Brainstorming spaceship design

[soltakss]

Some Cruisers from the excellent Star wars DatabankStar Wars: Databank | Starship Archive:

Star wars Federation Cruiser
Size: 1,088 meters long
Manufacturer: Free Dac Volunteers, Pammant Docks
Type: Carrier/destroyer (Providence-class)
Weapon: 14 quad turbolaser turrets; 34 dual laser cannons; 2 ion cannons; 12 point-defence ion cannons; 102 proton torpedo tubes
Affiliation: Trade Federation; Confederacy of Independent Systems


Imperial Star Destroyer
Size: 1,600 meters long
Manufacturer: Kuat Drive Yards
Type: Cruiser
Affiliation: Empire
Associations: Daala, Admiral; Imperial Navy Troopers; Isard, Ysanne; Needa, Captain Lorth; Pellaeon, Gilad; Ren-Cha, Gir Kybo; Screed, Admiral; Thrawn, Grand Admiral


Dreadnaught Heavy Cruiser:
Size: 600 meters long
Manufacturer: Rendili StarDrive
Type: Dreadnaught heavy cruiser
Weapon: 10 turbolaser cannons, 20 quad turbolaser cannons, 10 turbolaser batteries
Affiliation: Galactic Empire
Associations: Bel Iblis, Garm

Republic Cruiser:
Homeworld: Coruscant
Size: 115 meters long
Manufacturer: Corellian Engineering Corporation
Type: Cruiser
Weapon: None
Affiliation: Jedi, Galactic Republic

Republic Attack Cruiser:
Size: 1,137 meters long
Manufacturer: Kuat Drive Yards
Type: Cruiser (Venator-class Star Destroyer)
Weapon: 8 heavy turbolasers; 2 medium dual turbolasers; 52 laser cannons; 4 proton torpedo launchers; 6 tractor beam projectors
Affiliation: Galactic Republic; Galactic Empire
Associations: Republic attack cruiser

Super Star Destroyer:
Homeworld: Fondor
Size: 19,000 meters
Manufacturer: Kuat Drive Yards
Type: Star Dreadnought
Weapon: Over 5,000 turbolasers and ion cannons.
Affiliation: Empire
Associations: Imperial Navy Troopers; Isard, Ysanne; Ozzel, Admiral Kendal; Piett, Admiral; Vader, Darth

Dreadnaught:
Size: 600 meters long
Manufacturer: Rendili StarDrive
Type: Dreadnaught heavy cruiser
Weapon: 10 turbolaser cannons, 20 quad turbolaser cannons, 10 turbolaser batteries
Affiliation: Galactic Empire
Associations: Bel Iblis, Garm; Dreadnaught heavy cruiser

Correlian Gunship:
Size: 120 meters long
Manufacturer: Corellian Engineering Corporation
Type: Mid-sized anti-starfighter starship
Weapon: 6 quad laser cannons; 8 double turbolaser cannons; 4 concussion missile tubes
Affiliation: Rebel Alliance

Dornean Gunship:
Size: 90 meters
Manufacturer: Dornean Braha'ket Fleetworks Conglomerate
Type: Anti-starfighter gunship
Weapon: 8 double turbolaser canons; 8 concussion missile launchers
Affiliation: Rebel Alliance

Trade Federation Battleship:
Size: 3170 meters diameter
Manufacturer: Hoersch- Kessel Drive
Type: battleship (converted freighter)
Weapon: Turbolaser cannons
Affiliation: Trade Federation
Associations: battle droid; Gunray, Nute; Haako, Rune

Trade Federation Gunship:
Size: 1,088 meters long
Manufacturer: Free Dac Volunteers, Pammant Docks
Type: Carrier/destroyer (Providence-class)
Weapon: 14 quad turbolaser turrets; 34 dual laser cannons; 2 ion cannons; 12 point-defense ion cannons; 102 proton torpedo tubes
Affiliation: Trade Federation; Confederacy of Independent Systems

Mon Calamari Star Cruiser:
Homeworld: Mon Calamari
Size: 1,200 meters long
Type: Capital ship cruiser
Weapon: Laser cannons, turbolasers, tractor beams
Affiliation: Rebel Alliance
Associations: Ackbar, Admiral; Mon Calamari

[soltakss]

Have a look at Federation Starships and Alpha Fleet Simulations Group's Federation Starship Directory for Star Trek ships and Federation starships - Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki for mind-boggling detail.

http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/comp...rison_huge.png for a comparison of different spaceships from different settings.

