Ship Design Philosophy

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

130. The eleven inchers still were effective in taking out anything cruiser level and above, and because I could afford more of them in comparison to battleships, battleships weren't a threat.

131. Did the same for the torpedo boat with the left over cash, but only got three.

132. That's a very low sample to draw conclusions from, but it seems a mixed bag.

133. The tonnage went up from two to five hundred, and after maxing out speed, volumed by with torpedo tubes.

134. On the one occasion I got close enough to a heavy cruiser, it did sink it.

135. However, with a cost between six to seven hundred kilobux, probably not really worth it.

136. I think unlike the general purpose armoured cruiser, torpedo boats should be configured for specific functions.

137. Scouting would be one, rather than screening, since what you'd want is to get in contact with the enemy or have an early warning that they are approaching your main force.

138. Kamikaze runs don't appear to have much effect.

139. Keep onboard one or two torpedoes, so that the vessel is still a potentially serious threat, if the enemy becomes distracted and loses track of the torpedo boat.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

140. Moved upwards to Georgian Dreadnought era.

141. As an experiment, used an upgraded armoured cruiser.

142. At thirteen kilotonnes, could fit in another twelve inch twin turret, but unable to balance the vessel, unless I do a Brandenburg.

143. Interestingly enough, could install a two inch twin turret on top of the main turrets.

144. I sort of doubt that two inch pop guns can really do much against destroyers, and the game hasn't introduced aircraft, yet.

145. It's a pity that torpedo boats aren't an option, and destroyers are stuck at eleven hundred tonnes.

146. That makes them rather expensive in terms of expendability.

147. The Brandenburg configuration forces you to broadside opponents, rather than the more protective angled approach.

148. In theory, if you have a spinal mount, you do have to close with the enemy in order to keep it pointed in their direction.

148. You could do a Rocinante, and do a delayed flip, allowing you to shoot towards the rear, and the continue accelerating away.

149. However, that can't a great experience onboard a two hundred kilotonne battleship.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

150. Trying to coordinate seven squadrons in real time is like herding cats.

151. In order to avoid collisions, eventually forced to micro manage about twenty armoured cruisers.

152. You could hand it off, all or part of the management, to artificial intelligence.

153. The two destroyers have become missile magnets.

154. Though, to be fair, I tend to prioritize shooting up the destroyers and light cruisers, being low hanging fruit and/or having torpedoes.

155. You could give the destroyer light armament, but make it hard to sink it, giving the enemy a decoy that would keep them occupied for a while.

156. Engagement range has increased, meaning that's very clear when a enemy vessel tries to close, and gets a great deal of attention.

157. With that many ships, ideally you don't want larger subgroups than two or three, four has too long a tail for that close manoeuvring.

158. Assuming that the Imperium Navy uses squadrons more as an administrative grouping, they can still have battle squadrons with large numbers, but deploy them in two or three element divisions.

159. Flotillas are more groups of escort vessels, but sub divisional size seems more aligned with the tonnage of the vessels assigned.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

160. Post Washington.

161. Again, decided to roll on the best heavy cruiser design with upgraded three eleven inch triple turrets.

162. In our case, on a fifth generation fourteen and a half kilotonne armoured cruiser hull.

163. You mass them, and it's pretty much wood chipper time.

164. The Germans gave up fairly fast.

165. Destroyer hulls were comparatively expensive, so I went to a second generation light cruiser hull, minimized performance and added lowest grade control towers and funnel, and had a tad over four hundred kilobux cost for a twenty five hundred tonne hull at seventeen knots with a range of a tad over six megametres.

166. Against a stripped down third fifteen hundred tonne generation destroyer hull, with a range a tad under five megametres at twenty six knots, costing tad over one and a third megabux.

167. I think it's clarified a decade later in London, a two kilotonne hull, with a maximum speed of twenty knots, a cap of four upto six inch guns, and any number of three inch and below pop guns, no armoured hull, plus a maximum of three (float) planes, isn't counted against treaty tonnage of either destroyers or cruisers.

168. I'd define this as an unprotected cruiser, and if you send it to the colonies, the captain could have ad hoc armour plating to convert it to a gunboat.

169. It's sort of interesting that the Confederation Navy did have a soft cap of starwarships above two kilotonnes.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

170. Apparently, even an upgrade to a twenty kilotonne heavy cruiser can't make the eleven incher competitive enough after London.

171. Naval budgets are larger, warships fewer but more expensive and harder to kill.

172. The eleven incher lacks sufficient punch to sink capital ships before they kill off the super cruiser(s).

173. It's at this point that electronics, controls and engineering costs more than weapon systems, and the engagement range really opens up.

