Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

[TrashMan]

Mobile shipyards... that's the solution.

[Codius_Dak]

Not hardly. For the price of creating a shipyard that could move you could make probably a division size battle fleet. The solution would be spread out massive complexes that could defended against a siege. With an attendant fleet of monitors of course.

a monitor would be classified as a ship lacking FTL engines and could be of any size. its role is to defend the ship yard till death.

[Fotiadis_110]

The only difficulty in building a mobile shipyard is working on the means you use to hold the incomplete sub-assemblies together without rattling.
And as Arioch explained, there are several hours from the original jumping in of opposing forces till their actual arrival, and a shipyard doesn't really need heavy armour or shielding if the entire reason you fitted engines is to move away from combat, making it lighter and thus more mobile.

Compare A: a star ship equipped with a wide variety of highly complex and expensive alloys of armour and combat equipment
And B: A metallic frame used to secure and work on star ships for repair, probably with robotic arms for manoeuvring components, and additional hoops or fittings to allow major components to be 'strapped down' in the even of combat manoeuvres to evade.

If you ignore the Acceleration dampening, a Ship Yard like repair platform with big engines to make it mobile is still far easier to build, maintain and operate than a true warship.
In our terms contrast a Cargo ship and a Battleship, they are both similar sizes, but the cargo ship is far simpler and more modular in design than a battleship, and thus cheaper.
If they use momentum dampeners on their repair ship, it would significantly increase the cost, with the benefit that repairs could in theory occur while preforming manoeuvres.
I don't know for certain how useful that would be...
In general combat is generally described as long periods of mind-numbing boredom, punctuated by moments of absolute terror and intense activity.
If Outsider warfare is like this, the former shipyard is more useful. Meanwhile the latter is better for prolonged engagements.
Both are far more survivable and useful that a satellite design, which I might put in orbit despite it's lack of utility anyway, alongside more mobile models for the simple reason that having an 'easy target' can actually provide a worthwhile trap, not to mention while it remains in operation it can provide long term support to the system it resides in while more mobile variants may be required elsewhere.

Btw can someone run a simulation on the numbers of a craft with a max acceleration of 0.1 G for me? i'm curious if such a craft could be jump capable (ie build your satellites elsewhere as well as being able to send them home if problems arise)

[Absalom]

I don't think that any front-line 'shipyard' would be tasked with actually building warships. It would more likely serve as a depot with repair, salvage & refit capabilities. For example, it might be able to replace the external ordnance rack on a Katana, in the middle of battle. Any ships too damaged to return to operational status during the battle would probably be ejected for later recovery.

[Fotiadis_110]

it's normally cheaper to repair than replace, but to repair say one of their engines is probably a replacement job :p

That said, they are more likely to ferry a limited number of replacements/upgrades around with them (maybe inside the shipyards?) for quick repairs in combat situations. (IE: we got attacked yesterday, killed them all, but they could have another attack hit us at any time, so lets get as many ships back to operating spec as possible)

And any place you can preform intensive Ship repairs IS a Shipyard, even if it doesn't ever actually get used for complete construction jobs


Crazy idea: the shipyards come with all the standard engine sizes bolted on for mobility reasons and to act as replacements O_O

[discord]

foti: not quite as crazy as you might think, assuming reaction thrusters, these things the loroi use however....dunno.

[Michael]

a mobile shipyard? not really practical when a ship is docked, a small inertial compensator where the crew are would probably be needed, a single large ship yard with stationary defences around it would be good, however it would be impractical to make these defence any thing more than a stop gap for when the fleet turns up as they would not only be expensive but also be hazards to move around

[Indubitably]

First of all, GRAAAAVE DIIIIIG. Second of all, I think you guys are seriously underestimating the ability of mankind to build some supremely badass missiles. Take HIBEX for example. Around 370Gs of acceleration in atmosphere (the thing hit mach 1 coming out of the silo!) with a nuclear payload. and it might have had a less then impressive burntime, but that was in the sixtys! By 2160 we should be able to do much better.

For example, say we had a missile (or a loroi AMM) that accelerated at 400Gs for 60 seconds. in that 60 seconds our missile has gone 7,056,000,000 meters, or over 7 million kilometers, and Its final velocity is 235,200 meters per second (235.2 kilometers per second) or 0.79c. It takes this missile just under 12 seconds to travel one light second, the standard engagement range in the outsider universe Now, this type of system should be well within mankinds capability in the latter half of the 22nd century, The missiles themselves should also be relatively cheap to manufacture for a civilization that spans six worlds, and could be carried by any vessel able to mount its launch tube. guidance is the one issue i can think of, not the radars themselves, but keeping the missile up to date on where the target will be in twelve seconds. this could be solved by putting a radar on the missile, but this would also increase the cost of said missile. However, radar technology marches onwards, and who knows where it will be in 145+ years (not including alien assistance)

Mankind in the outsider verse, while likely not having the capability to mass produce advanced beam weapons (even if the loroi were willing to give us the blueprints, which i doubt) would be able to field many thousands of these missiles once significant production was up and running. The only weak point would be terran ship acceleration. This is something i believe the loroi would be willing to help us out with, because with ships capable of at most 6Gs of acceleration, we would probably be more trouble then were worth. Even if the loroi were to give us a dumbed down version of their inertial dampeners, allowing 15 to 20Gs, we would get a vast increase in the speed and maneuverability of terran warships.

So, without further ado, heres my take on what a TCA frigate would look like cira 2165: (wip)

[Arioch]

For example, say we had a missile (or a loroi AMM) that accelerated at 400Gs for 60 seconds. in that 60 seconds our missile has gone 7,056,000,000 meters, or over 7 million kilometers, and Its final velocity is 235,200 meters per second (235.2 kilometers per second) or 0.79c. It takes this missile just under 12 seconds to travel one light second, the standard engagement range in the outsider universe

Your calculation is off by three decimal places. The speed of light is 299,792 km/s, so 235.2 km/s is 0.00078c. It would take a projectile at that speed 3.5 hours to cross 1 light second.

It's a nice-looking frigate, though.

[LegioCI]

On the topic of missiles...

I've been playing with the idea of using massive, hull-mounted railguns to launch a missile bus. (Think Tolot blisters) You'd fire these at an enemy fleet, using the railguns to make up for the fact that human missiles don't have the same acceleration as their Loroi and Umiak counterparts. The missiles would work in two stages-

The first stage would be the carrier, essentially it's job is to protect the payload as its fired from the railgun, giving them protection from the massive EMI, friction and inertial forces they'd experience while being accelerated to a decent-enough fraction of the speed of light. It would also attempt to protect it's payload from any long-range counter-measures. (Probably some sort of ablative nose to protect it from point-defense systems.)

At a pre-determined range (Probably just outside outside of the more effective mid/short Point-Defense system ranges), the first stage is discarded, allowing dozens or even hundreds of smaller, semi-guided missiles to close the final distance. The idea is actually close to the Umiak's missile-spam strategy- in fact the variable-speed of a railgun launcher could mean that you could launch several volleys, each volley at a slightly faster speed than the last, with the intent for each volley to reach its target at the same time. (Figure twenty ships, each firing two buses every minute. Each bus contains, on average, 50 missiles. A ten-minute salvo, timed to allow simultaneous impacts would put 20,000 missiles on target all at once. I'm not sure what sort of targeting Umiak Point-Defense systems are capable of, but that's a whole lotta Dakka- even a 99% attrition rate would mean over 200 missiles get through to their targets.)

Might be an interesting way for less technologically-advanced human warships to have relevant weapon systems until we can catch up to everyone else. The best bit is that the missiles, assuming they're accelerated from a decent railgun, wouldn't even require a a H- charge- the mass of the missiles themselves would be sufficient to do severe damage to anything they hit. (Actually, including a small base-charge to fragment the missile just before impact might be even more devestating, spreading the damage over a much larger area...)

[sunphoenix]

On the topic of missiles...

I've been playing with the idea of using massive, hull-mounted railguns to launch a missile bus. (Think Tolot blisters) You'd fire these at an enemy fleet, using the railguns to make up for the fact that human missiles don't have the same acceleration as their Loroi and Umiak counterparts. The missiles would work in two stages-

'snip'

Doesn't this mimic the weapons systems and tactics from Honor Harrington's Universe? Not a criticism... just an observation... its a good tactic in my opinion.


