Life ona DropShip: What's it like?

[rogueranger1993]

I haven't really read any of the fiction, but I'm currently running a mercenary RPG game for a cousin that's set in 3020. One thing I really want to be able to provide some details on is life aboard a DropShip, since it's going to be a big part of the game.

I have a copy of D&J, and it was quite informative, but it didn't answer all of my questions. Essentially, I'd like to know things like, do the ships use running water, what's the air like, what are the accommodations and food like, temperatures, etc. The little things that effect your life onboard, but are usually relegated to fiction and aren't usually discussed in an operations manual.

[Wereling]

If memory serves a fair amount of Melissa Steiner's story in the Warrior trilogy takes place aboard ship. That might help.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

Watch any submarine movie ever.

But also remember that DropShips have crazy amounts of interior volume. so, any submarine movie ever... minus the claustrophobia.

[massey]

Remember the movie Alien?  I figure it's a lot like that... without the Alien.  Or the cryosleep.  Or the android.

[Natasha Kerensky]

Depends to a degree on whom the character is and what class of dropship they're serving on.  A fighter pilot gets his own private quarters aboard a Titan.  That's a world of difference from the infantrymen sharing triple bunks and crowded common area in the bowels of a Fury.

[SteelRaven]

The Expanse has great ideas that lines up right with BTU's one-foot-in-hard-sci-fi.

Fire Fly if you swap the 'Verse magical arti-grave with BTUs/Expanse Null Grave.

And of course Massey's suggestion of the first two good Alien movies because I freak'n love those movies (need to hand wave the magical arti-grav again)   

[R.Tempest]

 :) A topic I've thought about a lot over the years.
 Things to remember. If under thrust then `down' is toward the drive mount. Easy enough for spheroids but tricky for some aerodynes, unless they have a `transit drive' (don't get me started on the Leopard CV). Thrust is also what produces your G-Force, more thrust/speed = higher G's. I'm sure others can direct you to tables of relative values of thrust to G ratios.
 So, as long a the dropship is moving you have a definite down. Water will flow downhill so you can take a shower (assuming sufficient water supplies). Drinks will stay in their cups and food on the plates. You can lie on your bunk and it will feel normal. All of this changes when you are docked to a Jumpship. Now you are in microgravity, which I've always equated with Zero G, there is no down. Water will pool in the air rather than flow. Using a normal shower would be dangerous. Drinks will have to be in sealable containers. Food will resemble mush I think (there is a scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where one of the crew is eating and it's various semi fluids taken through straws - even though he's on a Grav Deck) I simply can't picture a way to eat normal food in zero G without it resembling a major league food fight. Rolling over in your bunk could send you floating into the far bulkhead.
 May not sound like much, and while your Merc's are travelling to & from a jump point it isn't, but if you are travelling to a new assignment that is 6 jumps away you could be in microgavity for 4-8 weeks depending on recharge times. You could undock and travel in the dropship while the Jumpship is recharging - but that's going to add fuel costs.
 I'm sure I'll have more to add as the thread progresses. I don't if there is any access still to the old forums but I once posted a thread entitled `Vermin' about small creatures that could get aboard a dropship (mice, insects and their alien equivalents) and how to deal with them.

[Frabby]

Watch any submarine movie ever.

But also remember that DropShips have crazy amounts of interior volume. so, any submarine movie ever... minus the claustrophobia.

Agree about the submarine angle. I was going to recommend the downtime/non-combat parts of Das Boot specifically.

Strongly disagree with the "crazy amounts of interior volume" idea though. We've had this discussion before (about WarShips) without reaching a consensus. I maintain that the outer hull will not usually be the pressure hull. Designers will keep the pressurized, crew-accessible parts to a minimum both for ease of construction and for safety. Most of the structure and "volume" is unlikely to be pressurized, and even that says little about being accessible: Freshwater tankage, food locker and general life support stuff will dig into your accessible space. 'Mech bays are cavernous, yes, but they have to be gigantic airlocks to facilitate combat drops and I expect them to be de-pressurized or filled with helium (at low atmospheric pressure) during combat operations for safety. Not sure how to count fuel tankage. And stuff like engine (and nozzles), landing gear, gun ports, ammunition storage and ammo feeds plus unnamed other systems don't require life support. These take up the bulk of the visible volume but aren't pressurized; these parts of the ship operate in vacuum.

