whoa whoa slow down there Chris... I only suggested highly efficient killers... no need to go over the top with the lawyers... geez... talk about WMLD
That which is not dead can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die
My Color is Blue
I value Knowledge, logic, and deceit. I love to pursue wisdom but also to manipulate and deceive. At my best, I am brilliant and progressive. At my worst, I am treacherous and cold. My symbol is a water droplet. My enemies are green and red.
My Color is Blue
I value Knowledge, logic, and deceit. I love to pursue wisdom but also to manipulate and deceive. At my best, I am brilliant and progressive. At my worst, I am treacherous and cold. My symbol is a water droplet. My enemies are green and red.
Well, I think we're coming to a point in generation where we have to elucidate some things.
If you guys feel adventurous, I can develop your encounters without regard to what your ship can and cannot do. Your ship is as much of your party as your characters, and should supplement what you as character can do and to some degree make up for what you lack. I want the game to be fun, but also hard. I've been holding back on my players for a long time, I've realized, so I'm taking this game to the next level.
On the other hand, if you'd rather receive a list of things you need to be able to do from me, then I could customize your encounters to meet those needs, and we would largely test how well you prepared yourselves to do those things. "teaching to the test" so to speak.
With the former, there would be a sharp learning curve, but also probably more experience points awarded for solving puzzles. With the latter, the learning curve would be smooth, and xp would probably be awarded modestly. If you know what is coming, you should be more or less prepared for it.
I'm going to design a ship that will represent what I as a player would do in your circumstances. I'll design it to be as versatile and capable as possible under the constraints you've been given. If at some point, you as a group decide that you are immensely unhappy with the ship that you've built, I'll let you call a mulligan and take my ship. Though I would much rather you have the satisfaction of building your own successful ship and winning the adventures with it, enjoying the abilities you gave it and pushing it as hard as you can for as long as you can in the face of a capable challenge, this may be the first time that some of you have been called upon to do such a thing. I have a bit of experience, I did design a dozen or so ships in the original starforge, and have designed a ship under the gurps system to try to learn the rules better. It's awful, you can't see it.
So, I'm going to design a ship under the criteria I gave you so that I can see what you'll be capable of, or could be capable of, and start building encounters to match that. (with of course a variety of difficulties, the hardest requiring you to gadgeteer your ship or make scary choices, and the easiest falling well within the parameters of what your ship was meant to do).
So, I would like to hear which one people want, encounters designed without your specific ship and crew in mind, or encounters WITH your specific ship and characters in mind.
Keep in mind that, though your skills are an important part of operating the ship, and your powers may still be useful in space, some things are determined by what you can make your ship do. In that way, the ship itself is a player character. and you may well make it intelligent, in which case it is precisely a player character.
If you guys feel adventurous, I can develop your encounters without regard to what your ship can and cannot do. Your ship is as much of your party as your characters, and should supplement what you as character can do and to some degree make up for what you lack. I want the game to be fun, but also hard. I've been holding back on my players for a long time, I've realized, so I'm taking this game to the next level.
On the other hand, if you'd rather receive a list of things you need to be able to do from me, then I could customize your encounters to meet those needs, and we would largely test how well you prepared yourselves to do those things. "teaching to the test" so to speak.
With the former, there would be a sharp learning curve, but also probably more experience points awarded for solving puzzles. With the latter, the learning curve would be smooth, and xp would probably be awarded modestly. If you know what is coming, you should be more or less prepared for it.
I'm going to design a ship that will represent what I as a player would do in your circumstances. I'll design it to be as versatile and capable as possible under the constraints you've been given. If at some point, you as a group decide that you are immensely unhappy with the ship that you've built, I'll let you call a mulligan and take my ship. Though I would much rather you have the satisfaction of building your own successful ship and winning the adventures with it, enjoying the abilities you gave it and pushing it as hard as you can for as long as you can in the face of a capable challenge, this may be the first time that some of you have been called upon to do such a thing. I have a bit of experience, I did design a dozen or so ships in the original starforge, and have designed a ship under the gurps system to try to learn the rules better. It's awful, you can't see it.
So, I'm going to design a ship under the criteria I gave you so that I can see what you'll be capable of, or could be capable of, and start building encounters to match that. (with of course a variety of difficulties, the hardest requiring you to gadgeteer your ship or make scary choices, and the easiest falling well within the parameters of what your ship was meant to do).
So, I would like to hear which one people want, encounters designed without your specific ship and crew in mind, or encounters WITH your specific ship and characters in mind.
Keep in mind that, though your skills are an important part of operating the ship, and your powers may still be useful in space, some things are determined by what you can make your ship do. In that way, the ship itself is a player character. and you may well make it intelligent, in which case it is precisely a player character.
so, a list of bare minimums. I can deal with that.rydi wrote:i would like option 1. but i would like a list of things you think can't be lived without just so that we don't forget things that our characters, and government, would know to get. but the perks, precautions, and all that i think we should come up with.
speaking of which, I know this is the wrong thread, but do try to come up with a similar list of 'bare minimum' skills. In star forge someone forgot to buy the dodge skill and died. lets avoid that.
