Launching a non-lander hulled ship

[Bertjammin]

Ok - say you have a Void or Atmosphere Hull starship on a planet's surface (perhaps it had crashed, was manufactured/repaired there, whatever...), how do you get it into space?

Is it just a "simple" task of kicking the engines up to full acceleration and breaking free of the gravity well? - mechanically what for sort of task difficulty/VPs would you call for? If that is possible why can't Atmosphere class hulls land (and take off again)?

Do the ships need "boosters" like the shuttle? How much would they cost? Do you need a full launch pad rigged up, like the Saturn series rockets?

[Angelman]

This is just guesswork as such questions have (as far as I know) never before been asked, but... I would say boosters. Any ship COULD be lifted off a planet, although ships not built for the purpose would be a lot harder & more costly to get off of the ground. (A related problem would be actually entering a planet's gravity and atmosphere, which might tear a Void ship apart). So yeah, I would say a very complicated booster project, or even a dismantling of the ship into half-a-dozen or som more managable pieces, which are then transported into space for reassembling.

[Angelman]

Basically, this would be analogous to assembling ISS except that all the moduls were already finished.

[Bertjammin]

Complicated for Void hulls less so for Atmosphere hulls perhaps?

[Holz]

I believe that void ships are built in space, with all the materials being launched from the planet to the "dry dock" in orbit. Any void ship in land (after a crash?) has to be chopped down and reassembled in space.

Must be very expensive to send lots of stuff to send the ship/materials to be built later on.

[Bertjammin]

In the specific case I have in mind it's an Atmosphere hulled ship that has crash landed rather than a Void hull.

[Angelman]

Getting a landet atmosphere starship into space would be analogous to lifting a modern submarine or a Boing 747 into space. It is possible, but it is quite hard and very costly. It helps if you have good tech, competent Engineers, and deep pockets.


That said though, in the end it is exactly as difficult as you need it to be for your story to work.

[Bertjammin]

I'm thinking of presenting they player character engineer with three options:

* Stripping/breaking down the ship, organise transport into orbit and reassemble there.
* Get it to a spaceport as it is and use facilities there to launch it (possibly boosters or a big mass driver/railgun assembly....)
* Try to build a launch site where it is (costly but more private)

Of course they will also have the local hordes of Husks to deal with however they chose to recover the ship...

[Holz]

Sounds like 3 great ideas!

[Bogie]

I know this is an old one but I figured that I would chime in.

Void: This is the hardest one as most void class ships that crashed or were forced into an atmosphere would probably be destroyed or rendered mostly inoperable. If enough of the ship survived to be recoverable it would probably have to be parted out and reassembled in an orbital facility.

Atmosphere: The major distinction in an atmosphere hull vs. lander hull is that most ships labeled as atmosphere are the larger ships. In my mind the distinction here is that the ships are too large to achieve / break orbit without assistance. They would need boosters, additional anti-grav, etc. They probably also don't have dedicated landing gear. These ships could probably land on planets with special landing facilities designed for the ship and possible attachable/detachable pods to hardpoints for assisted boosters.

Basically you had it covered but I felt like chiming in since I am working on spaceships right now.