About ship bridges

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Re: About ship bridges

Post by NRS Guardian »

In the Battle of Christophsus, those torpedoes caused explosions extending nearly halfway to the back of the ship. So it's quite possible that those torpedoes would have penetrated to a bridge inside the ship, provided they hit where the bridge was. Also, the knocking out of the command ship only allowed the Republic to break the blockade at least temporarily, there is no indication that it resulted in the destruction of the CIS fleet or even a permanent breaking of the blockade. In fact considering the the numbers and types of CIS warships compared to Republic ships it seems unlikely that even with the loss of the command ship that the Republic was able to permanently break the blockade.

As to the Battle of Coruscant in addition to not wanting to destroy the vessel that contained Palpy and two of the most famous and popular Jedi in the Republic, the Venator in question was VERY close to the Invisible Hand so firing at full power would likely have caused nearly as much damage to the Venator as to the IH. Plus, even with holding back, enough damage was done in the few minutes long broadside exchange that the IH was damaged enough it was forced to crash-land on Coruscant.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Patroklos »

SancheztheWhaler wrote:This has been discussed before, and frankly this brain bug (that SW ship bridges are "exposed" and "unsafe") is absurd.

1. Point to a single real world design where a ship's bridge or CIC is deep within the armored bowels of a ship. Why is that, do you all suppose? Perhaps because any weapon that will get past a ship's defenses will also, most likely destroy or disable the ship, such that hiding a bridge deep within a ship is unnecessary. And the benefits of having a bridge in a high, central, and exposed location, outweigh the possible drawbacks.
Every modern warship of any size in the modern age may have an exposed bridge, but it does not have an exposed combat. The functions are split, and they have been since sometime in WWII when electronics started to take over. The bridge is used to drive the ship and nothing more, the ship is fought from combat which is usually located inside the hull (vice the superstructure) or at the very least does not have windows.

You can drive the ship from combat or aft steering, but obviously its good to be able to see when driving. That is not the case for fighting a modern warship.
2. Assuming that a SW ship's bridge is located deep within the bowels of the ship, how will that actually increase the ship's survivability? Bridges cannot be targeted until the shields are down, and by the time the shields are down the ship is all but dead anyway. What the hell difference does it make if the bridge might survive an extra 30 seconds if it were located deep within the ship?
There are many examples refuting this point, SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time. Grievous's flagship in RotS is a good example.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by nightmare »

Patroklos wrote:There are many examples refuting this point, SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time. Grievous's flagship in RotS is a good example.
How long did it resist what kind of firepower unshielded? Especially considering that the Jedi fleet commander and his war hero apprentice was on that very ship on a rescue mission.

I don't think that counts one bit. Meanwhile we have the ISD in ROTJ getting one-shotted by a heavy turbolaser. Far as I can tell, it's almost irrelevant where the bridge is located from a protection standpoint.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Patroklos »

nightmare wrote:
Patroklos wrote:There are many examples refuting this point, SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time. Grievous's flagship in RotS is a good example.
How long did it resist what kind of firepower unshielded? Especially considering that the Jedi fleet commander and his war hero apprentice was on that very ship on a rescue mission.
You are assuming the Venator knew that Palpantine and the Jedi were on that ship, or that it was even Grievous's flagship at all. It was after all nothing but a cruiser hull indentical to several dozen if not hundreds of other CIS combatants.
I don't think that counts one bit. Meanwhile we have the ISD in ROTJ getting one-shotted by a heavy turbolaser. Far as I can tell, it's almost irrelevant where the bridge is located from a protection standpoint.
No you dont. There is an ISD-I temporarily disabled by a PLANETARY ion cannon in ESB. An ion cannon which all told would itself, as a single weapon emplacement, take up a sizable portion of an ISDs volume.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Srelex »

Patroklos wrote:
You are assuming the Venator knew that Palpantine and the Jedi were on that ship, or that it was even Grievous's flagship at all. It was after all nothing but a cruiser hull indentical to several dozen if not hundreds of other CIS combatants.
ICS etc identifies it specifically at his flagship. I even think they said as much in the film.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Patroklos »

Of course they did, because it was his flagship, and its a sourcebook. Just like the Guide to Vehicles identifies the Executor as Vader's flag ship. That does not mean that it was a unique hull form, and that when mixed with dozens to hundreds of others of the same hull is instantly recognizable to combatants.

Do you think the Japanese and Americans at Midway knew which carrier/battleship to bomb to get at Fletcher or Nagumo? Of course not.

You will note that dispite the ship being modified from the base Providence class hull, Obi Wan still had to point out the heavy vulture droid complement to identify it for Anakin. And thats with Anakin having all his whiz bang Jedi senses, so obviously it was not at that recongnizable from its sister ships.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by LionElJonson »

I'll point out that the Executor has an internal backup bridge, and they were in the process of transferring control to it when it crashed into the Death Star.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Big Phil »

Patroklos wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:This has been discussed before, and frankly this brain bug (that SW ship bridges are "exposed" and "unsafe") is absurd.

1. Point to a single real world design where a ship's bridge or CIC is deep within the armored bowels of a ship. Why is that, do you all suppose? Perhaps because any weapon that will get past a ship's defenses will also, most likely destroy or disable the ship, such that hiding a bridge deep within a ship is unnecessary. And the benefits of having a bridge in a high, central, and exposed location, outweigh the possible drawbacks.
Every modern warship of any size in the modern age may have an exposed bridge, but it does not have an exposed combat. The functions are split, and they have been since sometime in WWII when electronics started to take over. The bridge is used to drive the ship and nothing more, the ship is fought from combat which is usually located inside the hull (vice the superstructure) or at the very least does not have windows.

You can drive the ship from combat or aft steering, but obviously its good to be able to see when driving. That is not the case for fighting a modern warship.
Are you referring to CIC (Combat Information Center)? You are correct that most combat ops take place in CIC, but how exactly have you proven that they are located "deep within the armored bowels of a ship?" CIC in most warships is near the bridge, and a well placed shot from a 5" gun will penetrate to CIC just as easily as it will decimate a bridge crew. The functions may be separate, but CIC is not protected by armor.


Patroklos wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:2. Assuming that a SW ship's bridge is located deep within the bowels of the ship, how will that actually increase the ship's survivability? Bridges cannot be targeted until the shields are down, and by the time the shields are down the ship is all but dead anyway. What the hell difference does it make if the bridge might survive an extra 30 seconds if it were located deep within the ship?
There are many examples refuting this point, SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time. Grievous's flagship in RotS is a good example.
And, as has been pointed out by others, there is no quantification of the firepower being delivered against his ship. In that battle, the Republic forces may very well have been raking his ship with the SW equivalent of machine guns or 30mm cannon... hardly ship killing weaponry.

If you're not even going to bother giving numbers, then your claim that "SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time" is meaningless. You won't knock me down if you throw 500 wiffle balls at me, but if you throw 500 equivalent sized lead balls, I'm going down and I'm not getting up. Get it?
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Patroklos »

SancheztheWhaler wrote:
Patroklos wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:This has been discussed before, and frankly this brain bug (that SW ship bridges are "exposed" and "unsafe") is absurd.

1. Point to a single real world design where a ship's bridge or CIC is deep within the armored bowels of a ship. Why is that, do you all suppose? Perhaps because any weapon that will get past a ship's defenses will also, most likely destroy or disable the ship, such that hiding a bridge deep within a ship is unnecessary. And the benefits of having a bridge in a high, central, and exposed location, outweigh the possible drawbacks.
Every modern warship of any size in the modern age may have an exposed bridge, but it does not have an exposed combat. The functions are split, and they have been since sometime in WWII when electronics started to take over. The bridge is used to drive the ship and nothing more, the ship is fought from combat which is usually located inside the hull (vice the superstructure) or at the very least does not have windows.

You can drive the ship from combat or aft steering, but obviously its good to be able to see when driving. That is not the case for fighting a modern warship.
Are you referring to CIC (Combat Information Center)? You are correct that most combat ops take place in CIC, but how exactly have you proven that they are located "deep within the armored bowels of a ship?" CIC in most warships is near the bridge, and a well placed shot from a 5" gun will penetrate to CIC just as easily as it will decimate a bridge crew. The functions may be separate, but CIC is not protected by armor.
Who said anything about "armored bowels?" I said hull, thats it. And because hulls are usually the most structurally robust and widest portion of the ship, most important things that can be located within it are. As an example I am posting this very message from onboard the most prolific major combatant class in the world, a DDG-51, and the CIC is indeed located on the first deck (decks are insidet he hull, levels are in the superstructure). In carriers and amphibs CIC is not located by the bridge, it is not even in the island superstucture at all but rather located below the first armored deck inside the hull. The extra bridge levels you see are the flight bridge and the Admirals bridge (a glorified observation gallery).

