Ah, now we get to the good stuff: How to Build a Spaceship. First up, what do we need? Well, the most obvious component for a ship is its hull; without a hull, there's no ship. And we are given six basic hulls to work with, ranging from 100 to 1000 tons. Okay, that's reasonable. And the hulls are divided into main and engine compartments. Oh, and the price is listed in millions of credits, ranging from 2,000,000 for the smallest, 100-ton ship, to 100,000,000 for the big boy at 1,000 tons. No wonder there's a forty-year mortgage on these suckers. The chart also gives us the time in months to actually build the ship. Now, these times, and as we saw on the last page, are reduced by one if the standard hull is used, rather than a custom job. The time to construct them ranges from 10 months (9 for a standard configuration) to 30 months (29 for standard). So, it takes quite a while to build these suckers.
Almost all of that information came from the chart on this page; we also find out that the ship needs drives, power plants, life support, hardpoints for armaments, computers, and other fun stuff. And, the total tonnage of these items can't exceed the ship's Hull size.
Next up, we find out that different hulls have different drive and power plant requirements. Drive efficiency is reduced as the ship gets bigger, so you'll need more powerful engines to run the ship. And there are...twenty-four different drive and power plant types. Now there's a nice, juicy chart. Old school gamers love charts. There are probably fifty memes about Gary Gygax and his love of charts.
Hmm, that's interesting the hull sizes on this chart go up to 5,000 tons, not the 1,000 we saw earlier. I guess that would be for custom sizes, which we don't have data for yet. But I'm sure we're about to find out. The twenty-four drive/plant types are alphabetized; only I and O are missing, to avoid numerical confusion, I guess. The smallest, 100-ton ship can't take an engine bigger than size C, whereas the biggest, 5,000-ton jobs can't take an engine smaller than 'Y', and even that gives them a measly 1 for their drive potential.
It's coming along, anyway. So far, our ship has a hull and an engine. Technically. We haven't actually paid for the engine yet. Or the hull, for that matter. Even a tiny, 100-ton ship is going to be ludicrously expensive. But as long as it's cool, money is no object.
So, that gets us to the end of another page. More forthcoming. I'm going to try the function that lets me post-date my posts and see how that works for next time. Until then, keep on riding the stars, and buy indie publishing books to keep the dreams of real sci-fi and fantasy alive.
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