Help Needed in Refining a Ship Design

[Norade]

This is a ship intended for use in the upcoming SDN World 4 STGOD, as such I am trying to fit it roughly into the limits of Star Trek technology. It is designed to be a very massive very costly ship for the game ($750+ per unit cost).

These ships are massive cylinders, that taper slightly towards the ends. They measuring a full kilometer and a half in length and with a diameter of four-hundred and meters at each end, and five-hundred meters at the central bulge. They mass an incredible 220 million tons and rank among the largest ships fielded by any navy.

Size and mass of the vessel. The size is generally fine, and the mass is derived based on scaling from the size of the Nimitz-class CVN. However I maybe off as I'm doing this all very late so let me know if that mass seems too high or low.

Design features include two large sensor suites mounted at the ships center in dorsal and ventral positions, as well as eight sensor, four at the bow and four at the stern and equally spaced around the ships circumference. Other noticeable external features are the engine clusters at the fore and after of the ship, they are comprised of one central engine cluster of four engines each 30m in diameter surrounded by sixteen engines of the same size in two concentric rings of eight. Along its length it has four bands of thrusters each with eight equal spaced clusters of four 10m maneuvering jets.

Information regarding sensor and engine/thruster placement. The exact operation principles of these systems are not yet fleshed out as I'm not sure how to use M/AM reactions to create thrust in an efficient way. FTL drives haven't even been looked at yet, as they will be hand waved away anyway.

Internally it is powered by 25 matter antimatter power generation arrays in the middle of the ship in a one kilometer long core located two-hundred and fifty meters from each engine block. Each module is fifty meters in diameter and forty meters in length. The generators are rated at five-hundred kilograms per second at ninety percent efficiency; after factoring in the fusion caused by the reaction temperature. When going through resources at the maximum rate the ship can produce roughly 1e21 joules of power.

The generators are feed from the tube shaped tanks that extend a further fifty meters out from the ship's internal generator spine, with internal volumes of two-hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic meters per tank, and and twenty-five such tanks the ship contains enough fuel for long term voyages or heavy combats. Each container incorporates a high powered gravity filed to store their contents at a density of half a ton per cubic meter. Burning fuel at the maximum rate, a very rare event, the ship has enough fuel to last four-and-a-third hours. Usually the ship uses fuel at a far lesser rate running only one-kilogram per second through the reactors per second, at this rate the ship can stay fueled for five years even after factoring in faster than light travel.

Generally six generators are used to power the engines and maneuvering jets, or are on standby to power the engines, three power the sensors as well as the internal dampeners, life support and other non-weapon or defensive systems. This leaves eight generators to power the ships energy weapons and six more to power the protective shields. That said each generator can be used to power any system via back-up cables with generator being allocated systems based on position to conserve efficiency.

The notes on power generation are here. Key info is that the ship has 25 generators that operate at 90% efficiency. Each reactor can, at its very peak, handle a 500kg M/AM reaction. If I did my math right that is a peak output of 1e21 watts.

A key note on storage is that it is done via gravity and reaches a density of 500kg per square meter.

Enforcement-class Dreadnoughts have, as a primary armament sixty-four batteries of four lasers each arranged in eight bands, each of these bands has eight evenly spaced batteries along it. This arrangement is for ease of tracking more than it is for increasing firepower as a quint of batteries is rated fire using a reactors peak output. The main issue with fighting in such a way is dealing with the waste heat as each laser is only 60% efficient. This is taken care of by dumping waste heat into hyrdogen gas and then cycling that gas down to the ships secondary weapons which consist of two-hundred and fifty-six batteries of quick firing coilguns arranged in bands much the same way as the lasers except that there are sixteen bands divided into sixteen batteries of eight weapons. These then vent the gas as munitions. In such a way this 'waste' energy needn't be wasted at all. In cases where the secondary batteries are damaged or otherwise unable to fire the gas can be vented from a port just to the rear of the laser battery.

It uses 60% efficient lasers as main weapons, with 5 batteries (20 lasers) able to use the peak output of a single reactor. If I did my math correctly this means that one reactor outputs to weapons at a rate of 4839.866156788MT per second. The waste heat is absorbed by Hydrogen gas which is then vented or used as ammunition for the secondary armament of quick firing coilguns. This is the part of my design so far that I am least sure of.

Shields, hull armor, sensors, drives, and FTL are the parts that I have very little idea on how to make work.
Crewing, automation, and the like are thought of but not yet typed out.

Thanks in advance for the help, and try to go easy as this is a first draft done over a few hours and my research was done with google and wiki.

[Ford Prefect]

You have 4.8 gigaton lasers and you're trying to stick to Star Trek levels of technology? Also attempting to use a vaguely realistic method of dealing with waste heat when you're pumping out gigatons of energy at 60% efficency is ... pretty hilarious. Also, I'm not certain having 90% antimatter efficiency while having 60% laser efficiency is all that likely.

[Thanas]

One idea that I have would be to heavily armor the core and bury the relevant portions of the ship (command centers etc) next to it. Use everything else as disposable (crew quarters etc) mass to be sacrificed (such as the superstructure of dreadnoughts) in the event of a battle. In short, have a heavily armored box around the core and the CIC and make it so that everything else can be lost, but the engines, reactor and CIC can still function/escape. That would be helpful in case of emergency or combat damage.

[Norade]

You have 4.8 gigaton lasers and you're trying to stick to Star Trek levels of technology? Also attempting to use a vaguely realistic method of dealing with waste heat when you're pumping out gigatons of energy at 60% efficency is ... pretty hilarious. Also, I'm not certain having 90% antimatter efficiency while having 60% laser efficiency is all that likely.

Again, my math my be very off, but 5 batteries is 20 individual lasers so that is only, if I can say that, 242 MT per shot. It's still high, but the ship runs out of fuel and coolant very quickly when fighting all out. It'll likely run dry on coolant even quicker than it will run out of reactor fuel when fighting all out, as in like a shot or two per five batteries and then it's out. The point is I'm using things Trek could do, such as using gravity to super condense matter and then feed that matter into a reactor where it instantly expands and starts to react very rapidly.

The way I was pegging reactor efficiency so high, and I'm very willing to drop it, was that after the M/MA reaction took place the resulting plasma was shunted into a fusion reactor. I'm unsure that one could get 90% from that, but I figured start high and cut as needed.

The 60% lasers were taken from wiki saying that for the lowest grade of lasers you can get that level of efficiency. At the kinds of power I'm trying to push dispersal over range shouldn't likely be an issue. The other issue is they're going to be big and slow to track so that shot may very well miss, or at least so of the volley might. That or I may simply take damage while aiming the 20 slow moving weapons.

The other thing to note is that for one thing, this ship will never be stealthy in the least and if it misses with a shot it'll be massively flagged as the huge, formerly gravity compressed, mass of hydrogen lights it up. The second point is that, after giving it the most basic of thought I'm not going to use shields, at least not conventional shields.

