And, for the tech nerds! :
QUEEN KERALKA CLASS LINE SHIPS OF THE TALORAN IMPERIAL STARFLEET, SHOWN AS THE REPRESENTATIVE, HSMS EMPRESS MIKELA THE GREAT, OF A MODIFIED SUB-VARIANT NOT REPRESENTATIVE OF REGULAR SHIPS OF THE CLASS. THESE SHIPS ARE RATED AS SUPERDREADNOUGHTS ACCORDING TO ALLIANCE CLASSIFICATION LISTS.
NOTED STATISTICS:
Length, overall: 3,965 meters.
Beam, minus sponsons: 375 meters.
Height, minus superstructure: 375 meters.
Hull Volume (superstructure and sponson exclusive): 240 million m^3.
Mass, Empty Hull: 71.35 megatonnes.
Mass, Fuel: 220 megatonnes (metallic hydrogen plus miniscule quanatities of anti-matter and fissionables counted in stores).
Mass, Stores: 55 megatonnes (45 megatonnes are metallic hydrogen for ERA).
Mass, internal fittings: 20 megatonnes.
Mass, sensor masts, hangars, barbettes, turrets, guns, missile casemates and other superstructure: 76.2 megatonnes.
Mass, Total: 436.05 megatonnes.
Pod Empty Mass: 4.5 megatonnes.
Pod Fuel Mass: 5 megatonnes.
Pod Stores Mass: 1 megatonne.
Pod Equipment Mass: 1.25 megatonne.
Total Mass of Two Fully Equipped Pods: 20.5 megatonnes.
Overall loaded mass with pods: 456.55 megatonnes.
External fittings volume: 30 million cubic meters.
Total volume: 270 million cubic meters.
Density: 1,700 kg / cubic meter (equivalent to the ship being a solid aluminium block).
Overall Power Output: Approximately 1.25 x 10^20 watts.
Sublight drive type: Heim gravito-magnetic reactionless; high efficiency.
Crew Compliment: 25,000 minimum operational; 55,000 war standard.
Onboard troops and flight personnel: approx. ~10,000.
Energy Armament: 72 x 1.5 GT p.c. in 18 quadruple turrets; 56 x 50 MT p.c. in 23 twin turrets and 10
single mounts. Main guns are capable of firing once every twelve seconds, secondary guns once every two seconds.
Missile Armament: 16 x 10 GT short-range torpedo tubes per broadside; 4 x TTs fore and aft,
40 in all, eight reloads per tube. 120 x Mk.30 very-long-range quadruple-rail accelerative missile
launchers per broadside, 240 in all, 300 missiles per rail (variable mix of anti-fighter/anti-ship rounds) -- some missiles can be replaced with 4-pack capsules for LIS-168 as needed; standard anti-ship warhead is 256 MT for very-long-range missile for the Mk.30. Torpedo and missile launchers recycle to fire once every six seconds.
Point-Defence Armament: 144 x twin 21cm p.g. turrets (each gun fires four times per second); 288 x sixteen-cell missile interceptor launchers, 288 x quadruple LIS-168 box launchers (reloads carried internally only) -- 'raider-killer' bolt-on anti-slow small craft weapons + 8 x additional box launchers inside the hangar bays for last-ditch defence against suicide attack; 288 x flak projectors.
Weapons busbar capacity: 10.95 GT/S.
Maximum instantaneous shield absorption capacity (impact of greater energy than this in the space of a milisecond will burn out and destroy all the ship's shield genators): 208 GTs. (note only half this energy is available to each broadside.)
Acceleration:
1,500g's.
STATISTICS RELEVANT TO THE EMPRESS MIKELA THE GREAT SUB-CLASS:
Length, overall: 3,967 meters.
Beam, minus sponsons: 377 meters.
Height, minus superstructure: 375 meters.
Hull Volume (superstructure and sponson exclusive): 240.5 million m^3.
Mass, Empty: 74.15 megatonnes.
Mass, Fuel: 220 megatonnes (metallic hydrogen and fuel-grade tylium, plus miniscule quanatities of anti-matter and fissionables counted in stores).
Mass, Stores: 57.5 megatonnes. (46 megatonnes are metallic hydrogen for ERA).
Mass, internal fittings: 20 megatonnes.
Mass, sensor masts, hangars, barbettes, turrets, guns, missile casemates and other superstructure: 76.2 megatonnes.
Mass, Total: 445.05 megatonnes.
Pod Empty Mass: 4.5 megatonnes.
Pod Fuel Mass: 8 megatonnes.
Pod Stores Mass: 1 megatonne.
Pod Equipment Mass: 1.25 megatonne.
Total Mass of Two Fully Equipped Pods: 26.5 megatonnes.
Overall loaded mass with pods: 471.55 megatonnes.
External fittings volume: 30 million cubic meters.
Total volume: 270.5 million cubic meters.
Density: 1,750 kg / cubic meter (Somewhat more than the ship being a solid aluminium block).
Overall Power Output: Figures reported to IUCEC indicate approx. 9 x 10^20 watts at maximum power.
Sublight drive type: Heim gravito-magnetic reactionless; high efficiency.
Crew Compliment: 25,000 minimum operational; 35,000 war standard (heavily automated by Taloran standards).
Onboard troops and flight personnel: approx. ~5,000.
Energy Armament: 72 x 1.5 GT p.c. in 18 quadruple turrets; 56 x 50 MT p.c. in 23 twin turrets and 10
single mounts. Main guns are capable of firing once every two seconds, being of modified type with Tylium heat sumps which serve to transfer thermal energy from recoil absorption into electrical power for ship systems, secondary guns fire twice a second due to the same method being employed in their design.
Missile Armament: 16 x short-range torpedo tubes per broadside; 4 x TTs fore and aft, 40 in all, ten reloads per tube. These torpedoes have 48 gigatonne three-stage M/AM -> Tylium -> Fusion warheads. 120 x Mk.30 very-long-range quadruple-rail accelerative missile launchers per broadside, 240 in all, 300 missiles per rail (variable mix of anti-fighter/anti-ship rounds) -- some missiles can be replaced with 4-pack capsules for LIS-168 as needed; Tylium-boosted anti-ship warhead is 1.23 GT for very-long-range missile for the Mk.30. Torpedo and missile launchers recycle to fire once every six seconds.
Point-Defence Armament: 144 x twin 21cm p.g. turrets (each gun fires 27 times per second with Tylium cooling system fitted); 288 x sixteen-cell missile launchers (RMI-120 high acceleration interceptor missiles carried), 288 x quadruple LIS-168 box launchers (reloads carried internally only) -- 'raider-killer' bolt-on anti-slow small craft weapons + 8 x additional box launchers inside the hangar bays for last-ditch defence against suicide attack; 288 x flak projectors (these emit a cloud of ball bearings around the ship to destroy incoming missiles with their own kinetic energy).
Weapons busbar capacity: 82.125 GT/S (amount of energy which can be directed into the ship's weapons).
Shield type and strength: Vessel uses a composite layer system with 16 different shield fields. Each shield field area is triple layered, and each layer is powered by a copy of a standard Ha'tak shield generator so that the total shield strength is comparable to that of 48 Ha'tak type vessels. The ship is physically much larger than a Ha'tak however and so the point-strength is at 3 times Ha'tak strength. Backup shields have a maximum absorption capacity of 224 gigatons / ms, only half of which can be absorbed in each direction without compromising resistance to the other broadside. A total of 52 shield generators are fitted.
Acceleration at full load mass, with pods full and fitted: 1,985g's.
