"Located upon the gun decks of voidfaring capital ships, projectile-firing Macrocannons require large crews to handle and load their enormous shells into the waiting breeches. First, the breech must be opened by one crew pulling on massive pinions or chains, while the second crew ready the next shell to be loaded. Once the breech is open, the spent casing is extracted and the breech quickly cleaned by the third crew, under the watchful eye of a junior Tech-priest or Enginseer who checks for any damage or impurity.
Next, the second crew loads the gargantuan shell into the breech, and quickly clears the way as the first crew starts closing the breech as soon as the shell is aligned with the barrel. Once the breech is closed and secured, the crews move to a safe distance waiting for the gun to fire and the loading cycle to start anew. Macrocannon crews also have to contend with sitting on top of a magazine full of enough munitions to level a city. Operating a Macrocannon is extremely taxing and tiring, and the sheer size and weight of the components makes any mishap that occurs almost always a fatal affair, crushing the life out of the poor wretches involved. Life expectancy amongst such crews is often measured in mere weeks.
Many starship captains still prefer the reliability of Macrocannons despite the medieval toil they inflict on the crew of their warship. Additionally, Macrocannons are far more robust than energy weapons like Lances. After it suffers punishing damage, a Macrocannon can still load and fire long after an energy weapon's delicate mechanism would fall silent. Macrocannons tend to be mounted in individual gunrooms to contain the damage if their magazine explodes. Each cannon's battery is led by a gun captain and each gun deck by at least one petty officer. An ensign or lieutenant has nominal charge of the gun deck but these junior officers are seldom seen away from the vessel's command decks. The battery's commanding officer is usually only heard as a disembodied voice over the Vox-caster by the battery's crew."
In the grim darkness of the 41st Millenium, the guns are scarcely any different from the times ships were wooden and driven by sails.
Also, the Adeptus Mechanicus are hogging the good tech for themselves, and complete-autoloaders are considered unreliable by traditionalist captains who don't have the same level of tech support.
No, really. Well, macrocannons are somewhat feasible but simple manpower is insufficient if it is the only source of motive power.
Red Flag did some calculations for Nova cannons, and, well, there isn't enough space in the hull for all the people needed to manhandle the thing around.
Also, the Adeptus Mechanicus are hogging the good tech for themselves, and complete-autoloaders are considered unreliable by traditionalist captains who don't have the same level of tech support.
By complete-autoloaders I suspect it is more in line with "capable of selecting a shell from the magazine from different types and subsequently do all steps to load without human supervision, even solving some minor problems in doing so". Rather, I would expect most ships having a WWII style power assist loading scheme.
Because hydraulics are not exactly LosTech...
I have lurked around this thread mostly due to not having anything to say. (In response to the authors earlier question.)
As for tool assisted loading for five member family house weight projectiles I do feel its somewhat necessary but don't particularly care one way or the other.
[X] Plan Foundations Revised
-[X] (Hull) Saber-class Corvette: A imitation of a imitation of a proper warship, the Saber is intended to be a homegrown version of the Claymore Corvette as a budget frigate meant to be mass-produced to fulfill needs for escorts. Unlike a converted freighter, it will be built for war with the requisite redundancies, hull reinforcement, and extra crew reserves that can be fit within the hull we devise. It will have two slots dedicated to weaponry, a defense slot, a engine slot, and two utility slots. There will be no omni slots to reduce complexity of development.
-[X] (Weapon) Macrocannon Battery: Utilizing some of the remaining chartist merchant ships as examples, we will reverse-engineer the templates and dimensions of their Mars-pattern macrocannons to make a standard macrobattery for void warfare. Spaceborne warfare at it's most basic, consisting of firing kilotonne shells en masse at the enemy to achieve hits and damage. Loading systems and maintenance will be performed by large gun crews instead of automated systems to keep costs low and reliability high.
-[X] (Defense) Compartmentalised Shields: The first step toward developing the means for overlapping Void Shields is to have shields capable of acting in concert. With smaller shield generators each dedicated to the defense of their own section of the ship, made stronger where their edges overlap, the shielding of our ships is rendered more resistant to total collapse without sacrificing too much power or mass increase.
-[X] (Sensors) T-100 Auspex: A attempt at a military-grade sensor array utilizing a combination of active and passive sensors normally not used by budget-pinching freighter captains. Strive to improve lock-on resolution to allow for medium-range void combat with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
-[X] (Ordinance) Cargo Bay Hangar: Taking the dimensions of some of our standard freighter and station main cargo holds, we can outfit the cargo bay with large amounts of smallcraft maintenance systems and fill it with strikecraft as a basic hangar for void fighters and bombers that can be launched through a enviro-screened open bay. The hangar is liable to be a weak point in the hull when open, but will provide us a cheap springboard for strikecraft operations and hold at least two wings. (Intended for freighter hulls)
-[X] (Ordinance) Arvus Combat Lighter Refit: Outfit a Arvus Lighter with las-cannons, rocket pods and extra engine power to serve as a improvised fighter design. Intention is to have a craft to combat enemy strikecraft and ordinance, and possibly serve as air support for our troops in atmosphere, not fight enemy warships directly.
Not comfortable enough with the system yet to write in, sadly. Give it time, I suppose.
Well, compared to the previous count and given a lack of argument, this seems like a fair consensus (a thank you to everyone who voted). Formal closure will take place in... Twelve hours, whereupon work will commence.
If discussion picks up for an alternate plan this will of course be postponed to allow for alternate viewpoints for such a critical turn to be considered.
Invaders are drawing close. Traitors go unpunished. The course forward is clear: Calavar must prepare weapons for the faithful to use.
-[X] (Hull) Saber-class Corvette: A imitation of a imitation of a proper warship, the Saber is intended to be a homegrown version of the Claymore Corvette as a budget frigate meant to be mass-produced to fulfill needs for escorts. Unlike a converted freighter, it will be built for war with the requisite redundancies, hull reinforcement, and extra crew reserves that can be fit within the hull we devise. It will have two slots dedicated to weaponry, a defense slot, a engine slot, and two utility slots. There will be no omni slots to reduce complexity of development.
Result: 7-1 (Unfamiliarity with the field)=6
The traditions of void warfare go back for centuries uncounted. Drawing upon the knowledge so contained, and available to the children of Calavar, the Admiralty handed down a decree: to fight a war would require ships worthy of it. This would be no trader's spat, to be fought with the cunning use of available assets, but a war for survival against monsters from the dark of the void.
The representatives of the Adeptus Mechanicus convened at the request and drew deep from their comparatively paltry stores of technology and tradition. Of the latter there was precious little left as half of the representatives had been cast off their homeworlds or stations. Of the former there had been little to start with as the Lativa Subsector had never been influential or studied. Still, they knew that in times of war expendable ships were a common stopgap and so gave their blessings to the project with the small compromise that they be involved so as to prevent accidental heresies against the Machine and… Other.
As work progresses it can hardly be characterized as smooth, for neither side of the cooperation could be said to be experienced in this. The remnants of merchant cartels who have washed up on Calavar's shores make up a small fraction of the committee and the local elements were more involved in the repair and maintenance of merchant vessels rather than building entirely new hulls. But where there is a will there is a way and the looming fate of the system if nothing was done made for a very good motivator for the disparate groups to get to grips with the problem and at least tolerate their compatriots.
After the design schematics were presented in a reasonably ornate ceremony there was a more intense and sober event hidden behind stone faced guards and armored walls where the Admiralty was briefed on the capabilities of the newly born child of Humanity's intellect by the heads of the project. The Sabre-class hull was designed with a view to future proofing its service, so in order to get as much resilience in the face of enemy fire the spinal bracing was not as much as it could have been. It would limit the Acceleration the design could take but as the typical duties of a corvette were escorting shipping it was seen as a worthwhile sacrifice in order to ensure that it would meet the typical standards of military vessels.
[Sabre-class Corvette Hull: Designed at the beginning of the Hegemon's Crusade, this was the first warship created by Calavar alone and still holds a place of honor in the System Defense Fleet even in the face of more capable hulls that have been developed since. Two Weapons, One Defense, One Engine (Two Acceleration Maximum), Two Utility. (5M)]
-[X] (Weapon) Macrocannon Battery: Utilizing some of the remaining chartist merchant ships as examples, we will reverse-engineer the templates and dimensions of their Mars-pattern macrocannons to make a standard macrobattery for void warfare. Spaceborne warfare at it's most basic, consisting of firing kilotonne shells en masse at the enemy to achieve hits and damage. Loading systems and maintenance will be performed by large gun crews instead of automated systems to keep costs low and reliability high.
Result: 6+0 (iterating on current designs)+1 (examples to work from)=7.
Keeping in line with the Admiralty's demand for proper weapons to send into battle a line of development was spun off in order to increase the quality of domestically available weaponry. The prior school of thought had been merely to increase the number of merchant guns in a broadside, but that approach would quickly run into diminishing returns from multiple sources. Instead fewer but larger guns were used, as seen on the chartist and Navy auxiliaries that had fled the Subsector through Calavar. Such a layout eased fire control concerns as each shell was easier to track via auspex and held more penetrative power when they did hit.
Future concerns were adding an explosive filler, but the miniaturization, expendability, and durability of the required nuclear or chemical charge was outside of the remit of the design team.