And yes... Indubitably lovely Frigate designs! Thx!

[Arioch]

I've been playing with the idea of using massive, hull-mounted railguns to launch a missile bus. (Think Tolot blisters) You'd fire these at an enemy fleet, using the railguns to make up for the fact that human missiles don't have the same acceleration as their Loroi and Umiak counterparts. The missiles would work in two stages-

If it were practical to rail-launch torpedoes (or missile buses) to a high fraction of lightspeed, then wouldn't we expect that the Loroi and Umiak would already be doing this? Trying to come up with super-weapons or super-tactics for the backward Humans that would be decisive against the more-advanced, better-supplied aliens is very difficult without assuming that the aliens are either incompetent or not actually more advanced.

As we've discussed before, a railgun that could accelerate even a small 50-200kg projectile to a high fraction of lightspeed would be huge (likely more than a kilometer long) and require a great deal of power, and it's not clear how to avoid having such energies vaporize the projectile. Using a railgun to launch a much larger torpedo or missile compounds the problem; 50 Umiak "Gimlet" KKV's weigh 50 tons, and 50 Loroi AMM-250's weigh 200 tons. The missile bus could potentially protect the payload with an inertial damping field, but it's already established that fighter-sized craft don't have the power to generate a damping field, so what you're talking about is a projectile the size of a Highland shuttle, 50+ meters and 400+ tons. That would require one heck of a railgun.

I'm trying to imagine the ship that such a weapon would be mounted on. It would be bigger than almost everything the Loroi or Umiak have, with the possible exception of the 2.2km-long Umiak ultraheavies. And the Humans are supposed to build twenty of these? And if they could build them, how could they protect them? Such monstrosities can't be very maneuverable, and the Humans don't have defensive screens.



I haven't read any of the Honor Harrington books, but I get the impression from hearing discussion about them that they are operating at a much higher level of technology than what's available to the Outsider main combatants (and even more so for the Humans).

[LegioCI]

I don't think such a system would need the same sort of velocities that a traditional railgun would need- since the projectiles and buses are semi-guided (By this I mean they're able to guide themselves onto the target within a frontal cone; since the majority of their velocity is imparted on them from the launcher itself, they would not be able to turn and follow a target they'd already missed.) going too fast actually reduces their ability to effectively track their targets, by reducing the size of the "cone" they can maneuver in. I would consider the ability to cross a light second in 10-20min sufficient to accurately place semi-guided weapons on target. This is between 1/600th and 1/1200th the speed of light or between ~250- and 500km/s, the acceleration of existing Terran military railguns. At this point it would only be a matter of getting the same acceleration out of a larger payload, something not entirely out of the realm of possiblity. (Especially if we are provided with better power plants for future vessels.)

As for the weight of the individual projectiles, I don't think they'd be anywhere near the weight of their Umiak and Loroi equivalent simply because they don't carry their own accelerants with them- they need a minimal amount of thrust to change their direction but the massive fuel-dump required to get them up to speed can be removed from the design, leaving little more than payload, targeting systems and just enough fuel for the maneuvering thrusters. Depending on the efficiency of fuels used in Umiak and Loroi missiles, we could cut the weight of these projectiles by a huge margin.

Still, I agree that the buses themselves would be huge by projectile standards, likely the size of actual buses. I figure the fifty missiles themselves would be between 20 and 30 tons, with a 20 ton bus- really just an ablative shield with with its own minimal maneuvering thrusters- since it's maneuvering to stay on target at a longer distance, the adjustments it makes can be much smaller than the individual warheads. A damping field might be useful, but it wouldn't need to be anywhere *near* the power required to keep a living pilot from turning to jelly, as long as we can keep the G-forces under ~15000Gs, (The requirement for guidance on modern-day guided artillery shells- we're assuming that future electronics are at least as hardy as their modern-day equivalents.) the electronics and maneuvering packages should remain intact, which means a smaller, weaker damping generator that could be fitted to a bus much smaller than a shuttle.

