Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Vargr

I've developed an interest in the Vargr, but despite probably being the best known alien species, there doesn't seem to be much documented about them beyond the usual stereotypes.

My theory is that each Vargr spaceship, even built using the same template, from the same yard, and by the same people, will eventually be at least internally unique, based on the tastes of her captain(s), and the tinkering and runarounds of technical and engineering personnel.

This contrasts with my take on the Solomani Navy, emphasizing commonality in anything above hundred thousand, and below two thousand tonnes.

Whereas you could publish a supplement, Terriers and Gundogs, it too would just give a stereotypical snapshot of Vargr starships.

What would be needed is a sort of formula that would create unique starships, that in their own way are fairly efficient in flying from one world to another. The difficult part would be setting up the blueprints, since specifications are using numbers that can easily be manipulated, whereas visualizing layouts are rather more difficult.

 

[Askold]

Vargr heavy fighter is an interesting concept. It has thick armour, which makes it nigh invulnerable against mere civilian vessels, but if you get past that it is just as fragile as any other fighter.

Then again, even the Vargr cargo ships have more armour than the average human ship has.

And since the Vargr book makes it clear that companies frequently go out business or at least change management often it is possible that ship designs will also change as the manufacturers change and new management and designers have brand new ideas. Still, some things simply WORK and I doubt that even Vargr will try out crazy design ideas so even though ships will probably vary in appearance and design there will be some traditional designs and features that will be found often.

 

[Infojunky]

My theory is that each Vargr spaceship, even built using the same template, from the same yard, and by the same people, will eventually be at least internally unique, based on the tastes of her captain(s), and the tinkering and runarounds of technical and engineering personnel.

Well Shit Boy, you described every ship out there. No two are identical after entering service. Pretty much the same goes for boats as well....

 

[Condottiere]

Radically different and unique, without endangerously endangering ship structural integrity.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments and Missile Barbettes

1. The version I like is going to be slightly larger than five tonnes. Maybe not.

2. What you do is take four missile packs, place them off centre in a square turntable facing in the directions of the compass.

3. With a single fire control console, you could only salvo one side per turn.


4. Of course, you could also try to pack the barbette with as many missile launchers as you might try with a laser, which I put as a theoretical twenty seven.

5. Reloading might take two turns for such a large load, so a smaller number of launchers could actually be more efficient.

6. You could also just have four or five launchers, and the rest of the barbette acts as a magazine, with perhaps forty two missiles.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Armaments and Missile Barbettes

1. The version I like is going to be slightly larger than five tonnes. Maybe not.

2. What you do is take four missile packs, place them off centre in a square turntable facing in the directions of the compass.

3. With a single fire control console, you could only salvo one side per turn.


4. Of course, you could also try to pack the barbette with as many missile launchers as you might try with a laser, which I put as a theoretical twenty seven.

5. Reloading might take two turns for such a large load, so a smaller number of launchers could actually be more efficient.

6. You could also just have four or five launchers, and the rest of the barbette acts as a magazine, with perhaps forty two missiles.

If you go much larger than five ton displacement you are getting into the bay classification. The standard number of missiles fired at once form a 50 ton bay is 12, I believe..I'll check....So what your describing in rough is a perfect description of one type of bay mounted on a vessel.

in theory part of a barbettes volume would be taken up by hardware, and various bits of machinery for directing and focusing the weapons in its mounts as well as ammo handling gear for projectile weapons and missiles.


a rail gun barbette does have an internal magazine for projectiles. which are fed into the weapon from it's internal stores, then reloaded somehow from the ships ammo reserves as does a torpedo ( "heavy missile" in Highguard) barbette.

 

[wbnc]

My theory is that each Vargr spaceship, even built using the same template, from the same yard, and by the same people, will eventually be at least internally unique, based on the tastes of her captain(s), and the tinkering and runarounds of technical and engineering personnel.

Well **** Boy, you described every ship out there. No two are identical after entering service. Pretty much the same goes for boats as well....