Power generation: The Empress Mikela the Great uses a revolutionary new Triple Cycle Generation propulsion system. The standard Taloran Double-Generation system in which an initial stage of Hydrogen --> Helium 3 fusion provides the majority of the power and a matter/anti-matter catalyzed fusion of Beryllium six from the helium products of the first fusion cycle. In the Empress Mikela the Great however the heat from the two fusion cycles is directed through fuel-grade Tylium (also known as Naquadah) which produces an immense boost in overall power; the ship is recorded as generating about 7.5 - 8 times the power of the standard Double Cycle generation scheme. The primary fuel for the reactor cycle is metallic hydrogen.
Armour: The armour has been enhanced (making the ship slightly longer and beamier) with a layer of naquadah which transfers thermal energy in the outer armour layers into electricity, recharging the capacitors of the shield generators and guns and cooling the armour to prevent additional thermal deformation. The use of the metallic hydrogen tankage as explosive-reactive armour is retained.
Drive capability: Instead of the standard Gravito-Magnetic submersion (Heim Field drive) and Jump drive combination, the Empress Mikela II has a third stage with a Goa'uld Hyperdrive. The combination of Gravito-Magnetic drive operation inside of Hyperspace allows the ship to obtain 53.4 times the regular speed of a Goa'uld hyperdrive without further modification. Using a Cylon jump drive installation, the ship can instantaneously jump up to 1,840 lightyears with a recharge and recycling time on the jump-drive of 35 minutes. Dropping out of hyperspace and jumping before returning to hyperspace can be accomplished under computer-predictor control within one Taloran minute, making it worthwhile to use the hyper/heim-field combination and jump drive successfully when a maximum speed approaching 24,000 lightyears / hour is desired in critical response situations.
Onboard parasite combat craft: A total of 128 modified J'u'crea-type Gunboats are carried. They operate with a modified version of the semisapient computers used on Carinan tanks and small craft, allowing them to be fully automated and dispense with the crew; this in combination with Tylium power boosting allows for much more rapid-firing 21cm guns, more missiles, better shields to be fitted, and somewhat higher accelerations to be obtained; the craft can also manoeuvre without regard to a crew's limitations, and receive directives from a slave-control facility inside the ship, but can operate fully autonomously for scouting purposes.
Pod notes: The currently fitted pods each carry 24,000 Very Long Range missiles in mass-flushable cell launchers as well as the general stores and fuel storage normative to all pods.
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#51
Last edited by The Duchess of Zeon on Fri Jun 26, 2009 8:14 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#52
Some notes on the armour scheme of the Taloran Line Ship, or dreadnought to the foreign powers:
For the heavily protected Taloran dreadnought, utterly no expense is spared in protection. By long tradition the shields are considered the first line of passive defence (active defence being the interception and dispersion of incoming targets, which can include intercetion by counter-missiles of even incoming energy weapons fire where this may be appropriate). The shields are arranged with projectors running along the dorsal and ventral surfaces fore and aft only, and along the entire length of the ship in two rows offset from the broadside. One generator is therefore typically attached to six projectors and is usually designed to power all six at standard levels, or four at double-strength (due to power loss in transmission and certain other factors).
Due to this it's quite typical for shields in standard mode to actually have one generator focused on one side of the ship or another; to double the shields up is to concentrate all of them on a single side, and computers handle the complex switching tasks of allocating energy on the point basis to maintain the subspace distortion fields which operate on a two front basis--first the matter and energy of something entering the shields is partially submerged in subspace and then the distortion waves cause sheering. Therefore it is typical for missiles impacting the shields of Taloran vessels to simply be snapped in two; the shields themselves are not a mere barrier in space, but an area of effect extending out perhaps a dozen kilometers from the hull. The characteristic image of a forcefield around the vessel is the visual appearance of the subspace wave effect around the hull at the point where the shear effect disrupts incoming matter or coherent energy beam.
Because of the nature of the shields they beautifully allow for direct fire out of the fully raised shields without compromising the defensive integrity of the hull: This is due to the fact that the subspace shearing wave, occurring last against incoming fire, occurs first to outgoing fire, meaning it has no effect whatsoever as that fire is not submerged in subspace. Traveling beyond the shearing layer is the submersion layer, which means the outgoing fire is submerged in subspace and then de-submerged as it passes through it, which has the effect of actually increasing the velocity of outgoing fire, and indeed if the shields are at full strength it allows the heavy particle cannon shots to briefly exceed the speed of light for several tens of kilometers before dropping back down to extreme sublight velocities, though the infestimal length of time this occurs in makes it irrelevant to the overall time to target for fire.
A typical dreadnought or other heavy ship therefore has eight primary and three secondary shield generators as well as a series of twenty-one tertiary engine shield generators (providing point fields over the gravitic vanes) and up to 18 tertiary main battery shield generators over the main turrets. The three secondary shield generators, which are actually primary shield generators operating at full power, but concentrated over very limited areas of the hull, protect the hangar bay (one ventral), and the sensor masts (two dorsal), at levels of power much greater than the protection actually afford to the rest of the hull, while the tertiary generators are of lesser power, since the distributed nature of the engines and the armament makes it less important to provide them with overwhelming protection.
Rated shield capacity is based on the maximum amount of energy which can be absorbed by the main shields landing within the space of one milisecond before the submersion and shearing power of the generators is exceeded to the point where the generators themselves will be overloaded and melted into a slag, releasing intense energy into the hull. The secondary and tertiary shields do not enter into these figures. Wear to the shields can however take place because extremely concentrated fire can cause disruptions in the subspace shearing wave effect, allowing penetration of enemy fire before the shields themselves have been taken offline; also the heat absorbed by the generators must go somewhere. Taloran ships convert some of it to electrical energy and store it in massive super-capacitors (this has the direct effect of increasing the length of time the ship can be in combat before fuel is expended by meaning that when the capacitors are being drained the ship's reactors can be reduced from full military power), and dump the rest into heat sinks which must be periodically flushed in combat. Computerized systems automatically take the shields offline at the moment of critical damaging failure, but the shield generators are in internally armoured compartments with their control rooms outside of the armour which are designed to protect the rest of the ship from any potential damage from the generators being slagged anyway, as the magnitude of energies involved and rapidity of the situation means even direct computer control cannot always successfully take a generator offline before it is overwhelmed. In rare circumstances power from this event will be generated at excessive levels and can travel through the lines to the super-capacitors and blow out surrounding power distribution busbars, but statistically it is an exceptionally rare occurrence with recent extensive modifications having made it less likely.
The sinks themselves are usually flushed by diversion through emitters along the hull which emit it as diffuse light and directed thermal energy; this temporarily engulfs the ship in a blinding flash to rival the intensity of a star, and means that in action Taloran heavy ships will regularly disappear in immense blinding flashes to reappear a moment later undamaged, an effect that is also produced by the leftover energy when submergence in Heim Gravito-Magnetic drive effects allows for the violation of conservation of momentum; it is typical for Taloran fleets, though rigorous and requiring extensive planning, to rapidly slow or make extreme manoeuvres that would otherwise be impossible by briefly going to lightspeed and then disengaging the drives on the desired course and speed; this is accompanied by a huge backwash of leftover energy emanating from the Heim fields themselves which is superficially similar to that produced by dumping the internal heat sinks. It is also similar to the flashes produced periodically by Taloran cloaking devices to dump energy from the internal heat sinks which allow their cloaks to function, but unlike the cloaking devices and shields the burst is produced from the Heim fields themselves, located a hundred or more kilometers from the hull and is far more intense.