174. While you'd think this would benefit the super cruisers, it didn't.

175. On the other hand, while the trend was noticeable in the Twenties, if you let any surface raider with a relatively decent weapon set get loose among the convoy, by the Thirties they very efficiently wipe out all the merchantmen.

176. That would explain the alarm the Admiralty had when confronted by a breakout by the German heavy cruisers and/or battleships.

177. The lowest tonnage I could get with a modern light cruiser was a tad under seven kilotonnes.

178. Had to settle for a third generation destroyer hull, lowered to fifteen hundred tonnes, at base one and one fifth megabux.

179. Which was a tad cheaper than the sixty nine hundred tonne light cruiser, so I suppose if I had a need for all that extra tonnage, that would have been my choice; so maybe if they option was there, an auxiliary?

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

180. Given the constraints, the point is to squeeze out the maximum cost benefit, whether commercially or militarily.

181. I was support of surprized when I tried to duplicate the eleven kilotonne twelve six inch gun Town class, out of curiousity, on the sixty nine hundred tonne hull I think I succeeded.

182. The armour layout was rather speculative, but I did get twelve seven inchers, twelve four inchers, six two inchers and eight torpedo tubes.

183. Possibly a tad short on range, and minus two Walruses.

184. So I'm going to guess that the design system isn't that realistic.

185. More or less fully modernized, the price tag was around twenty seven megabux; not much point in not providing the best in fire control and acquisition, considering the investment in the other components.

186. Though how that performs in combat, I haven't found out.

187. Speaking of unrealistic, and considering the rather shorter range, I squeezed in a quadruple torpedo launcher and four five inch triple turrets on the fifteen hundred tonne destroyer, and having tonnage to spare, increased the speed to thirty seven and seven tenths knots with a range over eighty five megametres; price tag four and a quarter megabux.

188. The Tribals were a tad under nineteen hundred tonnes, four twin four and seven tenths inchers, a quadruple torpedo tube, ten and a half megametre range, and had a speed of thirty six knots.

189. I modernized fire control, in exchange for a speed of thirty seven and nine tenths knots, and the price dropped to a tad under four and one fifth megabux.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

190. I do wonder what is the actual size of merchantmen serving Chartered Space in general, and the Imperium in particular.

191. Megatonne freighters are going to be protected by capital ships, likely old second line battleships.

192. However, the lifeblood of any empire is not going to be carried principally by tramp steamers.

193. We're not looking at Panamax, but bulk carriers, and they're not in the sub kilotonne league.

194. You're probably looking at three types of escort groups.

195. The first type would be staying with the convoy, and acts more as a deterrence to commerce raiders, so could be paramilitarized vessels.

196. Performance and capabilities would only need to be slightly faster than that of it's charges, and enough punch to make it hurt.

197. The second type would be starwarships, possibly upto light cruiser, but mobile enough to intercept, if not chase raiders.

198. The third type would be an area covering group, that can go to the assistance of all the convoys in their area, or through intelligence intercepts, hunt down commerce raiders.

199. If the raider is large enough, capital ships from front line units would be released to intercept it.

 

[Condottiere]

Starwarships: 7 Most Affordable Star Ships in Star Wars

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJUCwW3B8EY


1. Cheaper than Traveller.

2. If you don't have an airlock, but use large cargo hatch equivalents for easy egress, you probably will want to wear a spacesuit.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

200. That leaves the the Enn/Gee Three, modernized dreadnought (presumably Queen Elizabeth) and fifth generation battlecruiser.

201. Chose a fifty kilotonne fifth generation battlecruiser, as a compromise emphasizing speed and fire power.

202. Well, full sensor set and fire control required some further compromise to speed and fire power.

203. So we ended up at around thirty four knots and three quadruple fifteen inchers.

204. It's always been my belief that the British could have kept the fifteen incher, and saved all that time and money trying to develop it's successors.

205. Except for refining the design, and the improved fictional Mark Three is a nice compromise between weight, damage potential and rate of fire, compared to thirteen, fourteen, sixteen and seventeen inch options.

206. So what we have here could be considered the Super Hood, except that there was only one turret in front.

207. That had to do mainly with trying to balance the hull, but considering I spent a great deal of time getting pursued by actual battleships, it worked out well.

208. No torpedoes, but a small number of hefty secondary batteries to deal with any destroyers, the idea being keeping a ten klick buffer zone so that the secondaries can't reach me, torpedoes can be detected and avoided, and that damage potential had no practical difference with the larger calibres.

