 October 29, 2014 - 5:56pm | First off, I create starships for a hobby. I've been doing it for about 20 years now. From graph paper to computers, I've basically done it all in both mediums. Now, back in the late 80's, I tried to create my own game system. It used elements from Starfroniters, Traveller and Battletech, with a pinch of Robotech and Iron Crown games thrown in. I came up with a system to design starships based on 1.5 by 1.5 meter square for the tonage. The ships use hydrogen fuel and fussion powerplant. They also used anti-grav floor plates. I'm telling you this because most of my design are linear and not to Star Frontier spec. Here is an example: |
October 29, 2014 - 6:02pm | I did this because, I want people to understand I've got some where in the neighborhood of 70 completed drawing and well over a 200 hundred + unfinshed drawings. I work on them during weekend when I have time and when I'm finished I'll post them on the COTI forum under the name Rigel Stardin. Since these designs don't fit into the Starfroniters theme. I'm working on designs for this forum plus I'm drafting blueprints for my work at this time as well. But it takes time, and hopefully you'll see something in a few weeks. |
 October 29, 2014 - 7:54pm | Cool. I look forward to seeing your designs. 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 |
 October 29, 2014 - 7:58pm | Nice dude... i wish I have your tools and your talent. That ship is assuming artifical gravity... in your library of designs have you done much with the linear acceleration assumption in battletech and SF? I look at sites such as RPGNow and like just about all the ship designs always assume for artifical gravity. Rare is a deck plan design you can use with SF out in the market. I guess that is because of the already small market for ship decks out there... the lower tech ones without artifical gravity are only a smaller sliver. ----------------------------------------------- |
October 30, 2014 - 6:14am | I'm sorry I didn't [read] your original post in enough detail. Disregard my post above. ----------------------------------------------- |
 October 29, 2014 - 8:30pm | Really nice "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
 October 29, 2014 - 9:18pm | Nice work. You should check out the Deck Plans project. |
 October 29, 2014 - 10:05pm | You certainly could use those designs as is in Starships & Spacemen 2E or if you house rule artificial gravity into your Star Frontiers game. I reconcilled the problem of Artificial gravity by including it in my Star Frontiers game setting as cutting edge technology that was relatively rare and very expensive so both tech could co-exist in the same universe. I love seeing what other people do with Hard Sci-Fi but its just not for me. I prefer cinematic sci-fi / space fantasy because I don't have a lot of spare time to sit around figuing out thrust to mass ratios or delta V for vehicles that don't exist and most likely never will. I respect those who do strive for that level of realism in their games but for me I want to jump waist deep into the pool of sci-fi goodness and let the science work itself out. |
 October 30, 2014 - 5:01am | Very nice. I too enjoy seeing deckplans no matter the layout. I will look for you in COTI and i encourage you to post anything here as well. Thanks for sharing your work with us. What tools do you use? Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
 October 30, 2014 - 3:34pm | Sweet! I am anxious to see some vertical deck ships you have in the works. The horizontal deck ship you did above is wonderfull. Do you write up notes on what each room and section is? -iggy |
October 30, 2014 - 6:38pm |
Thanks for the complements everyone. Rum Rogue: I use a program called Neopaint by Neosoft. It’s about $50 and they have a web site. The program is nothing more than advance version of MS Paint. The nice thing about the program is the feature they call Stamps. It allows me to save a room to its own little file that I can paste to any drawing when needed. The latest version has the ability to layer your drawings as well. You can also save the drawing to several different file formats. The most common are: BMP, GIF, PNG and JPEG. Don’t try this at home, I’m a trained professional: That’s a joke by the way J. As I have already stated, I’ve been doing this since the 80’s. Neopaint first came out in a DOS format, which tells you how long I’ve been drawing on the computer. I can’t tell you how many files I have on my computer concerning starship deck plans. What I don’t use on one ship, I’ll save for another ship. SO I’ve got a wealth of drawing to draw from when I start a design. So if you plan to start drawing deck plans, it’s going to take a while for you to build up your own database of drawings. Trust me I keep refining my drawings every time I come up with a new part. Abub: Yes, I have one or three. And I’ve posted two of those designs. Here is one of them, http://www.starfrontiers.us/node/8136 ,the other one is in Frontier Explorer 9 under my real name. Iggy: How about my version of the Eleanor Moraes, which was one of my earlier drawings? I’ve started to update it when I joined the forum. And yes, I do write ups upon request. |
