Manatee Deck Plans

[Daryk]

This project started out as deck plans of a particular Manatee stuffed to the gills with my non-canon unit when I ran it as a game here a few years ago.  In light of the positive reception of my Mark VII deck plans, I thought I should post the stock version of the Manatee too.  The good news is the newer version of Visio I've been using is much more efficient with file handling and conversion, so I can post all seven sheets in one pdf file now (when I posted the originals, I had to do so one page at a time).  The bad news is this version also mangled the Command Deck, so I ended up spending most of the day redrawing it.  Fortunately, that's not a problem any more, and I'm happy to present these deck plans as outlined below.

There are seven pages:

1) Engine Room Lower Level.  This is where the engines are, as well as the aft air lock (and attendant vac suit lockers and room for an exoskeleton "bay"), aft weapons bay, lower half of the port and starboard aft weapons bays, cargo elevator machinery, lower portions of the landing gear and ramp machinery, and rather a lot of auxiliary machinery I didn't draw.

2) Engine Room Upper Level.  The reactor is here, and dominates the level, along with the feeds for the main engines below.  The engine room levels are not air tight from one another, and have expanded metal decking between them to facilitate ease of maintenance.  Other major items on this level include the upper parts of the aft port and starboard weapons bays, upper portions of the landing gear and ramp machinery, an enclosed operating space for local operation of the reactor (e.g., during maintenance or testing), the cargo elevator, and another large chunk of auxiliary machinery and fuel tankage I didn't draw.

3) Cargo Bay.  As expected, the cargo bay is mostly empty space.  The cargo air lock is large, and can accommodate several light vehicles by itself.  The four 'mech cubicles are here, along with the cargo elevator and a large spiral staircase that climbs up to the main deck.  It doesn't say it anywhere in the fluff, but I can only imagine there's at least one overhead cargo crane to service this huge space.

4) Main Deck.  Sitting atop the cargo bay, the main deck is the last full size deck, though the overhead is low toward the edges of the ship.  The main air lock is on this deck, and is the principal way to dock with other ships in space to transfer cargo.  The "main passageway" leading to the main air lock can be used as additional storage should the cargo bay and dry storage space on the port side of this deck prove inadequate.  On the starboard side, a space roughly half the size of the dry storage to port is given over to refrigerated and frozen stores.  The rest of the space to starboard is divided up into bay quality quarters for the mechwarriors and their techs, and the small sick bay, all of which share a tiny head.  Aside from the main air lock and elevator and stairs to the cargo bay, there are four air locks leading down into the 'mech cubicles, and a smaller spiral staircase up to the command deck.

5) Command Deck.  This deck houses the bridge, port and starboard weapons bays, Captain's and crew quarters, galley, wardroom, main life support, escape pods (off the bridge), and gym equipment tucked between various auxiliary machinery I didn't draw.  There's also a staircase up to Avionics.

6) Avionics.  This is the smallest deck, and houses mostly avionics, but also the nose weapon bay and nose airlock (with attendant vac suit lockers).  There's room for an exoskeleton in this air lock, just like the aft one.

7) Elevation.  A cutaway view of the ship, directly facing one of the four mech cubicles (giving side views of two of the others, and hiding the fourth).  This helped me align the accesses between decks, and really gives a sense for just how cavernous the cargo bay is.

As I mentioned in the Mark VII thread, my next big project is the Scout JumpShip my non-canon unit was going to dock with before the board crash and I lost my players.

EDIT: I completely forgot to mention the scale on the grid is 50 cm (half a meter).

[Red Pins]

Tagged.

Send me any others you might have, and I'll put them in a folder for download with my collection of fan projects.

[Hellraiser]

I like what you've done here!   O0

[Daryk]

Thanks, both of you!  The Mark VII and the Manatee are the only ones I've done so far, though the overstuffed version of the Manatee is posted in my non-canon unit thread, and the Egret variant will go there sometime later this week.  As I mentioned, the Scout is next.  Cray warned me about the "100 decks of nothing" I'll face, but I have a couple of ideas to account for all that dead space.  I expect it'll be a while before I finish that one.  After that, I'm not sure what I'll do next.  I'm partial to combined arms, so maybe a Seeker, though I'm sure there'll be demand for a Union.  They're both pretty big, and will have little in the way of copy/paste decks like the Scout.

