Spaceship schematics for reference material?

[Rhoderic]

Just as an excercise of thought, I’m trying to draw up a “blueprint” for a modular spaceship interior board (which, to be clear, I probably won’t follow up on actually modelling in the foreseaable future) and it’s proving to be a bit of a headache. At first I went for a very neat and tidy layout of square/rectangular rooms with straight, evenly spaced corridors between, but it just didn’t strike me much as the inside of a ship. I’m now trying for something a bit more irregular and intricate (while hoping to maintain some modicum of modularity) but it’s turning up new problems including corridors with too many turns, and dead space in between irregular-shaped rooms.

I’d like to study some spaceship schematics/diagrams for guidance, and I know there’s lots of stuff like that out there – designing and studying spaceship schematics seems to be a well-established hobby in and of itself – but I don’t know where to start. I’d like to find something that’s free online (or at least cheap, in the case of material from DriveThruRPG and such) and not excessively advanced/complex. A spaceship interior for miniature wargaming is bound to be somewhat simplified, abstracted, and unrealistic after all.

Any and all tips would be welcome. Any “middle of the road” type sci-fi premise with the usual conceits (“magic” artificial gravity precluding the need for rotating sections or gravity by means of acceleration, etc) will do. I’m going for a board that represents a section of a larger spaceship, if that makes any difference. Space station schematics would be fine, as well.

[Stroezie]

I wouldn’t worry to much about the dead spaces between rooms. Thats where the cables,pipes and machines that keep the ship running are( oh and the dangerous xeno forms of course👿)

As to lay out you need to ask yourself what you intend to use it for. Bug hunts = lots of small cramped spaces to ramp up the tension vs. boarding actions = bit more room to maneuver and use some tactics.

 

[Rhoderic]

Stroezie wrote:

As to lay out you need to ask yourself what you intend to use it for. Bug hunts = lots of small cramped spaces to ramp up the tension vs. boarding actions = bit more room to maneuver and use some tactics.

If I ever go ahead with actually building the board, I’d be trying to strike a golden mean in every respect. So, suitable for bug hunts as well as boarding actions, and other more low-key or adventure-oriented scenarios as well (infiltration, “rescue the princess” style jailbreaks, rival salvage crews skirmishing over a derelict, that sort of stuff). Likewise I’d try to make it stylistically generic enough to suit most varieties of sci-fi setting. I have this (possibly unfeasible) idea of making some interchangeable detail pieces of different styles, so I could modulate the aesthetic of the spaceship to some limited extent: More techno-gothic for one setting, “space western” for a second, retro/Whovian for a third, sleek/utopian/ultra-futuristic for a fourth, and so on. But I digress.

Ultimately I think one would have to be very careful when it comes to modelling cramped spaces. Most figures stand on bases wider than the corridors would realistically be in a proper cramped ship. That’s a major aspect of what I was referring to when I said that a spaceship interior for miniature wargaming is bound to be somewhat unrealistic. And then there’s power armour to think about. If the interiors of spaceships were as cramped as the interiors of modern and 20th century water-going ships, they would be death traps to any soldier having to clunk around in bulky powered armour, which isn’t ideal for gaming. To say nothing of the fact that one might occasionally like to have a larger-than-human monster rampaging through the corridors for an interesting scenario.

I have this slightly crazy idea of “test modelling” a spaceship interior in 6mm before doing a more work-intensive one in 28mm. We’ll see if that pans out. At any rate I won’t be making a proper 28mm one any time soon.

[Mike]

What sort of ship?
A mining ship would be different to a cruise ship, which would be different to a strike ship.

Bunks vs hotel style rooms, wide spacey corridors vs space/cost saving rat runs.
Just a bridge, simple cabins and an engine room vs a dozens of floors of cabins from cheap to VIP.

I would get a purpose in mind first and then work out what actual rooms are needed.
Does the engine room need to be away from crew – is it noisy, dangerous, likely to leak radiation?

How long are these ships out there for, do they have a galley, do the crew eat in their bunks, is it an exploration vessel with its own hydroponics and gardens?

and so on…

Once you have that then you can choose what part of it you are to model and start from there, at least you will know which bits not to include..

[Paul]

Check out the Star Wars Deckplan Alliance

Those are brave men knocking at our door. Let's go kill them!

[Victoria Dickson]

I think it would depend a lot on whether your spaceship ever lands on a planet or not.  If it has to land then there won’t be much wasted room in it, if it always remains in space then it can be a collection of modules each in the most practical shape and size for their function, with no consideration of wasted space between them, would that make some kind of sense?

http://crazywargames.blogspot.co.uk/

[Dan Rayner]

If you just google “traveller deck plans” you’ll be spoiled for choice – ship schematics for every type of ship you can imagine.

[Rhoderic]

 

Mike wrote:

What sort of ship?
A mining ship would be different to a cruise ship, which would be different to a strike ship.

Bunks vs hotel style rooms, wide spacey corridors vs space/cost saving rat runs.
Just a bridge, simple cabins and an engine room vs a dozens of floors of cabins from cheap to VIP.

I would get a purpose in mind first and then work out what actual rooms are needed.
Does the engine room need to be away from crew – is it noisy, dangerous, likely to leak radiation?

