Freelance
TravellerGrampain-class Heavy Liner
This article originally appeared in the July/August 2019 issue
The Type LK Grampain-class heavy liner is a member of a two-ship class designed to move large numbers of people economically. Using an unstreamlined custom 5000 ton hull, it mounts Jump Drive Z, Maneuver Drive W, and Power Plant Z giving performance of Jump-2 and 1G acceleration. Fuel tankage of 1020 tons supports 1 jump-2 and 4 weeks normal operation. Adjacent to the bridge is a model/2 computer. There are no provisions for mounting weapons. There are 460 passenger staterooms; 10 Officer’s staterooms; 48 small craft cabins for the crew and 1000 low berths; 3 shuttles and 633 tons general cargo. There is 210 tons of expanded High passenger amenities 25 tons expanded middle passage amenities and a 10 ton low passage clinic. The ship has a crew of 58 consisting of a Captain; XO; Navigator; Ship’s Doctor; Chief Engineer; Pursuer and 3 shuttle pilots for officers and 3 clerks; 7 Engineers; 13 medics; 3 flight engineers and 27 stewards. The ship can carry 210 High Passengers; 250 Middle Passengers and 1000 low passengers. It costs MCr2,138.998 to build; construction time is 36 months.
The Grampain and Hesperian were built with a number of non-standard features that were viewed with skepticism in the industry. With standard passage rates for levels of accommodation star voyages had become somewhat mundane and the owning megacorporation had tasked its marketing department to look into a way to capture an increased occupancy rate on high volume runs. It was determined that a way to make passage on a specific ship more desirable as opposed to passage with a certain company would be the most effective way to do this. Calling up the most nostalgic and sanitized version of the Age of Steam liners plans where drawn up with areas that did not directly provide revenue (Staterooms and Cargo) which would be fitted out to reinforce the illusion of stepping back in history, ship’s uniforms were styled to resemble the fashions of the past and while the vessels were under construction a series of media channels were used to generate interest in the era. The expanded high and middle passage facilities are large open spaces that are not usually seen on starships in passenger spaces, the low passage expanded space is not tricked out to bring about the past though it is a state of the art medical facility with specialized equipment relating to cold sleep resulting in a significant reduction in cold sleep related injuries (DM +1 on revival rolls). An internal marketing campaign was directed at ship crews in the company to create an elite cachet about serving on one of these vessels which is why they were built with individual small crew cabins instead of the more common dual occupancy full sized stateroom. All these factors resulted in two ships that have almost 100% occupancy ratings at all times. The design is not more widespread partially to keep the mystique and mostly because a chain of high population worlds no more than 2 parsecs apart is not common.