My players have a frigate and a light cargo bay. They have a Gun-cutter with the Massive size and recently obtained a Halo Barge also Massive size. So I want to know how many ships that size the light cargo bay can hold?

Is massive the normal size for a gun-cutter? If so... I think the light cargo bay can hold 4 such vehicles... but I'm not sure.

pg 11 battle fleet koronus for every 5 points of hull space 1 lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter. if the ship has a cargo hold component they should be able to hold 4 additional vehicles

Yeah, most frigates are in the 30-40 space range, so that would be 6-8 auxiliary craft + 4 for the cargo component.

Which still seems a bit silly when you are considering the resupply problems of a ship over 1 mile long with 20k-30k crew. I mean, a crew of 30k using a mere 2 gallons of water per day (drinking, washing, cooking, and cleaning) per person (and that is super-sparse) would require 6 Halo Barge trips to bring the crew enough water for 1 day. Given that most ships carry 6-12 months of supplies, that would mean over 1000 Halo Barge trips to refill the ship's water reservoirs, and once again that's an unrealistically low amount of water. And that didn't bring aboard any food, fuel, clothing, ammunition, medicine, etc., etc.

pg 11 battle fleet koronus for every 5 points of hull space 1 lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter. if the ship has a cargo hold component they should be able to hold 4 additional vehicles

Those numbers can't really be accurate - they're vastly inadequate for the size of the ships and the size of the crews.

I suspect that that 'guideline' gets houseruled quite often.

For example, an arvus lighter fits, technically, in a 5x10x10m box, triple the dimensions for the necessary support equipment, and you're looking at 15x30x30m box. That's 13500 cubic meters of volume; in mass terms, that's 13.5 tons of water displacement. Even if you make it a 50m cube, which is way more than a arvus lighter should need, you're still only looking at 125000 cubic meters, or the displacement equivalent of 125 tons of water.

The small ships are around 1000m in length, and weigh in with megatons of mass, that is, 6 zeros . There is plenty of space on even the smallest ships for a goodly number of small craft.

pg 11 battle fleet koronus for every 5 points of hull space 1 lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter. if the ship has a cargo hold component they should be able to hold 4 additional vehicles

Those numbers can't really be accurate - they're vastly inadequate for the size of the ships and the size of the crews.

I suspect that that 'guideline' gets houseruled quite often.

For example, an arvus lighter fits, technically, in a 5x10x10m box, triple the dimensions for the necessary support equipment, and you're looking at 15x30x30m box. That's 13500 cubic meters of volume; in mass terms, that's 13.5 tons of water displacement. Even if you make it a 50m cube, which is way more than a arvus lighter should need, you're still only looking at 125000 cubic meters, or the displacement equivalent of 125 tons of water.

The small ships are around 1000m in length, and weigh in with megatons of mass, that is, 6 zeros . There is plenty of space on even the smallest ships for a goodly number of small craft.

You forget, they're including all the space for docking and launching the craft, refueling it, spare parts, keeping it running.

Even one jet fighter takes up enormous amounts of space. Further, they're not designed specifically to hold these things, so they aren't as efficient with space.

Then you have to take into consideration how much empty space has to be taken up just all the time when they're not working on it so they can move safely. You ever seen an air craft hangar for jet fighters? They are mostly empty space.

Further, I'm betting that cargo holds are really the officially dedicated and designed spaces for containing cargo with special constructions and machinery for helping load and unload the stuff, which takes up room all on it's own, and isn't dedicated at all for the purposes of containing and launching flying craft.

I think that the reason star ships have such small cargo holds compared to the rest of the ship, is they're CARGO holds. They're for TRADE and stuff you're NOT planning to use. Food, water, munitions, all the stuff you ARE GOING TO BE USING A LOT is going to be more evenly distributed in dedicated storage throughout the ship, in sealed bulkheads that aren't actually dark holds, in places that you don't have to travel kilometers to get at.

