 January 26, 2016 - 11:26am | http://starfrontiers.wikia.com/wiki/Privateer
Looking at the privateers, the Condor class is in the light crusier range with an impressive range of weaponry. The above link has the stats for the ship side by side from both Dragon articles.
I have little doubt that this ship has seen duty as the heavy muscle for corporations and for pirates. It's represented by both a miniature and artwork from one of the miniature's boxed sets. Mapping the deck plan aught to be straight forward- Miniature and artwork dictate that.
Beyond the stats there are a few questions before you could do this; namely related to stuff not in the board game section of the rules. Why would you bother? It's not the best ship for a PC ride. It would be a good location for an adventure as you would come across the ship from time to time. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 26, 2016 - 11:51am | First off is exact size: HS 13 is 340 m X 55 m with +/- 25% on either of those. The shape is long and thin so it lends itself to the standard KH format. We can assume some of the length is taken up by machinery and weapons but how many decks for a ship 340 m long? Pretty sure I don't want to map or manage 30 decks. 20-ish? Crew? A UPF light cruiser is this size and has a crew of 70-100. No doubt that reflects military redundancy and improved capability of military ships. Can't see a privateer sporting that big of a crew. Secondly is mission: privateer is in essence a private warship. Is it able to deliver mercenaries to hotspots? If so it would need a shuttle. Speaking of small craft launches, life boats (2 possible), life pods (13 possible), work pods? More than likely it would carry both radar and energy sensors if its a corporate enforcer but pirate vessel might skimp on energy sensors. It is a private war ship so decoys? (2 possible) White Noise Broadcaster? What about Atmo-probes? (13 possible) not really within its mission profile but I could see a ship this size carrying a few. 4 hatches- yes I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 January 26, 2016 - 7:43pm | The central section after the wings and engines is pretty long. This could be a large cargo section. Is this mini shown specifically spelled out to be the condor class ship in the Dragon articles or elsewhere? -iggy |
January 26, 2016 - 9:43pm | The central section after the wings and engines is pretty long. This could be a large cargo section. Is this mini shown specifically spelled out to be the condor class ship in the Dragon articles or elsewhere?
Good question, it was detailed that way on the wiki. I think it might have been on the back of the box, I'll need to get up to Maine and look for my copy of the box. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 January 26, 2016 - 10:45pm | I attempted rendering deck plans for a HS:12 ship and discovered there actually is a limit as to how big you can go for deck plans. The 50m diameter (re: about half a football field) meant there was far more room per deck than you can possibly fill. When I started my Light Cruiser deck plans I began at the fore --- which was about half the maximum 60m diameter of the craft --- and mapped out a very elaborate bridge that took up a good chunk of space. The problem was I became clueless as to what to stock the remaining half of that deck with. The gunnery decks were also surprisingly vacant with lots of space to fill, even after adding the crew quarters. Simply put, I could have made single occupancy luxury cabins for all 70-100 crew on those two decks and still have enough space for them to play frisbee golf on each deck. Adding a Gullwind-capacity six unit hold didn't chew up much space. Even the engineering/engine room, being the most elaborate version I've attempted, had lots of emtpy space despite having everything I once placed on multiple decks all on one deck. Also take into account my prior renditions of the UPF Frigate and Destroyer had 13 and 15 decks respectively --- and I was crucnhed for space with those --- so imagine how many decks the HS:12 cruiser would have with all that space to shove everythng into: Not many. That leaves a lot of empty unused space within that 300m long hull... |
 January 27, 2016 - 1:29am | For deckplans, I always though they didn't really take into account the thickness of the hull, which IMHO would take up quite a lot of space and it would have to be crammed full of wiring, pipes, etc. In most deck plans it looks more like a wall, so one wonders where everything else is (as it doesn't seem to be taking up space anywhere else, hence the rather empty looking spaces). As for Privateers as a design, anything large would be rather pointless. It's not going to take on bigger militarised ships and is better as a scout/commerce raider/blockade runner. I'd say there's no point them being bigger than HS 5 or 6, unless some corporation is using them as transports - but then it just may be cheaper to arm freighters. |
January 27, 2016 - 3:39am | For deckplans, I always though they didn't really take into account the thickness of the hull, which IMHO would take up quite a lot of space and it would have to be crammed full of wiring, pipes, etc. In most deck plans it looks more like a wall, so one wonders where everything else is (as it doesn't seem to be taking up space anywhere else, hence the rather empty looking spaces).