209. As usual, didn't invest in the tech tree, as the point was to bring the war to a fast end and move on to the last stage.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

210. As the secondary ship, I had a go with the destroyers, and tried to build a sophisticated twenty eight and a half hundred tonne modern destroyer leader.

211. This was a tad under twenty seven megabux, and some experimentation found that while ruthless against escorts, lacked effect against even light cruisers.

212. If I had wanted an expendable unit, what I had wasn't it.

213. It was too expensive, and at that cost segment, survivability is an attractive feature, if only to ensure you keep the crew's experience.

214. Reluctantly, I moved up the value chain, since the only other potion was a minimum sixty nine hundred tonne modern light cruiser.

215. For survivability, and because steel is cheap, I maxed out the belt armour to six inches.

216. Minimized the sensor suite and fire control as far as practical, added some torpedoes, and configured armament to two seven inch triple turrets forward, and two triple turret four inchers rear, with a sprinkling of some pop guns, at maximum range and thirty three knots.

217. It was a tad cheaper than the destroyer, and while some cruisers were sunk, more due to my tactical mistakes, hard to determine how much actual impact they had, besides making up the numbers, as I only built thirteen battlecruisers.

218. After a couple of false starts, the Germans sued for peace within two years.

219. The seven incher had on paper a bigger punch than the six incher, but modern German cruisers seemed to have weathered continuous bombardment quite well.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

220. London clarifies, unless a six plus incher, submerging, or four plus aircraft are involved, anything six hundred tonnes and below is ignored.

221. You might be asking too much of the deck to install a default naval six incher, and acting as an aircraft carrier at that tonnage would be rather difficult.

222. Sadly, you don't have that option; nor, armed merchant cruiser

223. While I don't the Confederation has formal agreement that set up the rules of the road, to prevalent needless escalation, with the Imperium, they may have an informal understanding.

224. With the Aslan, it may be more negotiated with each bordering clan, with caveats about reacting to third parties disrupting the status quo.

225. It's sort of a disappointment that you can't have an option to build warships to the standards of previous campaigns, as second line and/or cheaper alternatives, possibly upgrading them in some minor or major way.

226. It's likely they'd get easily wiped out, the upgrades might make them worthwhile for making up the numbers.

227. While on paper, the seven incher is a pretty good improvement over the six incher, I'm wondering considering the role the secondard ships play in my line of battle, might as well just stick to the reliable six incher for the more or less same effect.

228. Or five or four incher, which would require some testing out.

229. Line of sight with the naked eye seems around three klicks plus, so range may be less of an issue.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

230. Since the Great Patriotic War is the last campaign era, I'll take more care in outfitting the ships.

231. One problem with the "modern" control towers, is that they take up a lot of real estate.

232. So even choosing the cheapest ones, you're more or less forced for four main turrets to use the superfiring platform on either end, for lack of space.

233. I think I've balanced one out, four triple five inchers, one quintuple fat torpedo launcher, with maximum range, six inch armoured belt, and thirty and seven tenths knots, for a tad over twenty megabux.

234. Useless against capital ships, since you have to close, but apparently effective enough against a heavy cruiser, if you do a pass by shooting with the quintuple torpedo launcher.

235. Looks like the five inchers aren't cutting it, at the likely engagement range.

236. Also, while maximum range is probably a great idea in real life, doesn't do much ingame, or at least not enough for power projection for light cruisers.

237. I think the analogue would be that you need a spinal mount to seriously challenge another cruiser.

238. Also, missiles and torpedoes really need to have more damage potential, to make them a competitive alternative to spinal mounts.

239. And if you hit the missile or torpedo magazines, the potential for a catastrophic explosion.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

240. So I decided to try to build the secondary in accordance to a budget, per ship.

241. Instead of trying to optimize performance, I took a sixty nine hundred modern light cruiser hull, and gave it a basic four triple six inch turrets, and one quintuple torpedo launcher with twenty four inch long range variants, at minimum range but thirty five and seven tenths knots.

242. Default armour, but full sensor pack and fire control.

243. A tad above twenty five megabux, which seems fairly cheap in that era.

244. It's basically a gunship, with the torpedoes just in case something large gets too close.

245. The enemy destroyers and light cruisers appear to cost sixty megabux plus.

246. The Germans surrendered after eight months.

247. Anyway, that was last era in the game, and the small numbers of ships involved despite the large budgets, plus more sophisticated targetting equipment and larger calibres really opens up the range.

