Transhuman Space Original Designs for ICON

[redwood973]

Greetings and Salutations.

I was reading Sho-sa Kuritas' post on the Transhuman Space RPG. I had never heard of it so went looking for informaiton on it. One of the hits I had off the search was the page listed below which shows five original ship designs for the series.


http://homepage.mac.com/wbarker/newdesigns.html

One of the problems I have is a lack of support ship and freighter designs in Star Trek (which is understandable due to the shows being centered around Starfleet).

I would love to be able to bring the Tramp Freighter, Light Transfer Vehicle and especially the Cryognic Transfer Vehicle into our game. (The Cryognic Transfer Vehilce would make a perfect fuel tanker).

As I understand Transhuman Space it takes place only in our solar system and these ships are non-warp capable. I could use a little input on where to put the nacelles on the Tramp Freighter and Light Transfer Vehicle. As for the Cryognic Transfer Vehicle (reference the above hyperlink pictures) those aft squares with the "X's" through them would be a perfect place to put naccelle. . .giving the ship four warp nacelles (I am thinking of something like off of the movie Enterprise-class).

Are there any game stats for these ships anywhere? I would like to start my conversions to ICON but need something to reference first.

Thanks for the assist!

[Kodiak]

One thing that you might want to think about is that the fastest warship in Transhuman Space has an acceleration of 0.17 gravities. I think you would be better served just to say: this is the picture, this is the size and then use the ship design system of your choice.

[Cmmdr JT Wayland]

I like these designs, they remind me of 2001: and Gerry Anderson's Space 1999, especially Light Transfer Vehicle, which looks like the Eagle.

You could use these ships in an Entreprise era campaign, where they could be used either as Intra Terran System Transports running passengers and cargo from Earth to Mars/Asteroid Belt or as low warp transport ships.

[redwood973]

Moderators, please move this to the Spacedock Forum. Thank-you.

I have been tinkering with stats for the Cryogenic Transfer Vehicle for the last few days. . .right now I am writing them up using Spacedock.

I have decided to call it the Aquarius-class and figure it to be a movie era starship. I will post the final stats if anyone would like to see them. . .for now here are the very basics (and I will try to post the modified pic of her).

Aquarius-class Starship

Type: Fuel Transport (T-AOT)
Commissioning Date: 2286

Hull Characteristics
Size: 7
---Length: 525 meters
---Beam: 100 meters
---Draft: 100 meters
------Decks: 20
---Mass: 1 898 000 metric tons

Personnel Systems
Crew/Passengers/Evac: 43/215/430

I have so far decided on using NCT-3000 for the registry number of the U.S.N.S Aquarius, as far as I could remember I have never seen a ship with registry in the three thousands.

I have also gone with the idea that these are not commissioned ships, but are more like the US Sealift Command. These ships would be operated by civilian crews, thus the USNS and T-AOT designations (T-AOT being the I.D for a Sealift Command Auxiliary Fuel Transport).

The large tanks of this vessel, using the above ship stats, figure to be about 80 meters in diameter.

[Lt Cmdr Matt]

I like the tramp freighter quite a bit. Could definitely be used as a Kobayashi Maru or a real freighter under attack. If you really wanted to you could have the players be on it though.

[Owen E Oulton]

Two minor comments:

1) if it's not a Starfleet vessel in commission, it won't be flying an NCC number. We've seen civilian transport vessels with NFT numbers - perhaps NCT to designate that it's a fleet auxiliary vessel would work.

Second, the movie-Starfleet nacelle casings don't jibe visually with the rest of the ship - try using a modified TOS-era engine...

[redwood973]

Originally posted by Lt Cmdr Matt
I like the tramp freighter quite a bit. Could definitely be used as a Kobayashi Maru or a real freighter under attack. If you really wanted to you could have the players be on it though.