FTL drive (obvious)
Shields (regenerating defenses = pleasure)
Matter Transporter array (away missions)
Energy weapons (for ship to ship or ship to ground while in atmosphere)
Missiles (higher damage and longer range, also good for space to ground and to use while diverting power to engines or shields)
Shuttles (preferably stealthy, for getting to the surface without dropping your shields)
Sensors and blah blah blah, all the stuff the list mandates for sure
A scientific laboratory either for pc scientists or an intelligent robot scientist
Spare parts
A sickbay, with a doctor
Air, ground, and underwater vehicles
something to translate languages with
Note: some way, any way, to mount a military effort, either to rescue captured crew members, or to make precision strikes against an openly hostile force that have sufficient space defenses to keep the main ship from being able to make an offensive. Troops, robots, long range missiles, fighter drones, something. (This might rarely get used, but without the ability to do this, if a crew member gets captured then it is unlikely that he will be rescued. Though of course you could nuke him and regrow him, you would lose whatever knowledge he gained, and use up one of the limited lives you guys have)
The capacity to make 'uploads' or 'imprints' or copies of a persons brain, and to regrow their bodies. This lets you save the game. I may impose a game balancing restriction on how many times this can be used. Also, the extra life advantage does not 'precisely' emulate this, extra life still allows you to remember what you learned. So if you go in and spy and get caught and killed and we negotiate for your body back, with extra life you remember what you saw, with copies you don't.
Layout of the ship should include: vac suits and weapons close at hand in case you are boarded, the ability for the security team to make an effective response even if the ship decompresses such as space armor, battlesuits, powersuits, something, and a generally defensible layout, protecting vital areas and establishing bottlenecks.
items that should be of value to species of equal or lesser TL, that could be used either as barter, or as gifts of respect, and preferably of such a nature as to promote a peaceful existence rather than facilitate military development. (shields instead of nukes, agriculture instead of beam lasers, and so on)
and anything else you can think of. spare parts, ammo, that kind of thing.
Keep in mind that when i put together what I might consider to be a "very difficult" encounter, i will not have a solution in mind when I do so. i will try to come up with three solutions afterwards, and if I can't come up with any I might scrap the challenge and start again. Your best bet is to be as versatile as possible so you don't wind up identifying a solution but not having the necessary tools to utilize it. Let me give an example.
The people of Gud are under attack by the people of Bahd. The Bahd people have almost built a superweapon that will destroy the planet of the people of Gud. The people of Gud beg for your help. You go to the Bahd planet and identify a fortified world. The buildlings themselves are heavily armored, and when your ship is within sensors the buildings are individually armored. You identify the building with the huge weapon building center in it and your sensors confirm that a massive weapon is being built there, but your ship takes constant fire from the surface while near the planet, and your missiles are shot down readily.
this is kinda cut and dry, but if you have tanks and heavy infantry and stealth drop pods with launch tubes, you can deploy a strike team to take out the weapon. Alternately, if you have the parts and tech, you could design a transponder to relay your MT array beam to the surface, while your ship is far enough away that it can drop its shields safely, then an away team could deploy a nuclear warhead near the building, while simultaneously overtaking a surface battery, rewireing it to function as an MT array, and teleporting yourselves back to the relay and thence to the ship before the nuke goes off. or, if the TS is low enough, you could go back in time with the MT array and convince the denizens to lead a peaceful existence and embrace the people of Gud. Or, if you have a graviton beam, you could herd some asteroids from the system onto the surface of the planet and destroy all life on it. Or, if your ship is stealthy enough to enter atmosphere undetected at night, you could reduce the number of batteries that can target you by getting closer to them, and wipe them out in small groups until they are gone, and destroy the superweapon yourself.
so, this rather gimmicky example does show how multiple approaches can produce solutions to the same problems, it largely depends both on what you as players are capable of, what your characters are capable of, and what you make your ship do. All of the above examples are rather brutal, but so is trying to destroy someones planet. I suppose the final option is to wait for the superweapon to be removed from the planet and brought to the target, but if it isn't a missile or a beam, it may not ever leave the planet. it could be a teleporter or something, and might be capable of firing from the planet its on all the way to the target with a beam that will intercept its target in a few years.
So, the puzzle has a number of solutions, several of which require creativity and gadgeteering, and several of which require equipment and or balls.
/end rant
//I'm already having fun
Well, I've been working numbers on the SS Mulligan, and it looks like for purposes of game balance I'm going to have to make force screens more expensive.
First, the system proposes that purchasing TL11 equipment at TL10 double the costs. I'm afraid that the system for purchasing shields is a bit broken, so I'm going to multiply by at least another factor of 10. That would make 1 heavy shield cost around 100M$, which is still really cheap.
also, the shields are listed in DR, not DDR, so don't forget to drop a zero. Even still, no power cost is given, so I have set it at 2MW per point of MAX DR. So a 4000 DR (400 dDR) shield requires 8000 MW of constant charge, even after the shield takes damage and protects less than that.
This may be excessive, so I may decrease it. But being invincible for chump change kinda breaks the game and makes it no fun to run and no fun to play.
First, the system proposes that purchasing TL11 equipment at TL10 double the costs. I'm afraid that the system for purchasing shields is a bit broken, so I'm going to multiply by at least another factor of 10. That would make 1 heavy shield cost around 100M$, which is still really cheap.
also, the shields are listed in DR, not DDR, so don't forget to drop a zero. Even still, no power cost is given, so I have set it at 2MW per point of MAX DR. So a 4000 DR (400 dDR) shield requires 8000 MW of constant charge, even after the shield takes damage and protects less than that.
This may be excessive, so I may decrease it. But being invincible for chump change kinda breaks the game and makes it no fun to run and no fun to play.
Ok, I've sent cheyne a primitive excel spreadsheet to help optimize your ship. I did one ship in word and wound up going back through my numbers a few times before it was legal. Then I did a spreadsheet and quickly found myself able to cut the fat. I'm making a smoother more simple worksheet that has all the complexity hidden in a few lines, like I usually do, and it hurts my head.
