This will probably take a few posts, because I want to take it step-by-step to make sure I'm getting this right.

In a previous SF campaign I ran, I used CORPS and the VDS to design the ships and weapons for the campaign. I will hopefully revive this in the not-too-distant future and would like to use EABA and Stuff! instead.

The setting is relatively hard sf (combined with horror.) No FTL, the time period is about 300 years from now. FTL is being experimented with, to fairly horrific results (inspirations include Event Horizon, and the WH40K warp space problems.) The solar system is well colonized. I won't go into all the details, but Earth is at odds with most of the rest of the system. Luna and Mars are heavily colonized. Mercury hosts a number of industrial and mining facilities. There are hundreds of space habitats (most based on the O'Neill design) orbiting the inner planets, and no small number in solar orbit. The asteroid belt has a healthy population, primarily miners and prospectors. There are shielded colonies in the Jovian moons (and shielded orbitals as well). Saturn and beyond are primarily scientific and research installations (although Saturn has a few more tourist-oriented settlements.)

Travel time around the system ranges from weeks to months in extreme cases (say 110 days Earth to Saturn.) (Longer in the case of Persephone, a very large rocky planet of 3 Earth masses that orbits at about double the distance to Pluto. Normally it would be ignored, but it has a very high concentration of rare metals and other worthwhile resources. Usually mined by criminals serving sentences. A trip to Persephone can take over 900 days. Cryogenic chambers are common in long-haul spacecraft.

Even in VDS, I applied a healthy cheat factor just for aesthetics to reduce the amount of fuel needed. The trip times are where I want them to be.

I've started off with a ship the size of the one I developed in VDS, which is a 10,000 ton ship. Just starting with round numbers, I'm assuming an empty weight of 7,000 tons with up to 3,000 tons of cargo. (Assuming 1 ton = 1000 kg.)

I went with 10,000 tons because I wanted a larger ship. Unless I'm reading this wrong, even a 10,000 ton ship isn't all that large in dimensions. If I'm wrong here, it'll radically change everything else. That's why I'm taking this in small steps.

I'll address the basics in the next post.