Yes, yes you are exactly right..By the time a boat or ship has been in service for a while it's not exactly like anything else on the water...with the possible exception of military vessels which are produced to mil-spec designs and need ot be similar for ease of training and supply.

I'd think with the nature of Vargr Being what it is the differences are built in with each ship having a different design from the keel up. Since vargr are seldom organized into large stable governments it makes sense to me that designers would be just as hodgepodge in their approach

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments and Missile Barbettes

It's a thought exercise seeing how many launchers you could fit in a five tonne barbette. As mentioned, I doubt that the handling equipment would be able to load all the launchers in the same round within the remaining space.

As for the missile bays, as the current description stands, they're a pointless waste of space.

Barbettes as described don't have space for an internal magazine for railguns.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Flying Boats, Floatplanes and Amphibians Analogues

I love the concept of these subclasses of planes, though not necessarily the desire to actually fly in one. It brings back memories long ocean patrol flights and short reconnaissance ones from circa the Great Patriotic War.

Spaceships, by their nature, have no trouble parking in space. Which means it has to be a vehicle that can fly through both space and an atmosphere.

The floatplane's reconnaissance function is fulfilled by any number of moderately fast smallcraft that a warship can carry, or the modern analogue, drones. The floatplane does seem hopelessly outdated, as even landing on a planetary surface, you could pretty much done VTOLing, so not needing some form of runway.

I figure the flying boat more in the hundred tonne plus league; in a way, it could be defined as a scout, since we'd expand it's area of operation into the vastness of space, much as you would patrolling the Pacific.

In other words, you'd send it into the empty hexes, as well as the occupied ones.

It doesn't need a great jump capacity, just a lot of fuel to allow it to make one or two parsec jumps. I think it would be limited to a factor one, since the concept is an intermediate range craft that would be focussed more on insystem jumps, which would make it's sudden appearance unpredictable and unexpected, making it harder for anyone to sneak up, or in the case of jumping into a neigbouring empty hex, really hard to set it up as a staging area for a surprise attack.

Nor much manoeuvre speed, since having that extra fuel would allow it to jump right out of trouble.

I see it in the early detection role, as well as search and rescue missions, and is nimble enough that the ship can be landed or manoeuvred anywhere.

 

[Infojunky]

Yes, yes you are exactly right..By the time a boat or ship has been in service for a while it's not exactly like anything else on the water...with the possible exception of military vessels which are produced to mil-spec designs and need ot be similar for ease of training and supply.

It really comes down to how you build your ships and refit them and supply them with "new" hardware. A dozen ships side by side in the yard will all be slightly different do to variations in crews building them more so if said dozen are in 12 different berths in a larger yard. Factories that build the same ship over and over on the same lines are a different story as they all use the same jigs and crews as each "moves" down the line. Both sets of said ships will be real close in their basics, shapes, drive performances et'al, but they haven't all had their secondary machinery installed which is another place differences creep in they all can have the same radars, weapons, electronics etc... installed, with each installation being slightly different. Each ship is "Identical" from the yard, but all preform slightly differently in all those subtle variations in installation. Then you hand them over to their commanders and crews all trained in the same places and to the same equipment, but they all have slightly different maintenance and operation priorities. So at the end of a five year run said identical flotilla have significantly different operational characteristics.

I'd think with the nature of Vargr Being what it is the differences are built in with each ship having a different design from the keel up. Since vargr are seldom organized into large stable governments it makes sense to me that designers would be just as hodgepodge in their approach

I tend to give the Vargr a very Orky meme in their ships, while the base plants might have started off the same, what y'all see at the end 5 years is left to the imagination.....

 

[Condottiere]

I think it can vary from Gnomish to neo-barbarian Orkish improvisations, since we're touching on a possible Piperish trope elsewhere.

 

[Askold]

I would think that even Vargr have some "good old" designs that have been found functional and therefore they are used commonly. They might make more adjustments than other species do on their ships but the core principles behind the designs would still be the same.

 

[Condottiere]

It's more that that the ships evolve, especially internally.

Some captain may decide he wants the bridge next to the engines, since he believes that cuts down on reaction time.

 

[wbnc]

Spaceships: Armaments and Missile Barbettes

It's a thought exercise seeing how many launchers you could fit in a five tonne barbette. As mentioned, I doubt that the handling equipment would be able to load all the launchers in the same round within the remaining space.

As for the missile bays, as the current description stands, they're a pointless waste of space.

Barbettes as described don't have space for an internal magazine for railguns.

Ah, sorry lost track of what were talking about ...

MgT Railgun barbettes do have Ammo reserves internally..as do railgun bays..Torpedo barbettes however do not specify they have an internal magazine.

As it reads Barbettes have significant internal hardware...but I'd say a missle barbette would have less since it has no reason to do more than house, and launch missiles which are independantly guided...

which means your idea of a barbette consisting of multiple launch canisters rotating out of battery to load, then rotating into battery to fire would be plausible. since five ton barbette can hold up to 48 missiles and still leave a ton remaining for hardware...it could fire off three or four missiles a round While one container is in battery/launch position the other containers were being reloaded, and prepared for launch.

that also gives you a basis of what a barbette would look like. either a large disk mounted just above the hull wit a small central gunners blister. Or multi container cluster with a central pylon housing the gunner position and hardware. With it's missiles mounted in something like a rolling air-frame missile launcher with multiple containers on either side of a pylon.

containers on one side of the pylon would rotate into firing position while the opposite containers rotated to be reloaded and prepped.

...or a blister type mount with an internal array like a revolvers cylinder/rotary bomb bay . The cylinder would be mounted to launch perpendicular, or parallel to the axis of the ship.

 

[Condottiere]

You're right, the railgun barbette does have an internal magazine of twenty rounds.

If we don't want to make the fifty tonne missile bay redundant, we'll have to make it the barbette equipped with six launchers, which would take up a tonne, with loaders, and you could allocate three or three and a hlaf tonnes for the magazine, complete with handling equipment (presumably), so thirty six to forty two missiles, with blow out panels directing any hit/blast into space.

I wonder if it's necessary to armour it. You could place another magazine a little distant underneath it, connected by an elevator that moves a little complicately through the ship armour, so that an explosion doesn't flash directly downwards.

This is not so much an issue with railgun rounds, since they're solid shot and not a combination of warhead and rocket propellant.

 

[wbnc]

You're right, the railgun barbette does have an internal magazine of twenty rounds.

If we don't want to make the fifty tonne missile bay redundant, we'll have to make it the barbette equipped with six launchers, which would take up a tonne, with loaders, and you could allocate three or three and a half tonnes for the magazine, complete with handling equipment (presumably), so thirty six to forty two missiles, with blow out panels directing any hit/blast into space.

I wonder if it's necessary to armour it. You could place another magazine a little distant underneath it, connected by an elevator that moves a little complicately through the ship armour, so that an explosion doesn't flash directly downwards.

This is not so much an issue with railgun rounds, since they're solid shot and not a combination of warhead and rocket propellant.

I'd say the armor is covered under the ships armor, and defiantly there would be some sort of anti-flash system to keep a chain reaction from opening up the ship like a beer can with a cherry bomb stuffed in it.

and there we have it. the Missile barbette... Simple flexible, moderately useful with variant ammo loads available.

 

[AndrewW]

Torpedo barbettes however do not specify they have an internal magazine.

Each torpedo takes up two and half tons of space. They are normally purchased in two–shot loads of five tons each. A barbette holds two torpedoes.

 

[wbnc]

Torpedo barbettes however do not specify they have an internal magazine.

Each torpedo takes up two and half tons of space. They are normally purchased in two–shot loads of five tons each. A barbette holds two torpedoes.

Missed that thanks Andrew....

 

[Condottiere]

If you shrink the torpedo to one point five tonnes, you'd find the space for a third torpedo, plus have half a tonne left over.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Comets and Water-skiing

Once you predict the trajectories of all the various celestial bodies zooming through the system, why not harpoon one going in the general direction you're planning too, and tag along, and then cut line?

Or changing direction by harpooning a more stabilized planetoid, and slingshotting, then letting go?