I'm going to spend my defensive energy on projecting gravity fields and throwing out massive ECM. It will leave me weakest to fighters and other massed weapons as sheer volume of fire will bypass the gravity bending effects and misses caused by ECM will also start to mean less at significant volumes.

One idea that I have would be to heavily armor the core and bury the relevant portions of the ship (command centers etc) next to it. Use everything else as disposable (crew quarters etc) mass to be sacrificed (such as the superstructure of dreadnoughts) in the event of a battle. In short, have a heavily armored box around the core and the CIC and make it so that everything else can be lost, but the engines, reactor and CIC can still function/escape. That would be helpful in case of emergency or combat damage.

That was sort of what I was thinking, the outside will most be massive coolant tanks, bundles of thick power cables and masses of sensors. The outer most hull might also be ERA. In game terms this will mean my will have a high capacity to do damage, but shortly into a battle it will start to take damage. Damage, as usual, will be determined by hashing it out with my foe and comparing fleet values.

EDIT: Excuse any excessive rambling, it's 6am here and as usual I haven't slept. Some combination of current unemployment, insomnia, and the internet seems to keep me awake more often than it should. xD

[Thanas]

I'm going to spend my defensive energy on projecting gravity fields and throwing out massive ECM. It will leave me weakest to fighters and other massed weapons as sheer volume of fire will bypass the gravity bending effects and misses caused by ECM will also start to mean less at significant volumes.

Hmmm. My nation at SDNW4, if I join it, will use mostly missile-equipped long-range fighting ships for which stealth is of the utmost importance.

[/quote]That was sort of what I was thinking, the outside will most be massive coolant tanks, bundles of thick power cables and masses of sensors. The outer most hull might also be ERA. In game terms this will mean my will have a high capacity to do damage, but shortly into a battle it will start to take damage. Damage, as usual, will be determined by hashing it out with my foe and comparing fleet values.[/quote]

Isn't that sort of self-defeating? I mean, here you have a ship that
a) sucks at stealth
b) has no shields
c) has a heavily armored core, which speaks to high enduranceö.....
d) ..... but it cannot take much in comparison
My advice is to either go for the extreme stealth long-range weapon configuration with high speed or take a non-stealth heavy endurance battlewagon.

[Norade]

I'm going to spend my defensive energy on projecting gravity fields and throwing out massive ECM. It will leave me weakest to fighters and other massed weapons as sheer volume of fire will bypass the gravity bending effects and misses caused by ECM will also start to mean less at significant volumes.

Hmmm. My nation at SDNW4, if I join it, will use mostly missile-equipped long-range fighting ships for which stealth is of the utmost importance.

That was sort of what I was thinking, the outside will most be massive coolant tanks, bundles of thick power cables and masses of sensors. The outer most hull might also be ERA. In game terms this will mean my will have a high capacity to do damage, but shortly into a battle it will start to take damage. Damage, as usual, will be determined by hashing it out with my foe and comparing fleet values.

Isn't that sort of self-defeating? I mean, here you have a ship that
a) sucks at stealth
b) has no shields
c) has a heavily armored core, which speaks to high enduranceö.....
d) ..... but it cannot take much in comparison
My advice is to either go for the extreme stealth long-range weapon configuration with high speed or take a non-stealth heavy endurance battlewagon.

I was more thinking within the box of the 1:1 and 3:1 ruling that Steve had up as part of the game. If I'm going to lose at 1:1 anyway against some foes then I might as well at least have a reason why I lose at that rate. While I know that some people will let you RP a good war where one side can have advantages, it is a given that some people won't plan a war with you, and that others will whinge and moan until you're better off just taking 1:1 and moving on.

In that context I think either I'll hope for a rules change, or stick to designed super exploding battleships that insantly vaporize other things so they might as well be instantly exploding too.

[Thanas]

So sorta like Fisher's cruisers but transformed into Space?

Heh.

Those ships should be heavily automated then, because finding a crew will be damned hard IMO....

[Norade]

Sort of, more like D&D monster design though, at least that was the closet idea I could think of. The thing takes damage easy, but that doesn't mean that it dies easy (Like low AC/High HP monsters) people get to write about blowing epically large chunks of ERA off my boat while my lasers tear through a ship and plumes of plasma stream out the back of my laser batteries. It allows everybody to feel like they're winning. That sort of effect may even allow me to win battles because people could have too much fun wasting shots on my over sized stuff that my more normal scale things get them.

I'd also intended to make them nearly 100% automated, with just enough crew in the command loop to call off an attack if needed. Though I doubt I'd have an issue with finding crew the armored crew box, engines, and spine should allow the ship to functionally worthless and 'counts as' destroyed while getting those in it home.

[Simon_Jester]

These ships are massive cylinders, that taper slightly towards the ends. They measuring a full kilometer and a half in length and with a diameter of four-hundred and meters at each end, and five-hundred meters at the central bulge. They mass an incredible 220 million tons and rank among the largest ships fielded by any navy.

[Size and mass of the vessel. The size is generally fine, and the mass is derived based on scaling from the size of the Nimitz-class CVN. However I maybe off as I'm doing this all very late so let me know if that mass seems too high or low.]

Hmm. A cylinder roughly 1500 meters long roughly 200 meters in radius... 188 million cubic meters of volume. At 220 million tons, the ship is slightly more massive than its own volume of water. Which is reasonable IF it doesn't incorporate any exotic super-dense materials, and IF it's designed along the same basic scheme as wet-navy warships.

Design features include two large sensor suites mounted at the ships center in dorsal and ventral positions, as well as eight sensor, four at the bow and four at the stern and equally spaced around the ships circumference. Other noticeable external features are the engine clusters at the fore and after of the ship, they are comprised of one central engine cluster of four engines each 30m in diameter surrounded by sixteen engines of the same size in two concentric rings of eight. Along its length it has four bands of thrusters each with eight equal spaced clusters of four 10m maneuvering jets.

[Information regarding sensor and engine/thruster placement. The exact operation principles of these systems are not yet fleshed out as I'm not sure how to use M/AM reactions to create thrust in an efficient way. FTL drives haven't even been looked at yet, as they will be hand waved away anyway.]

Identical engine arrays at either end? That has advantages in combat against ballistic weapons (even light speed ones, which I guess you'd call... geodesic weapons?) But on the other hand there's a hell of a mass penalty, since it doubles the weight of your primary engines. It also increases the engineering complexity of the ship: either every compartment needs to be designed to withstand acceleration in either direction, or the ship's magic inertial compensator needs to be able to run from +100 to -100 g of acceleration instead of just +100 to 0.

Internally it is powered by 25 matter antimatter power generation arrays in the middle of the ship in a one kilometer long core located two-hundred and fifty meters from each engine block. Each module is fifty meters in diameter and forty meters in length. The generators are rated at five-hundred kilograms per second at ninety percent efficiency; after factoring in the fusion caused by the reaction temperature. When going through resources at the maximum rate the ship can produce roughly 1e21 joules of power.

