Alright, I'm going to make a valiant attempt to recreate the Scheherazade from my Bard Conley stories, using the rules from Book 2, Starships. I've gone over these rules in my read-through, but now I'm going to put them to work and see how it goes. The Scheherazade, as I mentioned, is a small ship with a crew of four. This will be a custom build, so I'm starting from scratch. The rules focus more on function rather than form, so I don't have to be a naval architect to do this. And I'll keep track of the costs, too.
On deciding the hull size, I'm starting out by looking over the crew requirements. The reason? Because I know how many people are on board; it's four. So, let's meet them.
First, there's Bard Conley himself, former Marine Sergeant who is the son of an Earth-born naval officer and a Capellan woman. The Capella system in the Bard Conley universe includes one habitable planet that is very heavy-gravity, so the natives are short, squat, and seriously strong. Bard is oversized for a human, with a Capellan body structure; he makes Ah-nold look like Pee Wee Herman. He's the captain of the ship, and controls the weapons from the captain's chair.
Next up is his cousin, Titania, who is a full-blooded Capellan. So, she's short and stocky. She's the ship's engineer, as well as a field medic, but not a full doctor.
The ship's pilot doubles as the navigator. He's Jazon, and he's pretty laid-back. He's also really good at his job, and knows every asteroid in the solar system by its first name.
Finally, there's Liam, who is the ship's comm specialist and computer wizard. He's not a total geek, though; he's actually cultured and has refined tastes in entertainment.
Okay, looking at the crew requirements page, the Scheherazade only has one engineer, so it's not going to have a lot of engines. If the ship is over 200 tons, it should have a navigator. Steward? No. There's one gunner, which means one weapon. I'm looking at a ship no greater than 200 tons here. I'm going to go with the 200 ton hull for now; I reserve the right to change that if I need to. That's going to be a hefty 8,000,000 Cr to get us started.
Now, the engine compartment can handle up to 15 tons. That presents me with a problem; if I'm going to include a Jump Drive, Maneuver Drive, and Power Plant (which I pretty much have to), I'm going to have to go with Type A for all three, since they add up to 15 tons. That's going to be a slow ship. What's the point of offering options that won't fit in the compartment?
Oh, that's right. I'm customizing this thing. Okay, so let's pump up the volume on the engineering section a bit. This ship has to be fast; there are chase scenes involving starships. But it's not going to be making the Kessel Run in twelve parsecs, so let's go with Type E maneuvering drive, Type E power plant, and a type C Jump Drive. According to the chart, that's 9+16+20 tons, or 45 tons. Triple the size of a standard hull's capacity for the Engineering section. I'm fine with that. It also means that my price for the hull just jumped from 8 to 20 million credits. Ouch. I add the costs for the drives and power plant, and I get 20+40+30, or 90...how do these prices work, again? Is it 100,000 times the price, or a million times? It doesn't actually say.
Nope, there it is in the next section. It's millions. So, just to make the ship go Vroom is going to cost an additional 90 million credits. I'm up to 110 million, and I don't even have a bridge yet.
So, the Scheherazade has a maximum acceleration of 5 Gs. That seems about right. The Jump drive gives us a range of 3 for interstellar jumping, and the power plant size rating is 5. So far, so good.
And the bridge is half a million per one hundred tons of ship, so I'm getting a bargain at a mere million more credits. 111 million and counting.
Next up is the computer, and I want one that can handle the stresses of starship combat, especially since I know there's going to be combat. The mass isn't going to be an issue; it's the cost, as usual. If I go with a Model-3 computer, that gives me enough CPU power to run five simultaneous programs, with nine in storage at once. That seems reasonable for a smaller ship. There's another 18 million credits. 129 million so far. It also takes up 3 tons of space, so counting the 20 for the bridge and the 45 in the Engineering section, I'm up to 68 tons of my 200 used up.
I'll hold off on the software for now; let's look at fire control. The Scheherazade isn't a warship; it's more of a privateer. It has one missile weapon system, and no lasers. Why no lasers? Because I didn't include them when I wrote the book, that's why. So, that means I need to commit one ton of displacement for the missile launcher. And there's no sand on this ship, so don't ask.
Staterooms. there are four crew, each of whom can have their own cabin. I'm also going to add two more cabins just in case; sometimes they pick up passengers. That's a mere 3 million credits and 24 tons of space, bringing us to totals of 132 million Cr and 92 tons.
Low Passage Berths? Screw that; I'm not killing people on board. No death freezers on my ship.
Fuel! I'll have to calculate that out, so let's jump back to that part of the book. And holy crap, I'm out of room. Just for a single jump trip I'm going to need 60 tons for the necessary fuel, plus 50 more for the power plant and maneuvering drive. That puts me to 202 tons, which is too much. Time to recalculate...
I'll think about it and come back to it. Obviously, I'm going to have to reduce the jump drive and power plant. I want to keep the maneuverability, though. I'll tweak it for the next post.
If you want to read about the intrepid crew of the Scheherazade, check out Bard Conley's Adventures Across the Solar System, available in e-book or paperback at an Amazon dealer near you!
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