Parthenolab class Bio-Construction Vessel
| Parthenolab class Bio-Construction Vessel | |
|---|---|
| Type: GCB Bio-Construction Vessel | |
| Category | ACS |
| Size | 400 Tons |
| Hull Configuration | Ring Hull |
| Streamlining | Unstreamlined Hull |
| Tech Level | TL–13 |
| Engineering | |
| Computer | Model/4 |
| Jump | J-2 |
| Maneuver | 2 G |
| Fuel Treatment | Purifier |
| Armaments | |
| Hardpoints | 1 |
| Offensive | Laser Drills |
| Accommodations | |
| Staterooms | 5 |
| Low Berths | 120 |
| Personnel | |
| Crew | 5 |
| Pilots | 1 |
| High/Mid Passengers | 0 |
| Low Passengers | 120 |
| Payload | |
| Cargo | 5 Tons |
| Fuel tank | 82 Tons |
| Carried craft | repair drones, Parthenopinnace |
| Special features | cloning facilities for 60 clones, library, mining & manufacturing facilities |
| Construction | |
| Construction Time | 9 months Months |
| Origin | Solomani Confederation |
| Manufacturer | GenAssist |
| Year Operational | 1020 |
| Price | |
| Cost | MCr281.82 |
| Maintenance cost | Cr23,485 |
| Statistics | |
| Quick Ship Profile | GCB-DU22 |
| Universal Ship Profile | GCB-D4822U-CD |
| Images | |
| Blueprint | Yes |
| Illustration | No |
| Source | |
| Also see | Lavalier class Laboratory Ship, Parthenopinnace Fuel Shuttle |
| Canon | Unpublished, fan design |
| Designer | Adrian Tymes |
| Design System | Mongoose 2nd |
| Era | 1105 |
| Reference | Fan: Adrian Tymes |
The Parthenolab class Bio-Construction Vessel is a TL–13 civilian industrial starship specialized in the creation of clones.
Description[edit]
Cloning can be a politically finicky business. For decades - longer than the lifespan of a forced-growth clone created by this process - a Parthenolab might sit immobile in port, plying its trade. Then, within the span of a week or two, it finds itself forced to flee to another system, mining asteroids for survival while its smallcraft scoops fuel from a nearby gas giant and the crew contemplates revenge.
The Parthenolab is designed to handle such a life. It is not optimized for any one mode of operation. In port, the crew buys ores and turns them into cybernetics for the clones, while it makes clones over periods of several months, to pay the ship's mortgage or to fulfill the crew's mission. If forced into the wilderness, it has a modest mining capability and the factories to turn asteroid material into life support for 60 clones plus 5 crew as well as the cybernetics.
A Parthenolab can create up to 60 clones at a time, with low berths for 120. How long this takes depends on the quality of clone sought. Ones raised quickly with shortened lifespans and no education, running only on skills input via wafer jack and/or neural link, take a few months per batch. Ones grown more slowly and given a basic education - as well as a wafer jack and/or neural link with a broad set of skill software they can make better use of - take a few years to produce three full batches. Either way, significant augmentation - at a minimum, a wafer jack or neural link - is added in during the growth process.
Even before augmentation, the products of a Parthenolab rarely have Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, or (in non-human cases) equivalent characteristics - as measured on a standard Universal Personality Profile - below 9. Some Parthenolabs have design templates allowing them to create psionically tested and trained clones; these, too, rarely have Psionics ratings less than 9. (Merely having psionic potential is not illegal in the Third Imperium, just use, a fact which Parthenolabs making psionically-enabled clones include in the clones' education.) While the Zhodani Consulate has no official stance on this, unofficial reactions have matched the unfavorable ones that may be expected when a society decides who is fit to rule based on one quality and then someone is said to have come up with a way to mass manufacture that quality. While Parthenolabs - in particular, ones able to create psionically trained clones - are far too small in quantity to pose a serious threat to Consulate leadership, few Parthenolabs venture anywhere near Consulate space, beyond their concentration on the other side of the Third Imperium given the class's origins in Solomani space.
While the clones are augmented, they are usually not equipped with more than basic clothing. A Parthenolab's small manufacturing capability can only do so much. Any weapons or tools larger than a small implanted blade must be supplied. This is a key consideration when planning to dump 180 quick-grown soldiers or colonists (with no families or loved ones who might object) upon a world.
General Description & Deck Plans[edit]
- Deck Plans for this vessel and the Parthenopinnace Fuel Shuttle.
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: 400 tons (standard). 5600 cubic meters. Unstreamlined Ring Hull.
|
| 2. | Crew | Crew: 1 Pilot, 1 Astrogator, 1 Engineer, 2 Medics. The medics run the cloning operation, including getting clones in and out of the low berths. Typically either the astrogator or engineer will run the smelter and factories as needed - or someone will take astrogator duties in addition to one of the other four roles and a fifth person, often a broker, will run the smelter and factories. The turret is intended only for mining, with no dedicated gunner. |
| 3. | Performance | Acceleration: 2-G maneuver drive installed.
