Ok, I've buckled down on ship design, and well, I've been using GURPS to design things. It isn't the easiest of systems to start out with but it does have plenty of tools to make it fairly realistic.
For example, for an Outsider/A New World (one of the settings I'm working on) fanfic, I have a corvette all ready to go (used the ship stats that the comic uses for a quick comparison):
Class: Sword VIII
Classification: Corvette (CC)
Length: 287 meters
Fully Loaded Weight: 450,000t/450kT
Dry Weight: ~284,000/284kT
Crew: 323 (including passengers and prisoners)
Screens: EXOTIC*
Max Acceleration: 27.2G (~88.7Mm of DeltaV (water propellant), 30GN Fusion Torches (high efficiency type)), ~3,055,988.38G (Powerplant and Capacitor Reliant, Interplanetary Drive)
Armor Rating: EXOTIC/500**
ECM Rating: 0/52***
Endurance: 4 Years (Primary)/6 Years (Primary+Emergency)
Armament:
- 32x1 2TW Interceptor**** Mk30 Pulse Weapon (500MJ/Bolt, ROF=30; maximum combat range=3Mm)
- 12x1 45mm L/110 Autorail Cannon PD Railguns (13.5kg/round, 25km/s, ROF=20; maximum combat range=2Mm)
- 8x1 100TW Light Energy Shell Cannon (25GJ per shot, Anti-Shield Only, ROF=2; maximum combat range=85Mm)
- 8x1 30TW 3-barreled Ultra-Heavy UV Pulse Laser Cannon (7.5GJ/Pulse - 1 cycle has 4 pulses, ROF=30; maximum combat range=99Mm)
- 16x1 40TW Ultra-Light Anti-Ship UV Pulse Laser Cannon (10GJ/Pulse - 1 cycle has 4 pulses, ROF=4; maximum combat range=112Mm)
- 2x6 300mm Light Anti-Ship Missile Launchers (50-ton missiles, ROF=1/2)
- 2x3 300mm Light Anti-Ship Missile Launchers (50-ton missiles, ROF=1/2)
- 4x20 150mm Interceptor Missile Launchers (10-ton missiles, ROF=3)
Small Craft and Ordinance:
- 4x Strikecraft
- 2x Shuttles
- 720x Star Javelin Mk9 Light Anti-Ship Missiles (5x Plasma Lance Warheads each, 100G, 15.7-second endurance)
- 360x Star Javelin Mk9 Light Anti-Ship Missiles (5x Programmable Fusion Warheads (Multi-Megaton yield, standard config is casaba howitzer), 100G, 15.7-second endurance)
- 300x Star Defender Mk9 Interceptor Missiles (27x Proximity-fused 'flak' warheads, 200G, 7.91-second endurance)
- 300x Star Defender Mk9 Interceptor Missiles (27x nuclear warheads fitted with scattershot x-ray laser-head technology (lots of X-Ray lasers in a conical pattern), 200G, 7.91-second endurance)
Notes:
* When compared to Loroi and Umiak designs, shields of the
A New World: A World of Conflict and Sorrow setting operate on different principles. The setting utilizes something akin to the shields of
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident where it is more akin to ablative armor. It can be penetrated, if the beam is powerful enough that is. The various factions in the setting utilize 'energy shell' and 'energy torpedo' technology to disrupt the field that a shield generator generates.
** Armor in
A New World: A World of Conflict and Sorrow is quite similar to Battletech armor, but with the caveat of having a required minimum to ablate. This is further complicated due to the fact that in-setting armor utilizes a dispersion component in their armor called 'ED-WEB'/'E-WEB', ED-WEB is short for Energy Dispersion WEBbing. In effect, this makes the armor harder to damage, especially with non-neutron particle beams. If a number had to be used, it'll be crazy like 500.
*** Lightspeed sensors of the setting use a combination of Cross-Spectrum LIDAR (basically a LIDAR array that uses the entire EM Spectrum) and 'Quantum Radar' (or, to put it in the simplest terms, radar that uses quantum superposition in its signals; this, essentially, ensures that any attempt to mess with the signal will be ignored as the radar set would recognize the change of superposition), making traditional ECM methods effectively unusable. The only way to get 'stealth' features is via metamaterials and the armor itself (which, due to being designed with DEWs in mind, scatters or otherwise disrupts most radar systems). These are used in conjunction with FTL sensors (usually the AU spanning in-system FTL sensors) and communication systems to create system-spanning sensor networks that make a system's sensor density quite literally 'yes'.
HOWEVER, going active with these sensors you are basically putting a giant neon sign here saying "I'm right here" to anyone in-system. Against more conventional radar and sensor sets? It's not god-mode levels but it's quite effective.
**** Interceptors are an interesting defensive weapon in that they're designed to shoot down not only projectiles and physical objects but also any energy weapon that isn't lightspeed (like lasers) or is completely exotic (like 'quark' guns which are matter disruptors). When used in conjunction with ED-WEB, this makes ships rather hard to take out.