Freighter Deckplans

Hi Folks,
Has anyone done up deckplans of a medium-large freighter or passenger ship. I'm working on an introductry Starfleet Academy adventure where the players are heaing to Earth aboard a transport when some of the passengers gas/incapacitate the crew in an effort to steal something valuable.

The idea is for the cadets to be to be doing some work inside a shuttle, and this isolated from the ship's air supply when the thieves gas the ship. The cadets can then surprise the thieves, who think everyone is knocked out.

I just need to find some deckplans for a ship that can hold enough people for the PCs and thieves to blend in with the other passengers.

It would depend on the era. The deckplans for the Huron and Independence are long fanon favorites, for instance. The Merchantman freighter has been done as well... But nothing, that I know of, for the TNG era.

You could try modifying some of the Traveller RPG deckplans to fit a merchant class vessel in Star Trek. You just have to replace the jump drive w/ a warp drive.

Here is the Traveller deckplans web ring:

http://x.webring.com/hub?sid=&ring=deckring&id=&list

Hopefully, you'll find something there you'll like.

Yeah that's the route I'd go too, Traveller Deckplans.

How soon do you need it? I might be able to rig you up something in a few days.

I've got fiery dragon future tiles Starships. If you give me a rough idea of what kind of ship you want, I can set something up, and host it for you to download.

The era is going to be later 24th century (say 2278-83). The ship can be older, though. I'm thinking something along the lines of a old tramp freighter or passenger ship. I've got the plans for the Huron, Sherman, and the Merchantman. The merchanman would be excellent except that the plans are for the version of the ship that appears in ST III (40m long). I'm thinkng of something bigger, so I can put the PCs and the pirates/thieves (I'm leaning toward Ferengi) on the same ship without the thieves automatically being noticed and drawing attention to themselves.

The advenure is going to be an introudctory adventure for the players (non are familar with CODA, although they have enough D20 experience to grasp the basic mechancis), and so it will stress some skill attempts and such. Since the characters are heading to Starfleet Academy, they are not going to have much for skills (I'm giveing them thier Personal Development Packages and another 5 free picks to round themselves out and be "exceptional" canditates). I'm trying to write up something that will rely on skills that can be used untrained.

I'll check out the Traveller plans, but most of thier ships are smaller craft (the sort of ships that are ideal for a group of PCs). I might try oing some editing of the Class 3 Merchantman plans to see if I can et a bigger ship out of them. I wish I still had my plans for the Deneva from Stardate.

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Originally Posted by LUGTrekGM

Yeah that's the route I'd go too, Traveller Deckplans.

How soon do you need it? I might be able to rig you up something in a few days.

I've got fiery dragon future tiles Starships. If you give me a rough idea of what kind of ship you want, I can set something up, and host it for you to download.

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Thanks, but don't go to any trouble. I was checking to see if someon had something done up already, before I go through the effort of working something up. I do appeciate the offer, but don't go to any trouble.

Thanks.

These would probably be useful to you: http://www.digitalindalo.com/rpg/trek/ncplanframe.html

Which are deckplans for : http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/my_ships/java.htm

Hey, now that's a big ship. Lots of places for the cadets to play hide and seek with the Ferengi pirates. Thanks Dan.

BTW, I started to write it up in Starships, but with 57,600 cargo units...

Does anyone know if the 25 cubic meters per cargo unit correct? It seems small (that's under 3m/10 feet per side). Especially since the shuttlebay on a Constitution class is close to 3000 cubic meters (30mx10mx10m), or 120 cargo units.

A 21st century freighter (size 4-5) can carry around 2466 "standard cargo units". The largest container ships today (size 5-6) carry around 9200TEUs (around 14183SCU).

Maybe we should get Size cubed SCU per space?

In Spacedock, a standard 1 SU Cargo Hold is 33,000 cubic meters. So, the 24 containers attached to that ship are a shade over 43.6 SUs of Cargo. As a Transport with a crew of 30, it should be 1000 SUs, which puts it between Size 3 and Size 5. (By length and height it should be Size 7, and I suspect that the SU count goes up dramaticly if you replace Cargo pods with the ones described as containing crew spaces.)

But I suspect your question pertained to the FASA system. ;)
According to Trader Captains and Merchant Princes, a FASA-Trek SCU is 6.75 cubic meters, and is intended to fill an area of floorplan 1.5 meters on a side (which means it is stacked 3 meters high).
That would make a single cargo pod hold 8886 SCUs, or almost 213273 SCUs for the whole ship. :)

I think it is save to say this ship is bigger than any cargo vessel we ever saw on screen, except for Voyager's preference for truly huge alien vessels.

Then again, the absence of truly huge cargo vessels has been something of a curiosity in the Trek universe. (I always assumed it meant that ships above a given size got less efficient at warp.)

Nope, I am uing CODA. In the NG, it is mnionedtht cargo unit is roughly equal to 25 cubic meters. Its a note that the amount can vary somewhat based upon the classification of the vessel.

25 cubic meters seems way to small. It looks a lot like a typo (250m3), or an error (square meters instead of cubic).

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Originally Posted by tonyg

25 cubic meters seems way to small. It looks a lot like a typo (250m3), or an error (square meters instead of cubic).

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Perhaps this could or should be mentioned over here as well http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread.php?t=12276 although I think it is a little too late... :(

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Originally Posted by tonyg

Nope, I am uing CODA. In the NG, it is mnionedtht cargo unit is roughly equal to 25 cubic meters. Its a note that the amount can vary somewhat based upon the classification of the vessel.

25 cubic meters seems way to small. It looks a lot like a typo (250m3), or an error (square meters instead of cubic).

