Ship Design

This page is about making a ship. There is a second page that is more about how one is made.
spaceship design

http://stahlforce.com/desktop/desk170201.html

Ya, with a ship!
Jump one is one parsec or 3.262 light years.
The basic game area is 60x60x60 parsecs, thus you can jump from one side to the other in 60 jump one jumps if there were a straight line of stars. Travel time would be from the outer jump Beacon to the Inner Jump Beacon for each jump plus jump compute and jump charging time.

I have been playing with the idea of having for the first year the fastest ship being jump one. Ships can have jumps that are partial levels. This would force community and trade of a certain level. Then when jump 2 is invented you will have back waters joining together and start to get a real feel of politics and something to really war about. It's just and idea but I think it is an intriguing one.

One of the most important devices in any SF game design is the spaceship.
The ship needs info about the interior for the players to walk around in.
It needs designs for the interfaces to run it.
It needs data about it's exterior shape and mass.
It needs data about its weapons and armor and drive.
It needs data about how much cargo it can take, how many docking ports it has and what kind.
How many G's does it pull? Does it have interior Gravity or not? Is interior gravity possible? If not then what? Every one floats or the ship spins?
Can it enter and atmosphere? What does it use for fuel? What is its range? How fast can it go? Even with 7g acceleration at what speed do micrometeorite make it to fast to take the impact?
What have I forgotten?

This bit is by Tim, Timothy Little, from the public TML listserv

"So a highly effective drive implies extremely high density of energy
storage and ability to turn that into useful work. For example, a
drive that can thrust at 6g for 3 days implies at least 10^14 J/kg
energy storage, and safely handling power densities on the order of
1000 MW per kilogram of vehicle. This is regardless of whether it's a
reaction drive or not, or how hot it can run.

The former criterion can be met by the availability of efficient H-H
fusion, though without much leeway. The latter requirement makes
things rather interesting. A 1000-tonne craft thus must have the
ability to deliver 10^15 W on demand. That's the yield of a fairly
large nuclear detonation per second, and the vehicle must be able to
sustain that sort of output for days."

By others
Noticed that in both cases, regardless everything else about them, they both
deliver exactly the same force per square centimeter of surface area
allocated: 196 Newtons/Cm^2.

Power and reaction mass input is irrelevant as are the sizes of the internal
components. In both cases the surface area required in square meters is
Tonnes - Thrust (1 Tonne - Thrust being 9.8 Kilonewtons) divided by 200.

Ship is made with one meter cubes. There is a tile set and you build the ship leg like and then skin it?
When shot the shot with disperse as per the weapon. If it is lazer like and cuts through the ship that you can easily tell which blocks are hit and what systems are damaged.
There needs to be some sort of system to keep track of what is damaged and how that effects other systems.

Ships can jump from 1 to 6 parsecs. It is much more expensive to have a ship that can jump more that jump 1.
Ships can do up to warp 6 at which point the Grave plates fail to work.
Ships have
Cargo,
Weapons,
Armor
Counter Measures
N-space Drives
J-space Drives
Computers for running ship and also special computers for each major function
Communications equipment, N and J Space
Nav for J
Nav for N Space
Quarters
Life Support
Air locks
Docking Ports
Piloting Areas
War Areas (Strategy)
Food Areas
Play Areas
Relaxation Areas
N Fuel Tanks
Jump Fuel Tanks
Sub-ship areas (docking, or interior spaces)

ID
Inherits Earth Data Design
Flight plan
Sub ships
Gas giant skimming
Atmosphere planet landing (max G)

id | owner_id | owner_read | owner_write | group_id | group_read | group_write | other_read | other_write | number_of_key_people | people_with_keys | ship_name | ship_description | number_of_rooms | rooms | ship_picture | ship_notes | home_star | home_planet | year_made | tech_level | ships_mass | ships_volume | ship_x_size | ship_y_size | ship_z_size | object_in_orbit_about | orbit_object_type | on_surface | positonal_location | docked | dock_object | x | y | z | vector_x | vector_y | vector_z | max_speed | max_degrees_turn | max_acceleration | cargo_mass_max | cargo_volume_max | cargo_door_x | cargo_door_y | cargo_x_size | cargo_y_size | cargo_z_size | cargo_climate_controlled | cargo_shielded | cargo_ejectable | cargo_fuel_ok | cargo_food_units_ok | cargo_water_units_ok | cargo_people_ok | cargo_fuel | cargo_food_units | cargo_water_units | cargo_people | refueling_port | refueling_sun | refueling_comet | refueling_gas_giant | refueling_asteroid | refueling_planet_with_water | number_of_berths | berth_ships | shielded_berths | launchers | launch_time | recovery_time | fuelers | refueling_time | engines_power | engine_type | warp_drives | energy_efficiency | warp_capacitors | recharge_rate | number_of_weapons | weapon_pointers | weapon_location | counter_measures | shields | shields_type | power_signature | stealth_reduction | number_of_systems | systems | systems_damage | systems_repair_rate | minimum_crew_travel | minimum_crew_fight | max_passengers | max_day_without_refueling | max_day_water_units | max_day_food_units | atmospheric_reentry | landing_dirt | landing_water | landing_port | launching_dirt | launching_water | launching_port

Great advanced ship design thoughts by someone on TML.

