• Registered: 2010-09-25
  • Posts: 63

Topic: Using Tonnage to Calculate Hull

I used the USS Enterprise (form Star trek) to figure this out.

I want my Heavy Cruisers to have about 10 hull. In the Star Fleet Tech Manual it states the Enterprise is 190,000 tons. I divided this 10, giving 19,000.

I then looked at their Destroyer Class, 95,000 tons, divided by 19,000, giving a 5 Hull. Sounds about right to me.

Scout Class, 94,500... giving a 4.9, rounded to 5. Again about right for me.

Dreadnought, 285,000... gives us a Hull of 15.

Tug Class... Alone gives 126,500. Comes out to 7 Hull. The various containers it can pull along can be calculated and added on to the tug's Hull.

Using this formula, if we have the tonnage of the ship, we can calculate it's hull no matter what universe it comes from (Babylon 5, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica, etc.).

That way we can have battles between the separate universes on an even keel (pun).

Problem is this... we would need to find the information for the tonnage of those other ships.

The Battlestar Galactica has been figured out to 20,000,000 tons!
At he bottom of http://www.tecr.com/galactica/capships/battlestar.htm
Giving a Hull of 1053!!!  yikes  :shock:

Oh well! This was typed up as I was doing the calculations and I guess I'm back to the ol' drawing board.  :roll:

Some fun sites from my research...
http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/compari … _small.png
http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/compari … medium.png
http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/compari … _large.png
http://www.st-minutiae.com/misc/compari … n_huge.png
Saved the best for last... http://www.merzo.net/

Enjoy!
Warren

  • Registered: 2009-04-14
  • Posts: 82

Re: Using Tonnage to Calculate Hull

Perhaps rather than use a base tonnage, use a base ship and use the same Hull size between them. For Star Trek, it's the Constitution (Or Galaxy, or Sovereign depending on era.) For BSG it's the Galactica. Using that as a reference, you can then work out the rest of the ships in that universe. For Star Wars it's... ummm... Star Destroyer? ::shrugs:: Of course, that doesn't necessarily work for universes that don't really have a base ship. What do you use for B5? Hyperion? White Star? The station itself?

  • Registered: 2010-11-15
  • Posts: 298

Re: Using Tonnage to Calculate Hull

While there can be some consistency in the technical data within a specific genre, its generally is wildly different between genres.  Your method for the star trek hull sizes is very sound.  You'll just have to come up with a different divisor for BFG.

If nothing else comes up you could always base it off the size of the miniatures you will be using for your game.

  • Registered: 2005-03-29
  • Posts: 330

Re: Using Tonnage to Calculate Hull

I came up with this same problem when deciding how I wanted to handle my sci fi conversions.  The best idea that I had was to determine what size each fleet would be and then make the ships fit into that.  Currently my plan is to make each fleet 1000 points.  So if I want to have just the Galactica as a 'fleet', it's going to be around 1000 points.  That also makes the large star destroyers fit in the 1000 points as well.

I have thought about making the Galactica be a mere 500 points but give the fleet two of them (I have a second model).  Of course it depends on if you think people would like multiple ships or not.  I'm assuming most 'purists' would want a single massive Galactica and call it a day... 

-Bren

  • Registered: 2008-12-22
  • Posts: 654

Re: Using Tonnage to Calculate Hull

I think there can be no "one-size-fits-all right way" to do this. Hulls/scales need to be based on the universe being represented. Take for example if you were working on a WW2 conversion. For the purposes of such a game you could set the Yamato-class battleship as the most massive hull in the game (we'll say 25 for the example) and then figure the tonnage per hull. I did something like this and came up with a number that put Yamato at 25 and Iowa at a Hull of 21. I did this with a bunch of ships until I got below a certain threshold where they became flotillas, and I was happy with the results. Obviously this wouldn't work out when you are trying to convert 20 million ton battlestars, but it worked well for what I was trying to represent (well the battlestar would be to scale in its ability to obliterate every ship in every fleet from WW2, but it wouldn't be much fun to play that game! wink ).
Cheers,
Erik

  • Registered: 2006-03-23
  • Posts: 241

Re: Using Tonnage to Calculate Hull

In the campaigns I've played in we assume that the SU is the indicator of mass/size not the HS. We use the WW2 size relationship of a 40,000 ton BB, 10,000 ton CA, and 2,500 ton DD (16:4:1) as the relationship between classes in our campaigns. So if you set a capitalship to be HS 10 (1,996 SU), a cruiser will be around 500 SU (HS 4) and a destroyer around 125 SU (HS 2). This reflects the much greater combat power present in a capitalship.

  • Registered: 2022-11-17
  • Posts: 18

Re: Using Tonnage to Calculate Hull

I usually take the square root of the tonnage or mass, mainly because mass doesn't scale in a linear fashion. I then take the biggest ship I want to use (like the Super Star Destroyer) and divide its squared mass by the biggest hull size I want to use (like 24) to get the divisor I need for the other ships. The Super Star Destroyer will have more than twice the hull size of any other SW ship, but at least it's playable with sane hull sizes  8-)