Gateworld Virtual Fleet 4.0 - Discussion thread

[Princess Awinita]

First off: when an aircraft enters the final stage of landing, it goes on full throttle to take off again should it be needed.

Second: ******* stand on a Nimitz. 300m is absolutely, mindboggling huge. The biggest place i've been is a powerplant. I was driving there by car and thought "damn it's big". Then, i got closer. At one point i just kept wondering "how much bigger does it get?". the main pipe is 135 meters high. Essentially, a nimitz is twice that in length.

you seem to be thinking in kilometers, but the truth is that it's not needed.

The final, most important part is: It depends on you engine technology. in SG, stargates and superfast hyperdrives ensure not a whole lot of supplies are needed, as more supplies, fuel, ammo and crewmembers are minutes away. in a BSG universe, you need much bigger ships because that universe not only has more manpower-intensive technology, ships can be away for a long time and ships need to be pretty much self-sufficient.

SG does not need that.

If you go into a universe where ships are away for months, resupplying is hard etc, you'll see MUCH bigger ships to cope with the additional challenges. in stead of being designed to survive one battle, such ships would have to survive many battles of great length, with ample of extra supplies to deal with it. Also, the support fleet would have to be much, much bigger and varied and higher tech to help.

For SG, it's mostly "send a couple of ships". The survivor fleet in BSG had several ships to maintain the Galactica, including a waste recycling one, a mining ship and a tyllium processor. For any significant fleet in a harder sci fi universe, the support requirements grow massively.

There's no need for huge ships, and planetoid baseships (Deathstars) are simply super-unrealistic, highly ineffective and their resources and time is better spent on other things.

the only real ship types that need to be huge, is where their role requires them to be. IE, Gateships (as a ship with some kind of gate, portal, whatever needs to be bigger than the ship it allows through), Baseships (as they are a "base", they contain much bigger control and command, as well as supply and production chains), and Generational Ships (as you need ample living space. It's bad to cram a lot of people in a small space).

Anything else, pretty much doesn't need to be big by default.

I've been on the USS Yorktown meuseum ship, it felt big, but when you look at it on a map, or even up close, it also feels small to me. I do not know the exact measuremtns of it, but somehow the Disney cruise ship Disney Dream seems far bigger then an aircraft carrier.

In some cases, the bigger the better, trust me.

Engine technology varies by race, some races have antimatter technology, dark matter technology, or just plain magnetic technology or plasma technology, maybe even mixes of all that I listed. in the case of the Felinus they're engine technology is all that I listed save for the magnetic drives. Those power their homes and businesses.

There is a need for huge ships depending on what you want to do, say, control a galaxy, how do you keep the local systems in line, simple through fear, so build something big enough to crack a planet and thus the local systems will be kept in line out of fear they could be next. therefore a Death Star is feasible. HOWVER I was not talking of the deathstar directly, I mean something more akin to a asteroid belt or the like wherein some of the planetiods had been convetted and built onto into massive space stations for repair and reift work.

What you call a generational ship I call a breedership, on average they're 14KM in length with ample room for familes to grow. Ontop of that, there are dozens of them. heck in my datasheet on the Felinus they had completely overgrown their homeworld of Erebus, pretty much made it into a Coruscant type of world with thoiusands of ships and fighters and other craft in the system it resides in. Basically the planet is one massive city that literally reached out into the hard vaccume of space.

I'm not too versed in BSG, the way they said their fighters could turn on a dime in deep space completely lost me, its impossible to do that even with your engine off.

[thekillman]

There is a need for huge ships depending on what you want to do, say, control a galaxy, how do you keep the local systems in line, simple through fear, so build something big enough to crack a planet and thus the local systems will be kept in line out of fear they could be next. therefore a Death Star is feasible.

......

i just don't know what to say. It's wrong, but i don't know where to start to even begin explaining that.

I'm not too versed in BSG, the way they said their fighters could turn on a dime in deep space completely lost me, its impossible to do that even with your engine off.

uhm? what? BSG has some of the most realistic combat maneuvers. In space, you can turn on a dime. you can fly backwards. sideways. any way. Have you ever played one of those 2D spaceship shooters (not scrolling), and the ship has no friction? that's roughly how space combat is.