The hull armour itself consists of an extensively layered system dozens of meters thick, though the majority of that thickness is in the form of the metallic hydrogen tanks. For the very largest and newest of Taloran Line Ships, the outer layer of the armour is a strength layer intended to protect against incoming fire, particularly kinetic energy penetrators, by shearing away or being melted by thermal energy. It is muonic steel about half a meter thick, the only use of that substance, and for good measure is coated along the outside in a thick layer of graphite. The second layer consists of a meter-thick depleted uranium (duranium) which resists vapourization and absorbs energy well from kinetic impactors; the heating of this layer necessitates the addition of a second, meter-thick layer of ceramsteel composites designed especially for dealing with extreme thermal energies. The next layer is one-tenth meter thick lead to guard the fuel tankage against radiation backwash, and the final layer is one-tenth meter thick muonic aluminium which serves as the outer nonpressure hull skin. The layers of armour are attached to it via pinions made up of solidified metallic hydrogen, extremely lightweight and easily manufactured from the fuel onboard to allow ease of replacement and a relatively small aspect profile within the armour. When energized they explode outwards; but each armour section is secured by fourty or more and will continue to serve in a protective fashion even with 75% of the pinions having been destroyed, as designed, and sometimes they will continue to protect even after this number has been exceeded. The pinions are attached to the main outer hull plating by huge built up base foundations of muonic aluminium which resist vapourization through transmitted energy by sheer bulk.
Below this outer armour structure (which is applicable to the Empress Mikela the Great) are the huge metallic hydrogen tanks. Since a typical Line Ship carries well in excess of 200 megatonnes of this fuel, these tanks occupy a substantial portion of the hull despite having a volumetric energy density due to their exceptionally compression, very similar to that of matter/anti-matter reactants. However the fuel has another function; because of the nature of metallic hydrogen, it is sufficiently volatile that it may be used as explosive reactive armour. The tankage is subdivided not hundreds but thousands of times across the hull in cells just large enough to function equivalent to ERA blocks. Penetrating fire cutting through the first layer of the armour sandwich will detonate the ERA tankage. The subdividing cell blockers are made up of a central layer of one-meter thick muonic aluminium with one meter of duranium on each side and one-meter of ceramsteel composites one each side sandwiched between them, for five meters thick subdividing bulkheads which essentially guarantee only one tank detonates; with the immense backing of the primary internal armour layer behind it, the tanks explode outward through the damaged region and intercept the penetrator or absorb the energy of incoming fire through their detonation.
Because the use of fuel as armour can result in a loss of fuel for sustained combat operations, the amount of metallic hydrogen carried is actually much higher than reported in ship statistics; for example the Queen Keralka class actually has an extra approx. ~40 millione tonnes of metallic hydrogen aboard, classified under stores as "Explosive Reactive Armour", meaning that the ships is expected to lose no less than 20% of her regular fuel tankage in sustained action due to detonating events along the hull; this means that the Admiralty expects a Taloran ship of the line to see the total destruction of around (when the additional tankage is factored in) 16% of the outer armour layer and 16% of the total tankage, meaning that only 84% of the ship's outer hull surface is seriously expected to remain intact after an action for the ship to still be considered combat capable. The detachable pods are not similarly armoured and their metallic hydrogen tankage is purely fuel (though some is still counted as stores due to the accounting metrics of the Starfleet) which is always drained first in any circumstance so that the ship always has full tankage; note however that only 75% of the ship's own total storage (including the stores-listed parts for the accounting metric) actually forms the ERA; the rest is in ready-use tanks associated with the reactors, guaranteeing that even with 100% loss of outer hull armour and tankage the ship can still be powered to continue fighting.
The lower layer of armour is by far the thickest, backing the tanks with an outer layer of 1 meter thick muonic aluminium. Below it is a layer of 2-meter thick duranium, and then a 2-meter thick ceramsteel composite; the .1-meter lead radiation absorption layer follows and then a final strength layer which consists of .2-meter thick muonic aluminium. Following this is a 5-meter thick void space separating the armour layers from the internal primary strength pressure hull. The primary strength pressure hull comprises of 1-meter thick muonic aluminium also heavily coated in graphite, and several milimeters of lead provide a final radiation coverage. This means that the hull and hull armour consists of 7% of the volume of the ship, not counting the ERA or void spaces. Another 1% of the hull consists of the 70 transverse bulkheads, each 1-meter thick muonic aluminium coated in graphite, which are placed every 50 meters along the length of the ship in a Queen Keralka class vessel. The ship is further subdivided by 5 longitudinal-vertical bulkheads of equal thickness and graphite coating, running the length of the ship at intervals of 60 meters inside the pressure hull; finally 5 longitudinal-horizontal bulkheads run the length of the ship dividing it into five vertical sections, these bulkheads of the same composition as the others, and spaced at 63-meter intervals in the Queen Keralka class, meaning there is one every twenty-one decks. In total the ship is therefore subdivided into approximately 1,500 vacuum-tight comparments and internal subdivision (which also reinforces the strength of the vessel)--the reduced number is due to the reduced beam fore and aft, where the bulkheads progressively terminate as the ship's hull curves inward, and, in the case of right aft, the horizontal bulkheads also terminate as it curves downwards. In total, 2.5% of the vessel's internal volume is taken up by internal vacuum-tight bulkheads. Standard regulations mandate that each vacuum-tight compartment be pierced for only three vacuum-tight doors, which are at the same thickness as the bulkhead and on heavily reinforced antishock mountings. In addition to protecting against decompression the incredible thickness of the internal bulkheads guarantees they can mitigate damage from fire which has completely penetrated the armour with a considerable degree of effectiveness.
The strength of the hull is completed by the central keel, a structure that is a 20-meter thick muonic aluminium box. This box is a total of 60 meters high and 60 meters wide and most of the central power mains run down it; the barbettes which enclose the main battery centerline turrets and the sensor masts are also directly anchored to this structure, running through the entire vertical height of the ship to be secured to it. Three decks including officer's country and all of the CIC and bridge functions on the ship are included inside the armoured keel with the other 11 meters of vertical clearance being devoted to central power and fuel distribution. There are only twelve access points into the internal keel capable of handling the crew; the rest are milimetric piercings for diffuse fuel and energy transmission, and the keel is subdivided every 24 meters along the length of the hull by a standard 1-meter thick muonic aluminium transverse bulkhead in the event of the unthinkable possibility of enemy fire penetrating 20 meters of solid muonic aluminium; all strength members are also coated in graphite, and the access points are closed off by 10 separate 1-meter thick vacuum-tight muonic aluminium blast doors each. The foremost and sternmost 6.5 meters of the keel is completely filled in by muonic aluminium forming solid, unpierced muonic aluminium blocks of 23,400 cubic meters in size that anchor the keel into the hull. The ship's several dozen gigawatt-range emergency fission reactors are also located inside the keel to provide emergency backup power for the sustenance of life support--or when in combat, to power the CIC/Bridge command functions--with electricity which can last for decades.
The keel is not however relied upon alone; eight subsidiary keels, which are 20 x 20 meter structures running part, though not all of the length of the ship (usually around 70% of the hull length) and are completely solid muonic aluminium also exist at the cardinal compass points of the hull structure, directly backing the armour. These are connected to the keel and to each other by a reinforcing girder structure of 2-meter thick muonic aluminium girders, all designed in a classic truss arrangement which cross through and are interconnected with the internal bulkheads so that both in turn strength each other, with all girders being two force members and the truss structure being statically indeterminate with a 100% safety margin, meaning that half of the girders in the hull can fail before the ship can suffer hogging under maximum military acceleration or any kind of impact event within the design specifications. This consequently also allows when the girder structure is fully intact for the ship to withstand accelerations or impact events with a very large safety margin above the design specifications.
