ChatGPT designs a starship.

[whartung]

This is a black hole, and I can appreciate how perhaps it's best not to just start parroting what ChatGPT is doing. But this was a fun conversation.

Can you design me a High Guard ship, 400 tons, 4G drive, Jump 2?

Sure, I can help you design a High Guard ship! Here's a possible design for a 400-ton ship with a 4G drive and Jump-2 capabilities:

Hull and Configuration
The ship will have a standard hull configuration, as it provides a good balance of armor, maneuverability, and cargo capacity. The hull will be streamlined, reducing the ship's profile and making it harder to detect.

Propulsion
The ship will be equipped with a maneuver drive providing a total acceleration of 4G, allowing it to quickly accelerate and decelerate. The ship will also have a Jump-2 drive, enabling it to travel long distances quickly.

Power Plant
The ship will have a Class 4 fusion power plant, providing enough power to run all of its systems and allowing it to make extended voyages without refueling.

Fuel
The ship will carry enough fuel to make a single Jump-2, as well as enough reaction mass for several weeks of operation at 4G acceleration.

Bridge and Controls
The ship's bridge will be equipped with standard navigation, communication, and control systems, as well as advanced sensors and computers for monitoring the ship's performance and detecting potential threats.

Weapons
The ship will be armed with a dual turret, each mounting a single beam laser. This will provide the ship with a limited but effective defensive capability against small craft and other ships.

Defenses
The ship will have a sandcaster system, providing a cloud of high-velocity particles that can deflect or absorb incoming energy weapons fire. The ship will also be equipped with a standard armor system, providing additional protection against physical damage.

Crew and Accommodations
The ship will have accommodations for up to eight crew members, including a captain, navigator, engineer, gunner, and several additional crew members. The ship will also have a small cargo hold, providing enough space to carry supplies, equipment, and trade goods.
This design is just one possible configuration for a 400-ton High Guard ship with a 4G drive and Jump-2 capabilities. The specific details and features of the ship can be adjusted to meet the needs of your campaign or adventure.


What would the USP be for this ship?
The USP (Unique Selling Proposition) for this High Guard ship could be its combination of speed, maneuverability, and defensive capabilities.
With its 4G acceleration and Jump-2 drive, the ship is capable of quickly traveling long distances and escaping from danger if necessary. Its streamlined hull configuration also makes it more difficult to detect and target.

In addition, the ship's dual turret, sandcaster system, and armor provide it with a decent defensive capability against smaller ships and energy weapons.
Overall, the ship's USP could be its ability to operate independently, rapidly travel to remote locations, and defend itself against potential threats. This could make it an ideal choice for scouting missions, border patrols, and other tasks where speed, maneuverability, and self-sufficiency are key factors.

I mean the Universal Ship Profile, as described in Book 5

Oh, I see! I apologize for the confusion. The USP for the High Guard ship described would be:

Hull: 4 Armor: 2 Maneuver Drive: 4 Jump Drive: 2 Power Plant: 4 Computer: 3 Crew: 8 Armaments: Dual Turret (Beam Laser x 2) Defenses: Sandcaster, Armor

The USP is a standardized way of describing a ship's capabilities and is used in Traveller to quickly compare and contrast different ships. The USP for a ship takes into account its size, speed, armor, weaponry, defenses, and other key features. Based on the specifications of the ship we designed, the USP for this ship would be as listed above.

Fun, but don't give up your spreadsheets yet!

 

[kilemall]

I want to see EuriskoChat on ship design.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Hmmn. Have two chatbots competitively design ship design systems, and have iterative contests regarding the usability of those systems?

 

[Spinward Flow]

Please ... do not have Teddy Ruxpin get into arguments with Teddy Ruxpin ... it'll never end ...

 

[Grav_Moped]

Please ... do not have Teddy Ruxpin get into arguments with Teddy Ruxpin ... it'll never end ...

Back in the day, I considered a cruel and unusual weapons system for SJ Games' Car Wars: the Heavy Duty Flaming Teddy Ruxpin Thrower.

This preceded the even more horrifying Heavy Duty Flaming Furby Thrower. The HDFTRT only wanted to tell you a story as it set your car on fire. The HDFFT would play back a horrifyingly distorted version of your screams, too, as it burned you to death.

 

[whartung]

I want to see EuriskoChat on ship design.

Nah, we have Spinward Flow for that!

 

[Spinward Flow]

Nah, we have Spinward Flow for that!

Uh ...

 

[bookwyrm]

I think Spinward Flow has the lead on ship design, as he has inspired goals for his ship designs, where as the A.I.s ship designs seem more generic and less inspired. (from my point of view)

 

[Spinward Flow]

I think Spinward Flow has the lead on ship design, as he has inspired goals for his ship designs, where as the A.I.s ship designs seem more generic and less inspired. (from my point of view)

There was a time, in the past, when I designed starships as more of a wargaming exercise (ala Trillion Credit Squadron, but never to that scale), where the objective was to make the most "battle ready" starship designs ... because when you're young it's a lot of fun to make Combat Monster stuff. Same holds true for other combat oriented RPGs (whether computer or tabletop), and I've always been one who prefers to "cut against the grain" of Conventional Wisdom™ to try and find out what ELSE can be done, rather than following in the well worn ruts of simply doing what everyone else has always done.

