Steve Jackson Games Forums - Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

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Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

In John Ringo's Troy Rising series (non-canon prequel to Schlock Mercenary), they have some rather large spaceships but I'm unsure of how to build them.

The basic hull is a 9 km sphere of nickel-iron with an open interior of 6 km and walls on 1.5 km. As the series progress, crew quarters, engines and the like are added. The main weapon is an huge array of mirrors that focus increasing amounts of sunlight through an aiming device inside Troy (the beam goes to 1.5 petawatts IIRC). The Troy masses about 2.2 trillion tons Based on the mass of the ship, it should be SM +27 with most of the mass as iron? armor.

How do I represent the 6 km sphere of mostly empty space inside; it has some equipment inside, but is mostly used to park ships.

With as SM of +27, even one habitat gives 20 billion cabins according to Eric Smith's Spaceship spreadsheet. I assume that I'd need to subdivide one habitat module into multiple types of smaller modules (habitats, weapons, power plants, etc..)

Re: Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

You don't. Build it as an asteroid with a building built into it (or, better yet, not at all - it's an invincible superweapon, so don't even bother giving it stats), not as an entire spaceship; otherwise, you'd need 19.9 modules of armor and .1 modules for everything else, including probably 0.099 modules of hangar space.

Re: Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

Edit: Never Mind, was going off the top of my head and had some things wrong.

Still, this shows one of the problems of building "ships" this large - the Spaceships rules quickly lose granularity above SM+18 or so.

Re: Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Langy (Post 1252936)

Yes, I could just not build it as a vehicle, but it is a spaceship and does use an Orion Drive to get around in the third book. It seems that I'd need a rule to build each module as almost all armor with a little bit of everything else; extending the half module system

Re: Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

So, here yah go.

Uses the rules from Pyramid 3.34 for reducing SM due to lots of armor systems. I modified deltaV and accel by actual mass assuming most of the "cargo bay" is actually empty. If you somehow fill all that empty space in the middle, reduce performance as explained in the note. I didnt build any of the inhabited/pressurized areas except for the light sail (the main weapon descriped) and the hanger bay, as no details where given. There is a LOT of space available though, even in just the spin gravity section. The "Orion Drive" is actually a TL 11 Antimatter-Augmented Advanced Fusion Pulse drive (AAAFP drive? "Aaaafpuh drive") as described on page 7 of Spaceships 8. Divide the given mps by 3.5 for TL 10 and 17.5 for TL 9. 1 trillion tons of AA Fuel Pellets costs 5 peta$. Lord only knows how or where you get enough material to make that...

Strictly speaking, stuff in the spin gravity area should be little sub headings hanging off of hit location 6 in each section, front, center, and rear. If this thing got into a fight with something that could hurt it, destroying each sections location 6 should have some bad effect happen to whatever you build in the spin grav section. It just made it messy to write up though.

The Solar Mirror uses the rules for Light Sails as weapons in Spaceships 4. I used the OP's stated power output to determine max size. Range is 50,000/150,000 miles. Include as many SM+15 Solar Boilers as you need to provide power, maybe a few Fusion reactors for back up...

Code:

John Ringo's Troy

Unstreamlined SM +27 (by mass) hull



TL        Spacecraft        dST/HP        Hnd/SR        HT        Move               LWt.        Load        SM        Occ        dDR        Cost

11        Space Ark        100,000        -6/5        14        0.0018/156mps* 3T**        315B        +28***        ****        170k        $161.805P

* Delta-v assumes empty holds, reduce to 0.0017/140mps with a full load

** Generally speaking, all but a tiny fraction of cargo is empty, reducing weight by 315 billion tons or so

*** SM +27 by mass, -1 SM for 17 armor modules, +2 SM for being a sphere.

**** SM+25 - 1 SM 23 module available for spin gravity construction. Go nuts.

Note: dDR is spread evenly across the entire ship.



