Deep Space: The UFP Playground

One theme in the Star Alas series is the UFP’s use of Deep Space bases. These bases are far away from water worlds, located outside stars FTL transition limit gravity wells. Star Atlas 1 lists Spectre,   a minor planet Sol X. Way the heck out in the Solar System’s Oort cloud. It's the biggest fortress in the best protected system in the sector.  Other Star Atlases include the Federation's deep space bases in Imperial and People’s Republic space. And perhaps, in other places they aren’t expected.
In the twentieth through twenty-second centuries Terran humanity became a technological space faring culture. IRSOL  monitored their painful progress. In secret, from the edges of the Solar System. The IRSOL moved outward, farther from the Sun as humanity ventured into space.
Later, in the twenty-sixth and twenty seventh centuries, the UFP takes up that strategy. They monitor potential friends and enemies from the edges of their star systems. Quiet, unseen, unsuspected. Watching space traffic, listening to electronic communications. Beyond the hyperdrive transition limit. Most people that get that far from a star kick in the FTL drive and keep going to another system, other worlds.
The Feds aren’t most people. Or rather, the High Republicans of the Terran Union weren’t most people. During the earliest stages of the Terran diaspora, the High Republics didn’t have FTL. They struggled, then thrived in vacuum colonies.The Moon, L5 cylinders, Mars, Mercury, the gas giant moons, even Pluto. If you can colonize Pluto, which they did, you can live on any icy airless rock anywhere.
There’s little evidence other Star Nations build extensive deep space facilities. They ignore the possibilities of a true space based civilization. Later Terran colonists, blessed with FTL drives, found better places to live. They know about deep space colonization, but didn’t bother without good reasons. Most examples we see involve big money from mining.  No investment in turning hell worlds to deep space homes. Why would they colonize hell worlds? If you keep looking you can find nicer places, safer, cheaper to settle. Other races mirrored their priorities. They seek colonies on planets that remind them of home.
It’s cold in deep space. No useful solar power. Nothing to breath. Nothing but dirty ice to drink. Far from  wet planets with breathable atmospheres. They will have construction and maintenance costs as high as Starships. And unlike starships, deep space bases will never visit habitable worlds. Never feel the warmth of a main sequence star. Hell. But the High Republic built there, found new lifestyles, and they stayed.
Strategic and operational advantages must be immense to justify the expense and danger. of deep space basing. And the eyes of High Republic natives saw those advantages.
At the edge of the Solar system, the great fortress Spectre demonstrates these advantages. It’s outside the Solar hyperdrive limit. Ships launching from Spectre can go FTL without long STL transition travel. Quick reaction forces save precious hours. Likewise, incoming traffic avoid long STL travel, and crowded inner Solar system traffic orbits. The base has privacy. Nobody goes there without good reason. If their reason is spying they will be detected a long way away.
There’s no weather on Spectre. It’s seismically stable. It’s a good place to store expensive things. Like surplus battle fleets. Unprotected Federation citizen die on Spectre, but they know how to protect themselves. Warehousing and airdock facilities are unmatched anywhere in known space. The guns of Spectre are known a dozen sectors away, unmatchable firepower. The Azzies and GPR consider attacking that base to be a pointless suicide mission.
.                  

Head Canon

In my Head Canon

Space Opera's "United Federation of Planets" was the winning name in a contest, narrowly defeating "Jedi Alliance" and "League of Evil McEvilskins".

My Head Canon probably does not have very much to do with the setting as the original authors intended. 

Other My Canon Heresy

The Federation Postal Service is the fifth UFP armed service. Joins Star Force, Defense Forces, Interstellar Police Agency, and Survey.

No mercenaries on UPF member worlds.

The actual ranks in Star Force and Defense Forces are a single hexadecimal numeral, from 0 to E. Traditional rank titles of the various Federation Home Worlds are alternative titles.

