The Great Thalvetian Starship Redesign Project (Moonstruck/Vendetta)

[Azardin]

Their doctrine is largely fighter-based and the turret guns are of limited capacity: they'd be okay against strikers or large bombers but the smaller and more nimble fighters would be able to evade their fire most of the time. Hence the need for a fighter screen.

These ships are also equipped with low-power laser point defences (originally designed for supplementary protection against asteroids etc) which can be used against fighters but these aren't powerful enough to be more than a nuisance to any reasonably shielded fighter. (To the extent that I don't actually note them under the table of armaments).

Ah, that makes sense, although what manner of armaments do these 'smaller and more nimble fighters' carry? I would think they'd have to swarm in rather large numbers depending on their particular load of heavy weaponry.

Although you could always have a sort of torpedo-bomber with a lone heavy missile that can sweep in and evade the point defense.

Yes, that was a shock when I was first reading about SW ships at the time I was designing these, after being used to ST in which a ship 600 m long has a crew of 1000...

Having said that I don't see the B'Stilan ships reaching the crew density of your average Imperial ship from SW due to the factor of their use of A.I.s and nanotech - they were always intended to be more lightly crewed than the norm in Thalvetian navies.

I think ST ships are supposed to be very automated too, that and they weren't built out of spare battleship model parts.

 

[Thande]

I was going to comment on the vertical asymmetry before you said this. Is the mothership too big to land on a planet? If so its three sided prism design seems awkward - better to have 6, 9, 27 etc sides, as the closer you approximate a cyclinder the more space you enclose per amount of carrier. Also if you keep the prism a trifoil nacelle design would really drive the 'rule of three' home in comparison to the iconic ST Federation vehicles .

A question remains regarding the 'nacelles' - I assumed they were like Star Trek where you needed pairwise outriggers to generate an all enclosing field, but the Nebulous appears to belay this and variable unbalanced field geometries appear possible. In this case why don't the larger ships have multiple small devices, reducing their profile, increasing robustness, and allowing interoperability for the 'modular' designs of the B'S with one/a few set FTL components that they can plug into any size of frame by just increasing the number used?

Thanks for the interest. I had considered switching the mothership to a trifoil design and I may still do that when I redesign these. At the time I was still running Star Trek logic that nacelles must be paired (and now, of course, with the 2009 film even ST itself has abandoned that!)

The real reason the mothership (and fleet carrier) can't land on a planet however is that they're simply too big to make it workable.

Your point about having smaller flux generators instead - this is indeed a basically more sensible design but it depends on the technology level and understanding of tachydynamics of the race in question. As I said above, the B'Stilans are in the situation of having a poor understanding of flux technology despite being pretty advanced in most other respects. By contrast the Zalyconians, whose ships I will post here in a bit, are a race whose understanding of flux technology is far in advance of their other 'tech levels' to use RTS terms and therefore do indeed use many smaller flux generators rather than a few large ones.

 

[Thande]

Here's another, the B'Stilan Maelstrom-class Assault Frigate:

 

[Thande]

The Maelstrom is a somewhat awkward compromise between a spaceborne frigate and an assault carrier for planetary descents - hence the name. B'Stilan planetary assault and invasion tactics are removed from anything seen in the Milky Way and reflects the "planet hopping" style of their early explorations and warfare. They barely have any dedicated fighting vehicles, instead using a single craft that doubles as space- and airborne fighter and ground-attack vehicle. The Maelstrom is only half a spaceship, with powerful magnetic floaters that allow it to maneouvre effectively in an atmosphere under battle conditions (whereas the larger ships are only intended to land under controlled conditions). Deflector shields are used to create a more aerodynamic shape than the blocky hull itself, aided by maneouvring winglets attached to the flux drive nacelles.

The Maelstrom's weaponry is designed primarily for strafing and other ground-attack strategies although it can still hold its own in spaceborne warfare. Relative to other B'Stilan craft it is somewhat underpowered and is never intended to operate alone due to its slow speed, always being attached to a Nebulous or other carrier ship.

