November Entry: Deep Space Scout Carrier

It's been quite some time since I last participated in a challenge! But since I was going to make this deckplan, anyway…

At the moment, this is an 800-ton (Traveller tons) carrier designed to transport four S Class Scout ships. The carrier is Jump-3, but it can be refueled by the Scout ships, giving it an effective range of four parsecs, twice what a typical Scout is capable of. It was designed to rapidly survey relatively remote star clusters and serve as a mobile subsector IISS headquarters in areas outside of Imperial sovereignty. Since it often operates in potentially hostile space, the ship is more heavily armed than a typical Scout Service vessel

I have a rough little concept sketch so far. I've done some research on standard Traveller designs since then, and I'll certainly be trading out the space shuttle lookalikes for more traditional Scout hulls. I'll probably also include a deckplan of the Scout in the same style, but it will likely be derivative of existing plans of that ship.

I got distracted by that scout ship, so work on the carrier hasn't yet begun. But here's what I've got at the moment:

### Latest WIP ###
Attachment 39760

Scout ship's probably done, and I'm starting in on the carrier. So far I've spent most of my time tweaking the numbers and size of the thing so that it fits within the rules, has the silhouette I want, and is close to the right size. As it is, I'm going to have to turn two of the scout ships around so that they're facing aft in order to fit them on there. I think it will make the ship more interesting to look at, though. Anyway, as a result of the tweaks, the vessel has grown to 1100 tons. The circular diagram in the upper left is a little reference for me to see approximately how much area each deck will have relative to the others.

### Latest WIP ###

Looking good so far...

Looking really cool although I can't see how you're going to fit 4 scout ships on it. Great to see some Traveller stuff being done!

The same thought as ravells had, crossed my mind, too.
But as long as the bottom-side of the wing-tips are at least an additional 50% of the main-ships hull radius from the fixpoints than four ships with that wingspan could fit. If the underside of the wings is lower than ravell is right, either the connection points need to stretch out more - or you could put three shuttles onto it...

I whipped up a quick 3d model to reality check myself and make sure that they'll actually fit. Looks like I'm okay.

Thats an interesting solution :D - on the handdrawn sketch all four looked in flight direction...

Very elegant solution....but with the space available you might need Pilot +4 to dock!

Docking must be done with a margin of error within centimeters anyway, I do not see a reason for a Pilot +4 for that *g*