A Concept: Nimitz Class Heavy Carrier

She has the equivalent level of firepower to a Kilrathi dreadnought (40 laser turrets), on top of which she's got two (or four, if you trust the description and not the table) more torpedo tubes than a Vesuvius and mass driver turrets; in my book, that's more heavily armed since the AMGs of most capships tend to do damage to armor and superstructure, rather than kill them outright like torpedoes tend to do - that's why destroyers are equipped with torpedoes as primary ship-killing weapons, instead of many banks of AMGs. This is probably the most number of laser turrets I've ever seen on a Confed ship, and they outnumber most of the other turrets on any other ship COMBINED, before or since the war - except the above named dreadnought. Plus she has six/four torpedo tubes, enough for any real cruiser in the fleet. The only other carrier I'm aware of which had this sort of torpedo-based firepower was the Tiger's Claw, which was designed to go it alone on occasion.

And she has better armor and shields than a Vesuvius, carries as many fighters, has more guns and torpedo tubes... yet manages to be 40000 tons lighter, and at the same size? I'm wondering why they didn't use some of THAT armor on the Vesuvius' hangar bay, so we couldn't kill it with torps -and- dumbfires. :D

IIRC, the Tiger's Claw also had multiple launch bays... and I don't see how they'd suddenly decide seven of them was better, especially since earlier classes of ships either had a huge hangar bay in the center for launch and recovery operations (like the Rangers) or maybe two launch bays and one recovery bay (like the Concordia-class, or the Confederation-class). Does this thing also have multiple hangars to recover fighters with, like the Hakaga-class supercarriers?

I'll be honest - I've seen too many supercarrier designs, especially after WC4 came out and people like David Borton were publishing their own 'improved' supercarriers... and the stats on this remind me of the TCS Destiny, but without the subspace AMGs and the supergun on the front. As I said before, I'd probably find another carrier design, something a little more logical for the period or after, to be more interesting - as it is, as a Confed comptroller, I'd have rejected this design right out because it tries to do too many things at once.. including being able to fight off smaller ships without fighters, via the torpedo tubes.
 
Despite all of this offensive firepower, I still say that a few squads of Longbows could roast it without much trouble if they had enough escort fighters.
 
Haess nailed it on the head. Logic. Considering the situation Confed was in during the Kilrathi war, they wouldn't really be looking at a Supercarrier design. Confed had no need for a supercarrier option. Quite the opposite, game fiction and the novels imply a growing focus on smaller ships. At the point your ship was being designed, Confed was in the middle of a strategically necessary drive towards smaller, faster carriers. They needed fighters on the front and numbers to match the Kilrathi. A supercarrier would take longer to build, require more resources and would not provide as much coverage along the frontlines. Designs like the Vesuvius and the Midway only came about during times of peace, when Confed could devote the resources to a supercarrier project. The Confederation class, though a wartime design, was introduced at an earlier point, when Confed still enjoyed some level of strategic parity, and had just driven the Kilrathi from the Vega Sector.

I say push your design back. Put it post Black Lance. Create the predecessor of the Midway, or a competing project as it seems like that's where you're heading anyways. Remove the Kilrathi War from your equation, hell, it might be interesting to borrow some ideas from Kilrathi warships, successful ones that, once victory had been achieved, Confed planners began to take apart and incorporate into their own designs.
 
Allrighty, I'll trim the laser cannons and remove the torpedo tubes. Will that be more sufficent. I'm currently modelling the ship in CAD and will post pics tommorow. And it takes a few years to design the Vesuvius, so designs on it must of started before the war ended.
 
Sylvester said:
Allrighty, I'll trim the laser cannons and remove the torpedo tubes. Will that be more sufficent. I'm currently modelling the ship in CAD and will post pics tommorow. And it takes a few years to design the Vesuvius, so designs on it must of started before the war ended.
Click to expand...

The Vesuvius was started towards the war's end, yes, though I suspect its roots were in some of the Black projects that were occuring in the last ten or so years of the war - remember the Behemoth, for example. The main thing about the Vesuvius is that it was the 'next step' in capship design - basically a conventional carrier, but scaled up in size and striking power, due to its fighter wings, PLUS a lot of armor. In concept, I'd have to say it was more akin to the supercruiser design or a modified Confederation-class dreadnought, in terms of its armor and armament.

It was somewhat faster than most carriers, tougher, and incorporated some of the Kilrathi innovations - including the ability to jump ships above a certain size and mass, though that too had some limitations, namely in the jump points that technology could exploit. Whether this was taken directly from the technology developed from the Hakaga, or developed indepently by Confed is not stated.. but it should be noted that the first ships were being completed some years after the War was finished, which indicates construction began either during the last year of the Kilrathi War, or just after. We don't know if they had to retool or revise the design to add any of the Kilrathi innovations, but we do know that this was different from the Kilrathi War-era designs because those were basically revised Rangers or Concordias, given the requirements of wartime.

However, even though it was a relatively new concept, the Vesuvius' design was still more akin to traditional Confed carriers and cruisers than the Nimitz previously shown was... and honestly, I'm a little leery of recycling current 'real world' ship class names, especially given the pattern in WC was to use completely NEW class-names, even if the naming traditions remained the same.

The Nimitz was far too heavily armed for most carriers... yet didn't have enough punch to be a proper ship-killer by itself, because of the limited number of torpedoes. It's too large to be anything but a supercarrier, yet was far lighter than it had any right to be, even as a carrier, given its size and the weapons it mounted, which would've made its mass probably comparable to a similarly equipped Vesuvius. It tries to do too many things at once (be a cruiser AND a carrier), and in doing so becomes a rather poor capship killer.
 
I'd probably suggest changing it enough, either in size, armor, fighter complement, or mass, just to make it different from the Vesuvius. Maybe find a reason it'd be rejected, beyond being too unconventional? :D
 
mainhull3yf.jpg


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These are the first renders of the carrier! Enjoy!
 
It does look like a nice cross between a Bengal and Vesuvius Carrier, which I like. I would love to see it in more detail though.
 
Just a quick question, was that done on AutoDesk inventor? I have been thinking of getting that but I wasn't sure how well it would work, but those features remind me of Inventor. I was just wondering what you thought of it if that is the software. Thanks.
 
The design, at least, seems to fit Confed tendencies. It's a very simplistic hull. Sleek, long lines, an easily accessible launch/landing bay, there don't look like too many inherent blindspots.
 
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