Completing the armour structure of the ship is the barbettes, engine sheaths and reactor shells, with one barbette corresponding to each turret and sensor mast; for example the Queen Keralka class has 20 barbettes, 18 for main battery turrets and 2 for sensor masts. The barbettes when inside of the hull armour are a 8.5-meter thick armour sandwich of 2 meters of muonic aluminium, 2 meters of ceramsteel composites, 2 meters of duranium, .5-meter of lead, and another 2 meters of muonic aluminium, with the outside coated in graphite. Outside of the hull armour all of these thicknesses are doubled so that the barbettes when exposed to direct enemy fire are armoured to a thickness of 17 meters all around. The barbettes in all cases each contain a fusion reactor, a small supply of fuel, and dozens of super-capacitors, and each barbette has only three entrances from inside the hull only except for milimetric diffuse power conduits. The barbettes are fully self-contained and with all capacitors internally provided and a backup fusion reactor, the guns can be worked even when the ship's main reactors have suffered a 100% power loss, often for hundreds of shots. The neutron base material tanks which provide the particles for the main particle cannon are thus also located within the barbettes for the turrets. The sensor mast turrets thus can also continue to operate even with all other power lost, and the sensor masts are covered in 17-meter thick armour entirely, with the sensors simply built over-powerful enough to work through the interference this creates out to the desired ranges, and the muonic aluminium in the armour itself being energized through milimetric leads as part of the subspace receivers for long range scanning and communications.
The actual turrets themselves are somewhat less armoured due to their large position and the preference to keep them low-aspect to minimize hits, being provideded with the below-the-hull 8.5 meter thick armour sandwich all around. However, the standard quadruple turrets on modern Taloran Line Ships have an 8.5 thick armour sandwich bulkead subdividing the turret, so that even if one half of the turret is destroyed the two guns in the other half can continue to function normally. Barbette/turret crews are provided so that the guns can be fought even if all contact has been completely lost with the rest of the ship. Wing turrets are attached to the secondary keels, running through one and terminating on the mid-line keel for strength (centerline turrets also run through the centerline keels at the strength deck).
The next component is thus the 17 meter thick armoured shells which surround each of the ship's (in the case of the Queen Keralka class) 144 primary fusion cycle reactors. The two-cycle reactors receive metallic hydrogen, and are penetrated for crew access three times, and also three times for the admission of metallic hydrogen, and three times again for the busbar leads--there are only two beryllium/helium vents, however). The two-cycle reactors on the Queen Keralka-class ships operate standard pulse fusion powered by metallic hydrogen; the helium which results is then catalyzed by very small amounts of anti-matter into helium-beryllium solar type fusion, and the exhaust gasses of helium 4 / beryllium 7 are then vented to storage and are used as thrust matter for the low-velocity ion manoeuvring thrusters as required. The reactor shells are dispersed throughout the hull to prevent one from being damaged by the destruction of another. A series of fifteen central busbar routing stations for internal power have separate and identical protection, and the ship's two jump drives (one main and one backup) are also similarly protected.
The missile batteries are arranged in Armoured Decks which pierce the regular armour hull, and are surrounded in the standard 8.5 meter thick armour sandwiches on all sides, pierced only for internal access, with subdivision between every eight launchers and corresponding magazines. Identical protection is provided by the secondary turrets; the point-defence weapons are all mounted in individual self-contained mountings inset into the armour without completely penetrating it. Like the individual secondary turrets each one of the torpedo launchers is mounted individually.
Defensively the last area protected is the ship's gravitic vanes. These are defended by 17-meter thick standard external armour sandwich like the barbettes, with the four superlight and four main main drive vanes clustered together in the extremely thick amidships sponsons. Four secondary thrust vanes are mounted aft with 8.5-meter thick protection. Eight manoeuvring vanes aft and four forward have similar protection, and the final, reversing and forward manoeuvring primary vane mounted in the telaro bow is afforded full 17-meter thick protection due to its importance. This completes the overview of the passive protective systems, which in combination with the hull, occupies 25.5% of the internal volume of the ship entire, the other 75% being empty space for tankage, habitation, storage, or the mounting of machinery; this does not count barbettes, turrets, sensor masts, and the small craft hangar, nor the sponsons nor other gravitic vane mounts, all of which are not counted in the hull volume figures, and so whose armour is not, either.
On the Empress Mikela the Great in particular the ship is 2 meters beamier; this is an addition to the backing of the second, primary armour layer of a thin layer of Tylium and space, sealed with a .1-meter thick muonic aluminium layer behind it off from the void space, allowing the mounting of machinery which transfers the energy absorbed by the tylium as heat, into the ship's power systems as electricity. Additionally the reactor spaces are expanded to allow for the third tylium-based stage of the reactor generation process, and two new armoured shells for the main and backup hyperdrivers are installed. These changes cumulatively increase the percentage of the hull's volume filled by armour and structural members from 10.5% to 13% on the Empress Mikela the Great sub-class.
A brief addendum on repairs: Within the stores are large quantities of .1-meter thick muonic aluminium plating which can be welded across damaged sections of the hull during lulls in battle or between actions where further repairs cannot be effected at a dedicated facility. These sections can then be flooded with metallic hydrogen up to the limits of the sealed bulkheads or lower armour layers (if it is only a partial penetrating hit). This turns the damaged area into an ERA block which can provide at least some protection to the ship's internal spaces, with the bulkheads resisting the force of the detonation enough to direct it outward with the outer plate intentionally lightly welded on, so that at least some defence can be provided in the already damaged sector against incoming fire which would otherwise have an impeded path into the ship's internal spaces.
Note also that regularly published calculations neglect both the volume of the barbettes / sensor masts / hangars / armoured vanes and also the mass of the armour protecting them. Since the barbettes, sensor masts, turrets, and armoured vanes are a very large component of the armour, as well as the secondary turrets and missile casemates, these figures can be slightly deceptive. For example though 10.5% of the hull volume is armour when the armour weights of the ship are balanced against the much more heavily armoured sponsons, vanes, barbettes, and etc, and their volume, the figure rises to not less than 25.5% for the Queen Keralka class and 28% for the Empress Mikela the Great. The actual density of the hull armour due to this accounting of figures (which is partially intentionally deceptive) is about 2,000 kg/ m^3, with the muonic aluminium being 1,700 kg / m^3 and the highly sophisticated ceramsteel being as little as 1,000 kg / m^3. Therefore the empty mass of the average Taloran ship is actually closer to double the figures typically listed, which basically are published for the hull alone in a stripped condition without armament fitted, a fairly typical shipbuilding practice; the same is true of most other powers.
For the heavily protected Taloran dreadnought, utterly no expense is spared in protection. By long tradition the shields are considered the first line of passive defence (active defence being the interception and dispersion of incoming targets, which can include intercetion by counter-missiles of even incoming energy weapons fire where this may be appropriate). The shields are arranged with projectors running along the dorsal and ventral surfaces fore and aft only, and along the entire length of the ship in two rows offset from the broadside. One generator is therefore typically attached to six projectors and is usually designed to power all six at standard levels, or four at double-strength (due to power loss in transmission and certain other factors).
