Astrogation Systems

Different types of ships need different levels of astrogation equipment.  Depending on the type of ship, choose the appropriate astrogation suite from the list below

Shuttles - Only basic astrogation equipment is needed as they are travelling only between ships or from a planet's surface to orbit and back.  Cost: 1,000 cr, mass: 0.3 tons, volume: 0.1 cu. m

System Ships - These ships need telescopes and other astrogation devices that will allow them to move around between planets and moons within a system.  Cost:  5,000 cr, mass: 1 ton, volume 2 cu. m.

Starships - In addition to the astrogation reqirements of a system ship, these ships need large telescopes and sensitive detectors to measure the positions of faint stars to determine the ships exact position and plot interstellar jumps.  Cost:  15,000 cr, mass 3 tons, volume: 5 cu m.

Deluxe starship package - This is a more sophisticated starship astrogation package that includes more sensitive detectors and a larger telescope.  It provides a 20% reduction in the time required to plot an intersellar jump and provides a +10% skill bonus to the astrogators using it .  Cost: 50,000 cr, mass 10 tons, volume 25 cu. m.

Communication and sensor equipment

Ther are a variety of communication and sensor equipment that can be employed by the various types of star ships.

Weapons

The following weapons are available for your ship.

Defenses

The following defensive system are available:

Specialized Equipment

These including mining equipment, exploration equipment, cargo handling equipment, etc.

Cargo Hold

Every ship should be able to carry at least a little cargo even if it is just for the ships personal supplies.  Of course this is take up the majority of space in a freighter.  A typical tramp freighter will have between 5 and 20 cargo units while some of the mega-freighters will have hundreds.

1 Cargo unit:  Cost: N/A (it's just empty space after all and will be accounted for in the cost of the hull),
Mass: 0, volume 150 cu m.

Ship vehicles and bays

There are a variety of small ships that a larger ship may be carrying.  These include launches, lifeboats, workpods and escape pods.  This could also include small shuttles or even fighter craft on military vessels.  This ships may be housed internally inside of bays within a ship or just docked externally depending on the ship designer's wishes.

Small Launch - Holds 4 passengers. Cost:  75,000 cr, Mass 50 tons, volume 20 cu m.

Large Launch - holds 10 passengers.  cost 100,000 cr, mass: 120 tons, volume:50 cu m.

Small Lifeboat - This lifeboat is designed to hold 10 beings instead of the standard 20.  Cost: 75,000 cr.  Mass 120 tons?, volume: 50 cu m.

Large Lifeboat - This is the standard lifeboad from the KH rules (20 passengers)  cost:  100,000 cr, Mass: 200 tons?, volume 80 cu m

Escape pod - The mass, cost and volume for an escape pod already include the bay/mount point in which it is held.  cost:  30,000 cr, mass: 15 tons, volume: 16 cu m.

Workpod - cost: 75,000cr, mass: 80 tons, volume: 30 cu m.

Bays - If the ship's vehicle is to housed inside the parent ship, space must be allocated to house the vehicle and secure it during maneuvers. Depending on the exact shape of the ship's vehicle, the vehicle bay could be two to three times the size of the ship itself.  The cost of a bay includes all the machinery needed to dock the craft and secure it during maneuvers.  Cost:  20,000*HS of vehicle cr, Mass: 25*HS of vehicle tons, volume: 1.5x volume of vehicle

External docking point - In this case the smaller ship is just attached to the outside of the mothership with a docking mechanism and connected by some sort of umbilical to allow access from within the main ship.  The only space10used up within the main ship is a bit of space for the vehicle access room (effectively an airlock) and some support equipment.  There is a limit to the number of ships that can be docked in this manner (Need to figure out how to limit it)  Cost:  5000 * HS of vehicle cr.  Mass: 15* HS of docked vehicle, volume: 10 cu m.

Size of crew and number of passengers.

The next step is to determine the number of crew memebers needed and the number of passengers the ship will accomodate.

Crew and passenger accomodations

There are a variety of crew and passenger accomodation levels.  The cost, mass and volume include the requirements for the cabin itself plus any associated passageways, common areas, cargo storage, etc.

