HOME | DD
chaos-sandwhich β Vesper Class (concept sketch)
Published: 2012-11-29 11:45:37 +0000 UTC; Views: 2358; Favourites: 63; Downloads: 0
Redirect to original
Description
Concept sketchs for the VESPER class hunter killersmall vessel with heavy forward firing railguns, for smashing through blockades and larger capital ship formations
equally suited to hit and run attacks on enemy shipping, hunting in packs like u-boats of the past
these are small ships, and often operate from a larger mother ship with docking ports for re fueling and re arming
Related content
Comments: 77
It was intended to occupy a size/classification similar to aΒ Littoral combat ship or Fast attack Craft.Β
Small but with anti capital ship weapons needed to punch above its weight.
π: 0 β©: 1
wow, it looks almost like a decepticon warship. Isn't it. and I thought it looked like a "frigate" or a "flagship"?
π: 0 β©: 0
I love the perspective, really detailed. Excellent work !
π: 0 β©: 1
added to Sketches and concepts in Sci-fi Archives
π: 0 β©: 1
Very cool. They have a quick and nimble feel as well
π: 0 β©: 1
Thanks , i was hoping they would seem nimble
π: 0 β©: 0
thanks 
π: 0 β©: 1
That would be quite neat. Should be featured in a few other scifi groups here!
π: 0 β©: 1
well i'll try a few submissions maybe
π: 0 β©: 0
Nice design dude, dissipating the heat on those things is going to be murder though. Real world railguns fire with so much sheer heat that a plume of plasma trails the slug from the barrel
π: 0 β©: 1
thanks, and yeah, but fortunatly the forward hull is ceramic, i may nave to sink heat exchangers through slits in the hull to dissapate the heat,and maybe some kind of system that can make positive use of the energy
π: 0 β©: 1
The ceramics and heat exchangers are a good idea to reduce the heat from railgun firings. you could find some way to vent the heat through the ship's thruster exhausts. that would increase the ship's flight speeds during combat.
π: 0 β©: 1
might be a nifty little trick, i'm working on the firing system at the momnent, probably going to use the plasma version cause it looks cool, but a sabot might reduce the heat
π: 0 β©: 1
one problem with the sabot idea, railgun ammo is ALL slug, no powder, no charge to ignite said powder, no shell casing, basically nothing more than just the tip of a bullet.
I don't understand what you mean about the 'plasma' version. do you mean change the railguns to plasma cannons?
π: 0 β©: 1
well the round can function as the armature , or the armature can be a seperate part, one type being a sabot casing that is simply pushing the round down the barrel , another being the hybrid plasma armature with a thin strip of material that will become plasma once the temperature gets high enough, i personally prefer this version because it looks cool [link]
some other version i have seen involve the shell simply functioning as the armature, but this reduces the flexibility of the ammunition types avalible
also it doesn't have to be a solid slug, i don't think it would be too hard to add an additional warhead to the tip, but its not required due to the shell velocity
π: 0 β©: 1
that's the thing, why would you need to purposely put something in the barrel to become plasma? the sheer heat from firing creates a giant plume of superheated plasma that trails behind the slug.
The railgun's lack of ammunition types is due to that extreme velocity. Why add an additional effect, like incendiary or high explosives, when that slug moving at speeds of Mach 10 or more will simply crash through any kind of armor you put in front of it.
π: 0 β©: 1
well firstly , there is a contact ratio required for the rail armature, which usually means that the slug needs to be shaped specifically which can spoil its areodynamic stability
the majority of slugs have a foil strip applied to the rear of the round to produce the plasma effect, as the round would produce unfavourable plasma type
the addition of warheads increase the effectiveness of the round in the specific instance i am intending to us them, due to the ships hull composition a kinetic round is effective in penetration but does little damage to critical systems , the secondary charge functions as a 'bunker ' buster type, detonation once desirable penetration depth has been reached to do massive damage to the internal systems
π: 0 β©: 1
I can understand that about the plasma effect and the aerodynamic stability.
About the whole thing about the slug doing little damage to critical systems, let's see a ship survive a slug through the engines, a reactor, or a magazine, that should do severe damage to the attacked vessel if not destroy it outright. For example, in WW2, Bismarck sank Hood with a lucky hit to her magazines, snapped the ship in two like she was a twig
π: 0 β©: 1
yeah but the ships i've designed her to hit are typically vast and vaulted
, attacking a dreadnought for example is difficult, given that the vaulted structure essentially gives the ship about a dozen hulls so the round is unlikely to penetrate deep enough to cause any damge to essential systems
as far as reactor jits go little dmg can be done without successive stikes due to the reactors assmembly bio shield jacket, made of reinforced boron nitride, a material not given to fail structually without extreme destructive forece
engines are typcically vunerable , but thats the point, however the successive fan compresser system will continue to function despite multiple hits to the system due to its layout, ( hard to explain without a diagram) although its effectiveness will reduce when the system in breached
as far as magazines go they aren't too much to worry about, as i'm working on a system of gel based propellants that are stored in two seperate componets, making them inert until mixed
so no volitile stockpiles of explosives to strike
keep in mind the designs of the ship took railguns into account when designed , and as such well prepared for their use in combat
π: 0 β©: 1
Very good points, i can see a need for multiple ammunition types in order to punch through and damage a ship like that, makes me wanna measure them up against the ships used by the Ariel-jin in my works.
