[Moved from another topic to avoid off-topic noise.]
atpollard wrote:
My personal pet peeve is "Why doesn't the 20 dT bridge on a 200 dT ship look just like the 20 dT bridge on a 1000 dT ship? - either the ships require the same bridge size and crew or they do not."
Pagan priest wrote:
The ships require the "same" bridge size, but I have always seen that as including various other things besides just the actual bridge. Stuff like the ship's locker, airlock, a bit of corridor leading up to the bridge, etc, etc, etc.
[I just came back from a very nice week in the Carribean, and was happy to see some activity in the Gearhead's Corner.
So this topic is just for some fun banter. I expect to solve nothing of substance.]Sorry, but the 'Various other things' argument really doesn't work very well. I use it myself in creating deckplans but at its core it fails the basic 'smell test'. A 200 dTon, 500 dT and 800 dt ship all require 20 dT of "Bridge" (whatever that means). If we assume, as you state, that the actual "control stations" Flight Deck (just to call it something other than bridge) is smaller than 20 dT and the rest of the 20 dT is used for 'other stuff', then one would expect a 200 dT ship to have a smaller Flight Deck than a 500 dT ship, and a 500 dT ship to have a smaller Flight Deck than a 800 dT ship. Just to use some numbers for an example, lets say that the Flight Deck is 2% of the ship:
...
4 dT for a 200 dT ship, 10 dT for a 500 dT ship, and 16 dT for a 800 dT ship.
This means that the 'everything else' part of a 20 dT Bridge (airlock, ship's locker and landing gear) is:
...
16 dT for a 200 dT ship, 10 dT for a 500 dT ship, and 4 dT for a 800 dT ship.
Why does a 200 dT ship need 4 times as much 'airlock, ship's lockers and landing gear' as an 800 dT ship?Using a fixed tonnage for the Bridge implies that all starships have certain minimum requirements that must be met in terms of crew stations and ship's lockers, and (if true) then the 20 dT bridge on a 200 dT ship should be about the same as the 20 dT bridge on an 800 dT ship. This is similar to the case on real world watercraft where the Bridge of a 1000 TEU ship is nearly identical to the Bridge on a 10,000 TEU ship because it serves the same basic navigation and control function, requires the same equipment and is manned by the same crew positions. This is what the Traveller Bridge Tonnage implies, but not what the deckplans show.
I don't expect a logical correction to the rules, so I just learn to live with it and hide the tonnage in the deckplan in the grand tradition of all the deck planners who have come before me. On a 200 dt ship, the stairs are part of the '20 dT bridge' and on an 800 dT ship the stairs are part of the 'Stateroom' tonnage ... or perhaps 'Engineering'.