Freelance Traveller

designed by Brandon Cope

This ship is designed at GTL 10.

The General Products HMM-2 is the result of studying the general failure of Ling Standard Products modular starships (p.GT:MC31-33) and trying to do better. GP decided that one of the principal failings was the use of fuel skimmer modules as a highly inefficient substitute for built-in fuel tanks (30 or 33 dtons for 22 dtons of fuel). They proceeded to do "revised" designs of the six LSP ships, using internal fuel tanks and vehicle bays for the cutter modules. In the end, only the 1,000-dton version with Jump-2 capability was deemed worthy of production. Sales have been slow, but better than the MSH-J2.

The HMM-2 carries fewer total modules (18 vs 24) but none of them have to be devoted to fuel, so it effectively can carry four more useful modules. Otherwise, the HMM-2 is generally similar to the MSH-J2 in terms of capabilities. The first 76 ships built had a minor flaw. The cutter bays, which are adjacent (over the ship's fuel tanks), could not fully open their doors at the same time, so the cutters could only be launched one at a time, one having to wait until the other bay doors were completely closed. This was fixed starting with the 77th ship.

The configuration below is for "frontier" use. Five of the turrets are armed with two lasers each and the rest are left empty. Standard module allocation is two fuel skimmer, eight cargo and eight quarters. In situations where wilderness refueling is not an issue, the fuel skimmers are replaced by one cargo and one quarters module. With 18 cargo modules, Accel is 0.86 and LWt 3,725.25. Total cost includes two cutters, two fuel skimmer modules, eight cargo modules and eight quarters modules; ship cost excluding the cutters and modules is MCr 156.8.

Crew: 21. Captain, Pilot, Navigator, Comm Officer, Sensor Officer, Medic, 4 Engineers, 6 Cutter crew, 5 Gunners/Stewards.

Design: 1,000-ton USL hull, DR 100, 10 Turrets (10x250 MJ lasers); Basic Bridge, 2 Engineering, 30 Jump, 80 Maneuver, 200 Fuel Tank, 2 Utility, 16 Staterooms, 16 Vehicle bays (16x30-ton modules), 2 Vehicle bays (2x50-ton cutters), 0.5 Ship's Stores

Statistics: EMass 1,271.25 stons, LMass 3,179.25 stons, MCr200.8, HP 67,500, Size Modifier + 10

Performance: Accel 1.01 Gs/1.68 Gs unloaded, Jump-2