Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
This... resonates... in a way I can't quite put a finger on.
A Crown of Biosteel (Kancolle)
- Location
- Somewhere between here and there
Boss-grade Abyssals, after absorbing enough ordnance to sink an entire fleet and dishing back enough damage to put half your roster on the injured list, don't always stay dead. Have fun sleeping tonight.
Yowza. To put that in perspective:
America's biggest battleship, the Iowa class - 57k-58k tons fully loaded
Essex class, the standard American carrier - 36k-37k tons fully loaded
Midway class armored carrier, end-of-war design - 60k-61k tons fully loaded
If shipgirls are restricted to WW2-era models, the only shipgirls in the world that match Grace's weight class are the carrier Shinano (slightly smaller) and her half-sister battleships Yamato and Musashi (slightly bigger).
Grace sits wherever the hell she wants.
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ColdGoldLazarus
Contrary Quester, Spreadsheet Queen, Pink Flamingo
- Location
- Challenger Deep
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oooh, a fascinating entry. I'm really loving how surreal Grace is even by Abyssal standards. And that method of docking is funky, but interesting.
DoobleDeeDooble
Please read me again sometime.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
It seems pretty clear that BMINTs and Abyssals are very different in a lot of key ways. The sense in which she could still potentially be considered Abyssal is, I think, a misframing. It's more a question of whether it makes sense to make a new category, containing BMINTs and Abyssals but not shipgirls; 'Abyssal' has enough baggage that I don't think it would be generalized to the whole category. (That would be on the table more if Grace had Abyssal mechanatomy and was just weird in not being super violent... Though in-universe PR would still suggest leaving Abyssal as the term for the violent enemy monsters.)
Which is mostly pedantry but still, the likely question of relation seems to me to be less "Is she a similar kind of thing?" as "Did her transformation happen for a related reason as the creation of Abyssals?" That seems a really fun mystery to me, whatever the answer—if ee even get one. Same with the question of the relation of BMINTs to normal sipgirls, not to mention that of shipgirls and Abyssals.
I am admittedly out of my depth here, not being into Kancolle prior, but my understanding is that there's no definite canon answers to the questions on Abyssals generally—both in the sense of varied continuities and in some continuities not having known answers.
Which is mostly pedantry but still, the likely question of relation seems to me to be less "Is she a similar kind of thing?" as "Did her transformation happen for a related reason as the creation of Abyssals?" That seems a really fun mystery to me, whatever the answer—if ee even get one. Same with the question of the relation of BMINTs to normal sipgirls, not to mention that of shipgirls and Abyssals.
I am admittedly out of my depth here, not being into Kancolle prior, but my understanding is that there's no definite canon answers to the questions on Abyssals generally—both in the sense of varied continuities and in some continuities not having known answers.
Qoheleth
Archivist
- Pronouns
- Any
I had a bit of trouble following the transformation sequence. To check: she's sitting port sidesaddle on the spooky ray where her guns and stuff are, with mechanical couplings between ports on the ray and shafts hidden in Grace's right leg and tailbone? With the latter essentially providing the nerve connection that lets her treat the ray as "herself"?
ColdGoldLazarus
Contrary Quester, Spreadsheet Queen, Pink Flamingo
- Location
- Challenger Deep
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Sorry if this is wrong, but after reading the chapter I was inspired to try sketching this out immediately. So here's how I understood it, at least?
One must imagine Grace happy ><
I got lazy with this last one, sorry; pencil kept snapping on me and it was pissing me off, so I gave up trying to make this nearly as detailed as the sidesaddle pic.
One must imagine Grace happy ><
I got lazy with this last one, sorry; pencil kept snapping on me and it was pissing me off, so I gave up trying to make this nearly as detailed as the sidesaddle pic.
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- Pronouns
- She/Her
That was basically what I was picturing but probably with more turrets?Sorry if this is wrong, but after reading the chapter I was inspired to try sketching this out immediately. So here's how I understood it, at least?
One must imagine Grace happy ><
I got lazy with this last one, sorry; pencil kept snapping on me and it was pissing me off, so I gave up trying to make this as detailed and accurate as the sidesaddle pic.
ltmauve
"Excuse me?"
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Shaft 3 is her right leg. Shaft 2 is her left leg. And her coccyx/tailbone is designed to connect to her rigging-mount at the point where the least re-engineering is needed for a high-bandwidth connection (spinal cord extension/control column)
Her rigging-mount is significantly bigger than that. She takes the place of the island. Two catapults straight ahead, two off to the right like on CVNs. (But lefty) The 169mm turrets are ahead and behind her human body.
ColdGoldLazarus
Contrary Quester, Spreadsheet Queen, Pink Flamingo
- Location
- Challenger Deep
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Yeah, I figured there were more turrets than what I actually drew, I was just trying to get the basic idea down. Probably more hex turrets on the main body alongside the big rotating ones too, now that I think about it, but I just put some on the wings because I was drawing in a small space ^.^;
Ahhhhh, whoops, but that makes sense. Forgot about the ten-by-seven-meters part.
I see. I guess I figured on two ahead and one each being diagonal in different directions, but it seems the actual design is a lot less symmetrical than I was picturing, if both diagonals are going the same way?
EDIT: Or did I misinterpret the design more heavily than I realized, and the catapults are all on the main body, not the wings?
At least I got these right! XD
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- Location
- America
Two things.
Firstly:
Secondly: this is probably the Balkan War Simulator: Space Edtion brainrot talking, but the layout of...everything, I guess, on her manta creature is making me think of a Legion.
Firstly:
Disregard my earlier statements about no rigging monsters and being unable to make jokes about Seaworld Ohio.
Secondly: this is probably the Balkan War Simulator: Space Edtion brainrot talking, but the layout of...everything, I guess, on her manta creature is making me think of a Legion.
wingnut2292
<Verified Sugar Addict>
- Location
- Milwaukee Metro
For contrast, a modern nuclear supercarrier like the Nimitz-class (CVN-69 to 77) displaces as much as 106,500 tons fully loaded.
Still, being 7/10's of a modern supercarrier is pretty darn big. And Grace is more hydrodynamicly shaped, so she ought to have a less of a sonar response. Might be a bit faster and turn better too.
I wonder how other BMINTs are designed.
Are the subs eel-like, all long and thin? Or are they literally the sharks of the sea?
Are the cruisers some love child of tuna, marlin and swordfish, all built for speed on the water?
Do they swim like mermaids with their rigging on?
Are the hospital ships jellyfish-like, holding the broken ship in their tendrils as the colony shelters the broken ship from harm?
Are the destroyers urchin-like, small and bristling with flack?
Not_Interesting
The Munchkin of Megastructures
- Location
- In your walls(the walls between realities)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
That´s with all the Armor a BB would have too. I know she is technically an Armored carrier, but a Battleship will always have more armor + all the turrets...yea she big boned. She ain´t no Nimitz, those ladies displace 100k, but she is bigger than anything fielded during or right after WW2
PS: How fast is Grace? I know it does not matter that much as a Fleet Carrier...but she has a lot of keel to haul, it might impact her speed...but then again, she would be reasonably hydrodynamic with her biomimicry, so it might even out...or she has Horsepower out the wazoo.
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- Location
- Somewhere between here and there
Abyssal DDs kinda have the "shark" thing taken already.
Despite their size, the Yamato class wasn't exactly slow. Big ships can still be quite fast, at least in a straight line.
There's also shipgirl/Abyssal/Bmint physics to consider. The manga directly compares their on-sea movements to ice skating - at least for those whose rigging doesn't double as a mount/vehicle - and both shipgirls and Abyssals are shown to be ridiculously agile compared to their mundane counterparts. (So agile that even installation bosses, many of which are immune to torpedo attacks because ISLAND, have an evasion rating.) If Grace hits a big wave at-speed, it's entirely possible she could catch some air.
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I was getting biblical angel vibes myself
From what I am getting from the vibe of the descriptions it sounds like her aircraft launchers are kinda like a cross between a missile launcher and a Railgun catapult thing
Also no wonder she and ship girl carriers can't carry each other's aircraft the set ups are designed with different takeoff and landing operating paradigms not to mention a whole slew of other problems depending what other bits about her Air creature things haven't come up yet
Also no wonder she and ship girl carriers can't carry each other's aircraft the set ups are designed with different takeoff and landing operating paradigms not to mention a whole slew of other problems depending what other bits about her Air creature things haven't come up yet
ltmauve
"Excuse me?"
- Location
- Earth
- Pronouns
- She/Her
No, it's solely for docking. Grace can move around on her human feet on water, but splitting her calves open reveals a lot of more delicate machinery. Not as bad a human undergoing surgery, but not something you do while expecting incoming fire.
The hardest part would getting the jaws around said Abyssal.
Yes.
Court martials aren't instant.
She's a bit heavier than the final refit for a Midway-class. The six Midway shipgirls probably haven't gotten SCB 101.66 (that particular upgrade) with the main culprit being technology - that is, they still don't have jets, so adding more hanger space isn't going to be useful since they were already running into coordination problems.
So, the British made a sexuple mount with 40mm cannons. They arranged them in an even weirder way than Grace's turrets. Put a gun at each vertex of this: >-< and you have the layout. I'm not sure why that was done, but okay.
The real offensive improvements that Grace's gun paradigm really only shows up for battleships. But there are a number of reliability and safety improvements present at any scale.
Flight decks are a vulnerability and a crutch for pilots with skill issues
This is what happens when the project director has a limited amount of thirdhand knowledge of ships at best
This is a very good reading here. It may be pedantry, but names have power. By giving Grace a new term, the team in Chapter Two gained power by separating Grace from Abyssals and letting them consider her as she was.
And yes, I did come up with an answer to this mystery. I can only really set the seeds for it right now, because obviously it's sort of a big deal for the story.
But here, have an acronym: HoLACNE.
There are only three carriers that I know of that were symmetrical: HMS Argus, Ryuujou, and USS United States. All other aircraft carriers have islands off on one side of the ship. This is normally the right side, but Akagi and Hiryu are also lefties. (This is because the gyroscopic effect of a propeller spinning in the normal way makes it easier to turn left.)
Therefore, an approximate top view of the Batoidea-class:
This image also has a hidden layer with the layout of the hanger, so this may be useful in the future. For various reasons.
Also, Grace's calves split into fore and aft sections, pivoting at the knee when they do so. Then she has, on her rigging-mount, two spikes. These split into two wedges each that go in the gap in her legs, from her ankle to her knees, and make sure everything is protected. Her ankle, and the shaft that extends from it at all time, need to be attached to her rigging-mount.
At least 33 knots. Probably more. Possibly a lot more.
The biggest problem for high agility is making sure your crew doesn't get injured by random toolboxes or bulkheads flying about. And Grace really doesn't have toolboxes, and her crew are either attached to docking cilla most of the time or have magnetic claws... and biosteel is ferromagnetic.
Up until she has to do a full eye exam for all of them. So many eye patches.
I mean, Grace's nature means she's getting quite a lot of attention, but she doesn't quite have all eyes on her like a truly biblically accurate angel.
EMALS (Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System) is a real thing, installed on real carriers. Though it's a coilgun, not a railgun.
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- Location
- Queensland, Australia
I've two thoughts on the matter. The first is that doing two rows of three might have had issues for either the ammunition feeding mechanisms and the loaders being able to keep up the rate of fire or the gunner might have had to sit in a way which was considered to reduce accuracy, so they went for something where they could basically pair the quadruple mount feeding mechanisms with the dual or single gun feeding mechanisms (considering the two central guns might not be as close to each other as they were in the dual mount so two singles might have been better) whilst also keeping the gunner in a 'proper' position for 'optimal' accuracy.
The second is that by doing the >-< layout, it might have been believed to improve accuracy and probability of shooting down a targeted aircraft over two flat rows of three barrels. Because that layout means you can have the gun fire the four outer guns first allowing the gunner to 'box in' the aircraft they are shooting at with the flak bursts in time for the two central barrels to fire shots right at it thus making a kill more likely.
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- Location
- Toronto
Remember that british weapon designers were also the people who invented The Great Panjandrum. Thoughts on their sensibility and sanity sould take this into consideration.
- Location
- Somewhere between here and there
Especially considering the Abyssals most likely to get close enough for her to bite are also the ones most likely to be trying to bite her.
Fun fact, there are some experimental jet squadrons available for carrier girls in the game. Most players don't use them because they're highly impractical - not all carriers can load them, and the squadrons wear down really fast in a setting where attrition is already one of your biggest challenges. (They're also expensive to field, go figure.)
Can't wait for sea trials - I wanna see Grace and her manta partner doing donuts.
Now there's an omake just waiting to be written.
Nihilo
Authorial parasite
- Location
- Catalonia
I know a bunch of bote nerds, want me to get you in touch with them?This is what happens when the project director has a limited amount of thirdhand knowledge of ships at best
Not_Interesting
The Munchkin of Megastructures
- Location
- In your walls(the walls between realities)
- Pronouns
- He/Him
She Zoomin´, that is pretty fast for a big Fleet Carrier like her. She can huff it with Fast Battleships. Iowas can make that speed and a bit more when redlining boilers on a light load.
Sandy River DL
(Verified Destroyer Leader)
- Location
- Lake Michigan
- Pronouns
- Her/She
33 knots is pretty typical of at least American fleet carriers. And that's because the Navy had to settle for it, rather than the desired 35 knots.