That's a measure of the total power available from the reactor tankage? Did you do the math on how much matter you'd need to burn for that?

Waste heat is of course a Problem From Hell, but it's also one that we're not going to be able to solve gracefully in a hard-SF context anyway.

The generators are feed from the tube shaped tanks that extend a further fifty meters out from the ship's internal generator spine, with internal volumes of two-hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic meters per tank, and and twenty-five such tanks the ship contains enough fuel for long term voyages or heavy combats. Each container incorporates a high powered gravity filed to store their contents at a density of half a ton per cubic meter. Burning fuel at the maximum rate, a very rare event, the ship has enough fuel to last four-and-a-third hours. Usually the ship uses fuel at a far lesser rate running only one-kilogram per second through the reactors per second, at this rate the ship can stay fueled for five years even after factoring in faster than light travel.

Half a ton per cubic meter is half the density of water; is that what you want? This fuel consumption rate reminds me of what some people have come up with for Star Wars: running at cruising power they have years of operational endurance, but only an hour or so in combat because they're pumping so much power into those insane turbolasers.

A key note on storage is that it is done via gravity and reaches a density of 500kg per square meter.

Square?

The main issue with fighting in such a way is dealing with the waste heat as each laser is only 60% efficient. This is taken care of by dumping waste heat into hyrdogen gas and then cycling that gas down to the ships secondary weapons... quick firing coilguns...

1)The exhaust gas will be at insane energies.
2)Coilguns do not use hot gas as propellant.

It uses 60% efficient lasers as main weapons, with 5 batteries (20 lasers) able to use the peak output of a single reactor. If I did my math correctly this means that one reactor outputs to weapons at a rate of 4839.866156788MT per second.

Your use of too many significant figures makes me angry, but that's because I am irrational, not because you are a bad person.

Realistically, except for specialized experiments involving scientific equipment, no one measures anything to a precision of more than three or four significant figures. You, on the other hand, are trying to calculate the power output of the ship down to the nearest gram TNT equivalent, or the nearest kilowatt. Which is ridiculous; for realistic engineering there's no way for power output to be stable to that tiny a percentage of the power output.

The fact that a calculator can give me that many digits doesn't mean I should use them. It would be more reasonable to specify "4.8 gigatons/second" or "4.84 gigatons/second."

[Norade]

These ships are massive cylinders, that taper slightly towards the ends. They measuring a full kilometer and a half in length and with a diameter of four-hundred and meters at each end, and five-hundred meters at the central bulge. They mass an incredible 220 million tons and rank among the largest ships fielded by any navy.

[Size and mass of the vessel. The size is generally fine, and the mass is derived based on scaling from the size of the Nimitz-class CVN. However I maybe off as I'm doing this all very late so let me know if that mass seems too high or low.]

Hmm. A cylinder roughly 1500 meters long roughly 200 meters in radius... 188 million cubic meters of volume. At 220 million tons, the ship is slightly more massive than its own volume of water. Which is reasonable IF it doesn't incorporate any exotic super-dense materials, and IF it's designed along the same basic scheme as wet-navy warships.

Ah, then I'll bump it up to 500 million tons.

Design features include two large sensor suites mounted at the ships center in dorsal and ventral positions, as well as eight sensor, four at the bow and four at the stern and equally spaced around the ships circumference. Other noticeable external features are the engine clusters at the fore and after of the ship, they are comprised of one central engine cluster of four engines each 30m in diameter surrounded by sixteen engines of the same size in two concentric rings of eight. Along its length it has four bands of thrusters each with eight equal spaced clusters of four 10m maneuvering jets.

[Information regarding sensor and engine/thruster placement. The exact operation principles of these systems are not yet fleshed out as I'm not sure how to use M/AM reactions to create thrust in an efficient way. FTL drives haven't even been looked at yet, as they will be hand waved away anyway.]

Identical engine arrays at either end? That has advantages in combat against ballistic weapons (even light speed ones, which I guess you'd call... geodesic weapons?) But on the other hand there's a hell of a mass penalty, since it doubles the weight of your primary engines. It also increases the engineering complexity of the ship: either every compartment needs to be designed to withstand acceleration in either direction, or the ship's magic inertial compensator needs to be able to run from +100 to -100 g of acceleration instead of just +100 to 0.

Seeing as the soft sci-fi were limited by has reliable gravity control I'll keep the mass penalty in exchange for having a spare engine and having more maneuvering options as well as a spare engine.

Internally it is powered by 25 matter antimatter power generation arrays in the middle of the ship in a one kilometer long core located two-hundred and fifty meters from each engine block. Each module is fifty meters in diameter and forty meters in length. The generators are rated at five-hundred kilograms per second at ninety percent efficiency; after factoring in the fusion caused by the reaction temperature. When going through resources at the maximum rate the ship can produce roughly 1e21 joules of power.

That's a measure of the total power available from the reactor tankage? Did you do the math on how much matter you'd need to burn for that?

Waste heat is of course a Problem From Hell, but it's also one that we're not going to be able to solve gracefully in a hard-SF context anyway.

No, that is the max rate the reactors are designed to operate at and I swapped my units because I'm tired. Dumping the entire tank would be, if it was even possible, a release of 1.5e25 joules.

The generators are feed from the tube shaped tanks that extend a further fifty meters out from the ship's internal generator spine, with internal volumes of two-hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic meters per tank, and and twenty-five such tanks the ship contains enough fuel for long term voyages or heavy combats. Each container incorporates a high powered gravity filed to store their contents at a density of half a ton per cubic meter. Burning fuel at the maximum rate, a very rare event, the ship has enough fuel to last four-and-a-third hours. Usually the ship uses fuel at a far lesser rate running only one-kilogram per second through the reactors per second, at this rate the ship can stay fueled for five years even after factoring in faster than light travel.

Half a ton per cubic meter is half the density of water; is that what you want? This fuel consumption rate reminds me of what some people have come up with for Star Wars: running at cruising power they have years of operational endurance, but only an hour or so in combat because they're pumping so much power into those insane turbolasers.

Can I compress it more? I was using the calcs for the fuel density that Trek stores their antimatter at, and I still bumped it up by 2.5x, I stopped there for fear of being a wanker. The fuel consumption was needed to get the burst damage I was looking for while staying with the same tech level. Sure you can drive it on the cheap, but when needed you have more balls than anybody might guess.

A key note on storage is that it is done via gravity and reaches a density of 500kg per square meter.

Square?

Another tired typo, as I said a rough draft. xD

The main issue with fighting in such a way is dealing with the waste heat as each laser is only 60% efficient. This is taken care of by dumping waste heat into hyrdogen gas and then cycling that gas down to the ships secondary weapons... quick firing coilguns...

1)The exhaust gas will be at insane energies.
2)Coilguns do not use hot gas as propellant.

1) Yeah, that was the point of trying to use it as a weapon.
2) Replace coil gun with some other electromagnetic way of shoving plasma at people fast enough that it may actually do damage. It's a venting system first, and PD second.

