MetaGaming MicroGame 4
Right of Ascension
Eridu, Sector 2318
Able Second to the First Engineer, Jaix Lejo sealed the electronic diagnostic tool pack on her red and black form fitting pressure suit and exited the cramped forward beamery maintenance station, entering the J-tube access way that served as the spine of the Mosulan warpship “Right of Ascension.” Jaix was lithe and nimble, two traits that made for a good engineer in the cramped crawl spaces and service ducts that veined the Right of Ascension … ducts that allowed Jaix and her team of technicians to keep the thousand foot long warpship space-worthy and combat ready.
The J-tube itself was never pressurized (it would have been a waste of valuable life support resources to do so) and the only time that anyone in the J-tube was subject to the effects of gravity was when the warpship was under any form of acceleration. You didn’t want to be in the J-tube when the power / drive was lit because there was no way to cushion yourself or strap in to relieve the many punishing maneuver G’s that the Right of Ascension’s nuclear plasma stutter pulse drive was capable of generating.
Moving to where she could brace her boots against a maintenance and structural support bulkhead, she forced the service hatch closed behind her and began the process of sealing the hatch. Her gloved fingers tapped out the maintenance sequence code on the hatch keypad that would seal the hatch and let her start her long journey astern, back to Life-Command. She had just started to seal the powered hatch locking mechanism when the status condition light on the HUD in her helmet went from green to red, followed by an animated flashing [ALERT] icon signaling that the Right of Ascension had gone to a full combat condition.
Jaix blasphemed under her breath as she felt the tell-tale energy signature of a pre-warp field buildup start to course its way through the Right of Ascension’s superstructure, along the J-tube and towards the bow where the energy focus of the warp field would be the greatest. Jaix knew that she was now on a strict time limit to get back to Life-Command because there were many things that you didn’t want to be caught in the J-tube during; acceleration, solar flares, combat and a warp jump because you weren’t likely to survive any of those conditions for very long. She whispered hurried, excited encouragement for the hatch to finish its mechanical sealing procedure and she watched as the tell-tales slowly creeped across the status board … red to amber to green.
She waited for what she thought was an eternity. Finally, the maintenance hatch seal was good and it was ninety seconds past time to go. She kicked off for her long trek “down” the J-tube moving from bulkhead to bulkhead and structural brace to structural brace as fast as she could kick and grab, flying down the center of the J-tube. In lighter times, she often raced other specialists up and down the J-tube in a friendly rivalry to see who could get to their assigned task post the quickest. Now, she was playing a different game … one in which her life was the prize and there was no second place. She keyed in her suit comlink as she worked to steady her breathing and tried to reach a pace that would get her to where she needed to go in the short time that she had to get there.
“Jaix to Braig. Braig! I’m in the J-tube, forward, section Alpha 3!”
“Braig to Jaix. Rodge that. I have you on the system locator moving stern towards Life-Command. Haul it!”
“Give me a sit-rep! Post now!” she ordered, continuing to move as fast as she could down the long crowded spine.
“Tactical just confirmed two warp signatures, big ones, Class III battlewarps at least, just entered the system at high speed and dropped their warp fields. Scanners show that they’re Ugaritan, one hundred and twenty-seven light seconds away, they know that we’re here and the energy readings indicate that the Uggies are reconfiguring for heavy combat. Tactical says that sensors are painting six smaller sigs so we know that they’ve seeded their Systemships. The short is that they know that we were here and now they’re coming for us. Get back here, Jaix. Get back here now! Captain says we can’t stay and fight.”
Jaix blasphemed again because there was real concern in Braig’s voice and there was certainly enough to be concerned about. The tactical situation was bad, real bad. The Right of Ascension was a Class II warpship, she might hold her own against a single Class III, especially with Rann Bondurant at the command column but against two Class III Ugaritan warpships and their six attendant Systemships … the Right of Ascension was at a distinct tactical disadvantage and likely wouldn’t survive the engagement … if Bondurant was foolish enough to press the one-sided engagement which he wasn’t.
“Bondurant?” Jaix asked, wondering what the captain of the Right of Ascension was going to do about the current situation, even though she knew that the buildup of the warp generator meant that Bondurant understood that the Right of Ascension really didn’t have a chance. A tactical warp retreat was the only option … if they could make it.
The energy from the warp field generator was building in intensity. It was starting to play havoc with her suit guidance and communications systems. Jaix arced over a maintenance bulkhead and kicked off a service panel to crisscross her way down the J-tube at a speed that would have been considered reckless, dangerous and would probably have garnered a rather stern personal reprimand from Bondurant in any other situation for the risks she was taking but now it didn’t matter. Now she had only one goal … to reach Life-Command before Bondurant considered her expendable and sacrificed her life to save his ship and the rest of his crew and he would do it, instantly, without thinking, he’d do what every captain would do in his situation … he’d order the Right of Acension to go to warp, the warp field would engage and the very energy that allowed the Right of Ascension to tear a hole in the fabric of space and time would itself flow along the J-tube and tear Jaix apart in a manner that would be as painful as it was messy.