The cargo hold is only going to be accessed at one time. When you get to a docking area, either in orbit or on a station. Do you think they're going to send the crew to the cargo hold to pick up fresh munitions when a fight breaks out onboard? Or to get food for the evening meal? Or do you think those things are going to be contained far, far, far closer to where they're actually used, not kilometers away.

if you are keeping a vehicle or craft that is just being transported as something to SELL, then you can probably stack the cargohold FULL of the **** things. But if you intend to operate said vehicle and get it out of the ship for whatever purpose, don't you think it'll probably need a lot more operational space?

edit: basically? A cargo hold, being used to transport goods from Point A to Point B? is going to be able to be filled with a city's worth of goods, or more. Because you're packing them in with no care to get at the **** things until you make bearth again. But if you want to actually have something you're going to USE. You have to free up lots and lots and LOTS of space in them, not just for the vehicle in question, but to easily be able to get at the fuel, munitions, and parts necessary to keep them running, not to mention the air locks and large spaces necessary for runways and landing areas.

Yeah, most frigates are in the 30-40 space range, so that would be 6-8 auxiliary craft + 4 for the cargo component.

Which still seems a bit silly when you are considering the resupply problems of a ship over 1 mile long with 20k-30k crew. I mean, a crew of 30k using a mere 2 gallons of water per day (drinking, washing, cooking, and cleaning) per person (and that is super-sparse) would require 6 Halo Barge trips to bring the crew enough water for 1 day. Given that most ships carry 6-12 months of supplies, that would mean over 1000 Halo Barge trips to refill the ship's water reservoirs, and once again that's an unrealistically low amount of water. And that didn't bring aboard any food, fuel, clothing, ammunition, medicine, etc., etc.

see above. The cargohold is for stuff you're not planning on getting at during the journey. Do you REALLY think that crew go to the cargo hold to get the food necessary for that day's meals? More likely each module in a ship also includes it's own storage space for everything necessary to keep it running provided you make bearth regularly (once every few months or year on the outside)

Things like deep space holds would be specilized to preserve all of the things necessary for a long journey. Keeping food good for YEARS, parts and perishables from rusting and breaking and degrading even on the span of a year or more.

Same for other types of dedicated holds that are obviously meant to be used regularly, they're specilized to be used regularly. Cargoholds are built to load and unload LOTS of things, and keep them safe until you get them from point A to point B and nothing more than that. Converting one to a hanger is basically a super inefficient use of space with them.

pg 11 battle fleet koronus for every 5 points of hull space 1 lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter. if the ship has a cargo hold component they should be able to hold 4 additional vehicles

Those numbers can't really be accurate - they're vastly inadequate for the size of the ships and the size of the crews.

I suspect that that 'guideline' gets houseruled quite often.

For example, an arvus lighter fits, technically, in a 5x10x10m box, triple the dimensions for the necessary support equipment, and you're looking at 15x30x30m box. That's 13500 cubic meters of volume; in mass terms, that's 13.5 tons of water displacement. Even if you make it a 50m cube, which is way more than a arvus lighter should need, you're still only looking at 125000 cubic meters, or the displacement equivalent of 125 tons of water.

The small ships are around 1000m in length, and weigh in with megatons of mass, that is, 6 zeros . There is plenty of space on even the smallest ships for a goodly number of small craft.

Indeed. I have it set to the Space of a ship as the minimum number of shuttles and other light craft. Instead of having hundreds of halo barges, which feels wrong on everything but a carrier or battleship, I just upped their sizes considerably. They're mostly empty space, so I waved them off as being collapsible for storage purposes but I hold to the 1 per 5 Space for them as a minimum. Each halo barge can lift approximately a week's worth of supplies for a frigate, or three days for a cruiser.

It hasn't really come up in our campaign so far. But I provide that info to give my players a sense of scale for their Star Galleon. With (only) ten Halo Barges on the Star Galleon each "refill run" brings a month's worth of supplies. That also feels right to me.

I feel the itch to actually stat out the halo barges too.

