Designing Armor for Star Wars like warships

[Purple]

Well, exactly what it says in the title. I am working in an Star Wars like universe where the primary weapons are gigaton range nuclear weapons, but also plasma cuter warheads and energy beams of all sorts ranging from lasers and turbolasers to stuff like that. The damage ranges are usually in the single digit gigaton range.

So I need to design a sort of armor that can provide adequate protection for my warship in such a setting. The thickens is not an issue since I plan to have several kilometers of the stuff on my weakest side but it has to be extremely resistant to both heat and energy transfer as well as to kinetic impacts. So, any suggestions for what I could look at and how to make such armor?

[Purple]

Missed the edit mark but have to add one thing. I know it's going to be pure handwaving. But I need to know what kind of handwaving to use to make it work right.

[Simon_Jester]

First we must remember the mantra: "I am ablative armor! Life is boring, then briefly exciting, then over! I am ablative armor! Life is boring, then briefly exciting, then over!"

Now that that's dealt with, you're gonna need a composite- multiple materials layered one after another, to deal with different threats. Broadly speaking, you have three major things to worry about.

1) Brute heating of the armor
Any impact energy will tend to turn into heat as it dissipates into the structure of the armor. After each hit, a certain amount of material will be vaporized, melted, or heated to the point where it loses structural strength and breaks off.

To deal with this, you want materials with high heat resistance. This does not just require you to pick materials that are hard to vaporize according to SDN-style 'spherical mass of iron' calculations. High heat of vaporization is not enough. Because the slabs of material you use are very large, you also want to use materials that are highly refractory: that retain their strength and durability at high temperatures, rather than shattering or softening. After all, the ship will need to keep fighting while taking these hits; you can't very well have bits of armor flaking off every time the ship makes an engine burn.

For this, you want dense metals with high melting points (tungsten, or the platinum-family metals or others I don't know of) and heat-resistant ceramics (the sort that get used in blast furnaces, for instance). You may want to use ceramics as insulators between layers of the overall armor 'sandwich,' so that heating one slab of armor doesn't transfer much heat to the one below it. Ideally, the first armor slab vanishes in a puff of vapor, but takes time to disperse, during which it takes the entire energy transfer of the hit with it, while the one underneath takes no damage.

2) Radiation damage
Relativistic particle beams, X-ray lasers, nuclear warheads, and mass drivers which fire rounds at any noticeable fraction of the speed of light create this problem. Radiation will tend to penetrate the structure of your armor and transmute individual atoms into things you don't want, weakening the overall structure over time.

This is a tremendous problem if you use small thicknesses of handwavium super-materials, because nothing made out of atoms is really immune to radiation. Since you're thinking more in terms of enormous thicknesses of normal materials, it's less of a problem; the sheer volume of crap between you and the source practically guarantees that radiation damage won't cause disastrous problems in and of itself.

3) Shock damage
This one is a doozy. When stuff hits your armor, it creates shock waves, and unwelcome twisting/bending motions of the structural framework of the ship. This is a Bad Thing. In real wars (where the amounts of energy being slung around are far lower), this is one of the main things that disables armored warships. For example, during WWII the British built a series of carriers with armored flight decks, hoping to make them immune to aerial bombardment. In practice, the armored decks did help protect the carriers from bombs, but each time the carrier took a bomb hit, the armored deck warped. Over time, this made it impossible to operate the elevators that lifted planes onto the flight deck, and (as I recall) weakened the structure of the ship, to the point where the carriers had to be retired as soon as the war ended.

Another example is the American command center at Cheyenne Mountain, designed to act as HQ for the defense of North America in a nuclear war. It's buried under a mountain, and the main limit people expect it to face in the event of nuclear attack doesn't involve bombing blowing apart the mountain; it involves the shock of large nuclear strikes cracking the rock and dropping chunks of the roof on the occupants. Rock is not good at handling shock damage.

This is very hard to protect against. The best I can come up with is to insert, along with your other armor sandwich materials, "shock absorber" layers of springs or 'super-rubber' type materials that can cushion even extremely large impacts. Think about what kind of stuff is needed to make an Orion drive work and you're on the right track, because an Orion drive is about the only thing anyone ever even considered building to survive long term sustained fire from kiloton-range weapons.

[Elheru Aran]

...several kilometers of armour? Um? What are you using, marshmallows?

Unless you've got something along the lines of the Death Star, I'm not sure how you're going to work with an thickness measured in kilometers... unless somehow I'm reading your post all wrong...

[Connor MacLeod]

I'm actually fairly convinced that ISD armor is not just "solid blocks of metal" anymore. Even if you use magical stuff there's a possibility raw firepower may not be enough alone to stop all damage. Maybe if it's some sort of magical ablative material.

Tidbits of the ICSs, the implied operation of alot of the higher-end armour (superconducting, energy dispersing/deflecting, etc.) and general visuals (like with the AT-ATs or other materials) may very well suggest SW armor is not quite passive but may incorporate some active elements. This could be magic forcefields, cooling/reradiation systems, etc. One idea I've had is that the "neutronium" element in SW armor is meant to act as some sort of heat sink mechanism. There clearly isn't enough in there to be a significant quantity in bulking out the armor, but I imagine it might have some benefit in at least (temporarily) storing heat.

Alot of this will also depend on where you think SW combat firepower falls. Whilst we know that they can arguably put out lots of energy at max performance (teratons, petatons, whatever) there is fair evidence that they typically fight at somewhat less than "max output" levels (and certain implications, like recoil, almost certainly demand it.)

[Connor MacLeod]

...several kilometers of armour? Um? What are you using, marshmallows?

Unless you've got something along the lines of the Death Star, I'm not sure how you're going to work with an thickness measured in kilometers... unless somehow I'm reading your post all wrong...

I suspect he said that because he's taking a more plausible look at it, not really "hard" in the sense people think, but probably "harder" in the sense Star Wars actually is. I also suspect he wasn't literally thinking "commonly accepted STar Wars yields" on here. Because for those you would need magic forcefield tech or something similar. Which is not exactly implausible, we have seen otherwise perfectly intact starships destroyed by single hits, after all.