“Tactical told Bondurant that survival confidence is extremely low … around five percent at best. Engineering is priming for a max burn and the captain has given the order for a tactical warp assisted retreat. We’re giving up Eridu and will fall back to Kish where we’ll wait for reinforcements. Nav’s got a course to Umma plotted and we’re prepping for a shunt out in three minutes. Weapons control is priming the two Systemships for autonomous ops in full attrition mode because Tactical says that if we sacrifice both Systemships that we should be able to get away. ETA for synchronous rack release is ninety seconds … mark. You should clear that section thirty seconds before that at the pace you’re maintaining. Hurry, Jaix.”
“Understood.” She replied, seeing the guidance lights of the main service and maintenance airlock that would allow her access to Life-Command, an airlock that represented sanctuary, sixty meters ahead.
“Haul it, Jaix. Captain’s not looking for martyrs but he’ll make one on the spot if it saves the rest of us.”
Around her the tell-tale energy signature from the warp generator began to cascade and arc across the structural supports of the Right of Ascension … lacing her in a constantly changing cyan and purple web of angel hair fine energy that tickled her even through the material of her protective suit.
Jaix Lejo moved for all she was worth …
Scratch-Building the classic spindle shaped warpship from the WarpWar rulebook
Mosulan Star Command "Right of Ascension"
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Background – Okay, I'll admit it again. I’m a fan of Winchell Chung’s artwork, namely the stuff that he did for Howard Thompson’s company Metagaming and their line of pocket sized Microgames that were popular among tactical war gamers from the mid to late 1970’s. One of those Microgames was called “WarpWar” (one word) and contained no less than four black and white illustrations by Winchell Chung (plus counters based off of his illustrations and in one edition of the game, a full color cover done by Winchell, see illustration above).
WarpWar was a nice little pocket game that included several novel concepts, as in the concepts were taken from several science fiction novels. It was played on a simple map (about the size of a sheet of letter sized paper); two generic empires (played out in blue and white counters, IIRC) went to generic war among the generic stars. The map seemed to have been built from scratch as none of the names of the stars really existed and I doubt if the positions of the stars would ever line up against real maps. Then there was the fact that the stars had names like “Babylon”, “Ur”, “Sumarra” and “Nineveh” … not highly original in hindsight though it did give the game a “cradle of civilization” type flavor.
The background for WarpWar could be summed up in three simple paragraphs taken from the sixteen page, black and white rulebook …
“WarpWar simulates a hypothetical future where time for flights between stars is huge … but ends in brief but violent combat. Warpships can enter the stressed space channels (“warplines”) between stars for nearly instantaneous travel. Nevertheless, wars among the stars last so long that huge advances are made in technology. Older ships are at a disadvantage against newer ones.
The destructive power of weapons technology has become so great that space combats have become tactical guessing games between ship commanders. A clear hit will wreck or cripple all but the most powerful ships. The goal, then, is to outguess the enemy – to use your own weapons in the optimum manner where his defenses are weakest, while avoiding a killing counterblow.
WarpWar represents a campaign fought between two relatively close base star areas. The bases can build and supply a few ships, but have no other defenses. The battle for a star is over when its sky is swept clean of ships; the planetary bases will be helpless. And with one side’s bases occupied, the war is over.”
The game liberally borrowed concepts from classic science fiction including areas of stressed space (Larry Niven) and the fact that flight times between stars were long and resulted in vast advances in technology while the crews were away on combat missions … a clear homage to Joe Haldeman’s classic sci-fi combat novel “The Forever War.” One could surmise that because flight times between stars were long that some sort of crew preservation must also have been invented, namely something along the lines of suspended animation or cryogenics.
The wars among the stars would be the realm of misanthropes, natural loners, and the incurably / insanely patriotic / zealous as crews would find that when they left on a combat mission that they were saying goodbye to all that they cared for and loved. When they returned, if they did return, they would probably find that decades or generations has passed in their absence and the world that they came home to would be very different indeed … if they recognized it at all. Haldeman wrote about just this very sort of story and if you’ve never read them then “The Forever War” and his short story “Timepiece” should be next on your list.
In the game itself, the advent of the warp generator allowed “warpships” to move from star to star while ships produced without the warp generator were called “Systemships” and had to remain in a given system until they were picked up by a warpship (using “Systemship racks”) and carried to another system. The game itself was simple yet challenging to play and used an innovative diceless combat system (a first since all previous Microgames required a single six-sided die to play). Ship component systems were equally simple; players were given a preset amount of construction points (“CP”) in which to “build” their fleets using given production costs for given components. The components consisted of a power-drive generator, warp generator (optional), Systemship rack (used to carry one Systemship), beam / shield generator (a function of the same generator), missile tube, and to buy missiles which were shot out of the missile tube (kind of saw that coming, didn’t you?). Players put construction points into these systems to “build” a vessel and then sent that vessel out to fight within the context of the rules of the game.
Each item cost one construction point per point of system strength, except the warp generator which cost five points and missiles where one CP would buy three missiles. Warpships were vessels built with warp generators (allowing FTL movement during a turn among the stars). Systemships were vessels that were built without warp generators. Of course, this allowed the classic debate to continue … could a warpship that cost 10cp outfight a Systemship that cost 10cp if half of the warpship production cost was taken up by the mass and cost of the warp generator itself. Several science fiction series have based warfare around this concept … even giving a disadvantage to starships in that they might be vulnerable as soon as they emerged from warp space and could in turn be pounced upon and defeated by hordes of much smaller, much less expensive spacecraft.
