Wednesday, November 11, 2015

Scope of reworking the Ship Creation System

I did some of the calculations and initial research and here's what I got. 

  1. Step 1: Hull, Costs and Tons tables. I also made a formula for it. Basically its getting the surface area of a cube of a certain volume. Again the liberty ship statistics are my baseline, the most common work horse ship is something of similar length to cross-section ratio of a liberty ship. 
    1. Assumptions about Hull Materials and Internal Structural reinforcements
    2. Basic thickness of each ship in mm. I'm using stainless spring steel as a baseline at 8 tons per cubic meter. I'm imagining a technology that would align the internal structure of the material to handle stress better than spring stainless steel.
    3. Shape and Streamlining Modifier for the Hull. the Sphere has the lowest sqm to volume ratio, and all other shapes have higher sqm to volume ratio.  
  2. Step 2. Propulsion system
    1. when it comes to main propulsions I have to extrapolate and set performance assumptions with various theoretical technologies from Atomic Rockets propulsion Chapter. 
    2. I need to make a Scale of Cost to Efficiency ratios. What Traders use, vs What fighters use, what Military Cruisers (long ranged military vessels) use. The beauty of the Liberty ship at 15,000 displacement metric tons is that the most basic military units: destroyers and light cruisers or corvettes use the same hull to confuse.
    3. Maneuvering Thrusters are a now a luxury for fighting ships. they minimal ones built in, but ships that dedicate a greater amount of resource can make more erratic evasion patterns.
    4. In this system we have limited Accel, so I'll have to make tables precalculated Km/s per amount of Reaction Mater and a Spreadsheet that does this all. 
    5. Decide on Fuel Tanks. To make it simple the setting relies on a propulsion system that can process any gass for reaction mass. 
  3. Step 3. Decide on Jump Range
    1. Assumptions about jump points. and comparing it against game system goals. Basically since intrastellar travel is the focus, I can make jumping take no time, but in system travel take up 99% of what happens. 
    2. I'm wondering how much fuel it takes to jump, so that I can put in multi-jump biz models. 
  4. Step 4. Decide on Powerplant. I plan to make this fairly hand-wavy. A core that runs for a number of years per expensive consumable. But since travel takes months, keeping spares would be necessasry. 
  5. Step 5. Utilities and Parts of the ship. there are some interesting OSHA guidelines to workshops and safety worth putting in to the how the ship looks like inside. 
    1. Gravity  less layout. Pantropic humans that are adapted for zero-gravity, and drugs or cybernetics that allow humans to survive without a gravity, plus hibernation. 
    2. There is a lot of Maintenance Drones usage to keep things tied down and particles from zipping about since there is no gravity anymore.  
    3. Some people will need to live in their suit for Zero-G. Or options for Players to move around inhabiting Drone bodies for ship maintenance. 
  6. Step 6. Bridge, Sensors, and Computers. There is a lot of automation and computation. Bridges are even more minimalist in light of automation and crews that need to be frozen for the trip. 
  7. Step 7. Vehicles and Crafts. with 15,000dtons there should be a landing craft. The ship should be not very well equipped to land and would require external landing drive riggings. ship stays in space type of practices and landing crafts to take care of planet side matters. 
  8. Step 8. Weapon Systems. Man this  is a whole chapter to tackle by itself. Setting assumptions on engagement ranges. Probably the ranges when a light beam loses its focus but can still deal damage and drones that fire such light beams or particles. I can probably simplify this with a Odds System (Amount of Firepower vs Amount of Defense and defense measures). I honestly dont want to go into this in detail without figuring out #9. 
  9. Ship Economics and Common Trade Practices. "made up" statistics of how long it takes to do trade, the costs involved, the risks, and where the PC's fit in all of this. Encounter tables and tools to facilitate this should be available. 

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