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SteamPoweredMikeJ β Traveller - Mining Ship
Published: 2014-05-20 04:57:12 +0000 UTC; Views: 7582; Favourites: 174; Downloads: 176
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Description
My first starship drawing in close to a decade, done for the Traveller campaign I'm currently running. A 1400-ton deep space mining vessel in fact, for those who are interested. Stats available on request ; )Related content
Comments: 48
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Never liked that game.Β Trying to create a character, and they may die before they're completed.
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You know,, I am interested in ststs!!Β Could you shoot me a copy?
Jeff
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Cool! and with the right modifications, I think that this ship could be used as a freighter or a (improvised) mercenary ship.
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More the former than the latter, unless you get REALLY creative ; )
The cargo bay is HUGE, and it's designed to also haul additional tonnage strapped under the 'wings' (with a hit to jump and maneuver speeds).
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Did you ever post the deck plans anywhere? I would love to see the inside of this wonderful ship.
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Not yet. Just wrapped up the campaign a couple weeks ago. I'll get those online soon!
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awesome job. It looks like it could take a lot of hits!
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Thanks! ...Though it's not really what it's designed for. Just mining ops for this bad boy ; )
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ahh. I see, haha. A badass miner.Β
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Thanks! I figured a mining ship was going to be all utilitarian, low on aesthetics...
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Love it! Do you have orthos? Would love to use this design for my campaign (as an NPC ship or even just in the background).
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I have deckplans, but I can't post them yet because they could be spoilery to my campaign. I'll post 'em later this summer though!
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A great-looking ship!
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Thanks! Yeah, I was always big on that aesthetic...
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Thanks! Fancy compliments are the best compliments ; )
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I'd love to see the stats and internal layout of that ship!
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Stats are in one of the comments below. Internal layout will have to wait until after my players deal with it in our game ; )
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Nice design and specs, perfect for a small RPG group
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I would like to request the stats as well. It looks quite interesting. Looks like there's at least 4 triple turrets, and accommodations for 6 (12 if they double up), though there could certainly be more bunk space if they don't insist on a window. Most of the rest of the space would probably be dedicated to a launch, atv/air raft, and dedicated mining equipment/stowage. I'm curious how you worked it out
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Well, I should give a couple caveats about my campaign: It's mostly MegaTraveller rules, but I liberally cherry-picked stuff from classic Traveller, as well as some more modern games (FUDGE in particular). I used High Guard ship design rules, as I think MegaTraveller's got too complicated, led to too many wonky side effects, and would've left me unable to properly use all the zillions of excellent ship designs made for the earlier version of the game. That said, I used stats for sensors and communications gear direct from MegaTraveller.
Yukon class Mining Ship
TL14, MCr485
1400 ton hull, jump-2, maneuver-2, power plant-2
Fuel scoops and purification plant
Type 3 Computer, plus extensive mining-oriented sensors (Active EMS - Far Orbit, Passive EMS - Intersteller, Densitometer - HiPen/250m, Magnetic sensor, Radiation sensor)
50 ton tractor/repulsor bay (I don't buy the idea that you can have anti-gravity vehicles at TL 9, but even at TL 15 you couldn't make a tractor beam. I also found the Tractor effects in combat felt patently unbelievable... So I ditched their combat effects and unified the tech. At any rate, a tractor beam would be very handy in mining.)
4 single pulse-laser turrets (I drew triples by mistake)
12 10Mw TL 13 mining lasers (since they're useless in starship combat, they don't count against the hardpoint limits)
Modular cutter and 3 modules, 2 TL 13 Prospectors Bubbles, 4 Motherload Mining Gravs
Crew - 34, 6 single occupancy staterooms, 14 double
Two cranes, plus a lab, workshop, and refining facilities
Fuel - 364 tons (one jump and 3 months maneuver/power)
Cargo - 485 tons, plus can mount an additional 700 tons externally under the wings, reducing performance to jump-1, maneuver-1.
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Always liked the old High Guard rules. They make things a lot more interesting than classic traveller's, notably more workable than megatraveller, and still a great deal more thorough than the mongoose traveller rules. I've noticed that Mongoose traveller tends to run fairly consistent with the traveller classic rules, but they do (usefully) ditch the tonnage requirements for computers. It's not quite as cool, but it is more realistic.Β I am kind of surprised the crew requirement is so high though. It is a 1,200 ton ship, but I'd guess you're tossing a bunch of miners in there to ensure that the whole shebang runs fairly smoothly
And I can certainly buy the whole tractor beam thing. I've always tended to rule that the reason they don't have one is because the antigrav is just a way to prevent gravity from applying any force (which makes your conventional engines more effective) rather than providing the ability to generate gravitons or antigravitons (tho, technically, this particular thought would count as antimatter and would probably destroy something, rather than float it >.>) as it just makes it easier with the parties I tend to attract. It does a decent job of justifying why low TL grav belts are impractical (at the very least) and generally provides an interesting way of making players think about what's going on. There are, however, *tons* of useful ways to use tractor beams. Realistically, there's no reason (save tonnage) why a ship would want to go without. In-combat effects should probably be limited to providing a +1 DM to hit the successfully captured target and requiring them to spend a point of maneuver just to resist it's push/pull effect. Anything more than that seems a bit gimmicky, and anything less is patently unbelievable, though larger and more powerful versions are certainly realistic possibilities if someone wants to dedicate the tonnage to it.
I am kind of curious why you included all three modules for the cutter though. The cargo and fuel modules are fairly self-explanatory, but why would you want the passenger module? Were you intending to have it rigged up as a kind of long-term on-station thing and have your crew members have a proper leave cycle with it?
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Yes, the crew includes 18 miners, a mining chief, and a vehicle maintenance engineer.
Myself, I really like the idea of gravitational manipulation, and I've really run with it in my game. Floating mansions, Hi-G worlds where the city is kept from collapsing by G-fields, etc. The one big limitation I've put on them is range, making it generally very limited. Grav deckplates only extend the field a few meters, and a Repulsor/tractor bay probably only has a range of 1 km at most (and is 50-tons minimum in size). At those distances it's absolutely useless in combat... and even at point-blank range, if you grab hold of another ship, it's YOUR mass and engine power vs. THEIRS, so unless you use a 10,000ton 5G ship to tackle a scout courier, it's not really going to affect a fight.
I think there's many many ways you could outfit cutter modules, beyond what appeared in the books. Lab modules, Β mining modules, or as you say, a temporary habitat!
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aaah. That is an interesting way of looking at it. In most of the source material for tractor beams, the beam itself has a kind of current that pulls a ship innately, but if you just have a leash of sorts it certainly alters the dynamic. Doing some rough math, you could effectively neuter a type S with a 1k dton ship of any kind just by latching on and not moving. Their engine isn't powerful enough to move 1,100 dtons at more than a few tenths of a g. If you wanted to be a real pain, accelerate (ever so gently) in the wrong direction and the type s will be completely overwhelmed. I'm not quite sure how I feel about the size limitation in a world where you have gravitic effects being common place, however. It just makes more sense to use tractor beams to, for example, provide ultra secure shuttle moorings, make the Imperium's best climbing suit, or to secure tiny little 1m x 2m devices that burst broadcast the ship's location every couple of minutes to anybody listening. You know, the parade of little things that having that kind of size limitation on just doesn't let you get away with. Admittedly, this is from the standpoint of someone who's actually thinking about coming up with a variety of uses for tractor effects. From the standpoint of someone who's running the game, I can certainly see why you might want to avoid the topic just to prevent the insanity of tying to deal with unbridled player creativity 
As for the cutter modules, I believe I described that poorly. I had intended to imply that the mining ship itself becomes, essentially, something of a mobile base that lands, mines the 'riod, and then moves on, while using the cutter's personnel module to ship a fair percentage of the crew to and from 'shore' leave at a local asteroid habitat or space station. And yes, there are most certainly additional options for the cutter, I just instinctively assume the book's default three >.< Perhaps a module to verify a claim before going through the expense of trying to mine the rock? A lab/sensor module (for the spectrometer), stateroom, and mining laser ought to be able to manage that pretty well. I don't think it's really appropriate for a mining campaign, but a good while back a friend of mine proposed using a cargo module as a mobile missile bay. You fill the thing with as many missiles as you can mange in wheeled racks 2 across and 3 high with a very tiny rocket engine, rig up a broad-spectrum arming system so that they're all armed and synced to the cutter's targeting computer the moment they leave the ship, then launch the racks out the airlock. I don't know about you, but having an apparently unarmed cutter suddenly start launching six missiles/2 rnds out their airlock would certainly surprise the hell out of me. Especially if I were hunting it's parent ship
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Re: Gravitics - Let me clarify my approach. To start with, EVERYTHING in the existing Traveller/MegaTraveller canon with gravitics functions with modest size and power limitations. Grav belts, grav vehicles, starship engines, the math all works. The odd man out is repulsors and tractors, which for some reason are VERY large (and tractor beams being TL16+ makes no sense whatsoever). So I squared that circle by assuming a range limitation. Your starship's grav deck plates don't extend beyond your hull, your engines don't push nearby starships around, etc. So what sets Repulsors/Tractors apart is that they have to reach out and affect objects at distance of hundreds of metres, or even a kilometre. And THAT is why they're bay-mount sized. Range.
Re: Cutter modules - Yep, you've pretty much described the mining module I had in mind: lab/sensors, mining laser, maybe a digging arm.
Re: I wouldn't allow the 'module full of missiles' trick in my campaign because it violates the game's hardpoint limitations and is very unbalancing. The in-game reason I would give is that you can't install a proper fire-control system... so maybe you could hack it all together, but you'd have serious negative to-hit modifiers.
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I guess I can see that approach. I just expected it to have a range in the 25-50 km ballpark for that kind of tonnage. Whenever you're talking ranges of less than 25 km in a space craft I tend to get a bit antsy. Unless you're intending to dock with it and have a precisely measured intercept with nothing else of notable mass/velocity around, having something that close makes it impossible to react if something bad happens. The velocities reasonably achieved by Traveller space craft makes 25 km a decent bit of breathing room. To cover that distance rapidly enough to cause a threat, whatever's trying to get to you will have to accelerate for at least 1 min (a 6 g drive will take roughly 100 sec to achieve 6.25 km/sec), which gives you plenty of time to prepare for it's arrival by powering up the guns and/or altering your rate of acceleration/heading. Taking stock of the asteroid fields in Sol, the 4 biggest asteroids we know of average about 5.6 km/sec orbital velocity. Doing the math, that gives you 4 seconds or so of reaction time if you screw up with a 25 km buffer. If you have a 1 km buffer, you don't even have the time to realize you screwed up (roughly .17 sec) before your ship gets hit with several thousand dtons of asteroid.Β
And as for the missile module trick, it's probably a good thing you aren't my referee. We'd probably go in circles for the better part of an hour as I explained the finer points of modern missile weaponry (irl) and how effective it's on-board targeting systems are with TL 7 (ish) equipment. Once you're talking TL 10+ the missiles ought to be intelligent enough to operate with a very minimalistic "go kill that thing" which can be achieved easily enough with the sensor gear that's already built into the cutter.Β There's just no good reason in-game to prevent it from working. I spent a long time debating it with a couple of similarly nerdy friends (two of whom happen to be military men, one of whom actually worked on fairly modern missiles [the phoenix, if you're interested]). The worst case scenario we came up with (to counter precisely the same argument you've just made) was that the primary vessel's targeting data could be easily relayed to the improvised rack and let you fire that at no penalty; obviously, you wouldn't get any advantage from the dedicated targeting equipment, but it ought to negate any direct penalties.Β If we want to be really efficient, you can always use custom-built and highly intelligent missiles as well, but this implies more planning than this entire idea would justify. From a game balance perspective, I also disagree. One of the reasons I stated 6 missiles every other round is precisely because that brings it into balance with a triple missile turret (which, you'll note, a cutter is actually capable of mounting). It's also a reasonable assessment of the space involved, as most missiles tend to be roughly forty cm in dia and about one meter in length and you usually want about fifty or sixty cm between missiles so they're less likely to actually cause each other problems when launched. For a 1mx2mx2m airlock, that's roughly the number you'd actually be able to fit in there if you want them safely racked up. The reload time was also fairly accurately calculated, tho was given a fair bit of extra time for the sake of caution. The last thing your loader wants is to trigger six missiles inside their ship (doubly so when that ship is loaded down with a bunch more missiles), so rather than the 2-3 min max time I'd normally suggest, I cranked it up to a full round (which, admittedly, varies by system. 5-6 min or so is appropriate for a reload time, however.) for a proper reload. Also, as I'm sure you're noticing by now, I rather like this idea, which is why I remember how we worked it up so well. If you've got some missiles lying around and are in over your head, this is the kind of desperate move you might actually make. It's simple, effective, and could actually be made to work with a couple hours, some scrap metal, a hand computer, and a few dozen data cables.
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We can all play RPGs our own way, that's the beauty of them.
My game is all about character, story, and cinematic adventure. War-game style number-crunching is the antithesis of what I've created for my players (and they seem quite happy with it). Years ago I became very enamored of FUDGE, when a friend (and one of the best GMs I've ever known) stated that the perfect RPG could be played in a hot tub ; )Β
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Aye. That is indeed their beauty. It's also their challenge, as communicating and sharing that beauty is a pain in the butt sometimes. In any case, thank ye kindly for sharing those stats and for the conversation. It has been quite an interesting discussion ^.^
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Maybe the upgraded the weapons due to going after the really good ore?
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Request!!!Β Very nicely done, glad to see you trying to get back into it!Β
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Thanks, it's been a lot of fun! I've posted stats in another comment...
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Was never able to get into Traveler.Β
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It's not a game for everyone. It's very hard SF, so unless you really dig the work of Niven, Asimov, Pournelle and the like, it could be pretty inaccessible. And the rules got pretty bogged down in math, like many of the early war game-based RPGs. That said, it was the first RPG I truly fell in love with, and I still think the basic setting is a fantastic universe, with potential for the kind of storytelling you can't do anywhere else.
That said, I had to take a meat cleaver to the rules to make it playable for a modern aesthetic, where fun and movie logic ("what would be exciting?") take precedence over ultra-realism and number-crunching.
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Maybe when I was younger, that kind of thing appealed to me.Β For reasons, I can't do that kind of stuff any longer.Β
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Oh man, coolness! Its great to see a new ship from you, Mike!
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Thanks! It was kind of hard getting into the groove actually - Ship designs in sci-fi have moved far away from the old Traveller aesthetic, but I wanted to capture that classic feel without looking out-dated. And of course, I drew up deckplans for my game FIRST, which actually makes it harder in some ways to make the exterior feel 'natural'.
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Glad you like!
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