[mikecj]

Thanks

[WeaponX]

Personally, I think that most spheroid Dropships are triple hulled (outer double hull with a small gap like how modern ships are constructed and a third inner hull with a huge gap between it and the secondary hull), sort of like a doughnut.  You can put weapons, Mech or Battle Armor bays anywhere in the "ring" so you are not restricted to one corner and you have easy access to the outside via a bay door or weapon port.  The doughnut "hole" is where you put your access walkways, control room, quarters etc. so its protected by a tertiary hull in case of a breach.  Special cases like fighter, small craft (where you need a runway) and cargo bays can probably fill up an entire deck without a big tertiary hull, just a small access shaft in the middle.

[Daryk]

I used a half meter for "hull thickness" to account for some of that padding, but on something the size of a Manatee, there isn't a whole lot of room to properly compartmentalize.  I may use that concept to help soak up space on the Scout I'll do next.  Thanks!

[Daryk]

I just realized I forgot to mention that the grid scale is 50cm (half a meter) per square.  I edited it into the first post so nobody new misses it.

[RunandFindOut]

I tend to run with the assumption that the external shape of the dropship is just an aeroshell.  Underneath that the actual structure and pressure elements look very different and not at all like a traditional vessel.  It's more like a giant ferret-tube warren inside a balloon.  With individual discrete elements all packed in however they can be made to fit and balance the center of gravity.  So on a spheroid you'd have a central "stack" with engineering, then control systems for engineering, then personnel spaces, then bridge and avionics.  With machinery spaces all jumbled up in there as needed.  Then you'd have the weapon systems, cargo bays, mech bays, etc.  As discrete individual elements attached to a frame butted up against the aeroshell and connected to the central stack with various oddly shaped passages.  Then the rest of the interior would be packed with fuel tanks into all the spaces left not part of the stack or the other interior volumes.

[Siden Pryde]

This is great.  Thanks for sharing.

[Daryk]

Runandfindout, as I mentioned to WeaponX, there isn't a whole lot of room on something as small as a Manatee to make that work, though it's something to consider if I do a larger ship.  Thanks!

Siden Pryde, you're very welcome!

[RunandFindOut]

Runandfindout, as I mentioned to WeaponX, there isn't a whole lot of room on something as small as a Manatee to make that work, though it's something to consider if I do a larger ship.  Thanks!

Siden Pryde, you're very welcome!

Ignore the tonnage figure, and start doing some cubage calculations based on their dimensions in meters.  They're enormous volume wise (spheroids at least). 

[Daryk]

I used the published dimensions of the Manatee as the basis for the deck plans.  They're simply small.  Other spheroids, sure... they're much larger.

[mikecj]

Can you do the Danais or Mule?

[Daryk]

I may do the Mule someday, but I'm working on the Scout JumpShip right now.  I had originally planned to be done by the end of March, but that's not looking very likely at the moment.  I'm just about done with the "elevation" thanks to Bren's help, but there are 54 decks to do.  Granted, a lot of them look alike, but there's enough work for at least two more months before it's ready to post.

[mikecj]

Wow, I never thought of a scout as particularly large inside.  I thought 2 or 3 people decks, then engines, etc.. and the cargo bay.  54 eek.

Thanks for taking this on.

[Daryk]

The thing is quite long, and trying to cram a small craft bay that will actually hold a small craft and a docking collar that will support gravity maneuvering with a drop ship attached into it is tricky.  I know that particular bit of fluff was superseded by Strat Ops, but I'm trying to make it work anyway.

[mikecj]

Hmm.  I hope you can re-use some of that work when/if you do another JumpShip.

[deathloc]

Any other deck plans?

[Daryk]

I've got two versions of the Mark VII Landing Craft posted in this sub-forum, a sketch of the cargo deck of a minimalist light vehicle carrier around the site somewhere, and the "loaded" version of this ship as set up for my game.  I had started working on deck plans for a Scout JumpShip, but lost the thumb drive the file was on.  I just haven't worked up the enthusiasm to restart that particular project yet.