Ultimately, though, the idea isn't to create a weapon better than what the Umiak and Loroi field, it's to create a weapon that can be created with Outsider-modern technology that would be effective against Umiak- and Loroi-level enemies. Think of the difference between a Spencer Carbine and an AK-74- the AK-74 is far more technologically advanced, and, given a choice between the two I'd probably take it over the Spencer, but properly deployed either one is capable of killing you. I see it as the same way- I'm not looking for humanity to punch like the big boys (...or girls.), I'm just looking to punch above our current weight-class.

[icekatze]

hi hi

I think it may be important to point out that space is really, super, extra big. You are already going to have massive initial velocities in a joust situation, but even with those massive initial velocities, they still do a good job of avoiding particularly close combat. (You may note that the Black Razor fired some missile busses, which took dozens of sub-munitions to damage two Umiak ships.)

I'm not sure where you are getting the velocities for railguns. If you mean railguns that exist today, you're off by a few decimal places. The recent railgun test-firing achieved a muzzle velocity of 2.4km/s, which is quite a bit different than 250km/s. Also, its not even a matter of withstanding Gs. Putting that much energy into something in a fraction of a second -unless you want your rail to be over 125 km long- is going to create a LOT of waste heat.

Also: Accelerating a projectile to 250km/s with a rail 2.2km long will subject the projectile to roughly 1,448,405 Gs. A little bit more than the 15,000 Gs for modern day artillery.

[Indubitably]

And now I reaffirm that math is not my strong point, whoops! Arioch, would you be able to give us any information on what the umiak point defenses are like, whether they're better/worse/or par with the loroi? or how willing the various friendly races are to exchange technology with humans? Because (Warning: more shoddy math incoming) a missile accelerating at 400g could (upon further investigation, again, my bad ) cross a light second in under 10 minutes, which would require much more propellant, which would probably vastly increase the cost and production time of said missile. but forgetting whether its actually possible for the human race to field these missiles en masse, say you launched a thousand of them at a umiak group about the same size as the first one we see the 51st fighting. Would a significant number make it through the point defense to strike their targets, or is it not even worth trying? Also, with the imminent threat to humanity proven, how much more funding would the colonial fleet be seeing?

[Arioch]

I don't think such a system would need the same sort of velocities that a traditional railgun would need- since the projectiles and buses are semi-guided (By this I mean they're able to guide themselves onto the target within a frontal cone; since the majority of their velocity is imparted on them from the launcher itself, they would not be able to turn and follow a target they'd already missed.) going too fast actually reduces their ability to effectively track their targets, by reducing the size of the "cone" they can maneuver in. I would consider the ability to cross a light second in 10-20min sufficient to accurately place semi-guided weapons on target.

A "minimally guided" projectile doesn't have the capability to keep up with the velocity changes that a ~30G accelerating target can perform over the course of a 10-20 min flight (whereas a 40-60G torpedo, which can cross the distance in about that same time, can). Mass drivers just aren't effective at the ranges and energies that have been set up in Outsider.

This is between 1/600th and 1/1200th the speed of light or between ~250- and 500km/s, the acceleration of existing Terran military railguns. At this point it would only be a matter of getting the same acceleration out of a larger payload, something not entirely out of the realm of possiblity. (Especially if we are provided with better power plants for future vessels.)

As icekatze mentioned, I think you're off by two orders of magnitude on the speed of current military railguns.

A damping field might be useful, but it wouldn't need to be anywhere *near* the power required to keep a living pilot from turning to jelly, as long as we can keep the G-forces under ~15000Gs, (The requirement for guidance on modern-day guided artillery shells- we're assuming that future electronics are at least as hardy as their modern-day equivalents.) the electronics and maneuvering packages should remain intact, which means a smaller, weaker damping generator that could be fitted to a bus much smaller than a shuttle.

As I mentioned before and icekatze reiterated, you're putting a stupendous amount of energy into the projectile over a very short period of time; it's not clear how to prevent this heat from turning the projectile into a star-hot ball of plasma. You can always wave your hands and say, "Science!" but keep in mind that this isn't a superscience story, and the Humans in particular are the primitives; if the Loroi and Umiak can't do it, then the Humans certainly can't.