Defensive force shield and offensive energy beam strength were taken from the same generator giving an either / or situation where a vessel could choose to project a defensive shield to absorb partially or completely any damage during a turn or to project an offensive energy beam in an attempt to damage other vessels. A ship (warpship or Systemship) could produce both a shield and a beam in the same turn but missiles could not be fired in the same turn that a shield was employed. Also, even though the beam and shield projection were from the same generator, either beam or shield could be weaker or stronger than the other thus it was possible to have a ship built with three points of beam strength and two points of shield strength … odd.
WarpWar was a fun game, something you could throw in your back pocket or school notebook and play with minimum setup between classes or when you had some free time. WarpWar was fun though it was ultimately overcome by Starfleet Battles and later by the much simpler Starfire (that is, simpler until it, too, became way too needlessly complex) … but I always had a soft spot in my war gaming heart for. If you don’t have WarpWar, I’m sure you could find a copy on Ebay or from some large online hobby shop that specializes in older games from unsold warehouse stocks. It’s worth a play or two and it will definitely send your imagination for a jog around the block.
Given that brief background on the game, and noting that it came with only a sixteen page rulebook, you can imagine that the rules were tight and the illustrations were few. In fact, just four illustrations are included in the instruction manual … all four by Winchell Chung. The first illustration is the ship displayed below, an illustration that graced the front cover of the game manual, has a draw date of 1977 (“WINCH 77”) and has always struck my fancy as something I would like to cobble together one day:
Bonus trivia – if you look at the black and white illustration and compare it to the full color cover that Winchell did, you’ll notice that the ship on the color cover is missing the “ball” section (“Life-Command”) in front of the four fuel tanks… Also, while the black and white illustration shows four fuel cylindrical tanks, the color illustration clearly shows six cylindrical fuel tanks. The spine of the ship on the color cover also has no provision for mounting Systemships as there are no “racks” visible in the color illustration. I wonder if anyone has ever noticed let alone pointed those discrepancies out before?
Interesting.
The second illustration is a hexagonal shaped warpship (which I always assumed represented “the bad guys”). The draw date of this art also shows 1977 which might explain why this design looks to draw some inspiration from Darth Vader’s sinister curved wing custom TIE-fighter as first seen in George Lucas’ monumental original masterpiece of sci-fi, “Star Wars”, during that very year.
More rambling on this beautiful but deadly (and expensive!!!) ship can be found here.
The third illustration is that of a bridge scene (itself showing that the crew is either in a centrifuge (like the one used on the USS Discovery) or the advent of artificial gravity has been introduced since we clearly see the crew member on the right standing in what appears to be one normal G of gravity. Also note the crew member standing in the hallway about a third of the way from the left … more evidence that the crew is under the effects of gravity and not really being bothered by it (as in the gravity isn’t being generated by the propulsion system of the vessel and it isn’t accelerating at 6G’s worth of thrust).
Winchell even talks in great depth about the design of this bridge and his inspirations for the evolving study of this bridge layout but for me, it reminds me more and more of the bridge of the USS Palomino, the small explorer ship from the 1979 Disney movie “The Black Hole.” Since “The Black Hole” came out in 1979 and Winchell drew this design way back in 1977, methinks that maybe Disney borrowed something from Winch and maybe never gave him credit along the way.
It’s a thought.
The fourth illustration was that of a bug-eyed Systemship with twin multiple rocket pods mounted on its wings, the light blue one shown on the color game cover above (Winchell has a case study of this Systemship and the history of its design on his website as well).
This is the design of Systemship that is housed in the “bad guy” ship design shown above. One piece of artwork from Winchell’s site seems to indicate that the front of this Systemship can operate on its own, as a beam armed fighter, in a manner similar to how the command module of the Space 1999 Eagle transporter could be detached … the multiple fuel pods suggest a tremendous ability to burn fuel at a very high rate of consumption. This Systemship is probably capable of brutal acceleration but maybe for only short periods of time. There seems to be one primary engine (center mount) and two auxiliary engines (perhaps boosters). The tail fin and the forward winglets hint at aerodynamic atmospheric operations ... but the staggered fuel tanks tend to counter that hint.
The multiple “ripple pack” or “scatter pack” type rocket pods don’t really translate well into the game but perhaps each side represents a single missile firing weapon “system” so in essence saying that this Systemship has two missile tubes is tantamount to the same thing. The pods look a little weak and flimsy so perhaps they retract in closer to the main hull during docking / storage / launch. Perhaps they can even swivel in clockwise / counter-clockwise manner in order to be able to fire up or down from the flight vector of the Systemship itself.
Some thoughts on the project material ...
Some thoughts going into this project
As I have said, the ship that I have chosen to model is rather simplistic yet elegant in its design (and it just looks really effing cool which is, I guess, kind of a bonus in the end and the primary reason why I built this ship to begin with). I have my own thoughts on this particular design which I will share as we proceed through the buildup.