The Maelstrom can carry an impressive maximum of 12 fighters, but the fighter bays are smaller than those on other ships and are not designed to repeatedly deploy them in spacefighting conditions with shakedown repairs and so forth. In a standard planetary assault, six of the fighters deploy in the air and six on the ground, either under magnetic drive or on articulated legs (q.v.). These may be interchanged although sometimes specialised equipment is associated with one role or the other. The standard formation is built around the Maelstrom itself, providing a defensive perimeter for the ship to either attack directly or deploy troops in hostile territory. Ships carrying more than the bare minimum of troops must sacrifice some fighters to outfit those bays for the purpose.

Technospec

Length - 100 metres

Crew - 36 associated with ship alone, not counting crews of fighters and troops; 132 troopers in max-fighter, min-troop configuration, rising as fighters are sacrificed for troops

Maximum speed = 50 Mdals

Armament - 11 dual phasebolter turrets, 1 triple phasebolter strafing turret, 3 phasebolter cannons, 4 hailfire torpedo launchers, 2 mapulse bomb chutes

Ancillary craft - Up to 12 fighters

 

[Azardin]

The Maelstrom is only half a spaceship, with powerful magnetic floaters that allow it to maneouvre effectively in an atmosphere under battle conditions (whereas the larger ships are only intended to land under controlled conditions).

Magnetic floaters? Are they something much like the Varoto use on their tanks and ground craft?

Deflector shields are used to create a more aerodynamic shape than the blocky hull itself, aided by maneouvring winglets attached to the flux drive nacelles.

Would the winglets actually be necessary? If you're using the deflector shields to create what amounts to a field of force in the form of a airfoil, why not just make a large flying wing?

In a standard planetary assault, six of the fighters deploy in the air and six on the ground, either under magnetic drive or on articulated legs (q.v.).

Articulated legs?

Crew - 36 associated with ship alone, not counting crews of fighters and troops; 132 troopers in max-fighter, min-troop configuration, rising as fighters are sacrificed for troops

I think your crew complement as stated is likely pretty much on the money here. 36 Crew and Command for operating the ship, plus some number of support crew for the fighters, plus the 132 troops.

While I personally find the aesthetics of these craft to be on the ugly side, as an engineer I do appreciate that they look to be more functional. Whatever aesthetics there are, seem to be derivative of the B'Stilan culture, so while I'd not stare at them in awe as I might the HMS Victory, USS Enterprise, or the like...I think I would have an "Oh fuck." moment much like what the Federation crews might have when encountering a Borg Cube.

 

[Thande]

Magnetic floaters? Are they something much like the Varoto use on their tanks and ground craft?

Indeed - the B'Stilans are the only other race to have developed a similar (though still slightly inferior) level of magnetic floater technology to the Vároto. Because the technology is very idiosyncratic, it's hard for other races to emulate.

Would the winglets actually be necessary? If you're using the deflector shields to create what amounts to a field of force in the form of a airfoil, why not just make a large flying wing?

The winglets are there to take over if the shields need to be reconfigured to deal with enemy fire - or if they are knocked out all together - giving it just enough supplementary lift that the ship doesn't fall out of the sky like a stone.

Articulated legs?

Will be covered when I get to the fighters.

I think your crew complement as stated is likely pretty much on the money here. 36 Crew and Command for operating the ship, plus some number of support crew for the fighters, plus the 132 troops.

Yeah in this case I think I was right.

While I personally find the aesthetics of these craft to be on the ugly side, as an engineer I do appreciate that they look to be more functional. Whatever aesthetics there are, seem to be derivative of the B'Stilan culture, so while I'd not stare at them in awe as I might the HMS Victory, USS Enterprise, or the like...I think I would have an "Oh fuck." moment much like what the Federation crews might have when encountering a Borg Cube.

Yes; as I mentioned before, I originally intended the B'Stilans to be even more utilitarian than this, only using one box-shaped ship design with different swapout equipment in the top docking port. They are an Andromedan race and should seem alien to those from the Milky Way seeing them for the first time. I decided however that was a bit boring so compromised between that and a more traditional fleet-layout design philosophy.

Would you like to see some more racial variety, because I can switch to other races' ships for a bit rather than covering the rest of the B'Stilan fleet if you want.

 

[Azardin]

The winglets are there to take over if the shields need to be reconfigured to deal with enemy fire - or if they are knocked out all together - giving it just enough supplementary lift that the ship doesn't fall out of the sky like a stone.

Ah, that makes sense. Hadn't thought of that, but then I think I was assuming multiple shield layers for that sort of thing. This makes more sense than that.

Yes; as I mentioned before, I originally intended the B'Stilans to be even more utilitarian than this, only using one box-shaped ship design with different swapout equipment in the top docking port. They are an Andromedan race and should seem alien to those from the Milky Way seeing them for the first time. I decided however that was a bit boring so compromised between that and a more traditional fleet-layout design philosophy.

Would you like to see some more racial variety, because I can switch to other races' ships for a bit rather than covering the rest of the B'Stilan fleet if you want.

I can't speak for others, but I'd say keep up with te B'Stilan or whatever you want to go to next. For me, it'd be better to keep a race's fleet all in my head as close to simultaneously as possible, so I can consider them relative one another all the better.

 

[Thande]

Just a quickie as I've just remembered that the design of the secondary cannons on the Tornado destroyer (the ones on top) was strongly inspired
by the designs of the guns on the Hoverfly-Tornado tank from MANTA Force, as you see here:

Will scan another design soon.

 

[MrP]

Man, I wonder where my one of them got to. It must be over in Liverpool somewhere. Mum brought back an old Duplo police car the other day. Classic!

 

[Thande]

Haven't had time to scan any ships lately, but I knocked up another alien alphabet today via the Dull Meeting Method I have mentioned before.

This is the Gahalese script - well, that's what the Doagori call it - in reality of course it's just the most common script used on Gahal because it is used for the dominant Lelleqi language.

I was inspired primarily by a mixture of Thai and Arabic (and squiggles )

The Gahalans should feature in the next Vendetta book, or perhaps the one after, depending on how I decide to split it.

 

[Nugax]

Thanks for the interest. I had considered switching the mothership to a trifoil design and I may still do that when I redesign these. At the time I was still running Star Trek logic that nacelles must be paired (and now, of course, with the 2009 film even ST itself has abandoned that!)

Well the Star Trek paired nacelles were pretty silly and ad hoc to begin with. I think it looks pretty nice with as a trifoil. This also has the advantage of making a trifoil gravity field much more graspable for the crew (you go down from the carrier deck to the nacelle), and allows you to use the entire interior surface as a landing deck for smaller ships.

 

[OwenM]

Bumping the thread with crew estimates (the figures I'm basing this on are largely just off the top of my head, with some basis in coventional military numbers)
Mothership:

Length: ~5,000 metres

Crew: 3,600 - not including crews of ships (I think this is probably too small)

Armament: 2,547 dual phasebolter turrets (standardised small size found on all B'Stilan ships - too small to see on image above), 666 medium bolters (ditto), 3 heavy phasebolter cannons, 30 hailfire torpedo launchers, 4 high energy monotwist missile launchers.

Ancillary craft: In "empty" conformation (no capital ships with their own fighters docked inside) it carries 112 fighter or bomber craft and 10 'VIP' fighter models used as executive shuttles.

Fighters first (asuming around a quarter of the fighters will be docked at all times) 28x3 (Thande's crew numbers)=84 for fighters, 10x8 (figured they'd want more for exec shuttles)=80 for exec shuttles. For 38 shuttles youll probably want 10 "groundcrew" for each. 10x38=380. A total of 564 for smaller craft and their support staff.
Assuming 10 crew for missiles, 8 for torpedo tubes, and 5 for havy cannons, pus a good 100 or so for smaller weapons, since even with automation, you'll need a fair few for 3000 weapons, you get maybe 450 gunners per watch so maybe 1400 total with three watches, and you'd also probably have at least a battalion of Marine types, or about 300. That's 2200 so far.
Then you'd need about one maintenance staff per watch for every 5m length, since you'll need a good number even with nanofog, or about 3000 total
You'll have about 500gardenersfor thepresumably large hydroponic gardens,about 200chefs and 200 medics for the large crew. There'll be a at least 2000engineers,a few thousand I've missed in various areas, so about 10-12,000 seems about right. I might cover the others later.

