Omni-ship technology—I need help please.

[Phoenix]

(I put this here in space dock because I need component stats, if this should be in some other location, by all means be my guest. Px.)

Ok, here’s the situation I’m trying to design a new species for my game, and one of the things I’m planning to give them is an Omni-tech like ability with their starships. For those of you who have no idea what Omni-tech is, it’s a technology I deriving from Battle-tech. Basically it is the ability to "field swap" various vehicular components (mostly weapons) in a few minutes, rather than hours at a repair bay/structure. Or for a different more current tech concept think auto detect, plug and play components for a home computer (turn computer off, plug new piece in, turn computer on, use new piece at will).

Now the two biggest questions I have is
1) What amount of SU’s would this highly modular system take up, and
2) What systems would (or should) be able to be used as plug in components, weapons, sensors, external propulsion systems, etc...

Just to give every one the concept of the specie’s fleet, I’m planning to have three main hull designs, the Heavy Hull (explorers, cruisers, carriers, command ship, etc...), the Small Hull (escorts, scouts, destroyers, patrol ships, and couriers), and the Civilian Hull (various freighter types, possibly troop transports, refueling tankers, and tender/spare parts ships). Their technology level is going to be lower than most of the Alpha/Beta Quad. Guys (Fed, Klingon, Romulan, Carddy, etc...) with some advanced tech. (i.e. their hull concept) weapons they’ll have particle weapons slightly less advanced than disruptors (I’ll be using the same stats though) and the plasma charges seen in VOY: "Dragons Teeth" (I just liked the look of those things)

To give an example: species-1 ship type-A encounter species-2’s combat based ship, species-1’s ship get damaged in a brief fire fight do to the fact that it has been set up for scientific research, it returns to meet with a re-supply ship, and is outfitted now as a cruiser or type-C, species-2 follows species-1 to the re-supply ship only to discover that the ship they bested in every form of combat only a few hours earlier is now on par with them.

I hope that every one follows this, I’m typing this out after working a 13 hour shift, so my mind might not be all here right now. So let me know what you think, suggestions on the above questions, and general brain storming.

Phoenix...

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"Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake."
-Napoleon

[kalamaro]

see a example on ship insignia at :
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/LUGTrek/files/

is a modular ship

[Phantom]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by kalamaro:
see a example on ship insignia at :
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/LUGTrek/files/

is a modular ship

</font>

Document not found.



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In the Praetors Name!

[Phoenix]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by kalamaro:
see a example on ship insignia at :
http://groups.yahoo.com/groups/LUGTrek/files/

is a modular ship
</font>

Ditto, page not found, sorry man I'll need a little more help than that

Phoenix...

[Steve Long]

I'm glad you raised this issue, Phoenix. It's something I had on my list to include in the next iteration of Spacedock, so it will be interesting to see it discussed here.

I haven't written any rules for this, but I'm thinking something along these lines:

1. To reflect the space and resources requirements of "modularity," you'd increase the cost of any system that could be easily "swapped out." For example, maybe you'd increase the cost by 150%, or double, or triple. Possibly the cost would vary for some types of systems (e.g., tactical systems cost triple, everything else double), but probably the same cost factoring rule would apply to everything.

2. You have to decide what you can swap a modular system out for. My personal thinking at this point would be to say something like, "You can swap a system for any other type of system under the same header on the Starship Template." For example, you could swap a Tactical system for any other Tactical system, but not for a Hull System or Auxiliary Spacecraft system. You could swap any Operations system for another Operations system, but not for a Propulsion system. And so on.

Possibly you could vary the cost of modular systems to reflect greater "swappability." For example, for double the SU cost, you can swap the system for any other under the same header. For triple the cost, you expand that -- you can swap for systems under any one additional header, or all systems, or the like.

3. You have to decide how long the swapping takes and how easy it is. The quickest solution here would probably be some rule based on SUs -- such as "it takes one minute per SU to swap out a modular system." You'd have to set the time factors to make it much better than the standard repair and maintenance rules (also coming in SD 2.0 ).

So, that's my thinking. I look forward to hearing other peoples' ideas.

Steve Long

[Lancer]

Some thoughts on modularity:

1. You could base the cost increase on the time it takes to swap the modules, eg.:
- can be done in a few minutes +300%
- takes 10-30 minutes +200%
- takes an hour or longer +50%

2. Cost increase shouldn't be to high or the advantage in flexibility and modularity would be canceled out by the increased SU cost, ie. why build a ship that can be field-modified with a phaser that takes triple SU's when you can build it at standard costs and use the other SU's for something else?

3. A special case could be made for the modularity when it comes to installing equipment in place of a cargo bay, which is a more or less empty room anyway. Putting a hangar bay or science system in place of a cargo bay should be easier than other cases of system modularity.