[Giovanni Blasini]

Oh, the Huge Manatee!  :o ;D

Thanks for posting this.

[Daryk]

You're more than welcome Gio!  Your stuff is one of the reasons I'm on the site in the first place... :)

[NomadicChronicler]

Ugh...
Dammit...
It's both my first post and I subscribed to this forum specifically for this topic too...
/Sigh...



I'm sorry Daryk but I think your internals are a bit off.
A lot in fact.

From the available lore, It it explicitly stated that each Mech had it's own bay door. We also know that Manatee was originally a civilian cargo hauler design that was kludged to create a stopgap solution, meaning it didn't have any of the more advanced (ie currently standard) specialized tech & gear like drop-capsules and automated mech-repair assistance systems.

In fact, the only modifications that we can be completely certain of are the installment of 4 Mech gantries in the cargo hold, the enlarged weaponry suite and the enlarged long term living spaces for a total of 8 crew and 4 MechWarriors from the original of 5.

Lastly we have this image;




Based on these data points, I created a mock-up in KSP to visually illustrate my points;
Aspect 1;


Aspect2;


Aspect 3;



Here are my assumptions;
Manatee has at least 4 cargo doors* based on the lore; Assuming it was originally a container hauler, specialized in quick turnarounds, I think it was a simple symmetrical design with triple cross-arch design for structural integrity and 6 doors.
*Represented by the radiator panels with green lighted batteries under them


Based on my engine and engineering volume guesstimates , don't think there is enough space under the cargo hold area to fit these components. In fact, I think the cargo hold doesn't actually cover the whole floor but is actually a  donut shaped area with a pillar in the center, which houses the reactor and engineering spaces.



Since each Mech Cradle is supposed to hold a Mackie, The Cargo hold ceiling should be somewhere between 14 to 18 meters high. (The pure white area in the mock-up) The engines probably eat at least 6+3(internal) meters under the hold, leaving about 10 meters for the Gun deck (Striped Area), Command deck and Avionics (Orange Cone).

Since this was originally a cargo hauler, it's quite probable that the cargo hold's ceiling had a circular rail track & an overhead crane setup by default for internal rearrangements. I think they increased the number of cranes on the ceiling track to 2 in the militarized version:
Door 1 (Left door in the first picture); Mech Cradle 1-1
Door 2:(Right Door in the first, Left door in the second picture)  Mech Cradle 1-2
Door 3:(Right Door in the second, Left door in the third picture) Cargo 1
Door 4: Mech Cradle 2-1
Door 5: Mech Cradle 2-2
Door 6: Cargo 2
Each Cargo zone holds the spares and consumables for the advent Mechs, 2 cranes allow using each pile and service 2 mechs for max efficiency.


The Gun deck houses 4 weapon installations (represented by the RCS thrusters), 2 escape pods (represented by the external barrels) and 2 aux sensor/comm installations (represented by the antennas, or maybe 1 aux and one engineering airlock) as well as life support and pantry. The whole layout is done in the standard onion / armoured core style meaning the more critical a system is, the closer to the middle it is placed.

The Bridge deck has the bridge, living quarters, galley, sickbay and so on.
The armoured citadel design mentality also continues here; the bridge is in the middle, surrounded by living quarters with various other areas lifting design tips from medieval castle design to create defensible choke-points in the event of boarding, ladders for easy movement down but the only stairway being clockwise and so on...

Avionics level has the avionics hardware, main sensors, prow weapon installation and any aux. fluid tank or other noncritical mass that might work as ablative armour in case of a bad encounter.



Again, sorry to start off with a criticizing post but what do you guys think?

[Daryk]

I'm more than a little confused by your criticism... each 'mech bay has an external door, and the ship has six cargo doors overall (five on the "cargo bay" level plus one on the "Command Deck"; there are also bow and stern air locks).  The cargo bay is 15.5 meters tall, and I was also assuming an overhead crane.  I forgot to note it in the file, but the first post does state the scale is 50 cm per grid square.  Does that help?

Also, please reduce the width of your images.

