 March 24, 2012 - 9:45pm | Watching a documentary on the Essex that was the whaling ship that was attacked and sunk by a whale and became the inspiration for Moby Dick. The Essex was 20 years old which was nearing the end of the ship's useful life. How long can a space ship hull enjoy a usefull working life, before its sold for scrap, or purchased by a lower budget colonization effort, etc. I suppose the real question is what are the effects of age on a space ship hull, how do we quantify them in game terms? (tactical impact or KHs action) Secondly, what are the imacts on the campaign, or AD or strategic gaming? What sort of storylines does an aged hull lend itself to? I think one thing: a table of major maintenance issues, these are not just quirks but potentially dangerous problems. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 March 25, 2012 - 9:53am | Start with how long it takes to pay off the mortgage on a ship. You should expect to use the ship for the length of the mortgage and then maybe half the length before you need to get another one. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 March 25, 2012 - 12:53pm | I did some searching for hard data on the internet but I could not find it. When I was working on my masters degree I took a class on the space environment, then my job at Stewart Radiance Lab was designing an instrument for a weather satellite. In both cases we were taught that space is a very harsh environment and it deteriorates the spacecraft. We often compared it to the inside of a nuclear reactor. Everything is constantly being bombarded by high energy particles and these blast atoms out of the structure of the materials making the craft. Metals become brittle, electronics start having opens and shorts on the chips, optics gain blemishes, materials become charges with electricity and may even become radioactive. Space is harsh. I would say that a lot of the unsung advances in frontier technology have been in materials science to adapt to the space environment. Spacecraft that in Earth tech last a decade or two should last fifty plus years in frontier tech. We could compare this to navy vessels of today. The Enterprise is fifty years old and on her last cruise. She is a great ship but is harder to maintain now because of her age. The maintenance bill is one reason the Navy is retiring her. Older tech Navy vessels didn't last so long. So I guess I'm voting for 50 years as the minimum age of an old frontier spaceship. I am inclined to push this as high as 80, but not more. Also remember that age of a ship or any other vehicle is also judged by replacement part availability. Once the parts are hard to get then people start thinking of the ship as old. -iggy |
 March 25, 2012 - 1:21pm | Perhaps "modern" frontier ships have miniaturized energy fields that block undesirable space stuff allowing these ships to last up to 100 years. The Marionette (PGC robotic ship) lasted 28+ years in space. Of course the cybot went crazy. :-) It sure would help those Trash Men orbiting Earth cleaning up the space junk! |
 March 25, 2012 - 1:56pm | There are a couple of authors/sci-fi series that talk about this. Thinking mainly of the Ky Vatta privateer series by Elizabeth Moon and the Lost Fleet by Jack Campbell. In the first the main privateer ship being used in one book has upgrade issues due to frame fatigue, # of prior modifications, etc. In the latter the warships have issues with everything from minor systems to power distribution because during the recent war the ships had an expected lifespan of 3 years and they were now 5+. For the adventure I am working on (https://sites.google.com/site/stariumx/) the main Freetrader ship has a backstory that considers practical usage and obselecence: 137fy - Ship is still in use in the Mystery of Starium-X adventure as a free trader. 129fy - Freetrader Captain purchases the ship from the Frontier Exploration Corps after it is retired. Minor refit is required, primarily to remove military grade sensor systems. 109fy - Retired as a freighter due to heavier load requirements and hull age, the vessel is purchased by the Frontier Exploration Corps, useful for it's modular design and thrust/mass ratio. It is then refitted for long range exploration services with upgrades, hull strengthening and permenantly afixing a set of containers to build out as lab space and extra tanks for atmospheric gas and reaction mass. 69fy - Modular Freighter enters service after completing shakedown cruise. |
 March 25, 2012 - 3:11pm | Considering how much time a space ship actually spends in...space, I don't see them rapidly succumbing to the elements. If anything it's the interior atmosphere that will do anything, and that should be controlled to keep salt levels and humidity down thus preventing oxidation. Nay, combat will destroy a frame much more efficiently than the elements. ;) |
March 25, 2012 - 4:01pm | Spaceships don't succumb to the elements, they succumb to high energy subatomic particles ejected at high velocity from stars (solar wind). We can conjecture that deep space is softer on spaceships. However we have never gotten any probes with the instruments needed that far away from the sun to find out. I am proposing that frontier tech has advanced materials science to the point that spaceship hulls and reactor walls are built of exotic alloys that are radiation resistant. A frontier engineer would look at lead lined hulls and reactor walls as extremely simplistic and inefficient. -iggy |
March 25, 2012 - 4:21pm | Gentleman we are dealing with a people who live 200 years. Methinks they would have spaceships that last at least half that time. How realistic this is is up to debate but that is why this is science FICTION. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
March 25, 2012 - 7:33pm | Spaceships don't succumb to the elements, they succumb to high energy subatomic particles ejected at high velocity from stars (solar wind). We can conjecture that deep space is softer on spaceships. However we have never gotten any probes with the instruments needed that far away from the sun to find out. I am proposing that frontier tech has advanced materials science to the point that spaceship hulls and reactor walls are built of exotic alloys that are radiation resistant. A frontier engineer would look at lead lined hulls and reactor walls as extremely simplistic and inefficient. The material already exists in the setting: federanium and if this is not enough then the two mysterious ores/alloys that the PCs can capture at the pirate city in SF-1: tomarillium and V something can be used. @ First citizen: I liked your run down on the ship's use and refit. @Rat traveller: are you annoyed with this thread? I thought your point about the ship lasting for the life of the loan and 50% more time was a good idea. EDIT: Sum up: 1. for the game to be practical we have to assume some major advances in material science yet in the end the exposure to raditiation is space is really tough on ships and they dont last forever so I've heard suggestions of 80-100 years and that would presume the bank note on a ship is paid off in less than that time. 2. One thing overlooked is stasis field technology which is part of the KHs cannon, though it is ill defined. It could be used to enveloped a moth ball ship that is sitting in space to prevent or limit the damage. This could allow Space Fleet to stand down ships and provided power is available preserve them for future need. That presumes that stasis fields actually do what I think they do. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 25, 2012 - 8:03pm | Refereeism - the length a hull will last in-game.  |
March 25, 2012 - 9:53pm | I suspect that stasis field technology wouldn't apply or wouldn't scale to ship hulls. In the very least it would not be economical. It is much cheaper to park the ship far out on the edges of a system, at a known deep space location, in the shadow of a large planet, orbiting a nomad planet, or stored in an asteroid that has been hollowed out. I really like the idea of starship graveyards. I very much like Shadow's Boneyard Station concept of a station with a nearby yard of ships and bare hulls ready for salvage. Likely only ships that will move through the salvage inventory quickly will be near the station and it's planet. Valuable collector hulls are probably stored far out of the system around the last planet or in the shadow of the furthest out gas giant. Similar practice is done here on Earth, there are salvage yards everywhere, but if it is valuable enough, it is taken out to the desert states and stored in a salvage yard there where the weather doesn't take as much a toll. Funny, I just remembered that the term space weather is used to describe the Sun's effect on the solar system. Our space weather is actively tracked and at times we have solar storms. We lost a satellite a week or so ago in the last big solar storm. The satellite is still up there but it is nonoperative because it's electronics got fried. Frontier scientists have likely studied space weather very extensively and know where the "calm waters" are. -iggy |
March 26, 2012 - 1:24am | Someone might be able to look it up for verification, but I seem to recall the Dragon article "Take Command of a Titan" mentioned something along the lines of "Crews and owners may come and go but the ship is always there." |
March 26, 2012 - 4:22am | Someone might be able to look it up for verification, but I seem to recall the Dragon article "Take Command of a Titan" mentioned something along the lines of "Crews and owners may come and go but the ship is always there." Yes but I think that was just the author waxing poetic with flowery language. I'm betting that space fleet has figured out which star, and I would assume a dim one, is the least harmful for hulls and established its location for a mothball fleet there. Also this discussion has me wondering about the heliopause- the point at which the pressure of the solar wind stops pushing back on galactic radiation/ cosmic rays. Is the "space weather" beyond the heliopause thought to be more harmfull? I remember seeing something about this property of the solar wind makes life possible on earth because otherwise the cosmic radiation is harmful enough to prevent life. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 26, 2012 - 6:52am | Mist Graveyard Station This special station host a most unusual spacheship graveyard. To combat the effects of the cosmos on an unprotected hull, ships are plunged into the Vath, the 8th and largest gas giant in this system. Before their descent they are sprayed with a epoxy to prevent rust and erosion, then they are tethered to Mist Station for retrieval at another time. |
 March 26, 2012 - 5:54pm | Yes, the cosmic environment outside the heliopause is much worse than that inside. At least at the "lower" energies (up to around 1 GeV. That's about 1 to 100 thousand times more energy than the x-rays used in medicine) At higher energies, the solar wind doesn't actually have much effect on the galactic cosmic rays and they stream right down to the earth. Fermi (the gamma ray satellite I work on) gets between 6 and 8 thousand cosmic rays impacting it every second (it's 1.5m x 1.5m x 1m in size). And the radiation is isotropic, i.e. comes equally from every direction so there aren't really any shadow areas. Your best bet is to hid the ships insides something if you want to make them last longer. Underground, hollowed out asteroids would work well as most of the radiation doesn't penetrate very far through any dense material. I can see ships lasting 80-100 years. Although by then, they will be getting weary and very decrepid. Per the KH rules, an 80 year old ship has a 17% chance of a breakdown per voyage. And that is if it is well maintained. At that rate, and assuming only one trip a month (not very busy) you are almost gaunteed to have a breakdown every few months. Personally, I'd go for half that, 40-50 years, as the typical life time of a ship. After which it seriously becomes a clunker. Based on the loan rules, I see typical loans for buying ships being between 5-10 years. Typical first owner ships will be kept until at most age twenty. At that point they have a 5% breakdown chance per voyage. Which means that if you make twenty trips a year (probably typical since it takes 8-9 days to make a jump and then you have to load, unload, or do whatever you came to do before leaving again so one trip every 20 days doesn't seem unreasonable) then you are almost guaranteed an average of a breakdown a year. Beyond that, the owner will sell the ship and use the proceeds to get a new and improved one so they don't have to deal with the maintenance headaches. Also, where is federanium referenced in the rules? I'm sure I've seen it and everyone talks about it but I can't for the life of me remember where. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
March 26, 2012 - 8:30pm | Sorry I was off for a couple days. I am not annoyed by this thread. I just don't think we can apply realistic lifespans to the ships. We are told to accept certain things when we play fiction games especially ones which use advanced science and magic so we should not try. Besides everyone seems to forget this part of space is supposed to have stars which are much closer together and much more numerous. This should mean the hulls would deteriorate much faster. So lets not use any system which ruins them and lets keep the floating graveyards around. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
March 26, 2012 - 10:30pm | I love this thread. I look forward to reading something new in it each time I login. I know it will eventually run out and I'll have a time until another thread catches my fancy like this one has so I am going to savor it while it is here. It's a bit like when I was in my dral mood and the posts were going in the core four project. I like when we discuss the parameters of future tech before I need them in a game because then I am ready when it pops up in game and I don't have to guess and then contradict myself later in the game. @TerlObar I was waiting for a post from you. Great read. I needed the correction on space environment beyond the heliopause. My course work was on the space environment around the Earth for satellite design. I think all of us want to keep our ships around a good long reasonable time. Also there has to be a wear and tear reason for the spacesuit-ed guy to need to be out repainting the hull of Red Dwarf. The thing I have always wondered is who is that guy. Lister is too lazy to do it, Cat wouldn't get caught dead wearing that spacesuit, and Kryten and Rimmer don't need a spacesuit. Did no one ever let him back in? -iggy |