Thought One – the short story. Looking at this ship, I had the thought that it must be a real bitch to service anything beyond the crew / command module. Like Winchell has said about atomic rockets on his website, starships are not “boats” and looking at this design, if you wanted to service the Systemships or the forward beam / shield generator you would either have to go EVA and approach it from the outside or possibly work your way forward through the long spine (“J-tube”) of the ship. I doubt that the spine of the ship is a very comfortable place to move through, it’s probably full of conduits, pipes, trunks, and other items that carry a variety of fluids, gasses, data, and electricity all in large portions and all in a variety of temperatures and ranges that are for the most part very life-unfriendly. The spine is probably also kept in a state of zero pressure, zero atmosphere and short of acceleration by the ship itself, zero gravity. This is a beautiful ship but keeping it running is a real chore. Pity the techs and mechs that have that occupational skill …
Look at the length of the spine … beyond the crew / command module you have the two system ship racks and the forward beam / shield generator … at almost the other end of the ship. The spine looks very narrow so I envisioned that it is made up of a sealed though unpressurized, airless access space where one or two pressure suited techs might be able to fit through with some amount of discomfort.
My first idea was that the crew might keep some pressure in the J-tube so that a crew member would be able to work along the various points of the spine without having to wear a bulky, labor reducing full pressure suit. I doubt if they would waste valuable air, though, so the crew member who went forward (or “up”) may not have to wear a pressure suit but they would still have to carry their own air supply with them … something like a self contained breathing rig like the firefighters wear today (or like Han Solo wore in TESB when they investigated the asteroid cave). Of course, there might be life support plug-ins along the way and at the various service stations as well as emergency centers that held first aid kits and areas where the crew member could plug their LS unit into the main LS supply of the ship or recharge their portable LS unit while working on whatever it is that they needed to work on. That’s how I would design the ship and it makes sense.
In hindsight, pressurizing the J-tube would be a waste of precious life support resources and I doubt it would be done which means that while the entire length of the J-tube is sealed, the interior of the J-tube is essentially cold, hard vacuum and a full pressure suit must be used to move through or work in the J-tube.
The J-tube is not the place you want to be in the event of: solar flares (it’s not shielded like the crew module is), combat (self explanatory), acceleration / maneuvers (no place to compensate for the G-forces), and a warp jump (I envisioned that the strongest warp field forces would, by their very nature, be focused at the front of the ship to tear through the fabric of space and time and anyone caught in the J-tube would naturally be at the mercy of energies and forces designed to propel a several thousand ton starship through the void at FTL velocities).
What happens when you’re regular duty shift turns into a combat alert and you’re stuck at the end of the J-tube? Well, that’s where the story came into play. I could imagine the terror of a tech caught at the far end of the ship when a combat scenario began to play out. Do the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few or the one? Sacrifice is a double edged sword. If the enemy has just put the jump on you and you are heavily outnumbered … do you wait around long enough for one of your best people to make it back from the far end of the ship (where you sent her to work on something) and risk the life of everyone else or do you save everyone else by sacrificing one of your best people through no fault of her own?
That’s a command decision and its one that’s been the fear of commanders since the position of commander was ever first instituted.
Why call it a “J-tube”?
It’s an homage to the old Star Trek TV series where the Enterprise had “Jefferies Tubes” that were tight access ways that the engineering staff used to get to hard to reach places on the Enterprise (and subsequently somehow save the day). I’m sure that any starship worth its production cost will have several J-tubes and that the dedicated crew who have to crawl through them will use very colorful language to describe whoever designed the J-tubes in the first place.
Thought Two – Small crew, big computers. The ship itself is heavily automated, the Systemships are little more than robotic weapons platforms / busses (ala the Starcruiser Shenandoah series) and the crew controls everything from the round habitat module which would also have both a centrifuge (for producing gravity) as well as the suspended animation facilities (to preserve the crew during the long flight times between stars). If the Discovery could be run by a crew of around ten, then maybe a crew of between fifteen and twenty-five people could be required to “fight and flight” this warpship. Some might be kept in suspended animation as “spares” in case of combat losses or simply to rotate shifts. The computer would probably form the central axis of the crew module and have extensions to all decks. Decks would include the standard areas; command, living (sleeping, eating, hygiene), engineering, suspended animation / medical / trauma, EVA (J-tube and exterior access), perhaps a machine shop / manufacturing facility, emergency escape systems and possibly a small arms locker to either protect from boarding attempts or enable such to be enacted on a damaged enemy vessel. There might be both standard issue pressure suits and power assisted armored pressure suits (for use by any “marines” aboard the ship). I doubt if there are any robots among the crew listings but if they are then they are more likely closer in nature to the drones of the classic movie “Silent Running” than they are to say an anthropomorphic android like “Data” in Star Trek: TNG.
Thought Three – Autonomous / semi-autonomous robot Systemships. The design of this ship does not show any way for the crew to embark or disembark from the Systemships short of the J-tube and we see no gantries or airlock type affairs. Indeed, crawling through the J-tube to reach the Systemships would be a time consuming and labor intensive affair that you wouldn’t want to attempt while under combat conditions. I see the Systemships used by this particular warpship to be little more than remote controlled weapon platforms … if we arm the Systemships with missiles (as Winchell did in his extrapolation of the design) then we have a warpship armed with beam / shield capacity and enhancing its offensive punch with two separate missile armed autonomous weapon platforms.
That makes sense from a combined arms point of view.
I also see the fact that being automated weapons platforms, it would be easier to sacrifice the Systemships when the warpship might need to retreat in the face of superior numbers (as in the short story). The clamps will be somewhat difficult to model and may be “re-envisioned” for convenience’s sake. There is obviously some form of interface that looks like it plugs into the Systemship (possibly for refueling as well as high speed data transfer) and the multiple arrays and antennas also hint that these ships are not only automated weapons drones but may also serve in the capacity as advanced scouts for the warpship … flying ahead into risky areas to scout out enemy positions before joining the warpship for an attack.
