[Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

How would you guys stat out a Colonial Viper Mk II & VII? The reason I ask is I am looking to make something similar to a campaign I'm tinkering around with. Basically, I want something like a Raptor (has a small FTL drive), and a Viper (uses gas and has conventional guns). Kinda like a X-Wing but with guns =)

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Hmm... well, probably use a medium forward fixed railgun battery for the guns on both ships. For the Mk II use the missing third gun for ammo storage. The missile launcher on the MkII could be a single fixed primary battery. Regarding the engines, I'm a bit stumped. Reactionless? Fusion torch?

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Grav plates to negate the mass of the ship, combined with fusion thrusters to allow for rapid delta-v?

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

This is what I have come up with so far:

SM: 5
Front
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2] Array: Tactical
[3!] Weapons: Major Battery
[4-6] Fuel Tank

Center
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2] Cargo Hold
[3-6] Fuel Tank
[core] Control Room

Rear
[1] Armor: Nanocomposite
[2-4] Reaction Engine: Antimatter Plasma Torch
[5-6!] Stardrive
[core] Power Plant: Antimatter

Design Options
* Winged Hull

Cost
$3,280,000

The 3 front fuel tanks power the FTL drive, giving it a good solid 3 FTL jumps. The 3 reaction engines put out 3G's of acceleration with the 4 fuel tanks in the center giving a delta-v of 480. Its major battery is a 10cm electromagnetic rapid-fire gun.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Which, incidentally the Viper is incapable of - it has no FTL drive. Which makes absolutly sense given it's role as a fighter - you want to get as much weapons per mass as possible.

I am also not sure I would use Antimatter in somehting as nimble as a fighter - it turns it too much into a bomb, especially given you will have lots of those around close to bigger ships. Antimatter is always a dubious choice for a warship (due to it's intrinsic tendency to blow up the ship on a containment failure), but having AM on board of something that is PLANNED to get destroyed even when flying in tight formation does not sound like a good design to me.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Viper Mark IIs, IIVs, Raptors, and in fact all ships of the BSG universe run on Tillium. Which is a mineral refined into a fuel. However, I believe those fuels supliment a "hot" nuclear reactor for thrust (as per the original Mini-Series)

Tillium is volital when not refined,and can be redered inert by strong radiation (like from a nuclear blast), but is fairly stable when in a fuel state.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

ok then what drive to use that has a decent amount of thrust and has decent amounts of delta-v if not the antimater drive?

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Tylium turbines. They're not in Spaceships, since they make no physical sense and are specific to the Battlestar Galactica setting; you pretty much have to roll your own. Refined tylium has a tremendous energy density of approximately half a billion megajoules per kilogram, or about 6 times greater than Uranium-235 and 81% that of deuterium fusion. [1] That gives it an Isp, if I'm figuring right, of 80-90,000.

[1] Battlestar Wiki

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Total conversion.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

ya, total conversion. It's a catch all engine type that fits anything you would like to do. you can fudge the TL.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

So total conversion, but say it only runs on Tylium?

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Or use Thylium with some other device. If you put in limited gravity control, you can live with lower amounts of G to get out of a gravity well.

You end up with short burn durations, but then the Viper IS not a long range fighter, much like todays fighters.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Mark 2 Viper:

Front
1-2 Armor (Advanced Laminate) dDR 6
3! Battery (Major) 2 railguns, one hardpoint
4 Fuel Cell
5 ECM
6 Control Room

Central
1-2 Armor (Advanced Laminate) dDR 6
3 Sensor Array (Tactical)
4 Cargo
5 Fuel Tank (1000 mps*)
6 Fuel Cell
0! Contragravity Lifter

Rear
1-2 Armor (Advanced Laminate) dDR 6
3-5 Total Conversion Drive (3G)
6 Total Conversion Drive (1G reverse thrust)
0 Fuel Tank (1000 mps*)

Options: streamlined, winged

* uses 10% conversion giving 15 hours endurance at 3G

TL dST/HP Hnd/SR HT Move LWt. Load SM Occ dDR M$
10^ 20 5/5 12 3G 30 1.6 5 1 SV 6 7.7

Mk 7 Viper has Nanocomposite armor (dDR10) and full automation - add M$1.5.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

The thing I am uneasy about the total conversion drive is that it is TL12^ and has a delta-v of 10,000 for each fuel tank. What about using a Fusion Torch drive and have it with high-thrust? With the 4 fuel tanks, it would get a delta-v of 90 mps. Maybe tack on an additional fuel tank or 2 and make it use water (Thylium in this case) for triple thrust.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Mk VII's also have a third gun, attached to the top fin.


