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X_TheLostOne_X
2017-10-02, 06:28 PM
Hello friendly folk i am setting up a Space opera RP with the system "Stars without numbers"
recommendations for a better system are welcome.
either way, reason i write here is that i am at a loss...
i wish to take inspiration from Stargate universe, plot will be a mix of exploration and slow uncovering of the ship little by little.
however i am no master of drawing nor engineering, and using those dungeon or ship generators don't quite serve the function, any idea anyone?
at a last resort, i might even be willing to pay a few bucks for something great( after all, you cannot put a price on good rp, and having something the players can enjoy looking at really does wonders)

ps: i really do enjoy people on this forum, so much experience and people are generally nice.

JPicasso
2017-10-02, 09:58 PM
I was going to leave a LMGTFY link, but I don't want to come accross as mean.

Seriously, google stargate battle maps or traveller battle maps. should have cool stuff under both.

Bulhakov
2017-10-03, 05:21 AM
No ready maps here, maybe some schematics, but I really recommend the Atomic Rockets website for a lot of awesome articles on realistic space sci fi.
Here's a link to generic ship design: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/basicdesign.php
At the bottom of the page there are many links for specific ship and module types.

X_TheLostOne_X
2017-10-03, 09:09 AM
its easy to find star gate atlantic (giant city) plans, but a layout map fitting for having player tokens on for a large space ship is hard to come by.
i find the "atomic rockets" website very interesting, it does however not scream "interstellar large sci-fi spaceship"
what i need is a ship layout of similar size to that of "Destiny" from stargate.
googling that for a couple of hours have only lead me to vague and largely incomplete layouts.
ultimately my best answer so far is to use roll20 premium resources to create a ship from parts, i have the packs but i am no artist to put it gently.

Vogie
2017-10-03, 11:42 AM
Obviously, the way the average human would build a starship is basically the same way we'd build a plane, aircraft carrier, cruiseliner or submarine. If you get normal blueprints from ships that already exist, and add the words "in space" at the top, viola! you've got a spaceship layout. If you don't hand the blueprints to the players, they'll never know.

If you wanted to build the ship from scratch, you'd likely in the same way one would worldbuild a city - with zones, and using the Snowflake method. First divvy up the ship into zones of roughly the same size and shape. These zones can be based on decks, sections, requirements and whatnot. Then pour a lot of detail and design into just one of those zones. Making the hallways, the plumbing, the walls, everything, for just that zone. Then, like making a paper snowflake, you can "unfold" that design across the rest of the ship. It could be a shape, a series of concentric information, et cetera.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/galaxy/galaxy-plans.gif See how each deck is basically a fractal of the same design?

Then you can go through and make changes. The engineering and warehouse decks will have less housing and more, well, engineering nooks & crannies and storerooms, while the hanger will have more open space and docks. The residential areas will have apartments of various sizes, conference rooms, and whatnot. Throw in some barracks, fancy courtyards & open spaces, shops, and a chapel, and you've got yourself a ship.

If that's too boring, create a new, second zone. With two designs, you can easily move the variations around like puzzle pieces to construct a map of that deck or area, even on the fly.

Another thing to think about, when designing a city of any size or era, is the landmarks that the city would have sprung up around. Rivers, mountains, et cetera, have an impact on the design. Similarly ships will commonly have something they are built around:

Serenity was a cargo ship with engines on the back and either side
Galactica & the Enterprise (from the show Enterprise) were basically Aircraft carriers or submarines, in space, with FTL drives
Various later Enterprises were designed with the "saucer" to be removed from the rest of the ship, in case the warp core became unstable.
The Ring ships from the webcomic Drive and the Ori Warships from Stargate are based on a... well, ring.
The Death Star(s) are made to look like spheres & Goa'uld or Protoss Motherships are made to look like pyramids, Atlantis was made to look like a star
The ISA Excalibur from Crusade, the Space Battleship Yamato, and even X-wing fighters are based around Fixed Forward-Facing Weapons (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/FixedForwardFacingWeapon)

So once you have a defining element, you can build the rest of the ship around that.

As for maps to place minifigs on, just make generic ones - large open air, corridor, split level, residential, et cetera - and reuse them as needed.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-03, 12:12 PM
No ready maps here, maybe some schematics, but I really recommend the Atomic Rockets website for a lot of awesome articles on realistic space sci fi.
Here's a link to generic ship design: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/basicdesign.php
At the bottom of the page there are many links for specific ship and module types.

Man, that's an awesome site, it got me to switch from reactionless drives to low-thrust plasma drives as my universe's primary method of sublight acceleration.


its easy to find star gate atlantic (giant city) plans, but a layout map fitting for having player tokens on for a large space ship is hard to come by.
i find the "atomic rockets" website very interesting, it does however not scream "interstellar large sci-fi spaceship"
what i need is a ship layout of similar size to that of "Destiny" from stargate.
googling that for a couple of hours have only lead me to vague and largely incomplete layouts.
ultimately my best answer so far is to use roll20 premium resources to create a ship from parts, i have the packs but i am no artist to put it gently.

