Original Starship Design Thread

[McAvoy]

Actually, I've been chatting with the faction creator; he says thus "I prefer the Tarkin Doctrine; Rule by Fear As such, size enhances that fear because of sheer size, and numbers of troops within said ships." I think this is a good plan. Personally for me anything over 14KM is too big for me to use.

And for me it is not about the coolness factor, it is merely about the preservation factor. Massive ships = too large a target for small splinter groups to try and take down. if you have enough of these massive sized starships you have a pretty good sized army ready for deplyment. I do not personally see what the problem is that everyone is finding with his ships, he factored in everything, mass, costs, etc. I personally like them. They Fit what he requires for them to fit. I work the same way

My rule of thumb; "if a starship cannot fit what I plan for it to fit, it is too small." My fighter craft are designed to be small, fast and highly manourevoable as possible while boasting strong heavy duty firepower. So therefore it takes a really insane person to fly a fighter that has no shields but enough armor and flight suit enough to survive vaccum if they must.

You are forgetting one key point in ship design and it's true today. All weapons of war whether it's a gun or as big as a aircraft carrier down to planes and tanks are all compromises. Do you think the US would love to have a ship even larger than aircraft carrier if money was no object and Congress approved of it? No, because the Nimitz class carrier is very limited in what docks that can handle it. Do you think the US Army would love to field a Abrams tank with 12" armor? No! That amount of armor while would make it invulnerable to practically all bu a handful of weapons in the world, would make it slower than walking speed, cost excessively too much and turret wouldn't have enough power to rotate.

The logic if it a smaller ship cannot suit my needs I will just build it larger is naive at best. Designing and building has always been about compromises and about what you can do with the limits you have.

Again, having 7 kilometer vessel that carries troops is exactly what the term"too many eggs in a basket" really means. You build a handful of these ships and one that is destroyed is a serious thing. You lost a huge flying piece of resources you will never get back, and tens or hundreds of thousands of troops. You lose a smaller ship, the loss of that ship will be felt far less.

[thekillman]

4 glider hits in rapid succession would actually do more damage then 5 hits spread out, because the shield has time to recharge. Rail gun ammo has no E5 field.

Also, my biggest problem with designing ships comes into play with 1-the size. And two, their maximum relative velocity.

1: that's weaponsfire 101

2: Railgun ammo stresses the shield. it does damage. especially if the designers thought it would be harmless.

3: actual velocity doesn't really matter. SG's screwed that up WAY too much.

Because it is powered by liquid naquadah fission, which can take place on a very small scale. Energy cells are pre-charged by excess power from the cell well the drones are not being used or energy transfer from the mothership. The force field is fully powered when the drone is launched.

like i said, the Goauld had trouble fitting such stuff on an Al'kesh. which is about, calculating from my head, about 30x bigger than that ship? sure, they weren't always efficient with their space, but it IMO says enough.

Again, having 7 kilometer vessel that carries troops is exactly what the term"too many eggs in a basket" really means. You build a handful of these ships and one that is destroyed is a serious thing. You lost a huge flying piece of resources you will never get back, and tens or hundreds of thousands of troops. You lose a smaller ship, the loss of that ship will be felt far less.

uhm i would like to raise a point you forget:

why the hell would you put thousands of troops on a ship? there's no use in it.

conquering planets via ground power is so uber-fishy, the only real way to win is to nuke the enemy into submission (with low-range tactical nuking of course). wel, actually kinetic bombardment would do the same, but cleaner.

[Gormagon]

like i said, the Goauld had trouble fitting such stuff on an Al'kesh. which is about, calculating from my head, about 30x bigger than that ship? sure, they weren't always efficient with their space, but it IMO says enough.

Except an Al'kesh could sustain weapons fire from a Ha'tak and was designed to travel through hyperspace. Hyperspace travel is more energy costly then projecting a force field meant to absorb the pfft pfft blasts from a Death glider. Now a missile, from a F-302 or something would do some damage.

However the main point of having my shield is to make PD almost useless against it, or at least allow the missiles to be deployed before the Drone is destroyed.

The railgun slugs would do physical damage sure, but not very much at all. Not enough to collapse the shield quickly.

[Princess Awinita]

the thing you forgot to factor in:

a ship that big has many parts. more parts = more chance of failure = more maintenance = bigger problems.

a ship 14km long will probably spend more time in the maintenance dock than in outer space.


plus, to power such a ship you need one hell of a powersource. you wouldn't need a whole lot of firepower to cripple such a ship, as the onboard powersource would be sufficiently vulnerable to blow it up.

lastly: a big ship can only target 1 thing, so to speak. a group of dogs is much harder to fight than one bull.

