Putting Humpty Dumpty back together again...

Wolfen said: I'd say that about sums it up.  As to the cutters specifically, I agree that we either need to get more utility out of them or dump them. Currently, we rarely use them.  Fully agree. That's pretty much what gave birth to the "Bandoleer" idea. Cutters would be more important once they actually have something important to haul.  I think my big fear regarding the cutters is that when it comes to space combat they're potentially a one shot kill from even the weakest starship weapon. But they could be beefed up. Steve Jackson games put out a military version of the Modular Cutter for Gurps Traveller. Hoping to bounce some ideas around in the new "Modular Cutter" topic.  But you're right. We should either use them or lose them. But the Ares has to have some kind of small craft. You're not always going to be able to land that big ol' ball where you want it. And I strongly agree with Tenacious' point about having the Ares in orbit providing covering fire while a landing craft hits the dirt to take care of business on the ground. 

Currently trying to put together some new deckplans for the Ares. These ones will be as close to the existing ones as possible while at the same time being accurate to the ship's actual stats. An 800dton ship has a volume of about  10800m^3. Rounding figures down a bit to include the ships "legs" I'm figuring a diameter of a 800t sphere to be about 27m, or 18 1.5m squares.  The current deck plans are about 16 squares wide at it's widest point. So maybe they diverted more volume toward the "legs"? 18 square diameter means only 9 decks. The current plan has 11 decks. I'm thinking that maybe they were working on a 2m high deck rather than a 3m high one? If the decks are 3m high, then two squares equals 1dton ( 1.5mx3mx3m=13.5m^3=1dton ). If the ceiling is only 2m high then three squares equals one dton ( 1.5mx4.5mx2m=13.5m^3=1dton ) Based on that math, we could have the same number of decks in a new set of deck plans. 5 decks could have a ceiling 3m high, while the rest would have a ceiling only 2m high. ( 5x3m +6x2m = 27m=diameter of 800dton sphere. ) All these numbers work out pretty well when we consider that according to the coolest small craft deck plans a modular cutter is 30m long. So the engine ports of the cutter are protruding slightly from the edge of the sphere like they do in most illustrations of the Broadsword class merc cruiser.  Merc Cruiser in action Cutter is 20 squares long = 30m ( 1.5mx20 ) So in the new plans I'm going to make sure that the cutter well is 9 squares wide to accommodate both the cutter and the module side by side. This may mean losing the space in between them. Going to see if I can be tricky with it though. At the moment the locked "vault" is in between the cutter wells. Seeing that this space has already featured in our story I'm hoping to maintain it's location. Will see what I can do.  If anyone has any comments about the deck plans and how they could be please post now. I'm hoping to make deck plans that are Roll20 friendly and that will look cool enough to play on.  

While 18" of diameter does mean 9 decks in theory , in practice, those decks turn out to be too scrawny to be useful; hence, my insistence on 8 decks; cram extra Power Plant, Maneuver Drive, and Jump Drive into the bottom deck, and extra fuel into the top deck. I was thinking that nice viewport on the top deck could be a transparent fuel tank; liquid hydrogen is mostly transparent... Decks less than 3 meters high means a dTon is no longer a dTon; deck plans should save players from math, not cause it. Place the 8 turrets like the corners of a cube. Divide the sensors into 12 units, and place them like the sides on a d12; the sensor units on the top and bottom should be laid out like a ring around their respective features, instead of as one piece. Have the Cutter Modules able to “pop out” of the sides of the Cruiser; one module pops out, the current Module in the Cutter takes its spot, and then the Cutter maneuvers out to the Cruiser’s side to slide onto the Module. Some arms would help here, too. Mounting the Cutter vertically means that the Cruiser to Cutter Airlocks are going to have to be 2 squares wide, to accommodate the transition from standing vertically relative to the ship to standing vertically relative to the Cutter. One of the “epic $&#**^% disasters with the Mongoose Deck Plans is that every deck is on a different 1" grid ! It is, in short, insanity . So some deck plans that actually work would be pretty helpful. Be sure to suggest to Pakkrat how to set them up with regards to grid sizing and so on; he’s not one for fiddling with Roll20 stuff.