I never said that cargo holds are used for storing food, water, etc. I merely said that the number of auxiliary craft allowed on ships aren't sufficient for the needs of the ship. The rules have tied the number of auxiliary craft allowed to ship space + cargo components. You read something else into my post. It doesn't matter where the water is stored (it does, but not for purposes of this discussion), it still has to be brought aboard, and at frontier worlds that means by shuttles, and the rules don't allow for enough shuttles to carry enough supplies for a voyage without undue trips back and forth from the surface.

The very notion that a ship over 1 mile long, with 30k crew members, can be kept supplied with 8 halo barges is preposterous. Whether or not a cargo hold is present is a moot point. We've had this discussion several times. Halo barges need house rules. Most of us have them.

I never said that cargo holds are used for storing food, water, etc. I merely said that the number of auxiliary craft allowed on ships aren't sufficient for the needs of the ship. The rules have tied the number of auxiliary craft allowed to ship space + cargo components. You read something else into my post. It doesn't matter where the water is stored (it does, but not for purposes of this discussion), it still has to be brought aboard, and at frontier worlds that means by shuttles, and the rules don't allow for enough shuttles to carry enough supplies for a voyage without undue trips back and forth from the surface.

The very notion that a ship over 1 mile long, with 30k crew members, can be kept supplied with 8 halo barges is preposterous. Whether or not a cargo hold is present is a moot point. We've had this discussion several times. Halo barges need house rules. Most of us have them.

Well I don't think they've ever stated exactly what a halo barge is... never seen the stats on one anyway. They carry massive amounts of food, and I'm with Marwyn, they are probably of variable size depending on whether they're in storage or not. They leave the ship, unfold, dock with the ship, load up, then enter atmo, then go back and forth by that method. Their cargo compartment doesn't even need to have anything much more than heat or rad shielding, it doesn't even, really, need to be air tight (anything keeping the various beasties of burnscour in containment is likely to be air tight in any case... it's not just a cage). So think of it as a scaffold with heat shielding and rad shielding on the exterior in fold out plates, only the cockpit of the halobarge is actually air tight.

Well I don't think they've ever stated exactly what a halo barge is... never seen the stats on one anyway.

Below the Guncutter.

Yeah, most frigates are in the 30-40 space range, so that would be 6-8 auxiliary craft + 4 for the cargo component.

Which still seems a bit silly when you are considering the resupply problems of a ship over 1 mile long with 20k-30k crew. I mean, a crew of 30k using a mere 2 gallons of water per day (drinking, washing, cooking, and cleaning) per person (and that is super-sparse) would require 6 Halo Barge trips to bring the crew enough water for 1 day. Given that most ships carry 6-12 months of supplies, that would mean over 1000 Halo Barge trips to refill the ship's water reservoirs, and once again that's an unrealistically low amount of water. And that didn't bring aboard any food, fuel, clothing, ammunition, medicine, etc., etc.

see above. The cargohold is for stuff you're not planning on getting at during the journey. Do you REALLY think that crew go to the cargo hold to get the food necessary for that day's meals? More likely each module in a ship also includes it's own storage space for everything necessary to keep it running provided you make bearth regularly (once every few months or year on the outside)

Things like deep space holds would be specilized to preserve all of the things necessary for a long journey. Keeping food good for YEARS, parts and perishables from rusting and breaking and degrading even on the span of a year or more.

Same for other types of dedicated holds that are obviously meant to be used regularly, they're specilized to be used regularly. Cargoholds are built to load and unload LOTS of things, and keep them safe until you get them from point A to point B and nothing more than that. Converting one to a hanger is basically a super inefficient use of space with them.

You kinda missed the point.

A standard main cargo bay that's converted to launch small craft is defined as a Hold Landing Bay Component.

A ship - as a whole - is more than large enough to carry a lot more small craft than the BFK guidelines indicate. A ship - which can nominally be completely resupplied in a fairly short period of time out of its native small craft complement - requires a lot more supplies than the BFK guideline small craft complement can carry in a practical timeframe.

