Need help settling an internal debate

[do not disturb]

why does everyone make sapceships with wings? its not like you need wings in space.

that said, its coming along nicely.

[Agent ONE]

That last one looks really good.

I'd like to see a rendition with texture and battle damage.

[Lynx7725]

why does everyone make sapceships with wings? its not like you need wings in space.

that said, its coming along nicely.

Oh yes you do. Wings provide:

1. ideal placement points for verniers (due to moments around the CG)

2. a place to stick additional ordnance so that accidental detonation don't harm to hull

3. a place to stick additional sensors so that (with a sufficiently long wingspan) they can be used to provide triangulation and ranging information with accuracy

4. a place to stick comms gear so that you can have good coverage (depending on whether you can stick a omni-directional comms gear in a position where 360 degree sphere coverage is possible).

Etc. etc. I didn't say anything about needing aerodynamic wings though.

I have some comments on the design, but it's 3am here, I need to work tomorrow.. so I'll save it for tomorrow.

[Knight26]

Linx just about hit it on the head for why this ship has "wings" and while they are referred to as wings, it is also explicitly stated that they are not lift producing devices and that the ship is not intended for atmospheric operations. Except maybe in extreme emergency like crash landings into the ocean.

[do not disturb]

why does everyone make sapceships with wings?  its not like you need wings in space. 

that said, its coming along nicely.

Oh yes you do. Wings provide:

1. ideal placement points for verniers (due to moments around the CG)

2. a place to stick additional ordnance so that accidental detonation don't harm to hull

3. a place to stick additional sensors so that (with a sufficiently long wingspan) they can be used to provide triangulation and ranging information with accuracy

4. a place to stick comms gear so that you can have good coverage (depending on whether you can stick a omni-directional comms gear in a position where 360 degree sphere coverage is possible).

Etc. etc. I didn't say anything about needing aerodynamic wings though.

I have some comments on the design, but it's 3am here, I need to work tomorrow.. so I'll save it for tomorrow.

alrighty then!

lets call them section B and section C and stay away from the word "wings" shall we.

when i think of perfection as far as designed for space travel/battle, i think of the Borg cube or something of the like. theres nothing fancy about it but it does what its supposed to without the all bells and whistles....or the wings.

obviously knight26 has no desire to make a cube ship but its nice to see something different(without wings) time to time. either way its looking good but i had to ask.

BTW, what the heck is this for? a game? a contest? sh!ts and giggles?

[Knight26]

ACtually I like the cube or sphere design as well for ships, very efficient and practical. The reason this is designed the way it is is mostly due to the traditions of the races involved in buidlign them. I try to give every race its own ship style. This one is built by a company named ASF, which has a good grounding in nautical and aviation designs and so by tradition those aspects carry over. THe Lodrans tend to have ships that look a bit more like sea life in overall outline, just far blockier. Their ships also all started out as submersibles, but aafter they went into sspace they ditched most if not all the aerodynamic features keeping only the basic outlines. The Drashig ships all look like backwards beatles, and many other races go with the morre blocky designs. The only ships I actually put aerodynamic considerations into are the actual trans or endo atmospheric craft, fighters, bomber, dropships, light corvettes and such. Also you can call them wings as that is what I typically call them, though like I said before they are that way only by name, not by function. Also, this is for my books, I design the ships so that I stay consistant in their descriptions and because I just like to, so a little for $h!ts and giggles yeah. Oh and haterist since you got the earlier question right, if you send me your picture I can render you in scene with any of the craft you like.

[do not disturb]

Oh and haterist since you got the earlier question right, if you send me your picture I can render you in scene with any of the craft you like.

picture? of me? that can't be done. i don't have any pictures of me. the last one i took was on 11/26/99 which was the exact date my state ID was issued. i don't take pictures because it only turns into evidence. but thanks for the offer.

[Knight26]

Oh and haterist since you got the earlier question right, if you send me your picture I can render you in scene with any of the craft you like.

picture? of me? that can't be done. i don't have any pictures of me. the last one i took was on 11/26/99 which was the exact date my state ID was issued. i don't take pictures because it only turns into evidence. but thanks for the offer.

LOL, ok how about a ship then, I'll name one after you in the books, what class of ship do you prefer and on which side, Good guys, bad guys, worse guys, or neutral?

[ladyraven]

It is definately looking better but I think the nose could stay the same still if the "winspan" were extended. Just a suggestion from one aeroapace enginner to another. That way the "nose" doesn't stand out so badly.

