Drone launching racks on the exterior of modules? Could work, but it seems like a waste of resources, considering the current cost of the bays.
Also, a plan:
Layered Exterior Armour
LEA, as the name implies, is made from layers. The outer layer is made of aluminum, which is followed by a gap intended to reduce the energy of impactors, and for plasma/fragments to spread out. Following this is a layer of fabric with heat and impact resistance. Finally, ablative laser protection in the form of an aerogel layer to reduce heat transfer to the hull.
'Yggrasil' Biological Regulator
Designed as a replacement for our current emergency life support system, the Yggrasil is composed of three subsystems: a Hydrological Reclaimer, a Carbon Extraction Manifold, and a Life Support Regulator. All waste water and urine is piped into the HR, where it is treated and filtered into potable water to be re-used. If more water is required, a controlled burn of mined hydrogen and oxygen can produce some, though this is not ideal. A system of vents and air scrubbers connect manned areas to the CEM, which can active and shut down as desired to maintain an ideal nitrogen-oxygen atmosphere. Oxygen can be sourced from our mining efforts, and the relatively rarer nitrogen can be supplemented by extracting it from urea, borrowed from the HR. Carbon is filtered out by using a low-intensity laser to strip it away from carbon dioxide. The LSR is a computer system that ensures the ship's life support resources are distributed correctly, and alerts the crew to problems within the Yggrasil.
'Kestrel' Point Defense Laser
The Kestrel is a short-ranged pulsed laser weapon, designed to take out incoming missiles and shells before they impact our ship's hull. It has a passive sensor bank that allows it to keep track of all objects within range above a few centimeters in height, and an active sensor system that tracks the nearest object to itself to aid in firing upon it. It is capable of detecting friendly fighter craft by having them emit signals on a specific identification frequency. All other objects will be fired upon automatically, unless firing is overruled electronically. As the system is automated, it does not require a human operator.
Remaining die to be used in revision.
AAA (1): DoubloonSeven
Stop using triple alliterations for plan names. It's irritating. Other than that, the Yggdrasil (you misspelled it) seems well defined, while I'd like to further work out the armor you seem to have planned, since it's pretty vague in execution or make-up. Depending on what we want to stop, we might want to specify some kind of thickness, though not doing that seems alright given we both have no idea what we're going to be up against (what kinds of ranges, masses, projectiles and speeds Chief has in mind) and the fact we don't know what our mass budget is on this thing, though we can assume it's pretty high given we have fusion reactors on-board. I'd replace the armor design this turn with a propulsion system, or otherwise the drone idea I proposed above, with the drones acting as armor on top of whatever we DO outfit the ship's hull with in terms of armor, both allowing us to focus drones on one side during combat and thus leave the other one free for resource acquisition and reinforce our armor mid-combat with more drones diverted from active duty or a passive status on the other side of the ship.
Alternatively, since we're dealing with one ship, we could set up flee-floating, large drone armor pieces with their own propulsion units and position those between us and the enemy ship at all times, thus creating what is essentially a massive Whipple shield and allowing us to layer them as we go, or otherwise attach them to the sides of the ship when not needed and store them that way, without really using up skeleton space.
Oh, and good impact resistance implies having a strong and stiff matrix and good interface bonds within the material, which is best achieved with unidirectional fiber composites. What you seem to be looking for is something with a very high tensile strength and to "catch" fragments or otherwise lose their kinetic energy via elastic deformation. Heat resistance isn't something you'll get far with with this type of material, unless you plan on using
Bragg gratings or Silica fibers, though their impact resistance might not be up to what you want it to be for those kinds of applications, as they're generally used in optical applications where high temperature resistance is needed, but impact damage isn't a concern. Even then, I feel such high-temperature resistant materials are best used on top of our armor, if we use any, or underneath sensitive areas as temperature sensors feeding into an intel center on the bridge. What's more, alloys like Tantalum Hafnium Carbide provide both impact resistance and immense heat resistance (with a melting point at 4215°C), and high thermal conductivity
The Kestrel has the go-ahead from me. The range depends on cross-section, so saying it should keep track of all objects a few cm "high" (in diameter, I assume, so with a circular object a certain visible cross-section and depending on laser intensity rather than sensor range), is a bit much. Depending on our sensors, we should aim to have perfect visibility of such objects from ten kilometers or more away. Given the Saker (a laser probably going into the "hundreds of MW" range in terms of power input) only takes up 3 power, we can assume we have enough power to melt away any kind of projectile with minimal energy input (1-2 power for an array doesn't seem far-fetched).
Overall, the Kestrel seems fine, if a little too specific in the wrong ways.
Author
Topic: Arks Race - Tokari: Ark Anvil (Jump 1, Revision) (Read 12592 times)