Something big

[fractalsponge1]

Filling in blank areas slowly:



I think the shortlist for class names right now are:

Assertor
Domitor
Eversor
Illuminator

[Thanas]

^no excubitor? Ah well.

*starts salivating over new picture.

Are those seven heavy turrets (with 3 presumably on the other side?) - holy crap, that's way heavier firepower than an ISD right there.

[fractalsponge1]

OK, add that - I have a feeling this question is going to be a bitch all the way until I'm done with the ship.

Actually for the guns in front of the bridge, it's 3 batteries of 3 quad 240-teraton turrets (two flanking, one centerline), and two twin 720-teraton turrets (centerline), so 11.5 petatons per volley, >4xISDs.

[Crossroads Inc.]

As a EasterEgg, I think you should put in the 'Skyline' of towers in that shot, A too scale rend of the Empire State Building

[fusion]

I see a city is being built!!! I guess this ship this ship is going to be a sector command ship like the Tichy, hence the city scape? But cannot fill the role of a regional commandship like the Executor? (wow, that came out garbled)...
Anyways, I await for the finish and ventral side of the ship like a hawk upon its prey...

P.S. The 32 tera behind the super the 720s look like there is a hole or a missing turret there...

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

As a EasterEgg, I think you should put in the 'Skyline' of towers in that shot, A too scale rend of the Empire State Building

I think you're overestimating the scale of the ship somewhat. The Empire State Building is taller than an Imperator when the spire is included and, if included in the central "skyline" section, would extend upward beyond the height of this ship's bridge tower. The "skyscrapers" appear to be only about 50-70m tall.

[Thanas]

I see a city is being built!!! I guess this ship this ship is going to be a sector command ship like the Tichy, hence the city scape? But cannot fill the role of a regional commandship like the Executor? (wow, that came out garbled)...

What do you base that on? This ship has way more firepower and volume than the executor. I think Fractalsponge refered to it as "what the Eclipse could have been".

[fractalsponge1]

As a EasterEgg, I think you should put in the 'Skyline' of towers in that shot, A too scale rend of the Empire State Building

I think you're overestimating the scale of the ship somewhat. The Empire State Building is taller than an Imperator when the spire is included and, if included in the central "skyline" section, would extend upward beyond the height of this ship's bridge tower. The "skyscrapers" appear to be only about 50-70m tall.

Indeed. Note:

I see a city is being built!!! I guess this ship this ship is going to be a sector command ship like the Tichy, hence the city scape? But cannot fill the role of a regional commandship like the Executor? (wow, that came out garbled)...

What do you base that on? This ship has way more firepower and volume than the executor. I think Fractalsponge refered to it as "what the Eclipse could have been".

I think it's a bit questionable to claim that any ship the size of a Mandator "cannot" fill the role of a regional commandship. Rough estimate of a Mandator puts it at about half the power of an Executor, which means if it shares a similar power to weight ratio, a Mandator has an available volume that can be scientifically stated as the natural log of a fuckload of cubic meters. Possibly it was a more combat oriented design, possibly not, and obviously they do fill the roles of private ship of the line in Kuat's sectorial fleet, and presumably also in certain squadrons of the Imperial Navy, but that doesn't mean they weren't also the regional flagships of the empire for the twenty years before the first Executors came off the slipway.

That said, this ship would not have the volume dedicated to flag and hangar ops as an Executor, despite having nearly the same volume, because a lot of that volume will be taken up in much tougher and more extensive structure to support and protect a much more massive power plant. This raises a few questions I've always had about the Executor and her flagship functions: how deep is that cityscape? and, related to that, what kind of volume is actually required for her flagship duties?

The only way in which I can see the cityscape of the Executor make sense is that it is actually hung off an armor layer equivalent to the main planar hull surfaces, which actually protects the critical internal power systems and supports the main armored hull as a structural member. Much like a shanty-town is built off the side of a hill, this cityscape would be only tenuously connected, highly modular, but not load-bearing except for itself. That leaves the question of will it be enough to cover all the administrative duties an Executor might have to fulfill as a flag. As a private ship (e.g. Black Sword Command), presumably a lot of that space is fitted "for, but not with" C&C equipment. As a flagship, even if the cityscape were only 10-decks deep, that's still potentially 8 times all the office space in Manhattan available.