It uses 60% efficient lasers as main weapons, with 5 batteries (20 lasers) able to use the peak output of a single reactor. If I did my math correctly this means that one reactor outputs to weapons at a rate of 4839.866156788MT per second.

Your use of too many significant figures makes me angry, but that's because I am irrational, not because you are a bad person.

Realistically, except for specialized experiments involving scientific equipment, no one measures anything to a precision of more than three or four significant figures. You, on the other hand, are trying to calculate the power output of the ship down to the nearest gram TNT equivalent, or the nearest kilowatt. Which is ridiculous; for realistic engineering there's no way for power output to be stable to that tiny a percentage of the power output.

The fact that a calculator can give me that many digits doesn't mean I should use them. It would be more reasonable to specify "4.8 gigatons/second" or "4.84 gigatons/second."

I know about sig figs, but for a rough draft I was just copying and pasting whole sale. Rereading it it annoyed me a bit too, but not enough to bother editing things.

[Simon_Jester]

Ah, then I'll bump it up to 500 million tons.

Hmm. Are you familiar with The Great Game crossover setting, the stories of which are on this site?

Seeing as the soft sci-fi were limited by has reliable gravity control I'll keep the mass penalty in exchange for having a spare engine and having more maneuvering options as well as a spare engine.

All right. Just pointing it out.

That's a measure of the total power available from the reactor tankage? Did you do the math on how much matter you'd need to burn for that?

Waste heat is of course a Problem From Hell, but it's also one that we're not going to be able to solve gracefully in a hard-SF context anyway.

No, that is the max rate the reactors are designed to operate at and I swapped my units because I'm tired. Dumping the entire tank would be, if it was even possible, a release of 1.5e25 joules.[/quote]Ah. So you meant a fuel reserve of 1.5E25 J, which could be drawn on at a peak rate of 1E21 W. I see.

Can I compress it more? I was using the calcs for the fuel density that Trek stores their antimatter at, and I still bumped it up by 2.5x, I stopped there for fear of being a wanker. The fuel consumption was needed to get the burst damage I was looking for while staying with the same tech level. Sure you can drive it on the cheap, but when needed you have more balls than anybody might guess.

The real question is: what kind of material is Trek antimatter? As I recall it's antideuterium. Look up the various states of hydrogen and try to figure out a density; deuterium has more or less exactly twice the density of normal hydrogen because the nuclei weigh twice as much.

1) Yeah, that was the point of trying to use it as a weapon.
2) Replace coil gun with some other electromagnetic way of shoving plasma at people fast enough that it may actually do damage. It's a venting system first, and PD second.

Ah, I see. Well, it's an interesting close-in point defense option. You won't get coherent beams out of the venting system, because the gas is too hot and will disperse on its way out the bore of a realistic accelerator. At thousand-kilometer ranges the stuff would not be effective. But you could throw a cloud of high-temperature ions out that would interfere with electromagnetic detectors and that might cause noticeable damage at close range.

I know about sig figs, but for a rough draft I was just copying and pasting whole sale. Rereading it it annoyed me a bit too, but not enough to bother editing things.

The fact that it annoys you does you credit.

[Night_stalker]

You could consider just dropping energy weapons out of the design all together, and adding in some TGG coilguns, and maybe some photon torpedoes. My advice is to either make the ship fast and dependent on its shields for protection, or slow but heavily armorred underneath the reinforced shields. For reference purposes, try looking up the figures for a H-class Battleship in terms of weapons and armor for the heavily armored version, and for the lighter one try the Bismark class figures.

[Norade]

Ah, then I'll bump it up to 500 million tons.

Hmm. Are you familiar with The Great Game crossover setting, the stories of which are on this site?

No, do you have a link or should I search for it?

Seeing as the soft sci-fi were limited by has reliable gravity control I'll keep the mass penalty in exchange for having a spare engine and having more maneuvering options as well as a spare engine.

All right. Just pointing it out.

Thanks.

That's a measure of the total power available from the reactor tankage? Did you do the math on how much matter you'd need to burn for that?

Waste heat is of course a Problem From Hell, but it's also one that we're not going to be able to solve gracefully in a hard-SF context anyway.

No, that is the max rate the reactors are designed to operate at and I swapped my units because I'm tired. Dumping the entire tank would be, if it was even possible, a release of 1.5e25 joules.

Ah. So you meant a fuel reserve of 1.5E25 J, which could be drawn on at a peak rate of 1E21 W. I see.[/quote]

Yeah, though that peak rate eats through fuel like an SUV in stop go traffic.

Can I compress it more? I was using the calcs for the fuel density that Trek stores their antimatter at, and I still bumped it up by 2.5x, I stopped there for fear of being a wanker. The fuel consumption was needed to get the burst damage I was looking for while staying with the same tech level. Sure you can drive it on the cheap, but when needed you have more balls than anybody might guess.

The real question is: what kind of material is Trek antimatter? As I recall it's antideuterium. Look up the various states of hydrogen and try to figure out a density; deuterium has more or less exactly twice the density of normal hydrogen because the nuclei weigh twice as much.

Ah, then I would just compress the normal matter more and split the difference in how the storage is divided. It's easy math, but I'll work out the new storage numbers when I feel like doing some more work on this.

1) Yeah, that was the point of trying to use it as a weapon.
2) Replace coil gun with some other electromagnetic way of shoving plasma at people fast enough that it may actually do damage. It's a venting system first, and PD second.

Ah, I see. Well, it's an interesting close-in point defense option. You won't get coherent beams out of the venting system, because the gas is too hot and will disperse on its way out the bore of a realistic accelerator. At thousand-kilometer ranges the stuff would not be effective. But you could throw a cloud of high-temperature ions out that would interfere with electromagnetic detectors and that might cause noticeable damage at close range.

Yeah, pretty much. Short ranged plasma flak as a byproduct of shooting your giant guns. How could I say no?

I know about sig figs, but for a rough draft I was just copying and pasting whole sale. Rereading it it annoyed me a bit too, but not enough to bother editing things.

The fact that it annoys you does you credit.

Yeah, I may have forgotten some stuff from grade school science but that was not one of them.

[Norade]

You could consider just dropping energy weapons out of the design all together, and adding in some TGG coilguns, and maybe some photon torpedoes. My advice is to either make the ship fast and dependent on its shields for protection, or slow but heavily armorred underneath the reinforced shields. For reference purposes, try looking up the figures for a H-class Battleship in terms of weapons and armor for the heavily armored version, and for the lighter one try the Bismark class figures.

While I know very well that there are two schools of thought in this sort of debate, missiles and coilgun/railguns versus energy weapons I'm just having fun and choosing to make a crazy ship that can dump insane laser shots and then defend itself using the waste heat it just made.

