Capital ships of my sci fi verse.

[Steelinghades]

For this thread, I'll be posting the information, lore and such for my personal sci fi setting's capital ships in the hope that you may, if you so choose, critique the doctrine--of them--and if they make sense in universe. So, let's begin.


The Interstellar Domain.
Founded over seen centuries ago by the Elder races of the Orion-Cygnus arm, this multi species power contains nearly all sapient species within their arm of the galaxy. While each species governs themselves, they are all bound to follow the laws of the Domain, made by the elder races and enforced by them.

Included in these laws are treaties, ones meant to put a limit on the power of individual nations and ships for the betterment of the entire arm. Many younger species don't consider things that way however and often go out of their way to get around the three principle naval treaty agreements. This has given birth to a number of designs for ships in effort for navies to lawyer their ways around limits on certain ship types.


Capital ships.
The Treaty of Vallun puts a limit on capital ship numbers based on a class systems for ships often of comparable size.

Class A: Dreadnoughts, battleships, carriers, Battlecarrier and Pre-dreadnought battleships.
- For Elder races the overall limit for the above class is ten million tonnes, which works out to two million tonnes--or roughly forty ships--per specific class.

- For young species the overall limit for the above classes is two and a half million, which works out to five hundred thousand tonnes--or roughly ten ships--per specific class.

- For Greater species the overall limit for the above class is five million tonnes, which works out to one million tonnes--or roughly twenty ships--per specific class.

Class B: Battlecruiser, Armoured cruiser, Unarmoured cruiser.
- For Elder races e over limit of the above class is seven point two million tonnes, which works out to two point four million tonnes--or roughly eighty ships--per specific class.

- For young races the overall limit for the above class is one point eight million, which works out to six hundred thousand tonnes--or roughly twenty ships--per specific class.

- For Greater species the overall limit forge above class is three point six million tonnes, which works out to one point two million tonnes--or roughly forty ships--per specific class.

To the above there are three additional points:
1: During times of war where the Domain itself is under attack, the above limits are doubled.

2: When launching one's newest generation of capital ships, the above limits can be exceeded by seventy percent so long as within thirty five years the tonnage limit has gone back down.

3: If over eighty percent of the nations of the Domain have their ship's tonnage creep up by any amount exceeding an extra fifteen thousand tonnes, a review and rewriting of the tonnage limit will be performed.

Types of capital ships
- Battleship: The battleship is often thought of as the go to capital ship, in the constantly changing technical and doctrinal world capital ships exist in, the battleship has yet to be displaced from its place. While other designs might sacrifice one element of ship design to boost another, the battleship balances each--firepower, endurance, speed and armour--as equally as it can.

- Dreadnought: The dreadnought can be compared to the battlecruiser and in many ways is a super sized one. It sacrifices armour for overwhelming firepower. While battlecruisers are often used to kill cruisers, the dreadnought is designed to kill capital ships.

- battlecarrier: The battlecarrier mixes battleship design And doctrine with carrier design and doctrine. Often these vessels will either use primarily bombers or interceptors, bombers to multiple its killing power or interceptors to boost its defensive grid.

- Carrier: the carrier acts as a mobile base and resupply point for fighter craft, these vessels are often hundreds of millions of kilometers away from combat and thus have extremely minimal armour and weaponry equipped.

- Pre-dreadnought: The name of this class comes from the past of one of the Domain's member species who designed a new capital ship armed with a heavy mixed weapon batter, traded speed for incredible armour and caused a new class to be born.

- Battlecruiser: These fast moving, heavily armed light capital ships are the terror of interstellar trade and enemy cruisers. While they are heavily armed, they're not capable of matching full on heavy capital ships and thus aren't used for battle line engagements.

- Armoured cruiser: The armoured cruiser is much like the pre-dreadnought, It trades speed for incredible armour, these can actually be used in the battle line, though their weaponry leaves much to be desired.