Also, Vipers of both types have slots for missile attachments (max 2 I think) under their wings.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

The major battery allots for up to three weapons anyway. The VII's loose the internal missile launcher, right? In that case just swap it for a third gun.
I don't think hardpoints have really been covered in Spaceships. Although, since it IS a mass-based system it shouldn't be hard to work out numbers.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Everyone keeps saying the viper uses fixed railguns, but on one of the first couple seasons there was an episode where someone was sabatoging the ammo the Vipers use. They held up one of the shells and it looked alot like a 20mm round to me. Am I Wrong here? Pretty sure its not a rail gun. Of course how there is an atmosphere system to allow combustion for a round requiring ignition is up to you guys, but I am pretty sure the vipers use 20mms or similar auto cannon rounds dont they?

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Because they use railguns as per tech spec. Welcome to the wonderfull world of movies - somehow obviously just thouht it is ok to use 20mm ammunition as railgun ammo ;) I also think the ammo shown was too big - no clue where they fit hhundreds of those rounds in that tiny fighter ;) But then, it is a movie - sometimes glitches happen.

No round of a current weapon uses the ammunition for ignition, you know. How could they - iven that the curren ammo is in a sealed barrel anyway? The oxidant is always enclosed with the explosive mass, even today, even in a shotgun, revolver or any other weapon. They all would work in vacuum - maybe not often (there are issues, but they are not about "makin it go boom").

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Viper ammo is casingless. The round is ignited like a real world bullet round, but instead of the round jettisoning its casing at firing, it takes it along for the ride. Its not exactly a rail gun, it just a high rate heavy machine gun, though it may have some magnetic assistance too. The Galactica has rail guns however.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Wrong. The Vper uses a Railgun, termed "Mass Accelerator". I suest you read u the technical specs (like for most science fiction series this is published somewhere - just use google).
if you trust in Wikipedia (which quotes the official season 1 companion book, which you can get at amazon) it states these are mass drivers, each (in the Mark II) with 800 rounds ammunition (which I do not see fitting into the wings, given the size of a round shown) and 20 rounds per second firing rate. 40 Seconds of fire - not exactly that much. Now, the definition of a mass driver is pretty clar - it is a railgun. Production obviously wanted to produce some problems with the ammunition (hard to do with mass drivers) and thus "changed" that to be "classical" gun ammunition for an episode. And then reused some ammunition they could get cheaply their hands on, without consulting how you would fit 800 of those into the tiny wings. Nothin serious here - just a small oversight in a TV series that is meant for entertainment.

Ever tried to get your facts verified before posting them? You are not even consistend:

Caseless = no case.
No case = nothing you can take along the ride.

This makes no sense, just from a logical point of view. The whole pioint of caseless ammo is that there is no case, so you dont have to get rid of one (and save the weight). As a result, the case could not be "taken along for the ride".

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Btw., even trickier than the Viper is the Raptor.

It is pretty obvious that a lot of the volume of the Raptor is passengers space. Naturally this is not mass (and URPS Space is mass based).

The raptor, thouh, needs ood sensors and ECM, as well as FTL.

For FTL I am not sure what to make out of the fuel requirements. While it is tempin to say it uses "one module of fuel per jump" this is totally non-canon...
...as it would scale terribly for larger ships. The Galactica and the whole fleet made more than 100 jumps in 30 minute episodes in the series. Without a chance of refueling.

Fuel requirements for jump drives seem to be neglegible, thus. So a limit of the range of a Raptor would be based mostly on limited life support (no kitchen, no sanitarian equipment etc.) and possibly some maintenance issues (maybe smaller drives "burn out" and need frequent maintenance - they could be terribly tuned to make them small).

I am pretty sure a Galactica setting can not be done without specific modules (like for Thilium engines). The price you pay for a generic rule set. A Galactica STYLE setting, though, is doable, but will naturally deviate.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

The Battlestar Wiki I'm reading says Caseless Round Autocannons. Not Rail Guns.

I don't generally trust "Spec Books" as they are rarely accurate to show cannon.