If Executors were meant for no more than Regional commands, that means a minimum of two sector groups. 48 star destroyers, and 4000 other ships. Of course most of those ships would be in formations with their own organic flags, so the Executor is carrying out coordination and strategic control, not administrative and tactical command duties. Still, we're talking the volume equivalent of several thousand Blue Ridge command ships being available as flag space in our hypothetical 10-deck cityscape. Going by a rough estimate of the volume of cityscape available on this dreadnought, we're talking something like an order of magnitude less than the 10-deck Executor cityscape. Still seems like it'd be enough for a small region, to me, but I really don't know what kind of space and manpower demands that represents. However, why you'd waste the most powerful line combatant ship in the galaxy as office space that should never really be risked in battle is beyond me. One could ask the same about Executors, really, but if both this ship and Executors were built, the division of labor would become immediately obvious.

[Thanas]

I doubt that you'd really need that many offices for fleet ops- the Allegiance was capable of coordinating the assault on MonCal by its lonesome, despite being much much smaller. IMO the Executor is pretty much a carrier wiht lots of LTLs in combat.

However, from what the EU tells us, it is supposed to be the command ship of Grand Moffs and Grand Admirals. I view it more as a moving oversector capital world instead of a purely combat-oriented flagship.

[fusion]

I doubt that you'd really need that many offices for fleet ops- the Allegiance was capable of coordinating the assault on MonCal by its lonesome, despite being much much smaller. IMO the Executor is pretty much a carrier wiht lots of LTLs in combat.

However, from what the EU tells us, it is supposed to be the command ship of Grand Moffs and Grand Admirals. I view it more as a moving oversector capital world instead of a purely combat-oriented flagship.

w
I like that, that actually makes sense... I mean why does anyone even need that much space for a flagship? However, as a mobile capital world, the executor makes much, much more sense... Those bureaucrats and their space wasting tendencies...
And Fractalsponge, thank-you for pointing that out...

[fractalsponge1]

Some updates:

Warning, 5760px wide:


1920x1200:


For those who are counting, the armament is currently, assuming symmetry:
330x720 teraton HTL
1668x240 teraton HTL
1312x40 teraton HTL
256x240 teraton heavy ion cannon

Total yield per volley, all arcs, ~752 petatons, or ~301 ISDs.

[Thanas]

Oh, lovely. Just lovely work.

Is that a smaller version of the spinal superlaser I see at the bow?

[fractalsponge1]

Is that a smaller version of the spinal superlaser I see at the bow?

I'm going to use deliberate ambiguity for that for the moment

More detail, different lighting:

[Havok]

While very cool, it seems to be bordering on the level of ridiculousness.

[fusion]

I have a question:

What is that? a medium turbolaser?

Anyways I second the notion of the superlaser...

[fractalsponge1]

Just a greeblie.

Changed the linked image, played with the levels to make the details more visible.

As long as it doesn't actually step over the ridiculous line, I'm fine with that

[Thanas]

While very cool, it seems to be bordering on the level of ridiculousness.

Why? This is a universe with 300km deathstars. This ship is peanuts against that.

Is that a smaller version of the spinal superlaser I see at the bow?

I'm going to use deliberate ambiguity for that for the moment

It would make sense to have one for a devestating alpha strike, though...obviously not as powerful as the eclipse, but powerful enough to cook another SSD if need be. Though recoil etc might be too much for it to be worth it.

[Havok]

While very cool, it seems to be bordering on the level of ridiculousness.

Why? This is a universe with 300km deathstars. This ship is peanuts against that.

It's not the size, just the fact that it is almost completely covered with weapons. It's very fanboyish. Like I said, cool, but for me, on the verge of ridiculous. It just doesn't mesh visually with Star Wars for me.

[Thanas]

While very cool, it seems to be bordering on the level of ridiculousness.

Why? This is a universe with 300km deathstars. This ship is peanuts against that.

