Topic: Vehicle Manual: Vehicle Creation Question

[Erik Sharma]

When I was designing an armed 2000 ton Spacecraft for our next adventure I encountered some problems that got me confused. It is on p. 98 of the Vehicle Manual dealing with reinforcing the Hull for a number of Gs. In my case I decided for 15Gs (same as the Zephyr Light Freighter) using a CAT XIV (Crysantium) material.
The questions that arose was these ones:

• Reinforcement Cost = [Gs] x [% from Chart] x [Cost of Hull] x [Total Hull Multiplier]

  What is the [Total Hull Multiplyer] and do I multiply with 0,9 or 0,09 (0,9% is picked from the table on p.99)?

• Multiply the volume of the ship by the acceleration (in Gs) it’s meant to support by the factor on the chart below. This will show how much of the volume is taken up by additional reinforcements. Do the same for the mass of the ship.

  Well according to this the reinforcements will take up 8100 (6000*15*0,09) kiloliters of the ships calculated 6000 kiloliters. Either I have misunderstood everything or something is wrong. One thing is sure it doesn't sound right! Can anyone help me with this, only thing I can think of is to replace the Vehicles Volume with the Hull Volume and then I get a result of 162 kiloliters or 1620 kilolitres (120*15*0,9 or 0,09) depending on if I multiply it by 0,9 or 0,09 according to the question above? 162 kilolitres (in addition to the hulls volume of 120 kiloliters) actually sound more correct but a confirmation would be nice.

[Defendi]

I'd be happy to look later tonight.  PM me if I forget.

[Erik Sharma]

Well after I have tinkered a bit with the system I think that I managed to answer some of my own questions.

• When using the 0,9% from the chart on p.99 you use 0,09 in the calculations for it to be correct.
• Still don't know what the [Total Hull Multiplyer] on p. 98 is and can't find it mentioned anywhere else in the book.
• As mentioned in the post above it must be the Hulls Volume you use and not the Vehicles Volume when calculating the reinforcements needed.
• Well I finished of the ship (named Prowler) i was building ignoring the [Total Hull Multiplyer] and ended up with volume of 5,653 kilolitres (max 6,000), mass of 1,983 metric tons (max 2000) and a cost of 33,235,437 credits. It has a 3000 kiloliter cargohold but if that is filled up it would bring the mass up to 2,983 metric tons and thats way above the max I had set for the vehicle. Is it supposed to be like this for ships with bigger Cargo Holds?

[DeadBob]

Well after I have tinkered a bit with the system I think that I managed to answer some of my own questions.

• When using the 0,9% from the chart on p.99 you use 0,09 in the calculations for it to be correct.
• Still don't know what the [Total Hull Multiplyer] on p. 98 is and can't find it mentioned anywhere else in the book.
• As mentioned in the post above it must be the Hulls Volume you use and not the Vehicles Volume when calculating the reinforcements needed.
• Well I finished of the ship (named Prowler) i was building ignoring the [Total Hull Multiplyer] and ended up with volume of 5,653 kilolitres (max 6,000), mass of 1,983 metric tons (max 2000) and a cost of 33,235,437 credits. It has a 3000 kiloliter cargohold but if that is filled up it would bring the mass up to 2,983 metric tons and thats way above the max I had set for the vehicle. Is it supposed to be like this for ships with bigger Cargo Holds?

1) to multiply by 0.9%, you multiply by 0.009, not 0.09
2) the total hull multiplier is the one you determined in the previous step, selecting the hull material.
3) Whenever the construction refers to "Volume of Vehicle, it IS referring to the volume of the whole vehicle. And with so may steps referring to tha, it is best to determine before-hand if you will have a "Cramped" or "Spacious" design (p 121)
4) your design works, and if you add more mass than your design allowed for in the argo, you only need to refigure your acceleration.
     (Tons of thrust)/(current total mass) = (Gs of acceleration)
But it is a dangerous thing to exceed yo design thrust, which you can do with an empty cargo hold. Damage may ensue.

[Erik Sharma]

1) to multiply by 0.9%, you multiply by 0.009, not 0.09

Yes you are correct can't belive I missed that extra zero!

2) the total hull multiplier is the one you determined in the previous step, selecting the hull material.

Well the only thing I can think of is the [Total Cost Multiplyer] from the previous step. But feels a bit strange to apply it again since it already should be included in the Hull Cost that you already use in the formula from the previous step.