Nowadays, when I think about starship designs for Classic Traveller ... I have a more nuanced yet broader "end user" appreciation for them, and what life aboard them must be like, than I did decades ago. I also have access to resources (meaning, LBBs, Traveller Wiki, Travellermap, etc.) that I did not have back in the day to inform notions and ideas. I can take a more ... holistic approach ... to starship design than I ever have in the past. This lets me analyze tradeoffs and decisions not only from the standpoint of the naval architect (LBB2/LBB5) perspective, but also from an owner/operator perspective once a starship is taken into service and "put to work" doing whatever its owners and crew need it to do. I've then taken that owner/operator use case scenario and then been able to extrapolate from there towards the kind of niche role that my starship designs are intended to fulfill, along with the social, economic and political implications that starships with such capabilities can be used for, facilitate and even become indispensable at providing in the broader context of interstellar travel ... which, to be honest, is where things start getting REALLY interesting!

Which is a long winded way of saying that I've gone through various "phases" in my ship designing "career" over the decades. For a long time, my focus was on Bang Per Buck Credit, where the objective was to get the most out of limited budgets for acquisitions (which usually defaulted to TL=15 everything, because that was the cheapest path to highest performance). After that came "edge case" specializations, where you want to design the best possible starship for specific uses (regardless of cost). I even had a "seeker phase" of trying to come up with the best possible mining ship designs (ala the Type-J) for use by Belters. Then I circled back to a pirate phase of wanting to make pirate ships.

It's only in the past couple of years that I've finally "mellowed out" enough to take a turn at wanting to design merchant ships that would be capable of (reliably) turning a profit for their owner(s) ... which is actually a VERY complicated proposition indeed! All kinds of derivative knock on effects flow from the choices being made at the design stages, many of which are not intuitively obvious (let alone apparent) ... and has been quite the learning exercise.

I would like to think that my Five Sisters Clipper (Iderati revision) is the ultimate culmination of all of those years of effort and "doodling around" with starship designing that I've done during my lifetime. At the very least, I know that it's a starship design that I would love to own/operate/live aboard as part of a Traveller campaign, even if it's just a "glorified cargo hauler" of a ship design. The sheer range of adventure hook possibilities that such a starship contains within its hull and crew is very nearly on par with a "go anywhere, do anything" mentality when it comes to Small Ship Universe adventuring ... mainly because the design is so extensible and flexible, from private to commercial to paramilitary ... and beyond.



So thanks for the vote of confidence @bookwyrm ... I really appreciate it.

 

[bookwyrm]

You have a way of using Form follows Function/Location/Tech Level/Is It Useful. Plus, you help me to think outside the box a little bit.

The A.I. built a generic 400 dT with the given specification that might be useful in many situations, and might not. A.I.'s still have a ways to go before making a person sweat. Maybe for giving a quick solution that can be tweaked by a human expert for what is really needed.

Your 400 dT would take into consideration ships role, where it is going to be used, technology where it's being built, and will it work. Some of your ideas give us multi-purpose ships and others with a narrow purpose of use. Just like Characters can't do everything but might be good at something, Ships are the same.

Now if in the near future an A.I. can give us some good builds and ideas comparable to Spin or any others on the CotI, then things will get interesting. The next question for the A.I.'s would be 'Do you want to be the Game Master or a Player?'

 

[Spinward Flow]

You have a way of using Form follows Function/Location/Tech Level/Is It Useful.

It's when you seriously GROUND a starship design in a Time/Place/Role to that extent that you start getting a "feel" for what lies beyond the boundaries of the hull plates ... the map, the cultures, the opportunities ... that sparks the desire to be a Traveller in the way that we like to think of it.

Plus, you help me to think outside the box a little bit.

Your 400 dT would take into consideration ships role, where it is going to be used, technology where it's being built, and will it work. Some of your ideas give us multi-purpose ships and others with a narrow purpose of use. Just like Characters can't do everything but might be good at something, Ships are the same.

I would even go so far as to say that SHIPS ARE CHARACTERS in their own right ... much the same way as any sophont you roll up on a career path (who doesn't die during character generation, of course).

There's a reason why people instinctively refer to the original 60s Enterprise as *SHE* in the presence of the actual film article preserved at the Smithsonian Museum ... and the instinctive REVERENCE that people naturally feel towards Matt Jeffries genius in executing the design of it.

Ideally speaking, we want that level of immersion in time, space and place to be true of our own starship creations ... for the crews that live aboard them ... and for the the stories we make up about them in our heads in our campaigns.

So yes, by all means ... starships NEED prose in order to realize them ... but the truly good ones, inspire poetry into the bargain.

 

[Grav_Moped]

I wouldn't necessarily go that far, but you're not wrong.

There's the "Design Only As Really Necessary" paradigm -- and it works, when you get the "as really necessary" part right. For a ship that player characters only briefly interact with (for example, the Type T from FASA's ACS Vol II), it doesn't even have to literally conform to the build rules, let alone be designed as a vessel that its crew could reasonably consider "home" for weeks or months at a time. As long as none of the players has the time to really look at it, suspension of disbelief holds and the game can progress.

"As really necessary" expands quite a bit when the ship is the player characters' home for an extended period, and especially when it's the setting for a character-development based (rather than incident-based) scenario. The relative location of a breakroom, or the precise location of the dirty-rag bin or the coffeemaker doesn't matter until it does.

 

[robject]

I'm in the "ship has a personality" camp, but I understand Don McKinney's "ship is a magic box for travel" camp as well. ChatGPT certainly managed to capture the "ship is a magic box" angle that would work in a pinch, though some light editing is needed. I prefer seeing a little love there.

 

[Condottiere]