Starship Scaling

[ASILiara]

As a part of some WOIN work that I'm doing, creating content for a setting to be used with it, I tried to convert a starship over to using the setting. Now, for its universe, it's a large cruiser, but still just a cruiser, clocking in at just over a kilometre long. However, upon converting it to WOIN's starship construction system, it was about 455,000 CUs. This is way, way beyond anything documented in the system's books. I'd be willing to bet that it's class L, at least, and this is by no means the largest starship in the universe - some larger ones clock in at about 20 kilometres long. I shudder to calculate those CU values...

Anyway, if I want this starship to fit into WOIN, what's my best option? Should I just scale down my stuff by a couple of orders of magnitude for game purposes, or would it be better to work on a new scale that's more accommodating to my massive ships?

And while I'm at it, how do you calculate the CU and crew values of higher classes, anyway? We're not given that kind of information for anything above class XVIII, and my attempts to figure out a formula in a spreadsheet have ended in failure.

 

[Morrus]

The starship builder over on the official website has the table for ships up to about a billion tons.

 

[ASILiara]

... which is all well and good, but I just did the math for a dreadnought's CU value, and it was something like 4 billion.
Mmmmmaaaaaaaaaybe I should just cut them down for game purposes...

 

[Morrus]

An Imperial Star Destroyer, at about a kilometre in length, comes in at 40,000,000 tons, which is Class XXXIII. It goes up to about 25 times that.

CU value? How did you calculate a CU value without knowing the ship's class? It's only a small percentage of the mass of the vessel, as it only represents the remaining space left over after the infrastructure is in place. You can't calculate it directly.

 

[ASILiara]

I worked out the ship's approx. internal volume, and then divided that up to get the total amount of hull space it takes up. So for a 20km*3km*2km dreadnought, that's 120 billion cubic metres, divided by 27 (the volume of a single CU in cubic metres) to get 4,444,444,444.44 CU that the entire ship takes up. For my "cruiser", 1024m*120m*100m gets me 12,880,000 cubic metres, which when divided by 27, gets me 455,111.11 CU. From there, it's pretty easy to look up the max CU of all the classes, figure out the one that it comes under, and go from there. I was just using "CU value" to refer to the total internal volume of the ship. Is that wrong?

 

[Morrus]

The CU value isn't the total internal volume of the ship. After all, if you filled the total internal volume of the ship with components, there would be no room for walls, power conduits, corridors... or even air -- it would just be a solid lump of metal.

 

[Morrus]

Using an old rough size formula I have, I get a 20km ship as being about 800 million tons. That's a Class XXXXVI ship, with available CU of 1,000,000 (AL9) or 2,000,000 (AL 10). Though I'd add that I've never built or playtested a ship of that size!

 

[Morrus]

Here's my quick attempt at a Class XXXVI AL 10 ship. It's really hard to fill all that CU! I suppose I could just keep stacking on superstructure and armour, more guns.

[TABLE="class: centered"]
[TR]
[TD="class: ng-binding, bgcolor: #cccccc, colspan: 10, align: center"]Giganto Class XXXXVI Destroyer[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: ng-binding, colspan: 10, align: left"]Weight 812,592,620 tons; Cargo Units 20000000 (18,740,738.0 available)
Hull Class XXXXVI (INIT -9d6)
Traits Heavily-armed[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Crew 1,700,000 (cost 340,000,000cr/m); Troops 25,000; Passengers 10,000 (10,000 standard, 0 luxury)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]Command & Control Systems[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Computers 11x Chemerkin-Liang Products LM-5S Command Computer (CPU cycles: 64; max FTL: 16; checks: +1d6)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Sensors Intergalactic Foundation GS-2H (range 22; check +1d6)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]Engine & Propulsion Data[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Subluminal 2x WayDyne Incorporated GI-2 Ion Engine (power 96 ea; SPEED 4.2; fuel efficiency 1.6)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]FTL 4x Yang Astrotech GA-2 Antimatter Engine (power 79 ea; FTL 6.9; fuel efficiency 1.1)
Backup FTL 2x Panwatch-Microbeam EA-2 Antimatter Engine (power 57 ea; FTL 2.5; fuel efficiency 1)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"][/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]Defensive Data[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Superstructure 600 DEFENSE 55 E-DEFENSE 32[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Armor 438x ablative (SOAK 14 ballistic, 10 energy.)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Shields 2x KDY ISD-72x Shield Generator Dome (power 175 ea; SOAK 7)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Point Defenses 200x Stornes & Warner Ultrashield Dual Gauss Gun (+13 vs. missiles and fighters, Aura: 12)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]Weapons Data[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]6x WayCorp Holography GPaB-1 Deathspear Particle Beam (range 17; damage 5d6 heat; attack +0d6)
6x Archangel Ultimate ASM-44 Missile Launcher (range 9; damage 8d6 heat; attack +0d6)
1x ME-Y Cosmic Mass Accelerator (range 22; damage 12d6 ballistic; attack +0d6)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]Facilities[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 10, align: left"]Luxury 30% (Spartan: -2d6)[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 11, align: left"]Facilities Brig (1000), Escape Pod (100000), Messhall (100000), Turbolifts (100000), Sickbay (5000), Galley(5000), Cabin, Luxury/Environmental (100), Shop (5000), Cabin, Standard (50000), Observation Lounge(50000), Training Hall (50000), Armory (100000), Cabin, Hotbunk (1000000),[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]General Systems[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 12, align: left"]Fueling[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 12, align: left"]Electronic Warfare 1x PanCorp Gravitics YN28 Active Decoy Transmitter, 30x Electronic Reinforcement,[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 12, align: left"]Tractor Beams 6x Phylon Q7 Tractor Beam Projector,[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 12, align: left"]Cloaking Device[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="colspan: 12, align: left"]Engineering 2x Newwatch IE17 Remote Repair Bay,[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]Hangars & Bays[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: ng-binding, colspan: 10, align: left"]Shuttles 128 ( 1x Imperial Design SD Hangar, )[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: ng-binding, colspan: 10, align: left"]Fighters 256 ( 2x Imperial Design SD Hangar, )[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="class: ng-binding, colspan: 10, align: left"]Vehicles 128 ( 1x Imperial Design SD Hangar, )[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR]
[TD="bgcolor: #dddddd, colspan: 10, align: left"]Market Value 3191307 MCr[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

 

[ASILiara]

... wow. That's quite impressive. So based on that, I suppose the best course of action would be to abstract and downsize somewhat, then?

And while I'm at it, do you think I could borrow that formula for a while, as well as calculating crew size for a given class? Pretty please?

 

[Morrus]

The ship’s longest dimension would (roughly) by the square root of its tonnage, multiplied by 0.7. So the above ship is about 20km long.