Because folks have been playing and visualizing their character stories on this ship for a while, I'm trying REALLY REALLY hard to keep the plans as close to the original as possible. The only radical changes I'm hoping to make are the things that don't make sense or that don't line up with the ships actual stats. I think bigger changes would have to be designed and paid for and sorted out In Character.  I'm also using the 1982 Classic Traveller adventure 7 - Broadsword book. That little black book has deck plans that actually make sense. Worth checking out. 

Feel free to reduce the size of the Captain’s Stateroom.  Gevaudan doesn't have an ego.  Give the space back to the bridge and C&C pit.  Gev lives there anyways.

Thanks for the hard work guys! Glad you're doing it instead of me. ;)

I don’t suppose you could do a crude scan of the original, so I can have a look? You can post an image in this thread...

Here you go.

A little better organized, but still grossly inaccurate... 10.5 decks instead of the 8 it should have...

By my count it could have 9 decks. (27m / 3m) I still don't think that lowering the ceiling of each lvl to 2m or 2.5 m is a bad idea. On a military ship I figured you'd be working hard to be economical with the available space. There's really no need for the extra head room.  On the other hand ... it does make sense to totally delete the "cargo decks" seeing that the ship only has 17 dtons available outside the cutter well. 

If you give it 9 decks, the top and bottom decks will have so much curvature in their ceiling and floor that they’ll be mostly unusable. It’s something I put a great deal of effort into looking at. I hear what you are saying about deck heights in theory, but in principle, you shouldn’t, and there are lots of good reasons why... The usable space in a deck is usually 2.5m high; the extra half a meter is often reserved for vent, plumbing, and conduit type stuff; the veins and arteries of the ship, as it were. You can’t just delete that. And while you can , in theory, reduce the usable space instead, it leads to problems like equipment taking up additional horizontal space to make up for the vertical loss, and units of cargo no longer fitting in like they should. There would also be a great deal of the space equivalent of OSHA safety standards you would be violating; deck heights are probably that height for a reason . It’s just plain more reasonable to do one of the following: Give the ship the displacement it should have, given its dimensions: A total suck-fest for gameplay reasons Stop trying to make it spherical, which is kind of arbitrary anyway: Perfectly reasonable given the circumstances, but may be a non-starter for those addicted to nostalgia Build a completely new design in the volume that is actually available: Doable, but a lot of work

Just a quick knock up for 27m diameter hull with 9 3m decks ( 20 pixels = 1m ) :   The toilet door people on the image are 1.8m tall.  So I've put two different wall cut off points on that top deck. One is where the height of the dome reaches down to 2m. That area is coloured in white. So in that kind of space there is no point where you'd need to duck unless your taller than 2m tall. That gives a space 11m ( about 7 squares ) in diameter. Quite roomy. About 7 displacement tons.  If you push the walls out to where the ceiling height becomes 1.5 m you get a space 13m ( about 8.5 squares ) wide. So if you're standing within 1m of the wall you have to duck a little. I figured that would be acceptable ducking space. If you have things like dressers and desks up against the wall that little bit of ducking space would never affect anyone. Space is about 9dtons.  I reckon it works.  You're totally right when you talk about space set aside for vents and such. We also really want a bit of room for alien infestation so we can shoot up into the ceiling Hudson style! So I'm with you. Best to stick with 3m tall decks. 

You’re forgetting the 0.5 meter utility space... put that in the floor of the top deck, and in the ceiling of the bottom deck... then measure.

I think we can get away with having one deck without that "utility space". We could put those things in the walls or something.  EDIT: Just added a .5 m floor deck for vents and such.  Still looks okay to me. I tiny bit of duck if you go close to the wall, but I still think that's okay. Desks and dressers up against the wall and you'd never actually need to duck. 

What I'm actually thinking ... what if we replaced the "owner's suite" with a big ol' turret? Delete one of the state rooms ( do we really need 25 state rooms? ) and laser turrets and we gain an extra 5dtons. Enough for a barbette!  EDIT: okay... just calmed down. No barbettes for now. Will try to keep the new deck plans as close to the current one's as possible. If we do want to go messing around with things later then that's cool. But for now I'm trying to stick with the plan - continuity. 

There's an amazing artist on Flicker (Winchell Chung) who has done some remarkable 3D computer drawings of the Broadsword.&nbsp; ; <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/albums/721576" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/albums/721576</a>... Scroll down through the first few images, scans of previous GDW artwork, to get to the really good stuff.