[Princess Awinita]

uhm? what? BSG has some of the most realistic combat maneuvers. In space, you can turn on a dime. you can fly backwards. sideways. any way. Have you ever played one of those 2D spaceship shooters (not scrolling), and the ship has no friction? that's roughly how space combat is.

I've tried it, I play fighter games, space fighter games mind you, the XWing vs TIE Fighter game series, its IMPOSSIBLE to turn on a dime in space.

Also when it is required, it is possible to make such large ships, personally though I do not go over anything other then a moblie shipyard. Something large enough to act as a repair and refit station, and also large enough to have a mall or whatnot on it as well as living quarters and eating places, etc

[thekillman]

I've tried it, I play fighter games, space fighter games mind you, the XWing vs TIE Fighter game series, its IMPOSSIBLE to turn on a dime in space.

this. just this

Something large enough to act as a repair and refit station, and also large enough to have a mall or whatnot on it as well as living quarters and eating places, etc

The main reason to make something like a repair station big, is to fit a ship in there. This obviously isn't needed when the ship itself can manage it's structure just fine and it's mostly exterior damage. Even interior damage can be managed. You'd only need a big repair station if the repairs are so intensive that the risk of the ship breaking/getting damaged are too high.

For most cases, small drones with thrusters can move equipment about just fine. For bigger hauls, hull-mounted cranes work (even crane drones latching onto the hull). Only for the very big cases do you need a big ship.

As to building ships in space: this largely depends on what you want your shipyard to have and do. For the most basic stuff, in-space construction (preferably under the protection of a magnetosphere) is just fine.

Deathstars and "planetcracking to maintain order" are nonsense. You CAN make them, but the amount of star destroyers the Empire could've made from the Deathstar is mind-boggling. And bombarding a surface with 20 meter or so tungsten rods, probably works better than nukes. ESPECIALLY better than planetcracking.

The only remotely sane reason for "cracking" that i can think of, is when you've created a world where -for safety purposes- the enemy sits many kilometers under the surface, and at that point a big kinetic penetrator will probably STILL work better.

[dboy-2007]

It has been that haha. Whats going on seems to have died off quite abit around here, is there anythign atall going on that i could have a look at. Dying to get my teeth into something.

[thekillman]

It has been that haha. Whats going on seems to have died off quite abit around here, is there anythign atall going on that i could have a look at. Dying to get my teeth into something.

some stuff went on in the Story thread (should be on page 2 or so of the Sci and tech department).

Yes it died. I guess real life happened. I for one am doing an internship and so i find myself robbed of the usual free time.

Secondly, as i get to deal with real engineering on a daily basis, i find myself no longer able to hide Stargate's hideous flaws -that i could previously cope with- under the rug. The way it has made FTL travel trivial, energy trivial, material strength trivial, time scales trivial, and technological advance trivial... even ship size is trivial. Whenever i try to design a ship for fun, i always try to match the power output of the ship with what it needs. it's armor with what it needs. etc etc etc.

Since in SG, armor is virtually useless and only buys you seconds (whereas shields buy you minutes), i've more and more become an advocate of low-armor, low exotic matter (ie, Nq) cheap material ships since shields are all that matter. Yet shields are the most boring cop-out of all.

I myself am a BSG fan. The one thing SG does better than BSG, is that Stargate has a rich mythology and plenty of extrapolation points (points from where you can create a new, seemingly canon and natural-feeling fanfic), and BSG pretty much shoved it down the deterministic road with it's ending. (IE, it all has to happen in the past, or in a radically different AU, and in the past it has to work out a certain way which removes all fun).

Thermodynamics are what fuel the world, pretty much literally. SG throws it out of the window. Energy densities, energy outputs. it's all relative, all speculation and it varies from episode to episode at orders of magnitude. A plasma bolt is either a supernuke or a firecracker. A shield can either soak up the energy output of a star, or it can barely withstand a heavy artillery shell. Armor is of debatable use. Well it has pretty much no use, but the only cost is construction as energy as above mentioned is meaningless, thrust is meaningless and accelleration is meaningless. The one refinement i should make in this, is that it's not entirely meaningless, but it's importance is so much devalued that from an engineering POV, it's no real concern.

