My Traveller group is making the transition to the new Traveller 5 rules. Or some of them, at any rate. Using the new ship design rules, I recreated the Kinunir class battlecruiser described in Adventure 1. The existing deckplan didn’t even follow the design rules set forth by Classic Traveller, so I threw it out the window, redesigned the ship entirely, and created a new more reasonable deckplan.
This version of the ship is not as independent as the original was, lacking the mechanical and electronics shops. The small apparent number of crew bunks is because the racks are stacked three high, and each bunk is shared by three crew members sleeping in shifts. This is the arrangement described on many U.S. Navy submarines, so I figure space ships may well have similar arrangements. The marines get more space because they have more time off, and they get restive when they feel too crowded.
The maneuver drives described in the rules are a gravity-manipulating device that apparently pushes or pulls against the gravity well of a large mass. Since there is no reason for them to be expelling hot gasses out of nozzles on the back of the ship, this and any future designs I make will likely feature a maneuver drive near the center of mass of the ship rather than at the rear. The jump drive is required to form a bubble or field around the entire vessel, so I gave it the entire central corridor on the center deck for similar reasons. And because it gives engineers an excuse to be running up and down a long corridor with sparks flying everywhere when something goes wrong!
I am going to stick with this sparse black-and-white scheme for deckplans and probably many floor plans because it’s easy to print and because ideally I’d like my descriptions to evoke the environment rather than a picture. Also, it lets the same deckplan serve for a shiny new vessel right off the assembly line or a decrepit old beater that’s mostly duct tape and chewing gum.
On to the pictures!