More Trouble with Tons

As we all know, 2136 is the year the High Republic threw off the heavy yoke of the Pure Earth. But many have forgotten the tyrannical and inefficient International Standards Organization. And ISO Standard 668. Two more than the number of the Beast. Standard shipping containers. Earther standards, keeping the spacer down.

During the great Exodus, millions of humans left Earth for new homes in space. They brought with them millions of shipping containers. Containers full of stuff: food, survival equipment, the kid’s toys, you name it. Containers they converted to shelters across a hundred worlds and more.
Obviously, no old-fashioned Pure Earth Government standard shipping containers would do. The Freight handling experts of the High Republic convened committees, considered and argued, and in time produced dense, turgid, confusing Standard Documents. The Standard Document was prayed over, preyed over, blessed, and found good.

The High Republic Standard Organization Sealed Stackable Shipping Containers (HRSO-SSSC) were lighter than the old earthling steel ISO containers. More resistant to weather. Insulated. Chemical resistant, impact resistant, meteor and radiation resistant. Not only were there refrigerated reefer versions, some were vacuum sealed or had full life support.

The HRSO-SSSC standard spread into the GPR. (Even though it was a Capitalist trick.) And into the Mercantile League (Suitably renamed to disguise their Statist origin.) The Azzurich Imperium even extended the standard, specifying armored ‘Leader Boxes’ to keep the Beast encaged. In time the Terran Union and the UFP adopted the Standard as well. The future history of freight shipping was the history of the HRSO-SSSC!

A HRSO-SSSC basic type 1 unit was 30 cubic meters. That became the basis of shipping planning and charges, and later of modular living and working space. For billing purposes, an empty unit had a Tare weight of one ton. (They could easily contain 30 tons of cargo.) In time, 30 cubic meters became known as a “Ton” of space. The rule of thumb: for each colonist, passenger, or crew, allocate a ‘ton’ of living and working space. (Unless you were under-resourced. Or a Ranan.)

Because nobody but a Standards committee member was going to say HRSO-SSSCU, type 1 equivalent. Much less ‘High Republic Standard Organization Sealed Stackable Shipping Container Unit.’ There wasn’t enough air to waste on that mouthful!

Trillions For Defense…

Federation Starfleet keeps its ships busy. Patrolling colonies, scouting threats, supporting police, survey, and contact, training with System Defense Forces, disaster relief, – the missions are endless. Throwing training and routine maintenance and it’s no wonder the tax burden is so enormous.

I expect the Federation’s biggest warships, the Concordant Battlestars, are held in strategic reserve. Assigned guard duty. They’re docked at bases, or in deep space ghost orbits, cruising at low TsIa in critical systems. They only leave the home systems for war or gunship diplomacy. Times when the Federation needs to get nasty and darken somebody else’s sky. With collapsium clad dragons.

There are sound strategic reasons why Battlestars stay close to home. The Home Systems are at the center of the Federation areas of influence. The ships can be sent anywhere in Federation Outworlds at need. But the big planets like having big guards. Budget committees like having heavy metal guarding their legislative offices. Starforce pays close attention to public demands.

Many of Starforce's best and brightest avoid capital ship duty, preferring the dash of destroyer duty and the important cruiser missions. But it’s a waste to reserve such expensive assets strictly as a fleet in being. Starships are meant for the stars. Warships can’t prevent or deter wars if potential enemies can ignore them. The outworlds also need to see where their taxes went.

Starfleet strategist worry. That’s their job. On the edges of known space, the Starkaad slept fitfully, and Korrillians ravaged. Someday, perhaps soon, there would be violent conflict. Those Star nations outnumbered the UFP, even as the Federation outnumbered their historic GPR and Azzie foes. Elsewhere, Bugs buzzed about. The Ranan and Hissss’t are perpetual threats. Along with The Rulanthu and other, even nastier potential and real foes. Those Star nations need constant reminders: Don’t Annoy the Union.