Unfortunately, my most abhorrent SG fear is one that i've known for a very long time: That Crazy Tom was right all along, even though i commonly strongly disagreed with the motives. It seemed sometimes he deliberately wanted to make a point, rather than create a fun and balanced story. And as much as my engineer senses tingle at his horrible machinations, in fact all alarmbells go off and i'm set to an engineer's DEFCON 1, i know that there's nothing in SG that prevents their creation. Well there's one, and that's the observed exponential relation between an object's power and it's tendency to not be there the next episode. The secondary relation is that the effectiveness of an object determines how fast a countermeasure will be conceived that makes it utterly ineffective. By those two relations, Crazy Tom's machinations would pretty much instantly blow up or no longer work by virtue of being exposed to the cosmic background radiation. But again, as they pretty much are the Neo of this universe, the "other end of the equation", they probably defy those rules of thumb too.



Right now i'm thinking of the future. I'm trying to conceive a stargate of my own design, but it's hard to draw a line between "nerf it" and "make it useless".

I myself vastly prefer the BSG school of thought, even though fighters are of questionable use. I prefer Sci Fi where huge ships blast each other with conventional weaponry (although the Galactica COULD be using Railguns, it's never really made clear what the main weapons are).


If i'd design a universe, it probably would be a shieldless one. Although i prefer point-to-point Jumpdrives, i think they open too much of a can of worms. I would opt for a hyperdrive system. Not a typical SG style, it would be BSG-esque in terms of the entering sequence. Not just a "new dimension" but rather a subspace as a whole other universe, connected to our own via a 5th dimension both universes "float" in, with only gravity as the transcending force (so Subspace would be my explanation of "dark matter".)

Anyway, i would go for a semi-early stage space setting. Mostly because i think that's where most fun is. you're at the point where it's all still fairly predictable. I think lasers and missiles inevitably become the weapons of choice, but until the obvious thermodynamic issues of lasers (they're blast furnaces that produce light as a byproduct) is solved, Railguns and coilguns are much more likely to be fielded, along with missiles.



Lastly:

Princess: After some reading up at Atomic Rocket, i must make a few important notes:

-Size does matter.
-Size does not determine speed
-The human limit determines the limit of acceleration (not applicable when using magitech)


Translated:
-Building a bigger ship is better
-A Battleship is best, and crapshoots everything that's not a battleship
-any other size other than a battleship is probably because of economic and logistic reasons, not because of engineering or war potential. If you can build a big battleship, build it.

Of course, there are obvious limits to this. Mostly the point where ship mass becomes a significant factor. I can certainly say that above a couple of kilometers (around 5), it's no longer really advantageous because the ship will have propulsion and structural integrity problems.

[Princess Awinita]

Princess: After some reading up at Atomic Rocket, i must make a few important notes:

-Size does matter.
-Size does not determine speed
-The human limit determines the limit of acceleration (not applicable when using magitech)


Translated:
-Building a bigger ship is better
-A Battleship is best, and crapshoots everything that's not a battleship
-any other size other than a battleship is probably because of economic and logistic reasons, not because of engineering or war potential. If you can build a big battleship, build it.

Of course, there are obvious limits to this. Mostly the point where ship mass becomes a significant factor. I can certainly say that above a couple of kilometers (around 5), it's no longer really advantageous because the ship will have propulsion and structural integrity problems.

Just some things here I wanted to point out in reply to this.

1. Size indeed matters, because bigger also means more weapons, and space to store items, and the like.
2. Size can not determine speed, this is correct, however, engine size and type determines both speed and power, which means, the larger the ship, the bigger the engines in order to power the weapons/other systems onboard.
3. Human limit does indeed determine how bit a ship can be when building it, HOWEVER these are not humans in my race, there are in fact no humans in my race at all, the Felinus are two groups of beings, feline and night elf-like, therefore better chances to survive against such large gravity pull and the like

There are indeed limits to this because such a large ship, say, 14KM in length, designed to merely be stationary or in orbit of a planet or moon with weapons and a means to move if required is possible, speed is a problem, a ship so big can only go so fast regardless of engine type.