[NomadicChronicler]

Gah! Apologies, somehow the BBCode resizing command went haywire. Or maybe it doesn't work here. Manually resized the images.
Also, now that I re-read the post with less blood in my caffeine system, I see that my observations are easy to mix with the sections that I think differently, so I'll try my best to unwound and make that mess a bit more understandable. give me 5 please.

From the available data, I get the impression that there are 6 (cargo) doors on the cargo level, evenly spaced around the hull plus possibly a main airlock at either Gun or Main/Bridge level.






This is an approximation of how I envision the Cargo hold to be;
-All the engineering spaces including active life support systems are in the middle (core).
-The landing Struts are embedded in the 6 outer structural pillars .
-The Black Barrels represent the Mech Cradles which (possibly) have reinforced cargo doors
-The Yellow balls  represent the 2 areas reserved for mech consumables and replacement parts




This is the rough approximation of the Gun deck;
-4 quadrants with gun emplacements on cardinal directions
-2 quadrants with Escape Pods (accessible from the Command/Main Deck)
-1 quadrant with Large/Engineering Grade Airlock
-1 quadrant with comm systems and a consumable storage / pantry (accessible from the Command/Main Deck).

[Daryk]

Ok, I can see how KSP's modular components may be skewing your estimates now.  Thank you.

One thing to remember is that material science in BattleTech is FAR beyond anything we can do in the real world (or Kerbals, for that matter), especially when it comes to spacecraft components.

As for the reactor and engine room in general: I've split 4.5 meters of height with expanded steel decking, with the presumption that the main reactor actually protrudes somewhat into the lower level.  The main reactor is just under 500 tons, so I think I've sized it reasonably.

A Manatee carries around 131 tons of fuel.  Liquid hydrogen is 14 cubic meters per ton, so the whole fuel load needs about 1,850 cubic meters, which I believe will fit in the engine room (though I'll grant that now that I take a closer look at it, it probably takes up MOST of the remaining space).

The illustration from the TRO has hilariously small cargo doors, especially given the 'mechs in the drawing.  I went with 5 on the cargo bay deck based on doors actually big enough to pass a 'mech (both internally and externally), and the assumption that the "main" door would be even larger.  Using the space between two 'mech cubicles made the most sense to me.  I put a smaller cargo door on the "Main" deck to facilitate docking with JumpShips, and passing smaller cargo without cracking the huge main hatch.

For the exterior and "structural" bulkheads, I used 50 cm.  Some portion of that is piping and duct work, especially on the "interior" ones.

On the "Command" deck, I did as you outlined, and tried to make the passage to the bridge as labyrinthine as possible, using 50 cm bulkheads.  Somehow, one of the pocket doors got pushed to the bottom layer, and doesn't show on the pdf.  Hopefully that's obvious.

Both escape pods are right off the bridge, and all "battle stations" are there, even for the engineers.  The ship just isn't big enough to warrant putting them anywhere else in combat.

The head clearance on the "Avionics" deck is pretty low everywhere except right under the peak of the nose (where the air lock and nose weapons are).

[NomadicChronicler]

A couple of points;
-I can't draw a stick figure well to save my life and I had KSP installed on this comp. so I used that to illustrate what I thought the design looked like to translate it human understandable from my mad-hermitese, not the other way around :)

-I finally managed to dig up my BT crate and find the entry for the original Mule and see that I was officially wrong (1 Cargo Bay door + 4 retrofitted Mech Bay doors. Never mind the Cargo Bay is actually a double bay with single door) aaaand remembered why BT went down to the depths of book pile during uni. The designs and allotments are all so subtly but uncannyvalley-ly off/wrong.

-I also thought that the required Reactor and the Engine volume would create a bump intruding into the Cargo Deck so I went with eliminating the Engine decks altogether and consolidating all the machinery in the core of the ship an expanded and U.S. Mil. design style large and easy to work in engineering space which would also allow using the tankerage  volume for ablative armour in the aft. But I guess I'm also off on this as well.

[Daryk]

It's best not to look too closely at the engine and reactor tonnages.  Aside from KF Drive technology, BattleTech for some reason went with magically efficient fusion rockets too.  The efficiency of any engine using strategic thrust mode is beyond what's capable with even pure matter/anti-matter annihilation.

Your points make sense otherwise, and I'm glad to have the conversation here.