October 30, 2014 - 10:05pm | @Tollon, The NG-1000 Container Ship in FE#9? I'm happy to have you sumbitting to FE and SFman. The Eleanor Moraes would be fine. New stuff is nise to see too. As Shadow Shack mentioned there is a deck plans project and most people are a member of it so we see when things post there. -iggy |
October 30, 2014 - 10:19pm | Understand one thing, I've been out of gaming since 87. I'll have to let you guys figure out the game mechanics. I just design the ships. |
October 31, 2014 - 7:22am | The Leva Stodtko Survey Vessel is up and running in the Ship design forum. |
November 1, 2014 - 8:47am | The entire ship has been posted and desriptions for every deck have been written in the Ship Design Fourm. |
 November 2, 2014 - 9:52pm | The frigate seems quite luxurious for a spaceship, what with it's regular beds, washing facilities, etc. I think such things would have to be made much more compact and 'fold-away' on non-luxury ships, especially military ones. Ideally you want to make sure that the ship isn't lugging around too much weight that could be saved by better use of internal space and the devices within that space. |
November 3, 2014 - 5:53pm | KRingway: There is a psychological reason for this and has to do with cramming to many people into a small space for long period of time. Second, the hallways are only five feet wide (4.9 Feet to be exact.) The beds are exserated at little but that is because I want you to identify the room as sleeping quarters. Most of the crew quarters house 2 or 3 crewmembers, only the officer's quarters house one person. |
November 4, 2014 - 1:48am | But if space is taken up with things that could be folded away, that space would feel more cramped. It's therefore better to have a feeling of space as much as possible. The tendency with deck plans is to make ships pretty much like houses or sea-faring ships, both of which have interiors that would be a luxuriant use of available floor space and weight compared to what would be required for a spaceship. |
 November 4, 2014 - 4:49am | It's like comparing Blackhole vs Firefly. Does it really matter? Both are good. |
November 4, 2014 - 10:53am | I figure you will have different interiors based on when the ship was built & likes & dislikes of consumers/purpose... a ship transporting "groundhogs" regulalry might have more space used for quarters so the passangers are less of a hassel. A ship that is all spacers in quarters will probably be tighter, more compact... look at how different campers/RVs & boats/ships are for markets & time periods. But age of craft would make a huge difference in "luxaries" and how space is delt with. "Never fire a laser at a mirror." |
November 4, 2014 - 5:50pm |
Nomenclature: VHA-1100 Common
Name: Manufacturer: Standard Production Model Classification: Frigate Crew: 6 officers and 18
enlisted Drives: 2 Standard Thrusters Additional
Craft: 1 20 ton Launch and 4 escape
pods Armament: 4 fixed Laser Cannons, 2 Bar
Arrays, 4 QF Torpedo Launchers, 48 CSM and 4 hull mounted dual Laser Turrets. Defense: Electronic Warfare Suite, 24
Electronic Countermeasures, Armor Plating, and Force Shield Generator. Displacement
full loaded, tons: 1532 Length,
Feet [meters]: 394.7 [120.3] Beam,
Feet [meters]: 146.0 [44.5] Speed:
5 Gs. 1 light year per day Range: 19.1 days Recognition
Features: n
General
Shape: The design features a flatten
arrowhead section at the bow, while the stern forms a ‘T’ shape. n
Side
profile: Bow is ovaliod in shape which
extents back to about the midship area. Stern
section is dominated by box like fuel tanks, fuel scoop and engine nacelles are
center lined of the fuel tanks. Port and Starboard airlock are visible on the
upper half of the main body. Bar Array
are center lined of main body towards the rear.
Remote turrets are located towards the rear of the main hull dorsal and
ventral side. n
Forward
Profile: Ovaloid shape of main body
clearly visible, Fuel tanks extend above and below the main hull, nacelles are
visible port and starboard side.