And when I say Caseless Cases go with the round, I mean, the part of the round that looks like a case on a realworld cased round.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

I agree. I basically was asking how would people stat a Viper since I was trying to make a fighter that was similar to the Viper in a space setting I am putting together. All the ideas are great so far =)

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Not sure this is sensible. I mean, seriously, I love the show. Tremendously. But the ranges they fight in are just SO small compared to what you would do in space. I also always found the Viper a tad small for what she does, even compared to "modern airspace fighters". But then, the series was done to sort of be "WW II style dogfighting". How can you justify this in your campaign, instead of people just firing off fire and foret missiles first?

Did you get your raptor done?

No, it does not. Seriously, it says most likely and lists a lot of inconsistencies in the show in this reard.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Cuz its cooler that way.

Not yet. I am working on a few different things at the moment.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Absolutly. Real space combat will be terribly boring.

But WHY is it still used? If I have an advantage through borin space combat, I will use such weapons. There must be an intrinsic reason in the setting, otherwise - it is something that will stress your player's suspension of believe.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Ignoring for the moment the tech specs, the technology you'd want to use here is combustible case. That obviates the "weak casing" plotline in the series, but by burning the case, you don't have to take it with you once fired.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Which never made sense to start with - the ammunition was caseless from the way it broke apart in his hands ;)

Anyhow, the idea to go with some slug thrower (compared to energy guns) is something that I would try to keep. IF you go with short range dogfights (which will take some energy to justify), then having those makes most sense - due to limited supplies. A fighter can not just go on shooting all the time.

I think you could seriously cut down Delta-V requirements, too. Cruising will take little / no fuel, and if you stick to what Galactica offer as "feeling", people don't run their engines full throttle too long. In fact, fuel on "hopping to planet" missions seems to be an issue.

I would love going tor such a setting, too, but my main problem is justifying the "close space" fighting, without looking like an idiot for more tech savy players.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Given the superscience nature of Tillium you could use the stats for either the Fusion Torch or the Antimatter Torch but have it run on Tillium fuel (rather than antimatter) and call it a Tillium Torch ;-)

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

There's actually a couple ways to do caseless ammo. There's combustible, in which case the warhead or slug is embedded in a 'cake' of propellant. When the round is fired, the propellant is burned up completely, leaving no case. This requires a very fancy (chemically speaking) propellant that burns completely and doesn't leave any residue to foul the firing chamber. I think this is the GURPS default for caseless guns.
The second method is to put a hollow base in your warhead or slug. This is actually used in some 40mm grenades. The propellant is packed into the cavity. When the round goes off, much of the residue remains in the hollow which takes off as part of the warhead. This clears up some of the fouling problems, although again the propellant still has to be fairly clean.

One possible explanation for the Viper's guns is that they are coilgun or railgun assisted electrothermal cannon of some kind. Current railgun designs usually need to get the projectile moving before it hits the rails. Otherwise the stationary projectile is just welded into place at the start of the rails. Typically a gas or spring piston is used, but there's no reason a little more 'oomph' couldn't be used... Still it does sound like that single episode regarding the bad ammo was just a continuity error.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Raptor

Front
1 Armor (Nanocomposite) dDR 5
2 Control Room (pilot)
3-6 Passenger Seating (8 seats worth of limited life support)

Central
1 Armor (Nanocomposite) dDR 5
2 Cargo
3 ECM
4 Battery (Major) [unpowered]
5 Sensor Array (Multi Purpose)
6 Fuel Cell
0! Contragravity Lifter

Rear
1 Armor (Nanocomposite) dDR 5
2-3 Tylium Torch*
4-6 Fuel Tank
0! FTL Drive

Options: SM5, TL11^, Streamlined, Stealth, Winged, Artificial Gravity, Gravity compensation

Based on Fusion Torch or Antimatter Torch for required performance.

M$ 3.9 if based on Fusion Torch, 5.7 if based on Antimatter Torch.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Maybe it's actually like one of those Metalstorm weapons? :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Storm

Most BS weapons seemed like high rate of fire pulse weapons to me, like maybe a Klingon disrupter but rapid fire. Just as easy to say the 20mm casing was actually some kind of pulse battery that is ejected after say a 100 shots (for the sake of the fluff).

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

According to specs 20 rounds per second. According to the movies that could match. Not exactly high rate of fire. Look at what modern machine uns do, and you will see you don't need somethin like metal storm.