3) Whenever the construction refers to "Volume of Vehicle, it IS referring to the volume of the whole vehicle. And with so may steps referring to tha, it is best to determine before-hand if you will have a "Cramped" or "Spacious" design (p 121)

It might be since I forgot the extra zero in the above calculation the numbers will be completely different. Have to recalculate the vehicle, thank god I used an excel sheet to design it so just have to change the numbers and see the effects.

4) your design works, and if you add more mass than your design allowed for in the argo, you only need to refigure your acceleration.
     (Tons of thrust)/(current total mass) = (Gs of acceleration)
But it is a dangerous thing to exceed yo design thrust, which you can do with an empty cargo hold. Damage may ensue.

Yes I did go ahead any way and ended up with about 6,8Gs unloaded and about 4,2Gs loaded. The hull was reinforced up to 7Gs so should be alright. But with the new numbers I will get with the miss above it might change drasticly so will see if anything needs to be changed.
Did change everything according to the stuff mentioned above. Also added the [Total Cost Multiplyer] for the Hull I used and since I had recalculated everything with the 0,009 number. The addition to the cost wasn't that much with the corrected numbers the price changed from 33,235,437 credits to 33,782,187 credits and the speed changed from 6,8G unloaded to 7,0G and loaded it changed from 4,2G to 4,4G. So still within limits. Thanks so much for the help and pointing out the huge error with a missed zero hehe.

There is a couple of more things that I wouldn't mind getting clarifications about.

• Several vehicles have Crew Berths listed, is this Crew Quarters or Cryogenic Berths?
• I might be mistaken but to me it looks like none of the ships have Crew Quarters added but instead have had some form of Staterooms added for the crew instead. Is this true and if so why?

[markc]

  1) If you look in the quarters section there are a few types of crew quarters. IIRC there are large staterooms, staterooms, 2 per stateroom and 4 per stateroom and hot bunking. Cryogenic berths are also in the same section as the crew quarters but unless it says cryogenic berth IMO it is a type of stateroom listed above.


 2) For Crew as I said above you can have 4 in a room (for military generally) and this cuts down on rooms needed. In fact even the lower officers share a stateroom to save on space.


MDC

[Erik Sharma]

  1) If you look in the quarters section there are a few types of crew quarters. IIRC there are large staterooms, staterooms, 2 per stateroom and 4 per stateroom and hot bunking. Cryogenic berths are also in the same section as the crew quarters but unless it says cryogenic berth IMO it is a type of stateroom listed above.

Well what you said is true. From what is listed on p.118 these are available:

• Crew Quarters
• First Class Staterooms
• Standard Staterooms
• Low/Military Staterooms
• Cryogenic Berths
• Seating

The reason I did ask is because I ask is that several vehicles (for example Goliath Heavy Freighter on p.28) have Crew Bert listed. Crew Berths are not listed in the above list makes me come to the conclusion it's either Crew Quarters or Cryogenic Berths from the name. But which is it? It's not a huge difference except that Cryogenic Berths cost a bit more than Crew Quarters and wouldn't change the stats of the craft anyway except for possibly the price.

2) For Crew as I said above you can have 4 in a room (for military generally) and this cuts down on rooms needed. In fact even the lower officers share a stateroom to save on space.

I don't have a clue where you found this numbers but comparing to the GURPS Traveller books I have there High Staterooms or for one person only and Middle-Passage staterooms are for 2 persons and I assume that for low occupancy you squeeze in 4 persons. But in GURPS Traveller the Staterooms are always of equal size you just adapt and squeeze in more persons in each stateroom for a lesser quality of living. But since the staterooms in Spacemaster have such a big difference in size I have assumed it's always a seperate room for a single person with varying degrees of luxury and comfort. Comparing it to Crew Quarters and Seatings in the book on p.118 you get these sizes:

• Crew Quarters: 9 cubicliters/person
• First Class Staterooms: 40 cubicliters/stateroom
• Standard Staterooms: 30 cubicliters/stateroom
• Low/Military Staterooms: 21 cubicliters/stateroom (I assume it is a typo here and it should be 20 cubicliters!)
• Cryogenic Berths: 9 cubicliters/person
• Seating: 3 cubicliters/seat

Crew Quarters and Cryogenic Berths take up about the same volume and I assume that it is basicly enough room for a person to comfortably sleep (the main difference is that in a Cryogenic Berth you sleep in a frozen state  ), seeing that it's about third times the size for a Passenger Seat only reinforces my suspicion. And the sizes only increases from there with a Low/Military stateroom taking up the same place as 2 beds (crew quarters), Standard Stateroom takes up the same spot as about 3 beds and finally First Class Staterooms taking up the same volume as 4 beds. Now I relalized that I have deviated from my question completely, and for that I am sorry.

