Starship Sizes: Changing the Assumptions

I have just uploaded Starship Sizes: Changing the Assumptions to the downloads area.

I was writing this for EONS magazine, but it turned out I only needed one page and that does not an EONS article make. So here it is for free!

This is just draft; I have NOT playtested this. it is designed to accommodate different assumptions in starship size while still allowing you to use the Starship Construction Manual. Any comments are welcome.

This makes it a lot easier to build Traveller sized starships or WH40K sized starships, instead of the default Trek-ish scale. You could choose to make all ships use a certain scale, all allow all three scales in your settings. This essentially changes the tonnage range to a lower end of 10 tons up to an upper end of ... well as high as you want to go, really.

The rules are meant to be simple and easy to apply. To build a small ship, simply build a standard one and then apply the adjustments.

You can find the file here in the downloads section. Please use this thread for comments.

Oh excellent.. I can start looking at the ships I have published and see how they work.
At the moment I have a ship in drydock I am working on. She's the Polixenes Class Modular Courier (and not a Third Imperium ship) 100 Tons.. kind of a modular Type S.

First let me say I've never read any of the other WOIN rules/materials. Second, as an aerospace engineer I found this topic intriguing, so I read your download.

Comment/question;
Why does the smaller ship always win initiative? Given that spaceship weapon systems are going to be electronic, response/reaction times will not be size dependent. Even if you consider mass and momentum as a factor, a larger ship might have larger/stronger servos. Same when it comes to maneuvering, Response times here are going to be all about weight to force ratios and presumably larger ships might have larger reaction thrusters.

Note, that when I saw this topic and read the thread, I had assumed you were going to talk about how in different game genre's you would use different technologies and assumptions and how it would effect ship size. Things like;
- artificial gravity allowing non-rotational ship styles
- self-repairing systems and materials that would allow smaller crew sizes and therefore smaller ships
- energy systems like; chemical, nuclear, anti-matter, other impacting things like; thrust, usable mass ratios, propulsion systems...
- FTL technologies and their impacts

One of the reasons for my curiosity is current technologies in 2016 make many of the assumptions used to generate sci-fi space ships inaccurate. The easiest one is in terms of crew size. Most fantasy sci-fi assume naval ships to have hundreds of crew members, just because today's water naval ships do. But we can see with modern cargo ships and the Sea Shadow and Sea Slice examples such large crews are not needed, especially if one includes some of the self-healing materials that various labs have announced experimental versions of in the last few years.

LordEntrails said:

Note, that when I saw this topic and read the thread, I had assumed you were going to talk about how in different game genre's you would use different technologies and assumptions and how it would effect ship size. Things like;
- artificial gravity allowing non-rotational ship styles
- self-repairing systems and materials that would allow smaller crew sizes and therefore smaller ships
- energy systems like; chemical, nuclear, anti-matter, other impacting things like; thrust, usable mass ratios, propulsion systems...
- FTL technologies and their impacts

Click to expand...

No, that's not what the article is about. it's just a page long. It's just a simple multiplier to quickly make Traveller sized ships with the rules in the WOIN Starship Construction Manual.

That all sounds like a very interesting article though! Maybe somebody out there will write it!

Morrus said:

No, that's not what the article is about.

Click to expand...

I saw. And after reading it I had that question about initiative.

That all sounds like a very interesting article though! Maybe somebody out there will write it!

Click to expand...

I agree it would be interesting That's why I was was curious about the thread.

For anyone interested, Popular Mechanics has an article that is several years old but is a good place to start. Not surprisingly, NASA also has articles on the subject, one from 2006 on anti-matter propulsion for instance.

LordEntrails said:

I saw. And after reading it I had that question about initiative.

Click to expand...

It's too big a question to answer if you aren't familiar with how initiative is derived and used in the Starship Construction Manual. Generally speaking, though, yes, better equipment and crew is a major factor.

It might be better in this article as a modifier; I was trying to keep it super simple, but you're right - a modifier would work better.

I think I'll have to go read your starship construction rules

Now updated:

- INITIATIVE rule changed
- LUXURY for tiny ships changed
- Sample micro-scale ship, the Fury Class I Starfighter
- Minor other changes/clarifications

As I understand it according to your guidelines it means hangar bays use less cargo units on smaller ships. I'd have them use the same amount, shuttles and fighters don't decrease in size just because the parent ship does.

Other than that love these guidelines.

Created this ship for my players as their intro ship:

Ironxxx said:

As I understand it according to your guidelines it means hangar bays use less cargo units on smaller ships. I'd have them use the same amount, shuttles and fighters don't decrease in size just because the parent ship does.

Click to expand...

You make an excellent point!

I think it probably applies to tractor beams, too.