Over at Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/r/traveller) there is currently a competition to design some alternative 100 Displacement Tons Scout ships. Reddit user MininalMask created this ship and I thought it looked cool and he agreed to me doing a deck plan. The race that built it are the Korr, a 2m tall bulky humanoid minor race. The ship has a crew capacity of eight, so is quite cramped. See his write up at Reddit. The basic stats for the ship, created with Mongoose Traveller’s ship design system are:
With the help of Wbyrd’s fertile imagination the Zhodani theme moves right along.
Wbyrd got a lot of feedback on his last fighter concept aimed at giving the fighter a more Zhodani-like feel. A lot of readers thought that more classical Zho design features were needed. This is his second concept fighter in a week. A 10-Dton Fighter. I added a ventral access cockpit access hatch and a pilot seat with two modes – flight and landed.
Zhodanii Type 125 Fighter.
One of the newest fighters deployed by the Zhodanii fleet, client states, and Allied forces. Type 125 Sh’zahg ( “Frightful Shape”, Imperium Code Name Zack) is a swift, agile and lethal fighter. Reserved for more experienced pilots, the Sh’zahg is named after a lethal ray like aquatic predator revered by the minor race native to the designer’s homeworld. The Sh’zahg made it’s debut during a border dispute between a large mining concern and a Zhodani corporation. When the Mining Concerns mercenary security forces fired on a transport severely damaging it. A single Zhodani Carrier and it’s escorts were dispatch.
The flights of fighters launched by the Squadron disabled and nearly destroyed the four Mercenary cruisers in the area, and flattened the ground installation being contested by the two companies. Even with fighter support the four Broadswords were unable to deal with he massed missile and laser fire put out by several squadrons of fighters. In the end the mercenary cruisers were able to destroy several fighters, but they inflicted no harm what so ever on the carrier or its escorts as they hovered well outside of weapons range.
Like the Older 10 ton Trilobite the Sh’zahg is lightly armoured, and has few defences. The pilot also sits in a sealed cockpit, with only narrow blow out panels covering vision slots to allow the pilot to operate if his electronics are destroyed, The Fighter does however have some pilot survival hardware built in to allow the pilot to eject in safety and survive for an extended period while waiting for pickup by his carrier vessel.
While more sophisticated than the Trilobite, the type 125 is still highly vulnerable to hostile fire, and its pilots have only a marginal survival advantage over the older fighters. The Zhodani have put more attention to the weapons and firecontrol systems of the newer fighter, but still seem to consider even experienced pilots as unfortunate casualties.
An older widely seen fighter deployed as a screening, scouting force for Zhodanii warships the Type 95 (“trilobite) is a fairly cheap, largely expendable fighter which is used in large numbers to harass enemy shipping, and screen larger ships against light attack craft and gunships.
Reasonably agile and fast the fighter can close into attack rage quickly and escape the heavier weapons of larger vessels before the formation is destroyed by heavy return fire. Few fighters can match its acceleration, and in expert hand the Type 95 can easily outrun missiles launched at them by other fighters and starships.
With few defensive system, light armour, and no pilot survival equipment installed the Type 95 is mockingly called a Prole Bomb, by Imperium fighter pilots. In practice the Type 95 is as effective as it’s Imperium counterparts, with numbers making up for the slightly better armour, and pilot survival hardware of Imperium fighters. Zhodanii admirals do not seem to concern themselves with the loss of mostly lower class Prole pilots assigned to these poorly defended craft.
Often older craft, or “Surplus” lots are sold at discounts to independent groups hostile to the Imperium. In the hands of Private “merchants” ,Pirates, and Vargr Raiders the Type 95 is as common in the hands of Rogue and criminal elements along the Zhodanii frontiers as it is in the hands of the Zhodanii fleet.
One distinctive feature of the Design is the hybrid Gravitic Plasma drives used by the designers. This is not a major advantage to the fighters since it has similar performance to a pure gravitic drive, and offer little advantage over their pure gravitic counterparts. They however do tend to leave a noticeable trail of ionised gas behind the fighter as it manoeuvres, giving opponents an easy visual cue to identify Zhodanii fighters among a mixed group of small craft.
This picture of a Type R Subsidized Merchant by William H Keith captured my imagination as a young Traveller player when I first saw it when I got my copy of Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats in 1980 or 81. Thirty five years later is still does.
Since I began drawing these Traveller starship deck plans I always had it in the back of my mind to do one of this vessel. She is a 400-Dton ship, has a crew of seven and can carry up to sixteen passengers and 200 tons of cargo. Her drives are capable of Jump 1 and she plods along at 1G acceleration. She carries a small 20ton launch on a dorsal mount for on-planet errands and passenger transfers. I have copied the layout from Traders and Gunboats as far as I could, but I had to change the location of a few doors here and there to use some standard. Hope you enjoy this one.
Who said I never listened to readers of my blog. Apparently I missed the obvious thing that a guy like Dave would be doing in his spare time in Jump Space. Bored with golf, he has taken up a new hobby, if only he can get the thing assembled – what was that old adage? RTFM Dave.