In the 26 teens, Starfleet began a new program, sending out a few Capital Ships to show the flag. Detach Battlestar and Battleship divisions from defensive duty, set them to cruising about the known worlds and beyond.Remind the colonies what protects them. Remind threats to stay polite. To go boldly where no Battlestar had flown before.

In 2017 Federation services organized an Operational Group – what we’d call a task force. It would be built around a Battlestar Administrative Pair (call it a Division), their escorts and scout couriers. The capital ships selected were battlestars, fleet cruisers, and destroyers. Selected ships were new, but built on the old, versatile ‘Expeditionary’ pattern. Each carries ground combat troops, assault boats, and fighters. Embarked on the capital ships were selected Space Marines or Planetary units forming a marine Operation Group subdivision. Assault craft to transport the marines into battle. And 300 Starfighters to screen and defend the big ships and troops. Make a hell-a-nice Guard day flyover.

Battlestar Division 555 were given this outreach patrol mission. Social Justice Warrior and Responsible (1)  finished acceptance trials, the latest out of Solar shipyards. They had a veteran cadre, still integrating and training up new crews.

The heavy metal was accompanied by the veteran Cruiser Division 1212, Fleet Cruisers Heimdall and Loki. Built as flagships, heavy arms and armor, fast and tough. Originally identical, they’d been customized, outfitted and manned for different, complementary duties.

Heimdall is the eye and the shield of the OG. Less armor than a battleship, but faster, harder to hit. An enhanced sensor package, equal to a Survey Battlecruiser. Heimdall’s captain liked getting in close and hitting her targets with megabolts and starbombers. Heimdall carried armored cavalry and bombers; more heavy metal.

Loki is a sneak and sniper. Working with Heimdall, Loki held back, used passive sensors and forwarded target info to hit her foes. Loki carried a Special Forces battalion, stealthships, and more classified covert action assets.

Operational Force Summers were the escorts. Twelve destroyers from the 1524 Destroyer Administrative Team. Should be all eighteen, but Starfleet never has enough destroyers. The rest of the DAT were on detached service or refitting and repairing. Summers was the Destroyer Leader, her sistership Katniss was on detached service. Eleven line Destroyers followed Summers. Faith, Swan, Leia, Padme, Ray, Natasha, Alice, Mulan, Wanda, Sonya, and Heidi. Glorious Names of ancient lineage in the High Republic and Union space navies. Earlier ships with these names had fought and won dozens of desperate battles.

Forty-eight Scout couriers were attached. The fleet train was Heavy Repair Ship Shade, three massive Replenishment ships and four Fleet tug/tow boats. A half-dozen corvettes escorted the fatties.

The Op Force carried an entire Starfighter force. And a division of Space Marines and Commandos. Attachments from other services: IPA, Survey, Contact and Diplomatic Service, BRINT, Security, Health, Ecology, and PSI Corp.

January 2, 2618, they left lunar orbit, passed Starbase Spectre in a review, and thence into the big dark.

(1) They almost named Responsible as‘Herald of Free Enterprise’. A homage to the UFP’s sometime allies the Mercantile League. But some spoilsport looked up that name other before she was launched. Not a happy history. Might embarrass or offend Augusta.

Trillion Credits of Space Opera

Back in the day, Traveller supported wargame style play. One supplement in this line was Trillion Credit Squadron. Players designed their own fleets, using the High Guard big ship rules. Then they lined them up, got out the ship combat rules. Then slugged it out. It was the only way to find out who was the best designer and fleet commander.

The results were very interesting. Douglas Lenat ran hundreds of simulations using an AI Program .The fleet he created won the national contest two years running. Look it up.

Space Opera’s shipbuilding rules never included the ‘secret’ military design rules. In their absence, we can use published examples. (And indulge in the time-honored Gamer Pastime: Make Shit Up)
Eight sample fleet lines were published in Seldon’s guides 2 and 3. The compendiums had Stats for Destroyers, Cruisers, and other space warships. In the fiction, Battleships designed according to each fleet’s capabilities and cultural preferences. Four more or less human cultures, four more or less alien cultures.

