Ship Design Philosophy

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Spacestations: True Size of the Imperial Shipyards [999.M41] 3D Documentary

In this Warhammer 40,000 lore documentary series we will be exploring the True Size of the Imperial Navy of the 41st millennium. In our first episode we looked at the overall naval hierarchy, the ship classes, and a typical ship section. This includes everything from the smallest attack craft to Destroyers, Frigates, Battleships, and even Gloriana class flagships.

Now in this second episode we turn our attention to the means by which the fleet is constructed and put into service. This involves coverage of the typical construction steps for building a warship. We then cover the various tiers of Naval Shipyards which work to churn out the vast fleets of the Imperium.

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:13 Fleet Size
07:09 Construction Steps
11:46 Naval Shipyards
12:49 Small Shipyards
14:13 Medium Shipyards
16:33 Large Shipyards
19:34 Massive Shipyards
21:56 Outro

Presumably, if you're ambitious enough, locate them on gas giant moons.

Cautionary tale from the Royal Navy, don't build warships larger than a substantial number of your dockyards can handle.

 

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Starships: Road Trip, Astrogation, and Reaching Your Destination In One Piece

You could divvy it up into specialization.

One variety would be rather specific to regions.

Another, to types of starships, I guess tonnage range.

Or, Einsteinian space navigation.

 

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Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

1. A ship without a functioning gravitic drive that attempts re-entry without heat shielding will burn up.

2. At 3000m/s it's absolutely necessary, unless you plan to capture into a highly eccentric orbit and do many aerobraking passes at high altitude.

3. You don't need a heat shield for entry into an atmosphere if your speed is low enough, generally below Mach 3 or a few hundred meters per second, to prevent significant heat buildup from atmospheric compression.

4. Speeds of orbital reentry, however, are very high (around Mach 25), requiring heat shields to protect against temperatures reaching thousands of degrees Fahrenheit.

5. Dead slow, it is.

6. If Mach/three is dead slow.

7. And, assuming the above is accurate.

8. Heat shielding is a hundred kilostarbux per tonne.

9. Default manoeuvre drive is twenty kilostarbux per tonne per thrust factor.

 

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Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

A. Which would seem to throw a wet towel on assault gliders.

B. You'd want to make them as cheap as possible, which would limit them to fifty tonnes and a single cockpit.

C. Manoeuvre drives at default, are five times more expensive than reactionary rockets.

D. Chances are, it would be a one way trip.

E. Towing could extend from space, to around forty kilometres altitude, before release.

F. It would seem, the passable speed, would be sub Blackbird.

 

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Starwarships: The IMPERIAL NAVY - Sword, shield and angry brick of guns protecting mankind | 40K lore

Warhammer 40k has some of the biggest, dumbest and most fantastical creations in all of science fantasy. One of the most immediately recognizable besides space marines is the might cathedrals of doom. The flying churches made of guns. The raw might and will of the emperor made manifest, the Imperial navy. Responsible for protecting mankind from anything and everything out there. The imperial navy is a cornerstone of 40ks silly universe. So settle in and enjoy as we go over how it's organized, what the ships are like, and what the Imperial navy does.

0:00 Intro
4:21 Pointless waffling
8:25 The imperial navy
19:42 Segmentums & sectors
27:42 Number of ships
31:15 subsectors
34:14 Ship classes
49:03 Technology & stuff
58:55 Outro

1. Ramming.

2. Astrogation.

3. Grand cruisers seem a little difficult to categorize; I put them at a hundred kilotonnes plus, since it seems a translation from Grosser Kreuzer, early examples which I would term battle cruiser.

4. Probably evolves into the large cruiser.

5. Super cruiser would be somewhere between that, and heavy cruiser.

6. If brute force isn't working, it's because you're not using enough of it.

7. Powder monkeys.

8. Eject warp core.

9. Or, eject a collapsing fusion reactor magnetic bottle.

 

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Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

G. The point of an assault glider is getting ground forces as close as possible, if not over the top, of opposing forces.

H. Most planets worthy of an orbital assault, have an atmosphere.

I. Non gravitationally motored, unheatshielded spacecraft are going to burn up on reentry, considering likely reentry speeds.

