• Registered: 2010-01-24
  • Posts: 10

Topic: Ships carrying ships

A thought occurred to me recently.  Has anyone put any thought to designing ships that carry other, smaller ships?  Specifically, I was thinking about working with a setting that focuses on individual fighters, such as Battlestar Galactica, or Space Above and Beyond.  The fighters would be small starships themselves, size 5 or less.  Capital ships would be huge, and rarely would there be more than one or two per side.  Other applications could include PF's from Starfleet Battles (to include in Klingon Armada), Traveller style battle riders, Battletech style jumpships and Dune style guild transports.

I think that this would be best dealt with in the starship design system by having the SU's taken up on the carrying ship to be some multiple of the SU's that make up the carried ship, but I don't know what that multiple would be.  Does anyone have any experience with this?  How many times the volume of an F-14 fighter does an aircraft carrier need to support it?

Sevya

  • Registered: 2006-07-24
  • Posts: 158

Re: Ships carrying ships

I actually did think on this for a little while, since i used to design small ships that basically stayed as a distance and shot from afar, and referred to them as battle satellites. What i thought of, but never tested, was having the cost of the ship in carrier points, plus an additional 10% (ex, carrying a ship that costs 200 would need 220 carrier).

Just a thought,

  • Registered: 2008-11-30
  • Posts: 79

Re: Ships carrying ships

One of the shipyeard programs has an attack boat option.  It allocates 25% of the SU of the carried ship as space required by the tender.

  • Registered: 2009-12-29
  • Posts: 12

Re: Ships carrying ships

I've moved in this direction myself, so I'm not fond of the fighter rules.  It got me to thinking:  what if the smaller ship sizes (hulls sizes 1 or 2 or even possibly 3) are the de facto fighters (say a light fighter, heavy fighter and fighter/bomber), and they get carried inside the larger ships to battle.  That way the larger ones have the Hyperdrive and the smaller ones can focus on more combat related equipment.

The problem is that the volume of a Hull Size of 1 and a Hull Size of what one would typically consider for a carrier (say 14-18) aren't so far apart what one could imagine even a larger ship holding a dozen smaller craft while still having a reasonable chance of moving and defending itself.

Solution:  why do the fighters have to be inside the carrier?  Since there's no "up" in space and no intrinsic requirement that that actually be stored inside, there's no reason why several little vessels can't be carried on the outside of the larger one like seeds on a strawberry.  I still have to figure out the maximum the large ship can carry, or how much "carrier" space needs to be allocated to control, repair, arming, launching, etc., but I think the basic principle is sound.

  • Registered: 2022-11-15
  • Posts: 1,286

Re: Ships carrying ships

It should be noted that surface area is limited...a good portion being taken up by weapons mounts and such rudementary things like sensors and point defense. The larger the ship, however, the more available surface area there will be wink  That being said, there will always be more volume of a shape than surface area, at least so far as I've found, making it more cost effective from a numbers standpoint to carry fighters inside the ship rather than outside.

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Ships carrying ships

I'm a fan of using flotillas and the attack boat tender/carrier option in the Shipyard to model this sort of thing.

  • Registered: 2009-12-29
  • Posts: 12

Re: Ships carrying ships

go0gleplex wrote:

It should be noted that surface area is limited...a good portion being taken up by weapons mounts and such rudementary things like sensors and point defense. The larger the ship, however, the more available surface area there will be wink  That being said, there will always be more volume of a shape than surface area, at least so far as I've found, making it more cost effective from a numbers standpoint to carry fighters inside the ship rather than outside.

True, but then I don't think it's an either/or thing.  Ships could be carried both within and on (which is why I arbitrarily made the amount of SU allocated to Carrier function at least double the size of the smaller ship's SU plus a constant of 100 SU, rounded up to the nearest 50).  One always needs to be able to pull something completely inside for overhauling, after all.  So to carry other craft with a maximum hull size of 2 the requirement is 600 SU set aside (247*2+100 rounded upwards).   And since a not insignificant amount of interior space is now devoted to things other than the sensors and weapons that would otherwise be mounted on the ship that leaves even less call for surface area to be allocated to them. 

