Advice with design!

[Rick]

I was wondering if there was a ship design system with enough PD/SFB information to be able to design ships for one of the PD formats?

I'm designing deckplans for a ship that's (eventually) going to be the base of operations for a PD group )plus extra NPC's most probably). Started off with a model that I've converted (second row down, on the right in the picture);



Looking at the new Starline 2500 scale, the ship is 80 metres long - which I'm thinking is too small for a Gunboat, but too big for a Skiff? Would it be the right length to be a Cutter? My initial idea for the standard military version would be about 20-30 crew, plus a few marines, and it's streamlined for landing on planets. Does this seem ok for a small, fast Cutter?

[terryoc]

SFB and Prime Directive have no ship design system AFAIK.

Prime Directive Traveller will probably have some kind of design system, I believe. GURPS may have a starship design system you could adapt, but it's not in the Prime Directive rulebooks, it would be in one of the GURPS supplements.

80m long is longer than a gunboat (about 30m?? I think). I think a police ship would be about that long? (I could be completely wrong though).

20-30 crew, a few marines, and optimised for landing on planets could be two types of ship: a gunboat (which carries 27 crew and is REALLY CRAMPED) or a Free Trader (a type of freighter). There are variants of the Free Trader such as the Prime Trader, which has more facilities like science labs but less cargo space. The Free Traitor is an up-gunned version used by Orion Pirates.

[Dal Downing]

APTs (Armed Priority Transport) has a oprtating crew of 36 to 48 people and there is no reason you couldn't run a little short handed. So you might just want to sub in its stats for your ship and just use your own drawing for what the ship looks like.

There is also the Federation Express Boat with a crew of. 24 to 36 I think it is.

Edit: Had to correct my math.

[gurps_gm]

GURPS Spaceships is available as a PDF. at e23:
http://e23.sjgames.com/item.html?id=SJG37-0120
There are 8 supplements with additional detail also as PDFs.
It's a metasystem. It doesn't due deckplans, for example.

[Sgt_G]

I think 80 meters would be about right for the Free Trader. There are deck plans published for it.

[Steve Cole]

The hull of the Free Trader is 50 meters wide and (not counting engines) 68 meters long.