Define large. We'd also need to know what scale you're using.

In some settings a 'large' ship might be 500m a side, in others it might be a few kilometres long.

And yes, the majority of science fiction settings likely list their ship dimensions in SI, it's not only a better set of units but it's used by pretty much every space agency (including NASA).

(as a side note, using 1m=2cm, a battle mat of a 1km long ship including engines and fuel would be approximately 10m long, cut that down to somewhere between 2 and 5 metres if you only care about the usable parts.)

It might be easier to do what I'm doing with my Fate science fiction game, and using zones (the idea being your exact positioning within the zone doesn't matter). Every ship begins with two zones, 'command' and 'outside'. For a fighter (although those are rare in this universe) that might be all you care about, but a shuttle will want a passenger/cargo area zone, most larger ships also needs a zone for the engineering deck, probably a crew quarters zone (maybe a separate canteen zone in truly large ships), separate zones for hangers, potentially a zone for the fuel storage (depending on if it'll ever come up), potentially zones for weapon arrays (if they aren't controlled from the command zone), possibly a med lab zone, for some a biosphere zone, and so on. 8-10 zones for a ship will be plenty, and you can keep the maps manageable even when dealing with kilometre long ships.

Splitting ships into zones and not worrying too much about placement (it's even more of a pain in free fall) allows you to keep all bar the most complex ships to a side of A4 and skimp on the details.

Lord Torath
2017-10-03, 12:12 PM
Palladium did a lot of deck plans for their Macross II game. Lots of ships of various sizes. They had several volumes of deck plans.

X_TheLostOne_X
2017-10-04, 04:59 PM
great guide about how to make one myself, and the ship to "space"-ship blew my mind, i might take inspiration from Macross II, mix in stargate designs and make layout from that. (great source)

Adeon Hawkwood
2017-10-04, 06:10 PM
Ryan Wolfe (http://0-hr.com/) has done a lot of cool ship designs with floor plans designed for use in games (mostly in the Firefly size range). They are in the payment-required category but they are nice.

EDIT: This is apparently my 10th post on the forums which is exactly enough to let me post a link. Just found that rather amusing.

X_TheLostOne_X
2017-10-04, 07:39 PM
Ryan Wolfe (http://0-hr.com/) has done a lot of cool ship designs with floor plans designed for use in games (mostly in the Firefly size range). They are in the payment-required category but they are nice.

EDIT: This is apparently my 10th post on the forums which is exactly enough to let me post a link. Just found that rather amusing.

congratulations :D
and This is more or less what im looking for, but Bigger Mmmmm.
http://0-hr.com/Future_Armada/Art/Remora_08.jpg
very niice :3

LordEntrails
2017-10-07, 05:23 PM
I haven't gone through all the links provided. But I have yet to come across an online resource that does anything but make me cringe with the ship designs.

First, as an aerospace engineer, the thing that gets me disbelieving first is that any spaceship of foreseeable or technology should have only somewhere between 10-40% of it's space/mass habitable/useable by the crew. Power, fuel, and mechanics should take up most of the ship.

So, though I love the Star Trek technical manuals, they all have way too much living space.

Now, if all you are doing is interior stuff, then you can ignore that since the players won't be worrying about the non-access areas. But, don't hesitate in any maps you make to have large areas that are inaccessible.

Anonymouswizard
2017-10-07, 05:43 PM
I haven't gone through all the links provided. But I have yet to come across an online resource that does anything but make me cringe with the ship designs.

First, as an aerospace engineer, the thing that gets me disbelieving first is that any spaceship of foreseeable or technology should have only somewhere between 10-40% of it's space/mass habitable/useable by the crew. Power, fuel, and mechanics should take up most of the ship.

So, though I love the Star Trek technical manuals, they all have way too much living space.

Now, if all you are doing is interior stuff, then you can ignore that since the players won't be worrying about the non-access areas. But, don't hesitate in any maps you make to have large areas that are inaccessible.

As someone with a passing interest in making his spaceships realistic, I would be interested to know more. I've been using Atomic Rockets as a rough reference, but even then I couldn't get much further on proportions than 'half of your ship is probably devoted to reaction mass, more if taking off from a planet (barring functional spaceplanes).

One of the things I've loved about the Night's Dawn trilogy has been crunching the maths and deciding that a good 40% or more of the ships should be fuel storage and engines, potentially more, with maybe 20% of the ship being actual crew quarters. The biological ships seem to be 80% propulsion, sensors, and digestion (because biological).

