Spacecraft size

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Here's an interactive guide to the ion drive, vor future reference.

[Vondy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Had you considered looking at the Jovian Chronicles? Its hard SF (if you drop the mechs and anime tropes) and takes a lot of this into account. It would at least provide a guideline. The spacer book and the hardware and vehicle books are great even if you have no interest in the world (or the mechs).

 

Some thoughts:

 

Build the ships in space. Orbital dock-yards at a lagrange point would remove the need to launch the ship and save massive amounts of resources. The basic ore needed could be found on the moon and in the asteroid belt. A lunar accelerator and tugs for asteroids could get the materials into place, and manufacturing could also occur on the moon and in space stations.

 

Consider fuel and transit times. It will take months to get to Saturn from Earth. This will mean the planets inside the belt have more physical contact with one another than those outside the belt. A lot of contact will be via com-nets (and there will probably be an interplanetary internet). The inner planets will be the hub.

 

Consider habitats. Most planets - including mars - are not ideal for human habitation, and terraforming venus is a centuries-long operation. As a result, most people living in space will be living in orbital habitats - and it will be difficult to travel between worlds. A martian who lives on the surface, for instance, will have to work-out in simulated gravity (a habitat ring under spin?) for a few months to be comfortable on earth (or course, it might take a while to get there, as well).

 

And remember, while military ships will focus on power and durability, commercial ships will probably focus on economy. As a result, you may have relatively fragile civillian ships who use entirely different drive principles - for instance: a slow moving solar sail or mag sail. Or even, a large, hollow, O'Niel style ring that serves as an accelerator to push the ship (potentially a drone) towards its destination, with tugs at the destination to turn it around and put it into another ring to push it back.

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Thanks for the recommendation, Von D-Man! I've heard of the Jovian Chronicles, but I was never able to find a copy anywhere. I didn't know it was still in print. I'll look for it ASAP.

 

You put in some good points there. Having civilian ships be relatively fragile (and unarmed) was one of my plans, so it would be necessary to have military ships escort freighters during wartime.

 

Definitely I have to work out how extraterrestrial habitats operate. I want to work out how humans survive there. And having the Lagrange points become major production centers will make them highly desirable real estate property. It will definitely be a cause of conflict between the major powers.

[The Monster]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

It seems to me (spurred by an earlier comment) that likely builds for spacewarships might steer completely away from large vessels, in favor of smaller vessels not unlike starfighters and monitors. You want a power plant, a propulsion unit, and one or more weapons, and pretty much nothing else (for the sake of cost, if not also mass and vulnerability). Given high-speed computer links, targeting and coordination would be no less difficult than on a single large ship, and the loss of a single fighter is much less expensive and decisive than a similar-sized hole in a battleship. If anything, I would bet that the battles would look a lot more like WW2 Pacific carrier action than Lensman/WWI battlewagon slugfests.

 

Now, it would be intersting if you make the fighters unmanned - that is, remote controlled by pilots on the mothership. This saves space on the fighter and allows extremely high-g maneuvering. Of course, then there's the possible need for tactical relay ships, which would need to be protected and/or redundant...

 

Other than the possible need for large powerplants, I doubt there's much real advantage in large ships. But I could be wrong.

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

It has been stated elsewhere that space warfare would be conducted via drones as opposed to ship-to-ship combat.

[Susano]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

It has been stated elsewhere that space warfare would be conducted via drones as opposed to ship-to-ship combat.

 

But where's the fun in that?

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

But where's the fun in that?

I think we (the forum members, that is) had that conversation and concluded that was the best reason to keep fighter pilots in a campaign.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Had you considered looking at the Jovian Chronicles? Its hard SF (if you drop the mechs and anime tropes)

Haven't looked very closely at the Jovian Chronicles, but I confess I'm having some trouble fitting "hard SF" in the same sentence with "mechs and anime"...

[Susano]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Haven't looked very closely at the Jovian Chronicles' date=' but I confess I'm having some trouble fitting "hard SF" in the same sentence with "mechs and anime"... [/quote']

 

There are several anime that contain hard SF concepts. Planetes is one, although the manga is far, far better than the anime.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

There are several anime that contain hard SF concepts. Planetes is one' date=' although the manga is far, far better than the anime.[/quote']

I can (just barely) wrap my brain around the idea that hard SF anime might exist. But add mechs and my brain implodes.

