Shipyard Page
While I probably fail the test to be a true gearhead, I have always loved the ships in Traveller. I guess I always figured that if I am going to play a game with the name of "Traveller", then I need a ship with which to travel.The Book 2 system (the same as the system in The Traveller Book) was very simplistic. The number of variables were quite few, and the various possibilities could be exhausted quite quickly. However, it didn't take long to move on to bigger and better things: Book 5 High Guard!
High Guard Designs
None of these designs would have been possible without the wonderful High Guard Shipyard by Andrew Moffatt-Vallance.When I first got Book 5, I, like most everyone, went trying to make the biggest, baddest space ships of all time. While fun to make, they are not terribly useful. In the High Guard system, the most important item is your spinal mounts. So, instead of bringing 1,000,000 tons of ship as a single ship with a single spinal mount, it made more sense to me to bring many more smaller ships, each with their own spinal mount. I then tried to find what would be the smallest warship I could design that would still be effective.
The size I came to was 20,000 tons. At TL15, that tonnage allows a spinal mount N to be mounted. Just for fun I also made a battlerider version (i.e. no jump drive) to see what the difference was. I then tried out a few other TLs to see what I ended up with.
Strike Cruisers:
TL 15
TL 14, both a Jump-3 and Jump-4
TL 13
TL 12
TL 10, both a high and low factor spinal mountBattle Riders:
TL 15
TL 15, 10 KTon
TL 12The results I found were that the 20 KTon Battle Riders were sick and they actually cost more than their corresponding Strike Cruiser. I have not yet made any battlecarriers to see what the total cost is, however. The TL15 Battle Rider was so sick, I wanted to see if a 10 KTon version would work. The Strike Cruisers don't have enough armor and are power-starved, but look like they can still be quite effective.
GURPS Traveller Designs
None of these designs would have been possible (except for the Kilaalum which I also did by hand) without the wonderful GURPS Modular Vehicle program by Tom Bont.When I saw the recent GURPS Traveller: 25th Anniversary Special Edition, I succumbed to temptation and got a copy. And I have to say that I was very impressed with the Modular Design system. In many ways it is quite different from other Traveller design systems (hidden power plant, inefficient GTL 10 maneuver drives, teenie vehicles), it works quite well. Coupled with the GMV program, which provides even more module options to use, the system provides a lot of versatility without a lot of the ridiculous overhead of the two FF&S design systems.
With a sudden burst of creativity, I attempted to "remake" some old CT designs into GT.
[Update: With the release of GT:Starships, I decided to go back and rework all of these. Some have been deleted, as that book makes them superfluous. But I have also added a couple of new ones, too.]
My favorite ship is the old Type T. I have reworked it into GT. You can use the deckplans from GT:Starships, FASA's Adventure Class Ships, Vol II, or you can use the much superior deck plans from Paul Schirf found here.
TL10 400-ton Patrol Cruiser
TL10 400-ton Base CruiserI also have a customized version of the TL10 Base ship called the Flaming Duck.
Two non-baseline player ships that I would prefer to have instead of their "baseline" versions are a jump-3 scout and a jump-2 subsidized merchant.
TL10 100-ton Long Scout The Sulieman deckplan on GT131 works as well for this scout as for the Sulieman. (In either case it is necessary to delete two staterooms from the deckplans.)
TL10 400-ton Far Trader The deckplans given in The Traveller Adventure or Double Adventure 5 are an excellent match, as long as enough cargo space is converted to fuel.Also, TL10 in GT causes a lot of compromises on with maneuver drives. Quite simply, they are huge. As a result, many of the ships that had been faster, have been "dropped" to 1G, including the Far Trader. So, here is a version of the Far Trader that gets a 2G rating.
TL10 200-ton Far TraderI have an old copy of Adventure Class Ships, Vol II produced by FASA. I primarily got it for the deckplans of the Type T in it. It also had some other really interesting ships, of which I present three here. In all cases, the deckplans provided in that product will also work unaltered here.
TL10 800-ton Exploration Ship
TL10 500-ton Orbital Facility
TL12 500-ton System Defense BoatBehind the Claw mentions the Barekdoldin-class Darrian Patrol Cruiser, which was first introduced in TNE. Humaniti clarified the mention, by stating that they are not really new production, but instead a recently found cache of ancient ships. This means that the GT Barekdoldin and the TNE Barekdoldin are completely different.
Another issue to keep in mind is that GT TL13 is very different from Traveller TL16. TL16 is just an incremental improvement over TL15. GT TL13, however, is a quantum leap over GT TL12.
So, I tried to make two different versions of the Barekdoldin. One as just a GT TL12 ship that could be new construction using some Traveller TL16 equipment, and the other as a full GT TL13 ship. The GT TL13 ship was fun to make. Its 55G missles are just insane. Unfortunately, there were many compromises with the GT TL12 ship. It was not possible to include the electronics, 1200 points of armor, 6G and J4 all together in a streamlined ship.
As a result, I now have three versions of the Barekdoldin. A GT TL13 version, a GT TL12 4G J4 version, and a GT TL12 6G J3 version. While anyone reading this will likely have a slightly different vision for what it should look like, these designs should be, if not adequate as is, at least a good starting point.
TL13 500-ton Barekdoldin Patrol Cruiser
TL12 500-ton Barekdoldin Patrol Cruiser - Jump-4
TL12 500-ton Barekdoldin Patrol Cruiser - Jump-3A discussion on the GURPS forum led me to take another look at the Leviathan class Merchant Cruiser from Classic Traveller Adventure 4. While the design is rather suspect, I went ahead and tried to recreate it using the High Guard rules, then recreate it under GURPS Traveller. Amazingly, the High Guard recreation was almost exact, and the GT recreation was closer than I would have ever expected.
1800-ton Leviathan Merchant CruiserThis site is of purely unofficial origin, and should in no way be considered official Traveller canon. Traveller is a trademark of Far Future Enterprises, Inc, and is used under licence by Mongoose Publishing.