Starship Construction
Draft Version 1.0
Table of Contents
Related Rules
Overview
Traveller's ship design system has seen several incarnations from quick and simplistic to very detailed and labor intensive. For the purposes of my game, I've decided to make a house set of design rules. They will borrow elements for the many systems that have come before as well as incorporate some of my own ideas.
When developing this system, I had several requirements in mind. The include:
- Simplistic Scaling – Player ships will be, at most, a few thousand displaement tons with the vast majority of them being under 1000 tons. For that reason, I want a simple scalling for components that can be represented as an equation (to avoid having to use lots of chart – though I'll have the chats available). This will make doing the designs easier and faster as well as making them easier to code should I want a generation tool. I'm only concerned with reasonable scailing over the player ship ranges. It's ok if the system breaks down for larger ships.
- Player Modifications – I want to allow players to take a ship and make some customizations, similar to Han Solo. Stock ships that the players can modify to get a little more speed or power from the system. A better computer, more efficient fuel usage, etc. Each ship will be unique as skilled player engineers incorporate some “personal modifications”.
- Cost – Traveller ships are very expensive. How many players can realistically come up with the 20% down (as specified in the original game) or get financing for tens of millions of credits with no clear means of income? This system produces ships that, on the low end of the scale (under 500 tons) should be similar in price to buying a modern Semi truck to a nice home. Still expensive but more reasonable. I am targeting most ships to be well under 1MCr for ships under 500 tons.
Definitions and Terminology
Before we start with the system, a few terms need to be defined or clarified to help avoid confusion.
- Displacement Tons
- In the context of this system, as with original Traveller, tons is used to mean Displacement Tons. This is a measure of volume, not mass. It represents the volume occupied by 1 metric ton of liquid Hydrogen or about 14 cubic meters. In game terms this is important for two things: will the components fit into the space available and how much space does it take up on a deckplan drawing. For deckplans, 1 Displacement Ton is 2 squares. Each square is 1.5 meters on a side (and just over 3 meters high), thus 2 squares is about 14 cubic meters.
- Jump Drive or Hyper Drive
- Traveller used jump drives for intersteller travel. A jump drive propelled a ship
into jump space causing it to emerge back into normal space 1 - 6 parsecs away after 1 week. Distance travelled
was based on the drive number but the time was fixed (within some minor variation).
For my system, I'm changing how this works. Jump or Hyper drive will still propell a ship into jump or hyperspace but the travel time is based on the drive speed and distance travelled. Thus a fast ship can travel 1 parsec in less time than a slower ship. Total distance travelled is based on fuel reserves. A slow ship can travel 6 parsecs (or more) if it has enough fuel, given enough time. In otherwords, more like FTL travel as depicted in most SF books and movies.
- Maneuver Drive
- A Maneuver Drive is actually a combination of several drive systems. The first is an anti-gravity based system that is used by smaller ships for landings. The second part is a main drive for use in interplanetary travel. Because of the nature of this system, it is not very efficient in strong gravity wells such as near planets. Normally the anti-grav systems is used to launch or land a ship on a planet. As the ship climbs higher into orbit and transistions into space, the drives transistion from using anti-gravity systems to using the main drive. The main drive works by creating a localized distortion or bending of space, effectively creating a localized gravity well that ship "falls" into.
The Design Process
The design process is as follows:
- Choose Hull Size
- Calculate Hyper/Jump Drive
- Calculate Maneuver Drive
- Calculate Power Plant
- Choose Electronic Systems
- Choose Optional Components
- Cargo Space
- Weapons
- Fuel Purification
- Ship's Vehicles
- Determine Crew Requirements
- Allocate Life Support
- Quarters or Barracks
- Food Storage and Processing
- Recreation
- Calculate Fuel Storage
- Validate Design
- Calculate Costs
Choose Hull Size
Choose the size of the ship you want to design. Many components have minimum sizes that means some hull sizes may not accomodate some components. Additionally, you neeed to ensure that the hull size you select is sufficient to contain all the required and optional componets plus sufficient fuel tankage to allow the ship to travel between planets or star systems.