Structure integrity troubles only come into being when damage is taken, even if that damage is repaired fairly quickly on the outset. even then the ship is expanded and made larger. Possibly to place more weapons on the hull or the like.

Crew is another problem, which does not include, say, army or naval personell that can stay onboard, the crew for such a large craft is normally more or less around 15,000 or more people. Even on such advanced craft, you still need crewmen to run it. and all are trained to repel boarders in the case of combat. in many cases the crew grew up onboard, depending on how old the craft is, some starships of the Felinus are thousands of years old, so there are some that never seen a planet or were born on a planet for that matter.

Ontop of that due to the sheer size of a ship for the Felinus, none of the Breederships or larger can actually land on a planet to begin with. They're just too big, trying to take off of a planet to break from the gravity well would be a major problem to deal with, so such large craft are constructed in space and never touch down planetside

hope that made sense, the main point being that humans have limits yes, but the Felinus are not human

[thekillman]

Some food for thought from Atomic Rocket website:

I don't think there would be a huge variation in the types of warships seen. You'd have the big battleship which would dominate everything it fights, and then maybe smaller ships that could cover more area at once and engage in light combat, but wouldn't stand up to the battleships. Red called these 'frigates' in his Humanist Inheritance fiction, probably because their role is similar to the ship of the same name from the age of sail, and it is a term I like, so I will use it here. However, note 'cruiser' may also be an applicable moniker for these ships, probably depending on its specific mission rather than its design goal.

I feel these would exist due to economic efficiency rather than speed or range difference like those seen in the real sailing frigates. Let me explain.

Many of the arguments against space fighters can actually be used when talking about other capital ship classes as well. Let's look at what the roles of various naval ship classes basically were, and see if they could have an analog in space.

You had corvettes, which were small, maneuverable ships used close to shore. This role doesn't really apply in space. You might argue low orbit around a planet could be seen as a shore, but the problem is combat ranges would be rather large. If you have a stationary asset in LEO that you want to attack, you could put your battleship arbitrarily far away and attack it at will. If you have a mobile asset in LEO you want to attack, you can still attack it from some distance away, probably around one light second, to avoid too much light speed lag targeting issues and diffraction of your laser beams over the distance.

For comparison, the moon is about one and a half light seconds away from Earth. So, the battleship could be sitting out two thirds the distance to the moon and easily engaging the LEO target with precision and power. Corvettes being there wouldn't be of any help on defense, and the battleship can do their job on offense just as well, and at longer range.

A corvette type ship might be useful to the Coast Guard for police and search and rescue work, but that is an entirely different realm than a warship.

How about cruisers / frigates? The historical usage of the term referred to a small but fast warship, capable of operating on their own, and often assigned to light targets or escort duty. I do see an analog to this role in space.

A frigate would be no match for a battleship, however they would be useful in force projection, due to presumably being cheaper to produce and operate, thus more numerous. I'll be back to this in a moment.

And of course, battleships would be the backbone of the war fleet, able to swat down anything that comes at them except other battleships. If it were economically feasible to build a huge fleet of battleships, I see no reason not to. Let's investigate some of their traditional disadvantages and see if they apply in space.

The big one is speed: the huge battleship can take just about anything dished out to it and dish out enough to destroy nearly any other class of ship, but its huge size makes it slow. This isn't so much of a concern in space. Allow me to elaborate.

There are two things in space that are relevant when talking about "speed": delta-v and acceleration.

Delta-v is determined by the specific impulse (fuel efficiency) of the ship's engines and the percentage of the ship's mass that is fuel. Tonnage of the ship doesn't really matter here: it is a ratio thing. If the specific impulse is the same and the fuel percentage to total mass the same, any size ship will eventually reach the same final speed. Thus, here, if fuel costs are ignored, small ships have no advantage over large ships. (And indeed, if you are going on a long trip, the large ship offers other advantages in how many supplies or for war, how many weapons it can carry at no cost to delta-v, again, if the ratio remains constant) So the question is how fast can they reach it, which brings me to acceleration.