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Well, FASA's cargo units were 1.5x1.5x3meters in size (6.75 cubic meters). Using a 3 meter deck height, that gives a 2.88 sq. meter "footprint" for each 25 cubic meter cargo unit....

That would mean that a Constitution-class ship (IIRC) would have cargo areas that add up to some 172.8 square meters of deck space (assuming single-deck height). Sounds about right to me at first glance...

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Originally Posted by Cut

Perhaps this could or should be mentioned over here as well http://forum.trek-rpg.net/showthread.php?t=12276 although I think it is a little too late... :(

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Not too late at all; that thread's for both PG and NG issues, and the size of a cargo unit is a NG issue.

I'm about to close down discussion of PG issues, though, since I'm trying to put that one to bed ASAP.

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Originally Posted by Doug Burke

Well, FASA's cargo units were 1.5x1.5x3meters in size (6.75 cubic meters). Using a 3 meter deck height, that gives a 2.88 sq. meter "footprint" for each 25 cubic meter cargo unit....

That would mean that a Constitution-class ship (IIRC) would have cargo areas that add up to some 172.8 square meters of deck space (assuming single-deck height). Sounds about right to me at first glance...

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Corrected your typo (6.75 m^3 as opposed to 6/75 m^3). :)

I'd have to have my books handy to corroborate, but yeah, it sounds about right.

some deckplans here

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Originally Posted by PGoodman13

Corrected your typo (6.75 m^3 as opposed to 6/75 m^3). :)

I'd have to have my books handy to corroborate, but yeah, it sounds about right.

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Not to me, consider:

1)A 173 sq meters is about a 13m x13 meter (40x40 foot) room. Compare that to the size of the shuttlebay is about 20 times the size of it's storage space. For 2 spaces, most shipc can get a shuttlbay that can hold it's size in small craft. This typically means that the ships in a shuttlebay wouldn't fit in the cargo bay if they were being transported as cargo. Your typical Size 2 craft takes up at least 2 spaces.

2) Consider the size of the typical officer/crew quarters on a starship in TOS or TNG. 25 cubic meters works out to about a 10x10 foot room. I find it sort hard to consider that you typical officers quarters (especially in TNG) are about a third the size of the ship's total cargo capacity.

3) Look at the size of those cargo bays in TNG. The ones I see are bigger than a 4.3 meter cube (14 ft cube).


4) Real world ships can carry a lot more cargo than their Trek counterparts. While I don't expect a cruiser to be able to carry as much cargo as a dedicated cargo hauler, I find it difficult to accept that a 20th century cargo ship carries 30 times the cargo of a Galaxy class starship.

5) Most sources for the cargo capacity of a Constitution class starship give it a capacity of 190,000 deadweight tonnage. If we use a 1 ton/cubic meter ratio (the density of water, although, admittedly starships don't sink, so they could hold use a higher number) that gives the Connie a capaicty of 7,600 cargo units. Knock off even half for fuel, crew and the like, and that still leaves around 3800 cargo units. Even if we assume that the ship is carrying something dense like gold, that would still leave around 190 cargo spaces.


6) On a similar note, most of the values we get for cargo capacity and amounts stored on the varius ships works out to a lot more that what we see with the current cargo capacitties.


7) The freighter and tanker designs that Don wrote up in Spaceships have cargo storage much greater than can be explained with the ship design rules. For example the Class III tanker is Size 6 holds 480 cargo units. That would require it spending 84 spaces on cargo capacity. Pretty tough for a ship built with 81 spaces. Likewise the Size 3, 39 Space Altair-class freighter needs to spend 44 spaces just for cargo.

8) Two crampled little Defiant class starships can carry the same amount of cargo as a big roomy Galaxy class.

9) Try building an actual cargo ship. Even if you can save about 90% of the ship's soaces for cargo you wind up with a pretty tiny amount of cargo.

10) The Kobiyashi-Maru a 237m long tanker in ST:II has a cargo capicty listed of 97,000 mt. That fits in well with a modern 247 m longAframax class tanker with a capacity of around 80,000 mt

11) A runabout takes up 60 cargo units.


The problem is that cargo space in CODA is a lineal function, but strorage space is actually a cube function. That is, a ship that is twice the size of a small ship can hold about 8 times the cargo of the smaaler ship. I understand why the ship design rules don't work that way for weapons engines an the like (it would make everything more complicated and more time consuming). Still, we wind up with ships crrying minisclule amounts of cargo.

How about this:

A Galaxy-class starship has a Cargo Capacity of 100 units; 110 for the uprated version.

But, the same ship has spent 6 spaces towards shuttlebays, and can carry 12 runabouts worth of small craft. Each runabout takes up 1495 cubic meter(23x5x13) or about 60 spaces. Each runabout can be fitted with a cago multimission pack (that fits inside the runabout) and carry 40 cargo units (any for only 4 points of spaces too).

So 12 runabouts can carry 480 cargo units. That's over 4 times the cargo capaicty of the Galaxy class ship that they are all being hauled around in. And that is fitten in a shuttlbay that is holding 720 cargo units worth of ships.

All for 6 spaces, although those same 6 spaces spent on cargo only hold 30 cargo units.


Why don't we make cargo space the same as shuttlespace? And while we are at it we can use the 5 cargo per size like they use for the runabout?

So something like:

Base Cargo Units: Size^3 cargo units
Each addtional space spent towards cargo adds another Sizex5 cargo units.

Maybe double that to Sizex10 for dedicated cargo haulers an tankers.


This way the cargo hold is a better optin than the shuttlebay.