[Susano]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

I can (just barely) wrap my brain around the idea that hard SF anime might exist. But add mechs and my brain implodes.

 

Planetes has no mecha. It does have an interesting view of life in space. The main character is a junkman who spends his time in Earth orbit collecting debris. Come to think of it... I would have to recommend it for anyone wanting to run a Solar System-based SF game.

[shadowcat1313]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Cowboy Bebop is better anime as far as hard sf, I dont mind mecha but the idea of protoculture is just beyond silly for me, at least in Battletech they use small fusion reactors, which is a tech that at least makes sense

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Planetes has no mecha.

Sorry, I was referring back to Jovian Chronicles.

 

The main character is a junkman who spends his time in Earth orbit collecting debris.

They made an anime version of Quark?!

 

[Vondy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Haven't looked very closely at the Jovian Chronicles' date=' but I confess I'm having some trouble fitting "hard SF" in the same sentence with "mechs and anime"... [/quote']

 

Big science, little speculation.

 

Nonetheless its there. The orbital habitats, weaponry, and ship designs are all diamond hard. They put a lot of thought into it. The terraforming for Mars and Venus are also based on current theories. You have to do simplified rocket science to calculate thrust and transit times for travel. They also have a scale for realism, and the more realism you choose the more rules including scientific concepts come into play. At the gritty level there are rules for radiation, life-support duration, and you have to track burn points for fuel. They also have cinematic rules where you can ignore a lot of this stuff, but the concepts remain hard science.

 

As for the mechs, they're plausible (with one iffy techno-leap for brain interface), albiet very anime.

 

I run it without the mechs. They aren't really essential.

[Susano]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

They made an anime version of Quark?!

 

Basically.

 

In truth, the job is important -- terrorists try and stop Earth-Moon travel by blowing up enough stuff to fill the space lanes with so much debris and travel would be suicide.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Thanks; I'll have to check out Jovian Chronicles. Who knows, I may even try to suppress my usual allergic reaction to all things anime long enough to check out Planetes.

[Vondy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Thanks for the recommendation, Von D-Man! I've heard of the Jovian Chronicles, but I was never able to find a copy anywhere. I didn't know it was still in print. I'll look for it ASAP.

 

You put in some good points there. Having civilian ships be relatively fragile (and unarmed) was one of my plans, so it would be necessary to have military ships escort freighters during wartime.

 

Definitely I have to work out how extraterrestrial habitats operate. I want to work out how humans survive there. And having the Lagrange points become major production centers will make them highly desirable real estate property. It will definitely be a cause of conflict between the major powers.

 

All of the books are downloadable at drivethrurpg.com.

 

For your puposes I would focus on the mechanical catalogues (lots of vehicles) and the spacer's book, which has a lot of information on spaceships. The Ships of the Fleet series is pretty cool, too - though it doesn't have game stats. Just specs and the like.

 

As for the world books, the CIS-Lunar Space book has a lot of information on orbital and lunar colonies. The Venus books has information on terraforming and arcologies. The Jupiter book has write-ups for several O'Niel Colonies. I really didn't like the Earth books (2) much, but there were useful bits. I never got a look at the Mars or Mercury books. As for the other books - the Core Rule Book has a lot of background information and lays everything out (including an overview of living in space), and SolaPol is very useful if you want to run something other than "Top Gun in space,"

 

And I do like their quick and light system and some of the ideas they worked into it (though I still prefer Hero). The expanded rules rehash a lot of material, but do add a lot to vehicle creation. I didn't think much of the Chaos Principle. That's all I can think of other than the fact that I ran it with exo-suits, but without mechs - and did a good bit of editing in terms of Earth.

 

One of the things I liked about the mechanical catalogues was the "crew member" comments, and the fact that they also tried to address the economy that allowed various industries to operate (like space liners and prospecting ships in the civillian mechanical catalogue).

 

Oh, and lagrange points are discussed both in the core rule book and CIS-Lunar space books.

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

Thanks again, Von D-Man! I'll definitely look into it.