Acceleration is determined by total engine thrust and the total mass of the ship. At first glance, it seems that the smaller ship would obviously have the advantage here, but there are other factors that need be observed.

One is the structural strength of the materials of which the ship is constructed. This becomes a big problem on insanely huge ships with larger accelerations, since the 'weight' the spaceframe must support goes up faster (it cubes) than the amount of weight it can handle (it squares). Mike talks about this on the main site when he debunks the silliness of giant insects. However, steel is strong enough that with realistic sizes and accelerations, this should not be an issue before one of the other ones are.

One that is a much bigger problem is how much the human crew can handle. In the space / atmospheric fighter thread we had the week before last, Broomstick discussed the limits of the human body to great accelerations. Well trained people in g-suits can handle 9 g's for a short time, but much more than this is a bad thing to just about everyone - their aorta can't handle it. In fact 5 positive g's are enough to cause most people to pass out, as she explains. If the crew is passing out, the ship is in trouble. This problem can be lessened by the use of acceleration couches: someone laying down flat can handle it much better for longer, but even 5 g's laying down is going to be very uncomfortable, and the crew will have a hard time moving their arms. Extended trips would probably be best done at 1 g so the rocket's acceleration simulates Earth normal gravity, with peak acceleration being no more than 3-5 g's for humans in the afore mentioned couches if possible.

That is probably the most significant limit on acceleration, since it is an upper limit of humans. No matter what technology exists, this cannot be avoided.

The third limitation will be based on the technical problem of generating this much thrust for the mass. This, too, can provide an upper limit, since adding more engines on to a ship will eventually give diminishing returns. The reason for that is the available surface area on the back of the ship where the engine must go increases more slowly than the mass of the ship as it grows. But, for a reasonably sized ship, this should not be a tremendous problem, especially when nuclear propulsion techniques are used, many of which have already been designed and proven feasible in the real world. Fission nuke pulse propulsion can provide 400 mega-newtons of thrust according to the table on Nyrath's Atomic Rockets website (see the row for Project Orion).

Three gees is about 30 metres per second squared acceleration. F = ma, so let's see what mass is possible. 4e8 / 3e1 = 1e7 kg, or about 10000 metric tonnes. Incidentally, this is the number Sikon used for his demonstrations in the October thread about brick vs needle. I think it a reasonable number for a battleship, so rather than repeat the benefits of this, I refer you back to that thread and the posts of GrandMasterTerwynn and Sikon on the first page, who discussed it in more depth than I am capable of. I agree with most of the views Sikon expressed in that thread.

So, for these sizes, the speed argument against battleships is very much sidelined.

You also pointed this out later in your post that these advanced propulsion techniques do not necessarily scale down very well, which may also serve as a lower limit on ship size, which is probably more relevant than the upper limit it causes.

You might ask if pushing for a greater peak acceleration would be worth it, and it is not, in my opinion. The reason again goes to the human limitations. Even if your warship is pulling 10 gees, it most likely won't help against a missile, which can still outperform you.

An acceleration of even 1 g should be enough to throw off enemy targeting at ranges of about one light second. By the time the enemy sees what you are doing, you have already applied 10 m/s change to your velocity. Then, if he fires back with a laser, you have another second to apply more change. This would be enough to help prevent direct, concentrated hits. Having even five times more acceleration will offer little advantage over this in throwing off targeting or wide spread impact of lasers of particle beams, due to the ranges and the size of your warship, which is certain to measure longer than 50 metres. For missiles and coilgun projectiles, it matters even less, simply due to the time the enemy fire arrives, you have plenty of time - minutes - to have moved. 1g is plenty for that, attainable by a nuke pulse engine for sizes around 30,000 metric tonnes.

Long range acceleration would again be limited to around 1 g or less due to the humans, mentioned above. However, even at 1g constant acceleration (which would probably not be used due to fuel concerns anyway), an Earth to Mars trip could be measured in mere days. More offers little advantage there either.