But yeah, it's not my field and I cringe when I see rockets with deck upon deck of living space and tiny tanks of fuel in a tenth of the rocket. I can accept that if you have a reactionless drive, there's no need to carry all that reaction mass you were using before, but so many times it's supposed to be reaction engines.


One of the things I like about Traveller is that reaction engines require a lot of fuel (2.5% of the ship's volume per hour of thrust at 1g), I spent a lot of time trying to make a ship that could carry a decent allotment of cargo and still have over 30% of it's mass as fuel. I'm still working on a not too expensive ship that can carry 100dtons of cargo while dedicating over half it's volume to reaction mass and engines.

Malimar
2017-10-07, 07:51 PM
congratulations :D
and This is more or less what im looking for, but Bigger Mmmmm.
http://0-hr.com/Future_Armada/Art/Remora_08.jpg
very niice :3
Ha, I recognize that from almost using it as the main ship for a Spelljammer campaign once. (Wound up using Jabba the Hutt's sail barge instead.)

X_TheLostOne_X
2017-10-27, 07:35 PM
As someone with a passing interest in making his spaceships realistic, I would be interested to know more. I've been using Atomic Rockets as a rough reference, but even then I couldn't get much further on proportions than 'half of your ship is probably devoted to reaction mass, more if taking off from a planet (barring functional spaceplanes).

One of the things I've loved about the Night's Dawn trilogy has been crunching the maths and deciding that a good 40% or more of the ships should be fuel storage and engines, potentially more, with maybe 20% of the ship being actual crew quarters. The biological ships seem to be 80% propulsion, sensors, and digestion (because biological).

But yeah, it's not my field and I cringe when I see rockets with deck upon deck of living space and tiny tanks of fuel in a tenth of the rocket. I can accept that if you have a reactionless drive, there's no need to carry all that reaction mass you were using before, but so many times it's supposed to be reaction engines.


One of the things I like about Traveller is that reaction engines require a lot of fuel (2.5% of the ship's volume per hour of thrust at 1g), I spent a lot of time trying to make a ship that could carry a decent allotment of cargo and still have over 30% of it's mass as fuel. I'm still working on a not too expensive ship that can carry 100dtons of cargo while dedicating over half it's volume to reaction mass and engines.

yea the technical part of space ships can be important depending on the douchbags that is players.
some can get quite technical, but lets not get off track.
i'd guess you'd find Dead Space ships interesting design wise?
they seem very thought out engineering wise(except the third game ofc, but we dont talk about that one)

LordEntrails
2017-10-28, 12:47 AM
Realistic is hard to do. One, if you base it on current technology there is a lot of 'overhead', and if you base it on technology that might be available, you're making a bunch of guesses. Here's a bunch of related thoughts, but not very well organized and not too carefully considered. For a final reference, I'm no expert on current or future spacecraft, but I did work as a structural design engineer on the Atlas III and Atlas V space launch vehicles.

First, if you are going to Google and want current technical information, use the term "launch vehicle" and not rocket or spaceship or such. For instance, "launch vehicle design" will get you NASA and AIAA documents. Authoritative, if you can understand what they are talking about. Also, "payload" is really what we would consider the useable part of the system other than structure (i.e. cargo, life support, etc).

Next, for reference. if you look at modern expendable launch vehicles, payload is less than 5% of the gross lift-off weight. Expendable means that the structure is not strong enough for re-use or re-entry (being able to survive that would mean a lot more weight). That's for typically getting the payload to low earth orbit from ground. Not what we are generally worrying about when it comes to ships like on Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. These use non-nuclear reaction masses.

For fantasy space ships, if you consider propulsion by reaction mass. It's pretty easy to figure out what's realistic, because reaction propulsion means everything is all about momentum. Meaning the velocity of the ship is limited by the max velocity of the propellent, which can reasonably be considered to be less than the speed of light. This tells us two things, reaction propulsion can not make a ship go faster than light (unless the theory that mass can not travel faster than light is wrong), and that the velocity of the ship is directly related to the ship mass vs fuel mass ratio. It also means that to reach the speed of light, the amount of propellant would have to be at least equal to the mass of the ship.

If you want to travel slower than light, and you assume your propulsion mass is ejected at light speed, you then have more favorable ratios.

All of that assumes you just want to travel in a straight line once, and not maneuver.

You can also consider things like ion or nuclear drive/propulsion. In the end, this is all about energy. It takes energy to move an object (mass*velocity squared). So, the energy you impart on the object (to accelerate) is energy you have to have stored on the object (fuel).

Non-reaction propulsion is mostly theoretical. There recently been some claims that seems substantiated (search "EmDrive" or "Cannae Drive") but the mechanism is not understood and the amount of propulsion is tiny. And anyway, it would be constrained by conservation of energy I mentioned above.