Generally, we don't need so many staterooms. Additionally, we don't need an "owner's suite," but might want to replace that with either a board room/meeting room, a lounge or some luxury space for high-paying passengers. I do think we should speak to the Referees if we're going to "retro-spec" the ship's overall structure and such. I have no real attachment to the sphere shape, but we should probably keep it, if only so we can continue calling the Ares "the big ol' ball of death." &nbsp;8)

...though in all honesty, I sure wouldn't mind some more offensive and/or defensive goodies for the Ares. Especially before we go traipsing into the extents.

Alby, you were measuring 2 meters from the bottom of the deck, instead of the bottom of the usable space. Here’s the rain on your parade... While the side projection suggests you’ve potentially got lots of space, the top projection clearly indicates that just about all the space is compromised; the third dimension is a bitch . If you fudge it, you might be able to get a reasonably uncompromised 4.5mx4.5m square, but then you need to put in the damn iris valve. The light gray area is really only fit for equipment, and the dark grey is definitely only fit for equipment. Additionally, with an odd number of decks, that puts a deck across the middle of the sphere. It uses the sphere more efficiently to have a deck just above and just below the centerline, since the wall is nearly straight there, which is just plain easier to get away with. Combined with the above, that clearly indicates 8 decks.

Wolfen, “sphere-ish” is a reasonable enough adjustment... instead of 18x18, it would be 18x22... Also, I prefer Winchell Chung’s other site ...

"Sphere-ish" is fine by me, as long as it is by the Referees.

Here’s the rain on your parade.. Lol. I'm not really on parade. Just trying to get it right. I'm not emotionally attached to the concept of 9 decks or anything like that.&nbsp; Keep in mind I'm trying to get it as close to the way it currently is as possible. Folks have already been hanging out in that suite. I'm not really all that keen to go make new plans as if that space never existed.&nbsp; Here's the way it currently is: See how the tables and chairs and the head of the bed are closer to the walls? The side walls of the Mongoose plans are half the height of the other decks, so lets just say 1.5m. Keeping in mind that a 1.5m roof means that a 1.8m tall person only needs to duck 30cms, and only if they're standing right next to the wall. I think the "compromised space" your talking about in your post is actually portrayed on the plans with that dotted circular line? Either that or it's just showing you where the glass ceiling is.&nbsp; The owners suit is essentially the "attic" of the ship. When you're using an attic as a living space you can work around the "compromised space" created by the slope of your roof. It's really about being smart about the placement of your furniture. As long as the "walking space" is toward the center of the room you're usually okay. A couple of examples of what I'm talking about: Beds and chairs under those sloped ceilings effectively negate them as being a problem.&nbsp; If we're really insisting on there being absolutely no then we could have that 0.5m of "vent and cable" space under the deck. So it'd be as if you turned the plan upside down.&nbsp; We can make the "owner's suite" space work, even if we just have to imagine &nbsp;the ceiling&nbsp;blistering outward 50cms or so to give a little bit of extra headroom. If you're not a fan of sloped ceilings and sleeping under the stars then that's cool, but that's the way it currently is and it's not really breaking any rules. I'm really just trying to concentrate on the rule breakage for now.&nbsp;

