Rules for The Shipyard: READ FIRST

Da Rules

The rules here are easy. Share your ship designs you've created using the published Ship Design Rules found in the Core Rulebook, Warhounds, Kashmere Commonwealth, or Operation Drydock: Volume II.

Some Sage Advice

When you design a new ship or cook up a refit, keep a few things in mind. (1) Every ship design is meant to fulfill a purpose. So when you present a new design, state it's purpose. If it's a new light attrition fighter or a heavy escort fighter meant to accompany convoys of bulk cruisers, then state that clearly. It helps everyone else get some perspective about where you were going with your idea.

(2) The Core Ships found in the Core Rulebook were designed before there was a published ship design system. Alas, they do not conform to the published ship design templates, and if you try and back engineer them, well, most of them simply won't work(Whisky. Tango. Foxtrot). So. Keep your refits within some sort of realistic parameters. For example, you can strip down the Damage Reduction (armor) of an existing ship, and use the slots for other things such as increased armament or Drive, but bear in mind that you're reducing the survivability of your refit, and may want to add a Design Quirk to add some playbalance to the mix, such as inflicting a less than stable reactor not so much that the reactor is somehow worse with the armor gone, but that with all that armor gone, the dratted reactor is now more exposed to battle damage and therefore all that more susceptible to taking a hit and being destabilized. Let logic be your guide here.

(3) If you have some favorite model kits or miniatures from other companies you like adapting to Silent Death, we are not going to get our knickers in a twist if you post your adaptive designs to the forum. In fact, in our Links page you'll find a list of great sources for proxy models from several indy manufacturers. If you have some of those models and you've done your own adaptations of them to Silent Death using the Ship Design Rules, we welcome you sharing them in a post here on The Shipyard. 

Remember: Terran Space is BIG. And starship designs are MANY. So share your cool designs accordingly.

Would you be interested in seeing the broken designs built to be legal within the current construction system?

Would you be interested in accurate BPVs for the current designs? (Not counting the fact most have too many slots!)

Would you want each class of vessel in its own Topic or just put them all in one OR each vessel gets its own Topic? I'm asking before I do so to avoid getting in trouble for spamming the board with lots of Topics!

I've reverse engineered most of the rulebook designs and a few others that I either like the looks of or that I have minis for. So it won't be ALL of the designs.

Would you be interested in seeing the broken designs built to be legal within the current construction system?

Would you be interested in accurate BPVs for the current designs? (Not counting the fact most have too many slots!)

Would you want each class of vessel in its own Topic or just put them all in one OR each vessel gets its own Topic? I'm asking before I do so to avoid getting in trouble for spamming the board with lots of Topics!

I've reverse engineered most of the rulebook designs and a few others that I either like the looks of or that I have minis for. So it won't be ALL of the designs.

Jim,

let's keep them separate by ship type, so break 'em down by SPAC, TPAC, MPAC (fighter), and MPAC (gunboat). We can go over them more easily that way, and I think this is going to prove a helpful "thought exercise" to compare to what work we've done so far in revising the current Ship Design Templates. 

As I stated before on the old Forum, there really isn't a whole lot wrong with the original templates outside of Damage Reduction taking up so much Slot Cost in the smaller ships. The other issue was in the sheer number of gun barrels one could theoretically cram into a fighter's gun turret; there is going to be a practical upper limit imposed on this specific weapon system option based upon ship size, weapon size, and weapon type. 

One of the issues that appears to have been neglected or just not taken too seriously by the original designer is a reasonable attention to the physical limits of engineering a fighting craft with more than one weapon turret system capable of a 360-degree arc of fire. The maximum I can see being reasonable from both an engineering perspective and that of play balance is four such turrets on a *gunboat* template, but no more than two on a three-seat heavy fighter design. Single turrets are the order of the day for smaller craft IMHO, and not necessarily enjoying a full 360-degree arc of fire for ships of 400-tons or less. 