[thekillman]

Lastly, there may be a question of rotation. A more massive and longer ship would have a greater moment of angular inertia than a smaller ship, thus requiring more torque to change its rate of rotation. Again, I don't feel this will be a major concern. At the ranges involved, you again have some time to change direction. However, this does pose the problem in quick, random accelerations to throw off enemy targeting.

Going with the 10,000 metric ton ship, let's assume it has an average density equal to that of water: one tonne per cubic meter. For the shape, I am going to assume a cylinder, about 10 meters in diameter (about the same as the Saturn V), with all the mass gathered at points at the end. The reason of this is to demonstrate a possible upper number for difficulty of rotation (moment of inertia), not to actually propose this is what it would look like. Actually determining an optimal realistic shape for such a ship would take much more thought.

With this, we can determine the length of the cylinder to be 10000 / (? r2) = about 130 metres long. Now, we can estimate the moment of inertia, for which, we will assume there are two point masses of 5000 tons, each 65 meters away from the center. So moment of inertia for the turning axis (as opposed to rotating), is 2*5000 * 65^2 = about 4e10 kilogram meters squared.

Now, let's assume there are maneuvering jets on each end that would fire on opposite sides to rotate the ship. Let's further assume these have thrust about equal to that found on the space shuttle, simply because it is a realistic number that I can find: about 30 kilo-newtons. Let's determine torque, which is radius times force, so 3e4 * 65 * 2 (two thrusters) = about 4e6 newton meters. Outstanding, now we can determine angular acceleration possible.

Angular acceleration = It, where I is moment of inertia and t is torque. So, we have 4e6 / 4e10 = 1e-4 radians per second squared. This is about a meager 10th of a degree per square second. Remember this is acceleration - change in rotation rate. Once spinning, it would tend to continue spinning. This is also a lower limit: most likely, the thrusters would be more numerous than I assumed, and probably more powerful as well, and the mass probably would be more evenly distributed. But anyway, let's see if it might be good enough.

As I said when discussing linear acceleration, you would want some quick randomness to help prevent a concentrated laser beam from focusing on you, and you would want the ability to change your path within a scale of minutes to prevent long range coilgun shells from impacting. There isn't much you can do about missiles except point defense: a ship cannot hope to outmaneuver them due to limitations of the crew, if nothing else.

Some unpredictable linear acceleration should be enough to do these tasks, unless the enemy can get lined up with you, in which case, you will want to change direction to prevent him from using your own acceleration against you, and blasting you head on. So the concern is can you rotate fast enough to prevent the enemy from lining up with you. So, let's assume the enemy can change direction infinitely fast, and can thrust at 3 g's. The range will still be one light-second.

We can calculate how much of an angle he can cut into the circle per second if he attempted to circle around you. His thrust must provide the centripetal acceleration, so we can use that as our starting point. Centripetal acceleration is equal to radius times angular velocity squared, thus, sqrt(30 / 3e8) = 3e-4 radians per second.

So, its angular velocity is three times that of the acceleration of the battleship. Thus, it would take the battleship three seconds to match that rotation rate. It would also want to spin faster to make up for lost time, thus lining up on your terms again. I feel this is negligible because of two factors: if the enemy actually was orbiting like this, its position at any time would be predicable, thus vulnerable, and the battleship can probably see this coming: the enemy's tangential velocity must also be correct to do such a burn - he can not randomly change the orientation of his orbit due to his limitations on linear acceleration. This means you can see what he is doing and prepare for it with a small amount of time of him setting the terms. In this small time, he would not even move a degree on you: still easily within your armor and firing arc. (Also, weapons turrets on the battleship would surely be able to rotate at a much, much faster rate, so outrunning them is impossible anyway).

Thus, I feel neither linear acceleration nor angular acceleration are significant limiting factors as size increases within this order of magnitude.

Long story short: unlike marine navies, speed is not a significant factor in space warship design, unless you are getting into obscene sizes.

And, since I find it interesting, I want to finish talking about possible ship classes, so back to the comparison list.

Submarines depend on stealth, and since there is no stealth in space (barring pure magic like the Romulan cloaking device), there are no submarines in space.