|
| 4. | Electronics | Model/4 ship computer. |
| 5. | Hardpoints | 1 hardpoint, with potential to add 2 more. |
| 6. | Armament | 1 turret with laser drills. |
| 7. | Defenses | None. |
| 8. | Craft | One Parthenopinnace Fuel Shuttle. Vacc suits required for most EVA (extra-vehicle activity). Rescue Balls for crew escape normally carried. |
| 9. | Fuel Treatment | It is typically equipped with a fuel purification plant but no fuel scoops, relying on its smallcraft to scoop fuel. |
| 10. | Cost | MCr281.82 (no architect's fees, those having been financed by GenAssist). MCr253.638 in quantity. This includes one Parthenopinnace Fuel Shuttle. In practice, often "built" for lower cost as a remodel of a Lavalier class Laboratory Ship; cost varies by port and by condition of ship. |
| 11. | Construction Time | 9 months standard, 6 in quantity, if constructing new rather than remodeling a Lavalier class Laboratory Ship. |
| 12. | Remarks | A Lavalier class Laboratory Ship converted to make clones. |
History & Background (Dossier)[edit]
GenAssist is not normally in the business of making starships, and even in this case it is more the creator of record than the actual manufacturer. The Parthenolab "class" is essentially just a formalization of a set of upgrades that more than one GenAssist team, having found itself with a spare Lavalier class Laboratory Ship, did to put the ship to use in GenAssist's core business. The plans have been published and distributed, and are now available royalty-free. It is suspected that GenAssist has even better upgrades that it keeps to itself, and distributed these plans to throw off investigation.
Regardless of their true origins, the published plans work and can be put to profitable enough use to pay the mortgage, even when constructed anew rather than starting from an already-paid-off Lavalier class Laboratory Ship. Most examples are owned and operated by independent outfits.
It has been noted that the majority output of most Parthenolabs is infertile adult female humans, the result of an initial selection bias and the availability of certain template features - genetics for high intelligence and athletic characteristics, removing the menstruation cycle to make sure the clone does not breed, with female XX chromosomes slightly easier to work with than male XY - resulting in an increasing number of variants available, which are the easiest to use for any customer that does not specifically request fertility, children, males (or otherwise non-female, such as neuter), or non-humans. This has spawned no end of comparisons - flattering and unflattering - to Terran bee hives and their sterile female workers. Fanning these comparisons is that the training regimens that Parthenolabs puts clones through, particularly as assisted by neural link and/or wafer jack, have been carefully screened to eliminate most possible causes of disloyalty to whatever master or cause the clone was created for. Extreme abuse and other such factors can still cause mutiny - which GenAssist clings to as evidence it is not making slaves, which would be illegal in the Third Imperium, but rather free-willed sophonts that choose to do what they were raised to do.
Some Parthenolabs have been purchased for use as a sort of retirement pleasure craft, wherein the owner - typically a pilot or engineer with no skill at cloning - also commissions four clone crew designed to be attentive and loyal partners, to create a large "family" (the clone output) for the rest of the owner's life. This is harder work than many popular conceptions of "retirement", but there is a sizable population for which this is a desirable way in which to spend the latter part of one's life - and the medical facilities of a Parthenolab aid in extending and enhancing said life, even without anagathics. Making such a crew takes at least a year, which is done in parallel with constructing the ship. In many cases the individual needs and is given training independently, in how to be someone the clones can be and remain partners to. Famously, some Parthenolabs simply decline such commissions if the individual is sufficiently odious and refuses to be trained out of it. After all, the logic goes, to make servants who simply do what the individual says is to make slaves; aside from the Third Imperium's ban on such, misunderstandings and contradictions in the individual's orders - if the slaves are not allowed to think about and question those orders - would eventually cause a breakdown in ability to serve, usually in less than a decade if not within a year. It is usually not in a Parthenolab's crew's interests to make such shoddy products, no matter how much they are paid.
Class Naming Practice/s & Peculiarities[edit]
Ship Interior Details: As with its parent class, a Parthenolab consists mainly of one large ring, and a docking strut extending into the middle. This gives it the option to use spin gravity, though there are few situations that warrant it.
A central corridor stretches the entire length of the ring - occasionally interrupted by and incorporated into larger working spaces, such as the cloning facilities and the common area, but still traversable - with functional spaces to either side. Engineering is separated into three pairs of rooms, each centered around a sensor block with drives and/or the power plant attached.
The cloning facilities are perhaps the main feature, divided equally into two units intermingled with low berths. This sometimes leads to the perception of creating two batches of up to 30 clones each rather than a single batch of 60, though if a Parthenolab is working at nearly full capacity, all the clones it is making usually have a common destination.
The bridge is laid out with two large holotanks to double as a briefing room, for instance to brief a batch of 30 clones at once.
There is a distinct paucity of airlocks, as the Parthenolab is designed to be able to operate in orbit of a world, relying on its Parthenopinnace to interface. Entrance or egress is normally only through the central docking area, though the repair drone hangars can also be used in a pinch.
Class Naming Practice/s: Many Parthenolabs are named either for aspects of the clone creation process or for ancient and/or mythological figures associated with pregnancy and fertility, such as Ceres. Given as Parthenolabs are most common in Solomani space, most of these references are Solomani in origin.
Selected Variant Types & Classes[edit]
9 Representative Bio-Construction Vessel (MM) Classes[edit]
References[edit]
| This article has metadata. |
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This ship was designed using Mongoose 2nd ship design rules.
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- Author: Adrian Tymes
- ↑ Timothy B. Brown. Fighting Ships (Game Designers Workshop, 1981), 10.
- ↑ Timothy B. Brown. Fighting Ships (Game Designers Workshop, 1981), 10.