Generic Starship and Small Craft Deckplans

As promised, here are some generic deck plans for the Blockade Buster and associated Boats. The Orbiter Bay can hold a Hopper class boat, an Intercept or a Fast Boat, but the Boat Bay is limited to Hoppers, Interceptors and Fast Boats.

I designed these ship's boats with the idea that the Orbiter is 20% bigger than the Interceptor or Fast Boat. The Fast Boat has more fuel than the Interceptor, but the Interceptor is quicker and more agile than the other two.

Starship Deck Plans for Hopper Alternates (Star Smuggler)

I came up with three alternates for Ship's Boats. One is a completely new product, an Orbiter, which takes up 50 CU inside a 60 CU cargo bay. It really not a good choice for the Antelope, but it can be done.

The Orbiter is roughly 25% bigger than a Hopper Ship's Boat. It is able to carry a skimmer. This ship is big enough to provide it's own Life Support just like a Starship. Even though it has enough cargo space for guns, there is no way to mount them due to the wing configuration. It is always unarmed.

The second ship is a regular sized Hopper, but reconfigured for longer trips. It does not provide Life Support, so some cargo will have to be used for that.

The third ship is called an Interceptor, because... well, it's an interceptor. It has integrated guns. They can be upgraded or downgraded, but never removed. It has a dedicated space for Fuel and Life Support Units. These spaces can't be used for other things, just like the gun space.

Each and every one of these ships have the ability to break out of gravity wells. See r214b. The Orbiter must use it's cargo for fuel to escape, while the other two ships can do it with just their fuel tanks. The Orbiter has a max power of 15, the Fast Boat has a rating or 16 and the Interceptor has a rating of 20.

In order to boost to a speed of 20, the Interceptor must purchase external fuel tanks on the planet is is leaving. Each tank holds just enough fuel to break orbit from that planet and are jettisoned on take-off. These tanks can be purchased for standard price 500 each and are available from ground based areas which offer offer Hypercharges (eg. e025). These tanks are extraordinarily dangerous and can only be stored on a planet or on a military vessel, like a carrier. They are never available at space stations.

All three of these items can be purchased or sold from e034 or e035. They can never be found in the Ruins.

Prices are:

Orbiter, e034. 1800 secs. base price. e035 is 2400 secs.
Fast Boat, e034. 1000 secs. base price. e035 is 1500 secs.
Interceptor, e034. 2500 secs. base price. e035 is 5000 secs.

Starship Deck Plans for Antelope Alternates (Star Smuggler)

A few weeks ago, I brainstormed an Antelope-class starship alternate. I inked out a Buffalo-class starship. I really didn't like how it looked, but did like some of the ideas.

Last night, I busted out the Wacom Tablet and gave it another go. It turns out I am really not good with either Inkscape or a Wacom Tablet and had to resort to mouse and keyboard. However, the results were nice. I came up with one new design I call a Blockade Buster, which is designed to fight and fly. It is more than twice the size of an Antelope-class starship and has a couple of different options for cargo and ship's boats.

First, the ship. The Antelope-class has 126 CU of space. The Blockage Buster has 256 CU of carrying capacity, but some of it is limited. The Boat Bay, Cargo Bay 1 and turrets are identical to those of the the Antelope-class.

However, the Blockade Buster has two turrets. Engineering, and Pilotage is twice the size of the Antelope's. There is a Bay for an orbiter, which is a larger shuttle that can carry a skimmer. The Cargo Bay 2 is specifically designed for consumables. It can hold one skimmer and has 36 racks for any type of consumable unit, such as Life Support, Repair or Fuel. In the corner is space for 4 Utility Suits. There is a locker for weapons near the officer's quarters. On the opposite side of the ship is a large suite of rooms for crew quarters. The Blockade Runner holds 12 hypercharges.

Special Rules for this ship: There are no hidden storage places. Cargo Bay 2 cannot be reconfigured to hold other items, the racks are a part of the hull. The ship has no installed Stasis Units. This ship has 12 hits.

If you would like to incorporate this into Star Smuggler, I have pricing and other information here to mix into e001 and e036.

Next post, we'll look at the Alternate Hopper Class Boats. I will also post some generic deck plans for any game system.

Playing with Inkscape and an Orion Type Ship

If I could make my own universe, I'd probably run with something like Traveller. However, the ships I have in mind are sort of WTF level.

This is an Orion Type ship. I'm tinkering with Inkscape and coming up with ship designs. This one is a Bixby class exploration ship. The difference between battleship and explorer is slight with an Orion class ship.

Typical models are 10 meters across and about a hundred meters long. The long spar from the base to the top is where the payload goes, which I haven drawn yet. The whole ship is over 600 meters long.

Orions don't scale down, period. 10 by 100 meters is an arbitrary limit that one hits if you merely want to fill a spaceship with niceties like a 50-100 kg barber chair just because you might want one.

Typical Orion type ships have HUNDREDS of kiloton nuclear devices used to push the ship forward. This one probably has thousands. The grey area above the orange is the magazine for these propulsion devices. Often, the nuclear device will be deployed by a gun like mechanism through a hole in the pusher plate. That is option 1.

Option 2 is to have the nuclear device mounted on a missile that flies out the sides of the ship and to the target area 30 meters behind the pusher plate. The delivery rate is a leisurely 1 device per 1.1 seconds and one launcher would have the ability to perform this task. However, this ramped up version has 16 launchers, each one capable of launching nukes once a second, plus the gun-like arrangement at the bottom.

Theoretically, this is an unarmed ship. You can read a story about it in action here. The tech level in this story is all over the place, no FTL, but lots of AIs and reefer sleep. The AI is beginning to think about arming itself.

I Just Can't Stop...

I just can't stop.

While organizing my desk, I happened upon a book by Robert Pearce. It is an incredible set of ship plans for Traveller. Sure, it says "Traveller", but it could be used for any game system. The detail and scope is amazing. It is campaign fuel for sure.

 Why not take a look yourself.

I know I will be pouring over this book for days to come. For some odd reason, it isn't even for sale. It's free.

Damn. A mighty big thanks to you Mr. Pearce, you made my day.