Traveller Starship Design in Star Systems

The latest update to Star Systems introduced a way to design starships for the Traveller RPG including core rules and High Guard support. In this post I will go through the process of recreating the Safari Ship type K (animal class) from the High Guard book.

Open the Starship Designer

Press CMD-Shift-S or select 'New' from the Starships panel to open the Starship Designer tool. The window is divided in two with the design steps on the left and the result updating live as you make changes on the right.

Hull
You just follow the steps as you scroll down the list. The safari ship has a 200-ton streamlined hull.

Drives
It has a Thrust-1 manoeuvre drive and a Jump-2 jump rating.

As we still haven't installed power plant we get a warning that the power is insufficient, but we'll fix that soon. Keep an eye on this as you add systems though.

Power Plant
We change the power plant to a Fusion (TL12) version and set it to 7 tons. This generate 105 of power so we cover the current requirements.

Fuel Tanks
We have nothing to change in terms of fuel tanks or bridge since all the defaults apply.

Computer
In terms of computer, the only thing we need to add is the jump control specialisation (/bis).

Software
For the ship software we add the Jump Control/2. The Intellect, Library, and Manoeuvre are added automatically.

Sensors
The Safari Ship has civilian grade sensors.

Weapons
For weapons, the Safari Ship has an empty double turret, so we start by adding a weapon mount.

Then we set the mount to double turret and the weapon count to zero.

Optional Systems
For optional system we add the fuel scoop and an Air/Raft. The Safari also carries a launch with an ATV onboard. For this we start by adding the total docking space, which opens three fields to enter the carried craft, its tonnage, and its cost. We set this to 'Launch (ATV)', 27 tons, and Cr2,785,000, which includes the costs of both the launch and the ATV.

We also need to add 2 tons for the fuel processors, and 16 tons of multi-environment space.

Crew
Next is crew. The crew requirements are set automatically but you can override the actual crew on board. This is because more than one skill may be covered by the same crew member. Setting this to the actual number of crew members frees staterooms to be used for passengers. Let's say that the Safari will have a crew of 5.

Staterooms
The middle passengers are set to zero at the moment because we haven't entered the number of staterooms yet, but that's next. We set the staterooms to 11 and the common area to 20 (including the 7 for the Trophy Lounge).

Cargo Space
The cargo space is computed automatically and the 10% discount is set by default but you can uncheck it if it doesn't apply.

This ship has no High Guard specific option, but those would be set next.

Summary
With these the ship summary looks like this.

Which you can compare to the official ship from the book.

Saving
If you're happy with the result you can save the ship. There is configuration name, a type, and a ship name plus a description.

Add Images
And then you can add images. These show as thumbnails in this but clicking on one will open a resizable floating window.

Export to PDF
Then you can use that ship as the players' ship in the campaign management panel, and you can print a PDF for them. This ship's PDF looks like this.

And you can download the actual PDF here: Wild Hunt Datasheet (PDF)

Low Available Power
This is not the case for the Safari ship that we just made, but sometimes the power plant doesn't provide enough power to keep everything turned on during jump. In cases like these the app will try to offer configurations that work. For example in the A2 (Hero-class) Far Trader has this for the powered section.

If it doesn't seem like the ship can run with minimum power during jump the app will flag this.

This can be used to set up ships the players can use, or just to validate a variation on an official design. If you want to change some part of a ship and you want to see if that works, you can just test that configuration with this tool.

I hope this was useful. Thanks for reading!