'Ariel' class 100 ton Freighter

Here is a Traveller ship design I cooked up a LONG time ago that's a common fixture in our campaigns. It's the TL9 space faring equivalent of the DC3/C-47 cargo plane.

I've always preferred, when practical, to have the common tech level for ships to be in the lower TL9 range or there about.

I also prefer, for simplicity, speed, and ease of use, to stay with the less cluttered design specs of the older Traveller. Most of the designs I use are usually a hybrid of Book 3 and Book 5 - High Guard, with often a bit of local environment tossed it. For determining ship to ship combat, I prefer to use the old 'Mayday' rules.

A long time ago I designed one of the most commonly used vessels I've ever some up with. The idea was to have a vessel that was small, utilitarian, spartan in it's bare configuration, super common, and often available dirt cheap on the used surplus market. The concept was to also have a design that was so old and had been in production for so long in various localities that some of the ships the adventures might wind up with would possibly be flying relics of horrifying age (if they could actually figure the original age out).

The main idea was to come up with the spacefaring answer to the venerable DC3/C-47 cargo plane, used for everything from smuggling contraband to hauling passengers and troops on backwater worlds (retrofitted with bunks or staterooms in the cargo bay), to private, low overhead freight hauling. This ship is a very practical one, especially if bought used and in good condition, for the private merchant/speculator/freighter.

The main spec of the ship was to be small, simple, and totally TL9. Notice that there are no iris valves on the entire ship - a VERY simple and easy to manufacture design capable of being built on even some of the most backwater spacefaring worlds.

The result was the 'Ariel' class 100 ton Freighter.

I'll let anyone post the design up to a Traveller website as long as they don't alter who get's credit for it :-)

'Ariel' class Freighter
TL9 
100 tons
Jump 1
Maneuver 2G
Power Plant 2
Fuel 12 tons
Cargo 51 tons
Staterooms 2
Computer Model 1
Streamlined 
Hardpoints 1
Fire Control 1 ton
Cost (new) MCr 20.43 


Notes: The power plant and the maneuver driver are standard 'Type A' drives from standard Traveller. The Jump Drive is a Book 5 - High Guard design that is TL9, and will only do Jump 1 on ships up to 100 tons max. In the campaigns it was used in, it is a very common drive of an extremely old design that renown for it's reliability. The ship is streamlined with fuel scoops, but there is no fuel purifier installed as original equipment (one would have to be retrofitted, probably somewhere in the cargo bay).

The cost reflects a discount for a standard, well known, universally adopted design which has been built at one time or another by every shipyard, in one for or another. The cost also doesn't include a weapons turret, which is optional.