Actually before I do anything I should double check with you guys and make sure I've got things right.&nbsp; Please let me know if we can sort out any of the following: In the Mongoose stats the room for the 30ton cutter modules is included in the 77 tons of "cargo" the ship has. So she effectively has 17 tons of cargo and room for two 30 ton modules. Whoever made the deck plans didn't count this into his thinking and made plans for a ship that actually has 77 tons of cargo.&nbsp; According to company docs 12 tons of fuel processor s were "included" in the ships fuel tonnage. So we now have 300 tons of fuel and 12 tons of processors. This effectively shaved 1 week off our life support. ( 240 tons required for J-3, 24 tons per two weeks ). We now have fuel for 1 jump-3 and five weeks of life support. Do I have that right? The company docs say we have 27 state rooms? . Not sure if that extra 8 tons for two more state rooms was made available by the removal of the repair drones( 8 tons ), the air raft ( 4 tons ) or the luxuries ( 8 tons ). The mass of those things has been removed from the spreadsheet. For now I was just going to go with 25 state rooms as per the stats in the mongoose book unless someone can confirm that 27 is not just a mistake. Still out of space for those luxuries, air-raft and repair drones ( current total on the spreadsheet is 804.5 tons without drones, air/raft or luxuries ).&nbsp; Sensors have been upgraded to v.advanced. That takes up an additional three tons (currently listed on spreadsheet) . &nbsp; 13.5 tons have been allocated to "escape pods". ( looks like one for each of the 27 state rooms ) So our big number problem at the moment is that if we add up all the components listed on the spreadsheet we come to&nbsp; 824.5 tons That includes a figure of 73 tons of cargo, but doesn't include 60 tons for two cutter modules. So if we eliminate all cargo and add the tonnage of the modules we come to&nbsp; 811.5 tons. &nbsp;... which is still over weight by a fair bit and we have 0 cargo except for what we can stow into the cutter modules. Most of this problem goes away if we're happy to just cull staterooms to make room for the added components. Unless we actually want the Ares to be a luxury passenger liner. In which case we should be culling other stuff.&nbsp; Downgrading the jump from M to K does give us another 10 tons to play with. If we keep going down that road we can gain another 4 tons by downgrading the M-drive and 6 tons by downgrading the P-Plant. Downgrading the p-plant also means we use 4 tons less per two weeks to keep the ship running. So the total down grade of all three drives gives us 20tons to work with. Also means we can have a week extra life support or reclaim 12 tons that was once for fuel.&nbsp; Does anyone here know how we can sort this out?

If asked, Gev would offer up to lose one Cutter module in the storage well. &nbsp;That frees up 30 dT, right? &nbsp;We no longer skim fuel by Cutters and we don't swap out modules that often. &nbsp;3 of 4 modules seems to fit our range of missions to Gevaudan. Backing all the drives and P-plant to K seems the other answer we seek. &nbsp;What were the Sword Worlders thinking?

Pakkrat said: &nbsp;What were the Sword Worlders thinking Oh I think I know what they were thinking. Extra power gives you plenty of options.&nbsp; I'm still a big fan of the coupling ideas. Downgrading may get the ship out of muchkinvill and back over the "legal" line but it does reduce our options a bit. We're going backwards rather than forwards.&nbsp; Take the 95 ton shuttle idea for example. Shuttles can carry 70 tons of cargo. If 30 of that is set aside for fuel for the Ares to jump with then we have a kick arse small craft plus 40 tons of cargo haulage. All this simply by adding a coupling... and maybe looting a puller infested scout base for a shuttle &nbsp;Can add up to two shuttles without affecting the ship's performance. I just think that's freak'n awesome. And if we had the shuttles we could probably ditch the cutters. That'd gain us an additional 160 tons of whateva the heck we like.&nbsp;&nbsp;A pair of bay weapons maybe? Huge cargo haulage? SO many options.&nbsp; I mean, a Broadsword cruiser can literally tow another Broadsword cruiser. If it wanted to it could even tow a 1000 ton freighter! Goes down to J-1 and 1G .. but still ... The ship has muscle!&nbsp;

If we're going to get rid of a module we should probably think of also getting rid of one or both of the cutters. A modular cutter without the option to swap modules is ... an unmodular cutter? No just a plain old cutter. May as well swap it with a 30 ton ship's boat or just ditch the second one all together and have 80t extra space.&nbsp; Kind of undoes the plans Tenacious and I were hatching for the modules though.&nbsp; Maybe we need to sort&nbsp; the Mission Statement issue out first, and then start fitting the ship out to fit the mission.&nbsp;

Also keep in mind that we will have to spend money and time for most, if not all of the modifications. I'd love to see more (certainly not less ) cargo space. Keep in mind that we need to reserve cargo space for passengers and even crew, as well, based on the "class" of their accomodations.

I hear what you are saying about the sloped ceilings, but then you have to track the equipment differently... 1. Get the volume of the slice of the sphere you’re making a deck out of, including the half-meter unusable height 2. Subtract the full half-dTon squares out of that volume 3. Divide the rest of the volume into pie slices equal to a full half-dTon So long as you portion equipment that way, you can do it, but it’s easier to just give up on the 9 decks and assign fuel around the fringe. With 8 decks, the top one is probably sufficiently large to have a dining hall added to it. The Mongoose “Owner’s Suite” is so riddled with errors that you really wouldn’t want to assume they got anything right about it.

