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[X] Twin thruster to the sides
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Department of Starship Design (Trek-ish)
- Thread starter Mechanis
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd STRONGLY argue against a pivot. We've taken every option to make it worse at being an SDB and better at being a scout. Well the single shuttle is fine for the SDB as well, but otherwise I stand by my statement. I think there is some real use for the ship, even if it's what I argued against.
Furthermore I'm not too worried about this ship's end results. It's very much a bonus ship. Given that the other option would have been an upgrade to the Gold Roads, we aren't wasting the Refit points even if the ship proves to be sub-par. However I can't think of a better way to make sure the ship is sub-par is to try to reverse course now. Trying to course correct now would be a mess.
With luck they will get a refit when we go to Mk 3 labs. Resources allowing I want to try to do so next research turn. That said there are enough variables that I don't feel as confident as I was between turns 1 and 2 for tech predictions. I'm still quite amused that my tentative plan from before the Paths of Medusa just switched Mk 2 medbays for basic shields but was otherwise accurate.
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- Location
- sweden
Hmm sort of like two engine rooms seperated harder to take over or having a merged engine room cradling the shuttle bay that it goes straight through?
- Location
- USA
[X] Twin thruster to the sides
Does the shuttle really NEED to be able to turn around? Couldnt you just cut off artificial gravity and back out on RCS thrusters?
Does the shuttle really NEED to be able to turn around? Couldnt you just cut off artificial gravity and back out on RCS thrusters?
[X] Twin thruster above and below Shuttlebay
I don't know what I am voting for
I don't know what I am voting for
- Location
- USA
I got a funny, but that was a serious question. Do we NEED enough internal space to rotate a shuttle 180 degrees?
We need to be able to load and unload the shuttle yes. It would be very nice to have enough room to perform maintenance in an atmosphere. But is being able to spin a very long shuttle all the way round a hard requirement?
We are engineers, this is a question we should ask. Because just flying it straight in and backing it out, or vice versa, is an entirely valid means of getting a small craft in and out of a mothership.
See the shuttlebay on the NX 01 for a similar concept.
If the answer is yes, for either technical reasons, safety reasons, or just the client's preference, keep those bulges. But if the answer is no, why not slim those down to save material and reduce the size of the pressurized space?
We need to be able to load and unload the shuttle yes. It would be very nice to have enough room to perform maintenance in an atmosphere. But is being able to spin a very long shuttle all the way round a hard requirement?
We are engineers, this is a question we should ask. Because just flying it straight in and backing it out, or vice versa, is an entirely valid means of getting a small craft in and out of a mothership.
See the shuttlebay on the NX 01 for a similar concept.
If the answer is yes, for either technical reasons, safety reasons, or just the client's preference, keep those bulges. But if the answer is no, why not slim those down to save material and reduce the size of the pressurized space?
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Mechanis
Confirmed Extremely Screwed
- Location
- Absconding with Alacrity
It is preferred for safety reasons; it is simply a lot safer if the pilot never has to fly the ship backwards in an enclosed space; especially one like this with but barely enough room for it. One of those Tyranny of Large Numbers things; sure it's safe 95% of the time, but over hundreds of landings and launches even a small chance of accident becomes a near certainty. Better to simply eliminate that risk factor entirely if possible.
Plus, remember that that bulge is mostly hollow, whereas the default state of the hull is filled with machinery, deck structure, etc; so there's actually not really more material there, it's simply arranged differently.
- Location
- USA
I would personally argue that trying to spin that thing around in an enclosed space is more dangerous than going straight in and straight out.
Line up outside the ship, get confirmation from flight control. One puff aft to ease in, one puff forward to stop. Camera on the stern for reverse.
Hell, take off and landing is ALWAYS the most dangerous part, why leave it up to the pilot at all for normal operation? Add an auto-dock program to the shuttle. Or even a mechanical arm to physically latch onto a shuttle and pull it inside.
Line up outside the ship, get confirmation from flight control. One puff aft to ease in, one puff forward to stop. Camera on the stern for reverse.
Hell, take off and landing is ALWAYS the most dangerous part, why leave it up to the pilot at all for normal operation? Add an auto-dock program to the shuttle. Or even a mechanical arm to physically latch onto a shuttle and pull it inside.
- Location
- sweden
Early adoption has alot of momentum it's like why RL we already invented optic cable technology and only used it when copper wires literally became impossible to use, beacuse we did not need to pair up cables one for information one for power, same reason we have piston engines instead of rotary engines. It would be having a prototype fighting against something with 100+ years of active improvement that needed partial experience of a piston but is slightly more complex at the start it's like evolution in many ways
- Location
- Dragyxx
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- He/Him/His
If you ask me, the bulge makes sense if and only if the shuttle is actually landing on a turntable that then flips it around.
Actually maneuvering a shuttle in there would be way more hazardous than just backing it out. Lots more time spent in precision maneuvering trying to actually turn it around while flying.
Actually maneuvering a shuttle in there would be way more hazardous than just backing it out. Lots more time spent in precision maneuvering trying to actually turn it around while flying.
- Location
- his hidden lair
Realistically the only compromise we've made that would inhibit it's role as a SDB is doing a ventral layout that favors utility internals. I would argue there was a lot more merit in grabbing a secondary hull on an SDB but even then I know you were skeptical of that. The big question is if we could still fit 3bs over 3as considering how much less runtime/power efficient the latter is. I suspect we could still see a diminished 3b armament even with the vertical choice.
I'm not trying to relitigate things, but I want to try and quantify when/if we've crossed the point of no return for this design considering we've not had a formal vote for the role this ship is expected to fill.
I think this was our last chance for 3bs. A horizontal hull might have let us mount two.
Either way, now is really late to try to switch over, and while the horizontal vs. vertical vote wasn't explicitly between a system defense boat and a survey ship, the names of the plans were pretty clear about intents.
- Location
- his hidden lair
Good point on the plan names, then I'm going to stop handwringing about the sdb option still being on the table and just focus on survey ship concepts.
- Location
- Canada
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Indeed. There was a reason I named the two leading plans what I did. Heck, even if the contents of the plans were the same I would have made two with different names. Just to make sure that people knew what they were voting for.
It does occur to me that a light courier/cargo ship could probably be built on the same hull. Just replace the labs with cargo space. Maybe replace the aux sensors with something. Otherwise done.
This is one of the reasons we might have chosen to build the hull to civilian standards. As it is, I think we'll probably retire and demilitarize these ships into exactly that, but since they'd still need to be built in military shipyards, we're probably not going to see a civilian version.
- Location
- Canada
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- He/Him
I wasn't thinking of it necessarily being a civilian ship. I can certainly see the government needing something carried between star systems and so not being suitable for a Gold Road and an Iron Road being impractically large.
I don't think there would be many converted to such a role, but a couple that could carry small urgent cargo seems plausible. One of the things that is stressed repeatedly about ships is how being multi-role is important to keeping ships in service. This is going to be too small to be multi-role but if alternate uses can be found for the same basic hull that would certainly be a good thing.
- Location
- his hidden lair
Yeah. I'm hesitant to just try and build every light design off a common baseline hull but fundamentally, we probably wouldn't do much differently for those roles. And while technically this is a militarized hull in that it has polarized plating, this is going to be far and away the least militarized design in terms of weaponry, and probably one of the cheapest hulls we'll be building for a while.
If we're interested in private civilian shipping, something cheap, tough, but minimally armed with a large central module that can easily be swapped out is probably not a bad contender. The biggest thing would be removing the cloak, and while I doubt that's easy given it's probably a network of emitters it's probably not impossible. It's not tapping into economies of scale necessarily but any interstellar trade, especially right now- is going to be about low volume high value goods. There's just not a demand for a superfreighter given there's exactly 1 major market right now even if interstellar trade does kick up.
Hmm. That probably encourages the double reactor, if it's possible.
I've been doing a little rereading of the thread, and I dug up a post by Mechanis listing what goes into a ship's warp speeds. Running a single reactor probably gives us the best information about just how much hull mass matters to speed, given the Rapid is going to share most of the list with the Iron Road... but the Iron Road has a cruise speed of 2.5, which is a fair bit slower than I think we'd like a survey ship to go.
- Location
- Panama City
Ok, quick question, what are the exact stats for the dual core duotronics upgrade, as well as the prototype secondary core? I'm trying to see what we can squeeze in (hint, no matter what we do, we ain't putting a matter printer on this, not if we want to put in anything else large). Specifically, I'm actually pretty sure we can fit 2 torpedo tubes and 6 t1s on this thing to give it a decent opening burst(assuming 2 t1s are able to shoot the foward arc) and still have room for decent science. Of course, this is assuming things like the labs are locked down during a combat situation due to runtime issues, and we're only firing half our guns for power issues(not actually unreasonable as you'd probably need to pull some funky manuevering to get all guns to bear depending on how we mount them) , but technically we can pull it off without upgrading the core or computer at all. However, having a buffer would be nice, and while we might not need more power getting a bigger comp would mean we can run everything if we need to
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- Location
- Canada
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- He/Him
This isn't "Now we build our new light cargo ship on this hull" but "Well, we have this hull and we need a light cargo ship. Rip out the labs and put stuff there. It will do in a pinch."
The reactor stayed the same with the refit but the speed went up. I'm not sure if it was just the Aux reactors giving more power or if the implied minor tech advances in the description were more then flavour.
The best I've been able to come up with is 4 single mount T1s. Twins might be possible, but I'm unsure if it's worth it. The ships primary defense is running away and cloaking. It's NOT a combat vessel. Trying to make it a combat vessel is going to mean it's a bad combat vessel and a bad survey ship.
There is no way we are going to get this scoutship armed with torpedoes. I don't feel like reposting my numbers, but go back a few pages and see. TL;DR - We need that space for what the ship is meant to do, not waste it on really inefficient weapons.
[X] Twin thruster above and below Shuttlebay