[Lynx7725]

I am considering maybe chopping out the foward most portion of the launch deck to give it a more open look.

More or less the same idea I had but you expressed it better.. I'm not fully supportive though, because it becomes a large target and potential kill zone for the attack crafts taking off, and because it's an overdone concept in sci-fi.

BTW, how are the attack crafts supposed to launch? Catapult/ mass drivers or under their own power?

Also to add a sense of scale I threw in an old Saratoga model I pulled off the net some time ago.

Uhm. This is where I get a bit skeptical. Just how many attack crafts is this ship supposed to carry? For now, I assume (based on your design requiring 3 launch areas) it's carrying in the vicinity of about 150 attack crafts (roughly doubling a CVN's compliment).

Factoring that space attack crafts have to be more comprehensive and probably bulkier, factoring weapons are likely to be bulkier (for more range and damage needed), factoring additional living quarters and facilities needed in space.. I think the ship has to be maybe doubled in size.

[Wabbit]

Made a little progress last night, plan to do more this afternoon and evening.

Looks better.

I am considering maybe chopping out the foward most portion of the launch deck to give it a more open look. 

What Lynx said; that will be a potential kill zone, the launch tube in the bow would be practicaly uncovered by its focussed opening. Unless you plan on using shields, but if that fails, your fighters are shot before they can clear the bow area. I'd rather then put the launch bays in the 'wings' which the tube from the left and right are protected by the hull the front, aft, top and bottom by a wide variety of turrets, AA flak-guns and missile-launchers. (Galactica had no wings on its sides, thus its launch and landing bays were shot to pieces or kamikazed every time, very ineffective). Or add more large 'sprouts' that stick out of the bow, that might help cover the fighters when they are most vulnerable.

The size of this cap-ship should be at least three to five times bigger than that sea-carrier, because we're talkin about space; three-dimensional fights, three times the strike crafts to cover the zone around this ship. It needs more equipment to scan its area, targeting enemies, really big-ass anti-capship guns, large torpedoes, more armor plating to stand on its own (current aircraft carriers always have the luxury to have a contingent of support ships to defend themselves, in space you need to be multi-roled and to be prepared for nasty surprises that suddenly arrives by hyperspace or warp). And it should be able to harbor large shuttlecrafts, corvettes etc. and space to store food and ordnance for long missions. Should really be bigger.

[Knight26]

Ok, more progress tonight, I should have all the armor "islands" now, but may add more to the viper area up front, the wide blue area. Tomorrow I will start on adding the weapons and other salient features like additional sensors, docking points etc... Also those blue areas on the fighter hangers are tentitively being used as corvette and transport docks. They also have cargo lifts. The cargo bays are accessed directly from the flight bays so I may add cargo bay doors later anyway, but we will see, since there really is no need. I appreciate all the suggestions and look forward to your future comments. I'm also going to add a couple observation bubbles and start texturing it tomorrow, also I decided not to cut the roof out of the front of the bomber launch area.

Lynx, in regards to the number of strike craft it carries. A Tacit Class carrier carries a compliment of:

20 bombers (1 squadron/wing [bSC, Bomber, Space Carrier])

26 attack craft (2 squadrons [ASC, Attack, Space Carrier])

65 interceptor/heavy fighters (5 squadrons [iSC, Intercept, Space Carrier])

312 medium/superiority fighters (24 squadrons [FSC, Fighter, Space Carrier])

39 light/recon fighters (3 squadrons [FSC and RSC, Recon, Space Carrier])

13 dropships (varying type) (1 Squadron [DSC, Dropship, Space Carrier])

30 shuttles (even mix exo and trans-atm) (1 squadron [sSC, Shuttle, Space Carrier])

So that is a grand total of 505 craft, plus smaller auxillaries, work pods, escape ships, etc...

Depending on where they launch from, launch is either, under own power, or using grappler beams to throw them out of the ship.

And, becuase I know it will come up it has a crew compliment of just under 6000 including marines and civilian staff. Officers can even have family members onboard as long as both parents serve aboard ship in either a military or civlian function.

And, the Tacit Class is not even the largest carrier in space, the GF Barker class are larger and carry more craft, and confed has one or two classes larger then the Tacits. However, after even 100 yrs in service the Tacits are still one of the most advanced class of ship in space, and are coveted not only because of their capability but the material they are made of.

Ok, I've written enough for now, on to the pictures.

Edited September 2, 2004 by Knight26

[Lynx7725]

500+ crafts and 6000 staff? Dude, where am I going to put the toilet rolls for the people, much less the spare parts for the vehicles?

