Confed battleship design

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Vinman

Vice Admiral
I went and designed what I figure Confed battleships might have looked like before they fell out of favor. I had pretty much nothing to go on, so I tried to incorporate typical battleship features (heavy armor, big guns) with a hull that combines the boxiness of pre-war designs with some of the aesthetics of later designs like the Confederation-class dreadnoughts.

I don't really know what sort of big gun reigned supreme during the early 2600s, but my guess is that they were beefed up anti-matter guns. The laser armament is pretty much a logical step up from that of lighter capital ships.

Illustrious-Class Battleship (circa 2635)
Length: 950 meters
Mass: 45,000 tonnes
Max Velocity: 150 k/s
Criuse Velocity: 100 k/s
Max Y/P/R: 1/1/1 deg/s

Armament:
Dual Heavy Anti-Matter Gun Turrets (4)
Dual Laser Turrets (28)

illustrious.jpg
 
You do realise that that thing is three times larger than a Nimitz class carrier, and yet masses half of the Nimitz?

That means your "ship" has the density of styrofoam. Or worse.

950x100x50 = 4750000m^3 (I'm making some assumptions)

45,000 metric tons = 45 000 000 kilograms

Therefore, density of your ship = 9.47kg/m^3

Density of air is around 1.25kg/m^3

Density of styrofoam is around 100kg/m^3 and Iron is around 7874kg/m^3

So to have a base density of iron, your ship needs to be around 7500*4750000/2 (I'm assuming that your ship is around half air)

=around 18 million tons.

EDIT: nice ship design though.
 
Maybe its hollow, not mentioning, decks,etc, just the outer hull plating.
BTW, No torpedo tubes?They're good for long-range engagements
 
dacis2 said:
You do realise that that thing is three times larger than a Nimitz class carrier, and yet masses half of the Nimitz?
It is odd, but I based the mass on other comparably-sized ships

fongsaunder said:
Maybe its hollow, not mentioning, decks,etc, just the outer hull plating.
BTW, No torpedo tubes?They're good for long-range engagements
I figure torpedoes would be carried by destroyers and cruisers because they lack the armor to get up close and personal with enemy warships
 
Still, sometimes is pertinent to have the option of a long range engagement, you don't want to go in guns blazing if you've taken some damage already for example.

And don't worry about the mass thing, I'm a Weberite, so I'm kinda touchy about these kind of things.

Maybe I'll do a "Great Remassing" for all Wing Commander capital ships.
 
On ship mass: I'd go with about 55,000 tons based on the description in Action Stations of "fifty-thousand-plus ton battlewagons".

On torpedoes: recall that prior to the war, torpedoes capable of penetrating existing battleship phase shields had not yet been developed, so the existing torpedoes would be limited to vessels that could not carry heavy guns (i.e. destroyers and smaller).
 
I don't really know what sort of big gun reigned supreme during the early 2600s, but my guess is that they were beefed up anti-matter guns. The laser armament is pretty much a logical step up from that of lighter capital ships.

Plasma Guns were the centerline weapons on the battleships in Action Stations. I don't think we see Anti-Matter Guns until a bit later.
 
Ijuin said:
On ship mass: I'd go with about 55,000 tons based on the description in Action Stations of "fifty-thousand-plus ton battlewagons".

On torpedoes: recall that prior to the war, torpedoes capable of penetrating existing battleship phase shields had not yet been developed, so the existing torpedoes would be limited to vessels that could not carry heavy guns (i.e. destroyers and smaller).
My point on ship's mass is that even though its canon, its completely illogical in a Physics sense unless they use mass-lightening tech. That thing's less dense than STYROFOAM.
 
dacis2 said:
My point on ship's mass is that even though its canon, its completely illogical in a Physics sense unless they use mass-lightening tech. That thing's less dense than STYROFOAM.

Or else there are large empty areas of the ship which aren't counted in the basic mass listing there, which is possible, since I don't recall if even current ship listings state the mass of things like fuel, crew, munitions, etc... although their mass is minor compared to that of the superstructure. I don't know, for example, whether they count atmosphere in the mass equation there, neither storage or generation of such.