Finally, as others have said, consider the type of the DropShip. Freighters and passenger liners are built for week-long habitation.
Unions, Leopards and the like are combat insertion vehicles, Higgins Boat-style. The cramped conditions and poor life support on the former keep getting mentioned in canon. On extended campaigns, you may want to use a separate DropShip for habitation.
(You may drive a tank in combat, but you don't use it like an armed winnebago to drive it all the way to the combat zone for days or weeks.)

[guardiandashi]

I hate to say it but I have to seriously disagree with frabby, the volumes described if accurate don't physically allow the ships to be as cramped as he is describing.

with that said I honestly think the reality would be somewhere in between.  Yes the mech, fighter and vehicle bays are going to be cavernous spaces but carrying the amounts of inert gasses you would need to have on hand to swap the atmosphere would frankly be better used for more breathable atmosphere stowage if needed.  and as far as the air locks he is citing they do exist as the "drop chutes" /doors.

I am going to say, the way I view a dropship is that you have the outer hull, and not much inside it is the pressure hull, in fact the "pressure hull" may be the inside of the outer hull, if the hull is a solid structure and not just a whole bunch of whipple shields especially when some of the novel write-ups have the hull being massive multi-ton armor plates.

if that is accurate, then either the craft are a lot smaller than the specs call them out as, or they are a lot more massive than they seem or a combination.

with that said I would say that using the example of the union it would actually only have 2 bay decks (kind of) the deck that the mech bays are on, and another deck that the fighter bays are on. although the fighter "deck" might be designed a lot differently than it is shown in the diagrams.  I think I would have the fighter "bays", being a pass through tunnel that links the two hatches and the "tunnel" being a combination launch and recovery area, and is normally kept depressurized, with the maintenance bays, being off to the side and the fighters being towed/taxi'd in for servicing.

the Mech bays would IMO be on a single deck, with the ceiling being ~15-20 meters high, and individual "bays" being around the outer edge of the space, with the "parking spaces" being about 1-2 meters in from the wall, and tie down hardpoints being placed to easily tie the mech to.  in a lot of ways I would say it resembles the jager bays in pacific rim, but on a smaller scale.  To use up additional volume, I would have racks and storage spaces in between the mech bays, this is where most of the supplies and consumables are stored, which also allows the supplies to be moved around to help balance the loading around the mechs, to help keep the dropship in trim (balanced)

I would have most of the crew spaces "above" the mech bay, with some of them buried deep in the hull, and others closer to the hull to allow for windows/portholes, but the reason the artwork doesn't show these, is they have armored hatches that close over the windows. because I believe studies have shown that windows like that can dramatically reduce claustrophobia effects.

[Daryk]

I've done deck plans of a couple of small ships (a Manatee, and a Mark VII), and found the space to be pretty tight.  Granted these are small ships, but still.  I'll certainly be back to this thread after work tonight.

[Major Headcase]

I look at Dropships  like modern Navy ships. Except more "rockety"...
Navy ships are built to maximize  efficiency  of design in the minimum space. These ships aren't yachts or cruise ships, every square inch is dedicated  to fulfilling its mission. Crew comforts are secondary or tertiary to the job the vessel is intended to perform. If that's cargo, 90% of interior non-mechanical space will be devoted to that. If it's a combat transport,  same answer. Most dropships  touch ground every 2 weeks or so unless it's a long jump chain, even then it probably  wont be more than 4 or 5 jumps (weeks, approximately) so a disciplined military  crew and passengers can handle  the close quarters for that long.
   I see them as worn and much patched together (at least most of them until Btech went all "new and shiny" in 3050+) but clean and well organized. The close environment would make cleanliness and tidiness a must for efficiency  and sanity. A ship set later could be newer? More spit and polish and less worn, maybe.
   For a civilian  ship, look to the tramp freighters of the 19th and 20th centuries. Crewed by families (at least all the Male members usually) and non-permanent itinerant crews. Again, worn, cramped, but clean and homey, especially  if crewed by hereditary  spacers where the ship is more than just a machine.
   Battletech  is about characters; the setting is full of larger than life characters. The mechs are characters. I think the ships deserve to be characters as well. Pick an "atmosphere" and go with it.