[Purple]

I suspect he said that because he's taking a more plausible look at it, not really "hard" in the sense people think, but probably "harder" in the sense Star Wars actually is. I also suspect he wasn't literally thinking "commonly accepted STar Wars yields" on here. Because for those you would need magic forcefield tech or something similar. Which is not exactly implausible, we have seen otherwise perfectly intact starships destroyed by single hits, after all.

Exactly, I even stated as much that the usual output of weapons is in the order of magnitude up to single digit gigatons. And I am trying to come up with something that sounds hard. Ideally we are looking at something along the lines of: "Well it works in theory but materials science won't get there in a trillion years." rather than flat out "Magical Force Field/Magical Plate Material."


Also, one of the reasons why the armor is so thick is because I want to place crew survivability above all else. The idea is that by the time it takes to punch your way to the core of the ship and actually start killing the crew you will have destroyed it's ability to fight ten times over. So hopefully an enemy in a pitched battle won't waste so much time finishing ships off but will concentrate on finding the next target as soon as the surface weapons are down.

[Purple]

I suspect he said that because he's taking a more plausible look at it, not really "hard" in the sense people think, but probably "harder" in the sense Star Wars actually is. I also suspect he wasn't literally thinking "commonly accepted STar Wars yields" on here. Because for those you would need magic forcefield tech or something similar. Which is not exactly implausible, we have seen otherwise perfectly intact starships destroyed by single hits, after all.

[/quote]
Exactly, I even stated as much that the usual output of weapons is in the order of magnitude up to single digit gigatons, not merely close to star wars weapons. But it is a space opera situation so I thought that it would fit in the title. And I am trying to come up with something that sounds hard. Ideally we are looking at something along the lines of: "Well it works in theory but materials science won't get there in a trillion years." rather than flat out "Magical Force Field/Magical Plate Material."


Also, one of the reasons why the armor is so thick is because I want to place crew survivability above all else. The idea is that by the time it takes to punch your way to the core of the ship and actually start killing the crew you will have destroyed it's ability to fight ten times over. So hopefully an enemy in a pitched battle won't waste so much time finishing ships off but will concentrate on finding the next target as soon as the surface weapons are down.

DAM THIS CAME OUT DOUBLE, SOMEONE PLEASE DELETE IT.

[Mr Bean]

Simply your problem the same way SW does. Shields keep your ships alive, armor is designed to reduce damage from high yield weapons but a ship without shields is a soon to be dead ship. If you don't force fields then your armoring is going to be just enough to survive a second hit or laugh off the lighter stuff. Jester covered everything your armor needs to be and with gigaton level of damage ability then it needs to be pushed that this armor (Lets say ten meters for a round number) is designed to shrug off near misses or make direct hits some what survivable but not a sure thing.

Also how combat is conducted matters a great deal. Is combat ships of the line style slugging matches where ships come in range and open up with long range then shorter ranged weapons then high yield short ranged weapons? Or is combat a rushing class with ships going .1C and flashing past each other in firing runs that last less than a second and no one knowing that they have been fired at or missed until it's already over until the fleets wheel about and come at each other again.

[Purple]

Combat is based of WW1 like naval battles that constitute fleets of ships splitting up into various formations and slugging it off as they close the range. Point defenses are fairly good so the closer you get the less time they have to shoot your projectiles down and the more chance you have of scoring a hit. Hence fleets try to close the range rapidly but are well away from relativistic speeds. Most weapons are either strait out missiles or at least guided shells.

And yes, I am looking at the beautifull post by Jester. I just want to hear more and more input to make sure I cover all the bases.

[Simon_Jester]

Combat is based of WW1 like naval battles that constitute fleets of ships splitting up into various formations and slugging it off as they close the range. Point defenses are fairly good so the closer you get the less time they have to shoot your projectiles down and the more chance you have of scoring a hit. Hence fleets try to close the range rapidly but are well away from relativistic speeds. Most weapons are either strait out missiles or at least guided shells.

Arguably, missiles perform better in vacuum at long range than short. Unguided weapons don't work well when the target has time to get out of the way, and even really big ships can dodge something coming at them if they have minutes to do it in and are capable of 1g or better accelerations. But you can't sidestep a guided weapon this way... so guided weapons are unique in lacking this range limitation, whereas unguided weapons will still hit their targets very reliably at short range and be cheaper than the equivalent guided weapon.

In the case of missiles, too, there's the fact that the longer the missile runs and the longer its engine burns, the higher the speed it can reach. That means it crosses the range of close-in point defense more quickly, which means point defense has to fire from longer distances... which in turn reduces the hit probability of the point defense weapons.

I'd expect to see missiles first, then guided shells, then unguided laser/plasma/care bear stare/whatever weaponry.

Also, one of the reasons why the armor is so thick is because I want to place crew survivability above all else. The idea is that by the time it takes to punch your way to the core of the ship and actually start killing the crew you will have destroyed it's ability to fight ten times over. So hopefully an enemy in a pitched battle won't waste so much time finishing ships off but will concentrate on finding the next target as soon as the surface weapons are down.

The sheer mind-boggling expense of ships built and armored to this scale... honestly, I could see crew survivability being something of afterthought, just because replacing the crew is a tiny fraction of the cost of replacing the ship.

You may get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing the crew is still alive, but unless the thing is operated by genetically enhanced telepaths that cost fifty billion spacedollars apiece or something, the fact that you will have to seriously rebuild a ship with a price tag equal to the lifetime labor of millions of people is arguably more important.

Simply your problem the same way SW does. Shields keep your ships alive, armor is designed to reduce damage from high yield weapons but a ship without shields is a soon to be dead ship. If you don't force fields then your armoring is going to be just enough to survive a second hit or laugh off the lighter stuff. Jester covered everything your armor needs to be and with gigaton level of damage ability then it needs to be pushed that this armor (Lets say ten meters for a round number) is designed to shrug off near misses or make direct hits some what survivable but not a sure thing.

It's all a question of how much armor you pile on and how handwavey the material science is.

We could, theoretically, construct objects capable of withstanding numerous direct hits from megaton-range nuclear weapons. They'd be really big, ludicrously expensive, incredibly heavy, and totally impossible to move. But we could do it. It would just be a question of piling on enough steel/concrete/graphite/whatever.