Had the design been a more "conventional" launch and recovery bay type, I think the size might have been able to take the numbers you quoted.. but because of the pass-through bays (which I presume to mean and end-to-end passage through the ship), the amount of space is reduced.

In combat situations, you would need the "flight deck" cleared so that you can conduct flight ops right? So you would need to park the spacecrafts somewhere else.. I guess you can make use of the ceiling above the flight deck and rack them there, but that's a hazard too.

One thing though, that long flight deck is a great place to play soccer on.

Do you have a shot of your typical attack craft (say, a BSC) in scale next to it? That'll really tell us whether the number of attack crafts you desire to carry would really be feasible.

I'm guessing that assuming each craft is on average twice the size of an F-14 (reasonable for a spacecraft, I think, and assuming attack crafts are small, one/ two crew affairs), the current size might be enough to take on 300 spacecraft, but it would be very cramp and a strictly military ship.. hard to guesstimate the number of crew on board there.

As for the design, I think it looks good, just that the bow opening still looks strange to me. I'm thinking that the spikes there can be the grappler mechanism to catapult the attack crafts out.

BTW, what's the fleet tactics governing the use of this ship? Does this work in fleet engagements or it's supposed to be independent? That makes a big difference in terms of storage/ fuel/ expendables capacity planning, etc. etc. which would influence ship designs.

[Knight26]

Actually the flight bays are arranged with the runway down the middle of each bay and the fighters parked on either side. There is plenty of room in front of and behind the parking areas to store the spares and the deck immediately beneath, or above depending on the where it is, is also used for ammo and spares storage. As for other space problems, figure that each deck of the centraul hull has a little over 800,000 square feet of deck space. That and the central hull has over twenty decks if you include the dropship hanger and the raised area at the aft end, twelve of which not quite run the full length of the ship. I will have to do a cross section later.

At the end of the first page is a picture of a bomber launching out of the bomber flight deck. All the rest of the craft are probably about a quarter that size, and the interceptor is probably on the order of super hornet scale. The number of fighters and attack craft is feasible, I have fit checked it several times. The reason for such a small craft is easy, these people have been in space for over 1000 yrs, so the development of such small craft is feasible. I will post a picture of the hanger/flight bays with the craft in them later, or near them to give a sense of scale.

Something to consider as well, the Saratoga there is the same size as most carriers and they carry a crew of around 5000. So, you're talking a very advanced craft that is probably 20 times its size and only requires another 1000 people to run it.

It typically operates with a full battlegroup, with about a dozen ships cruiser sized and up, plus another dozen corvettes. These ships would rarely if ever travel alone, but has enough armament and supplies to care for itself for quite some time.

The ship also has plenty of replenishable supplies, including a full farm deck with hydroponically grown foods, and more in the space between the inner and outer hulls. Of course if the hull is breached these areas are immediate exposed to space, but the food is flash frozen. Meat onboard is taken care of by way of rapidly cloned and grown genetically engineered animals that are kept in suspended animation, or not quite absolute 0 storage until needed. TP, what's TP, don't you know how to use the sea-shells, lol. Despite the farm resources the ship does have to resupply regularly to get other consumable items. The ship also has facilities to produce its own fuel, bussard ram scoops, bring in stellar hydrogen to be processed for fueling the ship and fighters.

Hope that answers some questions, I'm off to bed, tomorrow we will have weapons.

[Lynx7725]

Opps! I was under the mistaken impression that a CVN got by with 2000 people; if that is the case 6000 for a ship this size is reasonable (if a bit low..).

That small crafts will be reduced to the size of Hornets is not outside the realm of possibilities, I think, so it's fairly reasonable. Still, the number of small crafts is still stretching my imagination a bit.

I guess it is possible to fit so many into the space, I'm just not sure whether there's room for a maintenance team to work on any one given craft, or have enough room to do the mad scramble of bombing/ ammoing up in a combat situation.

In addition to this, as there is a community/ social aspect to things, there has to be some social/ communal space too. Depending on how big the civilian population is on the ship, this could eat into valuable space on the ship itself.

Since this ship is designed to be part of a battlegroup (but yet somewhat self-sufficient), then some design considerations can be lessened (such as spare parts, expendables, etc.). The ship just need to maintain a sufficient stock for say, 3 months, rather than having huge stores for long-haul passages.