- unarmoured cruiser: Taking the battlecruiser line of thought further, this design does completely away with armour for an incredible speed and weapon advantage. The problem being that with no armour and only an armoured hull, even corvettes can turn these ships to swish cheese if given the chance. It's important to note that only if given a chance, the sheer amount of weaponry carried by these vessels, including defensive armaments, means they tend to kill everything smaller then them within seconds and only run into trouble if against fellow capital ships.



So. Thoughts? If there's anything else you'd like to know, let me know.

[Sea Skimmer]

A naval arms treaty on this kind of scale and with this kind of diversity of ships doesn't sound very plausible to me, especially not with an escalation clause that rewards cheating. Forcing people to commit to ships which are intrinsically inferior is an awful stretch. Other then that not much can be said since we have no idea how these ships are to go about fighting.

[madd0ct0r]

does fighting occur in systems where planetary setups can support?

Is FTL avaailable and how does it work? how does FTL comms work?

Is there true AI?

How to engines work? reaction mass? Other?

What is worth shipping to support interstallar routes (and implied piracy)? How is the cost of shipping made so cheap? Where do the bulk of the population live - planet side or habitats or other?

[Jub]

I like that you have people trying to cheat the treaty system. IRL even among the nations that signed naval treaties most, if not all, of them cheated pretty much wherever they figured they'd get away with it and the treaty only held so long because of the shock of WWI. In this system you have a, presumably, greater power enforcing these treaties.

So the real question is how closely do they monitor things?

Do they consider bending the definition of a classes design or roll to be worthy of action or do they care more for the letter of the law than the intent? How do the other great powers monitor one another?

Is it conceivable that a nation could design something in secret that grossly violates the treaty but gets away with it for long enough to win a major battle or swing the course of a war?

I think all of these questions are more interesting than the technical details of ship classes.

[Steelinghades]

Quick update for ship weapons and a bit on capabilities.

Starship weaponry
Weaponry mounted on warships comes in three primary forms: Kinetic, munition exotic.

Kinetic weaponry
Railguns and coilguns make up this family of weaponry, they fire guided and thruster propelled--in addition to the speed given to them from their electromagnetic propulsion. Battles with these weapons are often conducted at ranges of one hundred thousand kilometers or less. The slowest projectile generally crosses this distance in six to eight seconds, the faster ones in less time.

Munition weaponry
The general workhorse of most navies when everything goes right. Missiles, torpedoes and rockets are what makes up this family of weapons. Rockets are used at similar ranges to kinetic weapons, missiles--depending on the type--are generally used at distances of one to four million kilometers and generally are moving toward their targets for a couple minutes. Torpedoes can technically be used at distances of fifty million kilometers though it will take them quite a while to get there and would he sitting ducks for defences and interceptors.

Exotic weapons
This family of weapons often includes spinal railguns with exceptionally experimental technology that allows them to fire their slug trough phase space at triple their normal speed, though only in phase space. One the slug drops back out it slows back down to its speed before entering phase space.

Warship capabilities.
Capabilities of modern warships are far superior to those of previous generations. Modern gravity drives allow warships to reach speeds in excess of ten thousand kilometers per second within very short periods of time. This added with modern stealth systems--where in ships partially phase themselves in phase space--have caused a radical redesign of most navies. Missiles are no longer the principle weapon--with maybe a cannon or two--instead navies have started mixing weapons to a far greater degree. Ships can no longer garuntee where they'll come across an enemy with modern stealth, carriers are a bit different and I'll go over them in the doctrine point, they have a few advantages.

does fighting occur in systems where planetary setups can support

Fighting can commonly occur across entire star systems at times and last days with newer stealth systems.

Is FTL avaailable and how does it work? how does FTL comms work?

FTL is available, its entered by approacin a system edge and briefly opening a tear into the tunnels of phase space from there a ships psionics guide it along the Phase space tunnels at about a parsec a day. Ships have realtime communication up to about a billion kilometers. For interstellar distances you need to use the FTL Common buoy system which can transmit messages at speeds of up to five parsecs a day.

