[Spaceships] Ships of Arbitrary Size WIP

[Langy]

Er, not if you're trying to match the specs from the book. Force screens have the same mass-DR relation as armor, but they aren't effected by whether the ship is streamlined.

Huh, I never noticed that - probably because I don't use force screens in my games, ever. That's silly.

Well, if you're using a Streamlined ship, record both its actual Surface Area and its Surface Area as if it weren't Streamlined. You'll be using the actual Surface Area only for calculating Armor dDR, and the non-Streamlined armor for any other use.

Also, I'll note that if you want more accuracy, you can make the Volume of the ship (and thus its surface area) dependant upon the number of Armor systems each ship section has. This isn't used in the normal Spaceships rules at all, so it's beyond optional.

Still, this makes sense since Volume usually assumes a system is 100 cubic feet per ton, but the density of steel makes it only 4 cubic feet per ton.

If you assume all armor types are 4 cubic feet per ton, and also assume that the density of a single ship section doesn't effect the density of the other ship sections, then you can use the following progression:

1: 1.1
2: 1.2
3: 1.4
4: 1.7
5: 2.3
6: 3.7

You multiply the normal dDR of a ship section by this number to get its final dDR due to high-density.

Alternatively, you can make the bonus due to high-density depend upon the total number of armor systems in a ship, though to be honest I prefer the other way. Still assuming all armor systems are 4 cubic feet per ton, we get the following progression:

1: 1
2: 1
3: 1.1
4: 1.1
5: 1.2
6: 1.2
7: 1.3
8: 1.3
9: 1.4
10: 1.5
11: 1.6
12: 1.7
13: 1.9
14: 2
15: 2.3
16: 2.6
17: 3
18: 3.7

If you somehow allow a ship to have its Core sections turned into armor, then you can get the following bonuses:

19: 4.9
20: 8.3

You'll note that the Section-based high-density armor bits are the same as if 3x as many sections of armor were installed and you're using the whole-ship rules. If using high-density armor, I'd go with Section-based and round the multipliers to:

1: 1
2: 1.2
3: 1.5
4: 2
5: 2.5
6: 3.5

I'd do that just to make them prettier and so 1 section of armor remains the same as the normal rules.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Langy

Huh, I never noticed that - probably because I don't use force screens in my games, ever. That's silly.

It's superscience. You could just say that the protective value of a shield system is proportional to the cube root of the mass of the generator, and area is not a factor. I was going to offer other possibilities, but I can't without taking the low resolution outside my comfort zone...the system claims to work for all sorts of shapes with quite variable surfaces, and the force screen has the same target SM as the ship so it has to more or less match the contours, meaning surface area can vary completely independently of any factor relating to the generator.

Well, at least I've got a consistent rule for it, then...

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Langy

If you assume all armor types are 4 cubic feet per ton

That's not really a reasonable assumption though. Ice is 35 ft^3/ton (At 0C).

Rock is typically abut a third of that.

Aluminum is 11.86 ft^3/ton.

[Langy]

That's not really a reasonable assumption though.

Yeah, I know. You need more specific rules for other armor types if you want to be truly accurate, at least with the lower-tech armors, but the higher-tech ones should work with that pretty well, unless you have a better idea of how dense metallic laminate, advanced metallic laminate, or nanocomposite would be than I do.

For Ice at 35 cubic feet per ton, you get the following progression:

1: 1
2: 1.1
3: 1.2
4: 1.3
5: 1.5
6: 1.7

For stone or light alloy at 12 cubic feet per ton, you get:

1: 1.1
2: 1.2
3: 1.3
4: 1.6
5: 2
6: 2.8

[Langy]

Systems

The following lists a number of formulas specific to each system.

Using all of this, you should be able to design a ship of any size. Weapons of an appropriate size have not been designed yet, and likely won’t be – instead, just use the weapons already available. A weapon that is a Major Battery of a given ship size masses Ship Tonnage / 20 tons, and each Weapon Battery that you put on a ship gives it Ship Tonnage / 20 tons of space for weapons.



