Well, as to the Warships of B5 book, I just finished reading it, and well, not very impressed. It looked great when I saw the first deck plans, but looking closer, they are just not very accurate.
The weapons they list for the ships are pretty off, especially since there are many published books stating what are on them. Some of the race specific weapons are not there. (For example, only the Earth Alliance uses dedicated interceptors to shoot down incoming missile/pulse weapons, the other races use offensive weapons set to defensive fire, but this book gives identical interceptors to all races.)
The deck plans have only a few different compartment types. They show every space on the ship to be an engine, stateroom, hangar, fuel tank, or cargo space. LOTS of cargo space, about half of every ship is bloody cargo! Warships have NO cargo space that is not dedicated to food, spare parts, or ammo.
You can tell that no one who worked on this book has the faintest clue as to what is on an actual warship. Here is a list of all the items they did not put anywhere:
Water tanks - it takes thousands of gallons of water to feed, drink, and clean on a warship, yet not a single drop to drink on an Omega.
Water treatment - to recycle all that water. Some nasty stuff will build up...
Atmosphere recycling - Hmmm, air gonna get a bit stale...
Air tanks - One little leak and you can't replace the air you just lost. There would be MASSIVE air tanks on a warship.
Food stowage - near the galley/crew quarters. I suppose they could use some of the collosal cargo bays, but its a bit of a pain to haul food for 1000 people up several stairs 3 times a day...
Cooling systems - Space is very hot, and very cold, you would need a ship wide cooling system and pump rooms. Weapon systems tend to generate a lot of heat too.
Ballasting system - or else every time you take on cargo or pump fuel you will upset the trim of the ship and go off course.
Emergency power plant - having a huge engine to power your ship is ok, but if it gets hit, you lose lights, air, heat, etc. Not good if you don't have backup. EVERY system on a warship has a backup.
Repair shops - It takes a LOT of repair shops to keep everything running. You need ones for fighters, engineering spaces, auxilary spaces, electronic spaces, weapon systems, damage control systems, etc. A huge part of a warship is just the shops to keep it running.
Damage control stations - Warship take damage, you need many large rooms for repair equipment.
Recreation rooms - they had a few tiny spaces, but you need some seriously large facilities to keep your people in physical shape, especially on a ship with no gravity.
And probably more as well, this is just my first impression. Anyways, if you are not picky about accuracy, the deck plans do look pretty nice and they have every area of the ships mapped out.