Ultimately, though, the idea isn't to create a weapon better than what the Umiak and Loroi field, it's to create a weapon that can be created with Outsider-modern technology that would be effective against Umiak- and Loroi-level enemies. Think of the difference between a Spencer Carbine and an AK-74- the AK-74 is far more technologically advanced, and, given a choice between the two I'd probably take it over the Spencer, but properly deployed either one is capable of killing you. I see it as the same way- I'm not looking for humanity to punch like the big boys (...or girls.), I'm just looking to punch above our current weight-class.

I think a more accurate analogy would be to compare that Spencer rifle to a knife... sure, the knife can kill you, but good luck getting into close enough range with the Spencer-armed opponent to be able to use it. Rather than trying to invent a knife-throwing super-Hwacha that will shower your enemy with thousands of knives, maybe you should be focusing your efforts on trying to buy or steal some Spencers.

Arioch, would you be able to give us any information on what the umiak point defenses are like, whether they're better/worse/or par with the loroi? or how willing the various friendly races are to exchange technology with humans? Because (Warning: more shoddy math incoming) a missile accelerating at 400g could (upon further investigation, again, my bad) cross a light second in under 10 minutes, which would require much more propellant, which would probably vastly increase the cost and production time of said missile. but forgetting whether its actually possible for the human race to field these missiles en masse, say you launched a thousand of them at a umiak group about the same size as the first one we see the 51st fighting. Would a significant number make it through the point defense to strike their targets, or is it not even worth trying? Also, with the imminent threat to humanity proven, how much more funding would the colonial fleet be seeing?

The very high-acceleration missiles must have relatively short burn durations, because the more fuel and propellant you add, the larger the mass of the missile and lower its acceleration. If you take the 400G AMM and increase the fuel by a factor of 10, you also increase the mass by a similar factor and what you have is a 40-60G torpedo (which can cross 1 Light Second in 16-20 minutes), and this is what the major combatants use. However, Humanity does not have the drive technology to sustain this acceleration for such a long period; a typical Terran torpedo can sustain 12G for only 5 minutes.

Terran ships will certainly be able to carry alien torpedoes, if they can get someone to give or sell them to us, but keep in mind that torpedoes are expensive, and the Loroi do not have a lot to spare. Many Umiak ships do not have dedicated point defense weaponry (they use their main batteries against torpedoes) precisely because torpedoes are expensive and the Loroi are always short of them. The Umiak have lots of spare torpedoes, but Loroi ships have very good point defenses.

[LegioCI]

A few people actually asked where I got the values for Terran Railgun velocities- there's actually a chart on the Shipboard Weapons Profile page that tags their muzzle velocity at 200-400km/s.

Terran ships will certainly be able to carry alien torpedoes, if they can get someone to give or sell them to us, but keep in mind that torpedoes are expensive, and the Loroi do not have a lot to spare.

Maybe we could get a demonstrator model from the Umiak instead.

[Arioch]

A few people actually asked where I got the values for Terran Railgun velocities- there's actually a chart on the Shipboard Weapons Profile page that tags their muzzle velocity at 200-400km/s.

Got it. We thought you were talking about real present-day railguns, which are in the 2.5 km/s range.

[Indubitably]

So in the outsider verse, it sounds like fighters have been relegated to second line duties due to the strength of point defense. However, the puny earthlings need something to relive scenes from top gun in, and i thought i could model something cool. let me present to you the SF-03 Kestrel, built assuming that man has discoved how to produce breathable fluid, may she satisfy all your GOTTAGOFAST urges.

[pinheadh78]

Don't forget about inertia in all that. If you have high enough residual inertia your going to keep going in the same direction unless you can muster enough force to overcome it and actually steer. Artillery shells like Excalibur work with such tinny steering fins in just the nose of the shell because they have a nice dense atmosphere to act against the fins (and the body of the shell itself) to fully change direction.

In space if you tried firing a directional thruster to steer your artillery round you may end up simply spinning along an axis rather than changing course as your relative inertia is going to make sure you keep going in the original direction. Like this deck of cards: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fPI-rSwAQNg You'd have to figure out something fancy to actually change the course of your artillery shell.

At some point its going to stop being a dumb cheap-to-manufacture artillery shell and start looking more like a complex and expensive guided missile.