Easy explanation: all that "stuff" is between the decks. Check out the Gullwind deck arrangement in SF/KH:1 and you'll see tons of space between the decks that can be occupied with various pipes, conduits, and even equipment that won't fit on the decks. I often render my deck plans with access panels in the floor to access such equipment. |
 January 27, 2016 - 12:09pm | While all of this is good it unfortunately does not meet the definition of a privateer.
Sounds like a great job but where did you say we had to go? |
 January 27, 2016 - 12:58pm | I play with scaling issues and spacecraft as another hobby. Could someone point me at an image of the ship in question, and I'll offer some thoughts. |
January 27, 2016 - 3:48pm | I play with scaling issues and spacecraft as another hobby. Could someone point me at an image of the ship in question, and I'll offer some thoughts.
I've search the net hard and came up dry, pretty sure I have an image on my computer 2 states away :( Best I can do is the link above to the wiki with a photo of the ship. The box set was #5404 Knight Hawks: Privateers. It would seem its a rare item as its difficult to locate a pic of its cover on the web. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
January 27, 2016 - 5:41pm | 1) Who is issuing the letter of marque? UPF? planetary governments? mega-corporations? AND why are they issuing the letter of marque. I would have to say a planetary government would have to be authorizing it. In times of emergency, the UPF/Council or Worlds could, but that would be rare. 2) What restrictions of does the letter of marque put on the privateer? 3) Who are to be the targets of the letter of marque, how are they to be identified, what are the rewards for taking the prize ship and what are the penalties for taking an incorrect prize? Completely up to the government issuing it. 4) If the privateer is to destroy enemy vessels then a small, fast and very heavily armed ship would be needed. 5) If the privateer is to capture enemy vessels than a much larger ship carrying prize crews and/or cargo space to take on captured cargoes is needed. Agreed on both counts. While you are at it a privateer is usually a civilian vessel modified for combat. There is a difference in Knight Hawks between civilian and miltary vessel design. See, I always had a problem with how upgunned the privateers were, in some cases very close to a full on warship in terms of cubic space allotted. The fact that the Condor can carry the same allotment of torpedoes as the equivilant light cruiser is proof of that. In my game civilians are not permitted torpedoes, I'm not sure what governing society would allow civiians access to nuclear weapons anyways...but for a civilian grade ship to be sporting the same nuclear arsenal as a warship is stretching it too far.