Due to this it's quite typical for shields in standard mode to actually have one generator focused on one side of the ship or another; to double the shields up is to concentrate all of them on a single side, and computers handle the complex switching tasks of allocating energy on the point basis to maintain the subspace distortion fields which operate on a two front basis--first the matter and energy of something entering the shields is partially submerged in subspace and then the distortion waves cause sheering. Therefore it is typical for missiles impacting the shields of Taloran vessels to simply be snapped in two; the shields themselves are not a mere barrier in space, but an area of effect extending out perhaps a dozen kilometers from the hull. The characteristic image of a forcefield around the vessel is the visual appearance of the subspace wave effect around the hull at the point where the shear effect disrupts incoming matter or coherent energy beam.
Because of the nature of the shields they beautifully allow for direct fire out of the fully raised shields without compromising the defensive integrity of the hull: This is due to the fact that the subspace shearing wave, occurring last against incoming fire, occurs first to outgoing fire, meaning it has no effect whatsoever as that fire is not submerged in subspace. Traveling beyond the shearing layer is the submersion layer, which means the outgoing fire is submerged in subspace and then de-submerged as it passes through it, which has the effect of actually increasing the velocity of outgoing fire, and indeed if the shields are at full strength it allows the heavy particle cannon shots to briefly exceed the speed of light for several tens of kilometers before dropping back down to extreme sublight velocities, though the infestimal length of time this occurs in makes it irrelevant to the overall time to target for fire.
A typical dreadnought or other heavy ship therefore has eight primary and three secondary shield generators as well as a series of twenty-one tertiary engine shield generators (providing point fields over the gravitic vanes) and up to 18 tertiary main battery shield generators over the main turrets. The three secondary shield generators, which are actually primary shield generators operating at full power, but concentrated over very limited areas of the hull, protect the hangar bay (one ventral), and the sensor masts (two dorsal), at levels of power much greater than the protection actually afford to the rest of the hull, while the tertiary generators are of lesser power, since the distributed nature of the engines and the armament makes it less important to provide them with overwhelming protection.
Rated shield capacity is based on the maximum amount of energy which can be absorbed by the main shields landing within the space of one milisecond before the submersion and shearing power of the generators is exceeded to the point where the generators themselves will be overloaded and melted into a slag, releasing intense energy into the hull. The secondary and tertiary shields do not enter into these figures. Wear to the shields can however take place because extremely concentrated fire can cause disruptions in the subspace shearing wave effect, allowing penetration of enemy fire before the shields themselves have been taken offline; also the heat absorbed by the generators must go somewhere. Taloran ships convert some of it to electrical energy and store it in massive super-capacitors (this has the direct effect of increasing the length of time the ship can be in combat before fuel is expended by meaning that when the capacitors are being drained the ship's reactors can be reduced from full military power), and dump the rest into heat sinks which must be periodically flushed in combat. Computerized systems automatically take the shields offline at the moment of critical damaging failure, but the shield generators are in internally armoured compartments with their control rooms outside of the armour which are designed to protect the rest of the ship from any potential damage from the generators being slagged anyway, as the magnitude of energies involved and rapidity of the situation means even direct computer control cannot always successfully take a generator offline before it is overwhelmed. In rare circumstances power from this event will be generated at excessive levels and can travel through the lines to the super-capacitors and blow out surrounding power distribution busbars, but statistically it is an exceptionally rare occurrence with recent extensive modifications having made it less likely.
The sinks themselves are usually flushed by diversion through emitters along the hull which emit it as diffuse light and directed thermal energy; this temporarily engulfs the ship in a blinding flash to rival the intensity of a star, and means that in action Taloran heavy ships will regularly disappear in immense blinding flashes to reappear a moment later undamaged, an effect that is also produced by the leftover energy when submergence in Heim Gravito-Magnetic drive effects allows for the violation of conservation of momentum; it is typical for Taloran fleets, though rigorous and requiring extensive planning, to rapidly slow or make extreme manoeuvres that would otherwise be impossible by briefly going to lightspeed and then disengaging the drives on the desired course and speed; this is accompanied by a huge backwash of leftover energy emanating from the Heim fields themselves which is superficially similar to that produced by dumping the internal heat sinks. It is also similar to the flashes produced periodically by Taloran cloaking devices to dump energy from the internal heat sinks which allow their cloaks to function, but unlike the cloaking devices and shields the burst is produced from the Heim fields themselves, located a hundred or more kilometers from the hull and is far more intense.
The hull armour itself consists of an extensively layered system dozens of meters thick, though the majority of that thickness is in the form of the metallic hydrogen tanks. For the very largest and newest of Taloran Line Ships, the outer layer of the armour is a strength layer intended to protect against incoming fire, particularly kinetic energy penetrators, by shearing away or being melted by thermal energy. It is muonic steel about half a meter thick, the only use of that substance, and for good measure is coated along the outside in a thick layer of graphite. The second layer consists of a meter-thick depleted uranium (duranium) which resists vapourization and absorbs energy well from kinetic impactors; the heating of this layer necessitates the addition of a second, meter-thick layer of ceramsteel composites designed especially for dealing with extreme thermal energies. The next layer is one-tenth meter thick lead to guard the fuel tankage against radiation backwash, and the final layer is one-tenth meter thick muonic aluminium which serves as the outer nonpressure hull skin. The layers of armour are attached to it via pinions made up of solidified metallic hydrogen, extremely lightweight and easily manufactured from the fuel onboard to allow ease of replacement and a relatively small aspect profile within the armour. When energized they explode outwards; but each armour section is secured by fourty or more and will continue to serve in a protective fashion even with 75% of the pinions having been destroyed, as designed, and sometimes they will continue to protect even after this number has been exceeded. The pinions are attached to the main outer hull plating by huge built up base foundations of muonic aluminium which resist vapourization through transmitted energy by sheer bulk.
Below this outer armour structure (which is applicable to the Empress Mikela the Great) are the huge metallic hydrogen tanks. Since a typical Line Ship carries well in excess of 200 megatonnes of this fuel, these tanks occupy a substantial portion of the hull despite having a volumetric energy density due to their exceptionally compression, very similar to that of matter/anti-matter reactants. However the fuel has another function; because of the nature of metallic hydrogen, it is sufficiently volatile that it may be used as explosive reactive armour. The tankage is subdivided not hundreds but thousands of times across the hull in cells just large enough to function equivalent to ERA blocks. Penetrating fire cutting through the first layer of the armour sandwich will detonate the ERA tankage. The subdividing cell blockers are made up of a central layer of one-meter thick muonic aluminium with one meter of duranium on each side and one-meter of ceramsteel composites one each side sandwiched between them, for five meters thick subdividing bulkheads which essentially guarantee only one tank detonates; with the immense backing of the primary internal armour layer behind it, the tanks explode outward through the damaged region and intercept the penetrator or absorb the energy of incoming fire through their detonation.
Because the use of fuel as armour can result in a loss of fuel for sustained combat operations, the amount of metallic hydrogen carried is actually much higher than reported in ship statistics; for example the Queen Keralka class actually has an extra approx. ~40 millione tonnes of metallic hydrogen aboard, classified under stores as "Explosive Reactive Armour", meaning that the ships is expected to lose no less than 20% of her regular fuel tankage in sustained action due to detonating events along the hull; this means that the Admiralty expects a Taloran ship of the line to see the total destruction of around (when the additional tankage is factored in) 16% of the outer armour layer and 16% of the total tankage, meaning that only 84% of the ship's outer hull surface is seriously expected to remain intact after an action for the ship to still be considered combat capable. The detachable pods are not similarly armoured and their metallic hydrogen tankage is purely fuel (though some is still counted as stores due to the accounting metrics of the Starfleet) which is always drained first in any circumstance so that the ship always has full tankage; note however that only 75% of the ship's own total storage (including the stores-listed parts for the accounting metric) actually forms the ERA; the rest is in ready-use tanks associated with the reactors, guaranteeing that even with 100% loss of outer hull armour and tankage the ship can still be powered to continue fighting.
