The new format is twice as complicated as the old (high guard) rules, which
were themselves a nightmare. I don't have a program to do ship designs,
(Though I have been working on one for a while - We could form A new
subgroup "Ship Design" :-).
Here are some tips that I use for designing ships:
The old (High guard) rules used to allow you to break things down into
percentage based, and non-percentage. Thus allowing you a quick calculation
for approx. hull size...No more, you have to guess at the hull size. (Not
a good tip I know)
The sensor/communications choices are quite complex, but there are essentially
two types of suites, Military (one of everything please), and Non-Military
(Radio (Laser), and medium range EMS). You should set up sensor pacakges
for your design style for each tech level in the two formats. Thus when
you design a tech 14 military ship, you just read off the line on your chart
which already has the cost, price, weight, and power worked out. You can then
list any modifications to the basic package.
Armour: Armour is only effective (for starships) in increments of three.
(40,41 and 42, are all the same for starhip combat). Civian ships which want
agility, (and are price consious) cannot have extra armour.
Design the craft in this order: Hull, armour, locomotion, senors/commo,
weapons, computer. Calculate the engergy reqiurements for life support on
the entire ship's volume. Gravity/compensators for total volume minus jump
fuel volume. Compute the non-agility power requirements, and enter the power
plant info. Estimate the crew size, anc compute the weight required. Using the
following formula:
(Required agility)*(Ship's mass so far)
---------------------------------------
5.4
Compute the power required to get the agility you want. Then compute the
size of the power plant (round up), and use it''s mass in the above equation
instead of the ships to get the power required for the extra mass of the power
plant. Repeat until the power is less than approx. 1% of the total.
Now compute the fuel required for the power plant (30 days is not essential, if
you only have 20 day's worth, it may be O.K). Calucate the purification plant
plant weight and power, and the savings on gravity/compensators for not
including the power plant fuel. If the net energy and weight aren't close
(using the above formula) either increase the purification time (especially if
the ship is not streamlined), or go back to the power plant calulations
increasing the ship's mass accordingly.
Now compute the exact crew requirements, and the control panel for the ship.
(If you wish - recompute your power plant, power fuel, grav/intertial, and
purifier based on these new totals). Otherwise, add all your totals up, check
that the agility, and volume is still O.K. And you can now write up the
description. (Remember all thoroughout this you should keep an eye on the
volume requirements, so you can see if your hull estimate is off).
Easy huh? This is the point where you find out that you really can't
get a TL15 ship, and it has to be TL14....time to cry.
One last tip. There are points on the charts for energy levels, batteries
bearing, etc. that an extra/fewer couple of units of size, energy, etc. can
make a big difference. (For example I was deigning a 45T fighter, when I
started to write it up, I discovered that it's 1100 Mw power plant, even with
E-M maksking, made it a Moderate energy output on a scan. By redesigning it
to 40T (and a 990 Mw power plant, the energy output dropped two levels to None).
Dan Corrin, System Manager, Mechanical Engineering, UWO, London, Ontario
TML FTP site coordinator: [email removed] ...!watmath!julian!engrg!dan