Mega-corporation warfare is possible but can a mega-corporation issue a letter of marque? I would say the megacorp would have to convince the planetary government for such letters, and even so that would only be applicable to the planet/system said government is responsible for. Additional letters would have to be acquired from other planet/system governments if they were to be permitted to operate in an interstellar environment. |
January 27, 2016 - 8:28pm | Ok, based on the image provided, here's what I got: Caveats: the image isn't 100% perpendicular to the camera view, but it isn't too far off so I think it should be "close enough". I make the assumption that the outboard nacelles end roughly at the same point where the "fantail" (extreme end of the central section) does. I can't really measure the "width", since the view isn't "overhead" and I can't do the math to allow for perspective distortion. I will say that the overall width (outboard port to outboard starboard) is a lot bigger than 55m. I'd say more like 155m. I also take as a standard "deck height" 3m (about the same as a current day floor height) With those notes, I measured the length of the central section to be ~837 pixels long. Doing the math, that works out to 0.406 meters/pixel. I won't bother giving you the pixels from here on out, just the metric derivations. These are approximate numbers, rounded to the nearest meter. First, I measure the cylinder hull at 28 meters in diameter. I was originally going to write all this out, but here's the salient points superimposed on the image.  |
January 27, 2016 - 8:56pm | This really shows how massive this is. This would be a big job to detail all the decks. Anyone got an aircraft carrier deck plan to compare to? -iggy |
January 27, 2016 - 9:04pm | Here's the specs on a Nimitz class carrier for comparison:
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 January 27, 2016 - 9:15pm |  Here's a picture of the actual miniature. It is labeled as the condor class on the box it came in. I also broke out my calipers and measured a few bits:50.5mm long fuselage 4.25mm diameter fuselage 1.67mm wing thickness 13.1mm wing height at fuselage 6.35mm wing height at outer pylons 3.68mm upper winglets height at fuselage Scaling the 50.5mm length up to 340 meters give a diameter of 28.6 meters just over half of the 55 stated as the standard size. So it's long and skinny. If you scale up the length by 25% to 437.5m that makes the diameter 35.8m. The original size has a volume of about 808,000 cubic meters. The scaled up one has a volume of only 440,000 cubic meters. Even accounting for the wings as part of the hull volume may not help. Just goes to show that the miniatures can't always be mapped to the game mechanics. And just 20 decks? At 5 meters per deck (3 for beings, 2 for machinery) a 340m ship will have 68 decks. Some of those are probably combined into a big cargo area but yes, you're easlily looking at 20+ decks on a ship this big. As Shadow Shack said, there is really way more space in these things then is needed because of the geometric growth of volume with HS. I should bust out my alternate ship design system and see how big a ship with those weapons and crew would be. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
January 27, 2016 - 9:19pm | And the full wingspan is 28.75mm Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
January 29, 2016 - 5:08am | Terl's 29-36m width measurements would make mapping a lot easier than the standard HS:12 55m decks would be. Still, with all that length (340m) there would be a lot of empty/unused space between decks, even if you were to hash out 30 three-meter high decks and a hold. A civilian ship just doesn't need that many decks...seriously, what would you stock all those decks with? The HS:6 Gullwind has four decks and a cargo bay (I expanded it to six decks) whereas my UPF Destroyer at the same size has 17 decks including a small cargo bay (and still offers plenty of 'tween deck unused space). Another issue: going by those 28.6x340 measurements that only masses about 22,000 tons whereas a HS:13 dimension gives you about 58K tons...22K is within the plus or minus 25% variances offered in the rules for HS:10. That hull needs to be either longer or fatter, and as we can see it's too skinny based on measurements. I'm guessing this miniature is about the size of the assault scout minis with double the fuselage length, and falls significantly smaller than what should be the comparably sized light cruiser mini...which brings up my next issue: Wings? Seriously?!? Whether you go by the HS:5 for system ships or nothing-bigger-than-assault-scout for star ship rules for atmospheric use, HS:13 is way off. So is HS:10.  {ABOVE EDITED 1/29 --- MATH WAS OFF} For example, a canoe (for the sake of comparison) was considered HS:1, it would suddenly double in hull size if it were an outrigger canoe, when the outrigger portion itself serves no purpose other than to better stabilize the canoe...its like the rules state "anything that doesn't fit inside can be mounted outside on the hull". Just for grins, over at Colonial Chrome (booooo...HISS!!!) where the 125 meter Corellian Corvette is considered "huge" (HS:5 in Star Frontiers), the parallel-to-main-axis deck plans leave a lot of empty/unused space much like the aforementioned Gullwind did in the cut-away view inside the Dramune Run cover map. |
