[gurps] Vehicle outline: TL13 Colonization Support/Disaster Relief Nano-Factory ship

[Onno Meyer]

Troy wrote:
> This ship is designed for an expanding civilization that is colonizing new 
> worlds. It also doubles for worlds that have had disasters that have had 
> destroyed infra-structure. The ship is armed and armored fairly heavily for 
> a non-combat ship because in any such situation the Navy might need to go 
> after a greater threat, leaving them to deal with the equivalent of pirates 
> in TL7 speedboats. A small "security" force is usually carried for this 
> purpose.

This makes the colonizer a legitimate military target, too. That may
be a good idea for a game ...

> Heavy body structure, underbelly skid, living-metal, self-sealing, total 
> compartmentalization; Very Good streamlining, lifting body
> 
> 12 pop turrets 4 forward rainbow laser ring (Top,Under,Right,Left); 4 rear 
> rainbow laser ring (Top,Under, Right,Left); 2 grav(combo beam, gravy) each 
> Right, Left

Just how common are surface landings? Of we're talking about an 'every 
now and then' option, a redundant streamlined deflector might be enough
and you can get the boxy, massive look-and-feel beloved by the movies.
That also helps with modular options (see below).

Talking about those laser rings makes me thing of a roughly cylindrical
shape, possibly with little control surfaces from the lifting body. How
did you envision it?

> Power: Cosmic Energy Generator, ruggedized with additional 200DR advanced 
> laminate. 3 generators, each 2/3 necessary power
> 
> Motive: Grav Drive, non-limited (planetary surface to space) vectored-thrust 
> (includes contra-grav), 16g sAccel (w/ 300lb/cf cargo load); Warp-drive, 
> Jump-drive

What about redundant 'engine rooms', each with power plants and engines,
and the ship able to operate on one or two 'engine rooms' out of three or 
four? That way you don't have half your power plant capacity sit idle.

> Armor: DR 200 expensive laminate all over, thermal-superconducting, PF 100k 
> radiation shielding

For the size, that sounds rather thin. A large ship should have a solid
physical hull in proportion.

> Force-field grid: 1000 DR, engery phasing surface,variable, no overload

Not enough for a ship of this size, either ...
 
> PD 8 deflector generator, shaped (extreme streamlining)

> Spinal gravity-beam mount capable of lifting 2xEwt (usable as combo-beam, 
> grav-beam)

Would you want a tractor beam in a spinal mount, and not in the belly 
pointing downward?

> Total life-support 100 people

Go for lots and lots of extra capacity. TL13 total life support could 
probably produce emergency rations from organic goo. 

> Macroframe computer; neural-net, high-capacity; SAI

Classic Vehicles makes sentience an option of the computer. How 
about taking a page from TS and having the AI resident both in 
the main computer cluster (redundancy!) and smaller systems?

> Force-locks 2 8-person, 8 2-person

Forcelocks don't have to be rated for persons - they don't have 
chambers like normal airlocks.

> 8 extreme-range comms; 1 gravity-ripple, 1 neutrino, 4 radio, 2 laser

Neutrino comms are extremely tight-beam. Two ships with one neutrino
com each can talk to each other. Several ships with two coms each can
form a 'ring', any unit can reach any other unit through relays. But 
the loss of any two units breaks the ring. Three or four are needed 
for a redundant net. Same for lasers.

> 2 very long range multi-mode radar(front), 1 ladar(front)

A FTL ship needs FTL sensors or really, really tough frontal armor :-)

> 2 very long range PESA(front), 5 medium range PESA(top,bottom, left, right, 
> rear)

On the passive side, what about radscanners? Possibly as part of 
multiscanners.

> Gravscanner, extreme range

Gravscanners have to be really large to get decent range. 

> 3 Navigation system, precision
> 3 Inertial navigation systems

Not enough for a ship of this size. Three are the mimimum to let two
accurate ones vote the faulty one out. You can't afford to take them
down for maintenance if you have only three.

And astronomical LLTVs are technically sensors rather than nav, but 
they should be part of your navigation suite.

Last but not least, IFFs would be nice.

> Bridge with roomy crew stations for captain, pilot, engineer, sensor-op, 
> gunner. Crew stations have crashweb, gravweb. (combine sensor and gunner to 
> tactical?)

Plus lots of commo staff to coordinate relief.

> Advanced emission cloak, basic stealth, basic chameleon

Why more cloaking than stealth?

> Build as tug and joined pod? (Manned area plus nano-tanks main body, then 
> cargo section)(Joined with nano-tech to form continuous keel)

Grab the rules for modular vehicles from GURPS Traveller.

What about a core with a variable number of nanofactory, medical and 
cargo pods?

> How long should sensor range be for ANY TL for operation inside a stellar 
> system?

Moving at 'realistic' in-system velocities:

A one-cf rock would really ruin your day. Say it moves at 50 mps 
relative velocity and you want to detect it 10 seconds out. That
means -33 speed/range, -2 size, +6 for radar in vacuum. Since 
detection should be fairly certain, you need 2,000 or 3,000 
miles nominal sensor range. 

A 0.1-cf rock would still be catastrophic for lower-TL craft, and
finding it requires 20,000 miles nominal range. 

Moving at 'cinematic' in-system velocities:

Say you are moving at 300,000 mps. The ship will be more agile, 
so call it two seconds warning. -52 speed/range, -2 size, no +6
because I'm not assuming EM systems. On the plus side, the 
operator will have a pretty good neural net, getting the most 
out of the available raw data. Maybe 3,000,000 miles (16 ls) 
nominal range. Detecting 0.01-cf rocks would be nice, too, for
30 lightminutes range, but at some point you have to leave dust
for the deflectors. 

Onno