As for defense, I already mention in a reply to Thanas that due to the rules for the STGOD I might as well have fun with it as in some cases I'll lose 1:1 regardless of what I do. Hence the wacky choices made in defense tech (Vong style singularity weapons created by artificial gravity as opposed to the more common one way magic shields), explosive armor blocks over thick armor are actually a decent choice as they defeat lasers and kinetic energy equally well.

For references, I could put more work than the six hours I already have, but as it sits nobodies calling me retarded or crying wank so with my design choices out in the open it seems like I have a half decent design.

[Iosef Cross]

This is a ship intended for use in the upcoming SDN World 4 STGOD, as such I am trying to fit it roughly into the limits of Star Trek technology. It is designed to be a very massive very costly ship for the game ($750+ per unit cost).

These ships are massive cylinders, that taper slightly towards the ends. They measuring a full kilometer and a half in length and with a diameter of four-hundred and meters at each end, and five-hundred meters at the central bulge. They mass an incredible 220 million tons and rank among the largest ships fielded by any navy.

Size and mass of the vessel. The size is generally fine, and the mass is derived based on scaling from the size of the Nimitz-class CVN. However I maybe off as I'm doing this all very late so let me know if that mass seems too high or low.

I would guess that a mass of 220 million tons is too much for a ship of this size, unless it is denser than usual iron.

With the average density of modern warships I would say that a mass of 20-30 million tons of more realistic. A Nimitz-class CVN scaled to 1.5 km would mass 12.5 million tons. Since this ship is fatter, I would guess 2-3 times that mass.

[Norade]

This is a ship intended for use in the upcoming SDN World 4 STGOD, as such I am trying to fit it roughly into the limits of Star Trek technology. It is designed to be a very massive very costly ship for the game ($750+ per unit cost).

These ships are massive cylinders, that taper slightly towards the ends. They measuring a full kilometer and a half in length and with a diameter of four-hundred and meters at each end, and five-hundred meters at the central bulge. They mass an incredible 220 million tons and rank among the largest ships fielded by any navy.

Size and mass of the vessel. The size is generally fine, and the mass is derived based on scaling from the size of the Nimitz-class CVN. However I maybe off as I'm doing this all very late so let me know if that mass seems too high or low.

I would guess that a mass of 220 million tons is too much for a ship of this size, unless it is denser than usual iron.

With the average density of modern warships I would say that a mass of 20-30 million tons of more realistic. A Nimitz-class CVN scaled to 1.5 km would mass 12.5 million tons. Since this ship is fatter, I would guess 2-3 times that mass.

Wow, are you really that dumb or did you work at it? For each doubling in size you multiply weight be a factor of 8. Did you even read the other comments in this thread, or even commonsense do the math in your head?

[Norade]

Seeing as we have some more people trying their hand at building spaceships for things and a few people that didn't post here have posted there this is a shameless bump to see if I can't squeeze a few more drops of advice out of people before finalizing this idea.

[Sea Skimmer]

Size and mass of the vessel. The size is generally fine, and the mass is derived based on scaling from the size of the Nimitz-class CVN. However I maybe off as I'm doing this all very late so let me know if that mass seems too high or low.

I don't feel like doing math to check anything, but this should help you out. Someone hand plotted ship displacement-volume curves off specific ship and submarine data they found over on the warships projects forum.

2) Replace coil gun with some other electromagnetic way of shoving plasma at people fast enough that it may actually do damage. It's a venting system first, and PD second.

What makes you think uncontained plasma will ever work? I mean... if it was 40 million degrees then it might, but this is supposed to be coolant? As in it MUST be cooler then the melting point of typical material? Remember ICBM reentry vehicles fly back to earth so hot they generate a plasma shroud.... but that doesn't stop them. They can just soak up the heat for a couple minutes and be fine.

If you shoot plasma out out a gun, at best it will work like a very flamethrower, and even then I'd suggest that a flamethrower based on reactive metals would work better. More likely the result will come out like a can of spray paint. Either way it wont damage much. Your only damage mechanism is going to be thermal shock, and any space weapon will by nature require a very high thermal shock resistance. Otherwise nuclear weapons going off anywhere nearby would kill the thing. But if you design to resist that thermal load, well it isn't hard. Mere copper barstock braced by steel has enough resistance that could it could used as a blast deflector for a 430,000lb thrust liquid rocket engine (Titan 1 missile, operational silos used concrete as the copper was in fact overkill). The time frame involved was 5-6 seconds.... how much range do you expect out of a hydrogen squrit gun? Real life missiles already can reach 8,000 meters a second (I sure expect more in the game) which would mean a missile could cover at least 40km in that time.

Also the coolant gun idea makes no sense at all in the first place. A guass gun is not a way to reduce cooling loads! Those magnets, in whatever form you have them, are going to be making just as much heat as a laser does, if not more. So what cools the hot coolant ejecting weapon?

It'd make more sense to either just store the coolant closed cycle. In good times, the coolant just reaches thousands of psi in the storage tanks and is cooled by radiators in lulls in fighting. If the storage overheats then you dump some overboard. If you insist on an open cycle system then just pipe it to the stern and use it as a slight bit of auxiliary propulsion jetting out the rear. If you vent it any other direction its going to push against the ship like a thruster, the ships guns are already going to be doing this making holding a course hard, why make the situation worse? A bunch of turreted guns with only a secondary weapons function really just doesn't make a lick of sense. It'd be much easier to just have some vent pipes, and save the mass and volume of the turrets for real weapons.

If you did anything special with the coolant.. then use it for regenerative power. Hot hydrogen coming out weapons could be piped to turbines or used to run a steam cycle. This would extract heat, and turn it back into power. Setups like this are used heavily in industry in real life, as well as some ships and a few car designs. If you really want a plasma weapon, then load the plasma in a shell and at least get it close to or ideally inside of the target that way. Hot plasma would be great for fucking up the interior of enemy ships, as it could flow through the air ducts and cracks, but this is a pretty specialist use.

[Norade]

Size and mass of the vessel. The size is generally fine, and the mass is derived based on scaling from the size of the Nimitz-class CVN. However I maybe off as I'm doing this all very late so let me know if that mass seems too high or low.

I don't feel like doing math to check anything, but this should help you out. Someone hand plotted ship displacement-volume curves off specific ship and submarine data they found over on the warships projects forum.

I don't expect you to do my math for me, but thanks for the chart. When I'm not so dead tired I'll look it over.

2) Replace coil gun with some other electromagnetic way of shoving plasma at people fast enough that it may actually do damage. It's a venting system first, and PD second.

What makes you think uncontained plasma will ever work? I mean... if it was 40 million degrees then it might, but this is supposed to be coolant? As in it MUST be cooler then the melting point of typical material? Remember ICBM reentry vehicles fly back to earth so hot they generate a plasma shroud.... but that doesn't stop them. They can just soak up the heat for a couple minutes and be fine.