Finally, the other idea, is for using energy sources external to the ship, such as a solar sail or some way of drawing energy from the void of space (sound like common explanation for magic in fantasy rpgs?)

All that means, that for "fun" spaceships, there has to be technologies in use we don't yet understand and probably have no working hypothesis about. Which is totally fine, it's why it's called science fiction :)

Spaceships don't need large crews. We see it on many sci-fi shows because many of the sci-fi authors have experience in early 20th century wet navies. The Sea Shadow and other programs have proven that current naval designs do not require large crews. But, as I've been told by a naval officer, would you rather be an admiral of 12 ships and 20,000 sailors, or 12 ships and 200 sailors? One has a great deal of prestige, the other, not so much. Then, if we consider technology, there are today experimental materials which can self-heal and their are demonstrated nanosized devices. It is, in my opinion, very reasonable to expect a space fairing race to have access to self-repairing materials, small (near nano) swarms of autonomous repair devices (robots), and probably things that I haven't considered.

So, I think for fun designs, we have to consider that a minimum, nuclear energy will be required. Probably anti-matter, or maybe something else. But whatever it is, it needs to have an energy density in the atomic range.

Now, how come a realistic feeling spaceship needs lots of non-living space? (Note as I go through the thoughts below, I might be talking myself out of so much non-liveable space).

Food, water, recycling? Yea, you do know that any type of long duration spaceship is going to have to recycle it's poop don't you? The better the recycling of proteins and nutrients, the less food mass storage needed. Though realize that not 100% of the proteins/nutrients use by the body simple pass through. Some goes into hair, nail, skin, sweat, etc and would also be desirable to recycle. (Leads to some interesting technologies for a ship huh?) Ok, so maybe not huge amounts of space, maybe even just a few times the mass and volume of each crew member per month of self-sustenance.

Mechanical distributions systems. Air, fuel, water, power, communications... These are going to take space. But probably not more than a few inches or a decimeter space under each floor or in each ceiling, along with something equivalent to "wet walls" in homes and apartments.

Structure... Well, given materials that we have today, and a space fairing race could be expected to have, no need to use more space than what we expect today. Maybe even such spaces would include whatever space would be desired for self-repairing systems.

Propulsion (engines). Ok, we really have no idea do we? Well, if it were reaction mass system, then we could estimate the size because you're going to need a mixing/ignition chamber and then both compression and expansion chambers (what you think of as the nozzle). We can also assume most propulsions systems can also provide energy for other systems such as life support, computers, and weapons. But, whatever the system, remember we are talking about the need to create, convert, and control huge amounts of energy. It seems reasonable that such a device should be relatively large compared to the device that uses it (i.e at least 5% of the ship size, if not more).

As for the weapons; beam (or emitter) systems are probably lower energy than propulsion, otherwise you would use them for propulsion. Missile (or kinetic or ballistic) systems may use the same tech as propulsion, just in smaller sizes, and of course must include an energy source. As for size... Well, remember, again we are talking about deviced to release / target large amounts of energy. Therefore, they should be related to the scale of the propulsion (engines), so again, maybe 1% of the ship for each system (battery/beam/emitter/launcher)

I'm probably forgetting a few things. But it's getting late and my mind is wandering. Thoughts?

Some links:
https://spaceflightsystems.grc.nasa.gov/education/rocket/guided.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payload_fraction
https://www.digitaltrends.com/cool-tech/emdrive-news-rumors/

X_TheLostOne_X
2017-10-28, 09:35 PM
@LordEntrails you are a god!
That really helps, and the need to google is no longer a need, i have chosen to pay an artist to make what i want, and that wall of text really helps put things into perspective as to how i want things.
just for those curious about the design i've settled with, here it is.

The group will be dumped on a large spaceship/station that can move, however it will start with severe damage, when it comes to docking on planets/stations they'll use lesser vessels.
The system im using is Starfinder(DnD) its for simplicity.
its going to be a opera like campaign, hopefully not too much focus on normal combat.

oh yea, the design, i'm waiting for my announchment to rest for a few days but my initial inspiration for the big ship/station will be Dead Space Ishimura, with creative freedom for the artist ofc, the artist will also make floor plans that i can use tokens on and so forth :3
went with Ishimura as inspiration since i don't want it to be military in design.

LordEntrails
2017-10-28, 10:17 PM
Glad that helps :)

The thing I forgot to talk about last night was artificial gravity. This is going to be key to the layout of the ship. If you have artificial gravity, then you can orientate the decks, and the direction people stand, in any direction you want. (i.e. StarTrek).

But, if you don't. then you have two options; One is where are the decks are perpendicular to the axis of thrust and in general ships are always accelerating at 1g except in combat, during warp, or during flip over to perform a 1g decelleration. Or two, ring ships that spin and "decks" or orientation is perpendicular (i.e. think the movie Passenger or a dozen other).

Other questions, just let me know.