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

A friend of mine maintains that our tendancy to think of spaceships in terms of naval ships is wrong' date=' or at least several centuries away. He believes that spacecraft are likely to resemble airplanes more than ships for at least the next century or so. Interesting way of looking at it, I thought.[/quote']

 

I have been thinking about this statement for a few days, so it would be easy to rename the ship designations. Perhaps they can be drone carriers, troop transports, gunships, bombardiers, and interceptors. In this scenario, war is mainly fought by sending drones to attack the enemy ships. Interceptors would then be used as escorts to protect the carriers and transports. However, they would act more like point defense systems rather than fighter planes. Gunships would be the exception: They would directly attack any enemy vessel they see. Dogfights would still be rare in this scenario. Bombardiers would attack ground targets rather than spacecraft, so they may be forbidden by treaty or international law. Of course, someone may decide to break the rules and build them anyway.

 

Of course, if you want the spaceplane scenario, you can also have orbital ships, short-range fighters that return to earth (or wherever they're based) after completing a mission. You can also have patrol ships, which would protect the space above a nation's territory. These would most likely be based on a space station in geosynchronous orbit.

[Nyrath]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

They made an anime version of Quark?!

No. It's an anime about orbital debris technicians desperately trying to prevent the Kessler Syndrome from cutting Earth off from all access to space for a couple of generations. It's dead serious.

 

Planetes has some of the most rock-hard science I've ever seen in SF.

[Nyrath]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

A friend of mine maintains that our tendancy to think of spaceships in terms of naval ships is wrong' date=' or at least several centuries away. He believes that spacecraft are likely to resemble airplanes more than ships for at least the next century or so. Interesting way of looking at it, I thought.[/quote']

He's got a point.

An argument can be made that early combat spacecraft will resemble battles between Sopwith Camels and Fokker-D Triplanes. Early spacecraft will be severely mass limited due to weak engines, exactly like a wood and fabric bi-plane. So the spacecraft will be rickety gossamer things with weapons bolted on as an afterthought.

 

A few centuries later when engines get powerful, well, I have some notes on my website.

[Nyrath]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

It has been stated elsewhere that space warfare would be conducted via drones as opposed to ship-to-ship combat.

 

But where's the fun in that?

Exactly. This is Burnside's Zeroth Law of space combat: Science fiction fans relate more to human beings than to silicon chips.

 

That is, while it might make more logical sense to have an interplanetary battle waged between groups of computer controlled spacecraft, it would be infinitely more boring than a battle between groups of human crewed spacecraft.

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

He's got a point.

An argument can be made that early combat spacecraft will resemble battles between Sopwith Camels and Fokker-D Triplanes. Early spacecraft will be severely mass limited due to weak engines, exactly like a wood and fabric bi-plane. So the spacecraft will be rickety gossamer things with weapons bolted on as an afterthought.

 

A few centuries later when engines get powerful, well, I have some notes on my website.

Yup. If you look at the link I posted about the proposed spaceship designs, that's probably what it will be like. If more powerful drives and ships can be manufactured in space, maybe the old naval designations can come into play. A lot of people like to base future spacecraft on submarines. I guess conditions would be similar to a point.

 

I notice people have different ideas about ship sizes. In some settings, destroyers are smaller than frigates; in others they're larger than cruisers. Of course, nowadays, the roles of these three vessels have become interchangeable, while battleships have become obsolete.

 

 

Edit: But I so wanted to have the USS Kennedy and the RFS Kruschev locking their missiles at each other over the skies of New Havana!

[Susano]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

No. It's an anime about orbital debris technicians desperately trying to prevent the Kessler Syndrome from cutting Earth off from all access to space for a couple of generations. It's dead serious.

 

Planetes has some of the most rock-hard science I've ever seen in SF.

 

Plus, it has Fee. And her cigarettes. And the chapter when she tries to get her fix is one of the funniest things I've read anywhere.

[tkdguy]

Re: Spacecraft size

 

I designed a few ships for the campaign using the Full Thrust system. Note that the designs differ from the original rules (I adapted a few rules posted in the Starship Combat News forum, such as adding mass per extra K-gun arc).

 

This is my first time designing FT ships, so if you're familiar with the system, let me know if I'm doing something wrong. Also, keep in mind that the history section is still in the preliminary stages and may be changed.

 

I'm using the designs from the Terran Republic ships from Cold Navy, as shown here. These are meant to represent NATO/ANZAC/Israeli ships.

 

 

Conquest Class Battleship

 

History: The Conquest class battleship was built by Lockheed Martin in 2047. While originally designed for exploration, it was redesigned as a patrol ship in 2059 and eventually upgraded as a warship in 2072.