It's not the size, just the fact that it is almost completely covered with weapons. It's very fanboyish. Like I said, cool, but for me, on the verge of ridiculous. It just doesn't mesh visually with Star Wars for me.

Well, to be honest, the Executor and the Death star were all covered with a lot of stuff/weapons. Compare this one to the cityscape on the Executor - it looks far more covered than this.

[fractalsponge1]

While very cool, it seems to be bordering on the level of ridiculousness.

Why? This is a universe with 300km deathstars. This ship is peanuts against that.

It's not the size, just the fact that it is almost completely covered with weapons. It's very fanboyish. Like I said, cool, but for me, on the verge of ridiculous. It just doesn't mesh visually with Star Wars for me.

Fair enough, but I doubt that would be the case we were all used to seeing an Executor model that used detailed turrets instead of featureless bumps. Visually, that ship is unarmed. The number of turrets here are a consequence of what weapons are necessary to use the reactor output, which is calculated by scaling from an ISD, with a fair bit of consideration for what actually looks reasonable; I think it'd be rather worse if I went with a featureless sea of armor with 2 rows of four barely visible turrets that just happened to output 50 petatons apiece.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Does anyone have a good idea on whether or not neutrino radiators can radiate past each other or not?
The reason I bring this up is that I'm trying to figure out what the actual limit on energy density might be, and how heavily armed a ship can really get.
If neutrino radiators are a two dimensional thing, then available surface area is the limiting factor, and we should see big ships get proportionately less well armed than small ships- volume increases much faster than surface area after all.
If neutrino radiators can be stacked behind one another and radiate through one another, then it is just down to volume and there's at least one good reason for very large ships to be proportionately well armed.

The sheer existence of the Death Star makes me think they can stack- it's the least efficient form for surface area after all, so much interior to so little skin. If surface area was really the determining factor for disposing of waste heat, it would have been more of a Death Starfish.

Pure speculation, but perhaps being stacked in series, one behind the other, does cause interference and reduce effectiveness? The Executor isn't as well armed as her raw volume indicates, after all- if you get some, but diminishing, returns from layering radiators, I think that agrees with that particular observed fact. It's not rigorous and could do with tightening up, but I offer it for what it's worth.


To be honest, this thing reminds me of a Tillman "maximum battleship." You know the story, I'm sure; US Senator Joseph Tillman, fed up with the navy building class after class of battleship only slightly larger than the preceding, proposed that they cut to the chase and instead of messing about with wasteful, expensive increments, build the biggest ship they could physically fit through the Panama Canal locks. At once.

Largely to keep him happy, and with no intention of ever cutting metal, several designs were drawn up; The Warships1 board may be the place to start looking, but the most impressive was an almost ninety thousand ton ship with five triple 18" turrets, date of design 1916. It would have been incredibly far ahead of the then current state of the art, if it had been practical.

Oh, and that greeble is probably battery local fire control.

[fractalsponge1]

One thing I've never understood is how neutrino radiators were never labeled on any of the ICSes. Either they negligible in scale, or they're somehow tied into the hull paneling itself.

If we use Saxton's Executor estimate of 1.3e27W, then by a very rough estimate of hull volume (~25-30 km3), the power-to-volume ratio of the Executor is within 2-fold of a comparable volume of ISDs at 1e25W each (~0.15 km3). That's much better than I first thought, and I'll need to much more rigorously measure the volume of my SSD model, but it shouldn't be too far off. Says nothing about durability or cost effectiveness, of course, or nonlinear scaling of structural mass; the power-to-mass comparison could be substantially worse than power-to-volume.

I've started the stupefyingly boring process of adding windows:





Don't expect much in the way of massive updates for a little while, as I slog through this. Hope to be done in a week or so with the existing structure.

I might use this self-illumination map for the windows in broad shots; some weird lighting effects up close though:


Whole-hull, completed to date (5760pix):

[fractalsponge1]

Some lighting effects and more windows:

[JointStrikeFighter]

Neutrino radiators are in the AOTC ICS on the Acclamator page. They take up a good chunk of the tail region.

[fractalsponge1]

This is going much quicker than I initially thought: