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OOC YSS Sakishima Discussion

:-/ The Star Army has enough ship classes already. Why not flesh out an existing one?
 
Wes said:
:-/ The Star Army has enough ship classes already. Why not flesh out an existing one?
Click to expand...


Hi Wes,

Well originally we had planned to flesh out the Chiaki class more, but ran into some issues with the ships scale. For a ship that's 2 feet shy of 400 long, 78 tall and 298 wide to only have room for 2 decks and 10 crew means there is a pretty big discrepancy comparing the internal size to the external size.

While I know a good portion of the forward section is taken up by the aether cannon, it still leaves a good portion available for other stuff. When comparing to a similar size wet navy ship, the Oliver Hazard Perry class frigate, which are 445 feet long and 45 feet wide has a crew of 71 and space for about 6-7 decks, support craft and supplies.

I know Yamatai ships have a lot more automation and do not require as many crew to operate, but the thought that a 400 foot long ship (even with half taken up by a gun) only has enough space to fit 10 crew just doesn't seem right. Tanka and I did some math, using the stated locations of the bridge and crew cabins and the known size of the crew cabins and what is listed being on the 2 decks, there is a lot of empty space on the ship. Even with all the added hardware for the space engines and FTL and weaponry, which a good portion of is contained in the wings.

There are some easily solutions to the matter with the Chiaki's size, one to scale the whole ship down to fit what she is stated to contain, or, two, add more stuff to fit the large size the ship already is. But, I also don't want to step on the toes of whoever designed the ship in the first place. It would be a pretty massive reworking of the design and also calls up scale issues with other ships in the fleet, such as the Plumeria class, which is over twice the size at 833 feet long by 419 feet wide yet has only capacity for 20 crew and 2 shuttles. This is a ship that's about the size of 2 ww2 Essex class aircraft carriers put side by side. Ships that each had a crew of over 3,000 and carried at some times up to 110 aircraft.

There are these issues and the fact that I cant find a small ship in the inventory that I have seen so far fit the role of a long duration patrol ship, they are mostly fleet support or short duration heavy attack ships. The concept we are thinking over here is a moderate sized ship designed to operate long term without going back to port for resupply. She would lack the super heavy alpha strike of aether cannon, but make up for it by mounting additional conventional weapons and capacity for additional support craft. This would be more of a commerce policing and border patrol ship compared to the Chiaki and Plumeria, which are dedicated heavy attack warships.

Anyways, I really don't want to go stepping on others toes and start redesigning existing ships in the fleet or create any discrepency between what we have and what everyone else is using as far as existing craft are concerned. Figured it would be easier and cause less conflict with those who designed said existing ships to just design something new from scratch that will fit our needs. As it is, things are in the early early brainstorming phase. So if or when this gets completed and submitted for review will probably be some time.
 
Yes to 18+.

Also, I agree the size is a little off. Perhaps the power plants and engines are much larger than we think.
 
That looks like all of us.

As for ship size discrepancies: power, engines, reaction fuel, life support, weapon systems. IIRC, modern spacecraft are less than half living space; the football field sized ISS is 'fully crowded' at 6 crew members.
 
Yep thats all of us. So the measure for making Sakishima an 18+ plot has been passed by all members, I will pass that information along to Wes.


Keep in mind that while the ISS occupies a football field sized area, that is almost entirely empty space. The internal volume of the ISS is very small and its modules are small cylinders that don't make up the largest portion of the station. The majority of the ISS' area is taken up by the massive solar arrays.

So I have made a bit of a comparison image trying to visualize this. I compared to the Essex class carrier USS Hornet CVS-12 because I work on that shim and am very familiar with how massive the ship is in almost every detail.

Also, I noted that the Plumeria class is only 4 feet taller than the Chiaki class and yet the Chiaki has 4 less decks...

anyways, image:
http://i.imgur.com/dGB8Nn8.jpg
 
Well, Gunny, I can personally tell you that a carrier with 4-5k crew is crowded beyond belief. Sure, we have lots of decks, but most of them below the waterline is equipment and gears that keep the ship running, and above are offices and even more equipment. Living spaces, galleys (places to eat, for those you don't know), and other key locations (medical, gyms, etc.) are almost always crowded.

Automation would cut crew numbers severely, but I do agree that 10 people running a vessel this size is a bit low. I think OOCly, the reason for this is to limit the total number of NPCs that PCs would have to interact with. So, in a way, it's for the GMs! :P

Also, back in the day, SAoY had sprites that kept the ships running smoothly, but I don't know if they have them anymore. I also don't know if all but a few key NPC sprites were actually considered crew members or not. Some food for thought.
 
Hey so got a PM from Dakaru this morning. His time is pretty well taken up by stuff right now so he will be on LOA for a while. So we will go ahead and auto-pilot his character for the remainder of this mission.
 
Oh soon, very soon :) aka in about 12-15 hours :P

Just waiting for the away team to post something before I do another GM post.
 
compleatly off topic, but here is the lay out for what Yoshi is going to do to her cabin after they reach Leo.

Anyone else want a redesigned cabin?
 

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sure you do, find an open slot and talk to the player of the character in it, to make sure it is ok

That or the captain might assign you a room. :😉:
 
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