[do not disturb]

Oh and haterist since you got the earlier question right, if you send me your picture I can render you in scene with any of the craft you like.

picture? of me? that can't be done. i don't have any pictures of me. the last one i took was on 11/26/99 which was the exact date my state ID was issued. i don't take pictures because it only turns into evidence. but thanks for the offer.

LOL, ok how about a ship then, I'll name one after you in the books, what class of ship do you prefer and on which side, Good guys, bad guys, worse guys, or neutral?

i'd like a simple fighter with decent firepower, hyperspace capabilities, and definitely a cloaking device. i figure its good enough to take on any other fighters in the same class, make a fast get away, and creep up on my prey undetected.

if the "worse guys" are worse than the bad guys, i want to be the worst guy of the worse guys.

oh and i agree in getting rid of the launch tube in the front...perhaps you can have it so fighters are launch out the sides of the front section? that way you can have multiple launch tubes and deply fighters at a faster rate. plus i'd make some kind of dock or something for larger ships, possibly on the underside of the ship as well as escape pods for the crew....you're gonna need them when i come to destroy your ship.

[Knight26]

Let's go blow something to hell, yes the Wolfsbane is now armed, not fully but armed. I just have to add the point defense turrets around the hangers and a couple on the engines. After that the other salient features like the sensor arrays, escape pods hatches, and docking points. I will also start on texturing the ship.

Haterist: I'm keeping the launch tube on this one, the later replacement will have the side launch tubes instead of the single foward launcher, remember this is to be a rushed design. Also, those big blue pads are the docking areas for larger craft like transports, corvettes, etc...

Edited September 3, 2004 by Knight26

[David Hingtgen]

Are those laser/energy turrets or somesuch? Because conventional large turrets usually have several decks of structure below them, and if that's the case then it looks like 50% of the hull volume is occupied by turret barbettes!

[Knight26]

They are Plasma-LASER, PLASER, turrets, later models have a beam capability added, so not too much space is needed below decks. It also has a pair of heavy Plasma Beam cannons, and 20 point defense turrets, minimum of two per hanger bay and engine. I think I may have gone a little overboard on the number of turrets though, need to cut a few, just have to figure out where.

Edited September 3, 2004 by Knight26

[David Hingtgen]

You could just remove a few, but upgrade the rest to triple-turrets, thus not reducing the number of barrels.

[Knight26]

Ok the exterior is all but finished. I just need to add the external observation bubbles and windows to the flight control spoilers, and the control thrusters all over the place. I can't do much more right now becuase adding all the escape pod hatches put on so many faces that it is lagging the machine. I guess I need to break down and get some more ram. Ok, what was added, those white pads are the sensor clusters, there are about 25 of them. I added the escape pod hatches, there are a lot of those, I lost count and will inventory them later. I also added all the point defense turrets. I also added textures to the whole ship, those may be editted or replaced, but I like it so far. I will start on the hangers tomorrow, model them seperately then insert them, make it easier. As for the number of turrets I have about 6 or 8 I may remove. The old design had 58, if I counted right and this new one has 69. Of course it is late and I am getting crossed eyed so I may have miscounted.

[Akilae]

Maybe try to figure out the arcs of fire for each turret, I can see a few that might hit your own ship if there were no built-in limiters.

Also, the rear of your ship seems to be something of a blind spot for all of your turrets. Get close enough, right behind your ship, and I can fire straight into your hangers without any turrets shooting at me. Hey, might even fly into your hanger bay and drop a few heavy bombs

Somehow I feel inspired to post my own designs... bah, boys and their toys :-p

[Knight26]

Actually there are smaller point defense turrets by the hanger entrances and exits to all the hanger bays. The main turrets also do have cut out/no fire zones that keep them from shooting the ship. Pretty much ever turrets since WW2 has had some kind of cut out zone, heck on LHA where they have their mairnes stand with Stinger missiles they have a ring that they stand in with two broomsticks that keep them from moving too far.

[EXO]

I like the design... aesthetically there's too many turrets... any way to diversify the external weapons... do they retract into the ship? Sorry that's a lot of reading, maybe you already anwered that.

[Knight26]

Yeah I am probably going to drop about 6-8 turrets, as for being retractable, no they are not, this is a warship and force projection is a big deal. Imagine being in something like a small cruiser and seeing that big beast baring down on you, all its turrets pointed your way, me, I think I'd surrender. If I saw that same ship with no visible turrets I may try and take my chances. The only ships I have with retracting turrets are smuggler craft and the point defense weapons on large warships.