[Elmoth]

Yup, the more I read about BT space travel the less believable aerodynes become. A pitty since I like Aerodynes more than spheroids. But the lack of artificial gravity is some serious stuff.

A leopard or other aerodyne would have the gravity towards the engines during space travel, so the whole configfuration would bneed to be somewhat different. For one, mechs and other cargo would be considered to be laying on their side for the whole space trip. I guess that rooms would need to be configurable as being usable in planetside mode and space mode. POerfectly cubic spaces with integrated tables that integrate with the floor and similar stuff would be common. Same for quarters and the like. A spheroid does not need several interior configurations, so they look way more feasible given the background.

Another reference for life in ships (except, once again, gravity) would be battlestar galactica.

[massey]

Yup, the more I read about BT space travel the less believable aerodynes become. A pitty since I like Aerodynes more than spheroids. But the lack of artificial gravity is some serious stuff.

A leopard or other aerodyne would have the gravity towards the engines during space travel, so the whole configfuration would bneed to be somewhat different. For one, mechs and other cargo would be considered to be laying on their side for the whole space trip. I guess that rooms would need to be configurable as being usable in planetside mode and space mode. POerfectly cubic spaces with integrated tables that integrate with the floor and similar stuff would be common. Same for quarters and the like. A spheroid does not need several interior configurations, so they look way more feasible given the background.

Another reference for life in ships (except, once again, gravity) would be battlestar galactica.

You could just have the mechs stand on a swiveling platform.  Crew quarters could be reconfigurable, with beds that fold up into walls and things like that.  Probably easiest to just have two toilets instead of one that changes position.

[Natasha Kerensky]

All of this changes when you are docked to a Jumpship. Now you are in microgravity, which I've always equated with Zero G, there is no down. Water will pool in the air rather than flow. Using a normal shower would be dangerous. Drinks will have to be in sealable containers.

In my head canon, jumpships rotate about their spine while recharging.  The flimsy design of their jumpsails seems to require the centrifugal force arising from that rotation to stay deployed.  If so, the same centrifugal force would provide some limited g-force to any docked dropships as they also rotate around the jumpship's spine.  And that g-force would be in the same direction -- down towards the dropship's main engines -- as when the dropship is firing those engines.  It wouldn't be a full Earth gravity and crew would have to be careful with their gait or risk bumping their heads on ceilings.  But a small yet significant fraction of Earth gravity would still keep water flowing in the right direction, food on plates and in cups, bodies from floating out of bunks, etc. on docked dropships while their jumpship recharges.  If accurate, then the only time that dropship crew/passengers would be in zero-G/microgravity would be during rendezvous and docking maneuvers, when they are all probably strapped into seats and klaxons are blaring.

The way dropships and jumpsails are arranged on jumpships, it seems that the original artists/game designers had this rotation about the jumpship's spine in mind.  But I don't know of any canon source that confirms it.

Finally, rotation too fast inside too small of a diameter will induce motion sickness in some people.  But it's a small enough detail compared to some of the other big handwavium going on in this universe that I wouldn't worry about it.

I don't if there is any access still to the old forums but I once posted a thread entitled `Vermin' about small creatures that could get aboard a dropship (mice, insects and their alien equivalents) and how to deal with them.

Isn't is obvious?  Target practice!  Weapons free! 

[Easy]

cleanup

[Weirdo]

Yup, the more I read about BT space travel the less believable aerodynes become. A pitty since I like Aerodynes more than spheroids. But the lack of artificial gravity is some serious stuff.

A leopard or other aerodyne would have the gravity towards the engines during space travel...

That's why the vast majority of aerodynes have belly transit drives. Down is always "down"(NOT towards the tail engines), no rotating or reconfiguring needed except on a very few classes such as the Avenger and Nagumo. The only time you really need to worry is in space combat, and most of the time the crew and cargo are either strapped down securely, or trained in such situations and know how to deal with it.

[SteelRaven]

... But the lack of artificial gravity is some serious stuff.

It's kinda funny that allot of people seem to demand more hard science in Sci-Fi but still think Arti Grav and Anti Grav is totally reasonable (then again, FTLT travel itself requires breaking a few known laws of physics)

[massey]

That's why the vast majority of aerodynes have belly transit drives. Down is always "down"(NOT towards the tail engines), no rotating or reconfiguring needed except on a very few classes such as the Avenger and Nagumo.

