Original Starship Design Thread

[blackluster]

Well this looks okay especially for a first attempt. THis isn't really a destroyer....it more like a tender or patrol at this size.

I mainly reasoned the destroyer designation based on the armament, though I did consider puddlejumperOZ's estimate as a good ballpark (he reckons destroyers would sit in the 200 m range) In terms of the model itself, my guiding star is actually the launch bay door. Whatever reasonably sized craft could fit through there would determine the length. The rest would scale accordingly. Looking at the fleet thread again, I probably did underestimate the crew size, though I am wary of just making numbers and having a whole ship of people doing nothing.

[Saquist]

I mainly reasoned the destroyer designation based on the armament, though I did consider puddlejumperOZ's estimate as a good ballpark (he reckons destroyers would sit in the 200 m range) In terms of the model itself, my guiding star is actually the launch bay door. Whatever reasonably sized craft could fit through there would determine the length. The rest would scale accordingly. Looking at the fleet thread again, I probably did underestimate the crew size, though I am wary of just making numbers and having a whole ship of people doing nothing.

Gotcha

[Experiment 442]

This is the First Ship I'm taking on.
The TCS (Terran Confederacy) Mega Carrier Midway
Wing Commander Prophecy

Spoiler:

Uploaded with ImageShack.us

This has been more difficult than I would have thought in the 2D plans.
Many views of the ship are not shown and I had to review the You Tube missions and take my own snap shots of the ship. Even harder is that there are more curves in the ship that I originally thought.

I started a Goodle Sketchup of the Fighter launchers and Sensor Booms.


I'll complete the 2D schemes before going to much further on the 3D

Looks like you have parallell projection on.

[Saquist]

Looks like you have parallell projection on.

Yep the sketchup version in on 3D and it looks good from what I first created but I may throw it out the door after I finish a full schematic for the Wing Commander Fans.

[boberth2o]

i was reading sphere by michael crichton the other day and I became really interested in the ship featured in the novel, i think i might re-engineer it to become a tauri vessel for gas giant research, but im getting sick of uber shields so i think ill add a shield loophole into gas planets, maybe they are only 5% effective, very low yield, when inside the atmosphere. Anyone got any ideas for a scientific loophole? id prefer to have a strong lead shielded ship than a tin can with a forcefield

I especially dislike shields in general. That's why I like Battlestar Galactica so much. The re-imagined series did it right, you should have to have heavy armor and should have to make a flak field to destroy incoming ordinance.

you could say that the planet emits some sort of weird radiation that interferes with your ship's shield emitters.

[Lt. Col. Mcoy]

Heavy armor isn't the greatest against relativistic and near-relativistic weaponry, though. It's just more stuff to convert to superheated plasma.

[Dr Lee]

Haven't worked on the Rex for a couple of days for various reasons.....

Did faff about with setting up yet another shot of my British Fleet



Left to right

Midget
Un-named carrier (Probably go go with something patriotic like 'Ark Royal')
Un-named Hospital ship (top)
Belatu-Cadros (Bottom)
Cissonius cargo ship(Top)
Un-named repair and Construction ship (Middle)
Stealth ship (Top)
Enyaluis (Middle top)
Recon Drone (Middle Bottom)
GateJumper (Bottom)
Spear Transport (Top)
Rapier gunboat (Bottom)

The idea, ultimately is to havve a carrier group based around, obviously, the carrier, but with the R&C ship, the Hospital ship and maybe another specialised ship as part of ONLY the carrier group.... the rest of the group would be an assortment of the Enyaluis, the Belatu-Cadros and the Midgets (In the Brit-Verse i'm slowely creating, the stealth ship doesn't officially exist).

the Enyaluis, midget and Belatu Cadros' would be operated outside of the carrier group in either smaller groups or solo tours

[boberth2o]

Heavy armor isn't the greatest against relativistic and near-relativistic weaponry, though. It's just more stuff to convert to superheated plasma.

Who would seriously make a kinetic weapon that goes that fast.

[Lt. Col. Mcoy]

People with dirt-cheap inertia-less drive systems.

[Aragon101]

People with dirt-cheap inertia-less drive systems.

That's actually my theory for how we're going to defeat the Reapers. Aim the Mass Effect Relays at them and WHAM! If it can cross a galaxy that fast, just imagine the IMPACT that would leave on a Reaper!

[Saquist]

I mainly reasoned the destroyer designation based on the armament, though I did consider puddlejumperOZ's estimate as a good ballpark (he reckons destroyers would sit in the 200 m range) In terms of the model itself, my guiding star is actually the launch bay door. Whatever reasonably sized craft could fit through there would determine the length. The rest would scale accordingly. Looking at the fleet thread again, I probably did underestimate the crew size, though I am wary of just making numbers and having a whole ship of people doing nothing.

What detail are you looking to add?

[Naquadah_nut]

I especially dislike shields in general. That's why I like Battlestar Galactica so much. The re-imagined series did it right, you should have to have heavy armor and should have to make a flak field to destroy incoming ordinance.

you could say that the planet emits some sort of weird radiation that interferes with your ship's shield emitters.

yeh that was pretty much what i was contemplating, but that wont work for every gas giant, but i have been designing it more like one of those canoes with the float at one end to make it stable, in the book it has a giant fin like an airplane wing, i decided to add another at other end of ship so it will skate its sensors into the atmosphere and use a ramscoop to gather hydrogen and other volitles, sorta like destinys sun scoop.

So maybe i can sell it off as the shield will cause massive interference if its always being hit by the atmosphere when the ships in the gas giant, meaning the sensors are less effective. i was thinking BSG when i thought about no shields, and i was gonna replace the flak field with a field of shaped explosive charges, with a wide angle of release, so they would sort of be motion activated by on coming ordanance.

Its still a work in progress, alot of things to work out, still havent designed an engine yet

[blackluster]

What detail are you looking to add?

In terms of the model, quite a bit. My to-do list is something like:
Paneling
Missile/torperdo hatches (actually did these last night)
AA missile hatches
AA plasma cannons (the lower ones will actually be housed in that structure extending from underneath the launch bay. the upper ones will be housed in shaped extensions on the top of the 'wings' which I still need to add)
ECM modules (1 long range and 3 close range)
Redesigned conning tower (the current one looks like crap, I'll probably try and make something closer to the 304 conning tower shape)
Special hatch which allows the ship reactor to be swapped out or jettisoned in an emergency
The design of the shuttle/recon craft, the function pods, and the subspace probe

That's the major stuff, the rest will just be cosmetic detailing. In terms of the specs I hope to settle on a decent size (maybe basing it off the conning tower instead of the bay doors) and crew number. I know a certain amount of redundancy is necessary on a military ship, but I am more drawn to the design approach from the 'Alien' fiction which favors heavy automation and advanced ship AI allowing a 384 m warship to be crewed by less than 30 people. Like I said, I'd like this ship to fit in with what is happening in the Virtual Fleet thread but at the end of the day, I'm a fan of what I'm a fan of if you know what I mean. I'll probably update the initial post as I think of stuff.

Your SketchUp model of the Midway is looking good by the way. I finally got the image to load properly. I'm not so familiar with the Wing Commander game and I only vaguely remember the movie.

[Dr Lee]

Added a set of airlocks near the nose, and both the Spear and Rapier hanger doors are complete.



Worked on the carrier again..... Tweaked the superstructure, added the underside cannons and slipped the Belatu Cadros engines onto the rear

[Experiment 442]

Can you guess what it is?

Spoiler: