 August 4, 2012 - 5:56pm | Perhaps its time to drop the nothing bigger than HS 3 with atomic drives landing on a planet rule. HS5 can land and seriously I'm betting that the thinking in the '80s was that nuclear anything was bad so that led to that deal-E-O of no atomic powered craft over HS landing and taking off. Having looked at pages on wikipedia, atomic rocket page and etc the ill-defined KHs atomic drive really should be re-interpreted and if its update at all it would be silly to say that HS 5 ships can land as long as they dont have atomic drives. I say flush that rule. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 March 11, 2015 - 4:10pm | Well size is an issue with the ships. A HS5 ship is 100m tall unless you're going to duel-arrange the ships decks. (Which means making the rooms so small that they will allow orientation in either "down-is-towards-the-tail" or "down-is-towards-the-wall" direction depending) Such a ship needs to be 'strong' in both direction so, (even if not reflected in game) that means extra material and bracing is required as well as added drives or ones that swivel. (And mounting them in places OTHER than the tail even on struts :) ) On the other hand I don't see a problem with an HS20 dedicated "lander" being possible. But as for the Atomic engines themselves I don't see it being as much of a problem as the rules state. Simply put "if" the Atomics are as dangerious as the rules state then the KH ships are all death-traps from the get-go. Agree. Flush the rule. Randy |
 March 12, 2015 - 5:43am | Yes, if the ship is strong enough to handle 1g acceleration in space it is strong enough to handle 1g accleration sitting on the surface of a planet. And if can handle 2g in space it can handle a slow lift off. Even the space shuttles only exprienced just over 3g during liftoff. The main issue is if the landing platform can handle the mass of the ship sitting on it and if the ship can hold itself upright. Otherwise there is no reason any ship couldn't land tail first on a planet. Of course plopping down a 600m tall building in a high wind area might not be a good idea. Plus how do you access those hatches that are 360 m in the air? So instead of limiting the ships by hull size flat out, you rate your landing areas by how big a ship they can support. "Sorry sir, we'd love to let your land your HS 7 freighter to off-load the cargo but our tarmak is only rated to hull size 5. You'll crack the landing area. You'll have to divert to Port Loren Interstellar to land." Or if you try to set your corvette down in a field on a newly discovered planet and find that your landing gear have sunk six feet into the ground. 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 12, 2015 - 7:59am | @ Terl: what would you consider the largest HS for landing on planet under the conditions of this discussion I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
March 12, 2015 - 6:22pm | Given the right infrastructure you you land a HS 20 ship as far as I'm concerned. You're just going to need either really, really tall buildings to moor against or really really deep holes to land in. Of course landing in holes might be an issue for exhaust and such. A HS 7 ship is about 500 ft tall. That's a 50-60 story building. I can see limiting it to HS 5 just due to the height. A HS 5 ship is 330 feet tall (33-40 stories). For comparison, the Saturn V was 363 ft tall so about the same size. 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 12, 2015 - 6:54pm | Or you land horizontally :) HS20 size ship plops down into a handy bay and sidles up to a dock. Been done in some sci-fi I recall. I'd agree that in general you probaly wouldn't actually "land" any starships over about HS5 just on general principles. They'd take some specific and special handling and operations gear and be a bear to handle outside of a prepared port facility. Getting down once the ship is down I've had thoughts of using similar "landing elevator cabins" as do the FFE ships in "Battle in Outer Space" (http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/embarking.php) BTW Atomic Rockets has updated significant'y again :) In most cases though you can rig the design to allow some sort of near-surface access capability pretty easily. The AS has the engines on the wings (I've got several designs and most use the "Mars Snooper" layout with the engines imbedded on the wings and incorperating landing gear systems) so it can techniclally have its "aft end" on or very near the ground for ramp style access. Space Scout layout and Mars Snooper: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/deckplans.php#id--Space_Scout Randy |
March 12, 2015 - 7:34pm | You can definitely design a ship to have access near the surface. But off-loading cargo through a single set of doors is going to be a bit time consuming. As to landing horizontally, again, the ship would need to be designed differently to do that but no reason you couldn't. You could even make the ship short and fat and get around much of the height issues. I was just looking at it in terms of the "canon" ship designs: long skinny cylinders. You definitely couldn't land the canon ships horizontially. The decks aren't designed for it and you'd have no way to control your landing as your thrust would be entirely in the wrong direction. On this ships you have to land tail first and upright or you're not taking off again. But given specially designed ships and facilities, I don't have a problem with landing any size ship if it makes sense. 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 13, 2015 - 4:40pm | One of the things I liked about the Perry-Rhodan-Universe ships was that the whole lower half of the (usually) spherical Earth ships was for off-loading-and-transfer of goods/people with built in elevators and lifts. Of course that's both something I like and am annoyed about with "canon" ships is that they are all skinny cylinders and making "alternate" hull types was such a pain. For larger "landing" ships I prefer spheres (with the occasional "disc" design :) ) for most designs. For non-landers I see the "long-and-skinny" making some sense, especially if you go with modular cargo/passenger pods. In many cases space-to-space designs make more sense than a ship that can land does but for PC adventures its almost always been surface-to-surface ships and all that implies. I will always regret not getting to run the converted Traveller adventure: "Leviathan" (http://index.rpg.net/display-entry.phtml?mainid=700) for SF as it included some awsome possible adventures. (Then again "part" of the conversion was to include the "Mutiny on the Eleanor Moraes" (http://www.waynesbooks.com/starfrontiers.html) as an "away-mission" using an assigned scouting vessel instead of the included "freighter-hull-drive" in the module) Randy |