How long are these ships out there for, do they have a galley, do the crew eat in their bunks, is it an exploration vessel with its own hydroponics and gardens?

and so on…

Once you have that then you can choose what part of it you are to model and start from there, at least you will know which bits not to include..

I think I must reply with the same “golden mean” argument I did previously. A generic, but not boring-looking, spaceship milieu for figures to run around in shooting at each other. More functionalist than decorative, though. Even in a luxury liner, there’s bound to be functionalist-looking sections for the crew. And more often I’d probably have it represent a military vessel or a not-too-grubby mining ship, cargo hauler or terraforming ship. Whatever the case, it would be a large ship; the board would represent an area of a little over 50 x 50 meters (if assembled as a single deck) and that would not be the entire ship.

I probably want to represent several different functions/aspects of the ship all in one area, but try to maintain at least some modicum of plausibility. So there would be at least one room with big machiney-looking things and engineering stations in it, but it likely wouldn’t be the main engine room (as I imagine that would be larger than I care to model and more separately situated). Instead, it could (for instance) be the machinery that maintains life support, artificial gravity or force fields – it might make sense to keep that kind of things well away from the engines and fuel sources. There would be at least one room for storing crates and tanks (not least because I’ve already got plenty of those, so they’re an effective way of filling space) but likewise it would probably not be the main cargo bay, more like a room where shipboard necessities are kept. I’d like a sickbay and a lab-type room, probably in connection to each other. Some crew quarters, the sort with bunk beds, not so much the Star Trek sort where every crewmember seems to have their own suite of apartments (but I may still find Star Trek ship schematics interesting for other reasons). A room or two that are mainly defined by computer consoles but probably aren’t meant to represent the bridge (more like astrographics, comms, or the rooms from which operations like mining or terraforming are overseen). Some smaller generic/nondescript multi-purpose rooms (just some tables, chairs and consoles to serve as workspaces or lesser rec areas as needed). Maybe a brig. Maybe an armoury. Maybe a locker room. Maybe some rooms with larger lockers assumed to contain spacesuits and other such equipment. At any rate, nothing that “locks down” the board as representing some all too specific of a ship type. So probably no hydroponics, no ore refinery, no fighter bays (although that would look awesome!), no vast arrays of cryogenic pods, and so on.

[Rhoderic]

Paul wrote:

Check out the Star Wars Deckplan Alliance

Dan Rayner wrote:

If you just google “traveller deck plans” you’ll be spoiled for choice – ship schematics for every type of ship you can imagine.

Thank you! That’s pretty much the kind of stuff I’m after.

Victoria Dickson wrote:

I think it would depend a lot on whether your spaceship ever lands on a planet or not. If it has to land then there won’t be much wasted room in it, if it always remains in space then it can be a collection of modules each in the most practical shape and size for their function, with no consideration of wasted space between them, would that make some kind of sense?

Well, I suppose this isn’t really for any one specific setting, and some settings do fudge the kind of considerations you’re describing, so I might also. For instance, in the Star Trek universe, some of those big ships (like the Voyager and the reboot Enterprise) are able to land on planets despite looking terribly unsuitable for that function given their convoluted shapes and spacious interiors.

[Stroezie]

another way to do it would be to make a board covered in hallway flooring(say 3×3 feet covered in granny grating spray painted in your favourite scifi floor color) and then build open topped boxes/rooms to put on top of it. Kind of like a little scifi village where the houses are the rooms and the streets the corridors.  That way you can make the corridors as narrow or as wide as you like, you could ever arrange the rooms around the edges and say the center is the cargo hold.

I actually made something like this way back when I still did 28mm using photo slides as bulkheads. I’ll see if I can rustle up some pictures for you when I get home.

[Rhoderic]

That’s largely the same as the premise for my plan actually, only with panelled flooring instead of grating. Maybe “modular” wasn’t the best word to describe it, not sure what other people think of when I speak of a “modular spaceship board”. Still, on paper I’m designing some of the rooms to be specific enough in shape to only “go a certain way”, which in turn makes some of the corridors difficult to customise. But that’s fine, I’m aiming for some modularity but not so much that everything is a square, interchangeable room of identical dimensions.

I’d love to see your board if it isn’t too much trouble. Looking at other people’s terrain set-ups is starting to be the part of the hobby I enjoy the most (alongside making my own terrain, which is rather completely contingent on my getting the inspiration from seeing what other people have done before me).

[Stroezie]

Here’s the pics I promised

The connecting walls were fitted with hooks on top so I could hang them between rooms as needed.

I also put metal plates in the panels that didn’t have windows or doors so I could use magnets to attach or remove diffent greeblies like airducts, junction boxes and computer screens.

And some pics of the finished product.

Furniture and flatscreens by Antenocitis Workshop the rest is scrach built all greeblees are magnetised and removable.

Hey Ed, you see anything?
No man, someone should like, really wash these windows or something!

[Rhoderic]

Oh that’s cool! Thanks for sharing that. How big a playing area is that? I’m guessing 2 x 2 feet.

[Mike]

I remember that!

[Stroezie]

That setup was about 2×2 but I had enough for 3×3 and I had the slides to build upto 4×4 but then I got into the smaller scales and well….

[Etranger]

https://woolshedwargamer.com has a lot of Traveller inspired deck plans.

[Author]

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