Nice ;) Comments anyone? How many passeners does that thing carry? (I dont have my space rules here at the moment)

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

6 passengers, and one pilot.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

A little more than in the series, if I remember correctly. You can always argue, though, that some passenger seats are removed under normal conditions for additional electronic capacity - not so much sensors, but recording and analysis equipment. In most scenarios you will want to collect a ton of information in a raptor for later analysis.

Nice little hugger, though ;)

Btw., anyone has an idea how to do the Galactica? Let's not get too focused on generic details (i.e. the scope we did it so far is great), but I have doubts how to do her in the SpaceShips system.

In particular, it looks a little like we will run out of systems. We have, in addition to the "make a ship" systems:
* Hangar space.
* We need additional fuel and ammunition reserves for the fighters.
* Armor.
* A main weapon that is at least a major battery - her forward facing main cannon is pretty powerfull.
* Quite some anti fighter weapons (one or two tertiary batteries?)
* Another major battery with missiles - supposedly loaded with Space to Ground missiles for bombardement.

Not blaming SpaceShips here, but the Galactica BattleStar role always seemed to be pretty unfocused. Doing everything, and nothing really good. Not like today's arcraft carriers that have no main guns. I fear two specialized battle stars would just eat three of them alive (imagine one only with fighters, standing behind, and one focused on heary anti ship weapons).

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Does anyone have dimensions for the Galactica? The only informal mention I found put it at SM+17! The problem may be too much space.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

People keep writing up these stats as tech level 11^, which just doesn't make sense to me. For the most part, Galactica definitely doesn't seem that much more advanced than our own society, and FTL is superscience, allowing it to appear at any tech level. I'd place them at tech level 10, maybe even 9.

Here's how I've modeled the engines. A lot of this is guess work because we haven't heard much of anything about the STL engines (other than the fact that they run on tylium). Tylium has been described as a substance with a tremendous energy density, "half a million gigajoules per kilogram" according to the Battlestar Wiki. Given that, it makes sense to me to use the HEDM Chemical Rocket as the main engines for a Viper. I realize that this would likely give it a low delta-v, but I haven't seen anything in the show that indicated to me otherwise. The Viper seems like a craft designed for acceleration, not delta-v. Indeed, when it leaves the ship, accelerated by a launch tube, indicating that it needs a bit of help to get up to a good operational speed. However, it seems to be the case that every ship in Battlestar Galactica uses tylium for fuel, and HEDM rockets clearly don't model Battlestars or Raptors well... unless you assume that tylium can also be processed into nuclear pellets. The level of power previously mentioned is about 81% that of deuterium fusion (according to the Battlestar Wiki) so it makes perfect sense to me that tylium could be manufactured into pellets that would power a pulse drive. So, if you power a Viper with an HEDM rocket, a Raptor with a Pulse Drive, and a Battlestar with an Advanced Pulse Drive, you start to get performance ratings that make sense given what we've seen.

As for FTL fuel, I would just assume that Raptors are too small to hold a nuclear reactor and therefore use a fuel cell. The FTL drive doesn't need fuel, the fuel cell does. That makes a lot of sense to me given that the fleet made around 230 jumps in 33 without any chance to refuel. Anyway, that's how I would model the ships engines.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Sorry, no. This could have operational advantages. If you launch the fighter in passive mode, you dont have to cool down the launch tube and get rid of exhausts before putting in the next fighter. Also stress on the material is lower.

As you may want to launch as many fighters as fast as possible in combat oerations, it may make more sense to launch them via a launch tube than under their own power.

You do not want to just throw them out, because sometimes you may want them to clear the close space of the battlestar as fast as possible. Remeber the scene where the Galactica crash-jumped into atmosphere? For those not knowing - the Galactica went onto a crash course down into the atmosphere, jumping out the last moment. They used the showckwafe the armored ship generated to distract defenders and were deploying the vipers while going down into the atmosphere.

All this can give you good operational reasons to use launch tubes.

Regarding the engine form, I would say that the effectiveness of engines seems to scale up with their size. Maybe there are different forms to deal with the fuel, but some of the mechanisms arej ust too large to fit into a small fighter. OR you simply get laret duration, but have a problem generating hih delta V. In the Viper you need a higher delta V, so you trade range (as in fuel efficiency) and use a less efficient but more acceleration generating form.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

The fighter's fuel and ammunition gets folded into the hanger space (until it hits 5% all by itself in addition to what can be included in the hangar).