January 27, 2016 - 11:48pm | Here's an overlay with a Nimitz. http://i1361.photobucket.com/albums/r667/Greg_Price/Star%20Frontiers/comp_zpscsal7wqr.jpg Note that the habitable hulls are proximate in volume, give or take a little. A Nimitz can sustain a crew of over 5,000 for 70 days (food) and 90 days (parts) with 1 week's worth of avgas at peacetime operations tempo. |
January 28, 2016 - 9:59pm | I don't think they really thought much about the legal definition of Privateers. All planetary based space navies are designated militias which seems a little odd. I suspect that the words privateer and militia were chosen for "feel" and not strict adherence to historic usage. Nothing in the setting suggests there was the issuance of letters of mark. In fact it's hard to see a megacorp securing a letter of Mark from a government it could buy with petty cash. However, the Dragon articles suggest that the terms "yatch" and "privateer" are category designationsfor non military armed space craft. Privateer being the category for anything paramilitary. I doubt the historic usage of privateer applies here. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
 January 30, 2016 - 7:05am | Personally, I would make the "Condor-class" design smaller in order to allow for aerodynamic capability, while the "Moonbright Stinger-class" design would be a light cruiser-sized ship. And I would personally group Privateers and Yachts as a single classification: Privateer Ships or just Paramilitary Ships. Each ship would also be classed by hull-size — scout, frigate, cruiser, etc. Mind you, those are thing I would change if I added them to my games. Oh, and I updated the Wiki page. (Added more pictures, and move the huge stat-blocks below the page.) |
February 1, 2016 - 1:35am | I don't think they really thought much about the legal definition of Privateers. All planetary based space navies are designated militias which seems a little odd. I suspect that the words privateer and militia were chosen for "feel" and not strict adherence to historic usage. Nothing in the setting suggests there was the issuance of letters of mark. In fact it's hard to see a megacorp securing a letter of Mark from a government it could buy with petty cash. However, the Dragon articles suggest that the terms "yatch" and "privateer" are category designationsfor non military armed space craft. Privateer being the category for anything paramilitary. I doubt the historic usage of privateer applies here. Yep! One of the problems I've always had with the way some RPGs handle spacecraft is their reliance on the surface vessel (sea) types and nomenclature. It's always struck me as being both a bit silly and a bit lazy. It tend to see them more as somewhat like aircraft, but at the same time as their own specific thing as spacecraft. Trying to shoehorn them to fit sea vessel tropes/nomenclature throws up problems and also restricts what is 'acceptable' as ship type in the problematic RPGs. I think it's better to work from the premise that one has to imagine what a ship might be needed for, then come up with a title for that - but work on the design first. Space is not the sea, and offers up a variety of interesting problems and solutions peculiar to itself. Any ship in space is going to need to have it's own set of definitions, and not those based on any premise borrowed from a surface vessel (which is it's own thing in and of itself). |
February 1, 2016 - 1:00pm | I'm much happier with the sea analogy, as cliche as it is derided as being. Living on a large spacecraft more closely resembles living on a ship than it does flying an aircraft. |
February 1, 2016 - 7:42pm | So I worked up the specs of the Condor class with my alternate ship system that takes mass and volume into account and even giving it a pretty big cargo capacity (75% of the entire ship) it only came out to 100,000 cubic meters. That HS 12 in my system but the HS is calculated differently and that corresponds to between HS 7 & 8. If you make the cargo area smaller, it can be as small as 25,000 cubic meters (between HS 5 & 6) with no cargo area or anything in between HS 5 and 8 depending on what fraction you want to make cargo space. Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
February 2, 2016 - 1:04am | I'm much happier with the sea analogy, as cliche as it is derided as being. Living on a large spacecraft more closely resembles living on a ship than it does flying an aircraft. I meant that the analogy in terms of purpose and design doesn't really work if one translates tropes from sea-going vessels to those in space. Actual life abaord a spacecraft may be it's own thing, but with simi8larities to other forms of transport, and not just sea-going ships. IMHO it's better to see spacecraft as their own thing in terms of design, as it tends to fall over conceptually if one sticks too closely and rigidly to the standard sci-fi trope. |
February 2, 2016 - 8:47am | I'm OK with using terms like yatch, priveteer, and militia and etc understanding that the game designers may or may not have had a good or clear idea of the proper use of these terms within their historical context. This begs the question of whether we should try to define the yatch and privateer class of ships? Also, as is the condor class kind of reminds me of the merchant cruiser in the Traveler module: Leviathan. Providing you give it a landing shuttle, a cargo hold, and some scientific equipment. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
February 2, 2016 - 10:12am | So it begs the question: does a KH schooner have 2+ masts worth of solar sails?  |
 February 2, 2016 - 1:40pm | I've search the net hard and came up dry, pretty sure I have an image on my computer 2 states away :( Best I can do is the link above to the wiki with a photo of the ship. The box set was #5404 Knight Hawks: Privateers. It would seem its a rare item as its difficult to locate a pic of its cover on the web. There are some decent photos of the privateers minis box set at http://supergalacticdreadnought.blogspot.com/2011/08/another-score-from-half-price.html. I recently became the proud owner of such a set via Ebay. I'm curious about how the Rollo's Revenge looks like the front section might detach and be a separate assault scout-style craft - anyone recall anything in the printed materials to that effect? Side note: this is my first post on this forum, though I came across it several months ago. Anytime I think I have something new to contribute, I noodle around in the archives and discover my brilliant insight was already thought of and hashed to death multiple times several years back. But I'm enjoying all the catch-up reading - thanks to you all! |
February 2, 2016 - 5:06pm | Welcome to our little corner of the Frontier.  There are some decent photos of the privateers minis box set at http://supergalacticdreadnought.blogspot.com/2011/08/another-score-from-half-price.html. So Moonbright Stinger (HS:9) and Rollo's Revege (HS:10) are both larger than the Condor (HS:13). Meanwhile Thruster (HS:2), Golden Vanity (HS:4), and Lightspeed Lady (HS:5) are all about the same size as the Condor. It would seem my initial theory is looking pretty sound... I'm guessing this miniature is about the size of the assault scout minis with double the fuselage length, and falls significantly smaller than what should be the comparably sized light cruiser mini... |
February 2, 2016 - 11:41pm | There are some decent photos of the privateers minis box set at http://supergalacticdreadnought.blogspot.com/2011/08/another-score-from-half-price.html. That website is what I used for the images of Privateer miniatures (croped and edited) used in the SF Wiki, and that vary photo of the back of the box set was what I used to confirm the class name for each ship. TSR made miniatures for the Privateers, but Yachts where looked over completely -- interest for the game and line might have waned by then. |
February 3, 2016 - 9:10am | I meant that the analogy in terms of purpose and design doesn't really work if one translates tropes from sea-going vessels to those in space. Why don't they? A space Navy has all the same needs as a "wet" navy: picket ships, smaller ships in groups to defend larger ships and formations (destroyers), independent patrollers (frigates and cruisers), the main battle line (battleships), and of course carriers (if you use fighters). Actual life abaord a spacecraft may be it's own thing, but with simi8larities to other forms of transport, and not just sea-going ships. Name me a function aboard a space navy ship that isn't parallel to a wet navy ship. Not space shuttles and other low-orbit types that are just space-capable aircraft, but actual independently operating long-range ships. IMHO it's better to see spacecraft as their own thing in terms of design, as it tends to fall over conceptually if one sticks too closely and rigidly to the standard sci-fi trope. It really doesn't. I know the popular idea of "space is not an ocean" is literally true, but it is completely analogous as the functions are identical. The bugaboo about wanting to steer away from the anaology stems mostly from a reaction to anime, where they have a tendency towards exaggeration such as by putting literal wet-navy ships in space (yes, Yamato I'm looking at you), up to the point sometimes of even inventing ones that look like they're right out of the Age of Sail at the extreme. |
February 3, 2016 - 1:12pm | and of course carriers (if you use fighters). One should use fighters, they're very effective in groups against big ships. a tendency towards exaggeration such as by putting literal wet-navy ships in space (yes, Yamato I'm looking at you), up to the point sometimes of even inventing ones that look like they're right out of the Age of Sail at the extreme.
And we're right back to the question of KH schooners boasting solar sails.  |
