Loroi Ship Design

[Cy83r]

So, Loroi have sleek prongs, Umiak are wide and bumpy, and humans are straight.

[TheUnforsaken]

If humans had equivalent ship tech, what do you think their doctrine and hence, ship design would be?

Looking back, we've done a little of everything. Thought mobility is certainly a favourite.

I always figured humans would do a little of both: the lighter units as high-mobility/hard hitting 'egg-shells armed with sledgehammers' style warships while the heavier classes start trading accel for survivability (except for the battlecruiser which trades it back again )

One thing I have wondered is if the humans would use carrier or battleship doctrine...I can't help but think the Loroi abandoned the carrier doctrine simply because they didn't focus on it enough. It seems to me that having lighter ships armed with a large number of weaker energy weapons would be sufficient to deal with the Umiak gunboats while large fighter formations would be excellent at dealing with the Umiak heavies. As long as the Loroi remain focused on speed over defenses then they need never get into Umiak energy range at all, for the most part, but they seem to have started the war with a mix of both doctrines which reduced their effectiveness at both close range and stand-off engagements...and given they've been mostly on the defensive the stand-off/war of maneuver doctrine is less useful simply because they can't move around if an inhabited world is under threat.

[Trantor]

If humans had equivalent ship tech, what do you think their doctrine and hence, ship design would be?

Straight, but stubbier than now to increase manoeuvrability. Modular design for quick response to new challenges. More automation, less crew. And carrying drones, smart rockets (acc > 100G), and dummies for distraction. Lots of them.

The next step would be devastating long range (beam?) weapons, maybe with less manoeuvrability, but protected by drone-carriers and long-range destroyers.


P.S.: @Solemn: Nice input, thanks very much!

[junk]

Is it odd that I get Vaygr fighter vibe off off terran warships? For some reason I love that kind of flat blade kind of aproach.

Out of curiosity, did you ever work on the AFF mod Arioch? The loroi designs remind me of a few ships from there.

[Fusebox]

Has anyone here ever considered WW1 tank style co-axle thrusters at the fore of a ship? I'd imagine such a feature as a couple thrusters on either side of a vessel capable of rotating 180 degrees would increase maneuverability a great deal.

[Mjolnir]

As I recall, decoys/dummies are impractical in the Outsider universe for the basic reasons given on Atomic Rockets...you need most of a spacecraft to make something look like a spacecraft, and they're expensive enough that you're better off turning them into real ships capable of participating fully in combat, plus massive enough to make carrying them impractical.

[bunnyboy]

Solution:

[Trantor]

Has anyone here ever considered WW1 tank style co-axle thrusters at the fore of a ship? I'd imagine such a feature as a couple thrusters on either side of a vessel capable of rotating 180 degrees would increase maneuverability a great deal.

Can definiteley help internal statics.

As I recall, decoys/dummies are impractical in the Outsider universe for the basic reasons given on Atomic Rockets...you need most of a spacecraft to make something look like a spacecraft, and they're expensive enough that you're better off turning them into real ships capable of participating fully in combat, plus massive enough to make carrying them impractical.

Nah, warheads are heavy and expensive. Acceleration is a matter of weight/power-ratio, so you can use cheaper thrusters as well, and lower reliability-rating necessary and sheer mass-production makes them even cheaper.

The intention is to flood the enemies´ defence sytem. With dozens of types of warheads/dummies/jammers in gazillion different configurations you effectively cripple their system due to overload. They can´t tell the difference in that short time.

[Trantor]

Solution:

"Blow it up" to blow it up.

They´re maybe a bit too primitive for a top-notch defence system, but they look definitely cool.
I´d like to put one of them in my garden to annoy my neighbours.

[bunnyboy]

I´d like to put one of them in my garden to annoy my neighbours.

Just give them call and ask price.
I don't know if that guy is part of decoy or if it's sturdy enough to climb on, but that's my favourite.

[Trantor]

I´d like to put one of them in my garden to annoy my neighbours.

Just give them call and ask price.

Thx for the link, request for price is sent.
Also i did some googlesearch; a T-80 capable of mimicking heat-signature and exhaustgas (!) is around 6000$ plus tax and shipping (russian company), a simple, raw-looking model in 1:2 (sherman) for paintballfields from a chinese sweatshop is as low as 20$, and a simple, but quite good looking sherman in original size is 160$ (plus tax and shipping each). Not too bad.

[Mjolnir]

Nah, warheads are heavy and expensive. Acceleration is a matter of weight/power-ratio, so you can use cheaper thrusters as well, and lower reliability-rating necessary and sheer mass-production makes them even cheaper.

The intention is to flood the enemies´ defence sytem. With dozens of types of warheads/dummies/jammers in gazillion different configurations you effectively cripple their system due to overload. They can´t tell the difference in that short time.

I had the impression you were talking about ship decoys to throw off enemy targeting. Dummy torpedos are more reasonable.

Not by much, though. An effective torpedo needs high acceleration and a high overall delta-v capability. Much of the cost and mass will be in the propulsion system. I strongly doubt removing the warhead will save that much money or reduce the size substantially, and those dummies will take up room in the magazines that could be used for weapons that can actually cause damage. Every dummy fired is a live weapon that isn't fired.

I also think you're being extremely over-optimistic in thinking you'll be able to overwhelm the computer that's tracking and identifying the incoming projectiles...the current Outsider Terrans can likely build computers capable of handling billions if not trillions of targets. It would be a simple matter to prioritize projectiles with large drive plumes for their acceleration, indicating a heavy payload. The bottleneck is going to be pointing and firing point defense guns, not identifying targets, and firing dummies only reduces your rate of fire of weapons the enemy PD guns have to prioritize.

Of course, a "dummy" is actually a kinetic kill missile, given a target it can hit. Such weapons might be carried for use against fixed defenses and ships with damaged propulsion. However, it seems completely impractical to use them to overwhelm point defenses.

[Solemn]

I was under the impression that Outsider's torpedoes didn't have dedicated warheads, but rather merely detonated their propellant. Their antimatter propellant.

So there isn't any mass tied up in a warhead, but as something of a tradeoff the power of the burst is proportional to the delta-v dedicated to the torpedo.

So there's no warhead to get rid of and no cheaper thrusters to get by with.

[Trantor]

I was under the impression that Outsider's torpedoes didn't have dedicated warheads, but rather merely detonated their propellant. Their antimatter propellant.

So there isn't any mass tied up in a warhead, but as something of a tradeoff the power of the burst is proportional to the delta-v dedicated to the torpedo.

Hm. In that case my dummy-scenario is pointless.

My initial thought was that war is a matter of economics, too. Fooling the enemy into spending money would be smart.
Now we have to find another way to do that.

[Mjolnir]

I was under the impression that Outsider's torpedoes didn't have dedicated warheads, but rather merely detonated their propellant. Their antimatter propellant.

Well, we were talking about Terran systems...though looking back, equivalent tech was a basic assumption, so they'd probably be using a very similar system, if not producing identical weapons that the Loroi can use.

Still, the Terrans may have stocks of suitably large warheads sitting around, but want to dedicate their fuel production to supplying Terran and Loroi ships instead of blowing it up in torpedos. Torpedos with warheads might exist as an intermediate step, to reduce usage of starship fuel.

[LegioCI]

Honestly, at the speeds we're talking about, the Matter-Antimatter explosion isn't nearly as effective as just hitting them with the kinetic energy, Though I suppose if the fuel is kept behind the warhead, the detonation might add an addition kick to a kinetic warhead just before impact, but the explosion really wouldn't do that much damage unless it was either A) Really close or B) Spreading shrapnel. (Somehow I think that with the Umiaks' capships' heavy armor, shrapnel would not be a huge problem for them.)

[Mjolnir]

Honestly, at the speeds we're talking about, the Matter-Antimatter explosion isn't nearly as effective as just hitting them with the kinetic energy, Though I suppose if the fuel is kept behind the warhead, the detonation might add an addition kick to a kinetic warhead just before impact, but the explosion really wouldn't do that much damage unless it was either A) Really close or B) Spreading shrapnel. (Somehow I think that with the Umiaks' capships' heavy armor, shrapnel would not be a huge problem for them.)

The explosions are very large...hundreds of megatons to gigaton range, to achieve the needed range in a vacuum. There's likely no surviving shrapnel, and even if there were, odds of it hitting a ship are low.

Kinetic missiles would cause far more damage, making human mass drivers look like pop guns, but must make a direct hit on the target. Apparently the Loroi and Umiak aren't capable of achieving this reliably...possibly because their point defense systems are just too effective. A kinetic missile that has its engines or sensors disabled late and just misses an evading target does no damage, and disabling propulsion and sensors is probably much easier than completely destroying an incoming torpedo. Explosive weapons effectively have a much larger target and must be disabled sooner to keep them at a safe distance, or destroyed entirely.

[Paragon]

You want open space? Fuck your open spaces, this ain't no yacht. That's room you could be using to hold a bigger reactor, more hull plating, or (my personal favorite) guns. Lot's of guns.

Stargate: the great race: (roughly quoted)

With you auxiliary Ox tank you should be able to hold up until rescue arrive.
Douche: Yeah i removed those so i could put more weapon.

Okay, two things in my defence:
1. I'm pretty sure it was space for smuggling weapons in that episode.
2. You know I didn't say "RIP OUT THE LIFE SUPPORT THIS IS A GOOD IDEA". I was joking about how the wide open spaces on the Loroi ship are kind of silly (if very pretty and understandable from an art standpoint).

Anyways, I've always wondered about the potential efficacy of a carrier in space. I mean, running a carrier isn't the same as running other ships. It would be hugely complicate running the ship normally (and that's already pretty damn complicated), and I can't even imagine the world of hurt you'd be in if the ship actually ended up taking fire.

Let's see: the space needed to store, service, and launch the fighters/bombers would take up a huge portion of the ship, which would severely limit it's ability to do anything else (so they'd better be able to deliver). It would take up more supplies than another ship of similar size. You'd have to either be able to quickly and safely compress and decompress the ships in and out of the launch and recovery areas (or have the whole fighter area be in vacuum all the time which is a whole other level of insane).

[LegioCI]

I still think an explosion alone like that would be a terribly inefficient weapon in a vacuum...

What about a two-stage warhead? As the missile approaches a certain range, it fires a kinetic warhead (Or big chunk of shotgun-like directed shrapnel) using either a conventional charge or a smaller MAM detonation. The remainder of the missile continues maneuvering to get within range and detonate what remains of it's MAM payload. Actually, a hit with the kinetic shrapnel could allow the main warhead to do even better, by pre-fracturing the armor, creating craters and pockmarks that allow the target ship to soak up more of that delicious radiated heat and high-energy EMR.

[Mjolnir]

I still think an explosion alone like that would be a terribly inefficient weapon in a vacuum...

Well, it is. But being able to inflict damage is more important than efficiency.

What about a two-stage warhead? As the missile approaches a certain range, it fires a kinetic warhead (Or big chunk of shotgun-like directed shrapnel) using either a conventional charge or a smaller MAM detonation. The remainder of the missile continues maneuvering to get within range and detonate what remains of it's MAM payload. Actually, a hit with the kinetic shrapnel could allow the main warhead to do even better, by pre-fracturing the armor, creating craters and pockmarks that allow the target ship to soak up more of that delicious radiated heat and high-energy EMR.

You've got to get close enough that the shrapnel has a reasonable chance of hitting, and the shrapnel has the same problem as a kinetic missile with its guidance/propulsion disabled...it can't track the target's evasive actions, or itself evade point defenses. You don't really gain anything by the explosive launch...how much extra velocity do you expect to get out of the explosion without the kinetic sub-projectiles vaporizing, 10-20 km/s? Closing velocity is likely to be hundreds or thousands of km/s...the ships will have been accelerating toward each other prior to the encounter, and their relative velocity will be far greater than the delta-v of the torpedo. If they're jousting at a crossing velocity that gives them an encounter every 20 minutes, with an average acceleration of 20 g, that's 10 minutes acceleration from a dead halt on each side, and a total of around 240 km/s closing velocity for the torpedos. If you can hit them with ballistic projectiles, you can hit them with a maneuvering warhead and cause more damage.

That closing speed also means you haven't really got time for warhead stages to separate to a safe distance for one to do what you suggest. They need to separate far enough from the target that the explosive warhead doesn't get damaged by the kinetic projectile's launch, and close enough that it doesn't reach detonation range before the kinetic projectile reaches the target. Launching them as separate weapons would give a lot more freedom in relative timing and physical spacing, as well as allowing you to assign each to the targets that it is more suited for.

Also note that an explosive weapon isn't necessarily isotropic, identical in all directions. The propulsion charges drawn up for Orion were designed to produce highly directional plasma jets to increase efficiency. Something similar may well be doable with Outsider torpedos.