And depending on the shape of a ship, surface area can be very large relative to volume.  A carrier shaped like a flat, wide pancake has a lot of surface area when compared to a more compact spherical one of identical volume:  200m x 100m x 20m has (almost) the same volume as 75m x 75m x 72m, but its surface area is more than 50% greater.  Big flat carriers and small cubic or spherical fighters makes Chris a happy boy.   :mrgreen:

  • Registered: 2007-12-17
  • Posts: 331

Re: Ships carrying ships

Not to mention there might be a hyper-space field that allows a larger ship to "pull" smaller ships through hyperspace with it. Could make it costlier than regular hyperspace and allow attack boat-type craft to begin play adjacent to the carrier. They could also then only warp out if adjacent to a departing ship.

Just a thought. It's long lost but I know I read some novel at some point in which this was the way small non-warp capable ships traveled.

  • Registered: 2005-06-08
  • Posts: 760

Re: Ships carrying ships

MadSeason wrote:

Not to mention there might be a hyper-space field that allows a larger ship to "pull" smaller ships through hyperspace with it. Could make it costlier than regular hyperspace and allow attack boat-type craft to begin play adjacent to the carrier. They could also then only warp out if adjacent to a departing ship.

Just a thought. It's long lost but I know I read some novel at some point in which this was the way small non-warp capable ships traveled.

Indeed there might, page 34 of VBAM The Starmada Edition. Extra Dimensional Travel (EDT) Drive in the Wars of the Boltian and Kuissian Universe.
Allows ships to piggyback with a vessel having an EDT Drive or use an EDT station which creates a field to transfer ships to another system.

Paul

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Ships carrying ships

MadSeason wrote:

Not to mention there might be a hyper-space field that allows a larger ship to "pull" smaller ships through hyperspace with it. Could make it costlier than regular hyperspace and allow attack boat-type craft to begin play adjacent to the carrier. They could also then only warp out if adjacent to a departing ship.

This reminds me of some rules I was working on for projecting special abilities into adjacent hexes, sort of Protoss Arbiter-style.  Never finished them, though.  It'd be a useful option to have, though...  AWACS-style projected fire control, Arbiter-style projected cloaking, EDT station projected hyperdrive, and the like.

  • Registered: 2007-12-17
  • Posts: 331

Re: Ships carrying ships

Ooooh... good idea, Nomad! Yes, projected Fire Control and Countermeasures have a great many precedents in the genre. Plus, you know the enemy would be gunning for your ECM ship.  :twisted:

  • Registered: 2005-12-28
  • Posts: 195

Re: Ships carrying ships

The concept of Battle Riders, the named used for such ships in the Traveller RPG ship building rules, does not work well for Starmada as the Hyperdrive cost of 5% is less than the volume cost taken up by storing the ship inside another ship.  It works for Traveller since that system uses an FTL system with a high volume cost in fuel.  It is a neat idea in theory and I made several attempts to create such ships with Starmada, but it was cheaper to put the Hyperdrive in the small ships instead.

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Ships carrying ships

MadSeason wrote:

Ooooh... good idea, Nomad! Yes, projected Fire Control and Countermeasures have a great many precedents in the genre. Plus, you know the enemy would be gunning for your ECM ship.  :twisted:

The real problem would be pricing them...  we (brother and I) had agreed that they shouldn't be able to fit in anything much under cruiser size (or at least they'd take up most of the space in a smaller vessel), we we went with a flat number of SU per 'projector unit' (don't remember what it was, though...  might've been 100 SU for a 5% ability (FC, CM, HD) and 200 SU for a 10% ability like cloaking or regeneration), with projector units contributing to the effected area using the same table as mine factors for minefield size.  We never did figure out a *RAT prices, nor did we get to playtest them before I left for college.  Maybe over the summer...

