Something big

[fractalsponge1]

This is something I blocked out a long time ago: a cruiser/battlecruiser design pair for the Impellor-class carrier.... The combat version retains the main reactor, producing ~5.5x ISD power, and adds (or retains rather) a secondary reactor complex where the forward mandible hangar bays would be for the carrier variant that adds another ~2.5x ISD power. That's adding up to ~8x ISD power, so roughly 8e25W.
[Snip]

So, perhaps a third- to half-again the power of an Allegiance? Even more of a multi-role design than the old Urbanus WIPs? Heavier than an Impellor, but must still have good footwork. High-endurance type perhaps - fast-battleship escort lending a bit of extra oomph to the battle carrier? Regardless, I do love this one. Look forward to seeing her grow.

Edit: Hadn't realized that the Impellor's plant looks just about Allegiance sized. Deliberate?

Pretty much same plant. I think Allegiance is a destroyer by budgetary sleight of hand - getting basically a cruiser as "destroyers" past Senate appropriators. Cruiser main plant, destroyer secondaries, cruiser firepower, destroyer speed - get it by taking a cruiser and trimming down as much as possible of everything that isn't reactor, engine, and weapon. Also use a fatter hull form since the Anaxes table is length based, right?

[fractalsponge1]

Speaking of the Urbanus WIPs, Fractal, when are you going to be working on the Urbanus again?

Anyways, nice to see that the Impellor carrier's going to be getting a full-on cruiser/battlecruiser cousin.

Eventually (TM)

[23 November 1939]

Pretty much same plant. I think Allegiance is a destroyer by budgetary sleight of hand - getting basically a cruiser as "destroyers" past Senate appropriators. Cruiser main plant, destroyer secondaries, cruiser firepower, destroyer speed - get it by taking a cruiser and trimming down as much as possible of everything that isn't reactor, engine, and weapon. Also use a fatter hull form since the Anaxes table is length based, right?

Intriguing. A pity we have so little to go on for things like endurance and shielding. Feels like the Allegiance is what the New Class Program intended the Nebula to be - but was better able to achieve it by stripping away all pretense at a multi-role platform. Allegiance is what we would consider a proper line-of-battle ship to be. She has always felt like a South Dakota class battleship or a second rate three-decker to me (Loyal London, for instance) - that stoutness to which you refer.

Sounds like this unnamed cruiser of yours manages to squeeze a Secutor and an Allegiance into one hull - individually more survivable but less flexible, classic trade-off. Looking forward to more, whenever inspiration strikes.

[fractalsponge1]

Pretty much same plant. I think Allegiance is a destroyer by budgetary sleight of hand - getting basically a cruiser as "destroyers" past Senate appropriators. Cruiser main plant, destroyer secondaries, cruiser firepower, destroyer speed - get it by taking a cruiser and trimming down as much as possible of everything that isn't reactor, engine, and weapon. Also use a fatter hull form since the Anaxes table is length based, right?

Intriguing. A pity we have so little to go on for things like endurance and shielding. Feels like the Allegiance is what the New Class Program intended the Nebula to be - but was better able to achieve it by stripping away all pretense at a multi-role platform. Allegiance is what we would consider a proper line-of-battle ship to be. She has always felt like a South Dakota class battleship or a second rate three-decker to me (Loyal London, for instance) - that stoutness to which you refer.

Sounds like this unnamed cruiser of yours manages to squeeze a Secutor and an Allegiance into one hull - individually more survivable but less flexible, classic trade-off. Looking forward to more, whenever inspiration strikes.

Endurance...meh, who knows? Fuel tanks seem to be relatively unobstrusive on the ICS.

Shielding - my shorthand is that this is dependent on power available and surface area to be shielded. Keep a ship compact with high reactor volume to surface area ratio, and relative shielding performance goes up. Take a high surface area ship with a small reactor, and you get survivability issues. This is presumably something important when it comes to designing carriers and the like.

Real world analogues to the Allegiance...hmm, if we go with sailing ships, I'd say it's more like a heavy "frigate" razee - like the British 74s that were cut down to deal with American heavy frigates - incredible firepower and scantlings for a normally light type of single deck ship.

[fractalsponge1]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser:

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ah good times!
Nothing like seeing another Cyclopian Murder Wedge barring down upon you
Quite intimidating.