B5TECH.COM - The Babylon 5 Tech-Manual. for Babylon 5 stats, again in mind-boggling detail.

Battlestar Galactica: Technical Manual for Battlestar Galactica statistics.

So, there are websites that give length, mass, drive and weaponry information for a whole host of SciFi ships.

Now, all we need to do is to collate them into a single spreadsheet, decide on relative sizes, allocate SIZ to them, then work out other stats.

Easy, really.

[soltakss]

It just goes to show there are far nerdier people out there than me, I'm glad to say.

[Atgxtg]

Yeah, mix & matching from differernt ScFI settings is problematic.

One reason why I picked Trek to start with is that it has the densest ships. It has something to do with the warp engines. I figured that would make them the toughest to work out.

What we might have to end up doing is separating Volume from Mass when we do SIZ for ships, and only worry about mass for small ships. Going with the DecTrek rules here are some ship SIZes (note that we could multiply these by 5, 10,15, 20 to get BRP sizes). For instance, DecTrek multiplies SIZ xby 5 to get the HUll Points (Hit Points). Or we could use DECTrek SPACES as the BRP SIZ, the numbers aren't too bad.

Here are the base SIZ and SPACES in DEcTrek terms for some ships.

Constitution-class SIZ6, 81 spaces
Galaxy-class SIZ 8, 119 spaces

Star Wars
Federation Cruiser SIZ 11, 191 spaces
Imperial Star Destroyer SIZ 12, 219 spaces
Dreadnaught Heavy Crusier, SIZ 8, 119 spaces
Repulbic Crusier, SIZ 4, 51 spaces
Republic Attack Crusier SIZ 11, 191 spaces
Super Star Destroyer (19km) SIZ 25, 765 spaces

Death Star I (Star Wars 120km diameter), appox SIZ 85, 7,665 spaces
Death Star II (RotJ, 160knm) appox SIZ 112, 13119 spaces


Going with SIZ would put pretty much everything into the rough same range, except for the Death Stars, and I think that is fine, seeing as they were superweaons that could engage fleets.

Note that the big Star Wars ships tend to be bigger and have more weapons than their Star Trek counterparts. This isn't a problem unless we are mix & matching universes in a campaign. Plus, the Star Trek ships seem to have stronger weapons and shields.

The DEcTrek Rules (as will the d20 Star Wars ship design rules) class ship SIZes mostly by dimensions rather than mass (although mass ranges are available). Going by SIZ would give us a better universal scale to go with.

Thanks for the links. Was aware of most of them (I own a lot of SciFI RPGS).

One thing we could do, thanks to the linear SIZ table, is use different scales for certain SIZ ships, and just write the scale with the ship. So a fighter might be in the x1, x2, or x5 scale, while a big ship could be is the x1000 scale or whatever.



soltakiss,
if you really want to see nerdy, there is a Star Wars fan site that tried to rpove that Star Wars Ships are "better" than Star Trek ships and goes to extreme lengths to prove it, including selectively applying the laws of physics to prove it. naturally said laws are only used when they support their theory, and conviently ingored when they don't.

So you're not even in the running.

[Atgxtg]

Well, it is looking to be pretty clear that only supers will really be able to interact with big ships in anything remotely approaching the same scale. Barely.

So what I was thing was a rule like this:

If a ship fires a ship scale weapon at characters at hits, they are detroyed UNLESS they make a Luck roll. If they make the Luck roll the attack was a near miss, graze, or hit something close by that exploded, causing the characters to take the weapon's normal damage. SO a D8 laser cannon would end up doing 1D8 to heroes, a 4d6 weapon would do 4d6, and so on.

Generally speaking those big guns on ships aren't designed to fire at something that small, anyway.