 

Description: The Conquest class battleship is a large ship, designed for front-line combat. It is often used as the flagship of any task force. It is heavily armed and armored. There are only about a dozen such ships in service.

 

TMF: 100

NPV: 286

 

Hull (average integrity): 30 (8/8/7/7)

Armor: 5

Thrust: 4

Fire Controls: 3

Armaments: 4 class 1 K-guns (all arcs), 3 class 2 K-guns (2xFP/F/FS, 1xAP/A/AS), 2 class 3 K-guns (2xFP/F/FS, 1xAP/A/AS), 2 missiles (from More Thrust)

Defenses: 2 point-defense systems

 

 

Avatar Class Battlecruiser

 

History: The Avatar class battlecruiser was built by Panavia in 2053 as a patrol ship, designed to replace the older Seraphim class cruiser. By 2072, amidst rising international tensions, it was converted into a warship.

 

Description: The Avatar class battlecruiser is a large ship, but not as large as the Conquest class ship. It is often used as the flagship of any task force. It is designed for front-line combat, heavily armed but not having as much armor as the Conquest. There are about twenty such ships in service.

 

TMF: 85

NPV: 240

 

Hull (average integrity): 26 (7/7/6/6)

Armor: 2

Thrust: 4

Fire Controls: 2

Armaments: 4 class 1 K-guns (all arcs), 4 class 2 K-guns (2xFP/F/FS, 2xAP/A/AS), 1 salvo missile rack (FP/F/FS)

Defenses: 2 point-defense systems

 

 

Orion Class Light Cruiser

 

History: The Orion class cruiser was built by Northrop Grumman in 2072. It is the newest design in spacecraft, the first built in Tyr station in L5.

 

Description: The Orion class cruiser is a medium-sized ship. Although it was designed as a combat support vessel, it is well suited for exploration or patrol. There are about fifteen such ships in service.

 

TMF: 60

NPV: 158

 

Hull (average integrity): 14 (5/5/4/4)

Armor: 2

Thrust: 6

Fire Controls: 2

Armaments: 2 class 1 K-guns (all arcs), 2 class 2 K-guns (1xFP/F/FS, 1xAP/A/AS),1 salvo missile rack (FP/F/FS)

Defenses: 2 point-defense systems

 

 

Masada Class Heavy Destroyer

 

History: The Masada class destroyer was designed by the Israel Aircraft Corporation in 2061. Many western nations bought the new ship, primarily to replace the older Antares class ship. It was upgraded in 2074.

 

Description: The Masada class destroyer is a medium-sized ship, designed for combat support and escort duties. There are about 20-30 ships in service.

 

TMF: 50

NPV: 129

 

Hull (average integrity): 15 (4/4/3/3)

Armor: 2

Thrust: 6

Fire Controls: 2

Armaments: 2 class 1 K-guns (all arcs), 1 class 2 K-gun (FP/F/FS), 1 salvo missile rack (FP/F/FS)

Defenses: 3 point-defense systems

 

 

Antares Class Destroyer

 

History: The Antares class destroyer was built by Mitsubishi Electric in 2042. It was a popular design, but it is now showing its age. It is now being phased out in favor of the Masada class destroyer.

 

Description: The Antares destroyer is a small ship, designed for escort duties and patrol. It can be used for combat support, but it is lightly armed and has no armor. However, its defense systems are more extensive than most other ships. Only about a dozen of these ships remain in active duty.

 

TMF: 35

NPV: 90

 

Hull (average integrity): 11 (3/3/2/2)

Armor: 0

Thrust: 6

Fire Controls: 1

Armaments: 2 class 1 K-guns (all arcs), 1 salvo missile rack (FP/F/FS)

Defenses: 2 point-defense systems, 1 area defense fire control

 

 

Northampton Class Frigate

 

History: The Northampton class frigate was built by EADS Astrium in 2071, inteded to replace the older Swift class ship.

 

Description: The Northampton class frigate is a small ship, designed for escort duties and patrol. It can be used for combat support, but it is lightly armed and has no armor, thus making it vulnerable to the firepower of enemy ships.

 

TMF: 25

NPV: 64

 

Hull (average integrity): 8 (2/2/2/2)

Armor: 0

Thrust: 6

Fire Controls: 1

Armaments: 2 class 1 K-guns (all arcs), 1 salvo missile rack (FP/F/FS)