A ship built along the same lines, but with better materials and engines somehow capable of moving such a mountainous object, might well have significant survivability even at the kind of energy levels he's talking about slinging around.

[Connor MacLeod]

IF we're talking gigaton range nukes but all other weapons being less than gigaton range they probably aren't strictly speaking Star Wars (at least not how I think of it). Anything approaching or at the gigaton range for a beam or projectile weapon is probably in the "magic tech" category for defenses.

Even then I still don't think you can rely on a perfect defense. Simply put, there are alot of ways to attack an enemy. Even a simple laser can work in several different ways (a heat ray won't be protected against the same way a pulsed laser beam will, though they may share some similarities.)

One possibility with protecting against nukes is some means of keeping them from getting too close to the target or to force them to detonate at a distance. I suppose if it was magical tech you might use tractor beams, although I'd bet that some sort of remote drone might work as well. Such a defense probably won't work against beam weapons (in space CPBs are pretty useless as I recall) although that migh thelp against some sort of "shaped charge" nuke (I think they shot out a plasma jet at the target).

Something else that occurs to me is, what sorts of accelerations are you looking crews being able to survive? And what sorts of weapons yields for beam and projectile (non warhead) weapons and ship masses were you thinking? recoil is not going to be a trivila issue (it certainly isn't for star wars) and handling that both for the firing ship and the ship that get's struck can be a non-trivial problem as well (although I think that gets into Simon discussing about shocks and stuff.)

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

There are drive possibilities start with the Mach-Lorentz thruster, which it is speculated here http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/mach-e ... swers.html may eventually mature to being capable of one newton of thrust per watt input- which would make it relatively easy to move gargantuan amounts of material around. Gigawatt powerplant, knock off twenty percent for hotel load and other systems, eight hundred million newtons of thrust- eight hundred thousand tons at a tenth of a 'g' as long as the reactor juice holds out.

With technology like that, we could end up looking at multimillion ton ships in the Plausible Midfuture. For the Near End of the Far Future, we may be better off with Heim-Droscher, which is suficiently weird that it could easily be handwaved to be utterly insensitive to the mass it's carrying, only to the volume of space it has to shift. I don't think this is actually the case- but it could be.

I did this for a story (and a half written sequel) involving earth nations in space, and the usual method of warship construction was to find a nice dense nickel-iron asteroid, slab it off to shape, burrow in and fit reactors and drives, surface the thing with refractory and what-else-have-you; weapons were remote mounts on the outer hull, and on the largest, there could be ten kilometres of raw metal from the bow back to the foremost inhabited space. Mind you, abandoning ship was a bitch.

The mounted components were the important and expensive part, as long as they worked there was still a ship. Get the hull broken, shot, blasted to radioactive slag- big deal, it almost was anyway, dismount the thrusters and find a new asteroid. Armour problem solved, I think.

[Purple]

Arguably, missiles perform better in vacuum at long range than short. Unguided weapons don't work well when the target has time to get out of the way, and even really big ships can dodge something coming at them if they have minutes to do it in and are capable of 1g or better accelerations. But you can't sidestep a guided weapon this way... so guided weapons are unique in lacking this range limitation, whereas unguided weapons will still hit their targets very reliably at short range and be cheaper than the equivalent guided weapon.

Well, the idea is that missiles are used to swarm over enemy ships from a distance and as you close range you open fire with the guns. The guns fire guided shells, what this means is that you have a missile with limited maneuverability that is fired from a railgun. It can't make sharp turns since it would rip apart due to the momentum but it can guide it self over longer ranges by taking an elliptical path.

In the case of missiles, too, there's the fact that the longer the missile runs and the longer its engine burns, the higher the speed it can reach. That means it crosses the range of close-in point defense more quickly, which means point defense has to fire from longer distances... which in turn reduces the hit probability of the point defense weapons.

What about laser point defenses? In ranges I am talking about light speed lag does not apply.

I'd expect to see missiles first, then guided shells, then unguided laser/plasma/care bear stare/whatever weaponry.

Than ramming if all else fails. And yes, a hugely armored ship could in theory break an enemy ship apart while ramming due to the sheer momentum. But it's not standard procedure by any means.

The sheer mind-boggling expense of ships built and armored to this scale... honestly, I could see crew survivability being something of afterthought, just because replacing the crew is a tiny fraction of the cost of replacing the ship.

Not really. I mean, this is for SF literature. Ships are expendable, crew members are main cast characters.

You may get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing the crew is still alive, but unless the thing is operated by genetically enhanced telepaths that cost fifty billion spacedollars apiece or something, the fact that you will have to seriously rebuild a ship with a price tag equal to the lifetime labor of millions of people is arguably more important.

Not rebuild, scrap, melt down and make a new one. Also write a long and emotion filled speech how the old girl saved all their lives at the cost of her own. *sob*

It's all a question of how much armor you pile on and how handwavey the material science is.

We could, theoretically, construct objects capable of withstanding numerous direct hits from megaton-range nuclear weapons. They'd be really big, ludicrously expensive, incredibly heavy, and totally impossible to move. But we could do it. It would just be a question of piling on enough steel/concrete/graphite/whatever.

That is the idea. In essence, I have to find exact properties to make my armor as good as possible. Than simply claim that magical materials science is up for the job. But I have to find the properties first since this is for a freeform RPG and people love exploiting the pros and cons of everything for a better story.

Even then I still don't think you can rely on a perfect defense. Simply put, there are alot of ways to attack an enemy. Even a simple laser can work in several different ways (a heat ray won't be protected against the same way a pulsed laser beam will, though they may share some similarities.)

I know, but like I need to get as close to it as I can.

One possibility with protecting against nukes is some means of keeping them from getting too close to the target or to force them to detonate at a distance. I suppose if it was magical tech you might use tractor beams, although I'd bet that some sort of remote drone might work as well. Such a defense probably won't work against beam weapons (in space CPBs are pretty useless as I recall) although that migh thelp against some sort of "shaped charge" nuke (I think they shot out a plasma jet at the target).