Dave Kashikvili (X-Boat Pilot 4 Terms – so far)
Current IISS Rank 2(Messenger 1st Class)
Str 8 (+0) Dex 10 (+1) End 6 (+0) Int 8 (+1) Edu 8 (+1) Soc 7 (+0)
Story: Dave is your typical X-Boat pilot. For the most part happy with his own company and enjoying the freedom to be himself – he has recently begun to feel that something is missing in his life. He has had a fairly mundane career so far with no real problems coming his way. He is however, a bit of a slob, and the X-Boat Tender cleaning crew are forever complaining about the state of his ship when it comes in for servicing. The cleaning chief has reminded him many times that regs do not allow consumption of food at the comms or pilot stations. Like most X-Boat pilots Dave wiles away the long days in Jump Space on hobbies. He reads, watches old Tri-V shows and has recently taken given up golf. Apparently his putting is getting better but he needs a lot of work on his long game. He has now taken up amateur robotics. The return trip from Jae Tellona to Celepina should be enough to see if to Sim-software just not is the same as a the real game thing.
I decided that I had made the Ship’s Boat from my previous post too big by at least 25%. This version is to scale with the Classic Traveller Launch I did some time ago. You can either use this one or the one from my previous post.
My 50 ton cutters are definitely on the big size but I am not rescaling them – already done too many modules for it so it would be way too big a job.
One of the fellow “Travellers” over at Citizens of the Imperium asked me if I could do a version of one of his ships. It looked quite cool – a mash-up conversion of several vessels. I already had a deck plan for one, but needed a deck plan for the ubiquitous “Ship’s Boat”. So, instead of finishing mowing the lawns like I probably should have while the weather held I did this. There are a few differences between this version and the one presented in Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats.
I have now done deck plans for the Cutter, the Launch and now the Ship’s Boat. The Pinnace cannot be far away.
First off, I have given it a starboard airlock and also a dorsal airlock. Makes docking, and drawing deck plans, so much easier if I don’t have to orientate a ship upside down. I know space is 3D and all, but I still work in 2D. Secondly, I added another two passenger seats because I had so much spare space. Other than that it is a standard Ship’s Boat.
One of the staples of canon Traveller is the Imperial X-Boat (Express Boat) network. This uses Jump 4 X-Boats to carry data and communications from system to system, much like the old Pony Express from Terra. In fact the the symbol of the Express Boat Service is a rider on a galloping steed (which due to a misinterpretation of old Anglic was translated as “poni” – a beast of burden on several worlds in the old Sylean Federation – the mistake was discovered but the emblem stayed in use).
IISS Express Boat Service Emblem
The Express Boat is a small teardrop shaped 100-Dton jump ship. It has performance of Jump4 but carries no maneuver drives other than attitude thrusters – it is reliant on X-Boat Tenders for refueling, resupply and crew change over. The crew is normally one, although there are two staterooms. The ship has extensive computers and storage banks for vast amounts of data. The boats sit on station in a system and when another X-Boat jumps in-system, it transmits it’s stored data to the waiting ship that then jumps to it’s next destination. X-Boat pilots log a lot of Jumps, but spend a lot of time alone. In Jump Space – with nobody to talk to.
Interior Detail of the bridge and communications room.
Here are my plans for the Classic Traveller X-Boat #51216 from Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats (pages 8-11) and a brief file note on the current main pilot of this particular ship.
Dave Kashikvili (X-Boat Pilot 4 Terms – so far)
Current IISS Rank 2(Messenger 1st Class)
Str 8 (+0) Dex 10 (+1) End 6 (+0) Int 8 (+1) Edu 8 (+1) Soc 7 (+0)
Story: Dave is your typical X-Boat pilot. Happy with his own company and enjoys the freedom to be himself. He has had a fairly mundane career so far with no real problems coming his way. He is however, a bit of a slob, and the X-Boat Tender cleaning crew are forever complaining about the state of his ship when it comes in for servicing. The cleaning chief has reminded him many times that regs do not allow consumption of food at the comms or pilot stations. Like most X-Boat pilots Dave wiles away the long days in Jump Space on hobbies. He reads, watches old Tri-V shows and has recently taken up golf. Apparently his putting is getting better but he needs a lot of work on his long game. Sim-software just not the same as a real game.
Everyone and their dog has done a version of the Classic Traveller starhips that we all know – the Type S, the A1 Boewulf, the A2 Empress Mavara and the Close Escort classes. This is my attempt at a deck plan for the Gazelle-class Close Escort. I have tried to follow the deck plans in GDW Supplement 7: Traders and Gunboats and for the most part it was pretty easy.
There are a few things that struck me about the description of this ship, and the deckplans on pages 30-35 of Supplement 7. The first was that the vessel is described as being designed ‘at a time when mutinies were a major threat to security. As as result major bulkheads break up the ship into distinct areas – some for crew, some for officers and some common to both’. To be honest, this doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. If all the potential mutineers serving in this class of ship were from the ranks, then why make access to the bridge a simple matter of going through the forward avionics bays? In fact why not, on a ship this small, just have a crew of officers. I thought – bollocks. The reason for the bulkheads is the fact that the ship is armoured. I represented this by drawing a thicker hull and lateral bulkheads. It is however, still a cramped little ship. Crew staterooms are all double occupancy and apart from the Captain’s cabin, the other officers personal space is very limited. The galley is tiny and I suspect that on mission the crew are eating reheated MRE type meals for the most part, stored in the cargo bay because there is no storage space in the galley worth mentioning. The second main thing is that this ship design cheats by having 400ton ship armaments on a 300ton hull. I thought the rules said 1 turret per 100tons. I know it has drop tanks that make it up to 400tons but to me that seems a bit cheaty. Still, at the end of the day if it was good enough for Frank Chadwick and Marc W Miller it is good enough for me.
Anyway – here is my attempt at the Classic Traveller ship. I have omitted the L-Hyd drop tanks – for the sake of these plans they have already been jettisoned.