And if you run the big plant at full tilt all the time, where's the excess
power go?

This is one of the conundrums with the Traveller drives. It should take a
hefty chunk of a ship's power to generate thrust (I forget if it actually
does, but it should) with M-drives. J-drives are their own insanity, but
they have mass capacitor banks that are charged then discharged. Charging
may take some time too.

So if I have a plant capable of a high output to charge a jump drive and to
support high G thrust and to drive weapons, it had better be something I can
turn off (and the only way to do this is the variety of different actual
plants that constitute the single logical plant) parts of when I don't need
that power. But in those cases, how do you get it up fast enough in some
situations?

I think this sort of multiplant situation explains why it takes a ship some
notable time to come from a low alert status to a high alert status - the
bringing live of the power systems to drive the combat systems (as well as
time for people to get suited and reach duty stations, strap in, etc). It
also means that ships going into areas they expect combat will have the
entirety of their power plant system online and will be generating more
energy than they need for some period of time (I think this is where they
charge up some batteries, which they later make sure to exhaust once they're
out of a combat situation or during particularly high energy demands during
combat).

I think this sort of conjuration of how power plants function introduces a
number of interesting in-game effects and decisions for how to handle your
ship. They are largely obscured by the fleet combat systems, but I assume on
individual ships, commanders and engineers work to make these decisions as
necessary and to keep the ship's energy balance (supply vs. need) as close
to even as possible. The times when there is a disparity will be the
interesting times....

Tom B.
"Ideally, you'd like an RPG space combat extension that let's your
pilot fly, your gunners shoot, your EW guy defend, your comms guy make
sure orders get around (maybe he is also your EW guy), your captain
plot tactical decisions, and your sensor guys find the enemy
(sensor/nav often combine in my games). You can also make good RP meat
out of the engineer trying to boost efficiency of the plant and keep
it operating and same with drives as well as damage control and rescue
folks dealing with damage and injuries."

SHIP FIGHTING
Scout Courier length? I'm guessing about 30m? Width maybe about 20m? Height 10m?

If you can modify your location by that distance in the time lag from
sensor reflection being generated to incoming beam arriving (so, say
3x the distance between the target ship and the firing ship plus some
analysis/tracking lag), then you can in fact dodge the single shot.
(this is largely why that isn't how it will end up being done)

1G for 1s = 5 m
1G for 2s = 20m
1G for 3s = 45m

Assuming the hits were to be dead center, you need to move by 15m in
the long axis, about 10m in the wide axis, and 2.5m in the height
axis. Notice how little effort and how low the Gs involved are. Since
the time you are worried about is 3x the distance, to get a 45m
movement, you only need 1 light second of separation. And if you count
that as 45m in any direction, that means your locus of targets just
went to 90m width in any cross section.

Bigger ships and higher Gs should produce results that still make
agility feasible in the 3-4 light seconds real ranges. The hugest
ships might need 7-8 seconds assuming mediocre Gs.

Remember, unless you're firing on passives (which only have 'emitter
(target) to shooter' + 'analyze/track lag' + 'shooter to emitting
target' distances), then you've got to add in an addition first stage
of 'shooting ship to target' for the outgoing sensor wave. That's 3x
the distance between. That adds up faster than you'd think.

For instance, a 3G ship at 3 real seconds = 1215m (or double that
since you could go any direction). So a locus of possible target
locations spanning a sphere of diameter 1215 m. That's with a zero
analysis/tracking lag.

That's enough to miss in the 'few shots' or 'single shot' model.

1 light-second is probably the limit, depending on ruleset. Even 1
light second and stipulating you can fire whenever you want to, a 1g
ship can move at least 20m and a 6g ship 120m. In terms of locus of
target locations, that is 40m and 240m respectively.

I suppose that won't get your hugest ships (in their big dimension)
out of the line of fire, but it'll move a lot of smaller ships out of
the way sufficiently to have a shot miss. I suspect hundred to
thousands of ton shipping can reasonably dodge and 100K dTons+ just
can't. The 10-100K range might be possible depending on design.

Ships are built using cubes that are 3 meters square.
There is a spot that lets you set the height, length and width as you go in squares. Each square is one level.
There is an editor that lets you select different kinds of 3 meter cubes. Some examples would be, crew cabin, part of a large room, engine block, Jump drive block, hall block, door types,