Combat: 

3 PJ Heat Ray 50,000/150,000 mile range, 3dx1000 (0.1) burn dDam





System                                                Cost                Notes

Front

1 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

2 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

3 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

4 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

5 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

6 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

C Cargo                                         0                150 billion tons, usually completely empty





Center

1 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

2 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

3 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

4 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

5 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

6 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

C Cargo                                         0                150 billion tons, usually completely empty





Rear

1 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

2 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

3 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

4 Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

5  Iron Armor                                        4 peta$                DR 10,000

6 Advanced Fusion Pulse SM +26                       90 peta$                Anti-matter augmented, TL 11

   Fuel Tank (AM Fusion Pulse) SM +26                3 peta$                140 mps (156 mps with no significant mass in the "cargo bay") 

      Hanger SM +25                                0.03 peta$        10 billion tons capacity (pressurized), 10 million ton launch rate

      Cargo SM+25                                0                15 billion tons, access to the rest of the "cargo bay"

         Solar Mirror SM+23                        0.1 peta$        up to 3PJ heat beam: 3dx1000(0.1) burn, 50k/150k mile range

         Build whatever else you want here        neg



Total Automation (135,000,000 workstations)     0.675 peta$        

Spin Gravity                                                                 270,000,000,000 tons in spin gravity. SM +25 - 1 SM 23 module.



Total Cost:                                             161.805 peta$

Re: Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

Thanks, I forgot about the rules for smaller modules. When I can find the 3rd book, I'll see if I can pull together the details for the ship as built and the ship as designed and alter this model appropriately.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chandley (Post 1253202)

So, here yah go.
I didnt build any of the inhabited/pressurized areas except for the light sail (the main weapon descriped) and the hanger bay, as no details where given.

They had some other armament and the ship wasn't nearly finished by the end of the 3rd book.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chandley (Post 1253202)

There is a LOT of space available though, even in just the spin gravity section.

I think that they had grav plates in many of the pressurized areas.

Quote:

Originally Posted by chandley (Post 1253202)

The "Orion Drive" is actually a TL 11 Antimatter-Augmented Advanced Fusion Pulse drive (AAAFP drive? "Aaaafpuh drive") as described on page 7 of Spaceships 8.

Why a TL 11 drive instead of a regular Orion Drive?

Quote:

Originally Posted by chandley (Post 1253202)

Strictly speaking, stuff in the spin gravity area should be little sub headings hanging off of hit location 6 in each section, front, center, and rear. If this thing got into a fight with something that could hurt it, destroying each sections location 6 should have some bad effect happen to whatever you build in the spin grav section. It just made it messy to write up though.

SO a more accurate but messier build would have 3 cargo sections total with each of them having sub modules for weapons, habitats and the like?

Quote:

Originally Posted by chandley (Post 1253202)

The Solar Mirror uses the rules for Light Sails as weapons in Spaceships 4. I used the OP's stated power output to determine max size. Range is 50,000/150,000 miles. Include as many SM+15 Solar Boilers as you need to provide power, maybe a few Fusion reactors for back up...]

IIRC, the ship uses a matter annihilation power source that runs on He3.

Re: Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by isf (Post 1253318)

I think that they had grav plates in many of the pressurized areas.

I was avoiding super science, simply because I didnt know if the source material had it.

Quote:

Why a TL 11 drive instead of a regular Orion Drive?

Because the TL 7 "Orion Drive" is pathetic, deltaV wise. And a trillion tons of fission based bombs just to eek out 2.33mps is madness at the kind of TL your suggesting :). The Advanced Fusion Pulse drive is still throwing out massive explosions behind it, they just arent nuclear bombs.

Quote:

SO a more accurate but messier build would have 3 cargo sections total with each of them having sub modules for weapons, habitats and the like?

You dont want 3 cargo sections with sub modules, the way I list stuff, I put the smaller modules in indented lists. So, that Rear Section 6 basically contains all the weight allocated for anything thats not empty space in the center of the ship or the iron hull. Simply list whatever other modules (up to a combined total of 270 billion tons or another 9 SM+23 modules or combinations of smaller modules that add up to that. e.g. 1,800,000 SM +15 modules, which is why I dont bother to actually list details...) there.

Quote:

IIRC, the ship uses a matter annihilation power source that runs on He3.

Why you would combine He3 with matter annihilation is beyond me, even as super science techno babble... but its John Ringo, so meh :). Call em Super Fusion (TL 11) power plants and let it ride.

Re: Spaceships Building Troy [spoilers]

Quote:

Originally Posted by chandley (Post 1253339)

Why you would combine He3 with matter annihilation is beyond me, even as super science techno babble... but its John Ringo, so meh :). Call em Super Fusion (TL 11) power plants and let it ride.

It was based on Schlock Mercenary's annie plants, just an earlier version of them