The lower layer of armour is by far the thickest, backing the tanks with an outer layer of 1 meter thick muonic aluminium. Below it is a layer of 2-meter thick duranium, and then a 2-meter thick ceramsteel composite; the .1-meter lead radiation absorption layer follows and then a final strength layer which consists of .2-meter thick muonic aluminium. Following this is a 5-meter thick void space separating the armour layers from the internal primary strength pressure hull. The primary strength pressure hull comprises of 1-meter thick muonic aluminium also heavily coated in graphite, and several milimeters of lead provide a final radiation coverage. This means that the hull and hull armour consists of 7% of the volume of the ship, not counting the ERA or void spaces. Another 1% of the hull consists of the 70 transverse bulkheads, each 1-meter thick muonic aluminium coated in graphite, which are placed every 50 meters along the length of the ship in a Queen Keralka class vessel. The ship is further subdivided by 5 longitudinal-vertical bulkheads of equal thickness and graphite coating, running the length of the ship at intervals of 60 meters inside the pressure hull; finally 5 longitudinal-horizontal bulkheads run the length of the ship dividing it into five vertical sections, these bulkheads of the same composition as the others, and spaced at 63-meter intervals in the Queen Keralka class, meaning there is one every twenty-one decks. In total the ship is therefore subdivided into approximately 1,500 vacuum-tight comparments and internal subdivision (which also reinforces the strength of the vessel)--the reduced number is due to the reduced beam fore and aft, where the bulkheads progressively terminate as the ship's hull curves inward, and, in the case of right aft, the horizontal bulkheads also terminate as it curves downwards. In total, 2.5% of the vessel's internal volume is taken up by internal vacuum-tight bulkheads. Standard regulations mandate that each vacuum-tight compartment be pierced for only three vacuum-tight doors, which are at the same thickness as the bulkhead and on heavily reinforced antishock mountings. In addition to protecting against decompression the incredible thickness of the internal bulkheads guarantees they can mitigate damage from fire which has completely penetrated the armour with a considerable degree of effectiveness.
The strength of the hull is completed by the central keel, a structure that is a 20-meter thick muonic aluminium box. This box is a total of 60 meters high and 60 meters wide and most of the central power mains run down it; the barbettes which enclose the main battery centerline turrets and the sensor masts are also directly anchored to this structure, running through the entire vertical height of the ship to be secured to it. Three decks including officer's country and all of the CIC and bridge functions on the ship are included inside the armoured keel with the other 11 meters of vertical clearance being devoted to central power and fuel distribution. There are only twelve access points into the internal keel capable of handling the crew; the rest are milimetric piercings for diffuse fuel and energy transmission, and the keel is subdivided every 24 meters along the length of the hull by a standard 1-meter thick muonic aluminium transverse bulkhead in the event of the unthinkable possibility of enemy fire penetrating 20 meters of solid muonic aluminium; all strength members are also coated in graphite, and the access points are closed off by 10 separate 1-meter thick vacuum-tight muonic aluminium blast doors each. The foremost and sternmost 6.5 meters of the keel is completely filled in by muonic aluminium forming solid, unpierced muonic aluminium blocks of 23,400 cubic meters in size that anchor the keel into the hull. The ship's several dozen gigawatt-range emergency fission reactors are also located inside the keel to provide emergency backup power for the sustenance of life support--or when in combat, to power the CIC/Bridge command functions--with electricity which can last for decades.
The keel is not however relied upon alone; eight subsidiary keels, which are 20 x 20 meter structures running part, though not all of the length of the ship (usually around 70% of the hull length) and are completely solid muonic aluminium also exist at the cardinal compass points of the hull structure, directly backing the armour. These are connected to the keel and to each other by a reinforcing girder structure of 2-meter thick muonic aluminium girders, all designed in a classic truss arrangement which cross through and are interconnected with the internal bulkheads so that both in turn strength each other, with all girders being two force members and the truss structure being statically indeterminate with a 100% safety margin, meaning that half of the girders in the hull can fail before the ship can suffer hogging under maximum military acceleration or any kind of impact event within the design specifications. This consequently also allows when the girder structure is fully intact for the ship to withstand accelerations or impact events with a very large safety margin above the design specifications.
Completing the armour structure of the ship is the barbettes, engine sheaths and reactor shells, with one barbette corresponding to each turret and sensor mast; for example the Queen Keralka class has 20 barbettes, 18 for main battery turrets and 2 for sensor masts. The barbettes when inside of the hull armour are a 8.5-meter thick armour sandwich of 2 meters of muonic aluminium, 2 meters of ceramsteel composites, 2 meters of duranium, .5-meter of lead, and another 2 meters of muonic aluminium, with the outside coated in graphite. Outside of the hull armour all of these thicknesses are doubled so that the barbettes when exposed to direct enemy fire are armoured to a thickness of 17 meters all around. The barbettes in all cases each contain a fusion reactor, a small supply of fuel, and dozens of super-capacitors, and each barbette has only three entrances from inside the hull only except for milimetric diffuse power conduits. The barbettes are fully self-contained and with all capacitors internally provided and a backup fusion reactor, the guns can be worked even when the ship's main reactors have suffered a 100% power loss, often for hundreds of shots. The neutron base material tanks which provide the particles for the main particle cannon are thus also located within the barbettes for the turrets. The sensor mast turrets thus can also continue to operate even with all other power lost, and the sensor masts are covered in 17-meter thick armour entirely, with the sensors simply built over-powerful enough to work through the interference this creates out to the desired ranges, and the muonic aluminium in the armour itself being energized through milimetric leads as part of the subspace receivers for long range scanning and communications.
The actual turrets themselves are somewhat less armoured due to their large position and the preference to keep them low-aspect to minimize hits, being provideded with the below-the-hull 8.5 meter thick armour sandwich all around. However, the standard quadruple turrets on modern Taloran Line Ships have an 8.5 thick armour sandwich bulkead subdividing the turret, so that even if one half of the turret is destroyed the two guns in the other half can continue to function normally. Barbette/turret crews are provided so that the guns can be fought even if all contact has been completely lost with the rest of the ship. Wing turrets are attached to the secondary keels, running through one and terminating on the mid-line keel for strength (centerline turrets also run through the centerline keels at the strength deck).
The next component is thus the 17 meter thick armoured shells which surround each of the ship's (in the case of the Queen Keralka class) 144 primary fusion cycle reactors. The two-cycle reactors receive metallic hydrogen, and are penetrated for crew access three times, and also three times for the admission of metallic hydrogen, and three times again for the busbar leads--there are only two beryllium/helium vents, however). The two-cycle reactors on the Queen Keralka-class ships operate standard pulse fusion powered by metallic hydrogen; the helium which results is then catalyzed by very small amounts of anti-matter into helium-beryllium solar type fusion, and the exhaust gasses of helium 4 / beryllium 7 are then vented to storage and are used as thrust matter for the low-velocity ion manoeuvring thrusters as required. The reactor shells are dispersed throughout the hull to prevent one from being damaged by the destruction of another. A series of fifteen central busbar routing stations for internal power have separate and identical protection, and the ship's two jump drives (one main and one backup) are also similarly protected.
