"Tonnage" is relative - you'd need to establish a standard that is unaffected by gravity.
Speaketh the Grognard: Work on this has already been done within the Traveller community, since the RTF is a good trope for a Trav campaign...and since I'm one of the users of that trope, I'm in a unique position to outline it.
When Marc Miller and GDW were designing the Traveller rpg, their standard was one displacement-ton of LHy -- it's base component is the most common in existence, it liquefies at a fixed temperature, has a fixed mass, and occupies a fixed volume.
In order to make it work for the game, they rounded a little, coming to 14 cubic (
) meters; their standard deckplan grid, however, was a square, 1.5x1.5 meters, with two squares equaling one d-ton. (Note that this was actually
four cubes, all 1.5mX1.5mX1.5m, measured volumetrically), totaling 13.5cu meters. To give an idea of scale, a 200 d-ton cargo cargo bay can hold 20-25 40' semi trailers; similarly, a
Los Angeles-class attack submarine (e.g.,
USS Dallas, from 'The Hunt for Red October') is roughly 660 d-tons (it's weird, because it's a tapering cylinder with an oddly-shaped sail).
Based on this, the Gator runs to roughly 60-75K d-tons, roughly a heavy cruiser or strike carrier in Trav. Since it carries a fairly heavy anti-capitol ship battery, I peg the Gator as being roughly equivalent to the Imperial Japanese Navy's (IJN) battleship
Ise (
http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/att...px-ise1944.png) in function, although the Gator has a
much larger fighter compliment, which is a consequence of its design.
This brings up the question of "How many Vipers?" I peg it as a maximum - allowing for shuttles - compliment of c.130, organized as four squadrons of 32, subdivided into 2 16-ship wings. This is so that it meshes with the 16 launch tubes outboard of both bays - the 'alert squadron' would be sitting on the rails, ready to launch en masse, while the others would be 'at the ready' - and with the visuals on-screen of 20+ fighters when a single squadron is referred to...IOW, when you hear "Launch Blue Squadron", all 32 of Blue's Viper's are going out of the tubes, from both sides of the ship, because you don't want split commands under fire -- Blue launches, then Silver Spar, then Red, etc.
This compliment would be cut in half if the Gator were transporting troops, since the troops would require shuttlecraft and berthing space.
Crew-wise, for a strike-carrier (which is how the Gal is set up in SASW), figure 130 Viper pilots, plus 12-20 shuttle pilots (two crew per shuttle, minimum, for 6-10 shuttles), c.700 flight crew and Viper/Shuttle maintenance (c.6 maintenance crew per ship, possible due to higher technology, and lower maintenance requirements), c.100 "bridge" crew (based on multiple watches of 20 Warriors each, which is the minimum seen during bridge shots), a minimum 700-Warrior Engineering section (engines, life support, computer, electronic/electrical systems, minimum 2 watches), a 50-Warrior unit of Security/Infantry/Commando and a 50 Warrior Medical section.....Call it about 1700 - 2000 permanent crew, with a possible emergency capacity of 2500-3000 (it's a warship, not a liner).
Again, note that these are maximum figures, as rigged for Viper operations. The numbers would change if the ship were carrying a lot of infantry/drop troops.