You wrote a lot of stuff here I will reply in the form of a list

1. Actually no the 14KM long {or round} ships are basically mobile shipyards to begin with, also carriers and other similar ships. the ships wont be in maintenance, other ships, smaller ships, will however be in their fighter bays and landing areas.
2. Fusion reactors, and other powerplants are onboard every ship in the direct dead center with the most armored areas around each reactor core. The engine wash is damaging even to a ship with strong shields.
3. When you have dozens of onboard weapons systems, you can target several things at once with one ship, the sheer number of troops and otherwise inside each ship is what keeps local systems in line because all those troops have weapons and enough ammo to last a lifetime. any planet or rebel group wanting ot rebel is suppresed pretty quickly.

There are several exaust ports, a half meter wide or less in size to vent fumes and prevent destruction of the ship as a whole. the worst that can happen is the ships crew starts a mutiny onboard one of them.

[Pharaoh Hamenthotep]

There are several exaust ports, a half meter wide or less in size to vent fumes and prevent destruction of the ship as a whole. the worst that can happen is the ships crew starts a mutiny onboard one of them.

....Have you not seen Star Wars?

[Princess Awinita]

....Have you not seen Star Wars?

Yes I have, have the whole saga in fact on DVD {widescreen, the only way to view the movies!}

Heck to me the Super Star Destroyer that belonged to Vader was too danged small for what I would want it for and the role it would fill

[McAvoy]

I think I am going to get out of this discussion. There is only too much nonsense fan******y I can take.

14 kilometer vessels as mobile shipyards yet there are larger ones. Might as well call that universe Fan******y Universe.

I want to join your universe: I want to build a 167,002,131 kilometer ship that spits out planets as weapons and runs on stars. Should fit in with your universe nicely with other fan ******y ships in there...

[McAvoy]

I can't believe w a n k e r is a banned word

[Princess Awinita]

I think I am going to get out of this discussion. There is only too much nonsense fan******y I can take.

14 kilometer vessels as mobile shipyards yet there are larger ones. Might as well call that universe Fan******y Universe.

I want to join your universe: I want to build a 167,002,131 kilometer ship that spits out planets as weapons and runs on stars. Should fit in with your universe nicely with other fan ******y ships in there...

In the Multiverse, anything is possible, and trust me, in the game, known as the Multiverse hosted on roleplay gateway, everything makes sense. So yes, the ships are indeed feasible to make as long as you got the faction to do it with.

[McAvoy]

Building a 14 km ship makes as much sense as building a 5cm ship that can shoot Death Star beams like popcorn.

[Princess Awinita]

Building a 14 km ship makes as much sense as building a 5cm ship that can shoot Death Star beams like popcorn.

Someone tell me this; why does everyone hate starship designs and tries to rip them apart ? rather than admire the maker for their imaginative ideas ?

[McAvoy]

Someone tell me this; why does everyone hate starship designs and tries to rip them apart ? rather than admire the maker for their imaginative ideas ?

Because designing 14 km ships and saying it's small isn't about imagination but about fan******y. If you said 1.4 kilometer ship then not many people would have said anything if at all. But the fact is you are talking about ships size of small cities.

[Princess Awinita]

Because designing 14 km ships and saying it's small isn't about imagination but about fan******y. If you said 1.4 kilometer ship then not many people would have said anything if at all. But the fact is you are talking about ships size of small cities.

Then I mention that my ships even though 14KM in length are small compared to another factions ships, people put a LOT of time into designing these things, its not something they hash up like a bacon & eggs breakfast

[McAvoy]

Then I mention that my ships even though 14KM in length are small compared to another factions ships, people put a LOT of time into designing these things, its not something they hash up like a bacon & eggs breakfast

And again I say what is the point in having ships larger than 14km? What is the point of having such large ships in the first place? So you can say I got this 30 km vessel that has 3,000 weapons and holds 30 million troops? Seriously what is the point?

You apparently are not getting this. Even in Star Wars 14 kilometer vessel is considered huge and they built two Death Stars! One of the largest ships ever built was 17.6 or 19.2 kilometers long depending what source you use.

So you for example, you build five 14 kilometer vessels. Each holding 3 million troops. In your fleet you have 15 million troops, but you have only five ships. Which means only between 1 to 5 places to use those ships. But if you lose one of those ships, you lose a fifth of your forces. Now you build for example a 1.4 kilometer vessel, you now have 50 or more ships each carrying 300,000 troops. You lose one and you lose only 2% of your forces.

Same goes for even larger vessels than your 14 kilometer ship. Build 20 kilometer battleships for example, you literally put all your eggs into one basket.

In your mindset, bigger is better. But bigger doesn't mean efficient use of resources. If the US Navy truly wanted to, they could build a 200,000 ton aircraft carrier and instead of destroyers and cruisers, build battleships instead. So you want me to believe that your Faction has near unlimited resources, money, manpower and labor to build these gigantic ships?

[McAvoy]

Also, there is a reason why there is a term called fan******y. It is as old as the internet. I have seen many Star Trek or Star Wars fan designs where they build the biggest and best without regard of the actual practical needs of the government it's being built by.

Like I said, if you said you have a 1,400 meter vessel not many people would question the size as long as you gave some sort of background.