Every Starnation’s culture was reflected in their ship designs. The UFP built the best ships they could; the expense was no object. In comparison, the Mercantile League kept a close eye on the bottom line. Both had to protect hundreds of allies and colonies scattered over hundreds of lightyears. The oppressive Azurich Imperium built big nasty attack ships manned by their relatively few chosen crews. Azzie ships were not designed to defend broad areas of space, but for destruction.
The Galactic People’s republic had more manpower. They built many cheaper ships to utilize this advantage.

Each ship classification came in several varieties t different levels of technological sophistication. Each ship had a price, fixed to the ‘hard’ credit of the Federation and League banks. Prices ranged from a few megacredits for cheap starfighters, to hundreds of Billions for ttop of the line Battlestars.
Zoe the cat and I spent a productive Sunday afternoon perusing the Starships of War for Space Opera. I started a spreadsheet of ship statistics, intending to do some "Trillion Credit Squadron" fun. My spreadsheet model lists out the classes and their prices. I can pick and choose and compare. Like fantasy yacht wishlist shopping on-line, only with nova guns.

Start with the most expensive ships in the books, Federation Concordant Battlestars. Over a kilometer long, a crew of thousands. Carries thousands of marines, hundreds of fighters. Cargo capacity of tens of thousands of standard twenty-foot shipping containers. Big bad mama-jammers.

Each Battlestar mounts over two dozen of the most powerful ship to ship weapons, with armor and shields to match. A Battlestar can wreck a destroyer in less than five minutes. UFP Battlestars are not super-fast, but they can cross between stars faster than GPR or Imperial battleships.

With a trillion credits we can afford three Battlestars. And we get change. Nearly a hundred billion left over to buy full fighter groups, ten destroyers, and thirty scout/couriers. That’ll make some pirate lord or galactic tyrant soil their pants.

Or what the heck, let's stock up on destroyers. For a trillion, we can get 200 destroyers, ten destroyer leaders, and full fighter load outs – nearly 1,700 fighters. They’re lifting over 38,000 Space Marines.
A trillion credits of Fleet corvettes and Scouts yields 2,400 ships. None of their guns will even scratch the Battlestars’ paint. But they can launch ten times as many missiles as the Battlestar’s fighter groups. And they can be spread across thousands of systems.

Thoul's Paradise reviews Space Opera.

That's a good point about the character sheet. It is not great.

Starship Size Follies

I recently noticed starship dimensions changed during the run of the Space Opera RPG. Took me long enough, it’s only been out for three and a half decades.
In book 2 of the Space Opera rules, on page 54, a starship ton is defined as 3 cubic meters or 100 cubic feet. (That’s an old maritime standard.) Further, a deck will have a height of 2.5 meters.

Several example hulls are listed. The largest is a million tons, with dimensions of 700 x 95 x 45 meters.

The Problem

Those examples are big enough for a Star Trek ship but too small for a Star Wars Star Destroyer. Too small for many of Doc Smith’s ships. Skylark 3 was a cigar two miles long and 1500 feet in diameter. About 18 billion cubic feet! An Imperial Star Destroyer is half as long, 80 percent as wide and all pointy and flat.Call it 2 billion cubic feet. These are a heck of a lot larger than 100 million cubic feet.

That’s significant since the foreword specifically calls out Star Wars and Doc Smith’s books as material Space Opera is intended to emulate. If it can’t “do” big enough ships, it can’t emulate the source material.

The Solution

We can either Change the Genre or Change the Game

Three “Seldon’s Compendium of Spacecraft” followed. The first one kept the same dimension rules. Seldon 1 covered smaller ‘civilian’ and ‘police’ ships. The Spice Runner is a reasonable knockoff of the Millennium Falcon.

