Forum:Ships and Narrative
Ship and Vehicle design:
I have spent a significant amount of money on supplements which describe ship-building and arsenals on the many variant ideas and supplemental rules. It's fun, right; trying to parse out credits and mass to create the most efficient and devastating pirate ship in the known space-sphere. I think, lots of us have spent time investigating the capabilities of contemporary naval vessels and aircraft; translating that information into "Traveller" stats.
While I have invested hundreds of credits in technical material, I have only ever needed to outline one specific craft for campaign play.
Looking into modern arsenals of aircraft, landcraft and spacecraft, it's readily clear that some vehicles are faster, some, slower, some more hardy, some have specific vulnerabilities. It doesn't make sense that all designs are quantifiable because, there are better components and schema and less sophisticated designs. These are a result of inequities in technological capacity.
My thought is this Give your ship what it needs for the campaign; don't focus on deck plans and capabilities.
I'm a former marine. I have no idea around the capabilities of the ships I travelled upon nor the air support provided. They got me there, I did my job and we had support from aero and naval gun assets. I have no idea how many crew were aboard, the arsenal or support available.
I've had a lot of fun designing Spacecraft but I think not knowing the capabilities of a campaign destination is better than number crunching an asset.