Wednesday, November 25, 2020

Tankeren TNK-101B (Star Wars Campaign)

For my Star Wars Campaign, I need a standard ship for a single planet. I have started with a rough design for a transport modified into a warship. There are only a handful of these warships around. They are vastly outnumbered by the standard food hauler version. 


I have not designed any landing skids or jacks yet. This ship would launch like an X-Wing, rising until the main engines kick it up to speed. 

The ship's dimensions are: 11 meters tall (taller with the landing jacks), 34 meters long and the body is about 10 meters wide. It has stubby wings with a span of 22 meters, mostly to keep the hot engines away from the body of the ship. 

At the bottom left is the nose door. It folds down to accept cargo. Directly above that door is an observation station with black windows. This location is the controls for the simple loading crane located in the fore cargo bay's roof. Next, there is also a man sized door port and starboard. The monstrous can-shaped engines mounted on top of the wings about 5 meters away from the body of the ship, so people can board through the side doors while ship is being readied. 

The fore cargo bay ends even with the back of the engines. There is 4 meter long hall that gives access to rear cargo area. This hall also gives access to the densely packed avionics in the waist of the ship's first level. 

The rear cargo vault is meant for food transport and the whole rear cylindrical area can be pulled right out the ship and connected to "shore power" to keep the food fresh. The ship can fly without the cylindrical vault, but it makes the ship "tippy". Pilots tend to fly by repulsor power in this situation, usually no faster than a speeder. In this mode, the ship feels very sporty. There are other variations of vaults to haul other materials, but this is most commonly used as a reefer ship.  

The second deck, the one with the crane controls, gives access to the gun spaces. There is a shower and bathroom on this level, plus a kitchenette and sitting area.   

The top deck has crew quarters behind the control space. The black area on this ship is a wraparound window which gives a breathtaking view or great lines of sight for the gun turrets. The gun turrets are great by local standards and poor by everyone else's standards. Sometimes, ships only mount one or two guns instead of all three. Shielding is just ok. 

You would think there would be a bomber variant and there is. Typically, a decommissioned food vault is filled with rock and dirt and dropped on ground targets. It's devastating. Even at low speeds it the vault can rip through city blocks of buildings. 

There is an actual sleeve-like unit built for bombs, but since most of the warfare on the planet is tribal in nature, there is little need to use something that can drop 100,000 kg worth of explosives on anything. They haven't met the Empire, yet. 

Tankeren missile technology is nearly non-existent, so no variant has missiles. 


The original 101A lack weapons and smaller porthole style windows, instead of the large wrap around window. All of the space saved by not having the turrets allows for an ample living space on the ship. This is by far the most common configuration for the TNK-101. 

While this ship is somewhat smaller than the Falcon, it is configured for family style living and seems very spacious by comparison. Most transport pilots don't own homes and simply live in the ship, either with family or a very cliquey crew. It is bigger than most houses.

The ships handling characteristics can only be described as weird. When hovering on repulsors, it handles like a dream, it's able to make centimeter adjustments easily. At full speed, the ship can barely turn or roll. Acceleration to top speed is incredible, but it can't go as fast as a warship, fighter or even a standard YT transport. Removing the rear cargo vault makes no difference except to make the ship feel off balanced. At low speed, it's fun ship to fly. At orbital speeds, it's like riding a dewback with a jetpack. 

I need to fix the side view of the wings, but to do that I need front and top views. Each view will be used to adjust and improve the other views making this a more complete ship. Then surface details can be added. 



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