Well I use all sorts of point defenses and a layer of energy shields to absorb as much of the fire as possible. But the fact that things do get through actually tells you how much fire is going on around here.

Like one battle had some 40'000 ships on both sides with something like a quarter of a million projectiles fired per volley each. The idea eing to overwhelm enemy point defenses and shields and score as many hits as possible.

Something else that occurs to me is, what sorts of accelerations are you looking crews being able to survive? And what sorts of weapons yields for beam and projectile (non warhead) weapons and ship masses were you thinking? recoil is not going to be a trivila issue (it certainly isn't for star wars) and handling that both for the firing ship and the ship that get's struck can be a non-trivial problem as well (although I think that gets into Simon discussing about shocks and stuff.)

Well, this is SF so magic inertial dampeners make short work of any starship speed related issues.

And for recoil the sheer mass of the ship combined with engine trust (since I have engines distributed around the ship and not just pointing one way) should be enough to counter any weapons recoil that occurs.


@Eleventh Century Remnant
Thanks for said engine idea. I will look into it. But in essence engine power is not going to be a great issue due to well that. Thanks again.

[Darth Tedious]

I agree that your armour might need to be fairly bulky to be realistic, but it could depend on how many magic metals you make it from. There's an incredible amount of handwave-y material in Durasteel- check this out:

Durasteel was an incredibly strong and versatile metal alloy, created from carvanium, lommite, carbon, meleenium, neutronium, and zersium.

Besides carbon, are any of those real?

Throw in some Duranium and Tritanium and your armour might not need to be anywhere near as thick...

Not really. I mean, this is for SF literature. Ships are expendable, crew members are main cast characters.

You'll be needing CharacterSheildsTM!

[Simon_Jester]

There are drive possibilities start with the Mach-Lorentz thruster, which it is speculated here http://nextbigfuture.com/2009/09/mach-e ... swers.html may eventually mature to being capable of one newton of thrust per watt input- which would make it relatively easy to move gargantuan amounts of material around. Gigawatt powerplant, knock off twenty percent for hotel load and other systems, eight hundred million newtons of thrust- eight hundred thousand tons at a tenth of a 'g' as long as the reactor juice holds out.

This sounds to me like quack science, but any space drive capable of moving such masses at helpful speeds will be... such is life, at least until and unless someone experimentally verifies any of the legions of quack theories on FTL travel.

I did this for a story (and a half written sequel) involving earth nations in space, and the usual method of warship construction was to find a nice dense nickel-iron asteroid, slab it off to shape, burrow in and fit reactors and drives, surface the thing with refractory and what-else-have-you; weapons were remote mounts on the outer hull, and on the largest, there could be ten kilometres of raw metal from the bow back to the foremost inhabited space. Mind you, abandoning ship was a bitch.

Only problematic aspect is that asteroids may not have the structural strength you want; we don't know a lot about the composition of the big nickel-iron ones, and they may be riddled with fractures and brittle points for all I know.

Well, the idea is that missiles are used to swarm over enemy ships from a distance and as you close range you open fire with the guns. The guns fire guided shells, what this means is that you have a missile with limited maneuverability that is fired from a railgun. It can't make sharp turns since it would rip apart due to the momentum but it can guide it self over longer ranges by taking an elliptical path.

The delta-vee available to a guided shell will be small compared to its opening velocity. It can't fly in circles, but it can steer itself into any point on a large cone (actually flared trumpet-ish) shape pointing forward and centered on its line of flight. More to the point, it can track a target and match its evasive burns second by second, which gives it far better hit probability- much harder to fake out.

In the case of missiles, too, there's the fact that the longer the missile runs and the longer its engine burns, the higher the speed it can reach. That means it crosses the range of close-in point defense more quickly, which means point defense has to fire from longer distances... which in turn reduces the hit probability of the point defense weapons.

What about laser point defenses? In ranges I am talking about light speed lag does not apply.

Lasers have maximum effective range governed by emitter diameter, wavelength, and general 'dispersion.' The emitter heads will also tend to be fragile, especially if they are large (and therefore long ranged); there are specialized tactics you can use to damage the laser optics that wouldn't work against solid slabs of armor. Such as lobbing shells at the ship and then blowing them apart with a fragmentation charge while they're still a few seconds' flight time out; this results in a hail of high-speed shrapnel that damages surface features but won't penetrate a multi-meter armor belt.

I'd expect to see missiles first, then guided shells, then unguided laser/plasma/care bear stare/whatever weaponry.

Than ramming if all else fails. And yes, a hugely armored ship could in theory break an enemy ship apart while ramming due to the sheer momentum. But it's not standard procedure by any means.

Ramming is... really really unlikely. It's very hard to make two ships contact each other unless they're both actively cooperating in doing it. There's just too much potential for one ship to sidestep at the last minute. Unless one side has a careless helmsman, I wouldn't go for it.

The sheer mind-boggling expense of ships built and armored to this scale... honestly, I could see crew survivability being something of afterthought, just because replacing the crew is a tiny fraction of the cost of replacing the ship.

Not really. I mean, this is for SF literature. Ships are expendable, crew members are main cast characters.

Fine in principle; in practice you accomplish this by damaging the ship badly enough that it's not cost-effective to replace this, and at that level of damage you have main cast casualties... which is OK, it happens. At least, that how I'd do it.

You may get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing the crew is still alive, but unless the thing is operated by genetically enhanced telepaths that cost fifty billion spacedollars apiece or something, the fact that you will have to seriously rebuild a ship with a price tag equal to the lifetime labor of millions of people is arguably more important.

Not rebuild, scrap, melt down and make a new one. Also write a long and emotion filled speech how the old girl saved all their lives at the cost of her own. *sob*

Sure, sure.

Just remember to have a long and emotion-filled speech from the Labour Party about how millions of workers will toil all their lives to recoup the cost of that ship, and is it really worth fighting this damn war over trade lanes that won't repay the cost of the materiel destroyed for decades?

It's all a question of how much armor you pile on and how handwavey the material science is.

We could, theoretically, construct objects capable of withstanding numerous direct hits from megaton-range nuclear weapons. They'd be really big, ludicrously expensive, incredibly heavy, and totally impossible to move. But we could do it. It would just be a question of piling on enough steel/concrete/graphite/whatever.