There's not nearly enough data to say 'the ship is as dense as styrofoam', since you're also assuming it's a homogenous mass, and that it's all composed of one substance/material. HEck, for all we know, half the furnishings or walls inside ARE composed of something with something less dense than styrofoam, or the bulkheads are quite thin and light, but remarkably strong.
 
I really don't care about the mass, but the "empty spaces" theory is not very sound in this particular case...
Battleships are not know for their spacious, cavernous interiors... This ship should be packed to the gills with reactors, shield generators, lots of plating, the works.

Even if you account for the crew's living space and corridors, this beast should have been a hell lot heavier. Mind you, it's not a carrier, no big empty decks, maybe a small hangar for a couple of fighters and shuttles.

I'd leave the mass at whatever amout the creator wanted, but let us not pull weak explanations from the thin air...
 
The mass numbers on WC are arbitrary, it's sci-fi, there's no profund reasoning behid it. The impact it has on story and gameplay is none.
 
dacis2 said:
Still, sometimes is pertinent to have the option of a long range engagement, you don't want to go in guns blazing if you've taken some damage already for example.

On a battleship, the giant main batteries are the long range engagement option.

And don't worry about the mass thing, I'm a Weberite, so I'm kinda touchy about these kind of things.

What the hell does that even mean? Focusing on weird artificial numbers instead of horrible writing?

Oh! 5,000 of the missiles fratricided! I can ignore the horrible marriage now.

Maybe I'll do a "Great Remassing" for all Wing Commander capital ships.

Don't bother, you'd be the only person that cares.
 
meh, whatever. speaking of bad writing, did you read Forstchen's Star Trek novel? Now THAT's bad writing.

On the guns thing, do guns have the same range and accuracy as missiles? I always thought they were.... kinda short ranged.

Must have thought wrong.
 
Haesslich said:
HEck, for all we know, half the furnishings or walls inside ARE composed of something with something less dense than styrofoam, or the bulkheads are quite thin and light, but remarkably strong.

Two words: Transparent aluminum.
 
Actually, there are no eels here.

And I dare you to try and explain how Weber's recent HH books haven't to hell.

About the guns, I know in real life that a battleships main guns are more accurate than a missile.
 
dacis2 said:
meh, whatever. speaking of bad writing, did you read Forstchen's Star Trek novel? Now THAT's bad writing.

On the guns thing, do guns have the same range and accuracy as missiles? I always thought they were.... kinda short ranged.

Must have thought wrong.
Guns are straightforward firing, well, guns, enemy ships have a chance to evade them. They need to be recharged by a reactor (excluding stormfires) but are unlimited, considering the gun capacitor and the reactor's power.

Torpedoes are homing and long-range. They can be shot down but can home towards enemy capital ships. They are also limited to the number a bomber/capship can carry.

CapShip Missiles are just Mega-Torpedoes, but slower
 
Halman said:
Actually, there are no eels here.

And I dare you to try and explain how Weber's recent HH books haven't to hell.

About the guns, I know in real life that a battleships main guns are more accurate than a missile.
I won't cause I agree. Have you seen his writing schedule by the way, it explains the crappy quality he's turning out. He plans to write 4 books this year and 4 next year. He's a novel factory or something.

Anyway, a battleship's guns in real life being more accurate than a missile? Are you sure?
 
I don't think that guns are more accurate than missiles in terms of the percentage of shots that hit, but guns have the advantage of a high rate of fire--those huge Dual Plasma Turrets could knock out a fighter in one shot (if they hit), and refire every couple of seconds.

Anyway, if you want realism on mass, let's look at historical battleships:

The Iowa class (and the Japanese Yamato class) had a dry tonnage of about 65,000 tons, and were about 300 meters long, with a beam of 40 meters and a draft of 12 meters (height is roughly 20 meters from keel to deck) Loosely speaking, you are tripling those dimensions for your Confed battleship (although your ship will be maybe 50% wider in the beam) . Given new, lighter materials and the lack of need for stability in water, I could imagine that it has about a quarter the mass per unit volume of a WWII battleship. This loosely puts it in the 500,000 ton range. Properly speaking, of course, all of the WC non-carrier capships are underweight by a factor of about ten.
 
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