The Old Light Cruiser

gurps_gm · Post by **gurps_gm** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:14 pm

Hi,
Looking for specs on the Old Light Cruiser: Length, Width, Height, Number of decks.
Where is the hanger deck, by the way?
I have GURPS Feds, so I have crew compliment.

Thanks in Advance!!

Sgt_G · Post by **Sgt_G** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:45 pm

Until now, none of that data was adresed. With the new Starline 2500 minis all being designed to be on the same scale, we will soon be able to estimate the size of most ships in SFU.

I just took some measurments on the screen-shot of the CA and oCL image (I hope it was the most current version), and the oCL body is roughly 173 meters long (not counting warp drive) by 85 meters wide by 18 meters thick (not including the 5-meter tall bridge dome). It should easily have five decks, tho only one will be full width of the ship due to the oval cross-section.

djdood · Post by **djdood** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:31 pm

The shuttlebay door is centered, on the rear face, and always has been (even on the old metal mini).

Post by **Steve Cole** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 11:15 pm

The data posted on the CL is as good as anything I have.

gurps_gm · Post by **gurps_gm** » Mon Nov 14, 2011 4:26 pm

It's a start. I appreciate the help.

gurps_gm · Post by **gurps_gm** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 4:27 am

Sgt_G wrote:
I just took some measurments on the screen-shot of the CA and oCL image (I hope it was the most current version), and the oCL body is roughly 173 meters long (not counting warp drive) by 85 meters wide by 18 meters thick (not including the 5-meter tall bridge dome). It should easily have five decks, tho only one will be full width of the ship due to the oval cross-section.

18 meters thick? Isn't that a little thin

Sgt_G · Post by **Sgt_G** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 5:17 am

Maybe. It wasn't as if I could do better than close approximations. I tried to go back and re-look at the imagery to see if I guessed wrong, but those topics are closed. If anyone has ST-2500 Fed minis, we can have them take some measurements.

gurps_gm · Post by **gurps_gm** » Sat Mar 03, 2012 6:16 pm

Maybe I can kludge something from the stats from the BURKE-class Frigate and a Franz Josef ship.

Thanks.

Sgt_G · Post by **Sgt_G** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 10:34 pm

I just received my Fed minis. After measuring, I found the oCL mini is 54.5 mm long (body only, no warp drives) by 26.25 mm wide by 6.00 mm thick at the max points (not including bridge). However, the band the wraps around the ship just aft of the bridge throws the numbers off. Measuring the hull, I found it to be 20.75 mm wide by 5.00 mm thick.

At a scale of 1:3125, it's 170 meters long by 65 meters wide by 15.625 meters thick. Including the band, it's 82 meters wide by 18.75 meters thick. The "neck" between the for and aft sections is 36 meters wide at the narrowest.

At 15.625 meters, the ship is easily five decks thick, four of you want crawl spaces between the decks. Of course, it's always just as easy to fudge the numbers up "slightly".

gurps_gm · Post by **gurps_gm** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 3:54 pm

That length is close to what I read in GURPS Federation, that the OLC is 75% the size of the heavy.

Thanks.

Sgt_G · Post by **Sgt_G** » Wed Mar 14, 2012 1:48 pm

I started to measure out the oCL mini to port it into Floor Plan Plus. I do NOT intend to map out the entire deck plans, but I will get the basic outline started and coverted to GIF image for someone else to take over.

Sentinal · Post by **Sentinal** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 12:40 am

Don't forget to account for the fact that the OCL has an armored hull all-around. So some of that thickness should be considered with this in mind.

djdood · Post by **djdood** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 2:25 am

Armor in the SFU isn't thick hull plating. The name "Armor" is a bit of a misnomer. Then again, so is "Shields"; it's not like the ships are surrounded by escutcheons

SFU "armor" on a ship is banks of capacitance/dispersal units and other technological means of mitigating an enemy attack. There might be some extra hull thickness or some ablative coatings, but most of the function of dealing with damaging energy (plasma, electricity, heat, hard radiation, etc.) comes from the "armor" units performing their function actively (like modern-day "reactive armor" which explodes to disperse an attacking weapon's effects), as-opposed to the passive approach of traditional armor plate.

Nick Blank's deck plans for the Snipe showed the armor as an array of diamond shaped features, in the same sizing as the water and other consumables tanks that would normally fill the void space between the inner pressure hull and the outer hull plates.

Basically, instead of sticking consumables around the inner hull, the old ships stuck these sacrificial "armor" units. They act a bit like a modern surge protector - if a large amount of energy hits them, they take in that energy and direct it away from critical ship's systems, destroying themselves in the process. They can be replaced but it is difficult work (thus the high repair cost, in both SFB and FC).

Note that I avoided using the word "absorb" in the description I gave. SFU armor has nothing to do with Andromedan Power Absorber Panels (or at least not a lot to do with them; nobody *really* understands Andromedan technology except the Andromedans and they're not talking).

I'll also note that this modern interpretation of "armor" in the SFU evolved over time and there might be references in old fiction or flavor text that doesn't grok with it.

Nerroth · Post by **Nerroth** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 1:40 pm

That's not entirely true in all cases; for the Trobrin Empire, the armor boxes do count as discrete belts (which, in some cases, can be removed to make space for other systems; as was done when some of the side belts on the Trobrin deep space dreadnought were taken out to make way for repair systems in the conversion to a space control ship).

In their case, part of the reason for this is also due to their unique physiology; the silicate Trobrin consume rock as their staple diet, so for them the armor literally counts as an emergency food source on extended patrol missions!

But in the case of the OCL (or its related designs in the Federation and Federal Republic), I would agree that the kind of ablative crystals shown on the Snipe deck plans would probably be fairly representative of how those Terran (and Auroran) armorclads work.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Fri Mar 23, 2012 3:06 pm

glug.