Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: Rule the Waves

So the Kaiser orders three more battleships, battlecruisers and.or dreadnoughts, which I'm not ready to commit to yet.

So I design the most minimalistic predreadnought battleship, which turns out to be a single gunned seven incher weighing in at fifty one hundred tonnes.

With the dropping of the technological level/computer factor limits on tonnage, it's a little unclear what would define a battleship at any particular technological level.

It's clear that you need at least a spinal mount and relatively hefty protection, and increased hit points at hundred thousand tonnes seems to indicate a starting point, with ten to fifteen, possibly twenty, thousand tonne spinal mount, though it could be easier just having a targetted damage factor.

 

[phavoc]

Inspiration: Rule the Waves

Building armed merchant cruisers was interesting, since you could only do in wartime, and are forced to sell them off once the conflict ends. However, they're launched in three months.

Did I say building? I think it's actually a conversion, though strangely you get to design it, rather than an off the shelf design.

I think I found the sweetspot at twenty six hundred tonnes at maximum speed of twenty one knots, but you can stuff it to the gills with six inchers and every single torpedo tube, though so far, I don't think any have been launched or hit. To be fair, probably only useful taking down freighters, since warships identify you before they get in their range.

I tend to equate the five hundred tonne bay with six inchers, so a subsidized merchant could have a narrowish cargo bay, where installation of a weapon system would be geared to.

Actually they usually just removed the armament and returned the ship to normal freight service. Both the Brits and the Germans (and others) armed standard merchant ships, but they also built Q-ships and armed merchant cruisers. Q-ships were heavily armed merchants, and some of the cruisers mounted 6" guns. As far as I recall, the remaining armed cruisers had smaller guns and those weapons were meant for defense. Q-ships and armed merchant cruisers employed their weapons offensively. Like the Kormoran sinking the light cruiser Sydney by luring them in close.

 

[Condottiere]

Could be because I never prioritize research on that subject, Q ships turn up rather late in my timelines.

Five hundred tonne weapon bays have to be an odd shape, and would make it easily identified as a preprepped platform.

Depending on the era, you could have protected cruisers (and armoured ones) with casemated six inchers, to the twelve gunned variants in double or triple turrets like the Worcesters.

Considering the effect, bays would be batteries compared to the less hardened single guns that you could only install on commercial ships.

Since I try to reconcile Solomanic canon, they'd define light cruisers as being armed with five hundred tonne bays, or maybe we'd downgrade it a bit to protected cruiser, and leave the definition of an actual light cruiser as requiring a spinal mount.

As for the Sydney, I think the consensus is the silly bugger allowed himself to move too close to the Kormorran, instead of sending over a boarding party.

 

[Condottiere]

Also, since you have to sell off the armed merchant cruisers after the conflict has ended, in this game fairly guaranteed to last quite a while, compared to real life crises that might be over in six months, you'd want to get as many in as early as possible to maximize your return on investment, though again in reallife, you have to balance that out in terms of disrupting your trade and economy.

As we can see from the big fast passenger liners actual armed merchant cruisers have an optimal size for the missions they'll be tasked with, whereas you can commandeer the fast passenger liners for what they do best, transferring vast numbers of people quickly and safely to staging areas.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Launching Systems

Now imagine that grav plates are embedded on the lid, the object would remain on the lid whether horizontal or at a right angle.

Drop a smallcraft on it, and winch it from the interior hangar deck to the exterior flight deck, removing the need for an elevator.

 

[baithammer]

Which complicates the process as you're dealing with having to deal with reorienting the craft into the winch system, whereas a standard elevator only needs to deal with the movement between floors.

 

[Condottiere]

Less moving parts, so presumably cheaper.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Hulls and Launching Systems

Imagine embedding the grab plates on the hull at one eight degrees to the interior of spaceship.