The weapons aren't really a problem. You just split a single tertiary battery between the AAA and the missiles. Neither comes close to the 5% mark even with magazines. The Main Battery makes up only one more system at most.

The Galactica is not heavily armed by the standards of Spaceships. A main battery on Galactica would need to look like a turret on a WWII Battleship in relative terms.

Remember every system needs to be 5% of the ship's total mass. It doesn't matter how distinct or seperate it looks. If it's not even close to 5% it's part of another system or just handwaved.

It's a very common problem with converting to Spaceships from fiction/movies/etc that details keep adding up. Everything that can get documented looks like it wants to be another system and Spaceships just doesn't work that way.

For all it's' virtues, Spaceships has a hard cap on the level of detail it can handle and that cap is set at 5% of total mass per system.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Like most TV SF socially the people appear at most TL9 so that the actors and society can be identified with. All the TL advancement is saved for the background hardware. They have different TLs in different fields.

Looking at the four fields of TL (G p512) the Colonials appear approximately:
TL11^ or 12^ in transportation tech (manned interstellar space flight is a _minimum_ of TL11 - though superscience blurs this).
TL9 in weapons tech
TL9 or 10 or 11 in power tech - it's hard to tell
TL9 in biotech

Cylons appear TL11 in at least one aspect of biotech (living machines), but are otherwise similar to the Colonials.

For baselining compare it to say TL10 Transhuman Space. The Colonials are not as advanced in biotech, were obviously once at least as advanced in AIs (to build the original intelligent robot warrior Cylons), it's not clear where they are with power tech, and are way more advanced in their transportation TL.

I would put them generally at TL9 with TL11^ or even TL12^ transportation/space technology.

I would just give the fighters High thrust versions of the same engines that the other craft use.

A single HEDM engine would use a tank of HEDM in 40 seconds. I think you have to go superscience to get something workable - possibly including a pseudo velocity component?

As an aside: I would guess that the origin of the word Tylium is from a contraction of Helium Three (Threelium, Threlium or Telium).

Seems reasonable.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Battlestar Galactica draft design

SM14, TL11^ or TL12^, Artificial Gravity and Gravity Compensation

Front
1 Hardened Armor (Nanocomposite) dDR 200
2! Battery (Tertiary) 20 Primary 28cm KEWs, 10x56cm Missiles tubes
3 Forward Fusion Reactor (2 Power)
4 Sensor Array (Multi Purpose)
5 Habitat (3000 life support, 50% steerage cargo)
6 Fuel Tank (Tylium)
0 Control Room

Central
1 Hardened Armor (Nanocomposite) dDR 200
2! Battery (Tertiary) Point defence array - contains 10 SM12 tertiary batteries with 300 VRF 5cm KEWs
3-4 Hangar Bays (each includes workshops, fuel, spares, stowage, landing deck, launch tubes)
5-6 Fuel Tank (Tylium)
0! FTL Drive

Rear
1 Hardened Armor (Nanocomposite) dDR 200
2-5 Tylium Torch
6 Aft Fusion Reactor (2 Power)

Tylium Torch is based off Fusion Torch or Antimatter Torch stats for your required performance.

B$180 if Fusion Torch, B$140 if Antimatter Torch.

Does the Galactica need contragravity? A limited nuclear Force Field? More weapons?

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Not bad but you miss the main armarment ;) And from the movies at least the rockets looked like a LOT more 56cm - more like a couple of meters ;)

But it does look nice.

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Missile tubes don't get bigger than around a meter in Spaceships. So it may just be a special effect. 56cm is also the minimum size for a 10MegaTon nuclear warhead.

I wonder if missile tubes with lots of reloads are the wrong way to model these? If they are just a handful of externally mounted fixed missiles then a single tube may be the way to model them, or maybe just subsume them into the hangar bays? Possibly just build the missiles as SM5 craft?

Re: [Spaceships] Stat a Viper Mk II & VII
 

Good questions. 1m seems low for large ships and seriously large missiles with multiple warheads.

Hangar may be a way. The way it looked in the series those missiles were pretty HUGH. Possibly SM6 or so craft, maybe even SM7 ;) Lots of bang.

Hm, no. It does not NEED it. But if it is cheap and small, there is no reason not to put it in - for added flexibility. After all, a Battlestar seems to carry everything ist possibly needs anyway ;)