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About a hundred years in my current campaign's future, the Clovis Class is one of the first standard cruisers to be commissioned and built by the Rule of Man of the Traveller universe.
Clovis, Ship Class, Cruiser
The Clovis Class Missile Cruiser was one of the first major 'Ambassador Ships' to areas of the Vilani Empire that saw little or no action during the Interstellar Wars.
Though originally designed for use in the Nth Interstellar Wars, budgetary concerns limited the initial run only four ships. It wasn't until after the naval coup in 2316AD and the Terran Confederation and Vilani Imperium were merged together by Grand Admiral Hiroshi Estigarribia into the Rule of Man that the Clovis was produced in much greater numbers.
Although designed as a main battle cruiser, its long range, relative speed, and ability to live off the land made it one of the admiralty's favored 'first contact' vessels, and hundreds were assigned roles independent of larger fleets, each assigned a handful of fast auxiliary and scout craft for mission flexibility. Mission length as assigned from Dingir was usually anywhere from 2-3 years. Once the capital was moved to Hub/Ershur, mission length was increased to 3-5 years.
Early examples of the Clovis were named after famous French, Gallic, Norman and Frankish military leaders. This was later expanded to include French castles and weapons, then Francophile colonies both on Earth and amongst the stars, and finally famous individuals of French descent.
Variants:
The Cherokee Class Scout Cruiser variant of the Clovis had only 10 missile launchers and ordnance, and removed the PA bays and downgraded the powerplant requirement to match. Instead, it carried a much larger complement of ship's vehicles, scientific equipment, staterooms for additional scientists, including anthropologists and language experts, and a larger space devoted to mission specific cargo. Though only a handful of Cherokees were made, and losses were high due to the nature of their mission, several were made famous while expanding the borders of known space well beyond that of the First Imperium.
Cherokee Class ships were initially named after eastern American tribes (Choktaw, Creek, Huron etc.). Oddly, the naming convention took a turn during the mid 24th century, and was changed to that of subject races of the First Imperium (Geonee, Bawapakerwa-a-a-awapawab, Answerin, etc.)
Though initially designed just to see the scale of a 50,000 ton ship compared to my other, more player-centric ship models, I kinda got sucked in and did a lot more work with it than I expected to.
Now in my mind, though still a fairly generic 'heavy cruiser', I see the Clovis as the "Star Trek 5 Year Mission" ship of the early Second Imperium - state of the art (for the time), long range/long mission, functional, "Only ship in the Quadrant", and ridiculously heavily armed (We come in peace/ shoot to kill!).
Clovis, Ship Class, Cruiser
The Clovis Class Missile Cruiser was one of the first major 'Ambassador Ships' to areas of the Vilani Empire that saw little or no action during the Interstellar Wars.
Though originally designed for use in the Nth Interstellar Wars, budgetary concerns limited the initial run only four ships. It wasn't until after the naval coup in 2316AD and the Terran Confederation and Vilani Imperium were merged together by Grand Admiral Hiroshi Estigarribia into the Rule of Man that the Clovis was produced in much greater numbers.
Although designed as a main battle cruiser, its long range, relative speed, and ability to live off the land made it one of the admiralty's favored 'first contact' vessels, and hundreds were assigned roles independent of larger fleets, each assigned a handful of fast auxiliary and scout craft for mission flexibility. Mission length as assigned from Dingir was usually anywhere from 2-3 years. Once the capital was moved to Hub/Ershur, mission length was increased to 3-5 years.
Early examples of the Clovis were named after famous French, Gallic, Norman and Frankish military leaders. This was later expanded to include French castles and weapons, then Francophile colonies both on Earth and amongst the stars, and finally famous individuals of French descent.
Variants:
The Cherokee Class Scout Cruiser variant of the Clovis had only 10 missile launchers and ordnance, and removed the PA bays and downgraded the powerplant requirement to match. Instead, it carried a much larger complement of ship's vehicles, scientific equipment, staterooms for additional scientists, including anthropologists and language experts, and a larger space devoted to mission specific cargo. Though only a handful of Cherokees were made, and losses were high due to the nature of their mission, several were made famous while expanding the borders of known space well beyond that of the First Imperium.
Cherokee Class ships were initially named after eastern American tribes (Choktaw, Creek, Huron etc.). Oddly, the naming convention took a turn during the mid 24th century, and was changed to that of subject races of the First Imperium (Geonee, Bawapakerwa-a-a-awapawab, Answerin, etc.)
Though initially designed just to see the scale of a 50,000 ton ship compared to my other, more player-centric ship models, I kinda got sucked in and did a lot more work with it than I expected to.