See if they measure up to a race that has had tens of thousands of years to perfect their technology and has had access to slipspace engines for at least six thousand of those years
π: 0 β©: 1
well its not going to fare well against spacecraft, as airships have to reduce weight a lot, ( the biggest limitation the design faces)
but they have some interesting lines of quantum research , incuding some rather nasty weapons , one branch of such weapons is the 0 kelvin state bomb , essentially an energy drain, it reduces the energy of all matter in the field of the weapon , killing organic matter, and stopping all motion and halting any chemical process's
π: 0 β©: 1
that's a real nasty piece of work there, hate to be anywhere near where something like that gets set off
π: 0 β©: 1
indeed, it is of course tempermental , and difficult to deploy
π: 0 β©: 1
LOL, the railguns, or the ships they need to take out?
π: 0 β©: 1
well all the tech has teething problems, some just less than others
( railguns have an annoying problem with wear on the rails which drastically reduces their lifespan)
π: 0 β©: 1
that's true. Railguns are notoriously hard on the rails, probably requiring new rails fitted in to replace the old ones after every few battles
π: 0 β©: 1
i am considering multi rail systems , and several new quad rail formation's i have researched , but nothing so far solves the problem, however the quads do reduce the required length
π: 0 β©: 1
that's true, quad rails instead of dual would cut the required barrel length in half
π: 0 β©: 1
i have seen some interesting ideas about giving the shell a graphite jacket, but i don't think it will be a suitable
π: 0 β©: 1
well the graphite can easily be removed from the rails unlike some other materials, but they way my ship designs have th guns fitted means there is limited access to the barrel for cleaning
π: 0 β©: 1
well that sucks. not that i'm any better seeing as i fit the railguns in one of my ship designs in paired turrets amidships
π: 0 β©: 1
well i find in turret formation its not too hard to have a retracting door and a turret maintenance bay to automatically purge the barrels and even replace the rails if the design has ejectable rails that is , the problem with min is the are mounted in the bow, so there is no internal access to the barrel exit
π: 0 β©: 1
that's true, in the design i'm workin on, the Kamikaze-class, the railguns are all mounted in retractable turrets that can be pulled inside the hull when not in use and then deployed when the ship enters combat. However, the railguns aren't the primary weapons on that class, that job falls to a pair of retractable positron cannons as well as two entire batteries of beam cannons
π: 0 β©: 1
nice, most of my ships have had the weapons downsized a little, instead boasting many more smaller armaments in banks of 4 and 6 , with up to 8x the rate of fire
add into that mix the use of self guided, fin stabalised rounds and thats a deadly hail of gunfire that can find its way into every singel nook and cranny , seeking out any and all weak spots to rip and tear away the armor to shreds in a matter of seconds
the best analogy i can think of is like piranha , compared to a shark, the shark does damage sure , but the swam does its dmg with far more ruthless efficiency and speed
π: 0 β©: 1
lol, yep. I use real world sea-going warships as a basis then double their weapons load to make up for the fact the weapons are going onto a starship, think Space Battleship Yamato in basic design principal. Like the Kamikaze-class for example, their armament consists of: 2 x βYudachiβ positron blaster cannons
18 x βYugureβ225cm high-energy beam cannons
40 x βShinonomeβ 115cm high-energy beam cannons
84 x 60cm missile launcher/torpedo tubes
12 x βInazumaβ 40cm linear cannons
32 x βArareβ 60mm automatic, multi-barrel beam CIWS
that's on each ship
π: 0 β©: 1
that sounds like a lot, don't want to overload it though , or you'll make it a bit OP
π: 0 β©: 1
i'm not increasing or changing the weapons load from that, i've got it right where i want it.
Besides, the Kamikaze-class is built using such highly advanced tech that the railguns each ship carries do not suffer the drawbacks nearly as bad as real world ones do and will punch through damn near anything because of the extreme speed the rounds travel with.
π: 0 β©: 1
cool, but like i said, don't want to make them too overpowered, every weapon needs a drawback, mainly for narrative reasons
π: 0 β©: 1
that's true. The railguns themselves aren't used that often because of that penetration. Wouldn't wanna fire on another ship only to hit a space colony behind it, for example.
π: 0 β©: 1
indeed , something sci fi often fails to deal with is the problem with missing the target, and what happens to the rounds/missles afterwards
π: 0 β©: 1
yep, most of the time in sci-fi they don't even portray a weapons system correctly. the only time i've seen a railgun realistically portrayed was in Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, and even then you never hear about what happens to the fired slug after it punched through that giant decepticon
π: 0 β©: 1
indeed, though i would say it would probably come to rest in some un-importnat sand dune if i had to guess
and i think Battlestar galactica gets it right, since the shells have a detonator fuse in them to detonate at a set range
π: 0 β©: 1
nice, they really try to do it right by using a detonator fuse like that
π: 0 β©: 1
indeed, and most of BSGs big guns are flak based anyway so thats cool
π: 0 β©: 1
shorthand for battlestar galactica, since its such a long name
rBSG is the one if your talking about the rebooted series
π: 0 β©: 1
| Next =>