To be honest, the main thing I don't like about the owners suite is the big glass window. That probably sounds a little pedantic but the 800 ton Mercenary Cruiser seems to me like the "tough ship" among all the other ships that are commercially available. It's a muscly looking, armoured, heavily armed behemoth. The big glass window just looks fragile to me. A big glass roof would make sense if it were a yacht or a passenger liner, but it feels out of place on a military ship. If a fighting ship is charging into battle, you'd think it would have it's most heavily shielded part of the ship facing toward the enemy, not the most vulnerable part. And you'd put the company owner in the most vulnerable part of the ship? Not unless you really hate your boss! You know what would look really cool though? Have the helmsman station moved up to that level. The acceleration couch and controls are set up so that the pilot is facing straight up. The's no real need to do it like that, but it would look kind of cool for Gev to be flying the ship like it was a giant starfighter.&nbsp; Dave S. said: There's an amazing artist on Flicker (Winchell Chung) who has done some remarkable 3D computer drawings of the Broadsword.&nbsp; ; <a href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/albums/721576" rel="nofollow">https://www.flickr.com/photos/nyrath/albums/721576</a>... Scroll down through the first few images, scans of previous GDW artwork, to get to the really good stuff. ^ this is really awesome by the way. Looks like he was very faithful to the deck plans ... which is bad for us. But it's great to be able to visualize things in 3D like that.&nbsp;

The math Spreadsheet for Ares I've set it so that anyone can edit it. Feel free to fiddle. Just make a note here of what you've changed.&nbsp; I've already "downgraded" the jump drive to K.&nbsp; The rest of it is copied over from the company document.&nbsp; According to what's on there at the moment we have -6 tons of cargo .&nbsp;

1. I wholeheartedly agree on the whole “Glass Canopy Owner’s Suite” thing... 2. It might be a Sword Worlder “bravado” thing... ? 3. Me and Charoux also don’t care ; Charoux has been looking forward to occupying that suite once the Vargr leave, and it’s been “de-furred” and “de-smelled” (smells are notoriously difficult to get rid of on spacecraft); bedroom over here, office over there, a lovely dining room and briefing room for company meetings... of course, Sebastian probably wants the suite too... :P

Okay, so based on what we almost discussed during the meta session today, I've shaved two staterooms off, bring the number of staterooms back down to 25.&nbsp; The Ares now has 3tons of space available for cargo.&nbsp; Still not a lot of room to move, but at least we're "legal" now. Going to assume that the cargo is in the unloaded cutter modules.&nbsp;

Did you work any of the decks out yet, or is it just a matter of raw size, for now?

Just size. I really can't do the deck plans until we figure all the tonnage out.&nbsp;

So ... are we all okay with 25 staterooms and only 3tons available for tonnage? Keeping in mind the plan to have 4 functional cutter modules that aren't really usable for cargo.&nbsp; We gain 4.5 tons of cargo space for every stateroom/escape capsule we give up.&nbsp;

We already have 2 Modular Cutters; I wouldn’t think we’d need many escape pods on top of that, except where access becomes restricted by the ship’s deck plan. Plus, I’m a fan of the idea that the only practical difference between any legitimate escape pod and a full starship is the lack of engines and the corresponding fuel, which wouldn’t make an escape pod all that practical anyway.

I'll have to go in and check, but are escape pods a requirement when carrying High Passage passengers?

I'm not aware of escape pods being a requirement. I'm pretty sure it's just a stateroom and a ton of cargo space for High, a stateroom and 100 kg of cargo space for Medium and 10 kg and a cryoberth for Low. On the other hand, if we want to be considered a truly high end transport service, every selling point we can come up with is a good thing. I've not really been worrying too much about the cargo issue, because I thought it would sort itself out. Seeing is that doesn't seem to be the case, I'll take a better look at the rules and Ares specs and weigh in later.