The hardest part was setting up the loop by which you get space acceleration automatically. It actually pissed off excel and I had to use a shitty work around. I wanted to make it to where I put in G's of thrust and it automatically computes how much maneuvering drive is needed.
needless to say, it is clear that the makers of the game did not have the ability to optimize their ships, either that or they deliberately chose not to. One iteration of the SS mulligan was 4400 dTons and could maneuver at 25 G's. The fast attack fighter in the traveller book caps out at like 8.6 or some gay shit. So....a cruiser that maneuvers like a leaf on the wind, and idles at five times earths gravity.
That was just me playing around. I said the Mulligan will have a "bit of everything", so I have to give up fancy things like relativistic sublight acceleration and maneuver.
Just a note, someone in the ship design crew should very carefully read all the considerations brought up in the traveller chapter, and take notes as necessary. It wasn't until I finished my first ship that I realized it only gave 0.3 gs of thrust.
If you guys have any questions call me at (405)445-0187, my computer will patch you through to my cell phone automatically.
I may not finish my design sheet before you finish your ship, but even so, you might be able to squeeze a little more performance out of it.
one other thing I did, and this sucked. Instead of using the chart of dTon values, I computed my figures from spherical volume. They give you enough to work with to do it. Also, for shields, you need to compute the longest dimension of your ship to get the diameter of the shield necessary to cover it. If you run into trouble over shields give me a call, I can walk you through it.
The hardest part was setting up the loop by which you get space acceleration automatically. It actually pissed off excel and I had to use a shitty work around. I wanted to make it to where I put in G's of thrust and it automatically computes how much maneuvering drive is needed.
needless to say, it is clear that the makers of the game did not have the ability to optimize their ships, either that or they deliberately chose not to. One iteration of the SS mulligan was 4400 dTons and could maneuver at 25 G's. The fast attack fighter in the traveller book caps out at like 8.6 or some gay shit. So....a cruiser that maneuvers like a leaf on the wind, and idles at five times earths gravity.
That was just me playing around. I said the Mulligan will have a "bit of everything", so I have to give up fancy things like relativistic sublight acceleration and maneuver.
Just a note, someone in the ship design crew should very carefully read all the considerations brought up in the traveller chapter, and take notes as necessary. It wasn't until I finished my first ship that I realized it only gave 0.3 gs of thrust.
If you guys have any questions call me at (405)445-0187, my computer will patch you through to my cell phone automatically.
I may not finish my design sheet before you finish your ship, but even so, you might be able to squeeze a little more performance out of it.
one other thing I did, and this sucked. Instead of using the chart of dTon values, I computed my figures from spherical volume. They give you enough to work with to do it. Also, for shields, you need to compute the longest dimension of your ship to get the diameter of the shield necessary to cover it. If you run into trouble over shields give me a call, I can walk you through it.
I think getting into the whole mess of ship design sounds fun, though I am sitting here now trying to write one of my many papers due soon. I just don't have time or mental energy to get into this stuff now. My character is the engineer, so it makes a lot of sense that he be involved in the process, since he'll be patching the poor thing back together and keeping her running.
I've had quite a bit of fun putting different editions of the SS Mulligan together. The traveller text has some neat idea, but a lot more can be done beyond that. I think gurps would benefit from a set of baseline costs.durden wrote:I think getting into the whole mess of ship design sounds fun, though I am sitting here now trying to write one of my many papers due soon. I just don't have time or mental energy to get into this stuff now. My character is the engineer, so it makes a lot of sense that he be involved in the process, since he'll be patching the poor thing back together and keeping her running.
One of the things that made life easy in the excel worksheet was a loop that increases the size of your reactor to meet the energy needs of systems as you tweak them, as long as you make sure it keeps track of what you want to be able to have 'on all at once'. I'm usually not including the warp drive in that total.
also, for the fuel cells, use the same stats, but those can be 'capacitance' cells, each one holding a megawatt of power. So if built with enough capacity, they could power a short burst from the warp drives and get the ship out of trouble without dropping shields or powering down weapons.
if you'd rather save space and cost by 'underpowering' your ship, then you'd have to manage which systems are up and which systems aren't, but that'd give the engineer something to do. (btw chris, make sure that you keep some useful skills around in case you do too good of a job and have nothing to do for a long time). And it would allow for less ship to do more. I would think that one or two weapon systems could draw power from the engines, as long as you manage carefully. Like have an excess of M-drive, so that you can catch up and aquire or dodge frantically, and then switch power back to the weapons to give em what you got. Also, capacitance could make up some of that gap.
Oh yeah, buy a Jump 2 drive and call it Warp v.2. I'll give you specs on it later, but there's no excuse to not buy a state of the art FTL drive.
I'm almost done with my new ship builder. I don't have a shiny cool interface for it, it's some 200 cells long in excel, but it's very thorough and very accurate. There a two or three things I still need to add. Because I have tests coming up, I was hoping some people would be willing to do some searching for me.
First and most important, is automation. One of the biggest limiting factors is the number of crew required, because each one of them requires housing. All this is built in now, but replacing them with drones would be much more cost effective. So, my research question is this: how much does is cot to replace a single person on board a ship? I need to know the size, weight, cost, and power requirements, as well as terabytes of data storage and complexity level. Here's what I propose:
Each "bridge" substitution has a different level of computer in it. For a small ship, this should have enough space and computing power to control drones going about their day to day. for a large ship, a whole secondary computer might be needed. A cruiser can have up to 700 or so people working in it, depending on how many shifts they work in. From what I read, a drone is simply a remotely operated machine, and the AI can readily reside in a larger computer. Of course, these drones and their controlling computer will add to the maintenance workload, but they should be able to maintain themselves. A safer method, perhaps, is to include a secondary maintenance that fixes the bigger computer, so that if the bigger computer totally breaks it's not generally fucked. Also, a given AI can only do so much at once. We do need to figure out how much it can do.
