[Space/Spaceships] TL9 nomad fleet - playable?

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would not build the fleet on a budget, in part because it usually requires a fair amount of handwaving to make a self-sufficient fleet anyway, in part because the numbers don't tend to have any real in-game use. Depending on the game, anywhere from a few hundred people to a million people seems playable.

Actually, for many game styles, the numbers actually do have an in-game use. This is what many tramp freighter campaigns are like - maximizing profits by optimizing all the other numbers - like fuel expenditure, number of hired assistants etc.

As to the specific needs of such a fleet, I looked over Spaceships, and noticed (1) that it is more important to figure the required proportions and the minimum size of a typical ship than a specific build for the whole fleet (since ships scale up with no overly complicated calculations) and (2) we have many of the tools necessarily to find those proportions.

Here's what I found so far:

Most ships need at least one system dedicated to one of each: Control Room, STL drive of some sort, reactor or other energy source, FTL drive of some sort, and a fuel tank (unless the none of the drives require fuel).

At least one significant ship needs Mining and Refinery systems. It is not exactly clear if it would be more efficient to have a Homeworld-style Refenery ship with a Hangar, and lots of STL Miner Ships.

'Population' ships consist of the necessary systems, plus an Open Space (or two for redundancy), with the rest of the slots filled by Habitat systems. Note that they are not 100% living space - there are also schools, offices, labs, clinics etc. The % of space dedicated to each will probably be analogous to that on earth, with some corrections.

Several ships should have Fabricators, preferably those with storage facilities. I'm not sure how to properly build a HW-style mobile shipyard in G:SS.

Anyone willing to comment or expand on my simple observations?