Thought Four - The name; “MSC Right of Ascension” hereafter abbreviated for convenience’s sake simply as “RoA.” I’ve always liked the word “ascension”, I don’t know why but it just oozes majesty and poetry, it symbolizes a grand climb from way down low to way up high with the hint of victory over all at the end. The term “right ascension” has long been associated with astronomy (thus with stars thus with the advent of war among the stars) but also with some of my earliest memories of the USA / USSR Space Race. I modified the term to be “Right of Ascension” giving the name of this ship something more elegant, something gallant and something with a bit of an attitude … Right of Ascension fairly states that the ship represents the empire dreams of whatever race built and launched this vessel. It is both an elegant name and one that speaks with some amount of authority when it is given to a vessel that carries weapons of mass destruction across the vast vacuum of interstellar space and does so with a fair clip to her stern. In looking at the original map, I chose a base star at the upper left corner of the map, “Mosul”, as all of the stars at the lower half of the map seemed to have been taken from an ancient map of the Middle East (“Babylon”, “Ur”, etc.). So, since all good ships really need some fancy letters at the front (i.e. USS Discovery, USS Enterprise, HMS Defiant, WWF Linedancer, etc.), I needed to come up with some letters and a meaning behind those letters … hence the MSC Mosulan Soverign Command. If you want something more than that, fill in the details yourself.
Thought Five – EVA and escape – I’m sure that there is a need for the crew to leave the interior of this vessel from time to time to work on the exterior of the vessel. Several airlocks should be located around the exterior of the ship, with suit storage / maintenance lockers and enough pressure suits for each crew member. I envision that this ship also carries one or two EVA work pods (similar to the design of the space pods used by the crew of the Discovery in 2001: ASO) designed to augment the labor capacity of crew members doing repair work or maintenance on the exterior of the vessel. Small EVA sleds might also be stored and used by crew members who must go EVA and travel long distances (like from one end of the ship to the other or to rescue EVA crew who have become lost in space). Escape from a stricken vessel might include multiple crew member capable escape pods (perhaps located in the life module) or the entire crew module might be able to be blown free, disengaging the rear drive / fuel section and the forward Systemship racks and beam shield generator in the event of catastrophe or catastrophic battle damage. I’m sure that crew survival would depend on the survivors going into suspended animation with power supplied by one or more auxiliary power reactors built into the design of the crew module itself. Since the rules state that flight times between stars are huge, then stranded crew might not expect to be rescued for months or even years … if they are rescued at all.
Thought Six – the massive engine exhaust bell – Winchell has said on his website that the engine exhaust bell is based off of a NERVA type nuclear exhaust drive. I think that something as advanced as a warpship might maneuver with something a little more advanced than a old style NERVA drive but then if this ship is closer in technology to the USS Discovery (and if the warp generator is the most advanced piece of hardware on this ship) then it might be easier to imagine this ship with a powerful NERVA based drive system (and it might need all those fuel cells to feed that hungry beast). When I was putting all of these parts together and trial fitting the arrangements, I kept listening to the soundtrack from Disney’s “The Black Hole”, the “Durant is Dead” track in particular. This is the track where the USS Cygnus begins to power up its engines. I could imagine this warpship powering up its engine in a similar manner … a build up whine (probably heard through the ship since sound doesn’t carry in space) followed by a few bright blue or cyan puffs of flame from the engine bell before the NERVA came full on into a blowtorch, going from pale blue / cyan in color to white hot intensity in a few seconds. I also think that, under full power, this warpship might leave a trail of plasma a mile or even more long … and what’s to say that the NERVA engine itself couldn’t be used as an emergency weapon? Just flip the ship around, point the nozzle at an enemy and run the ship up to full power.
In any event, if this type of engine is standard on some of these ships, then it might very well double as an emergency weapon ala Larry Niven’s Man vs. Kzin short story involving first contact when the human ship “Angel’s Pencil” used its plasma drive to destroy a Kzin warship. In the event of catastrophic damage, I’m sure that there is some way to jettison the various reactors onboard this vessel. Perhaps there is a massive solid fuel rocket escape system located just behind the crew module and, in an emergency, the fuel tanks are blown off, the ring / drive assembly is ejected and the rocket motor is lit to get the crew module as far as possible away from any danger of reactor detonation … or the escape system might itself be a miniaturized NERVA type engine that feeds from the fuel tanks of the primary engine.
Thought Seven – Systemships – These ships have to be remotely piloted because short of EVA, I don’t see how anyone can enter these ships from the main ship and at the scale that we’re building this model, there really is no room for a human crew in these ships, I see no gantry or airlock that would let a human crew move from the spine of the warpship to the body of the Systemship and in looking at the attachment points for the system ship, we see only five connections. Four of these connections appear to be docking claws which grab hold of the system ship along its spine. The front and rear claw would grab the system ship near the engine nozzle and probably near the “neck” leading from the body to the “head”. The other two claws apparently grab hold of the fuel rings (probably not the best of places to try to maintain a docking hold on a ship during violent maneuvers) or either they grab hold of the spine located in the small space between the fuel rings and the spine located just in front of the fuel first fuel ring but between the main body and the first fuel ring. There is also an attachment point that looks like it might be some kind of refueling line to fuel up the Systemships when they are docked. It could also carry high speed data to the onboard computer system, keeping it sync’ed with the warpship right up until time of umbilical separation and Systemship launch.