Costs

Progression 1 = Multiplier * 10^(SM/2)
Progression 2 = Multiplier * 10^((SM-1)/2)
Progression 3 = Multiplier * 10^((SM+2)/3)
Progression 4 = Multiplier * 10^((SM+1)/3)


Almost every system uses Progression 1 or Progression 2 – the only ones that don’t are the Stealth Hull options, the Stasis Web, and the Soft Landing System. The only one that uses Progression 4 is the Soft Landing System – the others listed use Progression 3.

Stealth Hull cost multiplier = $1,000
Chameleon Hull cost multiplier = $700
Soft Landing System cost multiplier = $50
Stasis Web cost multiplier = $10,000


Progression 2 systems are:

Cloaking Device
Factory
Light Screen
Fuel Tank
Fission, Super Fusion, and Total Conversion reactors
Reaction Engine, Electric
Hot, Super Reactionless drives
Weapon Batteries except Spinal Batteries

All others are Progression 1.

To find out the Cost Multiplier of a Progression 1 system, divide the cost of an SM+6 system by 1,000. If there are no SM+6 systems, divide the cost of an SM+10 system by 100,000.

For Progression 2 systems, divide the cost of an SM+7 system by 1,000 or the cost of an SM+11 system by 100,000.

Workspaces

All systems with workspaces follow the same progression.

Workspaces = Ship Tonnage / 10000

Cargo Hold

Tons = Ship Tonnage / 20

Control Rooms

Complexity = Size Modifier / 10 + 2
Comm/Sensor Array Level = Size Modifier – 11
Control Stations = 10^((SM-4)/6)

Engine Room

Control Stations: 1 if SM is below 9, 2 otherwise

Comm/Sensor Arrays

Array Level = SM – 9

Factory

$/hr = Ship Tonnage * 50
Lbs/hr = Ship Tonnage / 200

Force Screen

TL11 dDR = 10^((SM+3)/6)
TL12 dDR = 10^(SM+4)/6)

Fuel Tank

Fuel Tons = Ship Tonnage / 20

Habitat

Number of Cabins = Ship Tonnage / 150

At SM+6, round up.

Hangar Bay

Capacity (tons) = Ship Tonnage / 30
Launch Rate (tons) = This is the minimum of Capacity or 10^((SM-4)/3)

Jump Gate

Max Tonnage = Ship Tonnage / 30

Mining and Refinery

Tons/hr (Mining) = Ship Tonnage / 200
Tons/hr (Refining) = Ship Tonnage / 60

Open Space

Area = 10^((SM-8)/3)

Passenger Seating

Seats = Ship Tonnage / 15

Spin Gravity

Max G =10^((SM-14)/6)

[Ulzgoroth]

Any-sizing beam weapons:
Base beam output = 20/3 MJ/Ton * weapon mass

Apply modifiers such as rapid fire as desired get actual beam energy.

dDam1 = (Energy/100kJ)^(1/3) dice

For a first approximation (as close as the books, really), take the range of the nearest neighbor that's actually written up.

I don't have a solution on hand for the guns and missiles though.

[Langy]

I know I came up with a formula for determining gun/missile damage when given a weapon caliber, but I can't remember it and don't have the spreadsheet any longer. It had to do with getting the kinetic energy of the strike and taking into account the shell's cross-section.

I'm pretty sure I can figure it out again, but it'll be a while before I tackle that.

[Ulzgoroth]

I tossed you the guideline for standard-type projectiles earlier, for use with the damage formulas from SS 61 or SS3 32.

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

There's a straightforward conversion between projectile diameter and base damage (1.5 dice per cm), but I don't remember finding a straightforward relation between diameter and launcher size.

Deriving anything from first principles sounds like an absolute nightmare considering the basic weirdness of what projectile attack packages are supposed to actually do.

[Langy]

If I remember right, the damage used the same calculation as normal bullets - a calculation DOuglas Cole put into a Pyramid article. I was trying to figure out if gauss weapons were using too-large diameter projectiles to be efficient, I believe - if you can get the same kinetic energy into a smaller diameter projectile, you do significantly more damage, but if I remember right it took either more power or a longer gun to get the same KE into a lighter shell. Wound up being not too sure if it was better to use smaller diameter, lighter gauss shells or not.

[Ulzgoroth]

Hopefully it did in the actual calculation. But I'm not sure you're aware of the fundamentals behind how those are supposed to work.

See this post for what's actually in the package. Those things are not simple impactors, and their underlying specs are not available to us.