Starship Sections - Medical Bay

[Kihmbar]

Here is one of a series of maps I am working on. Each map is part of a starship (designed for the Star Wars universe, but possibly applicable to other Sci-fi genres). I have planned out these maps where there are entrances in the same location on each side (so the maps can be placed end-to-end or side-by-side and the doorways will align). This allows our GM to make a generic starship how he sees fit. This really only works for larger ships, since smaller ships would have smaller rooms. My goal is to eventually generate 5+ sections: Medical Bay, Barracks, Command Bridge, Engineering, and a Detention Block (since we always seem to be breaking out of one or rescuing someone in one).

This one is the Medical Bay. The left section contains a bacta ward and a surgical suite. The middle section contains patient rooms and the medical monitoring station. The right section contains storage and the physician's office and living quarters.

Starship Section - Medical Bay 1.jpg

I'm having some trouble with this one because this is my "crossover" map. I began building it using MS Powerpoint and am finishing it using Gimp (now that I am more fluent with Gimp). I would appreciate any comments or criticisms. [I am also open to any ideas for starship sections (perhaps something you would like to see).]

[Steel General]

Some other ideas... Hangar Bay, Workshop, Armory... all I can think off the top of my head.

[Talroth]

I would suggest spreading things out onto different "Tiles" that you can then quickly throw together to show the layout of different ships. Where one ship might have a very basic medical bay, a more complex ship can use the same medical bay as the first, but just with more tiles added to it.

[Midgardsormr]

No specific suggestions at this time, but you might think about expanding the scope of the project--this medical bay would fit just fine in a building as well as a ship. Gamerprinter made some sci-fi environment tiles a while back that you could then interface with. The styles would obviously not be the same, but in my opinion that's okay for tiles.

edit: I lied--you could do a cargo area, with or without cargo. Weapon control areas.

[Hoel]

I'm running a USCM campaign. The group is running around the universe in an beat up old conestoga class assault frigate.
My simplistic sideview deckplan include
Cargo hangar(for shuttles), fighter bay (for dropships and fighters), cargo bays (lots of them), Medbay with science station, Engineering, Reactor room, Grav generator room (for FTL flight), Engines, Cryo room, Barracks, Canteen, Rec room, Armoury, Supply stores (ammo, armor and gear), Ready room, Bridge with Nav, Comm, Tac and CIC stations. Then there's loads of corridors some of them doubling as exercise track, shooting range, extra bunk spaces and storage. I'm thinkng a cross between a wwii sub and a modern troop transport. I've toyed with the idea of mapping it, but it seems a lot of job since they rarely have any missions aboard ship. If you post some of your work, I'll steal them right under your nose!

Starwars ships are more open in their layout according to the reference material, and they seem to have less 'ship' feel to them, so you can put a lot of the essentials in one tile.
Your med bay was really nice. Have you seen the game Battlestations? It's got a lot of pre made starship compartments (and it's a really cool game too), they may come in handy!

[Gamerprinter]

Gamerprinter made some sci-fi environment tiles a while back that you could then interface with. The styles would obviously not be the same, but in my opinion that's okay for tiles.

An experiment that I never finished, but was fun to try out. It was back in August when the monthly challenge was create a set dungeon tiles within a minimum size per tile and minimum 4 tiles. I went nuts and created 20 and 30 or so map objects to fill the dungeon. When I was doing I was toying with the idea, that someone wished a set was made for a sci-fi game.

So I created these, I call Colony Tiles...

http://www.cartographersguild.com/showthread.php?t=2800

GP

[Kihmbar]

Wow. So many comments, so little time. I am encouraged by the responses.

First off, thanks for the suggestions. If nothing else, I have learned that I can bounce ideas off folks in this forum.

I had in mind to generate large scale starship sections for capital scale ships (or space stations or starbases). I already have smaller sections that I found here at the Holocron. What I was envisioning is something on a larger scale (a full medical bay with all the bells and whistles). Then the GM can remove what he doesn't want. The overall layout for each section would allow sections to be placed side-by-side or end-to-end with doorways aligning. Something like this:
Modular Map Layout.jpg
Where the brown squares are where doorways would be located.

It sounds like some of you are suggesting an idea I had rolling around to make smaller "overlays" for the maps so that the GM could customize a map quickly. I thought I was just being silly (trying to make more work for myself), but given the discussion on this thread I will have to give it some serious consideration. These overlays would allow the GM to remove parts of the map that he didn't want or move parts of the map around ("the Bacta ward is over here now"). Each overlay would be sized to fit into one of the six parts of the larger section. [Divide the larger section between the doorways to give six (roughly) square parts.] The size restriction is to keep everything modular - keep the maps where they can be placed end-to-end or side-by-side. Other than the size restriction, these overlays would function almost exactly like Gameprinter's colony tiles. Perhaps I can work in a way to use the colony tiles as overlays.

I will continue with the larger sections as I originally planned, but I need to think more about how to do the smaller overlays. As always, I'm open to thoughts and suggestions.

[Kihmbar]

If you post some of your work, I'll steal them right under your nose!

Feel free to snag whatever you like. My current plan is to generate one complete section each month (December was the Medical Bay; I'm thinking about Engineering or a Command Bridge for January). I'll most likely post them for critique prior to completion, but I'll make sure to post the completed maps for folks to snag.

Your med bay was really nice. Have you seen the game Battlestations? It's got a lot of pre made starship compartments (and it's a really cool game too), they may come in handy!

I have Battlestations and have played it several times. [I've used some of the Battlestations missions as adventures or adventure hooks in the Star Wars RPG.] I'm going to pick up the expansions when I get a chance. The starship tiles from Battlestations gave me the idea for a modular starship map. However, I needed a section larger than a 5x5 grid. I thought that I could combine the idea behind some of the Battlestations tiles (like Engines and Damage Control) into one larger starship section (Engineering).