Since we never see the head of the Systemship up close, what it looks like is up for debate and conjecture. I decided to try on Winchell’s shoes and take his mind for a spin (well, more like one hell of a joyride given the depth I’m going to in this extrapolation). Since a lot of Winchell’s influences were taken from classic 1960’s and 1970’s sci-fi television series like the shows from Irwin Williams and Gerry Anderson, and a lot of WarpWar images drew some of their content from Anderson’s “Space: 1999”, I decided to reach back a little farther to another Gerry Anderson TV series, “UFO” and borrow some design pointers from SHADO’s all-knowing, all-seeing watchdog sentinel satellite, SID or Space Intruder Detector, pictured below, for the head of the Systemships. If these Systemships are fully automated, autonomous action capable weapons platforms / munition delivery busses then it would make sense that they would have sophisticated detection / targeting systems which I think is represented best by SID.
SHADO’s SID
(Space Intruder Detector)
Sentinel Satellite (UFO TV series)
I think that the “head” of SID would make a proper inspiration point for the head of the Systemships attached to this warpship, since these Systemships are nothing more than remote weapon platforms either under their own guidance or the direct guidance of the crew of the warpship. SID always looked like it would be a good weapons satellite and the head with its myriad of sensors, scanners and detectors would go well with all the dead-tree antenna that the Systemships sport.
Winchell has mentioned on his site that the fuel rings of the Systemships are expendable assets, that they can be ejected when empty and that they fall away from the Systemship, sliding over the rear nozzle I guess much like some of the stages in the Apollo Saturn V (seen below) seem to do when they are expended.
While a (really) neat concept that strikes me (also) as a little odd. The only reason I can see this (ever) being an operational doctrine is if the Systemships are being sacrificed for the life of the warpship and its crew, if the Systemships have been put into martyr mode and are now considered fully expendable and if the crew have no intention or desire to recover them for future use. Ejecting the spent fuel rings might lighten the mass of the Systemship, giving better performance but it would also mean that after the second ring was ejected, performance would be optimal but there would be no fuel left to perform (unless the rings are simply auxiliary tanks used as disposable boosters and the primary fuel tankage is carried in the body).
I can see this a few ways. The ring ejection hardware could be both tactical (booster / high speed short duration) and safety (a damaged ring could be ejected but what if it is the first ring that is damaged … you’d have to eject both then). If the rings are simply booster packs to allow the Systemships to carry extra fuel for super high G sustained burns, then the Systemships become akin to really high performance interceptors. These high-G sustained burns would also preclude the use of a human crew since humans are just big bags of water that tend to not like being subjected to crushing gravitational forces for very long periods without bad things happening to them … but if the Systemships are remote piloted or computer controlled, they can withstand far more acceleration / deceleration Gs, harder maneuvers, etc. for far longer than any organic crew and these Systemships look brutal enough to be nothing more than weapon platforms.
So, Winchell has said that the rings are capable of being jettisoned and that the spent rings slide over the aft engine nozzle. If the engine is in full burn, I’d assume that some sort of physical damage would probably be done to the rings as they were ejected and that recovering them would be a moot point after that. If the rings are some type of booster fuel tank, then this might be a viable option but this could only be done once per mission as once the fuel rings are ejected, recovery of the fuel rings would present far more of a tactical problem than refueling and reattaching them. If this warpship were successful in a space duel, it might have to recover two Systemships moving at high velocity, each with no way to stop itself because all of its reaction mass was spent. Once the Systemships were recovered, the warpship would then have to match trajectory and velocity with each of the four fuel rings, recover those, reattach those to the Systemships and rearm / refuel the Systemships. Refueling might be done through the boom that we see in the design but as for rearming … that would certainly require EVA work by the crew of the warpship. However, the rules do state that missiles cannot be transferred between Systemships and warpships or vice-versa so rearming recovered Systemships, short of returning to base, seems another moot point when attempted in the field.
So, there you have it … the long on the short of the Systemships. Crewed or automated? My vote is automated from the evidence as presented. Jettison capable fuel rings? Yeah, we can go with that but modeling it will be a little more difficult.
"Let’s construct a really big scratchbuilt starship and let’s build it really cheap!”
One of the classic designs of warpships displayed in the WarpWar rulebook was the spindly beauty illustrated by Winchell “Winch” Chung, positioned on the front cover of the rulebook and having the drawing date of 1977 … In this elegant design, I thought I remembered seeing somewhere that someone had labeled all of the components of the design. Maybe I’ve just imagined that all those years ago. Nevertheless, I’ve labeled the components of this ship (from left to right) as Power-Drive, Warp Field Generator, Fuel / Crew quarters (referred in the vignette above as “Life-Command”), Systemship Racks (two of them, ventral and dorsal), and finally the Beam / Shield generator out front.