What?  Gaaak!!!  This just gave me a seizure.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

Just wait till you realize that if in combat during transit, Aerodynes can only shoot perpendicular to their direction of travel!

[Weirdo]

I think that it's safe to assume that unless completely surprised(nearly impossible to achieve during transit), the ship will have plenty of time to shift over to the maneuver drive.

[Colt Ward]

Agree about the submarine angle. I was going to recommend the downtime/non-combat parts of Das Boot specifically.

Strongly disagree with the "crazy amounts of interior volume" idea though. We've had this discussion before (about WarShips) without reaching a consensus. I maintain that the outer hull will not usually be the pressure hull. Designers will keep the pressurized, crew-accessible parts to a minimum both for ease of construction and for safety. Most of the structure and "volume" is unlikely to be pressurized, and even that says little about being accessible: Freshwater tankage, food locker and general life support stuff will dig into your accessible space. 'Mech bays are cavernous, yes, but they have to be gigantic airlocks to facilitate combat drops and I expect them to be de-pressurized or filled with helium (at low atmospheric pressure) during combat operations for safety. Not sure how to count fuel tankage. And stuff like engine (and nozzles), landing gear, gun ports, ammunition storage and ammo feeds plus unnamed other systems don't require life support. These take up the bulk of the visible volume but aren't pressurized; these parts of the ship operate in vacuum.

Finally, as others have said, consider the type of the DropShip. Freighters and passenger liners are built for week-long habitation.
Unions, Leopards and the like are combat insertion vehicles, Higgins Boat-style. The cramped conditions and poor life support on the former keep getting mentioned in canon. On extended campaigns, you may want to use a separate DropShip for habitation.
(You may drive a tank in combat, but you don't use it like an armed winnebago to drive it all the way to the combat zone for days or weeks.)

I will go with both Frabby and guardian . . .

For warships?  yeah, I can see it being a series of pressure hulls (think Typhoon construction) as well as maintenance areas that CAN be pressurized and as part of clearing for action certain compartments would be de-pressurized to avoid explosive decompression if struck.  Why would maintenance areas be normally left to vacuum (or near) unless someone was working?  Simply our atmosphere is corrosive and you can preserve components longer if you keep oxygen away.  You might use a noble gas or at least some pressure from noble gasses to provide temperature control.  Also, separate pressure hulls (again like the Typhoon design) can help with damage control and offers redundancy to keep the ship in the fight.



Dropships?  Well we get cut-away drawings showing they are pretty much up against the hull.  If you have ever toured a 'modern' warship you will run up against compartments that are right against the hull- which can be funny when one side of the room is curving.  For military or civilian ships such spaces might most likely be equipment rooms or passageways.  You can look at the following exploded deck plan of the HMS Belfast to give you some ideas.  Mostly you are going to look at the bottom 3 decks where the hulls is curving for performance at or below the waterline.  Its interesting to touch the hull and know a few inches on the other side is water about 8 to 10 feet down.  Of course, the larger the ship the less obvious you are against the hull- besides the Belfast I also toured BB-35 Texas which had more compartments with a curve but the curve was less noticeable.  One of the times I noticed the hull in the compartments was on the amphib ship Iwo Jima in '05 . . . the ship's store was a compartment off a passageway that had the curve from hull to upper decks.

[Tai Dai Cultist]

I think that it's safe to assume that unless completely surprised(nearly impossible to achieve during transit), the ship will have plenty of time to shift over to the maneuver drive.

Plenty of time to do so, sure.  What's (to my memory) undefined is whether or not one can actually switch back and forth between expansion and tactical fuel consumption modes for a potential in-transit interception. 

[Tai Dai Cultist]

*excellent points complete with supporting pictures*

Unfortunately, it's my duty to submit a rebuttal.

Sure it's not exactly what you're talking about Colt, but it's damn close enough to be relevant at least to the thread. Especially the bits about there being ridiculous amounts of free space inside a dropship.

[Weirdo]

Plenty of time to do so, sure.  What's (to my memory) undefined is whether or not one can actually switch back and forth between expansion and tactical fuel consumption modes for a potential in-transit interception.

