what if the captain procures type VI drones and stores them in the cargo bay? will the crew be able to reload the drone G rack with the type VI drones in ONE star fleet battles turn as called for in the rules?

(emphasis, not shouting.)

(grin!)

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, July 29, 2019 - 08:35 pm: Edit

Jeff,

I hate it when you make me go look up rules I haven't read in ten years.

Per (FD2.421), two spaces of drones can be loaded into a rack in a given SFB turn, so it takes two full turns to reload an empty rack from reload storage.

Per (FD2.442), if there are any drones in Cargo (SSD box), they are moved "automatically" for free to refill the reload storage.

I can't find any rule that allows one to take drones directly from Cargo to the rack (or to a scatter pack).


Otherwise, what you say about cargo transfers: yes, it will be difficult to move large items from the shuttle bay to cargo hold. It the item doesn't fit in a turbolift, it just won't be possible. I don't see any way around it, not without redrawing half the ship (and ignoring source material that put the cargo bay where it is).


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Monday, July 29, 2019 - 11:29 pm: Edit

Garth, type VI drones are the half space dog fight drones. per rule FD2.421, that means the crew reloading the drone racks just need to carry 4 type VI drones each turn until the supply is exhausted.

then again, if the POL captain has enough "pull" to acquire a Multi Role Shuttle (MRS), the Federation type comes with 20 spaces worth of drones That need to be accounted for(not to mention the speed upgrades...)

for me, having a couple of cargo boxes available to store the extra ordinance just makes sense.

or, it could be that the POL captain could use some commanders option points to purchase extra equipment to store in those empty cargo boxes. (oh, I dont know perhaps a ground combat vehicle or two... or a truck and a towed transporter artillery unit to reinforce the ships boarding parties?)

what are you going to do? drive the truck into the turbo lift and hope it fits? grin.

sorry, but the rules exist in the game that allow for many unlikely options. deploying C.O. equipment is just another example.

By Richard Wells (Rwwells) on Monday, July 29, 2019 - 11:37 pm: Edit

Build an external turbolift from the shuttle bay to the cargo bay?

(G25.22) allows each deck crew to move 16 cargo spaces per turn or completely load/unload an Admin shuttle in a bit less than a turn. Divide by 4 if explosive (G25.3).

There also needs to be some kind of large passageway to move half a ground vehicle to a transporter.

Edit: For the MRS, see (FD2.443) which lists a special storage area for those drones.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - 12:46 am: Edit

Richard,

in a sense, this is what we are talking about. Garths deck plans seem to show no easy way to move cargo between the Shuttle bay and the cargo hold.

shuttle bay is on deck 1. Cargo hold is deck 8.

no cargo lift or cargo sized turbo lift, no access shaft, and Garth mentioned earlier the idea of not having any external hatches to allow cargo to be moved out of the ship itself.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - 10:14 am: Edit

Jeff, there is an external hatch, but as the cargo hold isn't designed to be de-pressurized (unlike the shuttle bay), the ship has to be docked before said hatch can be opened.

That is, unless SVC tells me to change it.


I was under the impression that (J8.511) prohibits the Cutter from using MRS. Am I mistaken? That said, if it somehow can use an MRS, there is room in the shuttle bay for the 20-spaces of drone ready storage

~~~~~~~~

Richard,

---> G25.22) allows each deck crew to move 16 cargo spaces per turn or completely load/unload an Admin shuttle in a bit less than a turn. Divide by 4 if explosive (G25.3).

Yes, the rule says a shuttle can be loaded / unloaded in one turn, but does it *require* that it be able to move said cargo *directly* into the cargo hold? Perhaps it's unloaded and then moved a bit at a time as operations / manning allows. Likewise, items could be moved from the hold and staged to load onto the shuttle. The gymnasium is purposely located near the shuttle bay, so it could be a temporary cargo hold.


---> There also needs to be some kind of large passageway to move half a ground vehicle to a transporter.

There is a cargo transporter to move large items. To prevent someone from using it to beam a third BP team over, the background text says it can't be used at the same time as either six-pad personnel transporter (it uses their matter-converter and/or emitters).


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - 01:21 pm: Edit

Garth,

really. this is just dealing with some loose ends.

you have done a wonderful job puttng together the POL deck plans. I hope you do not feel I am being unfair or too demanding. (and I actually rather appreciate getting you to go back to the rules. for some one with an advanced case of OCD, like you, you need to be reminded every now and then that MOST people do not have a memory like you have. we mere mortals need to double check facts and figures every now and then! grin.)

having the cargo on deck 8 is just inconvenient. you are leaving the head ache of being able to access such things to the ships deck force, and its nomenal leader, the ships X.O. the captain just has to tell his xo to get the job done.

my problem is, I try to anticipate what forms of solutions will work in various situations.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - 02:11 pm: Edit

Garth;

---

Quote:

I was under the impression that (J8.511) prohibits the Cutter from using MRS. Am I mistaken? ...

---

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - 04:51 pm: Edit

Yeah, but if a POL is carrying an MRS something is seriously wrong like the POL recovered it while it was fleeing a battle or the POL is on a really weird and specific special mission or the captain is the son of the Federation President. I cannot see the designer including space for those drones just in case.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - 04:59 pm: Edit

Jon, agreed. And rule (FD2.443) states that any drones for the MRS are lost on the last shuttle box hit. As I said, there is plenty of room in the shuttle bay. I don't have a specific icon for the MRS, but I figure it shouldn't be any bigger than the FJ-style shuttle (775 x 475 cm).

Now then, I need to go look up the HAS & HTS to make sure the POL can't carry either of those.


Garth L. Getgen

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, July 30, 2019 - 05:59 pm: Edit

I was simply answering Garth's question if it was legally possible for a POL to carry an MRS, not arguing that the design should include provisions for such an unlikely occurrence. Hence the quote.