And no CIC is not typically located next to the bridge, on any vessel with the space to do so CIC is located a significant distance away from the bridge for the very reason that you don't want a single hit taking out both control locations.
Patroklos wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:2. Assuming that a SW ship's bridge is located deep within the bowels of the ship, how will that actually increase the ship's survivability? Bridges cannot be targeted until the shields are down, and by the time the shields are down the ship is all but dead anyway. What the hell difference does it make if the bridge might survive an extra 30 seconds if it were located deep within the ship?
There are many examples refuting this point, SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time. Grievous's flagship in RotS is a good example.
And, as has been pointed out by others, there is no quantification of the firepower being delivered against his ship. In that battle, the Republic forces may very well have been raking his ship with the SW equivalent of machine guns or 30mm cannon... hardly ship killing weaponry.

If you're not even going to bother giving numbers, then your claim that "SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time" is meaningless. You won't knock me down if you throw 500 wiffle balls at me, but if you throw 500 equivalent sized lead balls, I'm going down and I'm not getting up. Get it?[/quote]

Thats a two way streak, we can't assume they are NOT full power shots either. I already went through why we should not assume the Republic ships had any idea they were firing on the enemy flagship, there is no reason to believe they were wacking the Invisible Hand with wiffle balls.

I am going to point out that you just critisized me for not giving numbers when you yourself just made an assumption without giving numbers. You are right, it could have been smaller scale weaponry but then your assumption is no more valid than mine.
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Re: About ship bridges

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Patroklos wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:Are you referring to CIC (Combat Information Center)? You are correct that most combat ops take place in CIC, but how exactly have you proven that they are located "deep within the armored bowels of a ship?" CIC in most warships is near the bridge, and a well placed shot from a 5" gun will penetrate to CIC just as easily as it will decimate a bridge crew. The functions may be separate, but CIC is not protected by armor.
Who said anything about "armored bowels?" I said hull, thats it. And because hulls are usually the most structurally robust and widest portion of the ship, most important things that can be located within it are. As an example I am posting this very message from onboard the most prolific major combatant class in the world, a DDG-51, and the CIC is indeed located on the first deck (decks are insidet he hull, levels are in the superstructure). In carriers and amphibs CIC is not located by the bridge, it is not even in the island superstucture at all but rather located below the first armored deck inside the hull. The extra bridge levels you see are the flight bridge and the Admirals bridge (a glorified observation gallery).
Have you read this entire thread? People are arguing that SW ship bridges should be located within the ship's armor as that will allow for greater survivability. I and others have pointed out that given SW ship firepower, hiding CIC underneath armor is futile. There are even examples of SW ships being one-shotted which suggests that unshielded warships won't last very long. I also use real world examples to demonstrate why it's useless to locate CIC behind armor.
Patroklos wrote:And no CIC is not typically located next to the bridge, on any vessel with the space to do so CIC is located a significant distance away from the bridge for the very reason that you don't want a single hit taking out both control locations.
No lying, Patroklos. I didn't say "next to," I said "near" the bridge. And neither bridges nor CIC are protected by any meaningful armor. If a bomb, shell, or cruise missile penetrates the defenses, you're just as dead in CIC as you are on an exposed bridge if it hits you there.
Patroklos wrote:
SancheztheWhaler wrote:
Patroklos wrote:There are many examples refuting this point, SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time. Grievous's flagship in RotS is a good example.
And, as has been pointed out by others, there is no quantification of the firepower being delivered against his ship. In that battle, the Republic forces may very well have been raking his ship with the SW equivalent of machine guns or 30mm cannon... hardly ship killing weaponry.

If you're not even going to bother giving numbers, then your claim that "SW hulls can resist extreme firepower unshielded for extended periods of time" is meaningless. You won't knock me down if you throw 500 wiffle balls at me, but if you throw 500 equivalent sized lead balls, I'm going down and I'm not getting up. Get it?
Thats a two way streak, we can't assume they are NOT full power shots either. I already went through why we should not assume the Republic ships had any idea they were firing on the enemy flagship, there is no reason to believe they were wacking the Invisible Hand with wiffle balls.
a
I am going to point out that you just critisized me for not giving numbers when you yourself just made an assumption without giving numbers. You are right, it could have been smaller scale weaponry but then your assumption is no more valid than mine.
I'm saying there are perfectly reasonable, logical, and justifiable reasons not to hide CIC or the bridge behind armor. In other words, I'm sticking with the default position. You're arguing that SW ships should locate the bridge behind armor because the ships can live and fight for an extended period of time, therefore, a secure command platform is vital. If you're going to argue that, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that SW ships would benefit from a bridge secure behind armor. Capiche?
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Bounty »

If there's no point armouring the bridge, as some here are claiming, then there isn't much point armouring the rest of the ship either. Either armour is useful, and you use it to protect your command centre, or it isn't, and you invest its weight and cost in extra shield generators.

Yet Star Wars capital ships consistently use both, so either they do count on some survivability with shields down (even if it just means buying time to get shields back up), or their designers are idiots.

It's amusing that people try to claim the bridge windows are being used to "see out of" during combat and then turn around to accept light-minute combat ranges. At those distances your eyes won't be much use, unless someone here can confidently pinpoint a one-mile-long object on the moon. But that still wouldn't make an exposed bridge as useful as, like mentioned earlier, dedicated spotter stations. Or, say, cameras.

As for Executor, the backup bridge is a non-factor if it really takes that much time to transfer command. There's little reason why a SW-level computer system would take more than a blink to realise that the main bridge has all connections severed, the ship is in a catastrophic dive, and that it needs to level out. Having this process take long enough for the ship to crash into a moon-sized obstacle can only mean its design is fundamentally broken.

As for the question of exposed bridges - the one justification that comes up time and time again is design inertia and really, trying to claim anything else is just grasping at straws.
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Re: About ship bridges

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Bounty wrote:If there's no point armouring the bridge, as some here are claiming, then there isn't much point armouring the rest of the ship either. Either armour is useful, and you use it to protect your command centre, or it isn't, and you invest its weight and cost in extra shield generators.

Yet Star Wars capital ships consistently use both, so either they do count on some survivability with shields down (even if it just means buying time to get shields back up), or their designers are idiots.

It's amusing that people try to claim the bridge windows are being used to "see out of" during combat and then turn around to accept light-minute combat ranges. At those distances your eyes won't be much use, unless someone here can confidently pinpoint a one-mile-long object on the moon. But that still wouldn't make an exposed bridge as useful as, like mentioned earlier, dedicated spotter stations. Or, say, cameras.

As for Executor, the backup bridge is a non-factor if it really takes that much time to transfer command. There's little reason why a SW-level computer system would take more than a blink to realise that the main bridge has all connections severed, the ship is in a catastrophic dive, and that it needs to level out. Having this process take long enough for the ship to crash into a moon-sized obstacle can only mean its design is fundamentally broken.

As for the question of exposed bridges - the one justification that comes up time and time again is design inertia and really, trying to claim anything else is just grasping at straws.
Can you demonstrate that SW ship armor is intended to provide defense against heavy turbolasers and allow the ship to stand and fight, rather than last ditch defense to give the ship time to escape or to defend against starfighters that might have sneaked in under the shields?

To once again use a real world analogy, modern warships are no longer heavily armored because a single anti-ship missile will easily defeat the armor. That does not mean, however, that they carry NO armor. Many warships have kevlar in certain locations, and carriers have an "armored" (i.e., very thick and strong) flight deck. Even the basic hull of the ship (steel) is defense against rifle fire, small cannons, and possibly RPGs. Armoring a modern warship isn't done for the purpose of defeating all threats, but for increasing survivability against unusual threats (kevlar is in place to defend against speedboats strafing the ship with machine guns, not to defend against missiles).
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Bounty »

Can you demonstrate that SW ship armor is intended to provide defense against heavy turbolasers and allow the ship to stand and fight, rather than last ditch defense to give the ship time to escape or to defend against starfighters that might have sneaked in under the shields?
No.

But it doesn't matter because I'm not contesting the density or usefulness of armour, only its presence. SW ships have armour; therefore, armour has a use; therefore, it makes no sense to armour the entire ship but leave the command centre un-armoured.

Let's put it this way. Suppose you have an ISD slugging it out with a ship of comparable firepower and defences. When the ISD's front shields are weakened, the enemy ship fires a barrage at the ISD, part of which is headed for the bridge tower.

With a bridge inside the armour, the ship takes damage, but the command centre has a survival chance equal to that of any other part of the ship.

With an exposed bridge, the ship's command centre is destroyed, her senior staff is killed and the ship is at best disorganised and at worst defenceless while command is transferred to the backup bridge.

Which of these scenarios gives the ship the best chance of staying in the fight?

(one elegant solution for ISD's would be that the bridge isn't the bridge, it's just an observation deck with control relays to the real bridge deeper inside the ship, and Imperial officers are either too tradition-bound or too arrogant to consider it unsafe in battle)
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Re: About ship bridges

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Bounty wrote:
Can you demonstrate that SW ship armor is intended to provide defense against heavy turbolasers and allow the ship to stand and fight, rather than last ditch defense to give the ship time to escape or to defend against starfighters that might have sneaked in under the shields?
No.

But it doesn't matter because I'm not contesting the density or usefulness of armour, only its presence. SW ships have armour; therefore, armour has a use; therefore, it makes no sense to armour the entire ship but leave the command centre un-armoured.

Let's put it this way. Suppose you have an ISD slugging it out with a ship of comparable firepower and defences. When the ISD's front shields are weakened, the enemy ship fires a barrage at the ISD, part of which is headed for the bridge tower.

With a bridge inside the armour, the ship takes damage, but the command centre has a survival chance equal to that of any other part of the ship.

With an exposed bridge, the ship's command centre is destroyed, her senior staff is killed and the ship is at best disorganised and at worst defenceless while command is transferred to the backup bridge.

Which of these scenarios gives the ship the best chance of staying in the fight?

(one elegant solution for ISD's would be that the bridge isn't the bridge, it's just an observation deck with control relays to the real bridge deeper inside the ship, and Imperial officers are either too tradition-bound or too arrogant to consider it unsafe in battle)
OK, first of all, spell armor the right way, you damned Limey :wink:

Second, I bolded and italicized the section that makes the most sense. I still suspect that the armor is virtually useless against SW heavy guns, which is one of the reasons why the bridge is relatively exposed, but I looked through Mike's site and Saxton's site and couldn't find any quantification of the strength of Star Destroyer armor, so we're all just guessing, and this argument makes as much sense as any other.
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Re: About ship bridges

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We do have an unshielded Subjugator-class heavy cruiser surviving continuous fire from three Star Destroyers in Destroy Malevolence.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by nightmare »

Armor isn't completely useless, just close to it against heavy firepower. We all know about Executor's sensor dome blown up, and you can't put heavy armor on those - an ISD's dome also blows up in ROTJ. It makes sense to armor the protruding reactor dome however, and that's also where we find the heaviest armor on ISDs. I prefer 'armour' by the way, but I'm flexible. Bridges are not unarmored, but it's thinner.

Meanwhile we can't draw too many conclusions on the auxilliary bridge from the loss of the Executor. IIRC, the bridge officers were working to re-establish helm control, so it must have been at least partially functional. It is unlikely that transfer of bridge command would be an automatic, and even if it was, it can't have been with a still functioning bridge. Additionally, as far as we can see the crash happens in only a few seconds after helm loss. That's not a lot of time to react immediately after suffering an explosion.

Additionally, the high position of the bridge is not merely tradition, it's for observational purposes. It also bears to be remembered that an ISDs conning tower is large enough to be a capital ship on its own.
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Patroklos »

SancheztheWhaler wrote: Have you read this entire thread? People are arguing that SW ship bridges should be located within the ship's armor as that will allow for greater survivability. I and others have pointed out that given SW ship firepower, hiding CIC underneath armor is futile. There are even examples of SW ships being one-shotted which suggests that unshielded warships won't last very long. I also use real world examples to demonstrate why it's useless to locate CIC behind armor.
You need to pay attention to who says what when and in response to who.

My initial reply was dispell the notion that a modern warship was controlled entirely from the bridge, when of course that is not the case. CICs were not even mentioned until I brought it up, which of course changes the dynamic of the arguement because in the case of SW I don't know of any major warship with a demostrated seperation of control and combat funtions into different spaces. When challenged I then pointed out that modern warships seperate their CIC and bridge for function AND survivability, noting that the ship can be driven from combat or aft steering (or CCS for that matter) in case the most vulnerable of those stations (the bridge) was destroyed. The fact that the most prolific and powerful surface combatant in the world right now was designed in that fashion should tell people something.

In a response to a completely differnet comment, seperated from the CIC discussion for a reason, I made a comment concerning a starships hull being able to withstand weaponry. At no point in this thread have I commented about SW vessels having a seperate CIC at all let how it should be located in the "armoured bowels" of anything.

Patroklos wrote: No lying, Patroklos. I didn't say "next to," I said "near" the bridge. And neither bridges nor CIC are protected by any meaningful armor. If a bomb, shell, or cruise missile penetrates the defenses, you're just as dead in CIC as you are on an exposed bridge if it hits you there.
They are not designed to be near either. A DDG-51's CIC is four levels/decks below the bridge. A carrier's CIC is a dozen level/decks down and quite a bit forward. There is no direct transit between them, as far as the people manning each are concerned they could be on opposite ends of the ship and they would function exactly the same. There is no reason to design them to be purposefully near each other. They might end up that way if other design requirements make it necessary, but it is not some rule of naval architecture.

And yes while there are some weapons that make any likely armor useless it is certainly not all. A guy with an M16 could render a DDG-51's bridge untenable, not so for the hull protected CIC. Additionally many combatants use aluminum superstructures to save weight, a material far less bullet resistant, prone to cracking on impact, and flammable or in other words far less protective than a steel hull. And the kevlar armor is not for defense against bullets but rather shrapnel from missile/bomb explosions.
I'm saying there are perfectly reasonable, logical, and justifiable reasons not to hide CIC or the bridge behind armor. In other words, I'm sticking with the default position. You're arguing that SW ships should locate the bridge behind armor because the ships can live and fight for an extended period of time, therefore, a secure command platform is vital. If you're going to argue that, the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that SW ships would benefit from a bridge secure behind armor. Capiche?
I made no statment that SW ships even have CICs, let alone where they should be located. And given your own statment that a ships hull can withstand up to even cannon level weaponry you yourself provided the reason why vulnerable and important features like a CIC should and are located inside the hull for protection. This is simply a fact of the DDG-51's and other vessels design.

And given that we know SW uses armor and it can resist large scale weaponry as has been demonstrated locating something like a CIC if it exists inside the a protected hull is of course a a no brainer position (NOW you can accuse me of saying so :) ) There is some reason its not done, and unfortunetly like many tech features of SW warships it is probably something stupid. Out of universe the movie just needed an old fashioned easily recognizable control center for the audience to identify with instantly that provided direct interaction with the events outside.
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Re: About ship bridges

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Are you telling a carrier's CIC is BELOW THE WATERLINE? Because the thing is a whopping 48 metres high from top of the island to keel and the last dozen metres of that IS underwater.
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Patroklos
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Patroklos »

No, just inside the hull vice the superstructure. On a carrier, everything is in the hull except the island. Surface combatants have a lot more superstructure relative to total volume than carriers and large deck amphibs. Much of any ships hull is above the waterline.
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Knife
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by Knife »

Sorry guys, in the battle of Endor, a SD is obliterated off of a couple large scale shots. With either shields up or shields down, a couple huge red bolts and it's all over with armor.
They say, "the tree of liberty must be watered with the blood of tyrants and patriots." I suppose it never occurred to them that they are the tyrants, not the patriots. Those weapons are not being used to fight some kind of tyranny; they are bringing them to an event where people are getting together to talk. -Mike Wong

But as far as board culture in general, I do think that young male overaggression is a contributing factor to the general atmosphere of hostility. It's not SOS and the Mess throwing hand grenades all over the forum- Red
bz249
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Re: About ship bridges

Post by bz249 »

Bounty wrote:If there's no point armouring the bridge, as some here are claiming, then there isn't much point armouring the rest of the ship either. Either armour is useful, and you use it to protect your command centre, or it isn't, and you invest its weight and cost in extra shield generators.

Yet Star Wars capital ships consistently use both, so either they do count on some survivability with shields down (even if it just means buying time to get shields back up), or their designers are idiots.

It's amusing that people try to claim the bridge windows are being used to "see out of" during combat and then turn around to accept light-minute combat ranges. At those distances your eyes won't be much use, unless someone here can confidently pinpoint a one-mile-long object on the moon. But that still wouldn't make an exposed bridge as useful as, like mentioned earlier, dedicated spotter stations. Or, say, cameras.

As for Executor, the backup bridge is a non-factor if it really takes that much time to transfer command. There's little reason why a SW-level computer system would take more than a blink to realise that the main bridge has all connections severed, the ship is in a catastrophic dive, and that it needs to level out. Having this process take long enough for the ship to crash into a moon-sized obstacle can only mean its design is fundamentally broken.

As for the question of exposed bridges - the one justification that comes up time and time again is design inertia and really, trying to claim anything else is just grasping at straws.
AFAIK there is no information on how shields deal with the TL bolts. It is possible, that there is a partial penetration, some secondary radiation or whatever cascade effect arrives and the goal of the armor is to defeat this less energetic threat. Or the goal of the armor is to offer protection against physical impactors (like micrometeorites which can be quite dangerous at typical SW sublight velocities). So there can be plenty of reason to armor the ship even when it is worth nothing against a full powered heavy TL shot.
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