I'll admit that there's no evidence one way or the other regarding the amount of time it takes to switch between drives. Isn't there a rulebook that describes how long it takes to bring a DropShip up to flight status?  It seems reasonable to me that in neutral or hostile systems you'd at least keep the maneuver drive on a low standby even during transit, so whatever time is listed to bring a ship from standby to hot sounds like a good timeframe to me.

[Colt Ward]

Well, the pressurization of un-needed spaces was a tangential point that I did not fully spell out.  The main was that warships will be, because of function, designed differently than dropships.  For one thing consider the sub line . . . we have two different design philosophies in even one navy (Soviet) let alone comparing NATO to Warsaw Pact.  So between the Houses, Hegemony and SL we would get different ideas about how to design a warship to be robust and get combat endurance.

Dropships internal volume is pretty easy to figure out- its math.  And for them I am in the camp that says the full area inside the DS hull will be useable volume and SHOULD have access to any corner so regular maintenance can be done inside the pressurized hull.

[The_Caveman]

Air at sea level weighs about one ton per thousand cubic meters, so for a Union-ish size vessel it takes about 50 tons of gas to pressurize it with air. Note, this is assuming an otherwise empty hull, so the actual mass will be less once engines, fuel tanks, weapons, etc. have been subtracted from the available volume. If we assume 50% of the hull volume is habitable, we can cut the required gas load in half.

If you pressurize with 90% O2 (you want a little inert gas in the breathing mix to avoid the crew getting jumpy) you can get away with only 1/3 the tonnage by running the ship at 250 millibars of pressure (partial pressure of O2 remains the same as air at 1 bar).

This has certain advantages beyond just weight savings: at one quarter the pressure, explosive decompression will throw objects half as fast, greatly reducing collateral damage from a compartment being vacked; crewmen who are used to working in the low-pressure environment will be less vulnerable to decompression sickness when exposed to vacuum or partial vacuum; damage from weapons fire that penetrates the hull will be reduced because there is less gas to conduct energy from shockwaves; compartments can be filled and emptied more quickly due to 75% of the atmosphere mass being removed.

When landing on a planet, you can equalize the pressure by  adding nitrogen (this would only take a few minutes to do safely as the pressure difference is similar to that of an airliner at cruise altitude). You do have to carry one atmosphere's supply of nitrogen (or source it from outside) but you can carry 4 breathing atmospheres and 1 normalizing dose of nitrogen for the same weight as 2 atmospheres of air, giving you 3 reserve atmospheres compared to just 1.

[skiltao]

do the ships use running water

...huh. That's an interesting question.

Air quality varies. It gets stuffier, staler and smells more like a locker room the more people you have on board. Age and condition of the ship affect that too. I was going to suggest looking at the Explorer Corp sourcebook, but its "daily routine" section doesn't actually say much. It does suggest that most ships have both G and zero-G foods, though.

One of the novels, I think Mercenary's Star, mentions that DropShips often start their trip with thrust and day-cycles matching the planet they just left and change gradually so as to match the destination planet as they arrive. They might do the same with temperature and pressure (in the ship's habitable spaces), if it's close enough to Earth norms.

The DropShip in that novel, more or less a Union class, only has one room that a group can really lounge in socially. The presence of a microfiche reader makes me think it's a copy of the officer's meeting room on Kirk's Enterprise.

[Alan Davion]

I haven't really read any of the fiction, but I'm currently running a mercenary RPG game for a cousin that's set in 3020. One thing I really want to be able to provide some details on is life aboard a DropShip, since it's going to be a big part of the game.

I have a copy of D&J, and it was quite informative, but it didn't answer all of my questions. Essentially, I'd like to know things like, do the ships use running water, what's the air like, what are the accommodations and food like, temperatures, etc. The little things that effect your life onboard, but are usually relegated to fiction and aren't usually discussed in an operations manual.

Which type of Dropship and/or Jumpship are you operating in this scenario? That right there goes a long, long way towards figuring out what happens aboard ship.

There would be a HUGE difference, for instance, between how a Leopard operates compared to say, an Overlord.

TRO:3057 Dropships and Jumpships is great for figuring out how the ships are outfitted with weapons and what they can carry, but it's severely lacking in details about ship interiors. If you want more detail about the interiors, you'd be better off looking in say, TRO:3025. 3057 has to cram in the stats for both the Old and New versions of some Dropships. 3025 only has to worry about the stats for that version of the Dropship, cause the new version hadn't been created yet, so it has more room to go into details about the interior of the ship.

