Cepheus Review : Common Vessels

A few starting ideas and common types

TOC

1. Cepheus Engine Review TOC.

Common Ships

Spaceships and Starships

TL9 Asteroid Miner

The TL9 asteroid miner has a few major differences from the “seeker’ variant of the standard Scout/Courier from CT. First of all, it’s 200 tons, which even by CT-high guard rules allows room for fuel purification. It is limited to jump-1 and 1G, but has enough fuel for two jumps, in addition to being able to scavenge any source of local fuel. With 84 tons of cargo capacity and onboard ore processing, it can actually hold a fair amount of processed metals instead of raw ore. It’s obviously a mining platform and not an exploration/survey platform, though it can fill the seeker role as well.

TL11 Corvette and Patrol Frigate

These look like variants of the CT Patrol Cruiser, though slightly smaller at 300 tons. Both are jump-2 and have armor and stealth coatings, with the largest difference being the corvette gives up two fighters to pull 6G instead of 4G.

TL9 Courier

Has standard sensors, so not quite a replacement for the CT scout courier. Jump2, but also 4G - which is easier to achieve when you’re not getting the power plant fuel tonnages you did in CT. So far fuel processors appear to be common, but we haven’t hit any truly civilian ships.

TL11 Destroyer

800 Tons, but with fuel for two jump-2’s and 4 G’s of thrust for 4 weeks of ops. Looksing at the design it is definitely more what it bills itself as than a replacement for the 800-ton merc cruiser. It certainly doesn’t have the ATV/vehicle delivery capabilities the CT merc cruiser does.

TL14 Dreadnought

5000 tons. It’s big, it has lots of guns, and even keeps spare crew in cold sleep. Smart missiles, multiple screening technologies, hard armor, and stealth coating, for however much that helps something this big and hot. It also carries 20 fighters and a couple cutters.

TL9 Frontier Trader

The first truly civilian ship listed. 300 tons and only capable of a single jump-1. It also has fuel processors. Due to its fairly high passenger capacity, it only carries 75 tons of cargo. So a combines short-haul passenger-cargo ship.

TL11 Heavy Cruiser

2000-ton multipurpose combat and presence ship. The book states “not commonly deployed during peacetime” but these and larger destroyers are exactly what you see deployed. Powerful enough to make a difference, not as ruinously expensive to operate as battleships.

Its smaller cousin the light cruiser at 1000 tons with two fighters is explicitly intended for independent ops. It’s faster, with 3G of acceleration, and still big enough to make the typical raider think twice - though likely not two of them.

TL9 Merchant Freighter

At 400 tons, Jump-1 and 1G, carrying 261 tons of cargo and very few passengers, this is a a short-haul cargo ship, and little else.

TL9 Merchant Liner

A people tanker. Half the cargo of the frontier trader, and half again as many passengers.

TL9 Merchant Trader

The closest in here to the standard CT 200-ton trader.

TL9 Raider

600 tons of fun. This is not a substitute for the merc cruiser, instead, it’s a fast strike ship with enough cargo space to haul off the better half of a mechie’s cargo. With two fighters and three turrets it’s more than capable of tangling with a patrol frigate and even one can get lucky against a light cruiser. With only enough tankage for a single jump-1 it’s not a strategic deep strike platform.

TL9 Research Vessel

This 200 ton platform is the functional equivalent of the CT lab ship.

TL11 Survey Vessel

This vessel is used to do resurveys of a system for traffic/junk control and navigation as well as keep an eye out for pirate operations. At 300 tons it has a respectable operating range, a lot of probe drones, laboratories, and enough weapons to make many raiders think twice, but at 2G it’s also not getting anywhere particularly fast if it does find itself in trouble. I’m somewhat surprised a survey vessel doesn’t have better than basic civvie sensors.

TL9 System Defense Boat - and Monitor

The SDB is a 400 ton spaceship without jump capability, the extra tonnage is allocated to weapons, armor, and speed: it can pull 6G. On the other hand it too has only basic sensors.

The monitor, at 1000 tons, is the much more expensive and larger cousin, also capable of pulling 6G. I know the sensors are in part due to being TL9, but one would think at TL11 and higher the basic configuration would at least get improved sensors while being a “standard” design.

TL9 Yacht

Last but not least the venerable yacht, very similar to the CT hull it matches.

Small Craft

All of the following vehicles baseline at TL9

Cutter

Or - the modular cutter. Fifty tons with 30 ton interchangeable modules. These include cargo, commuter, fuel tankage, suites, labs, and vehicles.

Fighters

Actually pretty small at ten tons, especially when you consider a modern F-15 is 14 tons empty. 6G acceleration and “only” one week of fuel.

Launch, Ship’s Boat, and Pinnace

At twenty, 30, and 40 tons, carrying between to 10 and 25 tons of cargo. Interestingly they are listed as “no other passengers” - at least not in the cockpit, where in CT they not only could be but in various mainline supplements explicitly were configured to seat passengers. I don’t see a reason why the cargo space couldn’t be set up for that.

Shuttle

90 tons, and plenty of cargo space, crew of two.

Wrapping it Up

Nearly every hull has armor designated. Not every ship in CT has an equivalent, though many do. A number of designs have more acceleration than their CT counterparts, in large part due to not having to use up as much fuel tankage for the power plant so there’s more room to spare for higher-G maneuver drives and the power plants to support them. Also, where in CT fuel purification was so rare as to be unavailable in smaller designs utterly or outside of the High Guard rules supplement, here, nearly every starship and spaceship has a fuel purification plant, which is a no brainer as it renders the threat of misjump due to bad fuel a moot point.

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