Wolfen said: ... On the other hand, if we want to be considered a truly high end transport service, every selling point we can come up with is a good thing. I've not really been worrying too much about the cargo issue, because I thought it would sort itself out. Seeing is that doesn't seem to be the case, I'll take a better look at the rules and Ares specs and weigh in later. Yeah I figured that the pods were added to assure customers that our company spares no expense when it comes to passenger safety.&nbsp; I don't have access to fiddle with the company docs, so I made my own spreadsheet to figure out remaining tonnage.&nbsp; Ares spreadsheet Forget the Mcr fields for now. I haven't finished bringing those across. But the tonnage right.&nbsp; For now I'm assuming all the speculative cargo is in the modular cutter open modules. We lost our air/raft but gained the Colonel's air/raft ... so that issue is pretty much sorted. After trimming two state rooms and their pods we have about 3dtons of available space, taking into account the tonnage set aside for our missiles.&nbsp;

This might have already been covered, but has any one thought about getting a 20 or 50 tonn close escort fighter or 2? after all we have a new toon who only has 2 useful skills small ship pilot and civil engineering.

VIC e. said: This might have already been covered, but has any one thought about getting a 20 or 50 tonn close escort fighter or 2? after all we have a new toon who only has 2 useful skills small ship pilot and civil engineering. Done more than think about it. Made a couple of 90 ton dropships that could be coupled to the outside of the hull. Could be used as landing craft or for space combat. They're on the spreadsheet too somewhere. The main problem with small craft is that in space combat they're in danger of being destroyed with one hit. So I made a ship that was a bit safer. Armoured and reinforced hull with armoured bulk heads. There's actually two versions of the ship I made. One with a missile bay, and the other one that removes the bay weapon to make room for an ATV, extra passengers and cargo. &nbsp;

i was thinking more on the specialized fighter, 6 g maneuver and plasma guns, maybe Dariun design, a drop ship is tough but putting a gun on a pick up is good and all, but not as good as a Bradley AFV. Right tool for right job

Oh this thing is a flying tank. Something zippy would be cool though.&nbsp; I did also make a 300t ship that could be coupled onto the front of the Ares. It has 6x 30 ton modules around its hull. It can be attached to a regular 800t mercenary cruiser without any reduction in it's jump or maneuver. I figured it could have 30t "hanger" modules that each contained a 20t fighter. That way a Merc Cruiser could carry along its own squadron.&nbsp; This is on that spreadsheet too. "Atlas".&nbsp; Forgive the bogus images I stuck into the spreadsheet. They're just place holders.&nbsp; These are all just ideas I'm kicking around. It really needs boss people who control the credits to make decisions like this.&nbsp;

Now that sounds tuff

At the moment we have two modular cutters. I was hoping we could replace them with the beefed up Steve Jackson version.&nbsp; They're not exactly "fighter" material though. That discussion is in the "Modular Cutter" topic.&nbsp;