[Geforce]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser

my heart beats faster

i new imperial rebel killer that's how I like it ...a alpha strike beast

i hope you reworked your victory a little bit before you leak it (no aim antennas)

[Beersatron]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser:

Have you thought of stats? Number and type of main guns plus rough estimate on secondaries? How many squadrons and what kind of troop compliment?

[fractalsponge1]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser:

Have you thought of stats? Number and type of main guns plus rough estimate on secondaries? How many squadrons and what kind of troop compliment?

568 (71 octuple barbettes) 40-teraton (ISDII caliber) HTL (13 4 barbette batteries, remainder isolated turrets or partial batteries)
252 (63 quadruple turrets) 200GT MTL

Corps of troops, at least 6 wings of fighters. Trade ground force vehicles for a lot more fighters as an option.

[Beersatron]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser:

Have you thought of stats? Number and type of main guns plus rough estimate on secondaries? How many squadrons and what kind of troop compliment?

568 (71 octuple barbettes) 40-teraton (ISDII caliber) HTL (13 4 barbette batteries, remainder isolated turrets or partial batteries)
252 (63 quadruple turrets) 200GT MTL

Corps of troops, at least 6 wings of fighters. Trade ground force vehicles for a lot more fighters as an option.

So from your earlier post on energy generation, about 8 times the firepower of an ISDII? If my presumption is correct, what would the benefit be in making 1 Compellor instead of 8 ISDIIs? I think you mentioned before that reactor output scales better at greater sizes?

[Captain Seafort]

So from your earlier post on energy generation, about 8 times the firepower of an ISDII? If my presumption is correct, what would the benefit be in making 1 Compellor instead of 8 ISDIIs? I think you mentioned before that reactor output scales better at greater sizes?

For that matter, what's the logic behind giving it destroyer-scale weapons rather than fewer, heavier guns?

[fractalsponge1]

Large vs small guns:
I think by and large power on target is power on target, on an average basis. That said, caveats:

Pros of large guns:
- there *may* be benefits to shield penetration of a large bolt dropping a large amount of energy on a single point that would be difficult to replicate even with a turret of smaller guns with the same overall power firing (and hitting) together with greater dispersion
- fewer highly-trained gun crew required, assuming the smaller guns are not typically slaved together as a battery

Cons of large guns:
- probably proportionately more expensive than the same power output in smaller weapons
- harder to mount and to structurally brace
- lower rate of fire per ship if not per barrel - fewer bolts downstream means lower hit probabilities unless a ship is big enough to mount a large number of large guns - versus smaller ships this may be important

So I expect main batteries to diverge based on role. Battleships will carry more heavy weapons to batter down hard targets, but ships designed to run down smaller ships will likely mount more smaller weapons to deliver energy better against maneuverable targets, and slave guns together for shooting at bigger targets, albeit with an efficiency penalty.

1 large ship vs same power generation of smaller ships:
I assume this is a comparison between ships and groups of smaller ships of the same power/tonnage ratio. Obviously when that ratio is different the comparison changes dramatically. Only doing pros, since the cons are pretty obvious.

Pros of large ships:
- more survivable vs surge attacks - hits that would destroy a small ship outright would only cause shield depletion for a larger ship - this is presumably very important for siege operations where ships are pitted against massive planetary defense guns
- concentration of power - easier to coordinate fire across batteries of the same ship than across many smaller ships of the same overall firepower
- power efficiency - this is a bit debatable, but it really does seem like larger reactors generate proportionately more power per volume than small ones, at least from the ICS examples
- fewer trained crew required - it's much harder to get very specialized crew (officers, gunlayers, engineers, experienced noncoms) vs general crew. I also personally think personnel, especially reliable personnel, was a much more limiting factor than metal in the dramatic expansion of the Republic fleet into the Imperial Starfleet, once clones were supplanted by womb-born personnel
- more space for carrying specialized units - some large units like AT-SPs simply do not fit on destroyers and smaller - they require a larger ship to carry them and their associated dropships
- probably more expensive per ton to construct (we know so little about SW economics that this, like running costs, is really hard to quantify in any systematic or concrete way)
- they look cooler, so STFU and enjoy the battlewagon porn

[Beersatron]

*snip*
- they look cooler, so STFU and enjoy the battlewagon porn
*snip*

[23 November 1939]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser:

Gorgeous. Definitely like the family resemblance to your heavier types. The 40 TT HTLs certainly fit your razeed 64 analogy.