March 27, 2012 - 1:10am | My whole take on the old ships angle is this: old ships don't fall apart because they're old, rather they fall apart because their owners neglect them. It's like the 60s/70s era Harley Davidsons. To this day the company's reputation is plagued by the oil leaking nature of those bikes back then. Sure, the company had poor quality control and craftsmanship back then...but due to the ridiculous amount of aftermarket support the brand enjoys (which has been pretty consistent even before all those hyped up goofy bike building shows on Discovery Channel), you could throw a ham bone and hit a dozen companies that offered repalcement parts that could be swapped in. Lo and behold, by actually addressing the problem the engine oil would actually stay inside the engine. And so it is with star ships. If something isn't quite up to par, I'm pretty sure someone on one of the 27 different civilized worlds of the Frontier (or 39 if you go by Zeb's) has something to make it right. One final tid-bit on the matter...the KH manual has a clause where there is a 1% chance of failure on a voyage for every five years of ship age. Hence a 50 year old ship has a 10% chance of breakdown, 100 year old ship 20%, and so on. Ironically the breakdown table lists a meteor collision being 20% of the problems for older ships instead of actual equipment failures...apparently new ships are meteor proof? Anyways my point here is looking at the breakdown tables, if you're really worried about your 100 year old star ship breaking down, flip some coin toward new atomic drives, life support equipment, communication gear, and computer programs...since those are the actual failure points on the table. Problem solved.  Also, where is federanium referenced in the rules? I'm sure I've seen it and everyone talks about it but I can't for the life of me remember where.
Zeb's Guide. Take that for what it's worth  |
March 27, 2012 - 4:49am | I think perhaps modern day airframes are a better comparison to star ships. There will be a point at which wear tear and stress and cosmic rays have weakened a star ship's frame and hull to the point that breakdowns are very problematic. Imagine a situation where a disreputable organization does a cosmetic overhaul on a 125 year old ship then forges papers on it to make 55 years young. New owners will have a problem whether its PC's or PC's responding to a mayday of a star liner that has suffered repeated and catastrophic failures. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 27, 2012 - 5:41am | Speaking of Airframes. During 2005 to mid 2007 I worked on an airfield in Kuwait primarily with the US Air Force. The largest number of aircraft they used was the C-130 ( http://www.globalaircraft.org/planes/c-130_hercules.pl ). One of the pilots told me that the year of manufacture was located in the serial number so I find out how old the planes were. The majority of these planes were over thirty years old some had even been used in the Vietnam war. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
March 27, 2012 - 6:41am | @Shadow, I always thought the meteor collision entry in the table was due to failure in the interia screens that keep space debris from damaging the ship. Later in Dragon they called them "contact deflectors". |
March 27, 2012 - 3:14pm | The main point is that constant maintenance keeps them flying even in an environment as bad for aircraft engines as the Middle East. This means checks before and after each flight, regular scheduled maintenance and every 6 months a complete X-ray of the plane to look for stress fractures in the airframe. I always thought the meteor collision entry in the table was due to failure in the interia screens that keep space debris from damaging the ship. Later in Dragon they called them "contact deflectors". Call it what you will but canon makes no reference to such a system. The only thing that even comes close is the ICM defense system, but thanks to MHS and civilian ship modification rules not every ship has such a system. Either way, the concept remains the same: if your "contact deflectors" keep crapping out, replace them. |
 March 27, 2012 - 6:56pm | @ Rattraveller: I used to be a C-130 Mechanic for the AF and I have to say that those planes are older than I am(41), at least most of the ones I worked on. They continue to be usefull and will take more punishment than most people realize. But there is a lot of maintenance. I would suspect for spaceships things would be the same. If the ship is pushed to the limits and you maintain them they will outlast their expected life. @ SS: I think you said it too. Maintenance costs may outwiegh keeping the ship so go buy a new one. It all really comes down to how you want your game to go. If you think throwing kinks into the pc's life with ship breakdowns is good, then hit'em hard. Take all their money for repairs, keep them in dock, and have a great adventure having them figure out how to get it done. IIRC, a certain rouge from Star Wars was always working on his ship to keep it going. |