That is the idea. In essence, I have to find exact properties to make my armor as good as possible. Than simply claim that magical materials science is up for the job. But I have to find the properties first since this is for a freeform RPG and people love exploiting the pros and cons of everything for a better story.

Well, again, your key parameters are:

-Structural strength: This is mostly for the 'bones' that hold the armor together- given that you're using layers of sandwich material, you need some toothpicks holding the sandwich together. You need something that won't just break and leave a trail of broken-off armor slabs behind your ship when the engines fire up.

-Heat resistance: again, that means high heat of vaporization per kilogram, and refractory properties that let it stay strong even as it is superheated.

-Thermal insulation: You want to isolate the superheated portions, preferably in such a way that an incoming strike wastes lots of energy boiling off melted armor molecules, and then superheating vaporized armor atoms.

-Flexibility: This isn't so important for the armor as it is for the structural framework and especially the systems inside the ship. Unless every nut and bolt (and crewman) on the ship is made out of unobtanium, the shock waves from powerful impacts can themselves cause a lot of damage far from the point of impact. You need layers of material that can absorb and cushion those sudden surges of force, reducing their impact on the structure and systems.

[Sea Skimmer]

If you can have armor several kilometers thick then layers of whatever magic metal the ship is built from interspaced with voids, and layers of boron doped concrete to absorb radiation ought to work well enough. You’d reinforce that with special layers to break up kinetic hits, maybe tungsten rebar in the concrete and a layer of 100 ton DU slabs mounted on a crushing steel honeycomb. That’s if you want to stay somewhere in the bounds of reality. Massive use of ideal heat dissipating and highly energetically fracturing composite materials (with the density of osmium), would be fun, but being able to make many cubic kilometers of such material seems unlikely, even for something like Star Wars scale industry. Course the Death Star probably had 5 billion tons of paint on the walls alone so who knows.


If the ship burns any kind of remotely bulky fuel, some of the voids will be fuel tanks for added armoring. The most important survivability features of a realistic megaship would be a vast level of redundancy, and having many interior bulkheads to protect the ship from its own munitions and reactors exploding. A massive ship which can still be taken out of action by a single internal explosion is just not very justifiable. At the least such an explosion needs to be made as unlikely as possible, and that may mean mounting a lot of armor deep inside the ship to provide internal box protection rather then mounting it all equally across the hull. Thankfully in space combat as long as the crew are in suits, leaks in the hull aren't critical the way a flooding hit is on a battleship on the ocean is, so you could afford to have minor areas riddled with holes. The only danger would be excessive structural damage in the softer ends... but that's life.

[Purple]

First thing first, I forgot to mention something. These ships are not designed to allow people to abandon ship. The idea is that there is so much protection between you and the enemy that it is safer to stay put than go out of the ship. And considering that I do not pack anything explosive the ships won't go all nuclear on me if hit. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the space around the ship is likely to be radioactive and filled with debris as well as have things shooting at escape pods. So really, going out is not an option.

The delta-vee available to a guided shell will be small compared to its opening velocity. It can't fly in circles, but it can steer itself into any point on a large cone (actually flared trumpet-ish) shape pointing forward and centered on its line of flight. More to the point, it can track a target and match its evasive burns second by second, which gives it far better hit probability- much harder to fake out.

Cool, so the so called guns are better than my missiles? That is nice to know.

Lasers have maximum effective range governed by emitter diameter, wavelength, and general 'dispersion.' The emitter heads will also tend to be fragile, especially if they are large (and therefore long ranged); there are specialized tactics you can use to damage the laser optics that wouldn't work against solid slabs of armor. Such as lobbing shells at the ship and then blowing them apart with a fragmentation charge while they're still a few seconds' flight time out; this results in a hail of high-speed shrapnel that damages surface features but won't penetrate a multi-meter armor belt.

Got it, I will dial in a frag option on my projectiles.

Ramming is... really really unlikely. It's very hard to make two ships contact each other unless they're both actively cooperating in doing it. There's just too much potential for one ship to sidestep at the last minute. Unless one side has a careless helmsman, I wouldn't go for it.

It only happened once during a pitched fleet battle where there were like tens of thousands of ships fighting in an extremely enclosed space and mostly by accident.

Fine in principle; in practice you accomplish this by damaging the ship badly enough that it's not cost-effective to replace this, and at that level of damage you have main cast casualties... which is OK, it happens. At least, that how I'd do it.

That is why I rely on armor. See what I wrote before. I am counting that the enemy will stop shooting long before that. And the point of armor is to put as much space in between mission kill and real kill.

Sure, sure.

Just remember to have a long and emotion-filled speech from the Labour Party about how millions of workers will toil all their lives to recoup the cost of that ship, and is it really worth fighting this damn war over trade lanes that won't repay the cost of the materiel destroyed for decades?

Believe it or not I have done this already. The post is prepared and I just need to make it official. It comes in the form of a propaganda poster glorifying factory workers as the real heroes of the war.

Well, again, your key parameters are:

-Structural strength: This is mostly for the 'bones' that hold the armor together- given that you're using layers of sandwich material, you need some toothpicks holding the sandwich together. You need something that won't just break and leave a trail of broken-off armor slabs behind your ship when the engines fire up.

So you are saying essentially that I need rebar. This said, how would diamonds do in this role or a similar hyper density material like wolfram or DU?

-Heat resistance: again, that means high heat of vaporization per kilogram, and refractory properties that let it stay strong even as it is superheated.

Hm... what kind of materials are good at this? I assume some sort of ceramics.
I will try to make an image for this armor like a sandwich with color coding and than you guys can help fix it up.

-Thermal insulation: You want to isolate the superheated portions, preferably in such a way that an incoming strike wastes lots of energy boiling off melted armor molecules, and then superheating vaporized armor atoms.

How would a layer of vacuum several meters thick work in this role? I thought about putting a vacuum layer in the armor.

-Flexibility: This isn't so important for the armor as it is for the structural framework and especially the systems inside the ship. Unless every nut and bolt (and crewman) on the ship is made out of unobtanium, the shock waves from powerful impacts can themselves cause a lot of damage far from the point of impact. You need layers of material that can absorb and cushion those sudden surges of force, reducing their impact on the structure and systems.