[Standard Macrocannon Battery MkI: The refined version of the previous defense guns, these weapons were an iterative development for improved power. In recognition of the manufacturing bottlenecks of the time this model makes limited use of advanced systems and instead relies on direct human supervision for troubleshooting and maintenance. Damage 2, Short Ranged. (2M)]
-[X] (Defense) Compartmentalised Shields: The first step toward developing the means for overlapping Void Shields is to have shields capable of acting in concert. With smaller shield generators each dedicated to the defense of their own section of the ship, made stronger where their edges overlap, the shielding of our ships is rendered more resistant to total collapse without sacrificing too much power or mass increase.
Result: 10+0 (existing field used in a novel way)
After an examination of the available personnel it was found that those with the largest degree of expertise with the subject were a disparate team of engineers and technicians who specialized in fortress construction. Adding these minds to the existing producers of Void Shields at the Calavar docks resulted in a well rounded development team.
The results were interesting, as was the tendency of the team to do large scale live fire tests with the remaining auxiliary and refugee craft to find issues with their designs. Final designs held numerous individual emitters to slather the entire hull in shield panes that, while in groundside fortifications would be considered substantial, were under par for naval duties. Yet the weakness held advantages, as each emitter could cycle it's buffer faster than a full scale design. Sometimes even regaining capability before the incoming volley was finished even if these were previous batteries of merchant grade guns rather than the new military grade batteries.
[Haptrix-Pattern Rapid Shields: Named for the fallen homeworld of the refugee team that aided in their design, the Rapid Shields were another case of early Calavar taking something that already existed and modifying it to suit their purposes. Using numerous overlapping shield emitters taken from midscale planetary defenses the Haptrix had a small weakness to significant force from a single source, such as a powerful Lance, but made up for it by getting back fallen sections in a fraction of the time as standard naval bubble shields. Shield 2, .5 Armor. (4M)]
-[X] (Sensors) T-100 Auspex: A attempt at a military-grade sensor array utilizing a combination of active and passive sensors normally not used by budget-pinching freighter captains. Strive to improve lock-on resolution to allow for medium-range void combat with a reasonable degree of accuracy.
Result: 6+2 (iterating with extant technology with little change)=8
With the sensorium of existing vessels as a model the team assigned to making superior auspex for fighting vessels got to work with a will. They were aided by the fact they were studying and not designing for the most part, which made for quick work. The hardest part was the destructive analysis of the internals of two damaged systems and turning that knowledge into the production schema in order to produce new examples using available tooling.
The new auspex system was predominantly the simple use of additional sensor clusters placed all around the hull, augmented by tightened manufacturing tolerances and the introduction of new varieties of electromagnetic receivers that merchantmen deemed unnecessary for simply moving from one spot to another.
[T-100 Auspex: Additional and slightly improved sensor clusters allow for more than the simple recognition of a potential enemy presence. The new mark of sensorium allows crews to record and potentially analyze enemy auspex signals, do more detailed battle damage analysis on other hulls, and track targets with greater precision. Passive 1, Active 1.5, Medium Range. (2M)]
[Passive: noticing something is there. Active: Knowing where that thing is and therefore where it will be.]
-[X] (Ordinance) Cargo Bay Hangar: Taking the dimensions of some of our standard freighter and station main cargo holds, we can outfit the cargo bay with large amounts of smallcraft maintenance systems and fill it with strikecraft as a basic hangar for void fighters and bombers that can be launched through a enviro-screened open bay. The hangar is liable to be a weak point in the hull when open, but will provide us a cheap springboard for strikecraft operations and hold at least two wings. (Intended for freighter hulls)
Result: 7+2 (iterating on extant technology with little change)=9
Hangars and light craft have been a ubiquitous part of voidfaring life since its conception. Sometimes you physically can't dock with a destination whether it is on a planetary surface or lacks the mechanics to do so. Other times you simply do not trust a vessel to not send over an army for an aggressive takeover once your ships are firmly secured.
Designing such a thing for military use is almost as easy as doing so for a civilian purpose, or so claims the design team. Increased and rhythmic traffic needs to be accounted for, as well as the regular occurrence of what civilians would see as emergency or edge cases, but without the need for bulk cargo to be transferred to other sections of the ship such things can be simply isolated.
To account for the regular battle damage a small workshop is placed in each corner of the bay, between which are separate and reinforced hangars to hold strikecraft as they repair and rearm. Four small craft, or one of the larger voidfaring strikecraft when the time comes, can fit in each of these alcoves.So long as the workshops are provided with the requisite materials, and have at least a passing chance to retool for the new load, the majority of battle damage can be repaired within tactical timeframes.
The interlocking edges of the armored bay doors, present to reduce power consumption and provide some measure of protection until the onboard complement is ready to launch, reportedly bears some resemblance to the teeth of some great marine predator.
[Cargo Bay Hangar: A cavernous hold containing a small complement of small craft or void craft. Provides the Repair rule to its complement. Civilian hulls only. (1M)]
-[X] (Ordinance) Arvus Combat Lighter Refit: Outfit a Arvus Lighter with las-cannons, rocket pods and extra engine power to serve as a improvised fighter design. Intention is to have a craft to combat enemy strikecraft and ordinance, and possibly serve as air support for our troops in atmosphere, not fight enemy warships directly.
Result: 5+2 (it has been done before)=7
The Arvus has had a history of being armed in a pinch, despite or perhaps because of it's civilian origins. The design team for this project bears notables such as underworld mechanics and veterans from the occasional trade war the Subsector saw in its history even as the forces of darkness slowly encroached. Chosen for expertise rather than skill or the appreciation of fine characteristics the mass got disapproving looks from some of the more orthodox Mechanicus members Calavar can boast but were allowed to do their worst as the Arvus is such a ubiquitous platform the galaxy over.
In the end the Calavar-Pattern Arvus Combat Lighter possesses a pair of lascannon facing forwards, a pair of autocannon in dorsal and ventral turrets that are unable to point forwards because of the auspex equipment allowing for the tracking of targets in the void between worlds, and hardpoints for external ordnance such as rockets, bombs, or missiles. Previous cargo space has been claimed in the name of combat endurance, with a secondary reactor in close proximity to capacitors for the lascannons and cassettes of shells for the autocannon.
The general consensus is that it is a "good enough" design and will eventually be shuffled off to supporting ground forces as the armed portion of aerial cavalry.
[Calavar-Pattern Arvus Combat Lighter: As Calavar possessed little to no aerospace development before the Hegemon's Crusade the response to the threat of strike craft was answered in typical form. This variant of the Arvus Lighter carries fixed lascannon of local make, autocannon for self defense, and external hardpoints for mission packages. PD 1. (1M)]
=====
Lord Admiral: The time has come, brothers, sisters. Humans. The last of the previously ordered builds have emerged from the shipyard and it is time to establish new production orders. Proper warships, with which to face the enemy. A... Heady feeling, to do what the Imperial Navy will not...
Take care, lest we try for too much at once.
[There is a budget of 150 Manufacturing Capacity to be spent and 10 Artisanal Workmanship available to assign. Last "turn's" resources were put into nine Armed Merchants, divided into three Squadrons, and three Infantry Armies to avoid waste. Naming for the new hulls is open.]
Nothing right now. It's stuff that requires a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus to build by hand/remotely, so things at the top of or above Imperial Navy standard. Construction and maintenance of things like plasma broadsides, Nova cannon, and advanced torpedoes.
Nothing right now. It's stuff that requires a member of the Adeptus Mechanicus to build by hand/remotely, so things at the top of or above Imperial Navy standard. Construction and maintenance of things like plasma broadsides, Nova cannon, and advanced torpedoes.
Understood. Next question would be a clarification. Are hangars Utility or Ordnance? The refit Arvus Lighters are listed as Ordnance, so I presume the latter.
Understood. Next question would be a clarification. Are hangars Utility or Ordnance? The refit Arvus Lighters are listed as Ordnance, so I presume the latter.
Hangars are Utility, not Weapon. However, they can not fit on a military ship, at least not ones as small as a Corvette. And you pay the price of the loaded complement in addition to that of the hangar itself.
You can put Hangars on the Converted Freighter hull, yes.
Retrofitting existing ships is possible, although it does cost half of the old module(s), rounded up, plus the entirety of the new one (possibly with some restrictions about what can be put in in place of what). And lays up the ship for the campaign season.
Ground equipment can be modified as well, although given the relative lack of complexity much more can be done at a time. So it will generally be more akin to making new types of Armies to buy than merely upgrading a specific vehicle line. For example, right now Calavar is using something more akin to modern armored vehicles (albeit generations ahead in material science, obviously) rather than the venerable Leman Russ due to not previously having reason or ability to import Imperial standard vehicles.
Thank you for the complement, although I confess that it actually hasn't gone anywhere yet. We'll see if I can properly organize the combat phase in an understandable and somewhat streamlined fashion so as to avoid losing people or momentum...
After a bit of looking I will say that it will be possible to duplicate the standard Leman Russ within the next turn, it is just that Calavar has had no reason to do so in the past due to expense and needing permission to make a STC derivative design for internal use.
That would be... Difficult. Possible, but the different weapons, mobility, and control systems would quickly make it not a BOLO at all but a somewhat mobile fortress.
Which, y'know, can be a valuable thing to have on a campaign.