Okay so here are some ideas floating around about what to do with the Ares. BIG GIRL's BLOUSE IDEA The difference between K and M.&nbsp; J Drive M Drive P Plant T Mcr T Mcr T Mcr K Drive 55 100 19 40 31 80 M Drive 65 120 23 48 37 96 TOTAL 10 20 4 8 6 16 Reduce the size of all drives from M to K. This will give us an extra 20 tons of usable space. We already have a head start on this. Patching up our busted ship with a K Jump drive has given us an extra 10 tons of available space ( currently being swallowed up by escape pods and luxuries. ) This idea effectively eliminates the possibility of hauling extra stuff along with us though. We could couple additional craft to the hull of the Ares, but it would reduce the ship's Jump and acceleration.&nbsp; ( I think earlier I mentioned that this option would free up 25 tons. That was a mistake. It's only 20 ) NEUTER IDEA If our jump drive was restored to it's original M rating, the Ares could be used as a "Tender". Using the docking clamps described on p45-46 of the High Guard supplement we could haul up to 400 tons of craft without any reduction in performance ( p108 Main Rulebook ). Jumping with that extra tonnage does require extra fuel however. One easy way of getting that extra fuel is to drop the modular cutters. At the moment the Ares uses 80tons ( 800/10 ) of fuel per parsec jumped. If she was hauling 400tons of extra craft then 120tons of fuel would be used per parsed. So if the 300tons set aside for fuel now was expanded to 460 by dropping the cutters and modules, we would have enough fuel for 1xJ-3 ( 360tons ) and 8 weeks of life support ( M power plant uses 24 tons per two weeks ). Or if we turned one of the cutter wells into a bay weapon 4 weeks life support ( 5 weeks if the bay weapon was 30 ton high tech one ). So instead of using the cutters we would be using up to 4x 95 ton shuttles that are coupled onto the outside of the hull. Each shuttle can carry up to 70 tons of cargo. That's 280tons of fortune generating haulage. Or we could go for two shuttles and two 90 ton gunships. Really want to talk about our naval tactics in a different topic. A pair of tough scout craft would be really good for us. Or if we really want to go crazy we could have two shuttles and 4x 50 ton fighters. Or 10x 20 ton fighters! We'd have to hire a few NPC fighter pilots for that last idea. Either that or make the fighters drones. If we're emotionally attached to the cutters we could keep them with this idea. Each 95 ton shuttle would then need to section off 30tons of their cargo space to serve as extra jump fuel for the Ares. That means each shuttle can haul only 40tons. Still pretty good. OR two of them could be dedicated fuel shuttles carrying 60tons of fuel each with 10tons left over for passengers/cargo. The other two have their full cargo bay available. HUMP BACK IDEA I knocked up a 300 ton ship called the Atlas (place holder name). Stats here. The idea is that this ship be be coupled to the front of the Ares. It has 6x30tons of "modular" space that uses the same moduels as the modular cutter. It has no jump drive, and can only accellerate at 1g. So its happy to be left in orbit if the Ares ever needs to land or head off into battle. The idea is that the cutters in the Ares can grab modules from the Atlas. The Atlas holds all the fuel needed for the Areas to jump with the additional tonnage. Fully fueled, an 800t mercenary cruiser and with the Atlas coupled can make one J-3 jump with enough fuel for 4 weeks life support ( 378tons of fuel ). The atlas also carries enough spare fuel for 2 weeks life support when on it's own. This option gives the Ares 10 modules for the modular cutters ( 4 inside the Ares, 6 on the Atlas ). An additional 95 ton shuttle could be coupled with the Ares can it could still make J-3. For every 4 modules filled with fuel the Ares/Atlas combo can jump an additional 1 parsec. I also love the idea of fighter hanger modules. This could give the Ares it's own fighter squadron! ( again, we'd either need to hire NPC pilots or make them drones ) The reason the Atlas is 300 tons and not 400 tons is because 300t is the max load of a 10 ton coupling. The next size up weights 20 tons and costs an extra 2Mcr. See page 46 of High Guard. The Neuter option is probably the easiest one of these ideas to go with. Fitting Docking Clamps onto the Ares has got to be easier than swapping drives or building additional ships. &nbsp;

Random visuals.&nbsp; I like the look of these fighters. Their curved bodies look like they could fit up against the hull of the Ares! Love Charoux's idea of having Dream Chaser style wings on shuttles attached to the Ares. On either side of the ship the shuttle wings would give an "X" configuration to the Ares's hull. They would actually make our ugly old ball of death look good!

In going over the Ares' Ship Specs, I noticed that many of the features that we've added to the ship over the basic Broadsword model had been counted against the ship's overall tonnage and &nbsp;then added into the cargo tonnage, effectively counting as twice their actual displacement tons. I think this may be why nothing added up previously.&nbsp; Edit: Straightened this out in the Company Docs. We once again have the correct tonnage and have room for cargo.

The issue with attaching fighters to the out side is repair and maintenance re arm and&nbsp; refuel and crew entry, again new holes in the ship. You could sell 1 of the cutters and convert 1 of the cutter bays into a fighter bay. I do like the idea of the block of modules on the nose of the ship that can be left in orbit so a cutter can add and remove modules. As for the extra fuel, maybe we could have fuel bladders in one of the cargo holds?

We still need a way to rapidly deliver 4 Cutter Modules to the surface of a planet. If we ditch one Cutter, we might as well ditch both, as making 4 trips is dumb (well-past “tactically unsound”). I really like the idea of bumping up to 900 dTons, and sinking the two shuttles into the hull a little bit, to drop our modules and provide some close-air-support, and possibly also gunship capability. More than that, though, seems unnecessary, and not particularly valuable.