Shuttle Craft

[stule]

Hi.

Can someone tell me how you buy shuttle craft bays for a starship?

Its late and maybe I'm tired, but I don't seem to be able to figure it out in the Starship Book.

I would appreciate any help.

[Tobian]

Without checking the book (as i don't have it here) I beleive that the number of shuttles a ship can hold is governed by it's size.. I believe the radio is 1 point of structure gives you your ships size in shuttles.. So a Galaxy Class at size 8 spends 1 structure and gets size 8 in shuttles, whereas a Intrepid class (size 6) recieves 6 shuttles for 1 point of space...

Then you can divide those allocation dots to shuttles up to size 2, so again the galaxy class could have 4 size 2 shuttles or 8 size 1 (or any combination that fits)

i may be wrong on the ammount of structure, but I think it works like that.

[stule]

Cool, but what is the max number of shuttlebays that a ship can have?

[Tobian]

Can't remember that off the top of my head, I will have a look in my books tonight for you..

[IceGiant]

Stule,
Shutlebays cost 2 spaces per bay and you can have a number of bays equal to half the size of your ship. Each bay can hold the ships size in "sizes" of shuttles. eg. Galaxy Class. Can have up too 4 shuttle bays, with each bay holding 8 sizes of shuttles.

Don Mappin has stipulated that the shuttlebay "sizes" refers to the number of shuttle that can be launched and retrieved at one time. It is not the total number of shuttles that the ship can carry.

Hope that's clear enough.

[stule]

yep!

TY

[IceGiant]

No problem, edited my post to add the blurb about shuttle capacity.

[stule]

Yeah, the only thing that bugs me is that I can't represent the Akira as Cannon.

I even checked the Spacedock rules for Icon and they have it with 50 fighters and shuttles.

But those rules....God you need a PHD to play LOL!

I guess we have to give up a little for ease of play.




hmmmm...10 Runabouts with Torpedo launchers...
That would fit in an Akira...



Thanks again

[Tobian]

Hehe yeah Spacedock is a little... complicated..

Bottom line with the Akira is that it is a grey area... Several (semi canonical) sources have stated it has some kind of 'fighters' but these 'fighters' have never been seen on screen - the ships the maquis use as raiders are pretty huge and you could not fit 50 or even 10 of them inside an Akira class!

If you want to go down this route how many can fit inside is up to you really, but then with the rules you can only fit up to 21. Bottom line is if you want to break the rules to fit what you want.. you can! Several of the ships in both books break the rules because they are special case scenarios. You are GM and you can break them if you want! Don't let the tail wag the dog!

[IceGiant]

Like I said, the official statement buy the guy who wrote the rules is shuttle bay size only indicates how many shuttle can launch and be retrieved at a time. It's up too you as the narrator to decide actual capacity.

[Tobian]

Yes very true, I beleive Voyager had at least 800'000 folded shuttles hidden inside the room they keep the inflatable Ensigns

But seriously yes, while you can't realtistically use them in a combat situation Shuttles can be stowed in a partially deconstructed state.. so they take up less space.. in cargo bays and the link.. So if the ship found it's self without some, it can start building, however I suspect the minimum this would take would be an 8 hour shift!

[stule]

Wow Thanks guys!!!

[aelius]

Originally posted by Tobian

Bottom line with the Akira is that it is a grey area... Several (semi canonical) sources have stated it has some kind of 'fighters' but these 'fighters' have never been seen on screen - the ships the maquis use as raiders are pretty huge and you could not fit 50 or even 10 of them inside an Akira class!

Actually the fighters used by the Maquis in the episode "The Maquis" were somewhat smaller than a Runabout. Just look at the size of the cockpit windows.
Owen Oulton has an excellent exmination of the "Perigrine" (name not canon, but inferred). I use his numbers for the fighters in my campaign.

[Owen E Oulton]

"Perigrine" (name not canon, but inferred).

Actually, the name is canon - it was mentioned in the DS9 episode Heart of Stone. It has been confirmed by Rick Sternbach that the small fighter-type ship is the Peregrine.

Personally, I don't buy the fannish contention that the Akira is a carrier. Yes, Alex Jaeger used carriers as one of his aesthetic influences, along with battlecruisers, gunships and the Miranda class. The DS9 TM calls it a Heavy Cruiser.

Star Trek isn't a fighter-heavy universe, and such light attack craft as they have are warp capable, and have consistently been shown as not being carrier-based. Sorry, guys, but this is not Star Wars.

[Tobian]

Well I have to agree with you there Owen, BUT given that there could be the possibility of such craft in your story, then it's good to have rules for them as such.. For example if you were dealing with a primative culture, where a single strike from a starship wouldn't simply cripple you beyond repair, then yes they could work.. An example in the show would be the Lysian Space command - that had a number of small fighter type craft, or possibly if you looked at the Mars Defence perimiter.. Those things aren't manned, but they were probably the size of a Runabout so something had to hold them (or maybe they were just sitting there?)

My personal belief is that in the 24th century weapons are so very powerful and accurate that flying smaller craft is virtually suicide. The Runabout is probably the epitome of Starship design at that scale and while, because it was often used as a lead role ship, it often survived quite a few hits.. facing off against larger foe, without some sort of sensor defeating plot hook makes it virtually impossible ! But then given that you can apparently dodge energy beams and highly advanced sensors in photon torpedoes then who knows what's possible

From an academic perspective, and for situations not neccessarily involving Federation starships, it's still interesting to see what people come up with