The next two Seldon Compendium books covered military ships of the Space Atlas same setting. Seldon 2 covered four major Human-centric Star Nation’s space fleets. Seldon 3 covered four more Star Nations dominated by aliens.These books included a stealthy rule change. A Starship ton now equal 30 cubic meters or 1,000 cubic feet. There was also an example of a ship bigger than one million tons. An Imperial-class Star Destroyer was now statistically possible.

Good enough for Space Opera, in it’s original Star Atlas game setting.  None of the Star Nations is rich enough to get into the Death Star building business.

A problem with this change is some of the existing deck plans were distorted. The Nike and Nemesis class ships are in both Seldon’s 1 and 2, with the same deck plans. We can simply “stretch” the scale from feet to meters, and height and width are taken care off. But the ships have the same number of decks. The suggested vertical spacing even shrinks a little. It’s a good thing most Space Opera ships with deck plans don’t have side or front views. They’d look as flat as pancakes.

But

There are also the even larger Death Star and the Skylark of Valeron. And the Dahuk. 
But let’s not get crazy here. I’m already ignoring Skylark 3 weapon range is 50 million light years. Not even Space Opera can handle something like that.

Besides, if I have to re-read Skylark of Valeron, I might puke when I get to the scenes where the Naked Galactic Rebel Princesses use Richard Seaton for eugenic experiments. With Dorothy's full approval. 

SF Writers Know their Fans. 

Campaign notes from the old days

Back in the 1990s I GM'd a Hero System Space Opera campaign. I recently found my notes. Here's my campaign plan.

This is a science fiction role-playing game campaign set in 2592 A.D. There are all the usual trappings of space opera, including starships, blasters, psionics, and anthropomorphic aliens. 

Our heroes are the crew of a privateer starship. They'll start out pretty small time.  They will perform such missions as repo'ing a ship, running guns to the rebels, or smuggling operatives. In the tradition of the space opera genre, things will get out of hand before you know it . . .

Campaign Tone

In the tradition of space opera, Good Guys are always Good, and Bad Guys are always Bad. Player characters will be mostly good but a little grungy. To spice things up we add a couple of cyberpunk and espionage novel bits. You just can't tell whose side some people are on; some people switch sides on you.

This is a rather romantic, unrealistic campaign. There will be many classic Space Opera 'bits'. Some of the most obvious space opera cliches we'll use will be anthropomorphic aliens, faster than light travel, huge spaceships, and loud ray guns.

Naturally, our heroes will face (and overcome) great adversity. Some may die along the way. There will be at least one major act of treachery, balanced by one big break.

Description of Setting

The setting of this campaign is adapted from Fantasy Games Unlimited's Space Opera (1980) role-playing game and their Space Marines miniature rules. Some interesting bits were liberated from other sources, and some I made up myself.

Known Space is dominated by several vast militarist interstellar empires.  They include:

The Federal Systems Union is liberal, multiÄspecies democracy.  Its Capitol is Terra. For the purposes of this campaign, they're the good guys.

The Empire of Man is a fascist, Human Supremacist, quasi-mystical merit oligarchy.  Its Capitol is near Deneb. They think War is fun. Aliens are inferiors. Genocide and slavery are the Imperial way of dealing with them. The Empire is dominated by a Warrior cult, with bizarre rituals and traditions.

The Mercantile League is a human-dominated commercial alliance of corporations and individuals. They hate "Statist" governments. They'll trade with anybody, even nations they're fighting.

The Councilate is a very old, very eccentric multi-species government. They are very stuffy and bureaucratic. Some Councilate races have been running around interstellar space for thousands of years.

The Optimized Social Republic was a human-dominated Commie state.  The Republic was building the "perfect" society through social and genetic engineering. It collapsed after losing a war with the Councilate and their Mercantile League allies.  Former Republic worlds are suffering from many problems, including civil wars, Mercantile occupation troops, Federal "relief missions" and Imperial marauders. Strange mutants and hybrids are escaping from Republic labs and government servitude. They aren't always forgiving or merciful.