[23 November 1939]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser:

Snip.

Ack! Forgot that the razee analogy was for the Allegiance (where it fits better, given their 32-pounders against a heavy-frigate's 24-pounders). So, we have a fast, flexible ship with a large battery of barrels very well suited to cruiser-killing?

[starfury]

Comepllor-class Star Cruiser

Seemed to be the long awaited imperial conuterpart to home one rebel command ship, similar in size and scale, unlike the Allegiance which squeezed nearly comparable firepower into a hull modestly larger then a destroyer, a True muti-role cruiser I wonder what role it plays next to the bellator battlecruiser, seems to to have a armored cruiser to battlecruiser relationship?

[Sea Skimmer]

Real world analogues to the Allegiance...hmm, if we go with sailing ships, I'd say it's more like a heavy "frigate" razee - like the British 74s that were cut down to deal with American heavy frigates - incredible firepower and scantlings for a normally light type of single deck ship.

I'd point out know the concept of the 74 evolved out of the original Dunkirker's frigates in the first place! Was the logical end result of ever increasing firepower on that type of fast ship, in which the primary concern was high speed and agility. The upper gun decks got bigger and bigger until they were completely decked over, and 74 guns proved to be about where you started to seriously loose the high speed and agility. The 90-100 gun ships evolved separately.

This is no doubt a major factor in why 'heavy frigates' were uncommon prior to the 19th century, that had already been done to death in the 17th century and American designers were only exploited a narrow window of opportunity. European navies were limited by manpower more then anything else, so they had strong reasons not to field 'every' possible scale of ship. The Euros did end up all building their own 50 gun frigates later...but at the same time they outright doubled the displacement of ships of the line and increased the weight of armament by an even greater factor.

The British did have 64 gun ships that were rather ideal for countering American heavy frigates too, the reduction from 74 guns being purely to reduce manning, and the ships intended for overseas station flagships. Problem in 1812 was all of those ships were off in India and Asia.

Ships fit a role first, arbitrary designations come later and generally are important only for political and career reasons, what rank the captain-officer in command is. The first question should always be what is the ship supposed to do?

Ack! Forgot that the razee analogy was for the Allegiance (where it fits better, given their 32-pounders against a heavy-frigate's 24-pounders). So, we have a fast, flexible ship with a large battery of barrels very well suited to cruiser-killing?

Isn't that the definition of a battlecruiser?

[Shroom Man 777]

Your work is always great.

But I think the row of ten turrets is a bit overmuch. It's like those fan arts where every square feet of the ship is bristling with guns. Ignoring the space the stuff beneath the turret takes... (sure in the case of turbolasers, there won't be ammo-storage spaces...).

Might as well give the ship uber-ripped musculature, leave the ship's feet off the comic book panel, and give it enormous shoulderpads.

Imperial Star Ship Rob Liefeld of the YOUNGBLOODSHOT DEATHMATE RED THIS BLOOD'S FOR YOU-class killfuckcruiser.

Schematics:

[fractalsponge1]

Real world analogues to the Allegiance...hmm, if we go with sailing ships, I'd say it's more like a heavy "frigate" razee - like the British 74s that were cut down to deal with American heavy frigates - incredible firepower and scantlings for a normally light type of single deck ship.

I'd point out know the concept of the 74 evolved out of the original Dunkirker's frigates in the first place! Was the logical end result of ever increasing firepower on that type of fast ship, in which the primary concern was high speed and agility. The upper gun decks got bigger and bigger until they were completely decked over, and 74 guns proved to be about where you started to seriously loose the high speed and agility. The 90-100 gun ships evolved separately.

This is no doubt a major factor in why 'heavy frigates' were uncommon prior to the 19th century, that had already been done to death in the 17th century and American designers were only exploited a narrow window of opportunity. European navies were limited by manpower more then anything else, so they had strong reasons not to field 'every' possible scale of ship. The Euros did end up all building their own 50 gun frigates later...but at the same time they outright doubled the displacement of ships of the line and increased the weight of armament by an even greater factor.

The British did have 64 gun ships that were rather ideal for countering American heavy frigates too, the reduction from 74 guns being purely to reduce manning, and the ships intended for overseas station flagships. Problem in 1812 was all of those ships were off in India and Asia.