Destroyers operated to protect larger ships against submarines and small, fast ships, like torpedo boats. Since speed is not a significant factor and stealth impossible, there are no fast ships nor subs, meaning the destroyer has nothing to do, thus would not exist. (Though, you might chose to call what I call frigates destroyers if you prefer the name, but IMO the role is different enough that is isn't really accurate. But the US Navy somewhat does this, so it is up to you as the author.)

A cruiser is simply a ship that can operate on its own. Frigates, destroyers, and battleships can all also be called cruisers depending on their mission.

A battlecruiser is a ship meant to be able to outrun anything it can't outgun - it had the speed of a lighter cruiser with the guns of a battleship. In real navies, this was usually achieved by taking armor off a battleship. However, since speed is not limited by mass in the given order of magnitude, a battleship and battlecruiser would have the same speed: the battleship would be a clearly superior vessel. Thus, no battlecruisers. (Now, if you have FTL, then that might create a battlecruiser class, but I am trying to avoid talking about magic in this discussion, since as the author, it is entirely up to you what the magic can and cannot do.)

A destroyer escort is a small, relatively slow ship used to escort merchant ships and protect them against submarines and aircraft. But, in the real world, aircraft can threaten a ship due to its superior speed and submarines due to stealth. So neither of them are there, making the destroyer escort worthless. Frigates or battleships would have to be doing the escorting, since they are the only things that can stand up to what they will be fighting: other frigates or battleships.

Now, a little more on what I mean by frigate. It is basically a smaller battleship, built simply because I am presuming they will be cheaper to produce and maintain, thus allowing more of them to exist. With more of them, they can be in more places doing more things. Cost is the only real benefit I can think of: if for some reason you could crank out and operate / maintain battleships for the same cost, I see no reason why you would not.

The 10,000 ton proposal might actually be the frigate, with the battleship being larger than that, or it might be the battleship with the frigate being smaller than that. The relationship would remain the same, however.

Source;
Atomic Rocket

[thekillman]

There are indeed limits to this because such a large ship, say, 14KM in length, designed to merely be stationary or in orbit of a planet or moon with weapons and a means to move if required is possible, speed is a problem, a ship so big can only go so fast regardless of engine type.

Structure integrity troubles only come into being when damage is taken, even if that damage is repaired fairly quickly on the outset. even then the ship is expanded and made larger. Possibly to place more weapons on the hull or the like.

Speed is never a problem. Acceleration is.

Structural integrity poses a problem even outside combat. Simply accellerating in any direction would generate huge stresses.

Crew is another problem, which does not include, say, army or naval personell that can stay onboard, the crew for such a large craft is normally more or less around 15,000 or more people. Even on such advanced craft, you still need crewmen to run it. and all are trained to repel boarders in the case of combat. in many cases the crew grew up onboard, depending on how old the craft is, some starships of the Felinus are thousands of years old, so there are some that never seen a planet or were born on a planet for that matter.

Crew isn't a problem. Mostly because atomated ships make more sense, and right now we have little trouble sending an automated probe to another world, making it enter orbit, make it land by hovering above the surface and then making it move about.

hope that made sense, the main point being that humans have limits yes, but the Felinus are not human

Replace "human" in human limit with the appropriate race.

It does not matter what race they are, they too have limits. They too are based upon a physiology that has strengths and weaknesses. The felinus could have some space-variant of their kind, but it would never be able to properly walk on a planet.

Lastly: any form of magic (sci fi technology) can throw various arguments out of the water

[Princess Awinita]

Speed is never a problem. Acceleration is.

Structural integrity poses a problem even outside combat. Simply accellerating in any direction would generate huge stresses.

Crew isn't a problem. Mostly because atomated ships make more sense, and right now we have little trouble sending an automated probe to another world, making it enter orbit, make it land by hovering above the surface and then making it move about.

Replace "human" in human limit with the appropriate race.

It does not matter what race they are, they too have limits. They too are based upon a physiology that has strengths and weaknesses. The felinus could have some space-variant of their kind, but it would never be able to properly walk on a planet.