248. Torpedoes can be crippling, if you don't expect them, and miss the worm signs.

249. While eight months in particular, and short campaigns in general, don't prove it, survivability of the hull which ensures continuity of crew veterancy, should be at least a secondary goal.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

250. So, the primary ship had a selection of what by then was the cutting edge of hull forms.

251. Went for the sixty nine kilotonne super battlecruiser, since I really had to plans of closing.

252. Considered the selection of main gunnery from twelve to twenty inches, and opted for three seventeen inch quadruple turrets, backed up by a rear underwater torpedo tube, a quintuple torpedo launcher, and a pair of triple two inch pop guns, to balance out the front.

253. The point in battles is to survive them, and make sure that you can sink the opposition.

254. Even if you lose the encounter, you keep your veterancy, while the other side loses theirs.

255. Prioritize sinking capital ships, and keeping yours alive.

256. If you have the space and time, chuck a couple of salvoes against low hanging fruit, like destroyers and light cruisers, who don't survive long against eight to twelve fifteen to seventeen inchers ranged against them, at optimal chance to hit.

257. How expendable a ship is very much dependent on the sunk cost fallacy.

258. Generally speaking, if you can take out three capital ships of about the same cost, and lose one of yours, you're winning the game of attrition.

259. At the moment, at least for the British, capital ships take twenty to twenty five months to be built after getting ordered, by which time the war is long over.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

260. I started noticing some cheaper models from the artificial intelligence.

261. This made me come to the conclusion I must be doing something wrong in regard to the secondary ship.

262. So I gave up on the modern light cruiser, and moved to a first generation heavy cruiser hull, minimum eleven kilotonnes.

263. The default base hull costs just a tad over three megabux.

264. Out of curiousity I zeroed all the armour, though minimum was four inches main belt, and the price fell to a tad under one and a half megabux.

265. I took the default hull, minimized the superstructure (that still supported the eleven inchers) and maxed out armament with two triple eleven inchers forward, two triple six inchers rear, five triple four inchers and two triple two inchers.

266. I finally noticed that multiple torpedo tubes don't bring the blessings of economies of scale, either in weight or cost, so I installed six underwater torpedo tubes, and sixteen single deck tubes.

267. I wouldn't do this in real life, but the final design did evenly distribute the guns and tubes around the deck.

268. I maxed out the sensor pack, which since it's based on control tower costs and weight, was surprisingly cheap and light.

269. Maxed out gun options, since it is a gun ship, left the torpedoes at eighteen inches, though added an extra salvo and maxed out range.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Ship Design Philosophy and Ultimate Admiral Dreadnoughts

270. Default armour scheme, but left the engineering and workplace safety features at minimum, or none.

271. Unsurprisingly, the hull turned out to be (comparatively) rather fragile under bombardment, or in this case, torpedo strike.

272. The twenty six and seven tenths knot speed was relatively slow, but I had an excellent idea of where the enemy was and an early warning of torpedoes.

273. Probably would have helped taking advantage of more advanced armour plating and engineering features to lower weight and leverage that to faster speed and manoeuverability.

274. However, the current price tag of twenty two and two fifths megabux is hard to beat.

275. Probably great as a peacetime presence ship.

276. Besides being a glass cannon, and that eleven inch guns would classify it as a capital ship, the extra tonnage probably could have been fuddled with, if Treaty limits still existed.

277. By this time, twenty six knots is considered the minimum speed for destroyers, sixteen for cruisers and battleships, seventeen modern light cruisers, twenty three for battle and large cruisers.

278. While not a hard rule, warships probably do need minimum standards for expected performance in any particular niche.

279. Classic Traveller legacy had that factor one or two acceleration for commercial and private spacecraft, and factor five and six for warships; three and four probably ended up as compromises for designers unable to find tonnage or justify extra expense.

 

[Condottiere]

Inspiration: FTL jump cutscene

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jeDHvYaGx7c


1. Less than ten diameter jump initiation.

2. Micro jump.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Propulsion Systems in Science Fiction

Spacedock delves into various methods of sublight and FTL propulsion and maneuvering across the Science Fiction genre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-9B6B2vvr60


1. Torch drive.

2. Hook manoeuvre.

3. Rotatable engines.

4. Altitude/reaction control system.

 

[Condottiere]

Spaceships: Stay Awake While Pulling G's in a Plane - "Hook" Anti-Gravity Straining Maneuver (AGSM)

This is how aerobatic pilots stay awake while flying aerobatics and pulling G forces in a plane.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8z2CnbgrMg

 

[Condottiere]

Starwarships: How Much do Rebel Alliance STARFIGHTERS Cost?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y006JiOnzxg


1. Ai Wing - maybe experimental engines?

2. Why Wing - thirty five tonne fighter bomber; or light bomber.