I’ve always liked this ship, I don’t know why, but I just have. I guess it reminds me of another great ship from my youthful memories, the USS Discovery as first seen sliding silently across the inky depths of space towards Jupiter in the Stanley Kubrick sci-fi masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The USS Discovery from Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi masterpiece: “2001: A Space Odyssey”
Both ships were long and spindly with very distinct sections (drive, crew, etc.). If the Discovery was capable of FTL travel, then one might think of its EVA work pods as “Systemships” and the Discovery carried three EVA work pods in total though these “Systemships” were carried internally in forward facing pod bays, similar to the hex-shaped ship above. The fact that the game mentions that flight times between stars are long and the Discovery had suspended animation facilities aboard might also have caused the connection between the two ships as I see a lot of the Discovery in this vessel … if the Discovery had been built for space combat. The fact that we have to account for gravity in some way (the bridge illustration shows some form of gravity is in effect, whether naturally generated (centrifuge) or artificially generated (gravity field generators)) is apparent and will play in the design of the vessel as well as the explanation for why I chose to build this ship the way that I did.
Winchell has done a fair bit of design extrapolation and modeling of this classic warpship on his website and I was happy to see his interpretations of his original design, his thoughts on the design as well as the updates he was making to the design as he studied his original design and tried to render it digitally. You may follow Winchell Chung’s exploration of his original design on his website. However, while Winchell has worked very hard to re-render the vessel into digital graphic format, I don’t think he’s done very much to extrapolate the “how and why” of the vessel which is something I intended to do here and now.
I’ve had a plan for years now … Build a really big starship model from scratch, something like three feet long or more and build something that no one has ever done before; I’ve just never followed through with it like I have this time around. You see, for years I’ve wanted to build a really large scale starship … something … big … to turn heads and wow viewers. Something to hang from the ceiling of my study or mount on a nice base and put on display in my office and carry to trade shows to enter contests with.
I’ve gone through several sketches, bought a ton of starter parts but just never got around to actually starting this big scratch built starship project. The project ranged in size from three feet long (about one meter) to well over six feet long (about 2 meters) in size, waxing and waning as I studied ships, invented vessels and generally played around with what I wanted to build. I wanted something original of my own design or, failing that, something that no one else had ever done (and certainly something that no commercial model or garage kit existed for).
And then it hit me …
Why didn’t I just build that old spindly warpship from WarpWar that I liked so much!?
The design looked easy enough, a long spine interspersed with vital components, most of them simple shapes and slathered with greebles for detail. I got the idea that I could duplicate this ship, on roughly half of the railroad “N” scale or smaller in size at roughly three feet more or less. I chose something about a little less than half the “N” scale railroad size because Arthur C. Clarke once said that the centrifuge on the Discovery was too small and when I held up a “N” scale figure to the parts I was going to use for this model, the figure looked to be about twice as big as I thought it should be. I believe that N scale is about 1:148 so the exact scale of this model is somewhere around 1:300 scale, give or take, which would make this 40” long model about a 1000 feet long from one end to another. For comparison’s sake, the deep space explorer Discovery (from 2001) is about 460 feet long making the RoA over twice as long as the Discovery.
I set out to build this model on the cheap and with mostly prepackaged parts I could lay hands on right off the shelf (with the intention that anyone could follow in my foot steps if they so desired). With that in mind, some artistic license is going to have to be taken with Winchell’s design and since I’m the artist interpreting his design into physical form, I guess I’m allowed a little bit of divergence … not much, mind you, as I really like the shape and design of this ship, but like he has done, I intend to update the 1977 design somewhat … mostly for convenience sake.
My first choice was Hobby Lobby, a large arts and crafts retailer many of you are familiar with. In fact, most of the parts that made up this model were selected from the “balsa” section and were found on one isle in one section alone. How’s that for convenience? There needs to be a word of advice said here … if you are attempting to scratch-build something like this, don’t plan on getting any help from any of the employees at Hobby Lobby. No, I didn’t ask for a warp ring generator but I did ask several employees where I might find globes or spheres or hoops for crafting purposes and no one had a clue as to what Hobby Lobby carried if it wasn’t located on the isle that they were working. Crafting odd stuff like this model and using Hobby Lobby as the chief source of parts is akin to going on a safari into completely unexplored territory because you’re going to have to do some exploration and expedition work if you’re going to come out of Hobby Lobby with a bag full of crafting supplies turned impromptu garage kitbashing parts. One thing you have to understand before attempting a project like this and using a store like Hobby Lobby is that once you walk in the front doors you automatically know more than anyone who is employed in this store.
Okay, enough background and rambling on the WarpWar game and the illustrations found therein ... let's start constructing the long, spindle-like Warpship. Three feet long should be an adequate length to build this monster ... give or take. So, with that behind us, let’s start on this rather grand and long overdue project. Winchell has rendered his design in digital format. I’m going to render his design in physical format.
Step One – Acquire Basic Parts
There are really three models being built here (four if you count the base to which the Warpship will be mounted); the warpship and its two attendant Systemships. I’d like to model the warpship in such a way that the Systemships can be either attached or detached for display.
The Warpship construction is simplicity itself and consists of basic shapes arranged along a central rod like a cosmic shish kabob. I chose a wooden dowel and then a much larger dowel which would be cut up into four equal length parts for the fuel tanks. A pair of embroidery hoops were chosen to make up the construction of the warp generator / ring assembly. Wooden half balls and wooden balls of the same diameter as the larger wooden dowel were chosen as "caps" for the fuel tanks. Parts for the Systemships will be detailed later under a separate section. The shield / beam generator assembly was yet another set of wooden dowels designed to be clustered together, capped and detailed. The cooling fins will be scratch-built from balsa wood strips as will the Systemship grappling arms. The life support "sphere" is a large, two piece clear plastic dome used to create custom Christmas ornaments. The engine nozzle is a large plastic Champaign glass that has had the stem cut off.