Lastly: any form of magic (sci fi technology) can throw various arguments out of the water

Acceleration is only a problem if the ship in question is not properly designed, each ship has a max ammount of gavities of acceleration the craft can take, the larger the craft the better the max gravities, in this case, a 14KM Breedership class starship can sustain a max gravities acceleration of 6.8, the Breedercarrier class is 5.8 and so on, planetoid stations have a max gravities accel of 0.4 just fast enough to keep in orbit. Smaller craft, like shuttles and smaller non breedership class ships have a faster max graviies accel rating, for example a Felinus Battle Cruiser is smaller then a standard Breedership, so therefore the max accel rating is 7.0 gravities, a Battleship class Felinus ship has a rating of 7.4, and so on as the ships get smaller. overall the largest craft I have so far m ade is 14 KM, nothing larger then that. but I do have smaller craft as well. cargo ships, pleasure cruisers, fighters, infantry transports, etc.

Magic plus technology = pretty much new planets to visit

Also I do not use anything from Atomic Rocket because I do not trust their logic. No harm in saying it though, no offense intended to anyone here that uses it

I also mention that crew is a problem because even though we here on earth are going so far as to make unmaned probes and the like, it does not mean that we'll keep going on that front directly, we'll make a outpost, say, on mars for example, and to get there we'll need a ship, and that ship will need a crew, because by then technology will have only gone so far and trust me, I do not want another HAL or worse, Big Data dictating my life by then

its bad enough I need a credit card just to rent a movie someplace

[thekillman]

Acceleration is only a problem if the ship in question is not properly designed, each ship has a max ammount of gavities of acceleration the craft can take, the larger the craft the better the max gravities,

1: no.
2: no. there's an optimum based on your materials science. Bigger does not amount to more, but rather LESS gravities it can withstand. However, this effect is pretty much exponential and for regular ship ranges (up to about a kilometer or so) it's not noticeable. Only when you get in the kilometer range does it become apparent. If something like a Hiveship at the stated size (11km) were to try and maneuver like a 304, at a realistic universe, it would definitely loose and probably tear itself to shreds. Not that it's possible to do that anyway in a real environment as the Daedalus-class flies like an airplane and space doesn't work that way, but if it were to try and be as maneuverable, it would fail.

Also I do not use anything from Atomic Rocket because I do not trust their logic. No harm in saying it though, no offense intended to anyone here that uses it

I think your statement is very weird. They apply proper logic, real and actual knowledge, actual science etc. While i do not entirely agree with some arguments, that's very different from stating their LOGIC is wrong.

I also mention that crew is a problem because even though we here on earth are going so far as to make unmaned probes and the like, it does not mean that we'll keep going on that front directly, we'll make a outpost, say, on mars for example, and to get there we'll need a ship, and that ship will need a crew, because by then technology will have only gone so far and trust me, I do not want another HAL or worse, Big Data dictating my life by then

1: life IS going in that direction, and in many shapes and ways computer already dictate your life.
2: Such a ship will carry humans, but that doesn't mean it will be MANNED.
3: A computerized ship will beat the crap out of a manned ship by several factors, partially because of the previously stated human limit. it also beats the crap out of human response times, calculations, predictions, and many more fields. Worse of all, computers are already being designed to learn from their mistakes, so even if we take human creativity in account, it's only gonna work maybe a few times before human flaws become easily computer-exploited.

Lastly: Building spaceships isn't that hard. the hard thing about putting a man on Mars is the "man" part, not the "putting on mars" part.

[Princess Awinita]

You are forgetting one tiny thing; computers and other such technology can fail, and when that occurs, guess what happens, nobody knows jack squat of what they are to do because the computer handled everything.

[thekillman]

You are forgetting one tiny thing; computers and other such technology can fail, and when that occurs, guess what happens, nobody knows jack squat of what they are to do because the computer handled everything.

humans fail more often. Computers by the way, can have rendundancies. In terms of what's possible with programming, we're at the start. Eventually AI will come around one way or another, and then a computer is almost entirely superior

[Princess Awinita]

humans fail more often. Computers by the way, can have rendundancies. In terms of what's possible with programming, we're at the start. Eventually AI will come around one way or another, and then a computer is almost entirely superior

And when that AI goes metastablitity we're doomed