Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

I'm working on this. I've got a master document - on the other computer. The Andi and many of the other ships are currently undergoing revisions, so some of the numbers (even SMs in a few cases) have changed.

Pilot and flight crew bunks are all considered - or at least I tried to consider it - under the Habitat breakdown.

Not sure about combat casualties myself. What numbers would you recommend?

Others have noted that turrets on the central hull can cover the rear. In fact, point defense is pretty much the main reason to have tertiary batteries, isn't it?

Pretty much. Also the endurance at TL11 for fusion plants is in the hundreds of years, and the smaller endurance is what I was shooting for.

I have to double-check the notes for the habitat and steerage cargo. Lately I've been redoing the smaller ships and working on a few new designs, so revising the Andi may take a while longer.

The sickbays are all together; it's kind of a weird ship design that wouldn't put the bays such. So yes, they count as a Hospital.

As for the offices, I'd have to say a little of both. Certainly, those that have luxury cabins have individual offices, but the rest could be combined into a kind of CIC (Combat Information Center) - if such a concept isn't already covered under the massive Control Room.

I've revised this ship in a different thread. The version in this thread was actually made before SS4 came out (or at least before I got hold of it), so I had to do some handwaving of things.

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

To add to this comment:

I'm not that familiar, either. Do hangars have crew for servicing the ships? (E.g., on a modern carrier, example, you'll have aircraft handlers, catapult crew, landing signal officers, fuel suppliers, ordnance suppliers, etc.)

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

Anyone near one of the mothballed carriers serving as a museum (e.g., USS Midway)? That might provide a rough estimate...

The big ships, like our Nimitz class, often serve as emergency trauma wards when large-scale disasters happen (e.g., the tsunami hitting SE Asia, didn't one of our carriers pull in to help out?). So a little top-heavy in the sick bay department on the big ships might not be a bad thing.

Unless you have purpose-built hospital ships, of course.

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

Really large hangars do. Smaller than SM+10, no.

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

You should break them out as a seperate line item then, because I am not sure how you considered them. Of course, I don't know that there are real 4ED rules for support personnel, so you can probably handwave whatever you want.

The USS Nimitz, toting around 6000 people (including the embarked air wing) has 6 doctors and 80 beds. In combat vessels, this sort of thing is always a trade-off - the more space and mass you spend on "save my ass" resources, the more likely it is that you will need them. A smaller efficient ship may lack extensive repair and hospital facilities, but the saved mass and volume may be the difference that keeps you from getting taken out in the first place.

Good to know - as an engineer I am loathe to make that assumption, but if that's the rules you are fine. As for the reason for Tertiary batteries, it is all about balanced attack and defense - you want to be able to attack/defend against ships larger than your own (perhaps as part of a coordinated attack), against ships about the same size (on your own), and against smaller vessels (en masse), and that gives the need for tiered weapon systems. The smallest order is for point defense, but a large ship may have 4, 5, even 6 different levels of armament.

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

Summary: 8 power points, with 6 powered weapon systems, a light force screen, and a single reactionless engine all drawing power at the same time.

Question: what would you alter on this design so that the Force Screen is able to be upgraded to Heavy (drawing two power points when active)? Or should I have a "power deficit" requiring juggling of powered systems, leaving one of the weapon systems de-powered while the force screen is at full power? (The last option doesn't sit well with me, for somewhat obvious reasons.)

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

If I'm reading you right on this, you're saying the pilots and fighter mechanics should have separate cabin designations on the Habitat Breakdown? Or are you going by the Minimum Crew line, which doesn't list them? (For reference, I'm using "Minimum Crew" to indicate one shift, or the absolute minimum number of people required to run the ship and man the weapons.)

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

What I am saying is that it is not clear that you have accounted for the embarked wing in your general calculations. There is no problem with not including them as crew, nor with omitting them from the "Minimum Crew" line, but you should indicate how much space is allotted for them and ensure that this is sufficient.

For example, 10kt of hanger space could mean 10 1kt ships or 100 100t ships. Either way, while it seems that you have plenty of habitat space, you only have 700+100+5 - 646 = 159 available berths. Can 16 men crew and maintain and launch a 1kt ship? Can 8 men do it for 5 100t ships? That seems awfully low to me even for a civilian vessel.

List them seperately, but make sure the numbers make sense. I once designed a 3ED fleet using the vehicles rules, and the that tripped me up the most is that I started by designing the big stuff (battleships, carriers,...) but realized later that I needed to stat the small stuff and design subordinate commands before I could do that and make sense. For example, the current teams working on designing aircraft carriers start with a list of what needs to go on board - they don't just design the ship and then say "what fits, fits - deal with it!"

Re: [Spaceships] New carrier design
 

Now I see what you're saying. That's one of the reasons I'm going through and editing the ship designs in my master document for my potentially upcoming game, rather than using the current stats. I've started adding "Hangar Complement" to several of the larger ships (destroyer on up for warships, and many larger merchant/civilian vessels such as the bulk freighter, medical ship, and passenger liners).

One day I'll get around to posting all of the designs someplace.