Larvae (A.K.A. "The Bugs") are a species resembling giant insects and the monsters from the movies Alien and Aliens.  Each larvae clan has a "group mind", with individual larva linked telepathically. They have a nasty habit of migrating in mass to other folk's planets uninvited.

IRSOL are a Humanoid species. They wander the Galaxy in giant CityÄShips.  The IRSOL are a very old, very sophisticated, and very private race. IRSOL are allies and sponsors of the Federation, which they seem to be manipulating.  They are rivals of certain Councilate races.

Power Levels

Skill Rolls            11 to 20

Speed     2 to 5

Dexterity              10 to 23

Combat Values    3  to 10

Campaign Rules

Do not use hit location.

Do not use Knockback rules; use Knockdown instead.

Do not use longÄrange endurance rules.

Do use Limited Push; Must make Ego roll to push powers.

Campaign Plan

Starting Year: 2592 AD

The rate of time passage varies. It will speed up during long travel periods.

Campaign Type: Swash-buckling Space Mercs

Known Alien Races: Too many to list.  Humans and variants are common.

Base world: Terra, Sol System

The frequency of Good worlds: Scattered. Exploration is Ongoing and widespread.

Technology

Power Sources

Anti-matter and Fusion reactors are common and relatively cheap and reliable. Solar arrays and power satellites are also in use. Major planetary power grids use redundant room temperature superconductor lines.

Transportation

Countra-grav vehicles are common for personal planetary travel. Rail systems and surface ships are used for bulk transportation. Wheeled and tracked vehicles are used for agriculture and mining.

Spacecraft use a Hyperdrive for interstellar, faster-than-light, travel. This allows speeds of 1 to 10 Parsecs per day. Complex calculations are required before entering hyperspace. A ship in hyperdrive cannot affect or be detected from normal space. It can be affected by storms and creatures which exist in hyperspace. A hyperdrive is reliable, given regular maintenance. Malfunctions can result in odd time dilation/expansion effects and/or emergence in normal space far from the intended destination.

It is not safe to prematurely drop out of hyperspace; it places great stress on the Ship and personnel onboard. It usually takes at least a week to recalibrate the hyperdrive after a premature drop.

A jump drive is known, but not widely used. It requires a specially talented Psi adept.

Spacecraft use a  reactionless "Thruster" drive. This drive seems to violate or bend many laws of Relativity physics. Typically, a ship will be rated at 10 -100 mt/sec/sec acceleration. Some "barge" or racing vessels will be outside this range.

Teleportation devices, including stargates, are known but not understood.  All existing examples are unreliable and dangerous ancient artifacts from forerunner cultures.

Communications

Faster-than-light communication is possible using either a Tachyon transceiver (TTR) or a Hyperspace pulse generator (HPG). A Tachyon transceiver is limited to about 5 to 10 light year range but is reasonably small. A Hyperpulse generator (HPG) has a range of several thousand light year, with an effective speed of transmittal of about 256 light years/day.  It is a large, bulky device, (several thousand tons) which is usually deployed as a space station.

Tachyon transceiver relay buoys are deployed by explorers and military expeditions to extend their communication ranges.

Remote Sensing

Tachyon emissions from thrusters, hyperdrive engines, gravity control devices, or ship weapons can be detected at ranges of several hundred light seconds.

Very large optical and radio telescopes have been built.  These allow detection of habitable planets at ranges of hundreds of Lightyears.

Medicine

General purpose antiÄantibiotics, antiÄagatics, slow-time, and limited regeneration drugs are available. Regeneration tanks are available.

Bionics are available, reliable, and comfortable.  Elective bionics are rarely seen, particularly since implants are no longer required for direct mental interfacing with computers.  Powered exoÄskeletons have replaced most combat bionics.

Genetic engineering, cloning, and brain-taping are available but restricted. Genetically engineered humans are common in some parts of the Republic and the Mercantile league. The Republic was building the "New Soviet Man" and supersoldiers for their wars with the Empire and the Councilate.