Ships fit a role first, arbitrary designations come later and generally are important only for political and career reasons, what rank the captain-officer in command is. The first question should always be what is the ship supposed to do?

I didn't know that the third rates originally came from frigates!

For the Allegiance analogy I was thinking of very particular stuff like HMS Saturn or HMS Majestic - 74 gun ships cut down one deck into the rate below, in those cases I believe to produce ships to match the American ships, something the 18pdr frigates couldn't do. Scantlings still of a ship of the line and mounting long 32 pdrs like a larger ship but technically a lower-rated ship. I'm not sure in that case how well she moved relative to a frigate, but 74s weren't necessarily much slower than some frigates to begin with, and certainly razeed capitals like Indefatigable were very successful. Perhaps not a perfect analogy.

[Sea Skimmer]

That they did, I have a chart of this around I will try to post. Also those original frigates in the earliest years came from cutting down galleons, though in that era frigate built more or less meant any fast cut down ship, rather then the more specific meaning it would take on by the mid 17th century when hull forms improved.

The British cut those ships of the line mainly because they were old and tried hulls, often ones that had taken serious battle damage at some point or another. Removing a large amount of weight could extend the life of the ship. An economy measure rather then any brilliant decision choice. Some British razee were 74s cut down by an entire gun deck to only 44 gun ships. This kind of thing had been going on really ever since the broadside ship emerged as the real deal in the 1560s-1580s.

I'm not sure any of this is useful as a guide to how one should divide up Imperial ships, all of which seem to be hybrids between capital ship ideas and amphibious assault ships.

Sailing warships are kind of similar in that they largely varied in scale, while the basic technology was the same, as opposed to the carrier vs battleship vs submarine dynamic of real life, but that said all the other logic of what they do is a lot different, the mere fact that they have freedom of movement vs sailing is a deep change. That's what let something like a destroyer take part in a fleet action, while in the 18th century age of sail a frigate was simply incapable of this and not at all designed or equipped for it.

[fractalsponge1]

That they did, I have a chart of this around I will try to post. Also those original frigates in the earliest years came from cutting down galleons, though in that era frigate built more or less meant any fast cut down ship, rather then the more specific meaning it would take on by the mid 17th century when hull forms improved.

The British cut those ships of the line mainly because they were old and tried hulls, often ones that had taken serious battle damage at some point or another. Removing a large amount of weight could extend the life of the ship. An economy measure rather then any brilliant decision choice. Some British razee were 74s cut down by an entire gun deck to only 44 gun ships. This kind of thing had been going on really ever since the broadside ship emerged as the real deal in the 1560s-1580s.

I'm not sure any of this is useful as a guide to how one should divide up Imperial ships, all of which seem to be hybrids between capital ship ideas and amphibious assault ships.

Sailing warships are kind of similar in that they largely varied in scale, while the basic technology was the same, as opposed to the carrier vs battleship vs submarine dynamic of real life, but that said all the other logic of what they do is a lot different, the mere fact that they have freedom of movement vs sailing is a deep change. That's what let something like a destroyer take part in a fleet action, while in the 18th century age of sail a frigate was simply incapable of this and not at all designed or equipped for it.

You know if you ever did run a milhistory/tech blog, I'd subscribe to it - with real money even!

For the Allegiance, real world analogies aside, my idea is that the designers crammed the largest possible reactor into a fat hull, and started trimming away anything not related to weapons, shields, engines, or fuel tank to get it to sort-of-destroyer size. So gone are the launch bays and hangars that eat up armor weight to cover. Similar in concept to the Assertor really, just on a different scale.

[Captain Seafort]

Problem in 1812 was all of those ships were off in India and Asia.

I think you're forgetting HMS Africa - she was part of the Halifax squadron that nearly caught the Constitution very early in the war.

For the Allegiance analogy I was thinking of very particular stuff like HMS Saturn or HMS Majestic - 74 gun ships cut down one deck into the rate below, in those cases I believe to produce ships to match the American ships, something the 18pdr frigates couldn't do. Scantlings still of a ship of the line and mounting long 32 pdrs like a larger ship but technically a lower-rated ship. I'm not sure in that case how well she moved relative to a frigate, but 74s weren't necessarily much slower than some frigates to begin with, and certainly razeed capitals like Indefatigable were very successful. Perhaps not a perfect analogy.