J. The solution would appear to be, for such, assisted reentry to default forty klix altitude, and mach/three speed.

K. The approach would appear to be, under the horizon atmospheric reentry, riding piggy back on a gravitationally motored spacecraft, and then released.

 

[Fluffy Bunny Feet]

Another one:

 

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Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

L. Besides the limitations on size to minimize costs, the other aspect would be how many ground troops you're willing to risk in one basket.

M. And, how far you're willing to protect them.

N. Traditionally, gliders tend to be rather small and fragile.

O. And, tend to be unarmed.

P. Though, there are exceptions.

P

 

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Inspiration: MechWarrior 5 Clans Ghost Bear Flash Storm - All Cinematic Cutscenes

1. Logistics.

2. Merchants of death.

3. Actually, great ship designs, now in animated three dimensions.

4. Involuntary commandeerment.

5. Industrial base.

6. Both senses of the word.

7. You have to wonder how you can employ 'Mechs in the modern, or future, battlefield.

8. Apparently, boarding party, on the hull.

9. And if you figure out to squeeze into it, inside the spacecraft.

 

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Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

Q. You somehow get into the atmosphere, and are gliding onwards on your own.

R. If you have propulsion greater than the local gravity well, you're actually flying.

S. You're going to need a way to break, besides atmospheric friction.

T. Unlike the manoeuvre drive, reactionary rockets don't appear to be able to vector.

U. Given a choice, I'd prefer that sudden stop to be voluntary, not scraping along the ground.

 

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Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

V. One possible option, is to sacrifice a hardpoint, or, more likely, two, and install the drives into turrets.

W. Or, inflated turrets, at six tonnes and budgetted.

X. According to High Guard, a missile barbette has five launchers, and twenty five missiles, at zero power points and four megastarbux.

Y. Yet, an inflated single turret has one and one fifth tonnes, at one one and a half megastarbux, and one power point.

Z. But, how much does a naked barbette cost?

 

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Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

1. Indications are that for the one tonne turret, you can utilize the totality of their listed volume.

2. Actually, more considering that as long as you have installed a missile launcher, and a sand caster, you can add in another tonne's worth, each, of missiles and canisters.

3. I should actually clear out the three weapon systems, the gunner's workstations, and two tonnes of ordnance, to install a three tonne drive in the one tonne turret.

4. To be fair, I'd say that if you run out of space, what actually happens is that the ready magazine transfers under the turret, and retains it's feature of allowing the ordnance easy access to it's launchers, and/or casters.

5. Which, should make the actual tonnage allocated for the turret and it's weapon systems, in this case, three tonnes.

6. But, only if you have a missile launcher, and a sand caster, installed.

7. For figuring how much spare volume a barbette, there are only two with the same sized launchers and ammunition as their smaller cousin, the one tonne turret.

8. That would be the torpedo and missile barbettes.

9. The others just appear to be upscaled versions of their respective weapon systems.

 

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Spacecraft: Dropships - Making planetary invasion fast, easy and fun.

The humble dropship, a staple of science fiction, and the go-to for when you need to get a lot of manpower from space down to whatever world their invading. They're way overworked, constantly being shot at, and have a tendency to explode. But when it comes to invading an enemy world, dropships make it fast, easy, and fun. If not a tad lethal.

1. Landing from orbit, and returning, independently.

2. Drop pod, landing only.

3. Boarding torpedo, lift off only.

4. Dude bucket.

5. Battle taxi, after market add ons.

6. The claw, or carry all.

7. Gunship, dude bucket ground support add on.

8. Armour, firepower, mobility, plus carrying capacity.

9.

