(TFT) converting Azhanti High Lightning over to TFT Melee scale

["Jay Carlisle" <Maou_Tsaou1@netzero.net>]

okay, I recieved a copy of Azhanti High Lightning awhile back and decided to 
draw it up in TFT Melee hexes. I thought the roughest part would be 
squeezing in an extra hex every ~ 6.5 squares and still keeping all the 
nooks and crannies off of hexsides as much as possable. it turns out that 
square hexes help show some mistakes in the High Lightning deckplans.

1.3m ~ 4.26ft (TFT, average stride of 6ft tall Figure while running)
1 cubic TFT hex ~ 2.197m^3
1.5m ~ 4.9ft (Traveller, chosen for decimal pruposes perhaps?)
1 cubic Traveller square ~ 3.375m^3 (note that standard deck hight is 3m or 
2 T-squares)
2.6m ~ 8.5ft (2 TFT hexes)
3m ~ 9.8ft (2 Traveller squares)
3.9m ~ 12.795ft (3 TFT hexes)
4.5m ~ 14.76ft (3 Traveller squares)
1 ton ship displacement equals approzimately 14 cubic meters therefore one 
ton equals about two squares of deckspace (b2p21) {as B2 indicates that 
standard deck height is 3m, or two squares in height, one displacement ton 
is a little over 4 cubic T-squares or 6 cubic TFT-hexes}

so I started figuring liquid Hydrogen...

This is from a current liquid H ventless storage system pattent.

"A hydrogen storage and delivery system is provided having an orifice pulse 
tube refrigerator and a liquid hydrogen storage vessel. A cooling system, 
coupled to the orifice pulse tube refrigerator, cools the vessel and abates 
ambient heat transfer thereto in order to maintain the liquid hydrogen in 
the vessel at or below its saturation temperature. Hydrogen boil-off, and 
the necessity to provide continuous venting of vaporized hydrogen are 
minimized or avoided. In a preferred embodiment, the hydrogen storage vessel 
has a toroidal shape, and the pulse tube refrigerator is a two stage pulse 
tube refrigerator and extends within a central void space defined at the 
geometric center of the toroidal storage vessel. Also in a preferred 
embodiment, the cooling system includes first and second thermal jackets, 
each having a substantially toroidal shape and enclosing the storage vessel, 
wherein each of the thermal jackets is thermally coupled to one of the first 
or second stages of the pulse tube refrigerator in order to cool the vessel 
and to abate ambient heat leak thereto. The hydrogen storage and delivery 
system is particularly suitable for use in vehicles, such as passenger 
automobiles."

A big doughnut with a refrigerator it the middle works very well with the 
deckplans as given.
However, there is a big chunck of fuel missing physically on the plans, 
around 50% of what's called for.

It turns out that an old issue of Space Gamer (#53) tried to address this 
but it comes off alot more confusing to me rather than clearing any of this 
up, especally the 2.3m square height citation refering to 1 ton liquid H = 2 
1.5m x 1.5m x 2.3m squares... MY High Guard has no such reference on page 33 
or elsewhere, where as my book2 says standard deck height comes in at 3m or 
2 T-squares high.
The letters author also figures total fuel cap @ 37,800 tons rather than the 
stated 32,000 tons from supplement5, although this does make a point about 
total fuel shuttle trips to refuel.

So I checked on how much liquid H I could put into 4 cubic T-squares.
Liquid Hydrogen comes in at just under 71g per liter @ 20deg K which is 
around 1/14th the density of water @ 4deg C (1kg per liter for water and 
1000 liters per cubic meter).
A check of the math takes four cubic T-squares to be ~14 cubic meters or 
about 14,000 liters. With a density of 70.99g per liter for liquid H four 
cubic T-squares equals about 2,191.086 lbs which checks for the displacement 
figures as given in the rules and makes a little more sense to me because 
spaceships are more about containment rather than displacement huh? ergo 
figure to hold your most common cargo. (notice that sub displacement is 
closer to 1.4m^3 per ton but water is about 14 times denser than water)
The map and suplment indicates that there are about 250 1.5m by 1.5m squares 
per side on a fuel deck and that there are 3 squares in height @ 1.5m per 
square height to account for the 4.5m standard deck height given in sup5.
500 T-squares of deckspace by 3 squares height (4.5m) is 1500 cubic 
T-squares @ 396.156 tons liquid H per deck @ 20 K and 1 atmosphere.
Going with the 400 tons per deck times 43 decks we get 17,200 tons of fuel, 
and I can now agree with the point that the ship dosen't appear to have 
enough space for fuel showing only about 50% of nesecary space depending on 
which fuel tonnage you go with.

w/o bothering with lower temp densities (H freezes @ ~ 14 degrees K) or high 
pressure tanks (liquid metallic H @ ~ 1,000,000 atmospheres w/high temps) I 
think the easiest fix is to assume a fuel-deck "height" of 9m or twice the 
standard deck height of 4.5m to help account for the remaining fuel to fill 
'er up.
Should I add to the dimensions of someone elses ship just to fix a fuel 
problem? After all, Mr. Weisman states that the large fin on the box art 
holds fuel.

The dimensions of the ship are already off as both the hanger decks are 
described as being 18m in height, or 4 times the height of a "standard 
deck". If nothing else, this adds over 60,000 cubic meters to the things 
volume coming in at 900,000m^3 rather than the 840,000 stated (@ 61.2m * 
36.4m = 2227.68m^2 "grav floor area" * 4.5m "height" = 10,024.56m^3 per 4.5m 
standard height deck which matches up with stated figures in sup5) and also 
adds 27m to the "length" and almost 5,000 more displacement tons.

Doubeling the "height" of the fuel decks to 9m plus adding the 10 missing 
fuel decks adds 33 + 20 standard decks in length or 53 * 4.5m or another 
238.5m to her, making her about 670.5m in total "length", well over half 
again as long.
She also gets an additional 530,000 cubic meters of volume, now totaling 
1,430,000m^3.
We've now got over 90% of the total fuel accounted for.

The 9m (fin is shown spaning central tube, 6 T-squares on deckplans or 9m) 
by 17m by aprox half the length of the ship or 300ish meter fin covers 
around 7 tons of fuel per 1.5m of fin length, or over 1000 tons of fuel (~ 
2.5 standard fuel decks or 25% over 1 of my double sized decks), as well as 
covering swaths of quite a few turrents effective fire-arcs.
I'm not sure I'd keep the fin...

The above gives me a MUCH better "visual" on what this thing looks like from 
an objective standpoint. A Typhoon class sub comes in at around 175m in 
length, and a Nimitz class aircraft carier is over 330m long.
The Empire State Building is 381m by 129m by 60m roughly... Azhanti is 
289.5m longer and about half the width and bredth... "built around three 
tubes".

Compare to Ohio class ballistic missile submarines. Displacement: 18750 tons 
submerged, 24,034.56m^3 (1.3m^3 per ton displaced?) Dimensions: 560 x 42 x 
36.25 feet/170.7 x 12.8 x 11 meters.
Azhanti Displacement: 100,000+ tons @ 1,400,000+m^3 Dimensions: 670.5 x 61.2 
x 36.4 meters
The High Lightning as described is in the ballpark of a subs dimensions now 
(instead of a flying skyscraper) so I don't feel the need to make the thing 
any wider, adding even MORE tonnage.

okay, so lets go to TFT.

Azhanti High Lightning
515.769 hexes (52bm n/s or 65bm e/w) by 47 hexes (5bm n/s or 6bm e/w) by 28 
hexes (3bm n/s or 4bm e/w)
1 cubic Melee hex is 2.197m^3 and holds 155.965kg or 343.8lbs of liquid H 
per cubic hex.
5.8 cubic hexes hold 1 ton liquid H with 6 cubic hexes holding one ton of 
liquid H in a rectangluar box 1.5m by 1.5m by 3m (4 T-squares) with walls 1 
inch thick (~12,960in^3).
Each deck is 26 hexes n/s (3bm) by 47 hexes e/w (6bm) (bm equal two and a 
half by four feet in physical layout, a big table but not undooable I think)
Useing the hex lengths above into pythag, the longest possable shot on any 
deck comes in at 55 hexes or 18.3 mega-hexes, which is under 80 yards 
(although shots down the lengths of the gun or launch tubes, or more likely 
along the lengths of "ladder" tubes or conduit could come in significantly 
longer... and the hangar decks are 57 hexes from floor corner to cealing 
caddy-corner)

Now before there was Zaphod there was JoeJim... but there's alot to talk 
about here before we put weapons in the mix.

How does this thing fly? Book 2 shows the clasic mid-point flip manuver but 
sup5 says the thing has artifical gravity. If that is the case then I'd 
expect areas like cargo holds, hanger decks and ladder tubes to be at or 
near zero g's. And why the almost 15 foot tall cealings if the thing has 
grav-tec? That's a "boat-load" of extra air-space that serves little purpose 
unless the thing has 2 floors depending on if your comming or going...

I've considered tumbeling the thing around the power plant on decks 41 thru 
46 to get acceleration in the ladder tubes. I get a circle of about 300m 
radius rotating at about 22mph with gravity down to about 6% of earth normal 
about 4 decks away from the center of rotation.
Torquing the spin is also intresting, although it mainly affects falling 
down a ladder tube.
She's just so tiny compared to the colony ship in Orphans... which raises 
questions as to the ships lauder.

So what to talk about? Zero and multi-g combat, relitavestic travel and 
city/starport growth-change or tech-trees or something else entirly?


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