Is there true AI?

No.

How to engines work? reaction mass? Other?

Ships have backup reaction mass thrusters, by they primarily use gravity drives that are designed to quickly accelerate up to their max speed--which varies depending on the engine size, how man engines there are, how much mass they have to move--and hold that speed indefinitely so lon as you supply it with power. They can Redline their engines to boost their speed enormously, but this puts extreme strain on the drives.

What is worth shipping to support interstallar routes (and implied piracy)? How is the cost of shipping made so cheap? Where do the bulk of the population live - planet side or habitats or other?

Sixty to seventy percent of a nation's population live on planets, the rest live on habitats, moons, space stations, etc. Interstellar shipping can be anything from weapons--Nation A has superior railgun miniaturization capabilities then Nation B, So Nation B imports all their railguns from Nation A--ships, foodstuffs and other supplies--plenty of planets and some space based habitats aren't self sustaining--minerals and other valuable materials from mines being shipped around, synthetic materials created by psionics being trades between nations, etc.

Interstellar trade is primarily conducted by either civilian companies who buy old, outdated ships or by government lines. Interstellar trade is a very risky business with the possibility of enormous payoff. Because of the distances involved and the cost of starship fuel prices are high, but the risks are as well. Pirates could possibly hijack your shipment setting you back enormously in monetary value or another nation's privateers could do the same. Ships have been known to get lost in phase space. Many dangers exist to end a trading company along with just competition.

So the real question is how closely do they monitor things

The ancient races monitor things very closely.

Do they consider bending the definition of a classes design or roll to be worthy of action or do they care more for the letter of the law than the intent? How do the other great powers monitor one another?

The ship's role is the single most important part, smaller detail of design and secondary roles are ignored. Primary roles however are taken very seriously and are kept to letter for ships, If they weren't nations wouldn't have been able to pull out the pre-dreadnought type ship, since it technically doesn't fit a battleships definition it needed a new one.

As for monitoring. The ancient races generally monitor one another and the younger races as well. If say one greater race was building a battleship design that exceeded the battle weight limit, It broke weapon limitation treaties and such, e greatest course of action for that nations rival would be to not act themselves but to contact a ancient race that perhaps doesn't like the nation breaking the treaty's every much and they'll deal with it.

Is it conceivable that a nation could design something in secret that grossly violates the treaty but gets away with it for long enough to win a major battle or swing the course of a war?

Technically, sort of. The reason being that different elder races have differing opinions on others. If they, during a naval inspection official or unofficial, they happen upon something such as you suggested they may let it slide if they're on good terms with the nation building the vessel and perhaps not very big fans of the building nation's rival. There's also the option of building the thing hidden in deep space, though that has its own set of issues.

[Sky Captain]

How restrictive is the treaty? Is it just tonnage and numbers or also puts restrictions on systems? If some nation cheats and secretly builds a fleet of most effective ships their tech base allows would it make everything else obsolete? Space is big and it is conceivable that someone could establish secret shipyard around some rogue planet in deep interstellar space and build whatever it wants, chances of getting caught would be low.

[Steelinghades]

How restrictive is the treaty? Is it just tonnage and numbers or also puts restrictions on systems? If some nation cheats and secretly builds a fleet of most effective ships their tech base allows would it make everything else obsolete? Space is big and it is conceivable that someone could establish secret shipyard around some rogue planet in deep interstellar space and build whatever it wants, chances of getting caught would be low.

The treaty restricts total tonnage per ship class--for capital ships--the max number of capital ships based on tonnage, it restricts cruiser and small ship max size by not number, it restricts weapon caliber based on ship size though it doesn't restrict how many weapons you slap on a ship.

For star systems the only laws based on them are that those who discover and fully survey a system are the legal owners, even if the system is in someone else's territory.