Part of the reason for the silence....

Howdy troops.  Yeah, I'm still around, although the activity here wouldn't suggest that.  In addition to learning the Mongoose Traveller rules, I've also been spending some time refining techniques and doing a lot of experimenting.  Most of what I've come up with is far less than stellar, but it has taught me a few things (like how to get through life without using booleans and spending an hour cleaning up stray vertices).  I've also been developing some methods for my current project, which is shown above.  It's a classic 20 ton Launch for future use, with the twist that I'm working up full interiors as well as exteriors, similar to some of the stuff MagMagMag has done on COTI (such as THIS).  Suffice to say, I have a new appreciation for the work he's done in this arena...it's tough, and requires more thought and decisions than I expected.

 The number one thing I've discovered so far is that, with most ships, iris hatches are damn impractical.  There just never seems to be enough clearance to make them feasible.

Cool in theory, but very difficult to implement.  The standard cylindrical shape is also kind of a pain...it minimizes the amount of space required for a fitted hangar, but brings with it a boatload of issues as well.  For instance, in the launch above, how do you allocate passenger vs cargo space?  Where do you put the cargo hatches?  How high are the decks?  Where the hell can I put the landing gear?

The above design incorporates most of the good ideas that I've come across over the years...the landing gear, for instance, are similar to those used by Scarecrow on his version of the 100 ton scout.  The upper deck is just shy of 2 meters in the center of the cabin, and the lower deck is 1.35 meters beneath to allow some usable deck area.  Simply splitting the diameter in half didn't really work worth a damn, so this is a compromise.  The major problem is, at least in this passenger configuration, you're not going to be hauling cargo containers.  A cargo version with the ability to fit containers in winds up being able to carry about half as much cargo as you should, with lots and lots of wasted space. I may tackle that down the road.

One of the other issues that caused some headache was the personnel hatch...if it's that high off the ground, how the hell do you get up and down?  That's where the folding ladder arrangement comes in.

Anyhow, that's enough for tonight.  There's some other stuff in the pipeline, but I'm keeping that under my hat until I have some solid to post.  Night all!