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Do-Mo In reply to Michel-Lamontagne [2022-09-10 09:56:08 +0000 UTC]

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Michel-Lamontagne In reply to Do-Mo [2022-09-11 19:11:08 +0000 UTC]

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Do-Mo In reply to Michel-Lamontagne [2022-09-15 18:23:13 +0000 UTC]

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Michel-Lamontagne In reply to Do-Mo [2022-09-22 01:25:05 +0000 UTC]

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Do-Mo In reply to Eman-Ekaf [2015-12-10 05:25:01 +0000 UTC]

Awesome questions, I'll be happy to go over this piece by piece!

OK, first thing that should be pointed out, and this is probably obvious, decks and everything internal is not oriented like on a naval ship, more like a skyscraper. That makes sense because then whenever the engine is on, inside the ship, there would be a sensation of gravity in the opposite direction of acceleration. So yeah, whenever the engine is on, inside of the ship would literally be like inside a skyscraper, just with an engine in the basement

So, yes, the way back is the propulsion, and connected to it are fuel tanks, and between fuel tanks you can see towers with thrusters, and just in front of them two(1 on top, 1 on bot) sensor towers for some added situational awareness and yeah, fire control.

Those containers are something I just like to add to my ships (kinda like this Deviant link ), basically interchangeable cargo holds, something that ships could eject if they needed to lose weight, something that would be easy to transfer between ships. Sort of like how you add external hard drives to you pc it's a lot simpler to increase data capacity, and can be easily transferred between PCs, something like that, but for cargo. Inside could be ANYTHING, food, water, ammo, spare parts, coolants, additional fuel, whatever is needed.

The next part is airlock, and docking section, also "shuttles" are carried here, and there are internal hangars for 4 smaller ships. If you can see the hatch on the side, that part can be extended to reach to other ships. Here would probably be anything that relates to the support ships carried, like spare parts, some diagnostic tools, maybe a workshop, stuff like that.

Next up is the neck, in which the crew would be, but those wouldn't be star trek apartment sized crew quarters, but something much MUCH smaller, a crewman would get something that's about 2 cubic meters, basically a coffin with a bed and a small small space for personal belongings Which sounds like extremely small, but really there is no reason for them to have more than that, this is a warship, and I took submarines as inspiration, crew members are either sleeping, on duty, or in shared spaces.

Attached to that are the gimbaled centrifuges. This part is a bit hard to explain in words, but I'll try. As you can see in the pictures above, that part can transform a bit, when the engine is running, or when the ship is in combat, the large sections would fold in, to make it a smaller target, and to protect the neck. When the ship is just drifting, those sections would deploy and spin to create some sensation of gravity. It wouldn't be a full G, but it would be something (with 3 rotations a minute, about 0,5g at the tips, and only about 0,1g near the center). Inside, in the center of that whole setup would be a reaction wheel that would spin really fast in the opposite direction, which would counteract distortion in motion while these sections are spinning. I like this design since centrifuges generate a sensation of gravity towards the inner sides of the ring(or a circular motion), and once those sections fold in, and the engines start, internal sensation of gravity is in the same direction as when they are deployed. I'm not sure how well I explained this, but try googling "Pilgrim Observer", that was my inspiration, and it might be a bit clearer ...you can also check out this animation I did of an older version of this model, it demonstrates the transformation a bit Link
Those sections would contain anything that needs gravity(or simplifies life onboard with gravity), like gyms, mess halls, infirmary...things related to the crew, to keep them healthy, and give them something to do when not on duty.

And then the "Head", this is where most of the weapons are, they aren't apparent like those big cannons since I took inspiration from modern warships, and placed most of the missiles in a VLS type containers. Also yeah, that would be communications, as well as long range sensors, ecm, eccm, guidance for missiles...pretty much anything related to detection, spying and tracking. And in the middle of the Head, in a bunker of sorts, would be the bridge.

Radiators are the big red things, liquid droplet radiators, which could deploy when needed, or fold in when the ship is in danger or something. The red dots in them would be droplets of heated lithium that would slowly radiate away heat. There would be some passive radiators on those foldable gimbals, but still I imagine this ship would carry large amounts of coolants inside, something that could be flushed out if the situation calls for it.