I think I wasn't clear enough with my question from the beginning. Hopefully the first one have already been cleared up above.

The second question wasn't my intention to indicate that anything was wrong with the rules, but was more a thought of why the crew members had gotten such luxurious quarters when Crew Quarters would have been so much more efficient in volume than Staterooms, especially on the military ships. If it was only because the Crew required more comfort that would have been enough of an answer for me. But haven't seen the Crew Quarters used on any of the Vehicle Designs in the book (except for the vehicles that possibly are covered by the question above).

[markc]

 For in universe I think the crew gets such good accommodations is that robots take up a lot of crew positions (ie 3 per bot) and on de-commissioned military ships they have removed all armament so there are no gunners.
 I also think there might have been a name change for the Crew Quarters to Standard.


 I remember asking something like your Q before and it was hidden in some unusual section of the book. What I did was go back to the SM2 Star Strike book and look at their info. From them Low Military Births is 10 m^3 per person, Standard is 20^3 per person and first class is 30m^3 per person.


 You are right Cryo Tubes/Berths are where they put you to sleep for the trip and you have to make a roll to see if you wake up, die or have some other damage from the process.


 Does that help?
MDC

[Marc R]

Funny, considering how little room per person you get on a submarine, the closest possible real world equivalent. . .though I guess if you counted the common area it might get up to 2m³ per person.

[Defendi]

Crew quarters include all common areas as well, so that figure includes kitchens, dining areas, recreation, heads, everything (with the areas serving double and triple duty, of course.)  When you add a person, all the other areas need to get slightly bigger, so it isn't just the bed.

[Erik Sharma]

I think most of any unanswered questions have been answered. Thanks for all the insight and feedback. Really helped me to get my mind on the right track.

Until I hear something different I'll assume that Crew Berths mean Crew Quarters (not Cryogenic Berths).

Makes more sense when you for look at the Goliath Heavy Freighter for example. The freighter has 60 Military Staterooms and 634 Crew Berths. I assume the Staterooms (although the simplest kind) are for the higher ranking crewmembers and the others are sharing everything else and just get simple sleeping areas. Doesn't make much sense if they had to defrost crewmembers for every shift. 

Crew quarters include all common areas as well, so that figure includes kitchens, dining areas, recreation, heads, everything (with the areas serving double and triple duty, of course.)  When you add a person, all the other areas need to get slightly bigger, so it isn't just the bed.

True always assumed that there was extra stuff for the Crew Quarters included since a Cryogenic Birth probably require a bit more space than just a single person to cover all the Cryo equipment.

[Marc R]

I get the logic, just seems high, let me try a real sub.

An Ohio class is 560' long, 42' d

to meters that's x0.3048, call it

170m x 13m

Pi (r x r) x l = volume

3.14 (7.5x7.5) x 170= 22,503.05m²

With a crew of 15 officers (20 ea) and 139 crew (10ea)

So 300m² in officers cabins, and 1,390m² in crew quarters is 1,690m²

Still, that's only 7.5% of the ship,and leaves over 20,000m² for everything else.

OK, I take it back, that seems to work fine. . .sometimes your gut just leads you astray!

[markc]

 You can also hot bunk crew where they share beds but I would not try and do it for a great length of time as crew performance can go down fast depending on the situation.


MDC

[Erik Sharma]

Just wanna apologize for using the term cubicliters when I really meant kiloliters. My mind was so of on other things that I didn't realized my mistake until reading all the post now.

But seems like everyone else got what I meant anyway hehe.

[markc]

I would like to see the end ship. If you could post it that would be great.


MDC

[Erik Sharma]

That is actually my plan just gonna write it up in a readable format and then I will upload it to the vault toghether with another ISC ship I have classed as Trade Pioneer (sort of a trading ship about half the size of a Light Freighter) that basicly scour planets for a trading company for new market/trading opportunities.

I bit overworked at the moment with studies and stuff but hopefully it will be up before the end of next weekend.

[markc]

You might also want to submit it to the Guild Companion as an article when it is done.


MDC

[Erik Sharma]

You might also want to submit it to the Guild Companion as an article when it is done.


MDC

I didn't even think about that but thanks for the tip, I might just do that with the conversion I have made on Flare Star the adventure I am gonna run.

[markc]

You might also want to submit it to the Guild Companion as an article when it is done.


MDC

I didn't even think about that but thanks for the tip, I might just do that with the conversion I have made on Flare Star the adventure I am gonna run.

 I am sure they would love almost anything you can give them and the fans (like me) will love it also.
MDC