 

[Thande]

Well the Star Trek paired nacelles were pretty silly and ad hoc to begin with. I think it looks pretty nice with as a trifoil. This also has the advantage of making a trifoil gravity field much more graspable for the crew (you go down from the carrier deck to the nacelle), and allows you to use the entire interior surface as a landing deck for smaller ships.

Nice work! You managed to hit my mental image for redesigning the Spiral-class exactly. The third nacelle blocks the ventral hull of course but I was planning to modify that anyway because my original design didn't really fit with trifoil symmetry.

EDIT: Owain your logic also seems good. For estimates of the rest of the crew bear in mind the Spiral is designed as a mobile spacedock for frigate-cruiser scale craft and is therefore about 40% empty space. (I would not include the crews of those ships themselves in that of the Spiral's complement as they are not permanently assigned in the way fighter pilots are to an aircraft carrier).

 

[Thande]

Your contributions have reminded me about this thread so I have decided to work up another old design.

Switching races this time. This is a Zalyconian Ghujil-class escort frigate. As you can tell by the basic design, this was loosely inspired by the Nebulon-B from Star Wars (aka the medical ship at the end of Empire Strikes Back).

The Zalyconians are a bit of a schizo-tech race - blame the Sahdavi, as usual - with very advanced (but fuel-thirsty) engine technology coupled to rather backwards weaponry. They have developed various tactics and techniques to overcome this disadvantage, generally a combination of overwhelming force and surgical precision.

The Zalyconians are also a trade-focused civilisation and the Ghujil's main role is to protect convoys of freighters from pirates. There is also an uprated version designed for front-line combat called the Ghujiliana class which I may put up later.

I only ever made a starboard-side schematic when I designed this one back in 1998, so I have made the other schematics now from memory. They may not be 100% consistent.

Technospec:

Length - approx. 360 metres

Crew - my original notes say 194-400. Although there was always the intent of the ship using considerable automation, I think I need to revise this upwards to maybe 700.

Armament - 2 dual heavy laser cannon turrets (main armament), 112 light laser batteries, 13 torpedo launchers (atomic warheads, poor autonomic guidance), 15 tractor beam emitters (often used to guide torpedoes to target manually), 5 deflector beam emitters (primarily for maneouvring and repelling obstacles but can be used to disrupt enemy shields).

Engines - 10 transaxial-coil flux pods, 28 sublight drive nozzles, both driven by the same zero-point extraction enhanced collider plant (an unusual design unique to the Zalyconians).

Ancillary craft - None, but a single docking port on the back of the dorsal forward hull can be used either to accommodate a Faction-class shuttle or to connect the ship to a spacedock.

(Plans in next post)

 

[Thande]

And the plans.

As you can tell from the colours, the Zalyconians have a rather different idea of aesthetics to us.

 

[OwenM]

I thought the Sahdavi were from the Milky Way. If that much is empty space, 6-8,000 seems more likely.

 

[Thande]

I thought the Sahdavi were from the Milky Way.

They are. Oh, I see, I forgot to mention: the B'Stilans are Andromedan but the Zalyconians are from the Southern Core of the Milky Way (essentially the area visible from Earth through Baade's Window)

If that much is empty space, 6-8,000 seems more likely.

I'm not sure. I think I might compromise on about 15,000. These days I tend to err on the generous side when it comes to crew.

 

[Thande]

Here's the uprated version I was talking about.