  • Registered: 2009-12-10
  • Posts: 30

Re: Ships carrying ships

When I saw this thread title, I was thinking more about Andromedan satellite ships (which most mothership configurations can carry within internal hangar bays) than PFs (that are almost always carried externally) - but there might be room for both one day.

  • Registered: 2010-01-03
  • Posts: 17

Re: Ships carrying ships

MadSeason wrote:

Not to mention there might be a hyper-space field that allows a larger ship to "pull" smaller ships through hyperspace with it. Could make it costlier than regular hyperspace and allow attack boat-type craft to begin play adjacent to the carrier. They could also then only warp out if adjacent to a departing ship.

You get something like that happening in Crimson Dark.  Also, nothing to stop you having a hyperspace generator that is either static (rather like Babylon 5) for smaller ships, or mobile (similar, but mounted on a huge ship).  The latter might be quite interesting - the way to really invade a hostile system, with the defenders going all out just to get that one ship at any cost.    Static ones would make for good defensive scenarios (defending, or blowing up to prevent capture).

As for hyperspace drives being so cheap - nothing to stop you changing them to 10% of 15% or anything of SU space if you want a different sort of game and your opponents agree - or is that heresy?  :twisted:

  • Registered: 2006-01-17
  • Posts: 740

Re: Ships carrying ships

It IS Heresy... tongue
But Heretics are welcome here and make this game more fun. 8-)

  • Registered: 2008-03-15
  • Posts: 70

Re: Ships carrying ships

This reminds me of a groovy design from Space Opera's "Seldon's Compendium of Starships." It was a large mothership that carried four patrol cruisers.

<IMG src="http://www.waynesbooks.com/images/graphics/seldonsstarcraft.jpg">http://www.waynesbooks.com/images/graphics/seldonsstarcraft.jpg</IMG>

One advantage to carrying a ship on the exterior would be a fast breakaway speed--if the mothership was rotating (in whole or just the carrier portion.) The further you get it from the central axis, the higher the initial velocity.

Plus, it's more room for weapons! big_smile

  • Registered: 2010-01-03
  • Posts: 17

Re: Ships carrying ships

BeowulfJB wrote:

It IS Heresy... tongue
But Heretics are welcome here and make this game more fun. 8-)

Glad to hear that!

Another way to make the hyperdrive thing work would be to allow multiple hyperdrives that make campaign travel faster - or escape faster on the field of combat.  Something like each additional drive reduces interplanetary standard travel time by  50%-25%-12%  etc more in decreasing curve for each additional drive, and that each additional drive gives another d6 when warming up to hyperdrive out - 3 drives would give a better than evens chance of always escaping on the same turn you declared warming up the drive.

The space cost would make it more worthwhile for a big ship to carry smaller ships.

Another example in fiction is the ships in Ian Bank's SF books - thinking of Excession here - that are HUGE and can manufacture and deploy smaller ships.

  • Registered: 2009-08-03
  • Posts: 245

Re: Ships carrying ships

Governorflax wrote:
BeowulfJB wrote:

It IS Heresy... tongue
But Heretics are welcome here and make this game more fun. 8-)

Glad to hear that!

Another way to make the hyperdrive thing work would be to allow multiple hyperdrives that make campaign travel faster - or escape faster on the field of combat.  Something like each additional drive reduces interplanetary standard travel time by  50%-25%-12%  etc more in decreasing curve for each additional drive, and that each additional drive gives another d6 when warming up to hyperdrive out - 3 drives would give a better than evens chance of always escaping on the same turn you declared warming up the drive.

The space cost would make it more worthwhile for a big ship to carry smaller ships.

Another example in fiction is the ships in Ian Bank's SF books - thinking of Excession here - that are HUGE and can manufacture and deploy smaller ships.

I'd actually considered the multiple hyperdrives theory, and think it's totally workable.  Just hadn't used it because retreat isn't usually something I go for.  It'd be most useful in a campaign, though.