Once that is done, I'll include a control to determine automation in one of a couple ways. We can automate specific sections, partially automate specific sections, or automate, to one degree or another, everything. I will exclude bridge personnel from the general automation list. If you want, you can automate everything, but know that this can become really orwellian really fast if something goes wrong. (hal).
I see a safe use of automation as supplementing a single shifts worth of crew. they would generally be at 1/3 - 1/2 manpower, but if you have the ship capable of 2/3 automation, then you have enough people on board to run the ship without the computer, and an aberrent computer can't run the ship on it's own. Also, ships security should not be automated, unless you really want it so, but the numbers used for security depend on a number of factors, including how many people are on board in total. I think. *sigh*. So there's that, and I think automation will wind up saving a lot of money, as it would be space efficient, and that helps everything.
The other thing I need to do is build in an interface for ammo storage and cargo. Each missile battery would need to be allocated a certain amount of cargo space for ammunition. Also missile racks. Missiles have their use, even if they are essentially limited, especially in a setting like this one.
Now, I think there is a math error somewhere in either the builder I'm working with now or the one I built before. I tried to build one of my previous ships with the new builder and it came out vastly more expensive. I've checked it line by line, and since it uses charts and visible computations I think that it's the previous one that's in error. It may simply be the crew requirement that is making a difference, though a few passages in the traveller book are confusing no matter how many times you read them. Well, any help would be hot, but otherwise expect the new build in the vague future.
Oh yeah, I'm upping the budget. By how much I'm not sure. Once my builder is complete I'll throw together a 'minimums' ship and a 'maximums' ship, and sort of average them out. and then improve by a standard deviation. I think they fudged their figures in the traveler book, some of their costs are really really low.
First and most important, is automation. One of the biggest limiting factors is the number of crew required, because each one of them requires housing. All this is built in now, but replacing them with drones would be much more cost effective. So, my research question is this: how much does is cot to replace a single person on board a ship? I need to know the size, weight, cost, and power requirements, as well as terabytes of data storage and complexity level. Here's what I propose:
Each "bridge" substitution has a different level of computer in it. For a small ship, this should have enough space and computing power to control drones going about their day to day. for a large ship, a whole secondary computer might be needed. A cruiser can have up to 700 or so people working in it, depending on how many shifts they work in. From what I read, a drone is simply a remotely operated machine, and the AI can readily reside in a larger computer. Of course, these drones and their controlling computer will add to the maintenance workload, but they should be able to maintain themselves. A safer method, perhaps, is to include a secondary maintenance that fixes the bigger computer, so that if the bigger computer totally breaks it's not generally fucked. Also, a given AI can only do so much at once. We do need to figure out how much it can do.
Once that is done, I'll include a control to determine automation in one of a couple ways. We can automate specific sections, partially automate specific sections, or automate, to one degree or another, everything. I will exclude bridge personnel from the general automation list. If you want, you can automate everything, but know that this can become really orwellian really fast if something goes wrong. (hal).
I see a safe use of automation as supplementing a single shifts worth of crew. they would generally be at 1/3 - 1/2 manpower, but if you have the ship capable of 2/3 automation, then you have enough people on board to run the ship without the computer, and an aberrent computer can't run the ship on it's own. Also, ships security should not be automated, unless you really want it so, but the numbers used for security depend on a number of factors, including how many people are on board in total. I think. *sigh*. So there's that, and I think automation will wind up saving a lot of money, as it would be space efficient, and that helps everything.
The other thing I need to do is build in an interface for ammo storage and cargo. Each missile battery would need to be allocated a certain amount of cargo space for ammunition. Also missile racks. Missiles have their use, even if they are essentially limited, especially in a setting like this one.
Now, I think there is a math error somewhere in either the builder I'm working with now or the one I built before. I tried to build one of my previous ships with the new builder and it came out vastly more expensive. I've checked it line by line, and since it uses charts and visible computations I think that it's the previous one that's in error. It may simply be the crew requirement that is making a difference, though a few passages in the traveller book are confusing no matter how many times you read them. Well, any help would be hot, but otherwise expect the new build in the vague future.
Oh yeah, I'm upping the budget. By how much I'm not sure. Once my builder is complete I'll throw together a 'minimums' ship and a 'maximums' ship, and sort of average them out. and then improve by a standard deviation. I think they fudged their figures in the traveler book, some of their costs are really really low.
i think thael can help w/this. he's looking at ai for his character anyway, so he should know some of this.First and most important, is automation. One of the biggest limiting factors is the number of crew required, because each one of them requires housing. All this is built in now, but replacing them with drones would be much more cost effective. So, my research question is this: how much does is cot to replace a single person on board a ship? I need to know the size, weight, cost, and power requirements, as well as terabytes of data storage and complexity level. Here's what I propose:
funny, how everyone is specializing in information. you in shipbuilding, me in advantages/disadvantages/power, thael in robotics/ai/tech. its like school. goddamn rpg's.
and something that occured to me: we need something that lets us machin new equipment on the ship. for a long term adventure, it is a must.
oh, my ideas for shape: a saucer that splits into three sections. the ring can split into two copies (either a vertical or horizontal split could work i guess, but i envisioned a horizontal split, creating identical top/bottom sections), and a sphere in the middle. fun. darglar.