Now in my mind, though still a fairly generic 'heavy cruiser', I see the Clovis as the "Star Trek 5 Year Mission" ship of the early Second Imperium - state of the art (for the time), long range/long mission, functional, "Only ship in the Quadrant", and ridiculously heavily armed (We come in peace/ shoot to kill!).
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 800 x 1035px
File Size 360.4 kB
Yeah, it is.
Cost of the ship's around 39 billion credits (Traveller) and doesn't include the cost of ordnance or the 10 ship's boats.
A full complement of missiles aboard - enough to fire all missile bays 50 times each, came out to 11.25 billion if nuclear. 1.5 billion if standard high explosive.
Nuclear missiles in Traveller are kinda downplayed in ship to ship combat compared to RL - these are tiny compared to what modern ICBM's carry, warheadwise, so that they could can be fired from turrets and bays, but I think a single ship of this class could make a continent a very unpleasant place to live by the time it ran out of ammo. Best not to think about it.
Cost of the ship's around 39 billion credits (Traveller) and doesn't include the cost of ordnance or the 10 ship's boats.
A full complement of missiles aboard - enough to fire all missile bays 50 times each, came out to 11.25 billion if nuclear. 1.5 billion if standard high explosive.
Nuclear missiles in Traveller are kinda downplayed in ship to ship combat compared to RL - these are tiny compared to what modern ICBM's carry, warheadwise, so that they could can be fired from turrets and bays, but I think a single ship of this class could make a continent a very unpleasant place to live by the time it ran out of ammo. Best not to think about it.
You can't help but think of a earthly tanker when looking at this, and the first thing I thought of was how would it target objects in a 360 degree environment but then again, they're missiles and could technically travel in any direction, no? Unless it has a few turrets underneath. Overall though, it feel very military in nature. I can hardly believe that only 9 crew could maintain such a ship. ^.=.^
Well, all you have to do is roll the ship to cover the other arcs between firing, but yeah. 50kton ships have an 80% batts bearing - ie, only 80% of the batteries can target the -same- target. Not a problem usually as the lasers will be targeting small craft usually and the sandcasters pumping out clouds of polychromatic shrapnel to cause incoming lasers to refract and/or incoming missiles to detonate early.
As to the 'Maintenance' listing, that's strictly hull only as far as Traveller ship requirements - not internal ship systems for the most part - except where concerned with structural integrity. Engineering personnel handle the majority of the rest of 'maintenance', and both teams would be called into service for things like damage control, etc.
As to the 'Maintenance' listing, that's strictly hull only as far as Traveller ship requirements - not internal ship systems for the most part - except where concerned with structural integrity. Engineering personnel handle the majority of the rest of 'maintenance', and both teams would be called into service for things like damage control, etc.
Hee - the Rule of Man was a wilder, more uncertain time ... It was the last long bastion against the oncoming Long Night of the Traveller universe - and I'm sure that there are a few other 'Trekisms' that would arise from unruly crew ... and I'm sure some -did- mutiny. Not pretty, not pretty at all.
My current game already had the PC's follow the history of a ship that had mutinied some 60 years prior in the game universe - they had to piece together clues as to its escape path, star to star ... eventually they found it, floating dead, and had to unravel the history of the ship, discovering that it 'died' while in the throes of a second mutiny while running from a sister ship. Two days into jump space, a major malfunction basically destroyed life support enough that those still alive all -knew- they were going to suffocate well before the ship would exit jumpspace. Chaos ruled.
In the foul aired, zero-g, ice cold interior they found the preserved corpse of an -ensign- strapped in the captain's chair (apparently a distant relative of the player character's Director of Intelligence), with dead marines guarding the bridge. They found suicides by gun, corpses from a last attempted futile rush on the bridge, the XO locked in a room with his journal and many floating empty bottles of 'medicinal' vodka - who'd chosen to drink himself to death, or as near to, before suffocating in his sleep.
I like to think about a few ships that made it out, like the Bounty, and settled some distant world with topless natives (regardless of numbers of limbs or presence of an armored thorax), but since the story at hand was Russian predominantly, I had to throw at least one good tragedy into the mix to remind the PC's that ... well, space is dangerous and sad. And that even 'organized' bunches of humans can be downright crazy.
My current game already had the PC's follow the history of a ship that had mutinied some 60 years prior in the game universe - they had to piece together clues as to its escape path, star to star ... eventually they found it, floating dead, and had to unravel the history of the ship, discovering that it 'died' while in the throes of a second mutiny while running from a sister ship. Two days into jump space, a major malfunction basically destroyed life support enough that those still alive all -knew- they were going to suffocate well before the ship would exit jumpspace. Chaos ruled.