[Knight26]

Ok, another update. I added wing hangers, but upon doing so I realized that I forgot a few details, plus I am having problems getting the atmosphere shield generators textures to cooperate. I will fix that later. I also forgot to add the grappler catapults and the repulsor field generators that serve to slow incoming fighters when they land. Those should be easy to add though. Easier then adding all the doors were. Anyway onto the pictures.

[Knight26]

Here's a close up of where the quick reaction squadrons launch out off, I may later add doors, but making a door for this openning will be a pain in the you know what.

[Knight26]

Final approach, the four wing hangers are color coded to help make sure pilots land in the right place, plus the ventral hangers are upside down relative to the rest of the ship to maximize deck space.

[Knight26]

Update Time:

I spent most of the day on this, the hangers are finished, except for a few details that may be changed, including the ceiling structure, catapult textures, and add some support equipment, trucks, weapons trailers, etc... I deleted about ten turrets from the exterior, cleaned up the hull a lot in the process. Now the hull just needs to be "personnalized" for the Wolfsbane, with battle damage, registry tatoos, etc... Thing is I really can't do that right now because, I need to slam another 512MB->1GB of RAM into my system first. The design is starting to make the system seriously lag, too many bits and pieces. Anyway onto the pics, the first is of the exterior of the ship.

[Knight26]

Ok, this one is of the hangers. Top row is the launch end, bottom the recovery end. From left to right they are the upper port fighter bay (there are four), the bomber deck, and the dropship deck. It might be hard to see in the pictures but the blue bars on the deck of launch tube are the catapult emitters, floor and ceiling. More powerful ones are along the walls. The fighter bays can launch up to three fighters at once on the catapults, more under own power. The bomber deck only one at a time but it can have two bombers staged together at once, launch one after the other. The drop ship bay can launch two at once, out of two seperate launchers, but has little call to do so. Anyway on the recovery end, the yellow disks are inertial dampner field generators, they slow incoming craft considerably, not quite stopping them, keeps an out of control fighter from crashing badly, and enemy missiles from penetrating at high speed. The blue areas around the entrances and exits are the atmosphere shield generators, each portal except the one the quick reaction squadrons launch out of have two sets of field generators, just in case one fails. All portals then have closing doors just in case of total shield failure. The shields are quite efficient too, each field can stop up to 99.9% of any gasses that attempt to pass through. Field density is 8 per foot, and a typical emitter is five feet in depth, so that is 40 fields per generator. So each shield unit only allows one in 1x10^80 gas molecules through, so the ship does outgas, but not to any noticable degree.

One last thing, on the large decks, like the bomber and dropship, the structure up in the ceiling is a storage area, that is where they keep some consumables and a lot of spares. The fighter decks do as well, but not nearly as much so.

Oh one last things, where is a good place to buy memory, at a low price?

Edited September 5, 2004 by Knight26

[Kin]

That's really cool.. I can imagine u must have used alot of ram. It's looks complicated to work on the inside of the ship. I can't wait to see the rendered version.

[Knight26]

Just about done:

I slammed a gig of ram into my machine today and all but finished the design. I fixed a couple small things on the flight decks, but some detail work may still go there. I also added the manuevering thrusters, the observation windows to the flight control decks and the registry to the sides of the engine nacelles. I also added the old battle damage textures from the old design, they don't fit the same way, but they are close enough for now. There is very little left to do, just add some observation decks, maybe a couple more thruster packs, refit the damage texture and maybe recolor it. Right now the damage is too red, I need to gray and brown it out some more to make it look more like battle damage, and may remake it a bit more as well.

Let me know what you think.

[Knight26]

And the registry picture, onto her sister ships now:

Edited September 6, 2004 by Knight26

[Knight26]

Time for the siblings.

The first is the UCSBS - Trib'Kibal the second in the series, the only notable design differences is that it carries what was originally intended to be the standard beam cannon load out, of six beam cannons. The Wolfsbane was pressed into service early and therefore never received the additional four beam cannons. The Trib'Kibal was also pressed into service easly and never recieved its asteroid cannon, mostly because of delays in the weapons production.

[Knight26]

Next up the UCSBS - Quiness. After the Trib'Kibal went online it was decided that the Tacit's needed more beam cannons so four additional beam cannons, those originally slated for the Wolfsbane, were added onto the Quiness. The Quiness is also the first to mount the three barrelled rapid fire asteroid cannon. However becasue of its additonal armament the captain's of the Quiness have tended to use it more aggressively and therefore it has taken more damage over the years, which prompted space force leaders to decrease the beam cannon load out on all additional ships.