Hm, so I need some sort of massive shock absorption system sort of like steel rebar does for buildings?

If you can have armor several kilometers thick then layers of whatever magic metal the ship is built from interspaced with voids, and layers of boron doped concrete to absorb radiation ought to work well enough. You’d reinforce that with special layers to break up kinetic hits, maybe tungsten rebar in the concrete and a layer of 100 ton DU slabs mounted on a crushing steel honeycomb. That’s if you want to stay somewhere in the bounds of reality. Massive use of ideal heat dissipating and highly energetically fracturing composite materials (with the density of osmium), would be fun, but being able to make many cubic kilometers of such material seems unlikely, even for something like Star Wars scale industry. Course the Death Star probably had 5 billion tons of paint on the walls alone so who knows.

Working on an image thanks to you guys...

If the ship burns any kind of remotely bulky fuel, some of the voids will be fuel tanks for added armoring. The most important survivability features of a realistic megaship would be a vast level of redundancy, and having many interior bulkheads to protect the ship from its own munitions and reactors exploding. A massive ship which can still be taken out of action by a single internal explosion is just not very justifiable. At the least such an explosion needs to be made as unlikely as possible, and that may mean mounting a lot of armor deep inside the ship to provide internal box protection rather then mounting it all equally across the hull. Thankfully in space combat as long as the crew are in suits, leaks in the hull aren't critical the way a flooding hit is on a battleship on the ocean is, so you could afford to have minor areas riddled with holes. The only danger would be excessive structural damage in the softer ends... but that's life.

My thoughts on redudancy:

1. All my ships have 3 power generators that produce a total of 150% of the power needed for the ship. In essence, the ship can run at 100% required energy if it loses one and on 75% if it loses two of them.
2. All my vital areas (like the command bridge and the weapons bridge) are sealed from the rest of the ship and have their own life support designed to make them completely self contained. This also includes their own toilets, food and water supply to make them last indefinitely in case of a mutiny.
3. All my crew are in jump suits that convert to space suits simply by putting on a helmet.
4. Munitions are distributed in many magazines scattered throughout the hull and positioned in such a way that a direct hit on a gun turret will newer trigger them. (armored bulkheads, twisty delivery path etc.)
5. All vital functions like life support are distributed and controlled on a per section basis rather than a central command center.
6. All the free space between the ship components (like between multiple decks) is filled up with armor and the vital sections are surrounded by something like 10-20 meters worth of it on all sides complete with huge blast doors.
7. All corridors are designed with 1 meter thick blast doors for every 3 meters long section that can be closed almost instantly to seal off breached areas.
8. All access tunnels from the outside of the ship are small and snake around to ensure a fireball can't pass through them. They are also depressurized and closed off by blast doors in case of a battle.
9. The important areas (bridge, engineering, weapons bridge,...) are located in the center of the ship surrounded spherically by the less important sections like crew quarters and recreation areas. And on the outside of the core around these are the cargo bays for food and other supplies. This makes said less important sections act as a final layer of protection.

[Simon_Jester]

First thing first, I forgot to mention something. These ships are not designed to allow people to abandon ship. The idea is that there is so much protection between you and the enemy that it is safer to stay put than go out of the ship. And considering that I do not pack anything explosive the ships won't go all nuclear on me if hit. On the opposite end of the spectrum, the space around the ship is likely to be radioactive and filled with debris as well as have things shooting at escape pods. So really, going out is not an option.

What if people need to enter or leave the ship on routine business during normal operating conditions? What if the battle is over and you need to get out of a damaged ship? What if your ship suffers an engineering casualty (read: some important piece of machinery fails, dramatically)?

So you do at least need provisions for people to get on and off the ship in a reasonable amount of time, even if they're poorly suited for a quick evacuation.

The delta-vee available to a guided shell will be small compared to its opening velocity. It can't fly in circles, but it can steer itself into any point on a large cone (actually flared trumpet-ish) shape pointing forward and centered on its line of flight. More to the point, it can track a target and match its evasive burns second by second, which gives it far better hit probability- much harder to fake out.

Cool, so the so called guns are better than my missiles? That is nice to know.

Uh... missiles can do the same thing, only better, as long as they have enough endurance to make it to the target without their engine running out of gas. Indeed, their maneuver envelope will tend to be larger than that of a guided shell, because they have more acceleration -> more delta-vee to play with.

Well, again, your key parameters are:-Structural strength: This is mostly for the 'bones' that hold the armor together- given that you're using layers of sandwich material, you need some toothpicks holding the sandwich together. You need something that won't just break and leave a trail of broken-off armor slabs behind your ship when the engines fire up.

So you are saying essentially that I need rebar. This said, how would diamonds do in this role or a similar hyper density material like wolfram or DU?

Diamonds are brittle, not good structural material. Uranium, likewise- though uranium may make good armor material, since it's dense and can thus soak up a lot of punishment per cubic meter. Tungsten (wolfram) is better- more flexible and resilient, still very strong.

Though really, given the sheer amount of metal you're piling on the ship, you may need handwavy materials for the structural framework. Look around the Internet and you'll find descriptions of some interesting hypothetical materials that could serve your purposes- I remember the ones with the interlinked benzene rings for some reason...

-Heat resistance: again, that means high heat of vaporization per kilogram, and refractory properties that let it stay strong even as it is superheated.

Hm... what kind of materials are good at this? I assume some sort of ceramics.
I will try to make an image for this armor like a sandwich with color coding and than you guys can help fix it up.

Well, we're not qualified at that point. I can make suggestions about what kind of materials to use, but not exactly what or exactly how to lay it out. But yeah, for heat resistance you often want ceramics; that's why they make the insides of kilns and blast furnaces out of them.

How would a layer of vacuum several meters thick work in this role? I thought about putting a vacuum layer in the armor.

Vacuum is iffy because it's weak; you have a hard time maintaining the structural strength of the overall armor scheme if there are large empty spaces in it. You'd need to design the structure around that (honeycombs? I don't know). It's not a bad idea, I'm just not sure how to implement it effectively.

