Neo-Terran Empire designs

[Raxar]

Fixed guns, that's not a good idea. Look at how turreted warships replaced ships of the line, they were capable of a greater firing arc than their counterparts. This is even more true in the 3-dimensional battle atmosphere (Ha! Pun!) of space. (Yes, sea combat is also 3-dimensional, but primarily uses target bearing and range.) Adding more bridge windows isn't going to help either.
Your "battleship" is essentially a large armed barge with a command bucket at one end and engines at the other.

[Judah14]

Check out the spaceships of Macross. They have forward-firing guns and CIWS type turrets. "Aircraft carriers" in Macross still look like real aircraft carriers.
http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/macross.htm
http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/oberth.htm
http://www.macross2.net/m3/sdfmacross/n ... gnitzs.htm
http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/newmacross.htm
http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/ura ... arrier.htm
http://www.macross2.net/m3/macross7/stealthfrigate.htm

[APDAF]

Why does everyone call it a "barge" it can rotate you know?

[Raxar]

Why does everyone call it a "barge" it can rotate you know?

Because it's big, square, and won't function very well as a warship.
And barges can rotate too.
http://www.marinelink.com/images/main/340183.aspx

[doorman]

While I think you are on the right track somewhat I have a few suggestions that may or may not fit into your future time-line / development track.

The ship is too small, being only 100m the scale needs to be adjusted. If this is a battleship then it would be a capital ship capiable of engaging multiple foes and doing maximum damage. To that degree, based on what protection there is and the the weapons of this time, I would say would be up-armored Armor can take up a lot of room. As well your engines with fission drives would be much larger IMHO than the 20-30m long area your engineering area takes up. Also life support, and not just the part that keeps your alive but the part that keeps the crew entertained, clean, busy and happy. If it is a spaceship then the need to stay on board for multiple days at a time will be required unless it is more of a "coastal defense ship".

Weapon placement, I understand the desire for broadsides and I have built that into my "futuristic" designs of space combat but we must understand the reasons behind broadsides. In wooden ship days, broadsides worked because they were did not have the technology to move a cannon around. They relied on manpower and ropes to move weapons that could shoot a round shot big enough to do damage. Eventually tech improved and it got smaller as well mechanization came into play where we could move the cannon around. This lead to the turret where a cannon was on a rotating drum, at the same time tech improved so that the cannon got smaller and the shot became better.

As well your weapon have limited travel up/down or left/right being both so close together and confined by the engine pods, hangers and command structure. As well you have no point defense to defend against smaller craft. So while you are broad-siding a enemy ship, his small craft could have a field day. As well you have no other arcs of fire besides on a level plain on either side.

To better place weapons we need to know what would make them tick, energy requirements, projectile makeup, personnel needs as well as below (or behind) deck parts. Is it a autoloader? Does it require a gun crew? Does it shoot energy or solid projectiles? Rate of Fire? Equipment needed for cooling? How much power does it draw and does firing decrease the available power to engines?

As it stands now I would suggest the following updates / upgrades?

1) Increase ship size by a minimum of 2x, if crew are required to operate engines and weapons
2) Move the command module back so that 2/3 are to the rear and 1/3 forward
3) Create a sensor suite that covers 360* on all X, Y & Z axis
4) Lower the number of broadside cannons by 2/3 or to 40 and increase their size to 85mm.
5) Include the new broadside cannons in casemates
6) Put a few of the new heavier 85mm broadside cannons facing forward in the section in front of the bridge.
7) Add new turrets along the center line of the side to include 3x50mm Railguns, both top and bottom
8) Add point defense guns along the whole ship

Now my reasons for the changes.

1) I noted the reason above in my first paragraph
2) You need more space forward for sensors and weapons, the direction of travel is always where you will most of the time be pointed so you need to be able to respond with fire in that direction without wasting time getting your broadsides into place. It will also protect your command/habitat module from damage should you run into anything or need to ram a vessel.
3) You will need to know where everything is and I did not see any mention of sensors. In the black of space, your eyes will be crap for anything past a few 100 meters. Those big windows look nice but all of your navigation and targeting will be done based on what your instruments tell you.
4) All your weapons are on direction which means if some ship gets the drop on you then you are toast before you can maneuver to fire. The broadside can still be your heavy hitter but to accommodate more guns to protect your 360 XYZ axis then you need to sacrifice a bit. By making bigger guns it should help you make up for your less amount of guns.
5) Casemates for your new broadsides will give you a even bigger arc of fire making them much more effective, this will free up navigation to do more flying and less getting your ship directly in line to shoot.
6) Like I said in #2 explanation, you need to be able to engage a ship while still moving toward your target.
7) These are your all around weapons, these will be used for smaller ships as well as provide fire while moving your ships before your broadsides are in range. This USS Iowa, it had the big boy 16” guns then the smaller 5” guns for all around work.
8) As explained above, you need to provide small craft defense in smaller caliber, your 50mm guns may work but then again they might just suck up power and useful ammo engaging targets. I prefer a more conventional 20 or 30mm proximity gun. These can be used for smaller craft that are not heavy warships as well. You could also do like a missile battery for point defense but then with the laws of space you need to have fuel in abundance on the missile to stop momentum in all directions to be effective. This would mean very short range.


Overall I like what you are doing here and hope to see a update.

[Thiel]

Thing is, we know nothing about how his world works which means it's impossible to say how to improve the design.
What are the combat ranges? How fast can these ships go and how quickly can they accelerate? Is armour a viable option? How much manpower does it need? How much can you do with automation? How expensive is this ship and by extension how many of them are there. What kind of propulsion and power generation technology is available?
Without definitive answers to these questions, and many more like them, it's impossibly to critique the ship.

For all we know this ship has a crew of one whose only job is to OK they computers decisions or maybe it has a huge crew with people sleeping in shifts anywhere there's room and the most advanced computer on board is the cooks egg-timer.

[klagldsf]

TimothyC popped up a good website:

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/index.php

If you really care about designing your spaceship "realistically," you'll spend a few hours studying that site. Trust me, it's worth it.

If you don't really care, then you shouldn't really care what us jokers say about it either. There's more to sci-fi worldbuilding than coming up with the most realistic-looking spaceships.

[Thiel]

To me the most important thing to keep in mind when doing scifi is internal consistency. It's important no matter what genre you're working with but in scifi (and fantasy for that matter) you change the rules the world works by. It's extremely common to see writers who doesn't realise what extend their changes will have. To me there's nothing more annoying than reading about a skipper on a torch ship who lets himself be held hostage by a bunch of moon based missile batteries.

[Navybrat85]

If this ship is firing rapid-fire broadsides, how much Reaction Control is required (and fuel burned) countering the Newtonian reaction to the firing of a projectile weapon? A railgun produces recoil (I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, smarter people) which is transferred from the mount to the ship. In an oceangoing ship, the recoil forces are transferred from the hull to the water. In a lot of cases, the hull's resistance in the water can minimize the recoil deflecting the ship off course. In space, there's no natural resistance to the recoil. Firing a broadside could throw the ship off it's course. Just moving forward at a high rate of speed won't stop this.