A. Expendable.

B. Flexible employment.

 

[Condottiere]

Spacecraft: Atmospheric Reentry and Heat Shields

A. Assuming a missile launcher is a quarter tonne, and three quarters megastarbux.

B. A barbette has five of those, so one and a quarter tonnes, and three and three quarters megastarbux.

C. A missile barbette is five tonnes and costs four megastarbux.

D. In addition, they have twenty five missiles, at two and one twelfth tonnes.

E. That would appear to leave a balance of a quarter megastarbux, and one and two thirds tonnes.

F. Not accounting for the gunner workstation.

 

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Spacecraft: Accommodations, Pop Up Turret, and Elevators

1. You could use the pop up as an elevator.

2. Basically, from inside to outside the hull.

3. It has a listed capacity of one tonne, which you could use to install a somewhat smallish airlock.

4. If it were standardized, you could have a corresponding indentation in a docked spacecraft.

5. That would allow the pop up airlock, to, pop, right into the docked spacecraft's interior.

6. That would be a hundred kilostarbux for the airlock, and another megastarbux for the pop up.

7. Which is probably to expensive, even for the convenience.

8. Almost certainly, if the pop up was only for moving personnel up and down the it's spacecraft.

9. Though, you probably do have to install an elevator for the convenience of those less abled.

 

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Spacecraft: Accommodations, Pop Up Turret, and Elevators

A. Come to think of it, I don't recall any ship component that acts as an elevator.

B. Theoretically, you could use a hamster cage.

C. Though, you'd have to be pretty tight against the hull.

D. Otherwise, you'd have a gap that you would need to mind.

E. The arms would need to at the corner of the building block, so that they can freely rotate.

F. You could have them at the conjunction of two building blocks, and serve both of them as an elevator, with two sets of doors.

 

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Starships: Ye Scoutship

1. It's a pulp magazine science fiction trope.

2. Useful crutch to introduce cheap interstellar motivation to the player characters.

3. Hundred tonnes being the minimum volume as ballast to stabilize the jump bubble.

4. The default Scout/Courier with a jump factor/two might fly at technological level twelve, but is obsolete at this point in time.

5. I would suppose, it really depends as to how the Scout Service employs them.

6. Or, any other (para)military organization.

7. Depending on conflict, you'd have cruisers, destroyers, or torpedo boats doing reconnaissance.

8. Astrography and exploration would need larger starships.

9. Which leaves us with the courier role.

 

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Starships: Ye Scoutship

A. It's just transmission of electronic data, a subsidiary route from the primary express boat network could have been worked in.

B. For that last mile.

C. And, come to think of it, the Scout/Courier doesn't seem equipped with a lot of data storage.

D. So, we'll assume it's a physical delivery.

E. But military, bureaucracy, and aristocracy, could have had a naval starship diverted if they needed a lift.

F. And anyone else, would have to buy passage on a tramp freighter.

 

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Starships: Cheapest Possible

1. Start off with the obvious Venture Drive, around which everything would revolve, at eight and one tenth megastarbux, discount included.

2. Needs ten tonnes of space and since we'll opt for optimal volume, twelve points of power.

3. Optimal volume being one hundred twenty tonnes, though we could stick to a basic hundred tonnes, and only require ten power points.

4. Six tonne small bridge, at a quarter megastarbux per hundred tonnes.

5. A ship can have a bridge one size smaller than the Bridges table indicates, halving the cost of the bridge.

6. A ship with a smaller bridge suffers DM-1 for all checks related to spacecraft operations made from within the bridge (for example, Astrogation and Pilot checks).

7. Though, if the primary hull is below a hundred tonnes, small bridge cost would remain the same, but being in a smaller hull size category, in theory, the dice modifier penalty no longer applies, since the bridge would be the correct default size.

8. Thirteen tonnes for the primary fuel tank, twelve for the jump drive, one for the power plant.

9. If reactionary rockets were installed, instead of manoeuvre drive, it would be cheaper, but here we get into the question of operating costs.

 

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Starships: Cheapest Possible

A. But, since the concept is the cheapest possible, we'll throttle down the jump drive to a hundred parsec tonnes.

B. That leaves us with a six tonne small bridge, ten tonne jump drive, and eleven tonne fuel tank.

C. We'll default to a two tonne stateroom, that will default to two kilostarbux life support per month per inhabitant, at a quarter megastarbux.

D. Throw in a two tonne power plant, and a one tonne manoeuvre drive.

E. One tonne airlock, at a hundred kilostarbux.

F. Computer/five at thirty kilostarbux, and jump programme/one, at a hundred kilostarbux.