The missile batteries are arranged in Armoured Decks which pierce the regular armour hull, and are surrounded in the standard 8.5 meter thick armour sandwiches on all sides, pierced only for internal access, with subdivision between every eight launchers and corresponding magazines. Identical protection is provided by the secondary turrets; the point-defence weapons are all mounted in individual self-contained mountings inset into the armour without completely penetrating it. Like the individual secondary turrets each one of the torpedo launchers is mounted individually.
Defensively the last area protected is the ship's gravitic vanes. These are defended by 17-meter thick standard external armour sandwich like the barbettes, with the four superlight and four main main drive vanes clustered together in the extremely thick amidships sponsons. Four secondary thrust vanes are mounted aft with 8.5-meter thick protection. Eight manoeuvring vanes aft and four forward have similar protection, and the final, reversing and forward manoeuvring primary vane mounted in the telaro bow is afforded full 17-meter thick protection due to its importance. This completes the overview of the passive protective systems, which in combination with the hull, occupies 25.5% of the internal volume of the ship entire, the other 75% being empty space for tankage, habitation, storage, or the mounting of machinery; this does not count barbettes, turrets, sensor masts, and the small craft hangar, nor the sponsons nor other gravitic vane mounts, all of which are not counted in the hull volume figures, and so whose armour is not, either.
On the Empress Mikela the Great in particular the ship is 2 meters beamier; this is an addition to the backing of the second, primary armour layer of a thin layer of Tylium and space, sealed with a .1-meter thick muonic aluminium layer behind it off from the void space, allowing the mounting of machinery which transfers the energy absorbed by the tylium as heat, into the ship's power systems as electricity. Additionally the reactor spaces are expanded to allow for the third tylium-based stage of the reactor generation process, and two new armoured shells for the main and backup hyperdrivers are installed. These changes cumulatively increase the percentage of the hull's volume filled by armour and structural members from 10.5% to 13% on the Empress Mikela the Great sub-class.
A brief addendum on repairs: Within the stores are large quantities of .1-meter thick muonic aluminium plating which can be welded across damaged sections of the hull during lulls in battle or between actions where further repairs cannot be effected at a dedicated facility. These sections can then be flooded with metallic hydrogen up to the limits of the sealed bulkheads or lower armour layers (if it is only a partial penetrating hit). This turns the damaged area into an ERA block which can provide at least some protection to the ship's internal spaces, with the bulkheads resisting the force of the detonation enough to direct it outward with the outer plate intentionally lightly welded on, so that at least some defence can be provided in the already damaged sector against incoming fire which would otherwise have an impeded path into the ship's internal spaces.
Note also that regularly published calculations neglect both the volume of the barbettes / sensor masts / hangars / armoured vanes and also the mass of the armour protecting them. Since the barbettes, sensor masts, turrets, and armoured vanes are a very large component of the armour, as well as the secondary turrets and missile casemates, these figures can be slightly deceptive. For example though 10.5% of the hull volume is armour when the armour weights of the ship are balanced against the much more heavily armoured sponsons, vanes, barbettes, and etc, and their volume, the figure rises to not less than 25.5% for the Queen Keralka class and 28% for the Empress Mikela the Great. The actual density of the hull armour due to this accounting of figures (which is partially intentionally deceptive) is about 2,000 kg/ m^3, with the muonic aluminium being 1,700 kg / m^3 and the highly sophisticated ceramsteel being as little as 1,000 kg / m^3. Therefore the empty mass of the average Taloran ship is actually closer to double the figures typically listed, which basically are published for the hull alone in a stripped condition without armament fitted, a fairly typical shipbuilding practice; the same is true of most other powers.
Last edited by The Duchess of Zeon on Fri Jun 26, 2009 8:17 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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Destructionator XV
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#53
Your background and tech material is always fun to read. Thanks for posting it.
Last edited by Destructionator XV on Tue Jun 23, 2009 5:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Adam D. Ruppe
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#54
You're very welcome.Destructionator XV wrote:Your background and tech material is always fun to read. Thanks for posting it.
..How do you enjoy the conclusion to the story, if I may ask, now that it's up?
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frigidmagi
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#55
Last Women Standing: That ending makes me very, very afraid.
Sole Survivor: I commend Maria for her actions(I'm in pompous mode bear with me), despite what the old monster said to her, she acted in accordance with the best sentiments of honor and duty. The creature and her slave may prattle about Christian morality being her sole support I say the Samurai would praise her as would the Dog Soldiers of the American Plains. There are greater things then the survival of the individual and there are fates that render a person's individual survival worthless and meaningless. Any worthwhile trooper could tell you that. One prays that the creature's death is ironic in this regard.
Cardinal Files: So how bad does it have to be to declare State of Siege? Does it compare with our State of National Emergency or the state Lincoln's government operated in during the civil war?
Sole Survivor: I commend Maria for her actions(I'm in pompous mode bear with me), despite what the old monster said to her, she acted in accordance with the best sentiments of honor and duty. The creature and her slave may prattle about Christian morality being her sole support I say the Samurai would praise her as would the Dog Soldiers of the American Plains. There are greater things then the survival of the individual and there are fates that render a person's individual survival worthless and meaningless. Any worthwhile trooper could tell you that. One prays that the creature's death is ironic in this regard.
Cardinal Files: So how bad does it have to be to declare State of Siege? Does it compare with our State of National Emergency or the state Lincoln's government operated in during the civil war?
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
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frigidmagi
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#56
It is good to know Karma exists in your universes Marina. 
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#57
I'll post a table of power/mass ratios with the Asvin and Sarasavsati at 1.
Asvin / Sarasavsati - 1.
Ori - 1.
Ancients - 1.1.
Asgard, O'Neill era - 1.1.
Wraith Hives with 3 ZPMs (the Maedhv arrangement) - 1.8.
TGG, Tau'ri with Ancient shields powered by Aurora type reactors or tylium boosted M/AM - 1.8. (hypothesized only)
Vorlons and Shadows - 1.9.
Wraith Hives with ZPM - 4.5.
Tau'ri, 304s - 5.
Ha'taks, Anubis - 5.8.
Asgard, Beliskner era - 6.5.
Empress Mikela type upgrades (using tylium/fusion cycle) - 6.5.
TGG ships, pure anti-matter / quantum singularity - 14.
Ha'taks, pre-Anubis - 23.
Wraith Hives without ZPM - 27.5
TGG ships, fusion-powered - 50.
Note this is a table of POWER TO MASS ratios, which means that, for example, for the Asgard to generate as much power in a ship as the Asvin or Sarasavsati, that ship must be 110% the size of a ship of the Asvin or Sarasavsati with comparable power generation figures.
To provide further information, the Xihuatlatl has the mass of 150 superdreadnoughts of the same class as the Empress Mikela the Great. And she wasn't operating at full power over Terra (and has all sorts of other issues to be revealed later). No-Ships are also rather heavy on protection and engines and light on guns. Note that these figures are not completely useful in comparing firepower; for example on Maedhv's modified hive ships one entire ZPM is devoted to powering the telepathic and hidden-world disruption shields to prevent effects in either one from harming the ship, and a second is committed purely to powering the hundreds of spot shield generators required meaning that the ship's firepower, FTL speed, acceleration, etc, are no better than those of the ZPM hive in the series finale, it is just much more survivable.
Asvin / Sarasavsati - 1.
Ori - 1.
Ancients - 1.1.
Asgard, O'Neill era - 1.1.
Wraith Hives with 3 ZPMs (the Maedhv arrangement) - 1.8.
TGG, Tau'ri with Ancient shields powered by Aurora type reactors or tylium boosted M/AM - 1.8. (hypothesized only)
Vorlons and Shadows - 1.9.
Wraith Hives with ZPM - 4.5.
Tau'ri, 304s - 5.
Ha'taks, Anubis - 5.8.
Asgard, Beliskner era - 6.5.
Empress Mikela type upgrades (using tylium/fusion cycle) - 6.5.
TGG ships, pure anti-matter / quantum singularity - 14.
Ha'taks, pre-Anubis - 23.
Wraith Hives without ZPM - 27.5
TGG ships, fusion-powered - 50.
Note this is a table of POWER TO MASS ratios, which means that, for example, for the Asgard to generate as much power in a ship as the Asvin or Sarasavsati, that ship must be 110% the size of a ship of the Asvin or Sarasavsati with comparable power generation figures.
To provide further information, the Xihuatlatl has the mass of 150 superdreadnoughts of the same class as the Empress Mikela the Great. And she wasn't operating at full power over Terra (and has all sorts of other issues to be revealed later). No-Ships are also rather heavy on protection and engines and light on guns. Note that these figures are not completely useful in comparing firepower; for example on Maedhv's modified hive ships one entire ZPM is devoted to powering the telepathic and hidden-world disruption shields to prevent effects in either one from harming the ship, and a second is committed purely to powering the hundreds of spot shield generators required meaning that the ship's firepower, FTL speed, acceleration, etc, are no better than those of the ZPM hive in the series finale, it is just much more survivable.
Last edited by The Duchess of Zeon on Fri Jun 26, 2009 10:11 pm, edited 4 times in total.
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Destructionator XV
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#58
I actually haven't finished reading it yet. I've been following the feedback thread, but the story thread is still on the todo list. I'll hopefully get back to it this next weekend.The Duchess of Zeon wrote: ..How do you enjoy the conclusion to the story, if I may ask, now that it's up?
Adam D. Ruppe
Oh my hero, so far away now.....
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frigidmagi
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#59
At this point it's roughly 3 years before Apollo 11. In little over 2 years Apollo 8 will orbit the moon. The Space Race is in a dead heat. And the Apollo program is about 4 or 3 years old. After the Space Walk of
Which leads to the questions...
A: How do you stop the Americans from finding about this thing?
B: How do you catch up with a maturing program that's about to hit the high point of it's operations?
From what I understand in this point in OTL, the Soviet leadership was less then committed to actually landing on the moon. Due to Alexey Leonov's first spacewalk almost being his last.
There's also the question of how you keep the US from falling fairly far without the prestige of the Moon Walk? We're already in a fair bit of social upheaval and in trouble over Vietnam. In 2104 you got Soviet officers worrying about the US's opinion though, so not only are we still around but we're still a rival and a danger to them.
Which leads to the questions...
A: How do you stop the Americans from finding about this thing?
B: How do you catch up with a maturing program that's about to hit the high point of it's operations?
From what I understand in this point in OTL, the Soviet leadership was less then committed to actually landing on the moon. Due to Alexey Leonov's first spacewalk almost being his last.
There's also the question of how you keep the US from falling fairly far without the prestige of the Moon Walk? We're already in a fair bit of social upheaval and in trouble over Vietnam. In 2104 you got Soviet officers worrying about the US's opinion though, so not only are we still around but we're still a rival and a danger to them.
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
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frigidmagi
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#60
Now I really, really want to know what's happening over in the US and NATO.
Did we hold anything at all?
Also I feel within my rights to call for US Cyborg Marines of Doom.
Did we hold anything at all?
Also I feel within my rights to call for US Cyborg Marines of Doom.
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#61
We do get to the Moon first, yet, but we don't find it ironically because it's on the far side of the Moon.. And we were so focused on landing a man (which to have communications had to be on the light side, for safety reasons) on the moon that all of our explorations of the Moon focused on the light side, primarily surveying for landing sites and so on. That means that none of the very sophisticated instruments that the Soviets put on the Luna series to scan the entire moon with, were ever used to scan the entire moon by the USA due to our focus purely on getting boots on the ground there.frigidmagi wrote:At this point it's roughly 3 years before Apollo 11. In little over 2 years Apollo 8 will orbit the moon. The Space Race is in a dead heat. And the Apollo program is about 4 or 3 years old. After the Space Walk of
Which leads to the questions...
A: How do you stop the Americans from finding about this thing?
B: How do you catch up with a maturing program that's about to hit the high point of it's operations?
From what I understand in this point in OTL, the Soviet leadership was less then committed to actually landing on the moon. Due to Alexey Leonov's first spacewalk almost being his last.
There's also the question of how you keep the US from falling fairly far without the prestige of the Moon Walk? We're already in a fair bit of social upheaval and in trouble over Vietnam. In 2104 you got Soviet officers worrying about the US's opinion though, so not only are we still around but we're still a rival and a danger to them.
This means the Soviets can plot in detail a recovery mission while hiding it under the cover of various programmes... More on that will be steadily revealed as each chapter will be followed by two "podshorts" in homage to the episodic BSG podcasts, one in the "long history" of the events subsequent to the Luna 10 Incident, and one in the "near history" of the past decades leading up to the Present for the actual story chapters.
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#62
First scene of the first chapter will be set in the good ole' US of A...frigidmagi wrote:Now I really, really want to know what's happening over in the US and NATO.
Did we hold anything at all?
Also I feel within my rights to call for US Cyborg Marines of Doom.
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frigidmagi
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#63
You know Cybernetics could do quiet a bit that the Soviets are doing with genetics.
We got androids, we got genekids, do we got cyborgs?
We got androids, we got genekids, do we got cyborgs?
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#64
You'll see the overall level of cyberneticization in both societies soon, promise.frigidmagi wrote:You know Cybernetics could do quiet a bit that the Soviets are doing with genetics.
We got androids, we got genekids, do we got cyborgs?
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frigidmagi
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#65
Going off the story here's what I presume the world to look like sorta...
Red is of course the Soviet Union
Blue is the United States of America
Purple is the United States of Europe
Brown is the Greater Republic of India
Course there are some questions like the fates of Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, North Korea, Vietnam and Burma.
I figured India absorbed Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan along with Pakistan, it would seem very possible to me that India also absorbed Burma but that's just guessing.
Map gets updates along with the story of course.
Red is of course the Soviet Union
Blue is the United States of America
Purple is the United States of Europe
Brown is the Greater Republic of India
Course there are some questions like the fates of Yugoslavia, Greece, Turkey, North Korea, Vietnam and Burma.
I figured India absorbed Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bhutan along with Pakistan, it would seem very possible to me that India also absorbed Burma but that's just guessing.
Map gets updates along with the story of course.
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
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KlavoHunter
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#66
The Dutch seem to know the capabilities of the Kaetjhasti; I wonder how little the French and Spanish truly know about what they are getting into?
((This is why we have AUTHOR FEEDBACKS. Do not post in the Story Threads -- Tevar))
((This is why we have AUTHOR FEEDBACKS. Do not post in the Story Threads -- Tevar))
Last edited by KlavoHunter on Sat Nov 14, 2009 9:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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frigidmagi
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#67
25,000 men to conquer a realm of 17 million? They've underestimated the enemy clearly.
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken
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The Duchess of Zeon
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#68
More than that. That' s just the western lands and the Kaetjh plain. But it's damn near been done before...frigidmagi wrote:25,000 men to conquer a realm of 17 million? They've underestimated the enemy clearly.
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frigidmagi
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#69
Against an organized enemy with gunpowder weapons?
"it takes two sides to end a war but only one to start one. And those who do not have swords may still die upon them." Tolken