The US Sealift Command frequently have temporary small detachments of US naval personnel as liaison stationed aboard during more military oriented missions. (Sealift Command vessels are sometimes escorted by naval warships, naval personnel would be aboard to coordinate communications between the Sealift Command ship and the naval ships.)

So if I can figure out a justification for doing so, I will have the players aboard the Aquarius-class USNS Ward and June for a while. I think it would be a lot of fun to have the players interacting with the NPC civilian crew.

Originally posted by Owen E Oulton
Two minor comments:

1) if it's not a Starfleet vessel in commission, it won't be flying an NCC number. We've seen civilian transport vessels with NFT numbers - perhaps NCT to designate that it's a fleet auxiliary vessel would work.

Second, the movie-Starfleet nacelle casings don't jibe visually with the rest of the ship - try using a modified TOS-era engine...

1) That had never crossed my mind. It should not be an NCC registry. Like all US naval ships the Sealift Command paints the hull number on the bow of the ship, but precede the number with the letter "T" to distinguish them from commissiond ships of the US Navy. So there is precedents for not using the NCC registry. I have adjusted the post to an NCT registry.

2) Unfortunately that is the best we could do. I had wanted to use the nacelles from the new ST:Enterprise but could not find any profile pics with a decent view of the nacelles. We tried using the 1960's t.v show nacelle but could never get them to resize or line up correctly. We went with the nacelles from the Constellation-class only because we could fit them without too much dificulty. [We are all novices when it comes to computers and this is the first photo image we have tried to manipulate. I am still tinkering with it however so if anyone knows of a good profile pic of the ST:Enterprise NX-01 let me know.]

One of the biggest problems I am having is figuring out how to modify the SU's for this ship. I figure it to be a size 7 but do not want to give it the SU's of a size 7 ship. Most of the ship is open area where the transfer pods are located. If I adjust the SU's to compensate for this open space I don't have enough SU's to construct the ship.

I am toying around with the stats to see what I can work out. Right now I figure the Aquarius-class will spend a lot of time with escort ships so some systems can be trimmed back (sensors and weapons) but other items will have to be top of the line (such as SIF's considering the ships is two sections connected by what appear to be three beams).

The transfer pods I figure are docked to the ship and will get there own stats once I finish with the ship itself.

[Diamond]

There's another problem with the nacells. They're out of scale with the rest of the ship. By that I mean you've got identical nacells as that of the movie era Enterprise or Reliant, except vastly smaller. Making a complicated engineering item identical except a different size doesn't work - square cube law is just the start of one's engineering problems. I know, I know, someone should tell that to the multi-size klingon warbird. What you probably want is a new nacell that has a similar look and feel to the movie-era one, but is it's own design.

Either that or use the movie-era in-scale nacells, much larger compared to the ones that ship currently has. Perhaps paralleling the backbone of this ship. That would be good in another way as well: your current design has, proportionally speaking, significantly smaller engines than other Star Trek ships compared to their total size.

[Phoenix]

No the nacelles are correct, at 869 pixels long, 169 pixels beam, 195 pixels wide (est.), based on the orignal image, and with the aprox. measurments given above on the size of the ship. I did some quick math and got the following: 525 meters long, 102 meters beam, 118 meters wide (est.). The nacelles should be about 246 pixels or 154 meters long...


AAK!!! I have become that geek I have always feared...

[redwood973]

Thanks His Geekness for assisting with that one. I really did not want to mess with that pic again. Our group is not that well skilled in computers and it took forever to get that image. The idea of having to tweek the nacelle size near brought tears to my eyes. [I only plan to change it if I can find an older style nacelle to put on it that actually looks decent.]

I was afraid I would need to adjust the nacelles as they were from a Constellation-class pic. . .the nacelles on those always looked smaller than those on the Enterprise/Miranda-class ships. Anyone know if that is true. . .or are my eyes just going bad?

[Owen E Oulton]

The Constellation nacelles are Constitution nacelles with the aft ends clipped.

[Diamond]

I'm glad to hear that. I guess I was confused at how big the whole thing was.