Re: Modular Freighters (was Re: FB - Thrust Ratings for Freighters)

On Mon, 25 Jan 1999, Jared E Noble wrote:
> >In a message dated 99-01-24 14:04:46 EST, you write:
> 
> 
> >> i don't have the fleet book, but this still does not interfere with
my
> >> point - space concerns exist for military ships, as everything has
to be
> >> packed inside an armoured hull, whereas merchants do not have this
> >> problem. unless FB1 refers to merchants with space problems, that
is.
> 
> >> Tom
> >
> >I agree with the last part.	In FB1 it talks about how Merchies are
"tin cans
> >with a drive unit on one end an a command moduel on the other" so I
don't
> >think that they have space problems.
> >-Stephen
> 
> Luckily we have a way to represent Tom's style freighter - Tugs with
cargo
> modules!

you know, i do seem to have a thing about freighters. they're big,
cost-effective and they carry loads of freight. that's really cool.

> Standardized Cargo module:
> 
> And now the Tugs:

well, i wasn't thinking quite in standardised cargo pod terms, but it
does
make sense.

i envisage long, thin ships, like 2001's 'discovery', with cargo pods
wrapped around them. this is a bit like one of the freighters in the
'tie
fighter' computer game (the one with three trapezoidal pods around a 
rodlike core), and also like a freighter that's drawn somewhere in the
back of FT. it's also a little like the ships in "silent running" (bonus
points if you've seen that one - extra bonus if you spotted the ship
being 
attacked in an episode of battlestar galactica ...).

i was wondering about containerisation in the context of interstellar
trade. specifically, since there will be a larger volume of stuff to be
shipped around than now, and since it is probably going to fewer places
(there must be hundreds of major ports in the world), it would make
sense
to use bigger containers. currently, standard basic containers are 20
feet
long, and weigh in at about 20 tonnes each (i think); this would be 0.2
mass in ft2.5 terms, no?

i was thinking that (for offworld shipping at least, maybe not on-planet
haulage) you'd use big huge containers. if you stacked regular
containers
in a cubic lattice, 10 to a side, it'd be 2000 tonnes. that's 20 mass.
result!

of course, heavily industrialised planets would build large-gauge
railways
to carry entire kilocontainers around, and similarly big cargo lorries.
perhaps this was the origin of ogre technology :-)

> So how do they rate?

they look a bit pricey, but that's what you pay for the added
convenience.
of course, if you just model the kilocontainers as part of the ship,
this
problem mostly goes away.

> The largest difficulty comes from the fact that the damage points are
> distributed between the Tug and 2 per module.  Maybe an adaptation of
the MT
> Supership rules could handle this.

could be below ft's granularity. we don't bother figuring out where
warships were hit, after all. you could just roll threshold checks for 
each container, or something.

> This also necessitates some sort of hit location, but at least it is
not hit
> location 'inside' the ship - just which set of damage boxes to mark to
damage
> to.  How about something like this:
> - Damage location is determined for each volley.
>   - Even chances of hitting the Tug or each individual module
> - Tug thresholds roll once for each module attached; if the test
fails, the
> module is separated and remains behind.
> - If a module is destroyed, the Tug makes a threshold check at it's
current
> level
> - If a module takes more damage in a single volley than it has
remaining, the
> excess damage passes to the Tug damage track.

that might be a bit excessive - it would penalise containerised ships
far
more than bulkers.

Tom