Expanse Ships

[I am Belch II]

Just wondering if anyone tried to make any ships from the Expanse.
The Donnager would be a neat ship to make.
The Rosi would be a neat Cap Missile armed Dropship.


Thanks in advance.

[Korzon77]

A problem is that the rules don't really support Expanse style combat.  It takes place in a far different manner from B-tech designs and rules generally allow for.

[Daryk]

I seem to recall some reference in the first few episodes that referred to "30 Gs" of acceleration... That doesn't fit the BT paradigm.

[Maingunnery]

I seem to recall some reference in the first few episodes that referred to "30 Gs" of acceleration... That doesn't fit the BT paradigm.

My advice is in such cases is to use the relative values (slowest/fastest) instead of absolute values.

[I am Belch II]

I just thought that the flying skyscraper design, with some rail guns might fit in.

[Dragon Cat]

The Rocinate would be a Spheroid DropShip with multiple Rotary ACs or HAGs with a capital or sub-capital missile launcher season one.  Season two it would maybe have a SCC to represent the main gun since you don't get Sub-capital Gauss Rifles

[glitterboy2098]

I seem to recall some reference in the first few episodes that referred to "30 Gs" of acceleration... That doesn't fit the BT paradigm.

when the canterbury does its retroburn to check out the emergency signal. but only in the first airing.. a large number of people wrote in to point out that even with scifi miracle drugs this would be physically impossible for the crew to survive, so all later airings and streamed/videodisc versions had it audio relooped to only three gee's.

they also seem to have gone through the rest of the episodes they'd made to remove any references to specific accelerations, and avoided giving any in later episodes and seasons.

The Rocinate would be a Spheroid DropShip with multiple Rotary ACs or HAGs with a capital or sub-capital missile launcher season one.  Season two it would maybe have a SCC to represent the main gun since you don't get Sub-capital Gauss Rifles

agreed. a very small spheroid dropship.. as its physical size is not much bigger than a BT small craft, but it clearly would need more than 200 tons to fit in the capabilities shown using BT construction rules.

of any scifi show The Expanse would be the easiest to recreate using BT construction rules.. the biggest issue would be the fact that the big anti-ship railguns on most of the warships are turreted, which is something BT does not have rules for. you'd also have to deal with the fact that the biggest ships are clearly BT warship scale and mass, but have no KF drive. something that is not supported by the BT warship construction rules.
so you'd have to houserule a fair bit.

that said it shouldn't be too hard to create BT ships that feel like some of the ones from The Expanse.

[Daryk]

Glad to hear that.  Honestly, that one scene did more to completely kill my interest in the series than anything else.

Turrets can be easily fluffed away as firing arcs, but yeah, the ghost of "monitors" rears its ugly head yet again...

[glitterboy2098]

to give an idea of what i mean by "expanse like"..

i threw together a spheroidal dropshuttle inspired by the Rocinante but built to work for BT rules. the end result would fight similar but is very much a different beast. (note that the only out-of-place tech on this is the sub-cap missiles, which were invented centuries after dropshuttles stopped being built. you could probably rework this as an age of war escort dropshuttle by switching to a single standard capital launcher and fewer missile shots.)

Code: [Select]

Acheron Class Torpedo Boat
Type: Military Spheriod
Mass: 1,200 tons
Technology Base: Inner Sphere (Standard)
Introduced: 3150
Mass: 1,200
Battle Value: 4,791
Tech Rating/Availability: E/X-X-X-X
Cost: 105,188,720 C-bills

Fuel: 60 tons (3,000)
Safe Thrust: 5
Maximum Thrust: 8
Heat Sinks: 22
Structural Integrity: 10

Armor
    Nose: 71
    Sides: 65/65
    Aft: 50

Cargo
    Bay 1:  Cargo (60.0 tons)       2 Doors   

Ammunition:
    320 rounds of AC/5 ammunition (16 tons),
    800 rounds of Machine Gun ammunition (4 tons),
    20 rounds of Piranha ammunition (200 tons)

Escape Pods: 0
Life Boats: 3
Crew:  3 officers, 2 enlisted/non-rated, 6 gunners, 2 passengers, 7 marines

Notes: Mounts 21.5 tons of primitive aerospace armor.

Weapons:                                      Capital Attack Values (Standard)
Arc (Heat)                                Heat  SRV     MRV     LRV     ERV   Class       
Nose (18 Heat)
2 Sub-Capital Missile Launcher (Piranha)  18   6(60)   6(60)   6(60)    0(0)  Sub-Capital Missile
    Piranha Ammo (20 shots)
RS/LS Fwd (2 Heat)
4 Machine Gun                              0    1(8)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
    Machine Gun Ammo (200 shots)
2 AC/5                                     2   1(10)   1(10)    0(0)    0(0)  AC         
    AC/5 Ammo (80 shots)
RS/LS Aft (2 Heat)
4 Machine Gun                              0    1(8)    0(0)    0(0)    0(0)  Point Defense
    Machine Gun Ammo (200 shots)
2 AC/5                                     2   1(10)   1(10)    0(0)    0(0)  AC         
    AC/5 Ammo (80 shots)



[Daryk]

You're not hurting for fire control limits... a few more MGs fore and aft wouldn't hurt...

[Dragon Cat]

Could a season 2 Rosinate not upgrade the armour to a different type but keep it approximately the same and use a pair of Improved Heavy Gauss Rifles to represent the main gun that's added fluffed they fire together

Since the close in guns are still there swap the machine guns over to true AMS replace the ACs with Ultra versions

Since a marine squad is not used remove the space used for cargo

[VhenRa]

they also seem to have gone through the rest of the episodes they'd made to remove any references to specific accelerations, and avoided giving any in later episodes and seasons.

Eh, Roci's run after Eros had some pretty high gravity mentioned. Stuff like 12-13-15G.

And IIRC the Razorback run had them mention accelerations specifically. Same for the origin of the Epstein Drive sequence.

[Intermittent_Coherence]

Could a season 2 Rosinate not upgrade the armour to a different type but keep it approximately the same and use a pair of Improved Heavy Gauss Rifles to represent the main gun that's added fluffed they fire together

Since the close in guns are still there swap the machine guns over to true AMS replace the ACs with Ultra versions

Since a marine squad is not used remove the space used for cargo

IHGR's would actually work better than SCC's. Better range than SCC/3 and a tad better damage than the SCC/2. For an order of magnitude less tonnage.