Threading the Gerbil since 1982
hmm, interesting. Currently the system only allows for vehicle bays totally 20% of the ships mass. Not sure how we would work that.
Just to give you guys an idea,
The SS mulligan is supposed to be fast, heavily shielded, and lightly armored. As I described, an MT array cannot transmit through shields, even from inside a friendly shield. So our cool 'vehicle bay' ship is a dedicated MT ship. IT's about 500 dTons, and is very, very heavily armored. But has no shields. It DOES however have three MT arrays. So it can recover troops, deploy troops, or spearhead a boarding action. The troops are based out of four "assault shuttles".
The assault shuttles are little bastards, about 50 dTons, that carry two missile racks, a forward facing beam laser, and can deploy up to 40 powered infantry and drop two grav tanks from vehicle bays, much like the warthog from the pelican in halo, but the tanks can be entered from inside the shuttle and are fully operational at time of deployment. The troops are in heavy battle suits, so can safely jump from the ship at about 70-80 feet, more if they wear grav belts.
Each of the troops has, built into his armor, a gyroscopically stabilized articulated weapon harness, that reduces the strength requirement and eliminates the bulk penalty to moving while firing for their 4mm gauss miniguns. Also built in, is an 'over the shoulder' robotic weapon mount sporting a 64mm MLAWS. This is a reloadable pod that fires 64mm missiles, and has a capacity of 6. They also each carry, in their equipment, a 100mm missile launch tube, that has 'brilliant' missiles available at our tech level, which can be 'fired and forgotten'. these are intended for anti aircraft or indirect fire. Each troop carries one loaded in his launcher, and two more in his pack. They also carry a side arm, exactly what I haven't figured. I figured for a company of these guys (120) plus a signal/command/support group of 10. The SCS team has lighter armor, they wear either scout or command variants on the heavy battlesuit. They also are lighter armed, with Gauss LSWs instead of the miniguns. At there disposal are a few gauss railguns, for sniper support, a neutrino communicator, split into separate transmission and reception modules, which would allow them to communicate with the ship if it can't stay in orbit, a number of tripod mounted miniguns with AI governance, for point defense, some mortars, and a pile of 100mm missiles for use with their 100mm launch tubes. This allows them to set up a command post, which can still be highly mobile, which can also function as a fall back point for the company. A few surveilance tools and some combat networking are also at their disposal, including sensors, a combat computer, and a tac-net which allows their commander to coordinate fields of fire.
Additionally, I outfitted the troops with a variety of explosives, including grenades of a couple types, and plastic explosives. I did note that for actual hostage recovery a lighter troop would be needed. Hence the scout armors in the SCS team, they would be armed with gauss rifles and would do the actual entry and recovery of hostages. As good as these guys might be, a weapon with a rate of fire of 100 is not appropriate for clearing a room of hostiles but not killing friendlies. Alternately, ships security officers could outfit in space armor and beam rifles and be responsible for securing friendlies, but the powered infantry would be great at clearing out huge numbers of hostile troops.
Oh yeah, I also outlined some fighters, they are 10 dTons, very fast, and strangely well armored. they have dual forward facing beam lasers and a single missile rack. they can launch from a number of launch tubes from the main ship. (the assault shuttles can too, the main ship does not need to stop moving or open the hangar to deploy its craft). I figured for 8 of them, 2 to escort each assault shuttle, though they are nicely cheap, and more can be built. Also, the MT ship has a hangar bay just large enough to store the 8 fighters. The fighters are not shielded, and though they are well armored for fighters, they are highly vulnerable to larger ships, especially if they are out of missiles. I envisioned the main ship coming in to perform a specific strike, and trying to hold off a larger space and ground force. Pretty much the worst situation. I wanted the main ship to be able to deploy everything and not have to drop its shields to recover things until the last possible second. So, the assault shuttles and the fighters launch from the tubes and do their job. The assault shuttles are both armored and shielded, so they could assist the ground effort for the duration. The fighters would strafe and make airstrikes to support the ground troops, who go in and slap dalton or whatever their mission is. then they fall back to semi-defendable positions. Now, though the assault shuttles 'could' pick up the troops, I wanted to plan for that not being easy, like there's too much surface to air fire. So the MT ship comes in. It has 4 turrets and little else. So while it's beaming the troops and the tanks aboard, the fighters dock in it's hangar and the assault shuttles fold in as escorts, the whole thing should only take 10 seconds or so once it's in range, and it is streamlined enough to enter atmosphere, and then it pulls back and meets the main ship, which only has to drop shields long enough to let the MT ship and its escorts in, if this is well timed it would only take a second.
If the interior of the main ship were designed correctly, then the tanks and fighters stored in the MT ship could move through internal elevators back into the hangar bay. This wouldn't be hard to set up. Then the fighters could rearm, the tanks could repair and then reload into the assault shuttles. I wanted the MT ship to be able to have hangar space enough for the assault shuttles as well, but it would have to be larger and more expensive to do that. Also, the MT ship needs at least a light shield, to keep enemies for using MTs against it. Though a boarding crew would be slaughtered, it would be distracting.
There's a little space in the assault shuttles left over, I'm thinking of putting in a tiny hangar large enough to carry a couple drop pods. Also, drop pods can be fired from the missile bay(s) aboard the main ship, in case there's too much surface defense for even the assault shuttles or the MT ship to get within range. Under this circumstance, the troops would need to clear a recovery zone safe enough for either the assault shuttles to land, or the MT ship to get within range.