A ship's small craft bays are, by default, located near cargo bays, or rather, directly connected to cargo transfer corridors.

I would probably say that a ship carries the rough equivalent of one squadron of support craft, including some miscellaneous small craft - likely a few guncutters and the like, used for standard Hit and Run Attacks; or at least, that's appropriate for raiders, frigates, and small to medium transports, light cruisers and cruisers probably carry double that, grand cruisers carry triple, battleships four times.

A Cargo Hold and Lighter Bay component is essentially a strength 1 landing bay with extra cargo capacity.

I didn't miss the point at all. It was asked how many auxiliary craft a vessel could carry. I quoted the rules, then stated that the rules were wonky. I gave a single short example of the logistics involved to support my claim, and it was was spot on.

If anything, you restated my claim.

I didn't miss the point at all. It was asked how many auxiliary craft a vessel could carry. I quoted the rules, then stated that the rules were wonky. I gave a single short example of the logistics involved to support my claim, and it was was spot on.

If anything, you restated my claim.

I said that Shadowclasper missed the point, not you; his post was the primary quote, though he'd quoted you in his post. I then attempted to rephrase things - so that maybe Shadowclasper could have a second shot at getting our general argument (which we certainly agree on, though our fixes are probably different).

I didn't miss the point at all. It was asked how many auxiliary craft a vessel could carry. I quoted the rules, then stated that the rules were wonky. I gave a single short example of the logistics involved to support my claim, and it was was spot on.

If anything, you restated my claim.

I think he was saying I missed the point, and I see what he means. I don't know then. Maybe it means that's all the standard cargo hold/lander bay can hold, in addition to all the other things it can carry? EG: A standard cargo hold is only equiped with area/scaffolding/etc. for 4 vehicles, in addition to all of the cargo it is supposed to carry? I guess you could rule that if the players were willing to reduce how much cargo they were carrying, they could have more than 4 vehicles installed?

My bad, javcs.

As Tenebrae pointed out, Halo Barges are exctly statted out. They simply aren't sufficient. Hey, I don't expect the chaps at FFG to have a degree in logistics, or even business admin. I can live with these occasional blunders. They are fixable.

I''ve used Quicksilver's Halo fixes. The barge carries 4 standard cargo containers. Works real nice for me. That gives a barge about 8 times the mass capacity in water for purposes of resupply. Resupplying is very difficult, but not ridiculously so. And having interchangeable containers means the Halo can fill the role of dry goods carrier, tanker, and even troop lander. Beautiful.

Another solution, perhaps, is to say rather than 4 vehicles to a cargo hold, it's instead 4 squadrons?

Yeah, do that and have the argument with your players why they shouldn't instead be carrying 4 squadrons of Valkyries/Furies/etc.

"But we could strip out the armaments and use it for a shuttle!" "It has room for crew and passengers, why can't we use that space?"

Let me know what arguments your players use.

Honestly? I'd probably do some modification to rules on bomber runs and similar, and beyond that... since I keep a tight reign on the nature of their NPCs. I'd tell them "Your entire enginarium is now in revolt because you refuse to obey proper protocol as to see to the holy valkyries, packing them in too tightly and not showing them due respect. Have fun with that."

I'd say that a ship's native small craft capacity is mostly designed to handle support craft almost exclusively - with minimal capacity to reload and rearm those craft. Maybe a few bays are capable of or can be modified to handle armed craft, thus allowing for a small number of guncutters and armed shuttles - not enough for a mechanical benefit, but enough to launch standard Hit and Run attacks, and to allow an armed escort when deploying a landing party via small craft.

Remember, a proper launch/landing bay that can support any kind of small craft, especially armed ones, will need to have a great deal more equipment than one designed to solely handle support craft - remember, armed small craft require and carry munitions. That requires armory facilities to supply them. A hangar designed to near-exclusively handle cargo will have negligible, if any, small craft armory capability, and will have its equipment specialized towards handling cargo containers and the like, and otherwise unsuitable towards handling weapons to mount/load onto the craft.

I tend to fill my ships with a number of Arvus lighters in arvus-lighter sized holes (as opposed to actual landing bays) and integrated airlocks, similar to how we often see escape pods pictured in SciFi. The players even use them on occasion for a short cut from the stern to the prow of the ship - it's quicker than walking. Anyway, the integrated nature of the docks means they can't really be used for anything else - there's nothing to hold in atmosphere, walk on, fuel with, arm with, etc.

pg 11 battle fleet koronus for every 5 points of hull space 1 lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter. if the ship has a cargo hold component they should be able to hold 4 additional vehicles

Those numbers can't really be accurate - they're vastly inadequate for the size of the ships and the size of the crews.

I suspect that that 'guideline' gets houseruled quite often.

For example, an arvus lighter fits, technically, in a 5x10x10m box, triple the dimensions for the necessary support equipment, and you're looking at 15x30x30m box. That's 13500 cubic meters of volume; in mass terms, that's 13.5 tons of water displacement. Even if you make it a 50m cube, which is way more than a arvus lighter should need, you're still only looking at 125000 cubic meters, or the displacement equivalent of 125 tons of water.

The small ships are around 1000m in length, and weigh in with megatons of mass, that is, 6 zeros . There is plenty of space on even the smallest ships for a goodly number of small craft.

Normally you resupply via the planets space station where the ships can dock with the void station to load and unload cargo.

Now if you had a Hold landing bay witch is a strength 2 landing bay it can gold a max of six squadrons.

That would give you 48 assault boats or support craft.

pg 11 battle fleet koronus for every 5 points of hull space 1 lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter. if the ship has a cargo hold component they should be able to hold 4 additional vehicles

Those numbers can't really be accurate - they're vastly inadequate for the size of the ships and the size of the crews.

I suspect that that 'guideline' gets houseruled quite often.

For example, an arvus lighter fits, technically, in a 5x10x10m box, triple the dimensions for the necessary support equipment, and you're looking at 15x30x30m box. That's 13500 cubic meters of volume; in mass terms, that's 13.5 tons of water displacement. Even if you make it a 50m cube, which is way more than a arvus lighter should need, you're still only looking at 125000 cubic meters, or the displacement equivalent of 125 tons of water.

The small ships are around 1000m in length, and weigh in with megatons of mass, that is, 6 zeros . There is plenty of space on even the smallest ships for a goodly number of small craft.

Normally you resupply via the planets space station where the ships can dock with the void station to load and unload cargo.

Now if you had a Hold landing bay witch is a strength 2 landing bay it can gold a max of six squadrons.

That would give you 48 assault boats or support craft.

There's also provision for ships to be resupplied from planets without orbital infrastructure.

Also ... even with orbital infrastructure, stuff needs to get up from the planet in the first place.

The first requires more small craft.

The second requires both more small craft than a station can nominally support by the BFK guidelines.

Both require small craft larger than an Arvus lighter or the book Halo Barge.

Up the size of the small craft and you don't need as many, but you still need more than the BFK guidelines would allow.

pg 11 battle fleet koronus for every 5 points of hull space 1 lighter, shuttle, or heavy lifter. if the ship has a cargo hold component they should be able to hold 4 additional vehicles

Those numbers can't really be accurate - they're vastly inadequate for the size of the ships and the size of the crews.

I suspect that that 'guideline' gets houseruled quite often.

For example, an arvus lighter fits, technically, in a 5x10x10m box, triple the dimensions for the necessary support equipment, and you're looking at 15x30x30m box. That's 13500 cubic meters of volume; in mass terms, that's 13.5 tons of water displacement. Even if you make it a 50m cube, which is way more than a arvus lighter should need, you're still only looking at 125000 cubic meters, or the displacement equivalent of 125 tons of water.

The small ships are around 1000m in length, and weigh in with megatons of mass, that is, 6 zeros . There is plenty of space on even the smallest ships for a goodly number of small craft.

I just want to point out that cubic meter is about 1 metric ton of water, so a 50m cube is 125000 tons.