In the foul aired, zero-g, ice cold interior they found the preserved corpse of an -ensign- strapped in the captain's chair (apparently a distant relative of the player character's Director of Intelligence), with dead marines guarding the bridge. They found suicides by gun, corpses from a last attempted futile rush on the bridge, the XO locked in a room with his journal and many floating empty bottles of 'medicinal' vodka - who'd chosen to drink himself to death, or as near to, before suffocating in his sleep.
I like to think about a few ships that made it out, like the Bounty, and settled some distant world with topless natives (regardless of numbers of limbs or presence of an armored thorax), but since the story at hand was Russian predominantly, I had to throw at least one good tragedy into the mix to remind the PC's that ... well, space is dangerous and sad. And that even 'organized' bunches of humans can be downright crazy.
*grins* I'd have to invent a planet you could come from ... and a whole new branch of xenobiology that allows for 'big bugs in standard gravity' .... though not too hard if you push the evolutionary paths a bit differently than what ended up happening on Terra.
And yeah, I think roaches are sexy ... the two players I have might not think so (they're playing uplifted weasels) ;>
And yeah, I think roaches are sexy ... the two players I have might not think so (they're playing uplifted weasels) ;>
*chuckles* Well, I suppose it means my wings being purely vestigial...or atleast involed in a purely communicative fashion.
There is the Thranx, from Alan Dean Foster's Humanx series, as a good yardstick to creating giant bugs. Or the Thri'keen from one of the DnD-universes.
Aside from divergent evoloution, there is the prospect of genetic engineering for some past war.
Sure, moreau rabbits and foxes and tigers might be more personable to write tech-noir detective stories, but who's going to shed tears over some bug-soldiers?
I shall send you a note of my own ideas regarding the species Backstory for my own universe.
Which, truth-be-told even now is still something of a work in progress.
There is the Thranx, from Alan Dean Foster's Humanx series, as a good yardstick to creating giant bugs. Or the Thri'keen from one of the DnD-universes.
Aside from divergent evoloution, there is the prospect of genetic engineering for some past war.
Sure, moreau rabbits and foxes and tigers might be more personable to write tech-noir detective stories, but who's going to shed tears over some bug-soldiers?
I shall send you a note of my own ideas regarding the species Backstory for my own universe.
Which, truth-be-told even now is still something of a work in progress.
Well, at least there's plenty of worlds in Traveller that allow for odd combinations to come up - ie. low gravity + dense atmosphere worlds in the goldilocks zone, but you wouldn't be able to fly most other places, not without gravbelts. jetpacks etc.
There's hollow 'bones' instead of pure exoskeleton creations, or bio-kevlar style natural armor that's less heavy than chitin perhaps - Just going for the 'look' without necessarily being the same as terrestrial insects. Aesthetically, and even culturally, could take cues from terrestrial bugs - but depart radically on a scientific level to get your macro bugs without resorting to pure magic and handwavium. You don't have to go -crazy-, just enough to allow the reader/player/GM whatever to suspend disbelief if they know the normal problems with insect evolution past the 'pie plate' sized insects of ancient times or the giant 'sea bugs' of crabs and lobsters.
Though, the coconut crab's getting -close- (okay, maybe halfway) to the minimum size limits of sentient or pre-sentient 'race' of bugs.)
A lot of my older artwork has lots of space-insect background, some of it Traveller alternate universe (Closest to sentient bugs in the official game universe are the Droyne - and they're more socially insect-like than physically - exceptions as 'minor races' probably exist, but I don't remember any from the dozens that got published.)
Also, in timeline, Genassist is heavily modding terran creatures into sentience (ie. the PC's from weasels, plus chimps, orangutangs, dolphins etc - very Brin-like), but also mentioned but not detailed at all in canon is that they also manipulated -non- terran species upwards. Who's not to say there aren't hybrids - alien pre-sentients that got uplifted, and remind everyone of the bugs back home.
There's hollow 'bones' instead of pure exoskeleton creations, or bio-kevlar style natural armor that's less heavy than chitin perhaps - Just going for the 'look' without necessarily being the same as terrestrial insects. Aesthetically, and even culturally, could take cues from terrestrial bugs - but depart radically on a scientific level to get your macro bugs without resorting to pure magic and handwavium. You don't have to go -crazy-, just enough to allow the reader/player/GM whatever to suspend disbelief if they know the normal problems with insect evolution past the 'pie plate' sized insects of ancient times or the giant 'sea bugs' of crabs and lobsters.
