Swift Dreams class Colonial Transport

From Traveller Wiki - Science-Fiction Adventure in the Far future
Jump to navigation Jump to search
Swift Dreams class Colonial Transport
Type: R Freighter
Category BCS
Size 150,000 Tons
Hull Configuration Sphere Hull
Streamlining Streamlined Hull
Tech Level TL–15
Engineering
Computer Model/3
Jump J-3
Maneuver 1 G
Armaments
Hardpoints
Accommodations
Staterooms 506
Low Berths 30,000
Personnel
Crew 720
    Officers 36
    Enlisted 684
High/Mid Passengers
Low Passengers 30,000
Payload
Cargo 1,532 Tons
Fuel tank 114,934 Tons
Special features 40 medical bays, 34 workshops
Construction
Origin Third Imperium
Year Operational 998
Price
Cost MCr38,218.55
Statistics
Quick Ship Profile R-0KS13
Universal Ship Profile R-F1B31S-C
Images
Blueprint Yes
Illustration No
Source
Canon Unpublished, fan design
Designer Adrian Tymes
Design System Mongoose 2nd
Era 1105
Reference Fan: Adrian Tymes

The Swift Dreams class Colonial Transport is a TL–15 starship designed to carry an entire small colony.

Description[edit]

Besides being yet another massive unarmed megafreighter class, the Swift Dreams class is notable for two things: 1) It carries 30,000 sophonts in low berths. 2) It is capable of Jump-3 and has enough fuel for 3 jumps, giving it a range of 9 parsecs.

These two factors combine to give it its mission: transport an entire starting colony's worth of sophonts to a world they wish to settle - or from a colony that must be evacuated.

Thanks to its advanced jump drives, instead of 90% of the ship being needed for fuel, only 76.5% is needed. The freed-up 14.5% - 21,750 tons - yields enough space to enable the ship's mission.

From the outside, a Swift Dreams is yet another giant metal sphere, with little to externally distinguish it from other such ships aside from its single cluster of airlock doors.

General Description & Deck Plans[edit]

  1. Deck Plans for this vessel.
    Swift dreams deckplans.png

Basic Ship Characteristics[edit]

Following the Imperial Navy and IISS Universal Ship Profile and data, additional information is presented in the format shown here. [1]

Basic Ship Characteristics [2]
No. Category Remarks
1. Tonnage / Hull Tonnage: 150,000 tons (standard). 210,000,000 cubic meters. Streamlined Sphere Hull.
  • Dimensions: 156 m diameter sphere.
2. Crew Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 Astrogator, 417 Engineers, 150 Mechanics, 75 Administrators, 40 Medics, 36 Officers (including the Captain).
3. Performance Acceleration: 1-G maneuver drive installed.
  • Jump: 3. Enough fuel to jump 9 parsecs.
4. Electronics Model/3 with extra bandwidth (CT eq. [1])
5. Hardpoints 1,500 hardpoints, unused.
6. Armament None.
7. Defenses None.
8. Craft None. Vacc suits required for EVA (extra-vehicle activity). Rescue Balls for crew escape normally carried.
9. Fuel Treatment It is not normally equipped with a fuel purification plant or fuel scoops.
10. Cost MCr38218.55 standard. MCr34396.695 in quantity. (The architect's fees have long since been paid.)
11. Construction Time 30 months standard, 22 in quantity, if the job is to be done right. There are many recorded cases of Swift Dreams being built much faster, with varying degrees of reliability; these were usually desperate attempts to quickly evacuate a world under some sudden peril, where a significant risk of misjump was a much safer option than waiting for the peril.
12. Remarks A large, long-range transport designed to take 30,000 sophonts across entire subsectors.

History & Background[edit]

The Swift Dreams class began as an academic exercise among naval architects on Tobia (Trojan Reach 3215), as TL–15 began to be realized, as a better way to colonize the nearby Great Rift. Constructing the first example became a matter of pride - and then it was done, and it worked, but there was no large market for it. So, the proven design was put into the public domain, and the matter largely forgotten about.

Except by the crew of that first ship. They had poured years into making it work, and were determined to reap the rewards. They hired out to anyone who needed a large number of people moved at once. It was a small market, but enough to eventually support a few ships.

Then came the first evacuation. A colony of hundreds of thousands detected an incoming swarm of asteroids - too many and too massive to deflect most of them, but the colony had a few months' warning before it would be annihilated. The Swift Dreams - only the original ship was in the sector at the time - could only ferry so many in that time, but the colony had a class A starport. So, the decision was made to essentially cannibalize the starport to make more. Performing a 22 month project in 3 months seemed an impossible shortcut, and over half either were not able to lift off, failed to preserve most of their passengers, or misjumped - but the rest got out successfully. Between those efforts and the original Swift Dreams's, about two thirds of the colonists survived.

Unfortunately, actually evacuating was of much higher priority than documenting procedures, so subsequent efforts to study how to manufacture so quickly were stymied. Still, the plans remain in circulation, especially in and around the Trojan Reach Sector. On rare occasion when another colony needs sudden evacuation, some might have heard enough of the legend to suggest attempting an emergency build. Occasionally, it even works, and then there is another large transport seeking to justify its existence, where most of the crew is from a colony that no longer exists and got started in the business by freezing their friends and families - inevitably, not all of whom survived, leading the crews to be especially sensitive to proper low berth preservation procedures and related medical issues. This has inspired enough books, plays, and video productions that it has become a minor stereotype, but this stereotype is closer to the truth than most.

During the Zhodani Exodus, the worlds to be evacuated had quite a few years' warning. This, plus the desire to move large numbers of people long distances, resulted in several ships of this class (among several other similar classes) being constructed and participating, quite a few of them eventually crossing the entire Zhodani Consulate from coreward to rimward.

Class Naming Practice/s & Peculiarities[edit]

Ship Interior Details: The crew-serviceable space consists of a 3-axis cross, anchored to the spherical hull, surrounding a roughly cubical central area. The rest of the hull is one large fuel tank (sometimes divided into subtanks to reduce sloshing, though the maneuver drive is also tuned to counter sloshing as needed).

Four of the resulting six arms (parallel to ship's gravity) are primarily occupied by the jump drive, with another arm (going "up" relative to ship's gravity) is primarily occupied by a portion of the jump batteries. On some ships, two of the jump drive arms can draw back into the cargo space on deck 27, to give room for mountings for an external drop tank, fitted on the world the Swift Dreams is launching from, to give fuel for a fourth jump and thus extend the range to 12 parsecs. The remaining arm mainly consists of a series of elevator shafts (and, on some models, gravity tubes) to give access between the main central area and the airlock complex on the bottom deck.

The central work area is split into four general subareas. From top to bottom: half of the low berths, plus medical facilities to see passenger loading/unloading, and workshops to help with ship maintenance (close to the low berths to assist emergency repairs, as the berths are the whole point of the ship's mission); a living area with staterooms, common areas, and the bridge; the main reactors and cargo bay; and the other half of the low berths, medical facilities, and workshops.

Conditions are somewhat austere, with decks at a near-uniform 3 meters including interdeck spacing (typically 0.25 m thick, leaving 2.75 m standing room, with occasional bulges sporting life support or power and comms distribution machinery, which are usually worked into the walls rather than out in the middle of corridors), and limited recreational facilities. This, plus the 720-strong crew roster, leads to a high incidence of communal and virtual entertainments - usually curated, to avoid selections that might cause tensions among a crew that has to work together for most of a month at a time.

The cargo is often divided as follows:

  • 300 tons: 10 kilograms (0.01 tons) personal storage per passenger.
  • 300 tons: communally-owned gear, such as agricultural machinery and basic fabrication equipment.
  • 600 tons: roughly 1 week's food and water for the 30,000 colonists, to last until local production can start up. If the ship can wait at the destination world for a few weeks, or there are local low berths the colonists can be transferred to, sometimes most of the colonists will not be woken up for a while, to give the agricultural workers more time to set up food production. On evacuation trips where the destination already has sufficient food and water, this is instead used for trade goods to buy supplies and shelter at the destination, inevitably the highest-value trade goods that could be extracted during the evacuation.
  • 332 tons: supplies and spare parts for the Swift Dreams itself.

Class Naming Practice/s: With many Swift Dreams made singly, and many others under emergency conditions, there is no class-wide naming scheme. Common names are of hope or gambles, such as Phoenix or Massive Low Lottery. Ones made during evacuation campaigns may reflect that; the Last Ride Out Of Here notably assisted various evacuation efforts over its storied 50 year career, before apparently misjumping the first time it attempted to deliver colonists to a new world instead.

Selected Variant Types & Classes[edit]

55 Representative Freighter (R) Classes[edit]

§ == ( Please refer to the following AAB Library Data for more information: ) == §

Civilian Ship - Freighter - Type R Freighter


References[edit]

This article has metadata.
Mongoose New Traveller This ship was designed using Mongoose 2nd ship design rules.
This list of sources was used by the Traveller Wiki Editorial Team and individual contributors to compose this article. Copyrighted material is used under license from Mongoose Publishing or by permission of the author. The page history lists all of the contributions.
Retrieved from "http://wiki.travellerrpg.com/index.php?title=Swift_Dreams_class_Colonial_Transport&oldid=804136"