March 27, 2012 - 8:02pm | I was thinking about the movie with John Boy Walton, Battle Beyond The Star- where John Boy takes the old Corsair fighter out to find warriors. That ship was housed in a cavern but its old so, though the movie didn't show it but that ship would require at least some of the TLC that the c130 gets. Here's the thing, players want a ship and they like getting a free one too so why not give them one that requires a lot of TLC. Even make it that the same thing keeps breaking down so that they say why dont we just change that the next time we get a big payday. Meanwhile you've set up a quest to find the required part or that the one guy that has said part/engine/ bi-lateral phase inducer has something he wants and will trade for that. I think Shadow did this in his Pirates of Volturnus game where the PC pirates had to fix a ship to get out of Dodge before the Sathar arrived. A lot of fun could be had with this. Alternately, lost ship/flying dutchman is found and the attempt is made to salvage it- buyer of the engines is upset now and wants his money back but the PCs have already spent the money. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 27, 2012 - 9:53pm | @ Rattraveller: I used to be a C-130 Mechanic for the AF and I have to say that those planes are older than I am(41), at least most of the ones I worked on. They continue to be usefull and will take more punishment than most people realize. But there is a lot of maintenance. I would suspect for spaceships things would be the same. If the ship is pushed to the limits and you maintain them they will outlast their expected life. Just to drag this out a little further...many civilian firefighter groups whine to no end about their surplus C-130 water tankers failing left and right, despite their service records are almost nonexistant once the planes leave the military's hands. Touché. I think Shadow did this in his Pirates of Volturnus game where the PC pirates had to fix a ship to get out of Dodge before the Sathar arrived.
Right you are. Actually it was two ships, there was a downed pirate scout ship and LtCol Jameson's shuttle craft --- between the two ships the players could salvage enough parts to get one off the ground and into space in order to regroup with the rest of the pack. |
 March 28, 2012 - 7:21am | If the SF universe is even half of what real life is, I think the biggest expense would be the continual upgrades to software and peripherals. MS Portals operating systems 1.7 through 9.3 hitting the market in a span of 3 years. Of course, your ships systems are not compatible with previous versions (or future versions, apparently). And lets not forget all the patches. |
March 28, 2012 - 9:45am | PGC and SW1 had a unifying influence on society and technology so I would imagine that pre SW1 hardware would be beset with incompatibility problems. One question that we should ask is, "Does industry in the Frontier operate on principles of Controlled Obsolescence. Or is the culture such that because they are just coming out of a period of rapid colonization and things sent to new colonies have to last they are made to last. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 28, 2012 - 9:50pm | My take would be controlled obsolescence since mega-corps would not want to lose market share even to new colonies. Since these colonies are not just shot off and maybe heard from again (EARTH 2) they would want to keep them as developing markets. Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
March 28, 2012 - 12:26pm | I would side with controlled obsolescence as well. In my game, WarTech has the contracts for all the newer/mainstream SpaceFleet craft: fighters, assault scouts, frigates, and battleships...leaving PGC and Streel to duke it out for the older designs (destroyers, cruisers, carriers, etc). This subtlety "forces" PGC and Streel into developing improved designs on their older warships in the spirit of competition...re: why retire the venerable heavy cruisers when you can improve upon them? In other words, half the fleet (the more modern stuff) comes from one source while the soon-to-be-obsolete other half comes from other sources, who are bidding against each other for better replacements. Which will eventually force WarTech into improving their no longer newer designs. |
March 28, 2012 - 9:56pm | Upgrades are fun. During the Yugoslavian break up of the 90's some of the forces fought with WWII Sherman and T-34 tanks. Of course these tanks had 105mm or 120mm main guns, laser range finders, targeting computers, and a few other upgrades they could slap on. Wonder what upgrades there could be to SF equipment and what the old stuff looks like? Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