Viewport is visible on the nose of the craft from this angle. Dorsal and
Ventral turrets visible. n
Aft
Profile: Fuel tanks extend above and below the main hull and nacelles are
visible port and starboard side. Ovaloid
shape of main body visible from this angle. n
Dorsal
Profile: At the bow, the bridge’s
viewport is visible along with two hatches for the escape pods. Amidships, the Bar Arrays and upper remote
turrets are clearly visible. Just aft of
the turrets are two more escape pod hatches.
Aft section forms a ‘T’ shape with fuel tanks and nacelles clear
visible. Exhaust ports for plasma are
seen near the rear of this section. n
Ventral
Profile: Towards the bow, the hatch for the ship’s launch is center lined and
clearly visible. Amidships, the Bar Arrays and lower remote turrets are clearly
visible. Just aft of the turrets are two
more escape pod hatches. Aft section
forms a ‘T’ shape with fuel tanks and nacelles clear visible. Armament and equipment: Missiles: n
48
Bearcat CSM at the fuel tank mount. Torpedoes: n
2
forward facing Quick Fire (QF) torpedo launchers mounted in the bow carrying 9
torpedoes each. n
2
aft facing QF torpedo launchers mounted in the aft carrying 9 torpedoes each. Guns: n
4
forward facing laser cannons mounted in the bow. n
2
bar arrays mounted on the centerline of port and starboard sides of the main
hull. n
4
Remotely operated Dual Laser turrets. Decoys: n
24
standard ECM Decoys mounted at the fuel tank mount. Scanners: n
1
Navigational Scanner mounted in the bow. n
4
Tactical Scanners, 2 mounted forward and aft n
1
Passive Sensor Array. n
2
side-scan Sensor Arrays. n
6
recon drones Craft: n
1
SR 20 ton Launch for ferrying of personal and supplies. n
4
Escape pods. Modifications: Several
navies have opted to make the follow modifications: n
Replace
the Laser Cannons for Paw Cannons n
Bar
Arrays replaced with Manned Turrets. n
Replace
Bearcat CSM with 24 Short range Missiles. n
Nacelles
are removed and tanks modified to Gazelle designed nacelles. n
Launch
is replaced with 2 standard production model 10 ton Fighter. Overview: The Valhalla was built
in the early years of the Designed as Assault
ships the majority of its weapons are facing forward allow the ship to
concentrate it fire on its target. The
large fuel tanks gave the vessel a longer range than most vessels of that time
period. Armor was sufficient to engage
larger capital ships with a good possibility of survival. Earlier designs
lacked Anti-fighter suppression capabilities and if the nacelles were damaged
mobility was severely hammered. Normally
this would have doomed the ship for the scrap pile but the advent of Shield
Generates extended it life and made it a formidable foe. The Vaughan-Hagen
Aerospace Corporation (VHA) has continually upgraded the design and many of
these Frigates are sold to planetary governments and small coalitions for use
in their navies. VHA has responded
quickly to any design flaws and change naval tactics giving the corporation an
A1 rating as far as most militaries are concerned. Drawbacks: As stated earlier, the large fuel
tanks and only having two engines have decreased it combat effectiveness over
time. Even with the addition of laser
turrets for anti-fighter suppression, the large fuel tanks hamper target
engagement at the stern of the ship. Bar
Arrays are effected in much the same manner by the engine nacelles. The large tanks and nacelles provide enemy
gunners with an easy target from the side. Combat
Effectiveness: The advent of shield technology has
given the Deployment: Several planetary governments operate
the |
November 4, 2014 - 5:57pm | Sorry about the way the description posted here. What I wanted to show you was that the ship is only roughly 400 by 150 by 30 feet overall. In my eyes that's a very small ship. What seems to be an issue is relating the size to the actual scale of the ship. I check one of my room depicted on this ship and it basically works out to a 15 by 8 feet room, this includes the bathroom. I hope this clarifies the issue of scale. |
November 4, 2014 - 6:22pm | Well for comparison, based on those dimensions, that gives it about 51,000 cubic meters of space. Which in SF terms is a 25% larger than average HS 6. Roughly the same size as the Sathar Destroyer I designed (which was 48,000 cubic meters in volume). Which, given what's in there sounds about right. 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 |
November 7, 2014 - 9:58am | I just redesigned the Leva Stodtko after doing some reading Knight Hawk module. The ship now reflects a Star Frointer ship. |