If you shoot plasma out out a gun, at best it will work like a very flamethrower, and even then I'd suggest that a flamethrower based on reactive metals would work better. More likely the result will come out like a can of spray paint. Either way it wont damage much. Your only damage mechanism is going to be thermal shock, and any space weapon will by nature require a very high thermal shock resistance. Otherwise nuclear weapons going off anywhere nearby would kill the thing. But if you design to resist that thermal load, well it isn't hard. Mere copper barstock braced by steel has enough resistance that could it could used as a blast deflector for a 430,000lb thrust liquid rocket engine (Titan 1 missile, operational silos used concrete as the copper was in fact overkill). The time frame involved was 5-6 seconds.... how much range do you expect out of a hydrogen squrit gun? Real life missiles already can reach 8,000 meters a second (I sure expect more in the game) which would mean a missile could cover at least 40km in that time.

Also the coolant gun idea makes no sense at all in the first place. A guass gun is not a way to reduce cooling loads! Those magnets, in whatever form you have them, are going to be making just as much heat as a laser does, if not more. So what cools the hot coolant ejecting weapon?

I knew that plasma makes for a shitty weapon and I only used it for rule of cool effect. Seeing how bad it really is, I'm just going to drop it and use the regenerative power generation and compressed storage tank ideas that you mentioned. It seems more effective and in the thick of combat a bypass valve can flip and I can have my cool plasma venting monster.

It'd make more sense to either just store the coolant closed cycle. In good times, the coolant just reaches thousands of psi in the storage tanks and is cooled by radiators in lulls in fighting. If the storage overheats then you dump some overboard. If you insist on an open cycle system then just pipe it to the stern and use it as a slight bit of auxiliary propulsion jetting out the rear. If you vent it any other direction its going to push against the ship like a thruster, the ships guns are already going to be doing this making holding a course hard, why make the situation worse? A bunch of turreted guns with only a secondary weapons function really just doesn't make a lick of sense. It'd be much easier to just have some vent pipes, and save the mass and volume of the turrets for real weapons.

If you did anything special with the coolant.. then use it for regenerative power. Hot hydrogen coming out weapons could be piped to turbines or used to run a steam cycle. This would extract heat, and turn it back into power. Setups like this are used heavily in industry in real life, as well as some ships and a few car designs. If you really want a plasma weapon, then load the plasma in a shell and at least get it close to or ideally inside of the target that way. Hot plasma would be great for fucking up the interior of enemy ships, as it could flow through the air ducts and cracks, but this is a pretty specialist use.

As I said above, I think I'll use a closed system and have the plasma spin some turbines on the way to a storage and cooling tank. Anything else like bottling it and firing it at the enemy is cool, but too impractical in light of the complexity, and it is already seeming as if I've over engineered the shit out of my ship.

For those who care I should have a second draft out tomorrow sometime with some significant changes.

[Norade]

This is a ship intended for use in the upcoming SDN World 4 STGOD, as such I am trying to fit it very roughly into the limits of Star Trek technology. It is designed to be a very massive very costly ship for the game ($760 per unit cost).

These ships are massive cylinders, that taper slightly towards the ends. They measuring a full kilometer and a half in length and with a diameter of four-hundred and meters at each end, and five-hundred meters at the central bulge. They mass an incredible 1.76 billion metric tons and rank among the largest ships fielded by any navy.

Size and mass made to be slightly above the density of iron due to super dense armor and fuel as well as heavy engine components. Does this seem closer to right than my last attempt?

Design features include two large sensor suites mounted at the ships center in dorsal and ventral positions, as well as eight sensor, four at the bow and four at the stern and equally spaced around the ships circumference. Other noticeable external features are the engine clusters at the fore and after of the ship, they are comprised of one central engine cluster of four engines each 30m in diameter surrounded by sixteen engines of the same size in two concentric rings of eight. Along its length it has four bands of thrusters each with eight equal spaced clusters of four 10m maneuvering jets.

Still nothing new on the engine, does anybody have any ideas on how to use an M/AM reaction to produce thrust? If we assume the engine can use 1.2e20W at 40% efficiency what sort of thrust could I get? I can do the math on how fast my ship can accelerate if I can get that info.

(I did a bit of work based on the 67% efficient Vasimr test that produced 0.5N/s with 50kW of power. I upped efficiency to 90% and ran the numbers and came up with 367,000m/s2 of acceleration. That seems nuts, but the math seems right. Even at 40% as originally stated in my design goals it would be around 167,000m/s2. Again that is if my math is right and such a system can work.)

Internally it is powered by 25 matter antimatter power generation arrays in the middle of the ship in a one kilometer long core located two-hundred and fifty meters from each engine block. Each module is fifty meters in diameter and forty meters in length. The generators are rated at five-hundred kilograms per second at ninety percent efficiency; after factoring in the fusion caused by the reaction temperature. When going through resources at the maximum rate the ship can produce roughly 1e21 joules of power.

The generators are feed from the tube shaped tanks that extend a further fifty meters out from the ship's internal generator spine, with internal volumes of two-hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic meters per tank, and and twenty-five such tanks the ship contains enough fuel for long term voyages or heavy combats. Each container incorporates a high powered gravity filed to store their contents at a density of half a ton per cubic meter. Burning fuel at the maximum rate, a very rare event, the ship has enough fuel to last four-and-a-third hours. Usually the ship uses fuel at a far lesser rate running only one-kilogram per second through the reactors per second, at this rate the ship can stay fueled for five years even after factoring in faster than light travel.

Generally six generators are used to power the engines and maneuvering jets, or are on standby to power the engines, three power the sensors as well as the internal dampeners, life support and other non-weapon or defensive systems. This leaves eight generators to power the ships energy weapons and six more to power the protective shields. That said each generator can be used to power any system via back-up cables with generator being allocated systems based on position to conserve efficiency.

The notes on power generation are here. Key info is that the ship has 25 generators that operate at 90% efficiency. Each reactor can, at its very peak, handle a 500kg M/AM reaction. If I did my math right that is a peak output of 1e21W. If all reaction mass could be dumped at once it would be equal to 1.5e25J of energy.

A key note on storage is that it is done via gravity and pressure storing the reaction mass in a gaseous state at about 2,750 times more pressure than Deuterium would be in Earth's atmosphere. The same goes for its antimatter counterpart.

Enforcement-class Dreadnoughts have, as a primary armament sixty-four batteries of four lasers each arranged in eight bands, each of these bands has eight evenly spaced batteries along it. This arrangement is for ease of tracking more than it is for increasing firepower as a quint of batteries is rated fire using a reactors peak output. The main issue with fighting in such a way is dealing with the waste heat as each laser is only 60% efficient. This is taken care of by dumping waste heat into hyrdogen gas and then cycling that gas through turbines to run things such as artificial gravity, lights, and life support in combat, and then into storage tanks where it can slowly cool. In high intensity combat excess gas is often vented to help offset the acceleration caused by firing a batter of lasers.

Due to a lack of coolant it is rare to see the lasers fire for longer than 30 seconds in a given combat though they can fire for up to a two-minutes if their to be fired to destruction. This is known to happen in cases where a ship is doomed and needless to say the efficiency of the lasers drops rapidly after the first thirty seconds.