As I am an historian who has been obsessed with the evolution of weapons technology of the World Wars and between since childhood, with a heavy emphasis on aviation tech during that period, I tend to default to looking at the tech of the period as a touchstone if you will to the ships of the Silent Death canon for guidance. Looking at the efforts to mount a defensive gun turret on smaller, two-seat or three-seat single-engined aircraft during the period, none were able to mount a defensive turret capable of 360-degree firing arcs for obvious reasons, and not just because of the propeller. The machines just weren't that big to begin with, and allowances had to be made for fuel tankage, bomb load, controls, electrical wiring, etc. within the fuselage, to say nothing of accommodating the actual crew to operate the contraption. 

This also has the added benefit of making certain types of craft more oriented to aggressive use in order to be effective, making for more aggressive play style and (ideally) a faster-paced game.

So. Break 'em up into the categories I listed above, and let's get cracking on this!

I'm having an old man moment (and I'm not even old yet!), but what do SPAC, TPAC, MPAC (fighter), and MPAC (gunboat) mean???

SPAC = Single Person Attack Craft?
TPAC = Two Person Attack Craft?
MPAC = Multiple Person Attack Craft?

How about I break them up by the Template that I used to build them?

I think I'm going to put a summary here though.
Sorry about the formatting, I had it in a nice, neat table, but it did not copy/paste well.

Silent Death Slot and BPV Summary

Ship.........................Old BPV...Template Slots...Ship's Slots...Correct BPV

Pit Viper..........................12................9........................11.....................15
Spirit Rider......................18................9........................11.....................24
Dart................................21................9........................17....................30
Blizzard...........................19...............18.......................16*...................21
Blood Hawk.....................41................18.......................33...................41
Thunderbird....................25...............18.......................19....................33
Kosmos..........................27................28.......................31....................33
Talon..............................30...............28........................28*..................47
Hell Bender......................32...............28.......................31....................47
Night Hawk.....................47................28......................36....................60
Teal Hawk.......................43................25......................43....................65
Death Wind....................60................35.......................48...................66
Salamander.....................66...............35........................45..................82
Samurai..........................68..............35........................38...................66
Samurai II.......................75...............35........................40..................80
Lance Electra..................60..............35........................45...................84
Sorenson III....................68..............55........................54*.................94
Sentry............................80..............60........................66.................113
Agni..............................103..............65........................69.................103
Revenge.......................120..............65........................68.................175
Revenge II....................120..............65........................69.................177
Seraph..........................121..............95.......................103...............136
Glaive............................106..............95.........................96*.............133
Pharsi II.........................120..............90.......................101...............150
Epping Alpha..................119..............90........................82*.............231
BetaFortress Alpha.........218.............135......................158...............502

The only designs that are actually legal according to the construction system (and their BPV is borked) are: Blizzard, Talon, Sorenson III, Glaive and the Epping Alpha.
The standard Epping has weapons that aren't on the chart and the standard BetaFortress is missing a Gunner

The only designs that are actually legal according to the construction system (and their BPV is borked) are: Blizzard, Talon, Sorenson III, Glaive and the Epping Alpha.
The standard Epping has weapons that aren't on the chart and the standard BetaFortress is missing a Gunner

Standard Betafort had the gunner removed for translight drive. I forgot where I read that, possibly ship notes, but that would explain the previously mentioned 5 slots for a translight ship. Although I question if this should not be better allocated on a size standpoint, i.e. 5 pts for a gunboat, 1 pt for a light fighter. Possibly more slots for an escort, unless those are designed in.

Per the main rulebook:
SPAC: Single Person Attack Craft
TPAC: Two-Three Person Attack Craft (fighter)
MPAC: Gunboat

I've posted threads for the 100, 200 and 300 ton single-person fighters that are either in the main book or that I like the looks of.

Those are all I have done at the moment, the rest are in table form and Open Office tables do not copy/paste very well to the forums so I have to redo them without tables.