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Thor (heavy frigate)

0 (0%)

Hiram (Railgun drone)

0 (0%)

Occido MI (exploding mimic dron)

0 (0%)

Lux (Laser corvette)

0 (0%)

Stone (Solar sail transport)

0 (0%)

BIFROST (Laser drone)

0 (0%)

Pythagoras (Recovery ship)

0 (0%)

Julius (transforming drone)

0 (0%)

Total Members Voted: 0

Voting closed: December 13, 2012, 01:24:40 pm

[JWNoctis]

Normal mirrors will still absorb quite a part of incoming energy, and given the energy output of most sci-fi lasers such a defence wouldn't have been very useful. And I'm quite sure that reflective coatings, or whatever equivalent in this universe, would be quite a bit outside the technological and technical capability of our employer.

And speaking of fibreglass, maybe we can coat our ships with asbestos tiles to offer at least a bit of cheap insulation and protection too. No one's gonna breathe vacuum anytime soon anyway...Stones does include asbestos, right?

[Evil Marahadja]

Okey. Before we start to design any battle oriented ships we need to get a better understanding of what we are facing. What kind if ships the pirates use, where they have there groundbases etc.

While we figure that out by asking locals etc. I suggest we start designing the Sensor Drone M1 by Maxinum McDreich. It is cheap and serves a good purpose.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Wow, 100+ messages already. Never expected it to be so popular

I need to finish adding essential info sooner

One thing about ship sizes: different navies use different systems, but imperial Navy system is an easy one. It's based strictly on volume.

Crafts under 100 cubic meters are drones, 100-1000 - fighters, 1000-10000 corvettes, 10000-100000 frigates and so on, just multiply the size be ten with every category

Usually ship will get some kind of adjective depending on it's size inside the category. For example: 250 cubic meters fighter would be light and 900 cubic meters fighter would be heavy.

[kaian-a-coel]

I propose this shuttle:

Spoiler: exterior (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: interior (click to show/hide)

And for the building time, it sounds odd to me that we have thousands of workers, but are still unable to build more than one ship at a time. For a 1m² drone, we simply cant put more than 20 or so workers on it: the drone is too small.
That would mean thousands of people doing NOTHING in the mean time.
But if work is organized in a way that there is always 1/4 to 1/3 of the workforce actually working, 24/7, that mean we can build dozens of those drones at the same time.
And if we cant, because "lack of industrial capacity", why the hell do we have so much workers?

ninja'd EDIT: you should modify your classifications. My ship up there enter the "medium frigate" category (17*22*9=3360m³), while being able to run with only one pilot.
a typical air fighter (like a F22) is around 1000m³ already. (are they heavy corvettes then?)

[evilcherry]

I propose this shuttle:

Spoiler: exterior (click to show/hide)

Spoiler: interior (click to show/hide)

And for the building time, it sounds odd to me that we have thousands of workers, but are still unable to build more than one ship at a time. For a 1m² drone, we simply cant put more than 20 or so workers on it: the drone is too small.
That would mean thousands of people doing NOTHING in the mean time.
But if work is organized in a way that there is always 1/4 to 1/3 of the workforce actually working, 24/7, that mean we can build dozens of those drones at the same time.
And if we cant, because "lack of industrial capacity", why the hell do we have so much workers?

ninja'd EDIT: you should modify your classifications. My ship up there enter the "medium frigate" category (17*22*9=3360m³), while being able to run with only one pilot.
a typical air fighter (like a F22) is around 1000m³ already. (are they heavy corvettes then?)

I actually feel dry mass or laden mass might be a better classification criteria. That said a 20x20x10 boat would never use a single pilot.

btw what kind of software are you using?

Normal mirrors will still absorb quite a part of incoming energy, and given the energy output of most sci-fi lasers such a defence wouldn't have been very useful. And I'm quite sure that reflective coatings, or whatever equivalent in this universe, would be quite a bit outside the technological and technical capability of our employer.

And speaking of fibreglass, maybe we can coat our ships with asbestos tiles to offer at least a bit of cheap insulation and protection too. No one's gonna breathe vacuum anytime soon anyway...Stones does include asbestos, right?

Given fibreglass is never truly heat resistant (at least not reentry levels), its use would be limited to optical cover/cheap camo for cheap crafts. It might serve some use as a cheap frame if it not subjected to much force though.
I guess there are now 2 designs on table: a sensor drone and a self-propelled minigun drone.