Secondary weapons consist of two-hundred and fifty-six batteries of much lighter laser systems arranged in bands much the same way as the lasers except that there are sixteen bands divided into sixteen batteries of eight weapons. These put out under a hundredth the power as the main systems but have far higher endurance and much better tracking speeds. They are used in low intensity battles and as point defense against missiles.

All weapons are controlled by a series of computers linked to the main sensors. This allows for a rapid and accurate response to many threats.

It uses 60% efficient lasers as main weapons, with 5 batteries (20 lasers) able to use the peak output of a single reactor. If I did my math correctly this means that one reactor outputs to weapons at a rate of 4.8GT per second, each laser fires 240MT per second. The waste heat is absorbed by Hydrogen gas which is then either run through turbines and stored, or run through turbines and vented out the ship's other side to aid in fighting recoil.

The ship has no shields and instead uses a combination of super dense hull plating layered over explosive reactive panels against another dense plate that rests against a layer of gel. The entire armor system comprises five such layers and the upper most layer of each is coated in layer of gel designed to create laser disrupting smoke.

My basic idea for a defense system.

Not sure how to hand wave FTL yet, I may just use a hyperdrive slowed to Trek Speeds.

[Sea Skimmer]

Size and mass made to be slightly above the density of iron due to super dense armor and fuel as well as heavy engine components. Does this seem closer to right than my last attempt?

Yeah, seems better then 220 million anyway assuming you do not intended to have a large crew or lots of embarked troops and group equipment, relative to vast the size of the vessel. You could still easily have many thousands of guys on board.

Still nothing new on the engine, does anybody have any ideas on how to use an M/AM reaction to produce thrust? If we assume the engine can use 1.2e20W at 40% efficiency what sort of thrust could I get? I can do the math on how fast my ship can accelerate if I can get that info.

You've got three basic option. You can just use anti matter as a direct thrust producer, either by just vectoring the reaction products out the tailpipe, or by using it to heat/vaporize another working material into gas to create more thrust. This can work a bunch of different ways, I suggest using Google.
As the other options, the first is pretty simple. Anti matter reactor makes heat, which then heats a working fluid which becomes your rocket exhaust. As an alternative, you make heat in the reactor, then heat a working fluid which is used to generate electricity in a steam turbine or some kind of other gas turbine system (coolants other then water like liquid sodium would have higher thermal efficiency). The electricity can then power an ion engine as well as other systems. You could also have a hybrid, in which the reactor heat first heats rocket propellent, then also runs a turbine cycle to make electricity.

(I did a bit of work based on the 67% efficient Vasimr test that produced 0.5N/s with 50kW of power. I upped efficiency to 90% and ran the numbers and came up with 367,000m/s2 of acceleration. That seems nuts, but the math seems right. Even at 40% as originally stated in my design goals it would be around 167,000m/s2. Again that is if my math is right and such a system can work.)

I'd be very skeptical of efficiency that high. Vasimr requires electrical power. You might well convert 67% of your electrical power into thrust... but first you've got to convert anti matter energy into electrical power. A lot of anti matter energy (around 60%) is released as neutrinos from which you cannot extract heat, so they aren't going to be making you any electricity. On the plus side, you don't have to radiate the neutrions as waste heat either. They just pass through normal matter and are gone off into space.

In reality maybe 30% of the anti matter energy release will become useful electricity, and then 67% of that value becomes thrust, but the numbers are largely arbitrary. Also dont forget you need to split off a fair bit of power for the ships other systems.

Internally it is powered by 25 matter antimatter power generation arrays in the middle of the ship in a one kilometer long core located two-hundred and fifty meters from each engine block. Each module is fifty meters in diameter and forty meters in length. The generators are rated at five-hundred kilograms per second at ninety percent efficiency; after factoring in the fusion caused by the reaction temperature. When going through resources at the maximum rate the ship can produce roughly 1e21 joules of power.

90% efficiency means you've got some way of using the neutrinos to make power, I dunno how that could ever work but its not out of reason given the crap they pull in Star Trek.

The generators are feed from the tube shaped tanks that extend a further fifty meters out from the ship's internal generator spine, with internal volumes of two-hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic meters per tank, and and twenty-five such tanks the ship contains enough fuel for long term voyages or heavy combats. Each container incorporates a high powered gravity filed to store their contents at a density of half a ton per cubic meter. Burning fuel at the maximum rate, a very rare event, the ship has enough fuel to last four-and-a-third hours. Usually the ship uses fuel at a far lesser rate running only one-kilogram per second through the reactors per second, at this rate the ship can stay fueled for five years even after factoring in faster than light travel.

Burning up all fuel in a couple hours seems kind of excessive. That means peak power production is around 10,000 times normal power, which means this ship must have a crappile of machinery which normally does nothing at all. Its to be expected that some machinery would not be used normally, warships are like that, but the 10,000:1 ratio is pretty high. If you have 25 equal power reactors, then normally you must only need 1/400th the power output of a single one of them.

A key note on storage is that it is done via gravity and pressure storing the reaction mass in a gaseous state at about 2,750 times more pressure than Deuterium would be in Earth's atmosphere. The same goes for its antimatter counterpart.

Well remember you need matter and anti matter for the reactor, and then you also need some kind of propellent to shoot out of the Vasimr or other rocket engine, unless you intend to propel the ship with an anti matter torch. Its possible the matter for the reactor, and the propellent could be the same thing though. but if you use the anti matter torch, then propulsive power, and power for everything else on the ship are going to be separate systems and you'll need to rethink this reactor setup.

All weapons are controlled by a series of computers linked to the main sensors. This allows for a rapid and accurate response to many threats.

I would suggest mounting at least one reconfigurable bay that can launch missiles of any size. You never know when you'll need that kind of capability.

The ship has no shields and instead uses a combination of super dense hull plating layered over explosive reactive panels against another dense plate that rests against a layer of gel. The entire armor system comprises five such layers and the upper most layer of each is coated in layer of gel designed to create laser disrupting smoke.

No shields is not the best idea really. Even very weak shields (relative to whatever defense the armor is) are a brilliant thing for warfare, since they protect against a soft kill of the ships systems by light weapons and a whole lot of repair work afterwards. You just can't expect to fully armor everything, weapons sights, sensors, laser lenses. These things will not like being hit by anything at all. Even if you have moving armored shields for them, then the moving parts are going to be exposed. I mean... if you were just doing this for some fiction then it could work any way you want, but this is going to be a game in which people use shields and you will be at a disadvantage without them.

[Norade]

Size and mass made to be slightly above the density of iron due to super dense armor and fuel as well as heavy engine components. Does this seem closer to right than my last attempt?

Yeah, seems better then 220 million anyway assuming you do not intended to have a large crew or lots of embarked troops and group equipment, relative to vast the size of the vessel. You could still easily have many thousands of guys on board.

