• Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Topic: Mothership

How should motherships, ie those ships carrying 'baby' ships, be modelized?
Currently, i would say that you have to let some empty SU in the mother ship in order to accomodate those baby ships.
Any other ideas?

Marc

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

Re: Mothership

I have used tenders in the Aracnonoi.
The tender paying 25% of the total SU of the size 1 ships (attack boats/Flotilla ships) carried.
For ships of size 2 and upwards 40% of the carried ships SU.
The "Tender" could be anything from a tug to a warpdrive with a battle bridge.
I had revised the pdf with interaction between the ship being carried and the carrier.

Paul

  • Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Re: Mothership

For tenders, it's ok. But I was currently thinking about baby ships carried inside motherships. I designed the Andromedan Dominator, a truly big beast. Whereas dreadnought were on the side of 18 hull size, the Dominator must be roughly about 40 hull size to accomodate some 9 FF or 6 DD sized ships.

Marc

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

Re: Mothership

The "Tender" in the Aracnonoi pdf actually came about when looking at the Boltian Star League Szunheg class Attack Boat Tender, which carries six boats internally in a clam shell hull.
Tender, Mothership, Hollow Asteroidal Base or Deathstar are all essentially the same except that the name implies a size.
Everything depends upon the size of the ships that you want to carry and different settings have different size ships.
Take my WWC Destroyer which is hull size 10. If I wanted a carrier or hollow base for six of them, at most it would cost the carrier 2,872SU(40% of total destroyer group SU) or just under 20 hull (I know weird figures but that is down to available SU calculation, hull 20 having 2,948 SU). Of course the 20 hull needed to house them would mostly be an empty shell with the needed docking equipment.

Paul

  • Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Re: Mothership

OldnGrey wrote:

Tender, Mothership, Hollow Asteroidal Base or Deathstar are all essentially the same except that the name implies a size.

Not necessarily. A ship housing many lttle ships would need at least as much SU than as the total of smaller ships.
A tender, in SFU, IIRC, is 'tracting' pseudo-fighters, so in essence doesn't need SU to house them as essentially, that's not what it does.
But I don't understand the 40% multipler. Why did you introduce it?

marc

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

Re: Mothership

Structure needed to hold and launch other ships without the stress tearing the "carrier" apart.
I should stress that any carried ships are constructed in their own right with their own CRAT etc. The space taken up by the carried ships is just that "Space" not mass. If you bought a blown egg you would not expect to pay for the contents that it used to have. The actual discussion was a couple of years and a computer ago, I cannot remember the exact details. I can only say that 40% worked for my designs at the time and you could apply that the carrier has to be at least a third bigger than the carried ship total.
Sometimes it is better to think of SU not as space unit but available mass unit.
It was only a suggestion as there were no rules set in stone.
I'd say go with whatever works for you until Dan publishes a book with them in.

Hmmm, wonder if anyone has built a "tube" ship that you could hide others in?

Paul