Spaceship turret limiting factors

[Sea Skimmer]

Unless the nuclear weapon bursts after missing or otherwise alongside, directional protection is still relevant and useful. Nuclear effects in deep space, unlike on within an atmosphere, are entirely directional after all, and I'd tend to assume you'll be able to prevent a nuclear weapon from going off anywhere exceptionally close as a design basis. If you can't the battle is lost anyway.

You actually wont need that much armor to significantly reduce the effect of nuclear weapons at range against equipment. The tantalum shielding used to harden Minuteman missile guidance computers for example was only .025in thick. Protecting the crew is highly desirable since you can't physically harden the individual crewmen that much, though some effort can be made, but then, its futile to protect the crew if the ship is easily crippled as a fighting unit. They'll just die anyway. The combat area for the crew is likely to make up only a small portion of the ships hull volume.

[Irbis]

This is what makes Ion Cannon in SW work:



Now, the only part visible on Star Destroyer turret is one labelled 'ion tip' on the picture. Everything else needs to fit under armour. Does it make more sense now? It's not just the small moving part on the side.

[Simon_Jester]

Unless the nuclear weapon bursts after missing or otherwise alongside, directional protection is still relevant and useful.

Er... perhaps I was unclear, I totally agree with this.

You actually wont need that much armor to significantly reduce the effect of nuclear weapons at range against equipment. The tantalum shielding used to harden Minuteman missile guidance computers for example was only .025in thick. Protecting the crew is highly desirable since you can't physically harden the individual crewmen that much, though some effort can be made...

I don't know, you could probably wrap a man in fortieth-inch tantalum foil...

No seriously, I totally agree with you. I'm a big fan of directional armor schemes on spacecraft, look up my SDNW4 stuff if you don't believe me.

[Sea Skimmer]

I don't know, you could probably wrap a man in fortieth-inch tantalum foil...

That's more or less what Demron fabric is though the exact compound is proprietary. Use that on the man, then put him in an shielded seat with a canopy inside the citadel. The problem though will remain fast neutrons. High density material doesn't work on them very well, but hydrogen does so you'll need to make sure the crew is behind the propellent tanks unless you can afford several meter thick concrete armor.

[Imperial528]

I have a quick question.

So at the moment I am working on a space battleship, and I have run into an issue. With the way the turrets are set up, they have 0 gun depression (however they have a 90 degree elevation arc and the pivot is behind the traverse axis so they can easily fire at something and track something directly above them).

Were I to raise the guns up a little bit I would be able to add in a few degrees (2-10) of depression, depending on the exact turret's location on the hull. Would this be worth it? Note that the distance between the two furthers gun turrets vertically is 260.5' from the centers of the lenses, so the "dead zone" for aiming is not all that large when accounting for things such as beam diffraction.

[Stark]

You know its in space, right? Is the combat particularly high-thrust or high crossing angle? Or is this just a problem that exists if you apply orthodox thinking?

[Imperial528]

Yes, I know that I could easily rotate the ship. However, I'd rather have all angles covered before requiring maneuvers. At point-blank ranges it would be a real issue against a more agile opponent.

I'm not particularly worried about it, but it just gets to me.

EDIT: 8:11 PM Upon attempting to make a few changes on the model it seems that there would be too much interference with existing structure. Ah well, OCD will have to take a backseat on this one.

[Stark]

It bugs you that you make an imaginary spaceship without enough wasteful redundancy? Is close range, agile combat even relevant to your setting?

The far future of measuring shit in feet, I mean. I wonder if thinking like this is why some science fiction space combat is so focused on this kind of detail. AND THEY LOST BECAUSE THE PIVOT IS IN FRONT OF THE ROTATION POINT AND THUS THERE WAS 2M2 OF DEAD SPACE OMG.

[lPeregrine]

At point-blank ranges it would be a real issue against a more agile opponent.

So add some smaller secondary turrets. In your average scifi universe "point blank and more agile" also means smaller and less durable, so you don't need full battleship-size guns to deal with it.

[Stark]

God don't give him ideas from 1882. He's already worried about 2 degrees of main thrust deflection. :V

If you're designing a bland 'floating battleship in space' universe ship its probably easier to just come up with rationale why such problems aren't relevant to the form of combat. Its pretty trivial to do.

[Imperial528]

At point-blank ranges it would be a real issue against a more agile opponent.

So add some smaller secondary turrets. In your average scifi universe "point blank and more agile" also means smaller and less durable, so you don't need full battleship-size guns to deal with it.

Such small combat units would likely be dealt with very early on in the initial nuclear exchanges, in-setting. As I said I'm not worried about it since overall it won't affect performance, it just bugged me.