The ship will likely have a relatively small crew for its size, the RIS will make extensive use of automation so the crew is mainly to determine when the ship fights, and when she flees.

Still nothing new on the engine, does anybody have any ideas on how to use an M/AM reaction to produce thrust? If we assume the engine can use 1.2e20W at 40% efficiency what sort of thrust could I get? I can do the math on how fast my ship can accelerate if I can get that info.

You've got three basic option. You can just use anti matter as a direct thrust producer, either by just vectoring the reaction products out the tailpipe, or by using it to heat/vaporize another working material into gas to create more thrust. This can work a bunch of different ways, I suggest using Google.
As the other options, the first is pretty simple. Anti matter reactor makes heat, which then heats a working fluid which becomes your rocket exhaust. As an alternative, you make heat in the reactor, then heat a working fluid which is used to generate electricity in a steam turbine or some kind of other gas turbine system (coolants other then water like liquid sodium would have higher thermal efficiency). The electricity can then power an ion engine as well as other systems. You could also have a hybrid, in which the reactor heat first heats rocket propellent, then also runs a turbine cycle to make electricity.

Thanks, doing some looking over I think, I'm going to use Vasimr as my engine design and use the hydrogen gas as a dual purpose propellant coolant. Likely the two supplies will remain separate unless one system or the other has a critical need. That is unless more research shows major flaws with that plan or somebody here points it out as a terrible idea.

(I did a bit of work based on the 67% efficient Vasimr test that produced 0.5N/s with 50kW of power. I upped efficiency to 90% and ran the numbers and came up with 367,000m/s2 of acceleration. That seems nuts, but the math seems right. Even at 40% as originally stated in my design goals it would be around 167,000m/s2. Again that is if my math is right and such a system can work.)

I'd be very skeptical of efficiency that high. Vasimr requires electrical power. You might well convert 67% of your electrical power into thrust... but first you've got to convert anti matter energy into electrical power. A lot of anti matter energy (around 60%) is released as neutrinos from which you cannot extract heat, so they aren't going to be making you any electricity. On the plus side, you don't have to radiate the neutrions as waste heat either. They just pass through normal matter and are gone off into space.

In reality maybe 30% of the anti matter energy release will become useful electricity, and then 67% of that value becomes thrust, but the numbers are largely arbitrary. Also dont forget you need to split off a fair bit of power for the ships other systems.

I looked up some more info on Vasimr and recent tests had a 200kW engine running at 80% efficiency if that is true and such efficiency can be maintained on a large scale - for this game it likely will - then a 90% figure for future tech doesn't seem so bad. With my reactors working at a high efficiency as well I can get very large bursts of thrust or very long slower burns. Sort of like some future electric sports car using only a trickle of power to move to the start line and then letting it all flow when on the track.

Internally it is powered by 25 matter antimatter power generation arrays in the middle of the ship in a one kilometer long core located two-hundred and fifty meters from each engine block. Each module is fifty meters in diameter and forty meters in length. The generators are rated at five-hundred kilograms per second at ninety percent efficiency; after factoring in the fusion caused by the reaction temperature. When going through resources at the maximum rate the ship can produce roughly 1e21 joules of power.

90% efficiency means you've got some way of using the neutrinos to make power, I dunno how that could ever work but its not out of reason given the crap they pull in Star Trek.

No idea. I'm trying to be plausible, but somethings just need to be arbitrary and power generation, along with FTL, and shields are going to be where I start hand waving.

The generators are feed from the tube shaped tanks that extend a further fifty meters out from the ship's internal generator spine, with internal volumes of two-hundred and thirty-five thousand cubic meters per tank, and and twenty-five such tanks the ship contains enough fuel for long term voyages or heavy combats. Each container incorporates a high powered gravity filed to store their contents at a density of half a ton per cubic meter. Burning fuel at the maximum rate, a very rare event, the ship has enough fuel to last four-and-a-third hours. Usually the ship uses fuel at a far lesser rate running only one-kilogram per second through the reactors per second, at this rate the ship can stay fueled for five years even after factoring in faster than light travel.

Burning up all fuel in a couple hours seems kind of excessive. That means peak power production is around 10,000 times normal power, which means this ship must have a crappile of machinery which normally does nothing at all. Its to be expected that some machinery would not be used normally, warships are like that, but the 10,000:1 ratio is pretty high. If you have 25 equal power reactors, then normally you must only need 1/400th the power output of a single one of them.

The way I see it each of the 25 reactor blocks has many smaller sub blocks that feed into a final fusion reactor the entire thing is wrapped around some neutrino absorbing layer that is only active at peak power use. In this way running at a lower power simply means rotating which blocks are in use to keep and even wear pattern on the smaller sub components. It adds a lot of extra mass when out of combat so the ship can fight hard in combat.

A key note on storage is that it is done via gravity and pressure storing the reaction mass in a gaseous state at about 2,750 times more pressure than Deuterium would be in Earth's atmosphere. The same goes for its antimatter counterpart.

Well remember you need matter and anti matter for the reactor, and then you also need some kind of propellent to shoot out of the Vasimr or other rocket engine, unless you intend to propel the ship with an anti matter torch. Its possible the matter for the reactor, and the propellent could be the same thing though. but if you use the anti matter torch, then propulsive power, and power for everything else on the ship are going to be separate systems and you'll need to rethink this reactor setup.

Yeah, I did think of that and the ship is basically Reactors/Fuel, Tiny Crew Space, Engines, Hydrogen storage and reprocessing, Armor, Weapons, and External Systems. The ship is built 'simple' but to do one job which is to provide burst damage.

All weapons are controlled by a series of computers linked to the main sensors. This allows for a rapid and accurate response to many threats.

I would suggest mounting at least one reconfigurable bay that can launch missiles of any size. You never know when you'll need that kind of capability.

Maybe, I was thinking that the carriers and their drones will be the missile buses while the mainline ships are energy weapon intensive. I figured that there's no reason to mix roles when you have a fleet and especially not on a ship that will never see action alone.

The ship has no shields and instead uses a combination of super dense hull plating layered over explosive reactive panels against another dense plate that rests against a layer of gel. The entire armor system comprises five such layers and the upper most layer of each is coated in layer of gel designed to create laser disrupting smoke.

No shields is not the best idea really. Even very weak shields (relative to whatever defense the armor is) are a brilliant thing for warfare, since they protect against a soft kill of the ships systems by light weapons and a whole lot of repair work afterwards. You just can't expect to fully armor everything, weapons sights, sensors, laser lenses. These things will not like being hit by anything at all. Even if you have moving armored shields for them, then the moving parts are going to be exposed. I mean... if you were just doing this for some fiction then it could work any way you want, but this is going to be a game in which people use shields and you will be at a disadvantage without them.

You're right, I'm going to add some sort of weak screens based on artificial gravity or something. The lack of shields was mainly designed as a weakness so people didn't cry wank at seeing this thing fight somebody's version of the Defiant. However knowing the minds of my fellow players such a weakness may well be unneeded.