Civil Engineering

Large sspace tructures, such as L5 colonies and floating cities are common.  Union technology has not yet developed the capability to produce starcities, but could if there was a good reason to do so. The IRSOL and some Councilate races do build starcities.

Most cities cover a small area but are densely populated. They frequently consist of giant buildings or large underground facilities. Such cities have less impact on ecosystems and are easier to defend from space attacks. Extensive suburbs and road networks are avoided. 

Agriculture

Food is cheap and easily obtained, for the most part. Advances in transportation and robotics have helped a great deal.  Interestingly, several colonies on Jupiter and Saturn's moons are noted food sources; a monument to agricultural engineering.

Computers and Robots

It is possible to build a computer with effectively human (or superior) intelligence and creativity. Slavery of any intelligent, sentient being is illegal almost everywhere except the Empire; this includes computers as well as biologicals. Free-willed AI's can be dangerous. Their motives are not the same as those of biologicals. Free-willed AI devices, including sentient robots, are rare.

Nanotechnology has rendered implanted "hardwired" manÄcomputer interfaces relatively safe and convenient.

Weaponry

There is an extensive variety of energy and projectile weaponry available for ground, sea, air, and space combat. To counter these threats advanced armor and forcefield systems are available. Electronic camouflage and counterÄmeasures have advanced to match advances in sensor technology.

Nuclear damper field technology has spread throughout known space. The damper effectively neutralizes nuclear weapons. As a bonus, it reduces the destructive effects of large meteor strikes. Unfortunately, chemical and biological weapons still work all too well. The Imperial scum developed some "interesting" applications of microwaves and radio-active dust; the Xenon damper doesn't stop these weapons.

Magic or Psionics

Several elder races have supported the rational development of Psionic talents. True adepts are rare and require extensive practice to develop their skills. Most physical effects require some sort of amplifying matrix.

Like Stringbean, I keep it close to my heart

https://photos.app.goo.gl/g78vlLOw

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Seldon's Starcraft 2 and the Space Opera Trillion Credit Squadron

Zoe the cat and I spent a productive Sunday afternoon perusing the Starships of War for Space Opera. I started a spreadsheet of ship statistics, intending to do some "Trillion Credit Squadron" fun.

Trillion Credit Squadron

Back in the day, Traveller supported wargame style play. One supplement in this line was Trillion Credit Squadron. Players designed their own fleets, using the High Guard big ship rules. Then they lined them up, using the ship combat rules and slugged it out to find out who was the best designer and fleet commander. The results were very interesting; Douglas Lenat ran hundreds of simulations using his AI Program while designing his fleets and won the national contest two years running. 

Space Opera’s shipbuilding rules never included the ‘secret’ military design rules. In their absense, we can use published examples. Eight sample fleet lines were published in Seldon’s guides 2 and 3. 

The compendiums sad Stats for Destroyers, Cruisers, and other space warships. In the fiction, Battleships designed according to each fleet’s capabilities and cultural preferences. Four more or less human cultures, four more or less alien cultures. 

Every Starnation’s culture was reflected in their ship designs. The UFP built the best ships they could; the expense was no object. In comparison, the Mercantile League kept a close eye on the bottom line. Both had to protect hundred of allies and colonies scattered over hundreds of lightyears. The oppressive Azurich Imperium built big nasty attack ships for their relatively few chosen crews. Their ships were not designed to defend broad areas of space, but merely for destruction. The Galactic People’s republic had more manpower. They built many cheaper ships to utilize this advantage.  

Each ship classification came in several varieties t different levels of technological sophistication. Each ship had a price, fixed to the ‘hard’ credit of the Federation and League banks. Prices ranged from a few megacredits for cheap starfighters, to hundreds of Billions for the top of the line Battlestars. 

I built a spreadsheet model for buying warships. List out the classes and their prices, pick and choose and compare.