Note: The Engine Exhaust Bell – I originally wanted to use a plastic engine bell from the mid-1970’s Mattel three foot long toy “Space 1999 Eagle Transporter” (I had one as a child and remember that the engine bell would be “perfect” for this project) but if you’ve priced one of those engine bells on Ebay or anywhere else you would think that Mattel once manufactured them out of solid gold … sheesh! So, I went with making the engine exhaust bell from something … cheaper and more readily available (in case this project turns out really nice and other people want to duplicate it). What was the final item to be auditioned for the engine bell? It came down to using a large plastic Champaign glass instead, found at a local party supply store, on sale for under a dollar.
Step Two – Starting construction of the RoA
So, we start with the spine of the RoA, a 5/8” diameter, 36” long wood dowel. Three feet is a good amount of length to work with and this is going to be a big model … even though I know full well in advance that with the engine exhaust bell and the forward beam / shield generator that we’ll be extending this design well over 40” and maybe then some. I wanted to make this model as light, as cheap, and as quick to build as possible so I chose to construct it out of light wood products. I also chose a 5/8” diameter wood dowel because the dowel that I chose to make the fuel tanks out of came in at 1” diameter and most of the parts I chose to build this model with seemed to fit in that choice of sizes. You may can do better but I think that the size here is a good representation of the drawing. Printed out on a 8.5" by 11" piece of letter sized paper, the illustration measures about 9 inches from stem to stern and in doing so, with 36" worth of main body strut, we can measure parts of the illustration at a 1/4 scale or 1" of illustration is equal to 4" of model.
Here are all of the primary component parts of the ROA. The smaller diameter dowel will be the primary shaft, the larger dowel will serve to be cut up for the fuel tanks. The four smaller dowels will be cut in half and will serve as the body of the forward beam / shield generator. The two wooden hoops are embroidery hoops (the inner rings have been separated from the outer rings). These were a real find (thanks to my wife for suggesting them) since I thought I might have to cut up a five gallon bucket into sections to get a good sized ring for this project but since the ring is made of wood, I won't have to use two different types of glue to build that section. There's the large plastic Champaign glass on the left and the two piece plastic decorative ornament on the right that will serve as the command center that resides in front of the fuel tanks. The smaller pieces are various wheels, doll stands, half balls, caps, and balls that will be used to tie off the end of the fuel tanks. There's going to be a fair amount of detailing to be done once the basic shape is together including scratch-building the Systemship racks from balsa stock. Balsa and other craft bits will be used not only to construct the cooling vanes for the beam / shield generator but also to detail out the basic design ... especially the NERVA type engine and the areas around the warp ring / structural supports. Not shown in this photo because I didn't think to include them are two 1/4 inch wood dowels which will become the basis for supporting the warp ring structure. In the diagram above, you will note that the warp ring is supported by six spars. I intend to drill a hole through the primary wood dowel, insert another wood dowel, then use that to anchor the warp ring to the main body. Like I said, this stuff is going to slide on or attach like one big balsa shish kabob.
The beam / shield generator will be arranged with dowels mounted around other dowels in the following pattern where the center dowel is the main body strut:
Beam / shield generator - head on with main body strut in the middle. I thought that this arrangement allowed for the best recreation of the design presented in the illustration while giving the beam / shield generator a "flat" type layout. The red lines will be placement of the "cooling fins" on the beam / shield generator. The dorsal and ventral fins will be somewhat taller than the port and starboard flare fins.
Systemship construction
The spindle's Systemship design process probably went through the most revision simply because I had to try to match Winchell's original design to what was available off of the store shelves and get as damn close as possible for artistic sake. After many trial and error proto-assemblies (involving test fitting parts and using limited amounts of wood glue to hold the pieces in place while I judged the fit and appearance from all possible angles), I chose this final design. You'll note that it is missing the various antenna and aerials, which will come at a later date (perhaps after I primer the ships) to be followed by more detailing using craft bits and greebles. Below I have shown you a finished Systemship and the twelve simple, store bought parts which I ultimately chose to make up the Systemship (in essence, one finished Systemship and its sister ship awaiting assembly in an exploded view).
Here is a list of the parts I used, numbered left to right from the illustration above ...
1 - Wooden flower pot
2 - Wooden bowl - 3/4" by 3/8"
3 - Wooden bowl - 3/4" by 3/8"
4 - Wooden bowl - 3/4" by 3/8"
5 - Wooden doll pin holder
6 - 2" Wooden toy wheel
7 - 2" Wooden toy wheel
8 - Wooden bowl - 3/4" by 3/8"
10 - 2" Wooden ribbed tire
11 - 2" Wooden ribbed tire
12 - Wooden bowl
13 - Medium sized wooden apple
IMPORTANT NOTE - The wooden apples I had were left over from another project (which may see the light of day again on this site, soon) but it should be noted that none of the craft stores near me carry wooden apples anymore. I guess the demand is down but you might run into this problem as well in your location. I did find wooden apples for sale on the Internet so they are still available but you might have to go hunting for them ... or substitute another shape.
MORE TO COME, SOON !