Anyway, the SS mulligan is supposed to be as versatile as possible. Hence the above. You guys don't have to copy anything out of my design, I'd rather you be completely happy and original with your plan. I did want to share my work with you though, in case you find something you like.
From what I've learned from doing ship design, a high performance well equipped ship/fleet is not going to easily fall within a 3000M$ budget. I think at least 4000M$ and possibly 5000M$ is more appropriate, though automation might make that a lot easier, you should be able to choose to have completely unautomated crews.
So, chris? you're the main guy designing the player ship? shoot me your current email, and I'll send you what I have so far for a ship builder. Also, I'm using the newest version of excel, if you have an older version please let me know, so I can make you a backwards compatible version.
Just to give you guys an idea,
The SS mulligan is supposed to be fast, heavily shielded, and lightly armored. As I described, an MT array cannot transmit through shields, even from inside a friendly shield. So our cool 'vehicle bay' ship is a dedicated MT ship. IT's about 500 dTons, and is very, very heavily armored. But has no shields. It DOES however have three MT arrays. So it can recover troops, deploy troops, or spearhead a boarding action. The troops are based out of four "assault shuttles".
The assault shuttles are little bastards, about 50 dTons, that carry two missile racks, a forward facing beam laser, and can deploy up to 40 powered infantry and drop two grav tanks from vehicle bays, much like the warthog from the pelican in halo, but the tanks can be entered from inside the shuttle and are fully operational at time of deployment. The troops are in heavy battle suits, so can safely jump from the ship at about 70-80 feet, more if they wear grav belts.
Each of the troops has, built into his armor, a gyroscopically stabilized articulated weapon harness, that reduces the strength requirement and eliminates the bulk penalty to moving while firing for their 4mm gauss miniguns. Also built in, is an 'over the shoulder' robotic weapon mount sporting a 64mm MLAWS. This is a reloadable pod that fires 64mm missiles, and has a capacity of 6. They also each carry, in their equipment, a 100mm missile launch tube, that has 'brilliant' missiles available at our tech level, which can be 'fired and forgotten'. these are intended for anti aircraft or indirect fire. Each troop carries one loaded in his launcher, and two more in his pack. They also carry a side arm, exactly what I haven't figured. I figured for a company of these guys (120) plus a signal/command/support group of 10. The SCS team has lighter armor, they wear either scout or command variants on the heavy battlesuit. They also are lighter armed, with Gauss LSWs instead of the miniguns. At there disposal are a few gauss railguns, for sniper support, a neutrino communicator, split into separate transmission and reception modules, which would allow them to communicate with the ship if it can't stay in orbit, a number of tripod mounted miniguns with AI governance, for point defense, some mortars, and a pile of 100mm missiles for use with their 100mm launch tubes. This allows them to set up a command post, which can still be highly mobile, which can also function as a fall back point for the company. A few surveilance tools and some combat networking are also at their disposal, including sensors, a combat computer, and a tac-net which allows their commander to coordinate fields of fire.
Additionally, I outfitted the troops with a variety of explosives, including grenades of a couple types, and plastic explosives. I did note that for actual hostage recovery a lighter troop would be needed. Hence the scout armors in the SCS team, they would be armed with gauss rifles and would do the actual entry and recovery of hostages. As good as these guys might be, a weapon with a rate of fire of 100 is not appropriate for clearing a room of hostiles but not killing friendlies. Alternately, ships security officers could outfit in space armor and beam rifles and be responsible for securing friendlies, but the powered infantry would be great at clearing out huge numbers of hostile troops.
Oh yeah, I also outlined some fighters, they are 10 dTons, very fast, and strangely well armored. they have dual forward facing beam lasers and a single missile rack. they can launch from a number of launch tubes from the main ship. (the assault shuttles can too, the main ship does not need to stop moving or open the hangar to deploy its craft). I figured for 8 of them, 2 to escort each assault shuttle, though they are nicely cheap, and more can be built. Also, the MT ship has a hangar bay just large enough to store the 8 fighters. The fighters are not shielded, and though they are well armored for fighters, they are highly vulnerable to larger ships, especially if they are out of missiles. I envisioned the main ship coming in to perform a specific strike, and trying to hold off a larger space and ground force. Pretty much the worst situation. I wanted the main ship to be able to deploy everything and not have to drop its shields to recover things until the last possible second. So, the assault shuttles and the fighters launch from the tubes and do their job. The assault shuttles are both armored and shielded, so they could assist the ground effort for the duration. The fighters would strafe and make airstrikes to support the ground troops, who go in and slap dalton or whatever their mission is. then they fall back to semi-defendable positions. Now, though the assault shuttles 'could' pick up the troops, I wanted to plan for that not being easy, like there's too much surface to air fire. So the MT ship comes in. It has 4 turrets and little else. So while it's beaming the troops and the tanks aboard, the fighters dock in it's hangar and the assault shuttles fold in as escorts, the whole thing should only take 10 seconds or so once it's in range, and it is streamlined enough to enter atmosphere, and then it pulls back and meets the main ship, which only has to drop shields long enough to let the MT ship and its escorts in, if this is well timed it would only take a second.
If the interior of the main ship were designed correctly, then the tanks and fighters stored in the MT ship could move through internal elevators back into the hangar bay. This wouldn't be hard to set up. Then the fighters could rearm, the tanks could repair and then reload into the assault shuttles. I wanted the MT ship to be able to have hangar space enough for the assault shuttles as well, but it would have to be larger and more expensive to do that. Also, the MT ship needs at least a light shield, to keep enemies for using MTs against it. Though a boarding crew would be slaughtered, it would be distracting.
There's a little space in the assault shuttles left over, I'm thinking of putting in a tiny hangar large enough to carry a couple drop pods. Also, drop pods can be fired from the missile bay(s) aboard the main ship, in case there's too much surface defense for even the assault shuttles or the MT ship to get within range. Under this circumstance, the troops would need to clear a recovery zone safe enough for either the assault shuttles to land, or the MT ship to get within range.
Anyway, the SS mulligan is supposed to be as versatile as possible. Hence the above. You guys don't have to copy anything out of my design, I'd rather you be completely happy and original with your plan. I did want to share my work with you though, in case you find something you like.
From what I've learned from doing ship design, a high performance well equipped ship/fleet is not going to easily fall within a 3000M$ budget. I think at least 4000M$ and possibly 5000M$ is more appropriate, though automation might make that a lot easier, you should be able to choose to have completely unautomated crews.
So, chris? you're the main guy designing the player ship? shoot me your current email, and I'll send you what I have so far for a ship builder. Also, I'm using the newest version of excel, if you have an older version please let me know, so I can make you a backwards compatible version.
you know, something just occured to me.
why do we not have two ships? two large ships?
i mean, with the resources of the federation billions are nothing. and to do this mission right, there should be a failsafe ship. with a whole other crew. hell, we could even be on different ships, with part of the party on one, part on the other.
though this may sound like an attempt to get more power, really it just makes sense. and ultimately, it doesn't add that much power, since in most cases, if one ship can't take something out, two won't either (an armada or a planet vs. one ship or two ships is about the same in the end. both ships die).
why do we not have two ships? two large ships?
i mean, with the resources of the federation billions are nothing. and to do this mission right, there should be a failsafe ship. with a whole other crew. hell, we could even be on different ships, with part of the party on one, part on the other.
though this may sound like an attempt to get more power, really it just makes sense. and ultimately, it doesn't add that much power, since in most cases, if one ship can't take something out, two won't either (an armada or a planet vs. one ship or two ships is about the same in the end. both ships die).
Threading the Gerbil since 1982
well, that is in essence the 'backup' ship. Though my intention was that you would all be on the same ship. I've checked math again on my ship builder, and it seems to be right. I'm going to test it against a ship listed in the book, and if it turns out the same then I'll go with it, except for the cargo and automation aspects. If it IS correct, then I'll be upgrading your budget to something like 8 billion, simply because you need to have enough budget to build a very versatile ship.
splitting your funds to build two autonomous ships is certainly up to you, but having to pay for two jump drives is pretty expensive. You might do better with a large, heavily shielded 'mothership' that has little else to offer and is almost totally automated, and then one or two still significantly sized craft capable of working within a system. A jump drive has to be an exact size relative to the size of the ship you're building, there is little room for optimization there, it costs, it weighs, and even if you don't power it unless you need to, it's still taking up space and increasing mass, so you have to push it and that means more maneuver drive, which takes up more power and necessitates more power production. It's a nasty business. Just off the cuff trying to throw together a mothership with 8000dTons of hangar space wound up costing in the neighborhood of 5 billion. I suppose two separate ships might wind up costing less, it's really up to how you do it. Suppose you come up with a decent design and simply want two of them, and they fit within the budget you've got. That might work out just great. It does complicate the game somewhat, having to deal with people going in separate directions, all that crap. All in all, a ship worth twice as much as another ship will be more powerful than two of that other ship, unless it's designed poorly. also, it could make up for a lot of what the other ships can do with fighters, which are relatively cheap and with the right warheads in missile racks can seriously complicate someone's day. there's a lot of stuff that is really only needed once, but to build two ships each independent of one another you have to buy it twice.
It's your call, I'm having fun just designing awesome ships. I do feel that a large budget is needed, I've had trouble building a competent ship of any reasonable size within the budget I set.
oh yeah, and an update about the marines aboard the SS mulligan, that second missile launcher, the 100mm one, would actually be on a second robotic over the arm mount. those mounts are pretty good, the robotic arm allows you to aim and fire through your hud, keeping the weapon hands free. I'm contemplating replacing one or the other of the missiles with a sniper railgun, or making it a "one guy out of four" has a railgun over his shoulder instead of a big missile. Honestly, I think the railguns are fine where they are, on highly mobile scout troops who can get into high ground and set up.
Also, if you guys are going to design your own powered armor, make sure that if you use the grav belt, you buy it twice for each trooper. It does not specifically say how much weight can be carried, so I'm going to go ahead and say that a fully loaded heavy battlesuit is more than a single grav belt can carry, but buying it at 2x cost should fix that. they also need to carry one of the smaller power sources, all of the weapons I've mentioned have a power demand, and batteries would get expensive. I looked at energy weapons, but either they don't fix the ammo issue, or don't match up to the gauss for damage and rate of fire. honestly, the 4mm gauss minigun is a winner, with it's only drawbacks being weight and bulk. Weight is already a non-issue, the heavy battlesuit gives +20 ST, and the articulated harness reduces the weapons weight by 1/3. Then the bulk would keep them from being able to move and fire accurately, but the gyroscopic harness compensates for the full bulk of the weapon. I may have to trim their loadout if it slows them down too much, but their ST of 10 plus 20 from their armor should match what I'm giving them and still allow rapid movement.