[kaian-a-coel]

Mass could be a better criteria indeed. Mine's 128 tons.
I use Blockade Runner by the way.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Damn I screwed with numbers for classification. Sorry, will fix soon ( I used a wrong root in one place....)

Also, population of the Haven is not the same as shipyard workers. It's pretty nice place to live

And who said that shipyard can only make only one drone at a time?

And mass is a bad a way to measure ships because different materials will be used. In the modern world we use water tonnage for that, but that sounds silly for the space

[JWNoctis]

Speaking of workers... From Wikipedia:...NTS produced only 1½ torpedoes a day in 1937, despite having three shifts of three thousand workers working around the clock. Production facilities were at capacity and there was no room for expansion. Only two thousand submarine torpedoes were built by all three Navy factories in 1942. This exacerbated torpedo shortages; the Pacific Fleet Submarine Force had fired 1,442 torpedoes since war began.

Raw number is not a reliable indicator of production capability.

Length/Maximum dimension would also work, like 2.5-6m drones/shuttlepods, 6-25m fighters/shuttles, 25-60m corvettes 60-250m frigates and onward, and it would give a better sense of scale - as long as no one tries to design a borg cube, or a flying telephone pole, of course.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Cubes, rough spheres and telephone poles are quite popular designs in fact. That's not a video game. You need aerodynamic shapes only for aerodynamic jobs

And kaian-a-coel you confused me. Rechecked my math. Everything is right
F-22 would be a heavy fighter in that classification
IIRC, It is roughly 20m long, it's wingspan is  15m and it's height is 10m. That gives 3000m³ but it is far-far away from a cubic form

As for crew size, it depends on  number of systems. One pilot can run battleship sized empty box quite easily

[kaian-a-coel]

And kaian-a-coel you confused me. Rechecked my math. Everything is right
F-22 would be a heavy fighter in that classification
IIRC, It is roughly 20m long, it's wingspan is  15m and it's height is 10m. That gives 3000m³ but it is far-far away from a cubic form

wikipedia gives me 14*19*5, about 1000m³ (1170 to be precise). Anyway, even if it's far, far from a cuboid form, we're still much bigger than the 100m³ upper limit of the fighter class.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Damn, I missed one zero everywhere Fixed, now

[kaian-a-coel]

the F-22 is now under "heavy fighter" and my shuttle under "light corvette". All fixed indeed 

[10ebbor10]

Normal mirrors will still absorb quite a part of incoming energy, and given the energy output of most sci-fi lasers such a defence wouldn't have been very useful. And I'm quite sure that reflective coatings, or whatever equivalent in this universe, would be quite a bit outside the technological and technical capability of our employer.

Industrial mirrors can get up to 99.9% reflection. Sadly, those are expensive, are easily damaged, and your ship will show up on sensors for miles away.

I agree with the sensor drone though. As a side project, we could try to develop the slow reentry plane. It's intended as an automated orbit to ground cargo plane. It glides down like a paperplane, preventing it from heating up to much. While it might take a week to get down, it is very cheap in construction and maintenance. On the ground you just fold up the pannels and stuff the thing in the hold.

[Helgoland]

I assume the ships the pirates have aren't optimized for flying in the dusty atmosphere - we could design a hit-and-run fighter that can dip back into the safety of the giant sandstorm that is our atmosphere when necessary.

[Ukrainian Ranger]

Now, basic info about design mechanics:

I want format like that

Name

Desired volume

Team Who will work at the project. In order of preference (First one will be the head designer, the second is his assistant and so on. Note that only head designer will get full copyright rights and that you are the only one who will not get huge penalties in most rolls )

Estimated time How much you plan to spend on designing. That will affect quality of the finished design. Standard design time is 1 month*size category (drone month, fighter two and so on). You can work faster or slower and no one forces to rush anything in production if you dislike finished design. Bad rolls may ruin all time plans. Typical turns are month long

General description of the idea Most important part. Ship will be based on that.

Priorities You have 5 priority points that you may spend. That's may be anything you want, broad or narrow. Examples: AI, maneuverability, point defense laser, power consumption, complexity, $cost, IC cost.  Note that you can't directly say - improve maneuverability in expense for armor, that's what general description for. Priorities work in another way, team will look for possibilities to improve desired characteristic but that that will create disadvantages (possibly hidden) in other, semirandom areas. Priority can be negative. Example:  Neglect armor. Armor will be worse. But you will get some random bonus(es) in other semi-random area.

And the last thing: Every engineer can work in two projects without penalties, so it's a nice idea to have more than one R&D project on-line