That means you could drive the smallcraft in the hangar to a section of the floor, secure it, and just flip it over, to be now on the flight deck on the outside of the hull.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Passenger Volune

For the past two days, passengers passing through Helsinki airport may have wondered whether their airline is suffering from weight issues.
At check-in, Finnair staff have been asking them to please step briefly on to a set of weighing scales.
But this isn't a new "thin air" strategy to slim down the cargo.
The airline is surveying customers to check that the estimates it has been using to calculate total weight, fuel and safety are accurate.
"Airlines know what the aircraft weighs, what the check-in luggage weighs, but not what passengers weigh," said Päivyt Tallqvist, communications director at Finnair.
So far, they have found 180 volunteers willing to weigh in, complete with carry-on luggage. They need a total of 2,000 to accurately understand their regular payloads, said Ms Tallqvist.
Until now, Finnair has, like most airlines, been using European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) passenger standard weight estimates, which put a male's weight at 84.6kg, a female passenger at 66.5kg and the average under-12 at 30.7kg.
But the EASA found those averages hide a range of variables: men travelling first class tend to weigh more than those in economy, while for women the reverse is true. The average hand luggage is 6.1kg, but that average falls significantly in the summer and men carry on heavier items than women.

So Finnair is keen to survey the mix of air travellers specific to their airline.
As well as flying Finns in and out of their home country, the airline offers transfers between Asian and European destinations, and they suspect that the combination of tall Finnish men in winter coats, long-haul travellers from East Asia and daily business travellers around Finland will add up to different set of average outcomes.
Finnair is looking for more volunteers to be weighed over the winter months. Then they'll recommence in the spring, when travellers have stripped down to their lighter season togs.

One question is whether basing the data on those happy to step up might skew the results.
"That's a question a lot of people have asked," said Ms Tallqvist. But she doesn't think it will pose a problem.
"We found yesterday and today we had people of all shapes and sizes. We had Finnish and Asian customers, we had a variety of male and female and of different sizes."
In recent years, other airlines have begun to look at the variation in passenger weight.
In 2013, Samoa Air controversially became the first airline to charge passengers by the kilo rather than per person.
Travellers hold strong opinions on both sides of the argument whether treating heavier passengers differently is fair. But Finnair says that is certainly not what they are considering.
"That has been a concern that some people have raised," says Ms Tallqvist.
"For us, this has nothing to do with ticket pricing or anything like that."

http://www.bbc.com/news/business-41835933

How big are low berths?

 

[baithammer]

If they can't fit in a low berth than its fast drug and freight.

 

[Condottiere]

Passenger volume would indicate more quantity of drugs to gain the same effect.

Or less, with a danger of overdose.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments and Tachyon Cannons

With it's capability to bypass most armour, could be meson lite.

This could resolve the dilemma of High Guard meson bay equipped Imperium Navy ships, by retconning them with Tachyon Cannons.

 

[AndrewW]

This could resolve the dilemma of High Guard meson bay equipped Imperium Navy ships, by retconning them with Tachyon Cannons.

Except that tachyon cannons aren't standard OTU either...

 

[Annatar Giftbringer]

But... tachyon cannons, unlike meson, are listed among the standard weapons in High Guard? Sure, they’re not a classic weapon, but...

Eh, doesn’t matter - it’s my playground and I’ll do what I want to

 

[Condottiere]

It's an important distinction.

Are meson bay guns canon in the Third Imperium setting?

Under High Technology, that could make them as rare as Collectors.

Standard would make them available to everyone.

 

[Sigtrygg]

Considering they are included in a standard ship class and have many canonical points of reference then yes they are canonical for the setting.

Mongoose did a very poor job in explaining which bits of HG2e are part of the third Imperium setting and which bits are not.

 

[Condottiere]

Usually you can infer such things from printed examples.

If they weren't contradictory.

With wargaming, you want explicit rules and concrete examples how things work, while with roleplaying fuzzy logic can apply.

I'm trying to figure out how to push that camel through the eye of the needle.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: DIY

You, too, can build a smallcraft in your garage.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTvY9Llqtms
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkq3lAW875o

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Armaments, Stand Off Bomb Pumped Torpedoes and Point Defence Batteries

A point defence battery automatically intercepts missile and torpedo salvoes just before they make their own attack rolls.

That means, Point Defence Batteries must have an effective range that exceeds the stand off range range of Bomb Pumped Torpedoes.

So the question is, what is the stand off range of Bomb Pumped Torpedoes?

 

[baithammer]

Already handled by the -2 dm for the bomb pumped torpedoes. ( With sand casters being effective against it.)