[Spaceships] Life Pods as Habitat Options

[Kissamies]

So I'd like my ships to have escape pods, as seen on Ultra-Tech p.232. Spaceships gives some options for this. Emergency Ejection is fine for smaller ships. Hangars or launchers are not something I'd like to add to a ship just to represent life pods, not even with the smaller systems rule. Too messy.

It occurred to me that treating the pods and their launch bays as specialized rooms for habitats might be an elegant solution. Just convert some cabins to pods and pay $100K for each. Initially I thought 1 pod per cabin might be fair, but then I thought about it more. If 1 cabin is an equivalent of 1 habitat on a SM+6, it might be comparable to a hangar bay on same ship. That hangar bay has a capacity of 3 tons. Life pods have loaded weight of 1 tons, so the hangar would fit 3. Maybe lower that to 2 to represent reliable emergency launch systems and inefficiency of mounting them on habitats.

How does that sound?

[cmdicely]

Originally Posted by Kissamies

It occurred to me that treating the pods and their launch bays as specialized rooms for habitats might be an elegant solution. Just convert some cabins to pods and pay $100K for each. Initially I thought 1 pod per cabin might be fair, but then I thought about it more. If 1 cabin is an equivalent of 1 habitat on a SM+6, it might be comparable to a hangar bay on same ship. That hangar bay has a capacity of 3 tons. Life pods have loaded weight of 1 tons, so the hangar would fit 3. Maybe lower that to 2 to represent reliable emergency launch systems and inefficiency of mounting them on habitats.

Hangar bays usually include space to move the craft in the bay around, conduct recovery operations, etc. Since lifepods probably can't be recovered in their "bays" the way normal small craft can (though they can probably be reattached as a kind of repair operation), I'd expect the density to be higher than a normal hangar, rather than lower. I'd think they'd be closer to upper stages that have negligible "support" weight. If you had no extra support weight, that in one module on an SM+6 ship you'd get 5 pods, but it is reasonable to have a little support, so call it four pods per module. I like treating it as a habitat option, and there is precedent for fractional-habitat systems (e.g., the Hibernation Chamber in Spaceships), so call one lifepod as a 0.25 habitat option -- same as a Hibernation Chamber.

[Langy]

A habitat cabin can actually hold 5 tons (hence why you can fit 5 tons of stuff in one if you use it as stowage cargo). You should be able to fit five life pods in one habitat cabin, and I'd just use it like that. This matches perfectly with sticking life pods in hangar bays at SM+7+, BTW - SM+6 systems aren't actually big enough for a full habitat cabin (each cabin masses 7.5 tons at all of the other SMs), but I guess Pulver decided rounding up a little wouldn't mess anything up.

Anyways, I'm basically saying you can stick five life pods per cabin with no trouble.

[Kissamies]

You are right. SM+6 habitat should actually be 0.6 cabins if you follow the progression. On the bigger SM's 1 cabin matches 5 tons of hangar space. As cmdicely pointed out, a life pod bay should be able to pack more pods than a hangar because of the specialization and simple launch systems, but I think I'll make 5 pods per bay due to access and inefficiency factor I mentioned earlier. Matches the cargo space nicely that way.

Thanks.

[panton41]

If you dig up Eric Smith's thread about the Excel spreadsheet for Spaceships he has a house rule involving life pods that's pretty elegant. (For that matter, the spreadsheet is very nice, too, though he's said it won't be updated for Spaceships 7 for a while due to classes.)

[Kissamies]

0.2 cabins per life pod. That spreadsheet matches the conclusion here.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Kissamies

0.2 cabins per life pod. That spreadsheet matches the conclusion here.

What if you want multi-person lifepods? Maybe a '1' cabin lifepod could hold six people because of the efficiency gain in lumping the systems together into one pod?

[Langy]

Huh? A single life pod holds four people, Kale. A 1 cabin group of life pods would hold twenty people.

[Kale]

Originally Posted by Langy

Huh? A single life pod holds four people, Kale. A 1 cabin group of life pods would hold twenty people.

Ahhh.... thanks for clearing that up. I got confused when someone compared life pods to cryo tubes. I now remember the life pod listing within spaceships (what volume was it?).
That makes things much easier.

[Diomedes]

Originally Posted by Kale

Ahhh.... thanks for clearing that up. I got confused when someone compared life pods to cryo tubes. I now remember the life pod listing within spaceships (what volume was it?).
That makes things much easier.

I don't think they were in any of them, but there was an entry in the Designer's Notes.