I have a draft for a non-Traveller atmospheric/STL/FTL ship which is truly marginal -- 1,500 stons loaded weight, a few tons payload. It would help to switch some of the thrusters for fusion rockets and limited-endurance tanks, or to use the jump power cells to provide full power for a limited time only.
> > The same could be said for mounting weapons, or those 140 > > stons of external cradles on your tug. > > Sandcasters are relatively cheap weapons. The external cradles are > required by the tug to do it's job -- carry another ship through jump. There > are > other ways of connecting the two ships, but I preferred the external cradles > overall for this design. Hardpoints or tractor beams are in the same ballpark. > > If you assume that > > you never run without cargo, consider how much armor you > > could buy with a single unitary hull and no cradles. > > Without the cradles, how do you propose the tug attach to the ship iy > carries? I propose a regular freighter with internal cargo holds. It can't carry sublight ships, but it might be able to carry a higher total payload in smallish containers. Look at my vehicles from week 926 to 932. The three tugs save weight with a smaller hull, balanced -- or more than balanced -- by the weight of the towing gear, so the net result is inconclusive. It comes down to assumptions on hyperspace speed and distance between worlds, to decide if a few hours saved in port are worth the cost and weight of containers. Part of the "problem" is that hull and armor get lighter as the TL goes up, while there are just single entries for external cradles and hardpoints. Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