The 1814 razees were certainly capable of dealing with a President-class ship, to the extent that they were used interchangeably with 74s as part of the blocking squadrons, but their mobility was nothing special. In that respect the Indy was something of an outlier in terms of having the speed of a standard frigate. To make up for this a counter-President squadron was generally a razee or 74 as flag, a Leander-class fast 24-pdr frigate, and a few 18-pdr frigates. When President tried to break out of New York, it was Endymion, the fast 24-pdr the Leanders had been based on, that captured her. Majestic simply couldn't keep up, although I don't know whether that was simply due to poor performance in light winds, rather than generally.

[23 November 1939]

[Snip]

[Snip] So, we have a fast, flexible ship with a large battery of barrels very well suited to cruiser-killing?

Isn't that the definition of a battlecruiser?

Fair enough. I do hesitate to introduce the term, given the controversies surrounding them, especially after Jutland (never mind the issues of cordite handling) and Denmark Strait. But, so far as we consider 44s and others that seek that particular balance to be in the same family as battlecruisers, perfectly serviceable.

[fractalsponge1]

Messing about:

[Sea Skimmer]

Fair enough. I do hesitate to introduce the term, given the controversies surrounding them, especially after Jutland (never mind the issues of cordite handling) and Denmark Strait. But, so far as we consider 44s and others that seek that particular balance to be in the same family as battlecruisers, perfectly serviceable.

The battlecruiser concept was however like, 190 billion percent effective at the Falkland Islands, where both British ships together took 5 casualties. I bring this up to illustrate a key choice you got to make behind whatever logic.

In real life the shell caliber mattered a damn lot. The German cruisers fought to nearly the exhaustion of ammunition at the Falklands, and didn't have all that much inferior armor in thickness, but their fire was completely ineffective. Meanwhile even though British shells were pretty crummy in absolute terms, they could literally blow holes in the German plating and thus deal absolute destruction. So you get a completely one sided action. The Admiralty was actually pissed off about this, because they didn't like how much ammo was fired off, would have rather the battlecruisers got closer and a bit more damaged to end the action much sooner. Their armor would have still stood up to it. None the less, the I class was able to inflict this defeat at will and unfavorable weather, and certainly could have done so again and again to any other armored cruiser around.

With turbolasers and energy shields that doesn't have to be like that. One also has to consider the accuracy factor, in real life heavier caliber shells are much more accurate, but so much slower firing that they really couldn't deal with small craft attacks, which prevented a battleship from literally creaming an enemy force that had them.

Turbolaser? That may not matter at all. All equally accurate, and decently fast firing would mean heavier guns have a very large appeal, which tends not to favor intermediate size ships. War's sublight engines let these ships fly around solar systems pretty much at will, so once your in action, it's a battle. No hiding behind a space smoke screen and exploiting that real life problem of 'in real life people don't want ship sunk' so they simply WONT charge through a smoke screen against torpedo craft.

If aggregate over time is all that matters meanwhile then notionally any sized ship could be useful, because they can gang up with equal results to heavier gunfire. A bunch of swarmy crap isn't vulnerable to a battleship appearing out of hyperspace in that situation.


. But if caliber is the dominate factor, and I kind of think the sum of rough evidence and logic says it should, then one must be careful about the niches one uses, or at least which ones you really want to rationally justify. The problem with the battlecruiser was it was easily rendered obsolete by over matching threats. That's also what later discouraged increasing 8in cruiser calibers any higher, it turns into 'build Alaska' real fast...and Alaska cost as much as an Iowa by the time they actually finished her. If caliber dominates...then we should expect a ship like Executor to just waste a destroyer as a fighting unit with one or two broadsides.

Of course all that rambled, you could also bring back the term protected cruiser, or scout cruiser, or varying rates of cruiser or rates of scout cruiser or a bunch of other things, heck at one point the British were going to call the Tribal class destroyers corvettes in view of their heavy gun armament, a throwback to the sailing use of the term for a small but potent gunship. They decided against it though, and not long after awarded that designation to a new category of small mobilization ASW vessel everyone has heard of. For my own fiction I adapted that, then added for bonus the classification of Armored Corvette, something popular in the 1860s, to account for some real life destroyers mostly real only on paper which had some real armor on them. I once got myself up to 27 successive tiers of cruiser by category inflation like that, assuming you count the special branches for ASW Hunter Killer and High Angle cruiser which was about seven of em.