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Ships of the Expanse

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The Expanse is vast, and traversing the space between worlds in the solar system requires a ship. For a crew, a ship is freedom, home, safety, and a source of income, but also a source of responsibility and often debt. Out in space, other ships are potential targets, allies, or threats. The Ships of the Expanse offers details on many of the kinds of space ships characters in an Expanse game might encounter, or perhaps even own. From shuttles and racing pinnaces to lumbering ice-haulers and massive warships, the sourcebook describes them all. Ships of the Expanse also features information on  space stations and new rules for maintenance and repair, buying and selling cargo, new stunts and hazards, and much more.


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Reviews (1)
Discussions (11)
Customer avatar
Jon W September 24, 2023 3:13 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Book is great overall. The deck plans make half of the book useless. Can't zoom in with out it becoming pixelated.
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Customer avatar
Tolga C February 22, 2024 3:23 am UTC
Thank you for this review. I was two seconds away from purchasing this book just for the ship maps so that I could print them on a plotter for table top. You just saved me a 20$ and a host of frustration. I hope you get your money's worth at some point in this universe. Best wishes.
Customer avatar
JD S May 14, 2023 6:31 am UTC
Aside from the abject failure of the deck plans, what about the rest of the book? The series had fairly realistic ship movement; do the rules replicate that?

Or is it the usual WW1 dogfighting in vacuum?
Customer avatar
Richard W March 15, 2022 4:45 pm UTC
PURCHASER
This book is pretty great, but really needs to be accompanied by high resolution images of all the deckplans. Otherwise they're pretty useless, and I would question why they put so much effort into making them in the first place.
Customer avatar
Jussi M July 05, 2021 12:31 pm UTC
In an update on GreenRonin.com, co-author Ian Lemke expounds upon the complexities of writing a book like this:

"There are 28 ships detailed in this book, and we took a lot of time and care to get every one right. We wanted to [...] make sure that they were as realistic as possible."

Unfortunately, this is not quite as true as one might have hoped.
In TRULY realistic warship designs at this particular point in the Expanse timeline:

- Command Decks (Bridge, CIC, etc) of large ships are NOT placed at the bow of the ship, where even a single stray PDC round from an enemy ahead could knock it out, and where negative g-forces make all operations at crew stations impossible every time the ship changes heading (on small ships these effects are more marginal);

- Crew Quarters are NOT bunched into a single continuous stack of decks, where the whole off-shift crew would need to try to crowd through the same narrow avenues in case of a sudden call to stations;...See more
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Customer avatar
Jussi M July 05, 2021 2:55 pm UTC
For full disclosure: thus far, I have only seen the Kickstarter preview, comprising seven of those 28 ships.

However, of those seven, every single warship fails on every single point listed above — along with some other, rather odd points (e.g. why don't any of the ships, even the big destroyers, carry any small craft of any kind whatsoever?).

I foresee seeing the remaining 21 with a mixture of anticipation and trepidation, once the print edition arrives...
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Customer avatar
Gus B July 05, 2021 8:46 pm UTC
Wow. That's kinda depressing, I was really looking forward to this book coming out. Do they at least get the layouts of the ships we do see in the series correct?

Also, I've seen a lot of Spacedock, it's a wonderful source for in universe lore and the re-telling of what we could already find out for ourselves but this guy's sense of naval architecture is definitely stuck in StarWars/Trek/etc. The Expanse is supposed to be about how things would REALLY work given the strictures of good sense and actual physics. If the guys at Green Ronin had cast around a bit better, they could have referenced an (albeit aged) offering by Dream Pod 9 called the Jovian Chronicles, that is much more hard sci-fi (for all it's Gundam-esque stylings) than space opera will ever be.

Jussi if you ever decided to write a proper treatise on how hard sci-fi naval construction should proceed, I for one would happily read and disseminate it.
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Customer avatar
Jussi M July 05, 2021 10:49 pm UTC
As for the series ship layouts, no they don’t, but you really can’t blame Green Ronin for that — there are two very solid reasons for this:

One, the RPG has no connection whatsoever to the series production and its IP, so it references none of the material — designs, character likeness, lore, etc — generated for the series. The game’s deck plans e.g. for the Tachi/Rocinante thus derive from the books, not the TV series.

And two, the series ship layouts suffer from the all too common malady recognised in all too many SciFi ships, from the Space: 1999 Eagle, through the Millennium Falcon, on to the Nostromo, and many, many more — the interiors don’t really fit into the exteriors.
It’s impossible, or next to it anyway, to draw deck plans that line up AND fit inside the exterior geometry while staying anywhere near the indicated scale of the craft.