First Class cabin - cost:  2,000 cr, mass: 2 tons, volume 180 cu m.
Journey class cabin - cost: 1,000 cr, mass: 1 ton, volume 75 cu m.
Storage class berth - cost: 2,000 cr, mass: 2 tons, volume: 10 cu m.

Life Support Equipment

Now that you know the number of crew and passengers, you can select the amount of life support equipment.  It is recommended that you have at least one backup life support system in case there are problems with (or damage to) the primary system.

Ship's Computer

Tally up all the function points for the ship's programsthe initial size of the ship's computer.  We still need to add a drive program so you might want to look ahead and budget for the type of drives you will be buying. 

Also you might consider adding a backup system in case there is damage or prolems with the primary system.  If you do, determine which programs you want duplicates of and compute the size and cost of the secondary computer system.

Power requirements

This is a new section.  It might now make it in.  However, I'd like to add power requirements for all the systems and a power reactor to run the systems.  Need to work out the details.  It would add mas and volume to the ship and provide other systems that you might lose in combat.

Hull Type

There are different hull types.  Each type has a mass and cost associated with it depending on the hull type selected.  Different hulls provide different amount of hull points for a given ship size.

Light Hull
Standard Hull
Armored Hull
Military Hull

Hull Size

To determine the hull size of the ship, add up the volume of all the components, accommodations and vehicle bays.  Don't add in the cargo bays yet.  This gives you the total volume of the ship systems in the inhabited portions of the ship.

Next we need to add in space for the various control centers of the ship (bridge, engineering, combat centers, etc.) and passage ways.  For simplicity we'll assume that these spaces add 25% to the existing volume of the ship's systems.  So the total volume of the inhabited portion of ship is determined by multiplying the volume of all the components by 1.25.

Finally to get the total ship volume, we add in the volume of the cargo area. 

Once we have the total volume of the ship, we can compute the hull size (maybe or simply look it up on the chart below).

The ship's hull size will determine things like it's Hull points, the number of ships that can be mounted externally and the numbe of engines it can support.

Now that we have the hull type and total volume, we can calculate the cost and mass of the hull.

<hull cost values go here, it should go up based on the volume >

Additional Armor

Sometimes even the strongest hull just isn't enough and you want to add more armor onto the ship.  Once you know the hull size, you can add additional layer of protection to the ship as desired.  This will greatly increase the cost and mass of your ship but won't affect the volume.

<This is another new section>

Total Mass

The only thing left is to add in the engines.  But first we need to know how much mass the engines will be moving.  To do that we tally up the mass of all ship components, the mass of the hull and any additional armor the ship is carrying.  This gives us the "empty" weight of the ship (i.e. carrying no cargo).

To determine the loaded weight, we assume that when the cargo area is loaded, it will be filled with cargo that has an average density of 2 tons per cubic meter.  To determine the loaded weight, multiply the number of cargo units that the ship is designed to carry by 300 tons and add it to the ship's empty weight. 

Keep these two numbers handy as they will be used to determine the maximum acceleration the ship can achieve in it's empty and loaded configurations.  For military vessels, passenger liners and other ships that aren't designed to haul a lot of cargo, these numbers will not be very different and you can just use the loaded weight in the following steps if you desire.  For freight haulers the numbers become quite important and will vary greatly.

Engines

Engines

Now that we know the mass of our ship, it's finally time to determine its propulsion. Each type and size of engine is rated to have a specific thrust and fuel capacity. Your ship's hull size determines the maximum number of engines it can support. You don't have to have to fill all your engine slots if that number of engines is not needed to achieve the performance you desire. And regardless of hull size and engine type, the maximum acceleration of any ship is 6g.

Hull Size	Max Engines
1	1
2-4	2
5-8	4
9-12	6
12+	8

Engine thrust is given as an arbitrary thrust rating that has been scaled to work with the mass of the ship as given in tons. To determine the maximum acceleration of your ship, add up the thrust ratings of all your engines and divide that by the total mass of your ship in tons. The resulting number is the maximum acceleration of your ship in multiples of one standard gravity (10 m/s/s). Round all fractions down to the nearest tenth of a g. (Add in a ½ A engine for fighters/shuttles)

Chemical Engines

These engines use a high efficiency chemical fuel that burns and is expelled out the engine nozzle to provide thrust. These engines are relatively cheap and easy to produce. While very powerful, because of the large volume of fuel needed, these engines have limited capability in regards to how long the engines can operate on a single fuel load. These engines are typically used for ground-to-space shuttles and system ships.

Ion Engines

Ion engines work by ionizing hydrogen and accelerating the resulting protons and electrons to high velocity and expelling them out the back of the engine to provide thrust. Each engine contains a small nuclear reactor to provide the power needed to ionize the hydrogen and accelerate the particles to the relativistic speeds needed to generate thrust. This reactor uses the same atomic fuel pellet as an atomic engine but only needs to be replaced once every 10 years. The initial fuel pellet is included in the cost of the engine.

While not as powerful as chemical or atomic engines, Ion engine fuel is relatively cheap and if a ship is properly equipped, can be harvested from any gas giant for free.

Because of the nature of the engine, ships with ion engines cannot land or take off from planets.

Atomic Engines

An Atomic engine is a supercharged version of the chemical engine and uses the same fuel. The engine works by generating a quantum field that temporarily increases the momentum of particles by a factor of hundreds. These temporarily super-massive particle are ejected out of the back of the engine to generate the thrust for the ship. Because each particle is effectively much more massive, less fuel is needed to achieve the same thrust and instead of a single fuel load lasting for only few minutes of thrust, it can last for days and allow the ship to accelerate to Void jump speeds.

However, generating this field requires a huge amount of energy (which is transferred to the particles) during operation. To provide this power, each engine contains its own nuclear reactor, similar in design to the reactor in the ion engine. However, the large power requirement of the atomic engine means that it consumes one atomic fuel pellet after only 10,000 minutes of full thrust operations (about 8.5 days) instead of the 10 year life span for the atomic fuel pellet in an ion engine.

In addition, atomic engines require an overhaul every few jumps, again depending on the size of the engines. This overhaul is necessary to make sure that the quantum field generators are properly aligned and positioned to only affect the fuel and not the body of the engine itself. The number of trips that a ship can go between overhauls depends on the size of the engine and is give in the table with the fuel costs below.

Engine Costs

The following table gives the cost and thrust values for each of the different types and sizes of engines. Determine the number, size, and type of engines your ship will use and then record the engines chosen for your ship.

	Class A			Class B			Class C
Engine Type	Thrust	Cost	Thrust		Cost	Thrust		Cost
Chemical	6,250	50,000	20,000		175,000	80,000		770,000
Ion	3,000	100,000	10,000		400,000	40,000		2,000,000
Atomic	6,250	250,000	20,000		1,100,000	80,000		6,000,000

Fuel

Next you need to provide fuel for your engines and how much acceleration each fuel load will provide for your ship. Each engine uses different types of fuel and has different storage capabilities and requirements.

Chemical Engines

Each fuel load allows a chemical engine to operate at maximum thrust for 60 minutes. This is typically enough to allow the ship to make one round trip between the ground and orbit or limited acceleration and maneuvering in space. Each engine can only hold a single fuel load and must be refueled after each load is expended. The cost of a fuel load depends on the size of the engine and is given in the following table.

Engine Class	Cost of a fuel load
Class A	300 cr
Class B	1000 cr
Class C	4200 cr

Ion engines

Although not as powerful as chemical or atomic engines, these engines are reliable and can hold more fuel. While they can technically run off any material, the fuel of choice is hydrogen. Using any other fuel source decreases the thrust provided by the engines by a factor of two. Each engine can hold 10,000 fuel units and each unit provides 10 minutes of operation at maximum thrust (A fully fueled ion engine can operate continuously for over 80 days without refueling). A fuel unit costs 5, 17, or 70 cr per unit for Class A, B, or C engines respectively.

Once every 10 years, the atomic fuel pellet in the ion engine’s reactor needs to be replaced, the cost for this fuel pellet is the same as that for a similarly sized atomic engine.

Atomic engines

Like the other engines, Atomic engines store all their fuel internally. The fuel for these engines consists of two parts. The first is a load of fuel like the chemical rockets, the second consists an atomic fuel pellet (typically uranium) to power the reactor. The amount of fuel that can be stored depends on the size of the engine and is given in the table below.

Each atomic fuel pellet and load of chemical fuel provides enough fuel for 10,000 minutes (about 8.3 days) of operation at maximum thrust. The cost of a fuel pellet depends on the size of the engine, given in the table below. The cost of the chemical fuel is identical to that of the chemical engines of the same size.

Consult the table below to determine the number of fuel loads & pellets held and time between each overhaul for each engine size.

Engine Class	Trips between overhauls	Maximum Fuel Pellets loaded	Cost per pellet (cr)
Class A	1	3	10,000
Class B	3	6	32,000
Class C	10	12	125,000

Compute total acceleration per fuel load

Acceleration is measured in ADF One ADF is defined as 10 minutes of acceleration at 1g.

If you want to keep it simple, you can simply assume the following:

• a load of fuel in a chemical rocket provides just enough thrust to make one round trip between the ground and orbit around a planet or can provide a total of 8 ADF in space.

• Ion engines use one fuel unit per engine per ADF and a total of 1000 fuel units per engine for a single interstellar jump

• Atomic engines use one chemical fuel load and one atomic fuel pellet for a single interstellar jump or the same fuel provides enough thrust for a total of 1000 ADF if operating solely in-system.

If you want to be a bit more exact and track the exact fuel usage you can do the following to computer the total number of ADF that a load of fuel will provide for your ship depending on the type of engine you have.

• Chemical Engines – Take the maximum acceleration you calculated for the ship earlier and multiply it by 6. This is the total number of ADF your ship gets from using one load of fuel in each engine.

• Ion Engines – The maximum acceleration calculated above is the number of ADF provided by expending a single ion fuel unit in each engine.

• Atomic Engines – Take the maximum acceleration calculated earlier and multiply by 1000. This is the total ADF provided by using one unit of chemical fuel and one atomic fuel pellet in each of your engines.

Examples

Chemical Engine

Fully loaded a Digger Shuttle (HS 2) has one Class A chemical engine and a maximum acceleration of 4.7g. Since it has chemical engines, the total ADF provided by the single load of fuel in its engine is 4.7 x 6 = 28.2 or 28 ADF.

Ion Engine

A small (HS 7) freighter is equipped with four Class B ion engines. Fully loaded, its maximum acceleration is 1.1g. Thus by using up one fuel unit in each of it's four engines, it has 1.1 ADF available. If each engine carries it's maximum fuel load (10,000 units each), the total ADF available to the ship is 11,000 ADF. Since each interstellar jump typically takes 1000 ADF to complete, the ship can make 11 trips without refueling if it needed to.

Atomic Engine

The newly designed Swift class assault scout has a total mass of 2470.83 tons and two Class A atomic engines for a total thrust of 12500. This gives a maximum acceleration of 5.059g which rounds to 5.0. The total ADF available to the assault scout from one load of fuel in each engine is therefore 5x1000 = 5000 ADF. After expending this much thrust, the assault scout will have used two loads of chemical fuel and two atomic fuel pellets, one in each engine.

Final computer and power requirements

Now that you have the engine size, number and type, you can update the final specs on your computers by adding in the drive program needed to run the drives.  This will probably change the size and power requirements of your computers.  Not the changes and any increased costs.  The increased mass and volume are absorbed into the scaling we used when generating the hull.

Final cost

You've designed your ship, picked all its components and tricked it out exactly how you want it.  Now it is time to pay the piper.  Tally up the costs of all the components, engines, hull and other items to get the final cost for your new ship.

Final Stats

Now that you are done building, you can tally up the final statistics for your ship.  Record the ADF as determined in the engine selection step and then you can compute the HP and DCR of your ship based on the components, hull and armor selected.