Torpedo Troubles (set Turn 2 Design Phase, partially canon)
Warmach1ne32
Machine of War and Quests
- Location
- Indonesia
AN: Here is my omake about the bickering that caused the Torpedo to be delayed.
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"I am telling you, while that model of cogitator is enough to survive the launch, it takes up too much space to fit the proposed tube!"
"No, the armor needs to be 10cm thick on the nose to better protect the sensors from head on impact, while the rest only needs 5cm of armor."
"The X85 rocket engine have the velocity the torpedo needs, however the high temperature will damage the tube by welding it shut if it is launched from inside the tube, we need to eject the torpedo out of the tube first, before we can activate the rocket engine. The problem is finding a way to eject the heavy torpedo without damaging it or the launch tube."
It seems to be another unproductive day of bickering and arguing for the Torpedo design team. When the team first got the list from the admiralty we initially get to work dividing which parts of the team deal with which problem. First order of business is to design the warhead, a Sub-Magus Sydney Alfred, who specialises in explosions, suggested using a similar design to the warhead used in our infantry rocket launchers. Which uses a hollow cone of copper with explosives packed in the back to push the cone, inward and results in a jet of moltern metal that could penetrate medium to lightly armored vehicles. Fantastic, upscale it to torpedo size and we are good right?
No exactly, as a rule of thumb a shaped charge like the one we plan on using for the torpedo can penetrate about 5x the warhead's diameter, before the jet dissipates. A Claymore Corvette is 1.4 kilometers long and 300 meters wide and since most of the critical systems of a ship like the engines, ammunition, and bridge are usually placed in the center of the ship, it is safe to say that to damage critical systems the torpedo needs to penetrate 100 meters at least, so it can damage critical systems. So, the torpedo would need to be 20 meters in diameter to get 100 meters of penetration using the standard copper shaped charge, even then voidcraft armor is not easy to breach, and it will be highly likely that the torpedo would under perform if it uses the same materials as infantry variant used by the army. Thus Magus Sydney is tasked with finding a better warhead that would deliver much more damage than simply poking a hole into a ship. With that settled for the moment, we move on to the PDs.
A lot of the development time of the torpedo project was spent finding a sensor package that is robust enough to survive the high speeds of travel, be accurate enough to be able to reliably shoot down incoming interceptors, and fit inside of a PD turret. We run various test on a lot of models and even design several prototypes but all of them either can't survive the launch or not reliably accurate enough to hit possible targets or not being small enough to fit in the torpedo itself. We eventually decided to put Lascannons as the torpedo's PD to lower the accuracy requirement and that is what we end up doing. This removed the need for storing ammo, allows the use of more robust targeting suite that only needed to point the turret at an incoming threat, and the Lascannon turret can be more snuggly fit as there is no need for a loading mecahnism. While this lowers the bar, we still can't find a suitable sensor package, so we left Sub-Magus Perelmen and his underlings in finding one that meets qualifications.
Next is figuing out the engine and by that point, Sub-Magus Sydney managed to design a Tandem Warhead, where before the Torpedo hits that hull of the ship, the head of the torpedo explodes teh shaped charge will bore a hole into the hull of the ship using a plasteel alloy that have a low melting point compared to other plasteel alloys allow it to reliably punch through an estimated 200 meters inside a ship. However the rest of the torpedo remains and the surviving half of the torpedo containes a 2nd warhead which forces itself through the weakened section of the armor that had a hole in it created by the 1st warhead and once the rest of the torpedo forces itself inside the ship, it will detonate a small nuclear warhead, imitating the Emperor's holy Bolters in Torpedo form. Fantastic, the team is impressed. The problem is that it made the projected torpedo extremely cramped in the middle as there is little space left for the fuel tank and PD systems. It was decided to have the shaped plasteel charge at the head of the torpedo, then the neck will be for the Lascannon PD which contains the turrets, power packs, sensors, and cogitators, this also provide an extra layer of protection for the nuclear warhead from the explosion of the 1st warhead. The nuclear warhead itself will be in the middle of the torpedo will also have a plasteel cone which will protect the nuclear payload from teh 1st warhead and be strong enough to force its way through the severely weakened ship hull. With a timed charge, set to detonate a few seconds after the shaped charge detonation, this should give the nuclear charge enough time to travel deep inside of the ship before detonating. The rest of the torpedo are the engines and fuel tank.
Now with only 1 year left to our deadline, we are stuck on designing an engine that is powerful enough to get the torpedo at a respectable speed while still being small enough to fit inside our proposed torpedo tube that can fit inside of a Corvette. We also have a separate team handling the armor of the torpedo and which segment had how much armor and etc. Once all of that is settled we still need to set up factories and assembly lines to produce them, the method to safely launch the torpedo without welding the tube shut, along with designing the torpedo tube system that will be installed on ships. If we are given another 5 years and maybe an Imperial Torpedo to dissect, we could complete the project. Right now, it is unlikely we can complete the project before the deadline.
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AN: Here you go the thoughts of one of the Mechanicus Adepts and the story behind how complicated designing a torpedo is without something to copy. I thought up of the tandem plasteel shaped charge nuke warhead combo while reading the description of the completed torpedo. A Nuke inside a ship is nothing to scoff at especially in the confined spaces of a ship. It wouldn't be too damaging to any ship above Heavy Cruiser, because of its sheer mass, but it would be like a Bolter round fired on a Human for a Light Cruiser or smaller vessel. All done in 3 hours, not bad if I do say so myself. Let me know if you have something to add.
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Torpedo Troubles
"I am telling you, while that model of cogitator is enough to survive the launch, it takes up too much space to fit the proposed tube!"
"No, the armor needs to be 10cm thick on the nose to better protect the sensors from head on impact, while the rest only needs 5cm of armor."
"The X85 rocket engine have the velocity the torpedo needs, however the high temperature will damage the tube by welding it shut if it is launched from inside the tube, we need to eject the torpedo out of the tube first, before we can activate the rocket engine. The problem is finding a way to eject the heavy torpedo without damaging it or the launch tube."
It seems to be another unproductive day of bickering and arguing for the Torpedo design team. When the team first got the list from the admiralty we initially get to work dividing which parts of the team deal with which problem. First order of business is to design the warhead, a Sub-Magus Sydney Alfred, who specialises in explosions, suggested using a similar design to the warhead used in our infantry rocket launchers. Which uses a hollow cone of copper with explosives packed in the back to push the cone, inward and results in a jet of moltern metal that could penetrate medium to lightly armored vehicles. Fantastic, upscale it to torpedo size and we are good right?
No exactly, as a rule of thumb a shaped charge like the one we plan on using for the torpedo can penetrate about 5x the warhead's diameter, before the jet dissipates. A Claymore Corvette is 1.4 kilometers long and 300 meters wide and since most of the critical systems of a ship like the engines, ammunition, and bridge are usually placed in the center of the ship, it is safe to say that to damage critical systems the torpedo needs to penetrate 100 meters at least, so it can damage critical systems. So, the torpedo would need to be 20 meters in diameter to get 100 meters of penetration using the standard copper shaped charge, even then voidcraft armor is not easy to breach, and it will be highly likely that the torpedo would under perform if it uses the same materials as infantry variant used by the army. Thus Magus Sydney is tasked with finding a better warhead that would deliver much more damage than simply poking a hole into a ship. With that settled for the moment, we move on to the PDs.
A lot of the development time of the torpedo project was spent finding a sensor package that is robust enough to survive the high speeds of travel, be accurate enough to be able to reliably shoot down incoming interceptors, and fit inside of a PD turret. We run various test on a lot of models and even design several prototypes but all of them either can't survive the launch or not reliably accurate enough to hit possible targets or not being small enough to fit in the torpedo itself. We eventually decided to put Lascannons as the torpedo's PD to lower the accuracy requirement and that is what we end up doing. This removed the need for storing ammo, allows the use of more robust targeting suite that only needed to point the turret at an incoming threat, and the Lascannon turret can be more snuggly fit as there is no need for a loading mecahnism. While this lowers the bar, we still can't find a suitable sensor package, so we left Sub-Magus Perelmen and his underlings in finding one that meets qualifications.
Next is figuing out the engine and by that point, Sub-Magus Sydney managed to design a Tandem Warhead, where before the Torpedo hits that hull of the ship, the head of the torpedo explodes teh shaped charge will bore a hole into the hull of the ship using a plasteel alloy that have a low melting point compared to other plasteel alloys allow it to reliably punch through an estimated 200 meters inside a ship. However the rest of the torpedo remains and the surviving half of the torpedo containes a 2nd warhead which forces itself through the weakened section of the armor that had a hole in it created by the 1st warhead and once the rest of the torpedo forces itself inside the ship, it will detonate a small nuclear warhead, imitating the Emperor's holy Bolters in Torpedo form. Fantastic, the team is impressed. The problem is that it made the projected torpedo extremely cramped in the middle as there is little space left for the fuel tank and PD systems. It was decided to have the shaped plasteel charge at the head of the torpedo, then the neck will be for the Lascannon PD which contains the turrets, power packs, sensors, and cogitators, this also provide an extra layer of protection for the nuclear warhead from the explosion of the 1st warhead. The nuclear warhead itself will be in the middle of the torpedo will also have a plasteel cone which will protect the nuclear payload from teh 1st warhead and be strong enough to force its way through the severely weakened ship hull. With a timed charge, set to detonate a few seconds after the shaped charge detonation, this should give the nuclear charge enough time to travel deep inside of the ship before detonating. The rest of the torpedo are the engines and fuel tank.
Now with only 1 year left to our deadline, we are stuck on designing an engine that is powerful enough to get the torpedo at a respectable speed while still being small enough to fit inside our proposed torpedo tube that can fit inside of a Corvette. We also have a separate team handling the armor of the torpedo and which segment had how much armor and etc. Once all of that is settled we still need to set up factories and assembly lines to produce them, the method to safely launch the torpedo without welding the tube shut, along with designing the torpedo tube system that will be installed on ships. If we are given another 5 years and maybe an Imperial Torpedo to dissect, we could complete the project. Right now, it is unlikely we can complete the project before the deadline.
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AN: Here you go the thoughts of one of the Mechanicus Adepts and the story behind how complicated designing a torpedo is without something to copy. I thought up of the tandem plasteel shaped charge nuke warhead combo while reading the description of the completed torpedo. A Nuke inside a ship is nothing to scoff at especially in the confined spaces of a ship. It wouldn't be too damaging to any ship above Heavy Cruiser, because of its sheer mass, but it would be like a Bolter round fired on a Human for a Light Cruiser or smaller vessel. All done in 3 hours, not bad if I do say so myself. Let me know if you have something to add.
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