As for the treatise, that’s a very good idea — thanks! I should be able to cobble together a couple...See more
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Customer avatar
Volker S April 11, 2022 5:31 pm UTC
Like Gus I would happily read your work on this topic!
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Thomas B July 05, 2022 6:53 am UTC
The 'inside bigger than the outside' should only really work for a TARDIS. :)

The thing that bugs me is that some games (Traveller) makes it like subs in space, but you can't, realistically, manage living in space on ships without at least a variety of things that we just don't have on ISS or any ship we've ever built and a submarine isn't quite the right basis to create spaceship interiors.

If people are going to spend their entire lives in such vessels, no ability to go outside, there needs to be a bit more allowance for space (and the interior should not be magically extended without reflecting that outside).

There's a bit of a nautical sub comparison: In an attack sub, they tend to be smaller and more tight inside (and ones from WWII were absolutely claustrophobic, but they often had to come up to charge batteries and get some air) while a boomer has enough room you can job around the missile tubes in a loop.

I think if you were looking to make realistic...See more
Customer avatar
Tim L June 27, 2021 12:06 pm UTC
PURCHASER
The blurb no longer mentions anything about this being a pre-order, so does that mean that the actual final file is available here now? If so, how about an actual preview dear GR peeps?
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Customer avatar
Franck F July 01, 2021 8:03 pm UTC
PURCHASER
It is the real deal, I just downloaded it. 85 Mb PDF file. 147 pages, almost half of them are expanded rules on ships (ship creation, ships in action, life in a shipboard) and the rest is ship specifications with beautiful deck plans. A nice supplement, I'd recommend it.

The only drawback is that the ship deck plans are not high resolution enough to use them in a VTT (zooming on them, they do get pixelated quickly). I'd greatly appreciate if the product came with standalone image files with these decks plans.
Customer avatar
STEVEN T May 09, 2021 8:07 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Any updates on when this will be released?
Customer avatar
Daniel Q December 17, 2020 7:51 pm UTC
PURCHASER
What's the status on this? Any ETA?
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Customer avatar
Daniel Q January 13, 2021 12:31 am UTC
PURCHASER
The silence is deafening on this one.
Customer avatar
Dirk K December 15, 2020 8:54 pm UTC
PURCHASER
It is an expensive joke from Green Ronin, I’m afraid. Buy now, get nothing and maybe you get something when we maybe work on it. Very disappointing for paying customers.....
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Customer avatar
Travis H January 19, 2021 5:14 pm UTC
Technically not, considering a form of this book already went to the kickstarter backers, it mostly exists.

When the rest of us are going to get it here I don't know lol
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Customer avatar
Dirk K January 19, 2021 6:36 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I was a backer an never get something. But at the end a complete book must be the goal and Green Ronin is always over the date. That is very disapointing
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Customer avatar
Travis H February 13, 2021 3:57 pm UTC
I misread the update (found out about the kickstarter too late to back) where they said the deck plans had already been sent to backers as a version of the book had been sent out. That was my bad.
Customer avatar
Thierry H November 19, 2020 5:15 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I will try to be clear, is it possible to download it now, because previously it was said that the PDF would be there for the 17th of november...?
Customer avatar
Thierry H November 18, 2020 11:02 pm UTC
PURCHASER
I don't really understand, the PDF is available in a Beta version or it will be available later on?
Customer avatar
VICKI R L September 22, 2020 2:13 am UTC
PURCHASER
Will this be usable for vtt?
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Customer avatar
Erik F March 04, 2021 6:29 pm UTC
As usable as any pdf is.
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Customer avatar
Franck F August 30, 2021 9:59 pm UTC
PURCHASER
Yes and No:
-- You can technically use the images of the ships for your VTT
-- The images are not high resolution enough to scale them well without heavily pixelating.

I would grealy appreciate if Green Ronin either released a high resolution PDF OR released the maps as images in high resolution!
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Customer avatar
Lloyd R October 12, 2021 8:21 pm UTC
"The images are not high resolution enough to scale them well without heavily pixelating."
To what degree is this true? At 1200 pixels? 2100? 3500?
I ask cuz the image size in pixels matters immensely.
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Customer avatar
Franck F October 21, 2021 6:06 pm UTC
PURCHASER
For example:
page 74, the floordeck image for Insertion Dropship skiff is only 623x856, covering three decks. It's a small ship so it may work
page 81, the floordeck image for the Murphy-class light destroyer is the same resolution, but it covers very 8 large decks. You'll never be able to get it to miniature scale without a huge amount of pixelation.
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Product Information
Gold seller
Artist(s)
Rule System(s)
Pages
144
Publisher Stock #
GRR6607e
File Size:
89.36 MB
Format
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File Last Updated:
June 14, 2021
This title was added to our catalog on September 21, 2020.