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"To seek, to strive, to find and not to yield" - Alfred Tennyson

[kalamaro]

ok the path is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LUGTre...gnia-class.pdf

[spyone]

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2">Originally posted by kalamaro:
ok the path is http://groups.yahoo.com/group/LUGTre...gnia-class.pdf

</font>

Improvement.
Now it says:
Oops...
You are not a member of the group LUGTrek."



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You're a Starfleet Officer. "Weird" is part of the job.

[kalamaro]

register you!!!!!!!
ok, if you whant really it an don't regiter, mail me but you lose great thing in ship

[Phoenix]

Kalamaro- Ok, I applied...it still says the same thing. What's the next step I'm missing here.

Steve- Being the designer of SD, your the one person I had most hoped to hear from on this. I'd be tempted to go with +50%'s rather than doubling, as lancer said

<font face="Verdana, Arial" size="2"> "why build a ship that can be field-modified with a phaser that takes triple SU's when you can build it at standard costs and use the other SU's for something else?"</font>

even if that is the whole concept of your fleet.

Phoenix...

[aelius]

This is a concept that I have played with under several ship construction rules, and I have found that when the increased mass exceeds 50% the modular features become problematic and when they exceed 100% you are better off constructing a non modular vessel, IMO.
However, I do like the idea of varying the increase based on how quickly the modules can be swapped out.
I look foreward to Steve's rules on the subject.

[Phoenix]

I could still use just a little more input, please...I'm beggin' here.

Phoenix...

[Lancer]

Okay, some more general thoughts about modularity (sory if you are hoping for fully fleshed-out rules - too many other things I am working on right now to go into any rule details):

The easiest way for system modularity would be to "bolt-on" components to hardpoints on the outer hull. SU for hardpoints could be determined as a percentage of the components to be carried on said hardpoint. If the module requires a link to the ships systems for energy supply the SU cost should be a bit higher (I'd say you could design modules with there own power generation capacity that would require a less complex hardpoint, ie. less SU in the hardpoint itself).

If you want to place your swappable components within the ships superstructure things get a little more complex IMO:

Some components can obviously not be replaced by just any kind of system, eg. on most ships it would be difficult to replace a system located deep within the ships hull with a phaser or a deflector, since these need to be on (or near) the outer hull.

Steve's idea to limit the modularity to systems that are under the same "header" in Spacedock seems more than reasonable to me.
Possible exceptions would be cargo spaces and crew compartments. For those I would think it reasonable to state that nearly any other ships system can be replaced by cargo or crewquarters without any major problem.

Some other systems are distributed troughout a ship and an installation or upgrade will still require some dry-dock time. ODN and Security Forcefields (ie. forcefield projectors in the whole ship) and things like that are what I am thinking about here.

Other system might be easily replaceable but not totaly. Most ships need a Nav Deflector or a Bridge, after all. In these cases it could be possible to swap them for a similar, but smaller system to free some SUs for other uses.

In the end how to resolve all these questions?
What I would do (don't have to time to do the actual work on it right now - sorry) is to go over the components of a starship and classify each one as:
a) critical system, can't be replaced by anything else
b) critical system, but can be replaced partialy
c) non-critical, but can't be replaced for some reason (eg. distributed throughout the ship)
d) non-critical, can be replaced with other systems of it's kind (eg. tactical system replaced by another tactical system)
e) non-critical, can be replaced by several kinds of systems (eg. phaser replaced by phaser, deflector dish or tractor beam)
f) non-critical, can be replaced by about anything else

What system fits into what category would IMHO depend more on ship-design patterns of the race in question and general logic.

Next step would be to work out the SU cost itself, decreasing from categories (b) to (f), like category (b)= +100% down to (f)= +20%. I guess you will have to toy around a bit with these costs to get something that makes modularity a viable option while retaining play balance.
You could also try to account for the swapping time. Perhaps something like:
> can be exchanged in no-time-at-all: add. +25% SU cost
> can be exchanged fast, but not super fast: add. +10 to +15% SU cost
> takes some time to change: no add. SU cost

All in all just some pointers and ideas, but I hope it helps a little.
If I can come up with anything more detailed in the foreseeable future I'll post it here, but don't hold your breath

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"To seek, to strive, to find and not to yield" - Alfred Tennyson

[toadkiller]

Another possibility is to have entire swapable chunks of SU's. For instance, you could swap the "exploration" saucer off the Ent-D for a "colonization" saucer full of specialized gear. Or a "battle" saucer for war time (something that would have been cool to see CGI'ed for the DW.

In which case you'd simply (?) have different SU for each hull chunk. I've done this with a smaller ship I made such that it can be converted from a small explorer to a light cruiser simply by dropping off the labs and picking up a weapon hull - but it can never be both at the same time. I guess this is just expanding the Nebula pod concept though and may not answer for your design.

TK