Dropships like the Avenger, for instance, which can operate both in atmosphere and space, have crew compartments that can be reconfigured depending on how the ship is oriented. Either so that down is towards the bottom of the hull when in atmo, or down towards the main engines when in space.

Dropships like the Vengeance on the other hand, that never operate in atmosphere, are built more like Spheroid Dropships like the Union or Overlord, where the decks and compartments are always built with down towards the main engines.

It's not super detailed mind you, but it does go a long way towards helping one picture the interior layout.

For instance, I just recently built up my own Mercenary unit, set in 3025/3026 whose Transport section consists of a Star Lord class Jumpship, Overlord class, Triumph class, Seeker class and Leopard CV class Dropships.

[cray]

I have a copy of D&J, and it was quite informative, but it didn't answer all of my questions.

Strategic Operations adds a chapter or two about life in space, derived from and expanding on D&J, BattleSpace, and Explorer Corps. Tech Manual has a chapter on aerospace technology, but it doesn't delve deep into living conditions.

Essentially, I'd like to know things like, do the ships use running water, what's the air like, what are the accommodations and food like, temperatures, etc. The little things that effect your life onboard, but are usually relegated to fiction and aren't usually discussed in an operations manual.

The answer for all that is, "It depends on the ship and era."

Starting on p. 251 of Strategic Operations, there's some description of life aboard ship ("Daily Routine.") It starts by mentioning widespread use of "Terran Standard Time" (i.e., Greenwich Mean Time), and then discusses military and civilian watch cycles.

Food is describe as being fairly normal, not foods-in-a-tube. "Modern spacecraft generally have endless power and no shortage of spare volume for refrigerate food storage, so freeze drying and other food-abusing 'space food' treatments are only necessary...in fighter emergency lockers or life boats." Most dining areas, taking a lesson from Skylab, have air intakes that also serve to sweep up crumbs and other loose items. Gravdecks are prime dining areas because they avoid the headaches of zero-G dining though. (Grav decks are explained in greater detail in the "Aerospace Technologies" chapter, p. 140.) Food is considered "generally, pretty good," because of ease of resupply.

There's a section on recreation and exercise: video games on cramped ships, and even football and basket ball courts on the largest gravdecks. Exercise of any kind is very important on JumpShips to fight zero-G health issues, while DropShips and WarShip crews have laxer standards because of their frequent 1G transits.

Quarters are described in detail (p. 252) and, regarding the question on water, "It depends." In a 3020-era of lostech, water filtration and reserves were kept as simple as possible so poorly educated techs could quickly replace battle damaged hardware. The Union is noted as having simple water filters and tightly rationed supplies, leading to limited bathing (like the International Space Station's wet wipes, but less often.)

Recovered technology of the 3050s-3070s allowed much better life support conditions for crews, and civilian ships generally had better equipment for crew and passengers "for improved air and water quality."

A final point on p. 252 is that the mass of crew and passenger quarters tends to be related to life support quality rather than volume. JumpShips and civilian DropShips have vast volumes to burn, so even steerage quarters can be very roomy. The difference is that luxury/officer quarters can afford mass for personal kitchenettes, exercise machines, and "a big water budget" allowing extended showers. (Gotta love fast recycling unless you pee in the shower.)

Meanwhile, infantry bays are prime offenders for terrible conditions. "A typical infantry bay for a foot platoon allots about 175kg for each soldier, his gear, and any life support." The drawback to the required, simple life support systems is found in the "consumables" rules earlier in StratOps: infantry bays and passengers tossed in cargo bays use vast life support supplies due to limited or no recycling. Meanwhile, crew quarters are very frugal because of good recycling.

So, military ships in the 3020 era will probably be stuffy and humid like the ISS (to minimize climate control requirements), have a lot of smells in the air (from unwashed crews) but no shortage of oxygen, and have limited water budgets for passengers stuffed into overcrowded passenger quarters. Civilian ships and JumpShips of the time will probably have very roomy quarters, better water budgets, and air handling systems that cleanse it of stinks.

[Daryk]

I see Cray stopped by, so all I can really say is...  :thumbsup: