Category Archives: Traveller RPG

Aslan Khtukhao-class Clan Transport

I did this deck plan many years ago. Based on the Art of Jesse de Graff and a plan in the GURPS Traveller Book.

Aslan Clan Transport (Traveller)

I have updated the deck plan to a newer look. Hope you like it.

Ore-Crawler from Gamelords 1984 Adventure “Duneraiders”

My first Traveller deck plan in quite a while. This is from the 1984 adventure by Gamelords titled “Duneraiders” by the prolific Traveller writer and artist William H. Keith Jnr. I love his artwork – it speaks Traveller to me in so many ways.

Ore-Crawlers are large (approx 1200tons) designed to sweep up surface ore and refine minerals and metals from said ore. It has a powerful fusion engine that powers the drives and refinery equipment, and also has a limited grav assist to help negotiate soft sand and so forth. The vehicle is sealed and can operate in vacuum and hostile environments. These are common industrial machines and are manufactured under license across the Imperium.

For more information you will need to find a copy of the adventure Duneraiders. Where…I have no idea. Ebay, Noble Knight Games…..there must be some out there somewhere.

Full Size Deckplans


Reddit 100dton Scout Competition

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:

The Original Deckplan by LiminalMask

Korr 100dton Scout

Overview

Type SI-K – Korr Scout/Interceptor – TL 11

Hull: 100 tons, Streamlined

Armor: Titanium Steel, 10%. Armor 4.

J-Drive: A

M-Drive: B

P-Plant: B

Computer: Model/1 bis

Sensors: Standard

Fuel: 28 tons (1 Jump-2 and 2 weeks operations)

Staterooms: 4

Low Berths: 0

Fuel Scoops Installed

Fuel Processors: 1 ton

Vehicles: Air/Raft

Weapons: Triple Turret – Pulse Laser / Pulse Laser / Missile Launcher

Cargo: 10 tons.

Maintenance Costs: 3,518cr / month

Life Support Costs: 8,000 / month

Total Cost: 42,220,000

 

Full Size Deck Plans

Korr 100dton Scout Named

Another Zho fighter

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.

Zhodani Type 125 Sh'zahg 10ton Fighter concept

From the original discussion at Citizens of the Imperium.

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.

Full Deck Plans

 Zhodani Type 125 Sh'zahg 10ton Fighter

Zhodani 10-Dton Fighter

Over at Citizens of the Imperium veteran poster Wbyrd has been churning out concept designs for fighters. They are really cool and I knocked out a deckplan for his Zhodani Olinaed “Trilobite” fighter.  Here is a link to the original discussion over at COTI.

zhodanii_olinaed_trilobite_fighter_by_wbyrd-d93m9na

To quote wbyrd

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.

Full Deck Plans

zhodanii_olinaed_trilobite_fighter_by_wbyrd_deckplan

Type R Subsidized Merchant – Classic Traveller

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.

Type R Subsidized Merchant WH Keith

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.

Type R Subsidized Merchant

Dave Kashikvili – RTFM!

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.

robot assembly

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)

Skills: Pilot(Spacecraft) 2, Comms 2, Astrogation 1, Jack of Trades 1, Engineering 1, Navigation 0, Streetwise 0, Computer 1, Fly (Grav Vehicle) 0, Carouse 1, Investigate 1, Athletics (Golf) 0, Robotics 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.

X-Boat 100t alt

Ship’s Boat – Rescaled – Classic Traveller

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.

reduc_30dton Ships Boat

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.

Full Scale Deck Plans

30dton Ships Boat

Ship’s Boat 30-Dtons – Classic Traveller

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.

Traveller Small Craft Sup 7 Image
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.

Full Sized Plans

30ton Ships Boat