Pre-made spaceships?
 

Did anybody make some sample spaceships? I'm particularly interested in military vessels, since I'm going to play a fight-heavy space campaign and I'm getting mad designing sample opponents. ;-)
Thanks for your attention and answers.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Wait 'till you see Spaceships 3: Warships and Space Pirates. I think it'll be exactly what you need.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

*sigh*

But I don't like waiting!

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Me, either.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

You need to be quite specific on the setting parameters including allowed superscience and TL. Particularly drives.

If you want Traveller equivalent or Transhuman Space equivalent ships you will probably find them and I would guess some Star Trek and Star Wars ships may be out there too.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

TL 10 and limited (still have to decide how) superscience.
I made a couple of samples, just to give my players something to shoot at:

Light Fighter

SM: 5
Front
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2!] Weapons: Medium Battery [3!] Weapons: Major Battery
[core] Control Room
Center
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2] Power Plant: Fusion
Rear
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2-4] Fuel Tank
[5-6] Reaction Engine: Antimatter
[core] Reaction Engine: Antimatter

The major battery is a missile launcher; the medium battery, three improved lasers.

Missile Corvette

SM: 6
Front
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2!] Weapons: Major Battery
[3!] Weapons: Medium Battery
[4] Defensive Ecm
[5] Array: Tactical
[core] Control Room
Center
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2] Power Plant: Fusion
[3-4] Fuel Tank
Rear
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2-3] Reaction Engine: Antimatter

Both battieries are composed of missile launchers.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

2 or even 3 layers of armor and some ECM are appropriate on small military craft.

With these antimatter plasma weapons I am not sure it needs any actual official weapons apart from point-defence ;-)

Nitpick: reaction drives can't be buried inside the ship [core].

For short duration fighters/craft you could go with non-superscience High-thrust Antimatter Thermal Rockets and the fuel is way cheaper. Antimatter catalyzed hydrogen is only $20K/ton rather than 12M$/ton for full antimatter engines.

Or if your superscience allows: 1G HT Hydrogen / 1.5G Fusion Torch (water) drives and the fuel is practically free.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Something like that, you mean:

SM: 5
Front
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3] Defensive Ecm
[4!] Weapons: Major Battery
[5!] Weapons: Medium Battery
[core] Control Room
Center
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3-4] Fuel Tank
[5] Power Plant: Fusion
Rear
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3-4] Reaction Engine: Antimatter

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

You've got no weapon with a rear firing arc to defend yourself against missiles up the chute. Move the medium battery into the centre section and put it in turrets. And my advice would be to replace it with a tertiary battery of very-rapid-fire [improved] lasers so that you can't be swamped.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

It's a single-crewman ship, two batteries are even too many. ;-)
Remember, you can fire a single turret weapon per Gunnery task and you can do only a single Gunnery task per turn, so more than one weapon in turret would be a waste. And since the pilot would be at -4 to hit due to the two different kind of tasks he's performing (I'm assuming he wants to pilot the fighter too!), the +2 to hit for a beam weapon in a fixed mount would be welcome.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

You can just spin your ship around to fire at what was your rear. There's no air friction in space.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

There is still a moment of inertia. Spinning a massive great ship is not trivial.

And you will find if you use the combat rules in GURPS Spaceships that you need a rear firing arc for point defence against shells and 'missiles' fired by a ship in your rear arc.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Good point. Axe the second battery.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

I don't think you should ever have a military ship with unused spaces.

If you need a gunner or two stick in a seating module next to the bridge and put in a turret weapon or two in the center hull.

If you need more protection you can have up to 3 ECM modules.

A tactical sensor wouldn't go amiss.

If you still have space left over slap on some more armor, more fuel or a bigger drive.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

You're right, but all these things are damn expensive and that is supposed to be a very "baseline" fighter. A more "advanced" version would probably have a second major battery, a gunner and some other upgrades.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

The ship costs around M$ 2.5. Filling up the tanks with antimatter boosted hydrogen costs M$ 36.

I think they throw in one of these fighters free every time you fill the tank ;-)

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Economics definetly isn't my subject. :-(
Antimatter engines, OTOH, were the only way to get a decent acceleration... Should I downgrade them, perhaps?

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Not quite. But it is the shipping container when you buy the fuel for home delivery. And you get always free shipping with Antimatter Prime membership.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

I use TL11 Fusion Torches. I suppose it's cheating to use TL11 engines for TL9-10 ships, but they're the only engines that provide the performance that I want. Since it's my campaign, I don't worry about the discrepancy; Torch Drives are considered superscience anyway.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

That leaves very little space for anything else however - clearly a design philosophy favouring defence over manoeuvre or offence.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Their DV per tank is not very impressive, however. In fact, if you're down at that level HEDM chemical rockets might be a better bet. The drives are cheaper, the fuel is much cheaper, and they give good acceleration.

Here's my attempt at a thrown together TL10, nosuperscience fighter:

SM+5 (30 tons)

Front:
[1-2] Armour, Nanocomposite (dDR14), Hardened
[3] Defensive ECM
[4-5] Fuel Tank - HEDM
[6]Weapon, Spinal Mount
[Core] Control Room (Pilot)

Centre:
[1] Armour, Nanocomposite (dDR7), Hardened
[2] Defensive ECM
[3-6] Fuel Tank - HEDM
[Core]Weapon, Spinal Mount: launcher, 24cm, 7 rounds

Rear:
[1] Armour, Nanocomposite (dDR7), Hardened
[2] Weapon, Spinal Mount
[3] Defensive ECM
[4-5] Fuel Tank - HEDM
[6]Reaction Engine, HEDM Rocket

She'll do 2Gs, has 4.8 mps DV (which is actually less than 7 minutes fuel). The price is $2.76M, a full load of fuel is $63K, and the missiles are $2.333M for conventional ones. The missiles are large enough that even cruiser (SM+10 or SM+11, IMO) armour should be vulnerable to conventional warheads.

More DV can be gained by replacing the spinal launcher with a large one and using the space for fuel tanks giving 7 mps DV (and such a design, were it streamlined, could reach orbit from Earth's surface), maybe a large beam weapon plus power plant and only 6.3 mps fuel, or maybe a second engine for 4G acceleration.

Anyway, what we have is a small, high acceleration fighter, with a single large missile system with enough DV for work in orbital space or similar. If more DV is desired acceleration will drop significantly and/or other systems will have to go (and ECM and armour are really the only dispensable systems), or a bigger vessel will be required.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Small vessels can't have tertiary batteries. Here's a handy table:

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

I see: not listed on the weapons tables. What a pest!

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

We were posting designes in this thread a while back. You might look there for some pre-made ships.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Well, they are starting to get into the 'too small' range - even a medium VRF laser for a SM+5 ship is only 30kJ, and does 1d-2 damage, which is about 6d in the normal damage scale - it's in the same damage class as a small arm.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Give back my loophole!

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

What? Three gatling lasers firing 600 shots a minute each a ships the size of a modern fighter not good enough for you? Even though you can have multiple such mounts? Grizzle guts. ;)

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

I was thinking the same. The cheap antimatter required for the AM torch would push up the TL too. So TL 11^ Fusion Torch gives a similar interplanetary performance, and you can use HT and/or Water drives for short duration or combat craft.

You can probably avoid superscience drives for non-interplanetary work if you want to, but it does require a bit more initial design effort for those.

Water and Hydrogen based drives allow the PCs to wilderness refuel too.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

It is not cheating to create a game world in which STL drives are 1 or 2 TLs advanced, relative to other technology in the setting.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

What about this "super fighter"? It has hardened armor and three weapon batteries: a fixed-mount launcher and three fixed-mount improved lasers in the front, and a turret with an improved rapid fire laser in the central hull for point defense. It hosts two crewmen: a pilot and a gunner. The launcher is the main "sinking" weapon against big ships, while the lasers are used against other fighters and/or when missiles run out. Generally, the pilot fires the missiles (usually in proximity detonation mode, so that the +4 to hit offsets the -4 for the second task of a different kind) and the gunner is charged with point defense; when missiles run out, the pilot usually fires the three fixed mount lasers.

SM: 6
Front
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3!] Weapons: Major Battery
[4!] Weapons: Medium Battery
[5] Defensive Ecm
[core] Control Room
Center
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3!] Weapons: Major Battery
[4] Power Plant: Fusion
Rear
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3-4] Fuel Tank
[5-6] Reaction Engine: Fusion Torch
Design Options

* Hardened Front Armor
* Hardened Center Armor
* Hardened Rear Armor

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Looks good.

For short range I would go for 2 Fusion Torch (Water) and 5 tanks (cheapest design and fuel is free)
OR 3 High thrust Fusion Torch (Hydrogen) and 3 tanks (if you need the space)

both of which give 3G performance and an hours combat endurance. [edit: assuming TL11^ performance]

or for long range: go for 4 normal Fusion Torch (Hydrogen) and as many tanks as fit.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

I forgot to type that fighters in general would be dropped out of carriers, so they don't generally have much fuel in - they are hit-and-run ships, not hunting vessels. A dedicated "hunter" ship wold probably be like this:

SM: 6
Front
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3-4!] Weapons: Major Battery
[5] Array: Tactical
[6] Fuel Tank
[core] Control Room
Center
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3] Power Plant: Fusion
[4!] Weapons: Major Battery
[5-6] Fuel Tank
Rear
[1-2] Armor: Nanocomposite
[3-6] Reaction Engine: Fusion Torch
Design Options

* Hardened Front Armor
* Hardened Center Armor
* Hardened Rear Armor

with two missile launchers in the front and an improved rapid fire laser in the central hull turret.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

How restricted are simple AIs in your campaign? You could replace physical gunners with computer programs; to me it makes a lot of sense especially for point-defense systems.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

So have you decided on the setting ship component details yet?

I currently see TL10 standard plus the following super-science items:

• hardened armor
• TL11^ Fusion Torch drives - are these allowed in a habitable planets atmosphere?
• single Stardrive for interstellar ships
• Artificial gravity [edit]

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

And realistically humans couldn't react fast enough for point defence with missiles moving at miles-per-second anyway.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Well, I'm thinking about limiting programs to skill 12. Good for firing that extra weapon when everyone else is too busy, not so good to thrust it to save your life in point defense. ;-)

Pretty much, but I've still have to specify some details.

Is it superscience?

Fusion torches are actually TL 10^. Super fusion torches are TL 11^, but they have no place in my games. ;-)

Yeah, that were for simplicity: my players are new to GURPS in general, no reason to bother them with 0-grav operations or multiple stardrives.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Hmm, I am not sure. Hardened Armor looks superscience, but isn't listed as superscience.

Oh, I thought you were using the TL11 version for fuel endurance. If you are only using two tanks of H2 for interplanetary travel using TL10 tanks at 15mps each, then an Earth-Mars voyage will take around 19 weeks and that is orbit-to-orbit, not surface-to-surface.

Spacecraft Travel Time Calculator

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

Why would it be? Neither the description in Spaceships nor Characters implies any such thing. In fact, modern tank armour is effectively hardened vs HEAT rounds.

Re: Pre-made spaceships?
 

I saw the Hyperdense and thought Traveller superscience. Is hyperdense normal science?