For example, take the most expensive ships in the books, Federation Concordant Battlestars. One point two five million tons, crews of thousands. Carries thousands of marines, hundreds of fighters, and tens of thousands of tons cargo. Each mounts over two dozen of the most powerful ship to ship weapons, with armor and shields to match. With crack gun crews, a Battlestar can wreck a destroyer in less than five minutes. UFP Battlestars are not super-fast, but they can cross between stars faster than GPR or Imperial battleships. Big bad mama-jammers. 

With a trillion credits we can afford three Battlestars. And we get change. Nearly a hundred billion left over to buy full fighter groups, ten destroyers, and thirty scout/couriers. That’ll make some pirate lord or galactic tyrant soil their pants

Or what the heck, let's stock up on destroyers. For a trillion, we can get 200 destroyers, ten destroyer leaders, and full fighter load outs – nearly 1,700 fighters. They’re lifting over 38,000 Space Marines.

A trillion credits of Fleet corvettes and Scouts yeilds 2,400 ships. None of their guns will even scratch the Battlestars’ paint. But they can launch ten times as many missiles as the Battlestar’s fighter groups.

More to follow!

How much is a ton of Starship?

In FGU’s Space Opera RPG (1980) Spaceships are sized in Tons. Section 9.9 in Book 2 on Page 54 tells us a ton of ship equals a volume of 3 cubic meters. 

(Or you are a true blue patriotic American fanatic, 100 cubic feet. Not equal, but close enough for D&D.)

Ships in Book 1 and Seldon’s Compendium of Space Craft Vol 1 (1981) are constant with this volume to weight ratio.

But in Seldon’s Volume 2 (1984) there’s a stealth rule change. A ton of ship is now 30 cubic meters. This ratio is repeated in Seldon’s Volume 3 (1988). We can be reasonably sure it’s not a typo.

The Nike Scout and Nemesis Corvette class ships are in both Seldon’s Volume 1 and Volume 2. In Vol1, there are volumes listed for these ships. This is consistently 3 cubic meters per ton. Volume totals are not in the stats in Seldon’s Volume 2 and 3.

I don’t believe any of FGU’s published Space Opera deck plans included a scale. They work just as well scaling 1 square meter up to 100 square feet. Triple the width and length add a few centimetres headspace and deck thickness.  A drawing scaled for  3 cubic meters equals one ton easily translates to 30 cubic meters equals one ton.

Handwave, Handwave, close enough for D&D. 

Actual weight/mass of these ships doesn’t matter. In the Space Opera game, ships use ultra-science inertia-less antigravity faster-than-light space drives. They don’t violate the laws of physics as we know them.  Space Opera sends rampaging hordes of bugs to devour the laws of physics. Space Opera tech is "Sufficiently Advanced"!

Why the change? I speculate the Nemesis corvette inspired the change. That boat carries a company of space marines. Somebody familiar with shipping requirements of a military unit may have seen the deck plans. And had a fit of the giggles. It was the 1980s, the news was full of stories about military transportation during the Gulf War.

Same for anybody who tried to fit in Fighter bays. Same for anybody who tried to figure out how some of these ships made money trading. Any ship that can’t carry standard shipping containers does not have a cargo bay. It has a broom closet.

This sort of thing was not unique to the Space Opera game. I remember it affecting the more popular Traveller Game. I was surprised while reading Traveller High Guard. A Traveller ton is 13.5 to 14 cubic meters. The volume of a ton of liquid hydrogen. Why? A ton of water is a single cubic meter. Real world ships have 3 to 5 cubic meters of interior space per displacement ton. Early deck plans published by Judge’s Guild were tiny, compared to later plans for the same ships. 


So a ton of Space Opera ship takes the volume of two tons of Traveller ship. A Nike class scout is 7.5 times the volume of a classic Traveller scout. It has a bigger crew, more and bigger guns, better defenses, and ridiculously higher performance. 

Prerequisite skill tree