Though, the coconut crab's getting -close- (okay, maybe halfway) to the minimum size limits of sentient or pre-sentient 'race' of bugs.)
A lot of my older artwork has lots of space-insect background, some of it Traveller alternate universe (Closest to sentient bugs in the official game universe are the Droyne - and they're more socially insect-like than physically - exceptions as 'minor races' probably exist, but I don't remember any from the dozens that got published.)
Also, in timeline, Genassist is heavily modding terran creatures into sentience (ie. the PC's from weasels, plus chimps, orangutangs, dolphins etc - very Brin-like), but also mentioned but not detailed at all in canon is that they also manipulated -non- terran species upwards. Who's not to say there aren't hybrids - alien pre-sentients that got uplifted, and remind everyone of the bugs back home.
I suppose in the end, if you were going the divergent-evoloution route. You'd have to figure out why we beat out the veterbrates on the road to sapiency.
And if bugs are bug...what replaced bugs? Small annoying little mammals, trying to nibble on one's carapace during the middle of summer?
And if bugs are bug...what replaced bugs? Small annoying little mammals, trying to nibble on one's carapace during the middle of summer?
Well, vertebrates may have stuck to the seas ... maybe everything that tried to wallow up on land ended up macro-bugfood without being given a chance to really make it.
And if bugs were king, that doesn't preclude bugs fullfilling the role of 'bugs', perse, anymore than humans preclude other primates being around, or even other mammals if you wanna extend the 'relatives' to mammals.
Listening to an entomologist on NPR discussing the equatorial rainforests - 1 hectare of land contains over 100,000 species of insects. That's species - just diversity. The number of individuals of Class Insecta was somewhere in the order of 10 to the 23rd power.
That's Earth, where mammals, reptiles, birds and fish all won in the 'mass and brains' department - now try to imagine that level of biodiversity where evolution went with an -all- insect analog cast and crew.
Or run it differently- insect parts are all surface strategies for survival. Mandibles, compound eyes, pheromones, antennae, fingernail or hair/fibrous derived 'armor' plating for your carapace analogs.
Maybe even with this, they -are- fliers, using Poul Anderson's 'supercharged blood' scenario. They're twice as awake, alive, reactive when airborne because their blood's sped up by the process of flying - and feel sluggish, dreamy, etc. when on the ground. There's a lot of ways to approach it from a scifi point of view.
And if bugs were king, that doesn't preclude bugs fullfilling the role of 'bugs', perse, anymore than humans preclude other primates being around, or even other mammals if you wanna extend the 'relatives' to mammals.
Listening to an entomologist on NPR discussing the equatorial rainforests - 1 hectare of land contains over 100,000 species of insects. That's species - just diversity. The number of individuals of Class Insecta was somewhere in the order of 10 to the 23rd power.
That's Earth, where mammals, reptiles, birds and fish all won in the 'mass and brains' department - now try to imagine that level of biodiversity where evolution went with an -all- insect analog cast and crew.
Or run it differently- insect parts are all surface strategies for survival. Mandibles, compound eyes, pheromones, antennae, fingernail or hair/fibrous derived 'armor' plating for your carapace analogs.
Maybe even with this, they -are- fliers, using Poul Anderson's 'supercharged blood' scenario. They're twice as awake, alive, reactive when airborne because their blood's sped up by the process of flying - and feel sluggish, dreamy, etc. when on the ground. There's a lot of ways to approach it from a scifi point of view.
Well, there are things about bugs I like. Although, I can imagine it would mean bugs would have a reduced life-span.
The fact that bugs don't really "sleep".
At best, they go into a torpor.
I suppose, scientifically there'd be ways around this, artifical life-extension like we have nowadays, but naturally they'd probaly only have 40 or 50 years in them.
Still, it's a damned sight better than the 4/6 lifespan that Replicants get.
The fact that bugs don't really "sleep".
At best, they go into a torpor.
I suppose, scientifically there'd be ways around this, artifical life-extension like we have nowadays, but naturally they'd probaly only have 40 or 50 years in them.
Still, it's a damned sight better than the 4/6 lifespan that Replicants get.
Yep, resident, houseowner, and mate is the inventor of the Skiltaire (used in Other Suns originally - I coopted Skiltaire for Traveller - not the first to do so, but I gave them a decent website and background setting in Foreven sector from the original Traveller Universe.
So the house is named after them, and we have a lit streetsign with one 'prancing' with a tophat, and a cane.
So the house is named after them, and we have a lit streetsign with one 'prancing' with a tophat, and a cane.
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