-Flexibility: This isn't so important for the armor as it is for the structural framework and especially the systems inside the ship. Unless every nut and bolt (and crewman) on the ship is made out of unobtanium, the shock waves from powerful impacts can themselves cause a lot of damage far from the point of impact. You need layers of material that can absorb and cushion those sudden surges of force, reducing their impact on the structure and systems.

Hm, so I need some sort of massive shock absorption system sort of like steel rebar does for buildings?

That's the right starting point- the flexibility of rebar makes concrete buildings less brittle and more durable. But you need more than that, because we're talking about material that is supposed to survive repeated nuking. You may need big honking pads of rubber-like material, or "crumple zones" like Skimmer describes (which may double as vacuum spaces for insulation).

Your overall design scheme sounds pretty well-adjusted for what you have in mind, I think. It may not be perfect, but it's on the right track and describes what you want to describe.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I know what you're talking about Purple, I had a similar issue when coming up with some ships and ideas for something I'm writing currently. One of the main two galactic hyperpowers, the human one, loosely based on Civilization from Lensmen, doesn't have forcefields while the other alien one does (they also don't have energy weapons, depending on antimatter and railguns of various sorts, while the aliens do). But the weapons, on both sides, are roughly equal in the single-digit to, on the extreme end, double-digit gigaton range plus the ships on both sides use what amount to a shit ton of guns so all in all they had rough parity with SW all around. Most combat is similar to what you're describing, focused more on huge heavy dreadnaughts and missile carriers (on the human side, the other civilization uses longer ranged lasers and particle beams).

So here's my suggestion:

So I tried to figure out some kind of way to design a "plausable" solid, non-energy armor for the Human Civilization. After thinking about it, and running through several ideas including ablative plating and just hella-dense materials, I decided to throw everything at the wall and just figure these guys used all of it, in multiple layers on average around 500+ meters thick (take note, the average cruiser size is roughly that of a SSD).

The outermost layers are made out of the most refractory stuff they could manufacture, including artificially created elements, with ablative armor over vital areas. Clouds of particulate matter are launched out in battle, then ignited with lasers into really dense plasma, and held by magnetic fields and directed by other lasers to form a kind of interception cloud which disrupts lasers and particle beams and overheats and destroys missiles...theoretically, hopefully.

Fictional, ultra-dense materials (decasteel, neosteel, "neutronium plate") make up the thickest underlayers of armor, which mean these ships are incredibly massive in weight since their armor alone weighs as much as they themselves would if they were just made of, say, steel. All of the armor and materials are laced with small, microbial worker robots that repair it, so unlike an energy shield which is either up or down all the way (save for localized breaches) this material can be "30%" down or "70%" remaining or whatever and it rebuilds over time, even in the heat of battle, using onboard stores of raw "nanofeedstock".

There is also an element of active, direct defense going on with guns and missile launchers called "countermeasure projectors" that throw out huge shoals of hyper-refractory chaff and particulate matter and use pinpoint raingun shots to known down, disrupt or otherwise stave off enemy shots as much as possible--obviously this doesn't work perfectly but still a chunk of ultradense metal slung in the path of a laser will vaporize and disrupt it somewhat, and really every little bit helps.

Now I have no idea if any of that would work (my theory: it wouldn't...like at all), but that's the best I could come up with. Granted 90% of it is bullshit and it involves a lot of made up exotic materials (for example, neutronium doesn't come in solid "plates", IIRC), but I would suggest going for something plasuable sounding instead of actually plausable in reality--it should require no more than a passing mention in the story proper, IMO, so it doesn't need to be "realistic" just sound plasuable as a handwave. Like--ironic in that we're talking about SW--a transporter.

[Purple]

Here is my initial concept so far. Call this prototype #0.

This is for a Leviathan warship, the dimensions of who are:
Length: 15'000 meters
Width: 6'250 meters
Height: 3'000 meters

Going from outside and inward first I have a thick, something like 500 meters thick layer of Crysteal. Crysteal is essentially my word for a crystalline material that is essentially Neutronium with a crystal lattice. This layer of armor protects against kinetic impacts and also houses bunkers that are used to hide point defense weapons and their ammunition. The layer is composed of huge slabs reinforced and held together by a rebar structure composed out of wolfram.

The idea is that each point defense station is a small CIWS complete with its own tracking system and a rotary pivot that can turn it around. Each station is armed with a rapid fire railgun firing extreme velocity solid slug projectiles and an array of guided missiles with a small (several kiloton) nuclear warhead. These are used to intercept enemy projectiles en mass. The point defense stations are not perched outside on the hull but are instead inside dugouts something like 3/2 of their height deep. This is a precautionary measure to protect them against blast waves that might come when an enemy nuclear missile or something similar hits the hull. These dugouts can also be rapidly covered by a thin roof that provides no protection but does provide a pressure seal so that the area around the point defense station can be pressurized for ease of repairs when in a station.

Furthermore, all additional equipment like sensor systems, missile silos and turrets receive a similar treatment being slightly dug in, although the turrets are only dug in as deep to allow the rotational mechanism to be safe from harm.

Now, underneath this initial thick layer is a protective layer of ceramics something like 100 meters thick. The ceramics encase a tunnel of vacuum held together by Crysteal and wolfram grid with a total width of some 400 meters (2 x 100 meters walls + 200 meters of vacuum).

Underneath this vacuum layer is a 100 meters thick layer of concrete also with rebar used to absorb the final shock of impact. From this point on the ship is just a solid slab of said concrete with all the various internal areas being encased inside it much like hazelnuts within a chocolate bar. What this means is that depending on the importance of the room in question there might be several hundreds of meters of concrete around it as extra armor.

The magazines and other similar volatile areas are distributed toward the edges of the ship the front and back (labeled as #A), named so because they are the extreme points along the longest axis of the ship. This is done because it allows the maximum amount of space to be made between the magazines and the crew areas should they go off. Toward the center, in what is marked on the image as #B are the power plants and other similar components essential to ship operations but not the crew. And finally, in what is labeled the Central Core are the crew areas culminating with command and control being in the dead center of the ship.
Spoiler

Spoiler

Tell me what you think of the design.