Basically, the 120 marines I've built for the SS mulligan, along with their 8 grav tanks, 4 assault shuttles, and 8 fighters, should be more than a match for any lesser tech level enemy, and any equal tech level enemy that is not as well equipped. They would be able to level a city in a matter of hours, and could fend off tanks, artillery, and other aircraft rather easily. And that's in an open field. Underground or in large facilities they'd be even more lethal. Normally bottlenecking troops is a good thing, but bottlenecking a power armor with a minigun really just means that one guy per tunnel is all they need. These troops would normally spread out pretty far, I've designed them to be very independent, capable of handling large numbers of regular troops with ease. they have the firepower and mobility to keep a few dozen guys in combat or space armor pinned down. I was thinking of the starship troopers from the novel, really.
splitting your funds to build two autonomous ships is certainly up to you, but having to pay for two jump drives is pretty expensive. You might do better with a large, heavily shielded 'mothership' that has little else to offer and is almost totally automated, and then one or two still significantly sized craft capable of working within a system. A jump drive has to be an exact size relative to the size of the ship you're building, there is little room for optimization there, it costs, it weighs, and even if you don't power it unless you need to, it's still taking up space and increasing mass, so you have to push it and that means more maneuver drive, which takes up more power and necessitates more power production. It's a nasty business. Just off the cuff trying to throw together a mothership with 8000dTons of hangar space wound up costing in the neighborhood of 5 billion. I suppose two separate ships might wind up costing less, it's really up to how you do it. Suppose you come up with a decent design and simply want two of them, and they fit within the budget you've got. That might work out just great. It does complicate the game somewhat, having to deal with people going in separate directions, all that crap. All in all, a ship worth twice as much as another ship will be more powerful than two of that other ship, unless it's designed poorly. also, it could make up for a lot of what the other ships can do with fighters, which are relatively cheap and with the right warheads in missile racks can seriously complicate someone's day. there's a lot of stuff that is really only needed once, but to build two ships each independent of one another you have to buy it twice.
It's your call, I'm having fun just designing awesome ships. I do feel that a large budget is needed, I've had trouble building a competent ship of any reasonable size within the budget I set.
oh yeah, and an update about the marines aboard the SS mulligan, that second missile launcher, the 100mm one, would actually be on a second robotic over the arm mount. those mounts are pretty good, the robotic arm allows you to aim and fire through your hud, keeping the weapon hands free. I'm contemplating replacing one or the other of the missiles with a sniper railgun, or making it a "one guy out of four" has a railgun over his shoulder instead of a big missile. Honestly, I think the railguns are fine where they are, on highly mobile scout troops who can get into high ground and set up.
Also, if you guys are going to design your own powered armor, make sure that if you use the grav belt, you buy it twice for each trooper. It does not specifically say how much weight can be carried, so I'm going to go ahead and say that a fully loaded heavy battlesuit is more than a single grav belt can carry, but buying it at 2x cost should fix that. they also need to carry one of the smaller power sources, all of the weapons I've mentioned have a power demand, and batteries would get expensive. I looked at energy weapons, but either they don't fix the ammo issue, or don't match up to the gauss for damage and rate of fire. honestly, the 4mm gauss minigun is a winner, with it's only drawbacks being weight and bulk. Weight is already a non-issue, the heavy battlesuit gives +20 ST, and the articulated harness reduces the weapons weight by 1/3. Then the bulk would keep them from being able to move and fire accurately, but the gyroscopic harness compensates for the full bulk of the weapon. I may have to trim their loadout if it slows them down too much, but their ST of 10 plus 20 from their armor should match what I'm giving them and still allow rapid movement.
Basically, the 120 marines I've built for the SS mulligan, along with their 8 grav tanks, 4 assault shuttles, and 8 fighters, should be more than a match for any lesser tech level enemy, and any equal tech level enemy that is not as well equipped. They would be able to level a city in a matter of hours, and could fend off tanks, artillery, and other aircraft rather easily. And that's in an open field. Underground or in large facilities they'd be even more lethal. Normally bottlenecking troops is a good thing, but bottlenecking a power armor with a minigun really just means that one guy per tunnel is all they need. These troops would normally spread out pretty far, I've designed them to be very independent, capable of handling large numbers of regular troops with ease. they have the firepower and mobility to keep a few dozen guys in combat or space armor pinned down. I was thinking of the starship troopers from the novel, really.
I am going to dive into the ship but want to finish the character first... doing an ex-biological AI (a living being that sometime after "backing up" with a brain scan lost his body so is now an AI)... So as soon as that is done and I get the cartographer software then I will jump on it...
To satisfy Cheyne's ideas but to get closer to a manageable design for Gideon's sake I suggest we design the 1 "mothership" that breaks off smaller portions that are in system light cruisers only... will only have 1 jumpdrive, multiple capital ships for versatility, etc... now I do not know what additional aspects of design this would add to the build process but it sounds cool...
if we REALLY want to be silly then we can have them recombine in a different configuration for different things.... (And I will form the Head!)
To satisfy Cheyne's ideas but to get closer to a manageable design for Gideon's sake I suggest we design the 1 "mothership" that breaks off smaller portions that are in system light cruisers only... will only have 1 jumpdrive, multiple capital ships for versatility, etc... now I do not know what additional aspects of design this would add to the build process but it sounds cool...
if we REALLY want to be silly then we can have them recombine in a different configuration for different things.... (And I will form the Head!)
That which is not dead can eternal lie and with strange eons even death may die
My Color is Blue
I value Knowledge, logic, and deceit. I love to pursue wisdom but also to manipulate and deceive. At my best, I am brilliant and progressive. At my worst, I am treacherous and cold. My symbol is a water droplet. My enemies are green and red.
My Color is Blue
I value Knowledge, logic, and deceit. I love to pursue wisdom but also to manipulate and deceive. At my best, I am brilliant and progressive. At my worst, I am treacherous and cold. My symbol is a water droplet. My enemies are green and red.