The Ghujiliana or "Super-Ghujil" class assault frigate represents an enhancement of the standard Ghujil class and a realignment towards frontline combat roles. This was mainly achieved by a technology exchange with the United Kalsaj, a generally more technologically advanced race than the Zalyconians. The Ghujiliana came about as part of an ultimately failed coup attempt by Admiral Sariov Lev'Vasan, who (accurately) believed that the Zalyconian government's continuous provocation of the Kalsaj would eventually lead to war. Individuals in the Kalsaj government agreed and supplied him with technology for a project to build enhanced Ghujil and Jilan class ships (the Ghujiliana and Zhebnel respectively). The reason for this was that while Lev'Vasan could command the loyalty of the Zalyconian Defence Fleet (ZDF), the more numerous Zalyconian Escort Fleet (ZEF) was loyal to the government, and he needed a punch to even the odds.

Only about 200 Ghujilianas were ever built (compared to over 2000 baseline Ghujils) and it is generally regarded as a lost opportunity by Zalyconians (cf. Canadians and the Avro Arrow). Lev'Vasan had 100 constructed and a second run of 100 was commissioned by the ZDF after the coup was crushed.

The chief Kalsaj technology enhancements are in weaponry and engines. A new stardrive section was used incorporating Kalsaj flux-blades as well as Zalyconian flux-pods. This changed the tachydynamics of the ship sufficiently that the zero-point energy/matter (acquisition) sinks were moved back from the forward hull to a circular array on the stardrive hull. This freed up room in the command hull to allow the installation of a secondary fusion reactor to drive the new Kalsaj-made main armament, part of which was mounted in the previous position of the sinks. The sublight drive represents a more advanced domestic Zalyconian design as opposed to a Kalsaj-influenced one. The Kalsaj flux-blades also mount additional maneouvring thrusters, making the Ghujiliana much more agile in combat.

Kalsaj streamer weapons were installed as the main armament, while the torpedo tubes were unchanged but equipped with more advanced Kalsaj matter-antimatter pulse warheads. Most of the old laser armament is maintained, now chiefly having a point-defence role, but some turrets were removed to facilitate the changes.

The greater size of the stardrive hull allows for additional fuel storage, giving the Ghujiliana considerably more range and capability for autonomous missions (the chief problem with the Ghujil).

Technospec

Length: 415 metres (approx)

Crew: 176 as standard. The considerable automation required for this reduction was achieved through Kalsaj computer technology. The 'real' reason for the small crew (as opposed to the 'official' reasons about the secondary reactor taking up too much space) is because Lev'Vasan knew he might have more ships available for his coup than officers loyal to him.

Armament: 4 Kalsaj heavy streamer cannons (main armament; 2 in turrets, 2 in fixed-focus mounts), 94 light laser batteries, 13 torpedo launchers (more advanced Kalsaj mapulse warheads), 15 tractor beam emitters, 5 deflector beam emitters

Engines: 4 Zalyconian transaxial-coil flux pods, 4 Kalsaj flux-blades, 12 sublight drive nozzles (all driven by primary collider plant in stardrive hull), additional Kalsaj maneouvring thrusters. Secondary fusion powerplant in command hull can be rerouted to drive engines if necessary but this is insufficient to do much more than limp a couple of light-years at low speed to a friendly star system.

Ancillary craft: As with the Ghujil, none.

Plans in next post

 

[Thande]

The Ghujiliana:

 

[Thande]

Another Zalyconian ship, the Spectral Utopia class freighter. This very popular design has sufficient armament to face most trade route alone, without escort; it is generally used for moderate-sized valuable cargoes, with bulk cargoes using the larger, modular Zhanx-class superfreighter which lacks armament and requires an escort.

Its large antimatter tanks allow long-range capability (months) and the refuelling ports on the topside mean it can refuel any escorts in-situ.

Technospec:

Length: ~705 metres

Crew: 225 as standard (mostly in the forward command hull and the auxilliary control centre on the topside cargo hull)

Engines: 18 transaxial-coil fluxpods, 18 sublight drive nozzles, all driven from a single zero-point extraction enhanced collider plant

Armament: 27 light laser batteries, 10 torpedo launchers (atomic warheads, poor guidance), 26 tractor beam emitters, 12 deflector-beam emitters (used to facilitate planetary landing)

Ancillary craft: 8 Faction-class cargo shuttles, located in hangar deck in command hull.