PS. I am thinking about adding several layers of something like 20 meters thick ablative ceramics mixed into the neutronium plates. So like 100m of neutronium -> 20m of ceramics -> 100m of neutronium. Would that be a good idea? And what about having a layer of ceramics as a cover on the outside of the armor?

PPS. How does neutronium fare against heat? I know it should stop all sorts of impacts but what about melting?

[Connor MacLeod]

If we're going the handwaving route, why does one have to pick theroetical examples from real life? One form of handwaving is hardly going to be much better than another for what he's trying to do, and picking stuff that is theoretical in real life is dangerous. I remmeber a time when "zero point energy" was all the rage in sci fi, and yet that turned out to be something of a joke. At the best it might end up being cliche (becuase there are alot of writers who like to inject "nanotubes" or something similarly high techy into their fiction) and at worse you probably date and/or contradict yourself because it doesnt quite work out the way you envisioned. For that matter, its probably better not to focus too heavily on numbers, weapons yields, masses, and anything like that, just to avoid possible nitpickery or second guessing along the line (EG poor David Weber.)

For that matter there's enough consistency issues to deal with. For example, if we're building all these super duper tough and massive starships that have no problems moving or accelerating, what factors (if any) will limit the use of purely robotic enemies? Or robotic ramships/missiles? Stuff or tactics like that have to be accounted for, along with combat styles or attacks that may arise from whatever technological base you're envisioning./

[Simon_Jester]

Well, in his case I think he's trying to limit the handwaves by basing them, so far as possible, off stuff he can reasonably project: posit that the ship is made out of "super-steel" instead of out of "the condensed dreams of fifty thousand madmen" or something equally bizarre. Things like that. It's soft SF, but I respect soft SF that at least refers to the laws of physics and makes a sincere effort to work with them where that wouldn't disrupt the story.

The "I don't understand why they don't just use robots" objection is universal in science fiction and, frankly, there is no defense against it. I don't really give a damn, and I don't think anyone else should either. Only a very restricted subset of stories can be told when robots do everything difficult or dangerous, even if that's what our future will supposedly look like.

Also, Purple: I think you misunderstood. You do not want 100 meters of X, then 100 meters of Y, then 100 meters of Z. You want, say, one or two meters of X, then some Y, then some Z, then more X... you get the idea. Basically, it defeats the purpose of using multiple materials to protect the ship if any given weapon hit only actually has to confront one of those materials at a time. For example, you want layers of heat-insulating material throughout the metallic part of the armor belt, because you want each slab of armor to take the heat without conducting it to the layer below- at least, if your design philosophy treats the armor as being ablative, which it should.

[Connor MacLeod]

Well, in his case I think he's trying to limit the handwaves by basing them, so far as possible, off stuff he can reasonably project: posit that the ship is made out of "super-steel" instead of out of "the condensed dreams of fifty thousand madmen" or something equally bizarre. Things like that. It's soft SF, but I respect soft SF that at least refers to the laws of physics and makes a sincere effort to work with them where that wouldn't disrupt the story.

If he's trying to limit handwaves then he shouldn't be aiming for SW level firepower because.. frankly,, SW level is pretty absurd. And in terms of practicality there's no point in it from a storytelling perspective. You could get away with Megaton, kiloton, terawatt, or petawatt level firepowers (which are probably excessive) without getting into Star Wars levels of absurdity (which is in part driven by stuff like the Death Star and BDZ, but other things.) MT/kt/TW/PW doesn't even prohibit stuff like "mass extinctions" either, since you can just mass nukage at that point (or antimatter, or whatever.) You also save a great deal of headache that way since SW stuff is, frankly, a pain in the ass to deal with at the really high end yields (so much so I've actually preferred finding ways around that without saying "its fucking stupid and we should ignore it." because that's not really an argument, that's a personal judgement.)

The "I don't understand why they don't just use robots" objection is universal in science fiction and, frankly, there is no defense against it. I don't really give a damn, and I don't think anyone else should either. Only a very restricted subset of stories can be told when robots do everything difficult or dangerous, even if that's what our future will supposedly look like.

Oh I think there are defenses against it, they just won't be logical ones. Politics, religion, personal or cultural bias, diplomatic reasons (maybe they have some sort of agreed upon methods upon how war is conducted, the way we have agreements IRL that limit the use of stuff like chemical and biological weapons or "inhumane" ammunition.) It could be argued that robotic type stuff is a real pandora's box when it comes to flat out "total war" type scenarios, depending on how you design it.

That said, he still has to think of a reason why, since if he doesn't someone else will. I'm getting quite used to dealing with that sort of nitpickery in the 40K venue, and I didn't even make the universe.

[Simon_Jester]

Well, in his case I think he's trying to limit the handwaves by basing them, so far as possible, off stuff he can reasonably project: posit that the ship is made out of "super-steel" instead of out of "the condensed dreams of fifty thousand madmen" or something equally bizarre. Things like that. It's soft SF, but I respect soft SF that at least refers to the laws of physics and makes a sincere effort to work with them where that wouldn't disrupt the story.

If he's trying to limit handwaves then he shouldn't be aiming for SW level firepower because.. frankly,, SW level is pretty absurd. And in terms of practicality there's no point in it from a storytelling perspective. You could get away with Megaton, kiloton, terawatt, or petawatt level firepowers (which are probably excessive) without getting into Star Wars levels of absurdity (which is in part driven by stuff like the Death Star and BDZ, but other things.) MT/kt/TW/PW doesn't even prohibit stuff like "mass extinctions" either, since you can just mass nukage at that point (or antimatter, or whatever.) You also save a great deal of headache that way since SW stuff is, frankly, a pain in the ass to deal with at the really high end yields (so much so I've actually preferred finding ways around that without saying "its fucking stupid and we should ignore it." because that's not really an argument, that's a personal judgement.)

To be fair, I think "Star Wars" level firepower is an exaggeration of what Purple has in mind. Nukes that touch the single digit gigatons at the high end aren't entirely unreasonable, and everything else in his arsenal scales down below that range. Granted that if he's imagining these ships mounting thousands of such weapons it creates problems, but that's a separate issue from the warships' armor scheme.