Want opinions on ship design.

[DrBeau]

Especially after reading the thread regarding ship creation rules (or lack thereof), I decided to make my own ship. I used the "Usually Runner Ship" in the PW Main, but it's only for an idea of where to place MDC levels and whatnot. It's not complete, but here are the stats. BTW, it's a 3 story ship with a large cargo bay and so basic weapons:



Unnamed Medium-duty cargo ship

Class: Cargo Ship
Crew: 12 is the typical crew compliment. The ship can run on as few as 2 with one Pilot and one
Co-pilot/Comms Officer.
MDC by Location:
*Laser turrets (2) - 200 each
Cockpit - 600
**Landing Sturts - 200 each
Cargo Bay Force Field - 10
Cargo Bay Blast Doors - 200
Force Field - 350 per side (2100 total)
***Main body - 3500
* These laser turrets are relativly small and are -2 to strike on a called shot.
** The legs are only exposed when on the ground or during the landing and takeoff procedure.
*** Depleting the M.D.C. of the main body means the ship is
in tatters, with life support and contragravity systems
knocked out, and unable to fight or move under its own
power except for launching missiles. If the ship is reduced to
-200 M.D.C., it explodes, doing 1D6x100 M.D. to all other
ship components and any target within 1000 feet (305 m).


Speed:

Driving on the ground: Not possible
Flying: Mach 2 in an atmosphere, Mach 11 in space, and can travel at 5 light years per hour
using a CG-drive.
Range: Effectively unlimited; life support will keep the crew alive for six months.


Statistical Data:

Height: 50 feet
Width: 80 feet
Length: 160 feet
Weight: TBD
Cargo: TBD
Power System: TBD
Market Cost: TBD



Weapon Systems

1. Laser Turrets (2): Each turret has a high-powered laser array.
Primary Purpose: Anti-Ship.
Secondary Purpose: Defense.
Mega-Damage: 2D6x10 M.D. per blast.
Rate of Fire: Equal to number of hand to hand attacks of the
gunner.
Effective Range: 6000 feet (1828 m).
Payload: Effectively unlimited.

2. Long-Range Missile Tubes (2): Thew launchers are built
into the ship's main body. The launchers can only engage targets
in front of the ship.
Primary Purpose: Anti-Ship
secondary Purpose: Defense
Mega-Damage: Varies with missile type.
Rate of Fire: One at a time or volleys of two, four, or eight missles.
Effective Range: About 500 miles
Payload: 48; 24 missles per launcher. Extra loads can be kept in the cargo hold (1 ton per
48 missles)

EDITED

[Jefffar]

This ship seems vaguely familiar . . .

Anyway, you need to do some editing. You have the ship with 2 laser arrays in one section and 3 in another. You also called a laser array a laser army. You got a few other little thigns liek that to take care off.

So is this a standard mass produced model or highly customized? How did the speed get pushed that high? What gear does the ship have other than the weapons? Does it have escape pods, concelaed cargo hatches? Some flavour text would help.

[DrBeau]

Thanks for the reply. It might seem familiar because I used the "Typical Runner Ship" on Phase World, Pg. 171, as a template. That's the reason it reads so funny (I typed out the stats of the ship in notepad and erased most of the stats to start).

About the speeds, I didn't know what would be good. I dropped the within atmosphere speed by about 2 or 3 and upped the vacuum speed by 1 I think. I didn't really know what would be good for that.

I have more but I posted it last night as my laptop battery was dying, so I just pasted it in and hit submit.

I was thinking of this ship as something of a Mass-Produced ship from a company of little significance. I just feel that the civilian-class starships are a department seriously lacking in content and I wanted to make a new ship for a campaign I have coming up.

I'm going to EDIT the main post and either change some of the stats and inconsistencies or mark them as undetermined.

A brief description:

This multi-deck cargo ship is approx. 160ft long, 80ft wide, and 50 ft high. The decks are 25', 10', and 7' high from the top deck to the bottom. The lower deck is ~7' high and is where the much of the power systems and weapons are located. It is serviceable but is made up of many crawl spaces and tiny paths. The mid-deck is a 10' high deck that houses the crew quarters, kitchen, common area, and storage space. The rear 1/8th of the deck is dedicated to engine systems, FLT systems, and various other ship systems. The top deck is shorter than the rest, essentially an 80'x80' warehouse in front of a 20'x80' area that is a continuation of the FTL, CG-drive, and general systems area from the mid-deck. The cargo bay is protected by a large slatted door system that's 200 MDC and a minor force field (10 MDC) can be put into place in order to protect the contents inside from the vacuum outside (this is usually used for mid-space trades/swaps). A 20’x20’ cargo elevator connect the upper and mid decks.

The 2 laser turrets can fire on anything in their hemispherical angle of attack. Two missile launchers are also housed within the belly of the beast.

The cockpit is somewhat detached from the main body, coming away from the left side of teh crew area and rising to be level with the cargo area, just in front of the door. The cockpit has a very large window towards the left side looking into the cargo bay. The reason for this is to give one of the crew a good view of the area so that they can direct the work and deal with related ship systems easily.

Here is a rough sketch. The decks are out of order so pay attention.

[DrBeau]

Also, please give suggestions for changes or ways to fill in some of the missing data. If I thought this thing was done I probably owuldn't have posted it up.

[Jefffar]

Well your design seemed a little similar to another ship, but we won't get into that here.

Weight and cargo, I suggest you explore similar sized ships out there for those figures. If you use a military model to base those numbers off I should warn you the military model's weight will be higher due to weapons and armour and the cargo is lower due to a lack of space.

Powrer systems are pretty standard

Market cost should compare to the cargo ships in there. Maybe a bit more for the added speed.

[RainOfSteel]

Also, please give suggestions for changes or ways to fill in some of the missing data. If I thought this thing was done I probably owuldn't have posted it up.

Sorry, but for the most part, PB uses the "make it up as you go" design system.

I think there's a Starship Design Sequence in the Galaxy Guide (or whatever it's called, I don't own it), but it's an SDC system; and it's, well, overly simplistic to a Traveller fan like me.

Just go ahead and finish up the attributes you haven't got yet, and then look over the MDC and Weapons MD and see if they look like they'll work out based on your experience running combat. Run a couple of desk simulations, and then playtest a couple of encounters like blasting your way out of spaceport, or running an orbital blockade . . .

[DrBeau]

Well your design seemed a little similar to another ship, but we won't get into that here.

The cockpit design does scream of a certain ship form a galaxy far far away, but it seemed very practical (the entire left/inner side is windowed so you can see the entire cargo bay from the cockpit).

Market cost should compare to the cargo ships in there. Maybe a bit more for the added speed.

Maybe I'll tone the speed down a little. I figured a bigger ship would be able to go a little bit faster since it can fit more stuff and there is no such thing as drag in space, but I was thinking logically, not Palladium-ly. I wouldn't think the speed would be unbalancing, but whatever.

Sorry, but for the most part, PB uses the "make it up as you go" design system.

Yeah, unfortunately for us. I wouldn't be saddened by it as much if there wasn't such a lack of diversity in the spaceships.