It's not a perfect design, and parts of it could have surely been made with more sense or logic, but I guess no ship or spaceship is perfect with no cutbacks or design compromises
For starters I have NO IDEA how to calculated anything related to heating or cooling, so those parts are probably way off. The gravity would be weird inside, and would take some time to get used to. And a bunch of other things...but still I actually think this could function as a spaceship

It's not over analyzing, I'm happy to answer anything I can, and would be happy to see how your ship turns out

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Eman-Ekaf In reply to Do-Mo [2015-12-11 05:22:53 +0000 UTC]

Thanks man, that helps a lot! I like the idea of the modular containers and I used that idea in a cargo ship I built today in the game (not sure If I'll post pictures anywhere). The one prior was heavily inspired by the ship from "The Martian" so I use the centrifuge gravity idea mostly as well. The idea of having the hangar is cool too. one other question: are the dish-like parts at the front for communications? (I also thought of the ECM but that would be massive) A couple problems though from my perspective, one being that, bringing up my question, if those are in fact the comms gear, they're in a bad spot for impact in combat. The same goes for the bridge. Though you said it relies on evasion over armour, the possibility of being hit is still there and the control centre of the ship would be much better protected were it deeper into the ship. I'd also like to say that I 'do' like the bunk idea. It's what I expected but I misunderstood from your description and thought that you were including cafeteria and gym etc. in there too, which is why I was confused about size; my bad. But that brings me to the main concern: gravity. the centrifuge makes sense and you obviously have knowledge there considering you know the different g forces in different places but its the acceleration based one that doesn't seem quite right to me. You'd have some sense of gravity while they were extended and spinning but when collapsed they'd basically be zero g. The key word is "acceleration", not (velocity if that's the right word. haha). The acceleration thing would only make sense if the ship was constantly travelling in a relatively straight line at 9.8m/s^2 (I think...) as the crew would eventually reach the same speed as the craft returning it to effectively zero g again. I'd personally just go with the zero g idea and buckle up haha. Though I also never thought of the idea of dumping coolant as a secondary heat venting method. I don't have anything to back it up but it's an interesting solution on a warship that I'd assume creates a lot of heat with many pieces of equipment that are likely heat sensitive. And sorry for the massive paragraph. I didn't know how to break it down better. I swear I won't post massive comments too often.

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Do-Mo In reply to Eman-Ekaf [2015-12-11 09:17:42 +0000 UTC]

Dish-like parts, well first off, they are probably over-sized, but I didn't like how the front piece turned out without them, the whole ship was just...well dildo shaped This came as a second choice and I liked it a lot more, yes the looks helped, but also it made a bit more sense. Think of something like "Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array" in New Mexico. This would be something like that...in a way. A very sensitive long range radar dish. In reality, something of this size, if put in space, could probably scan most of the solar system, and way beyond, if used for science, but if you used it in a warship, it could probably track many many other warships, track their engine signatures, listen in on their communications, track their missiles, basically give it an amazing situational awareness for an amazing range. And at the same time, give it's missiles(or other allied ships) a better shot at hitting enemies, while sending out strong signals to jam their incoming guided missiles. With warships like this, battles would be fought at distances of thousands, even tens of thousands kilometers, so every bit of info would help. You *could* also say it creates some type of magnetic or electrostatic field, which clears space debris in front of it, making it a type of deflector dish, buuut that's something I know little about, so I don't really want to go there yet. Whatever it may be in the end, the front may not be the best spot, but then again, if in combat, it would probably try to turn towards its target, that way it would be the smallest target possible, and at the same time, full sensor power would be directed.

Pure communication dishes would be a lot smaller and could be placed somewhere else where it can turn, and cover more directions (like for instance in that fire control tower).

The bridge is there because that is the ships head, most of the sensors are there, so that simplifies construction, that place is closest to the point defense missiles, so it gives them a better shot at stopping an incoming missile, and with layers of hull that are provided by missile silos, even without added armor(you don't need armor, you need layers ), it is the most protected part of the ship, also, crew sections are close by, so that simplifies moving around.

Again, the centrifuges would only be collapsed if the ship is accelerating, or if it's in combat (or I guess if it's docking, but then again, that's why it has support ships so it would rarely need to dock...I guess... ), which most of the time it wouldn't be doing. And no, the ship can't accelerate at the speed of 9,8m/s^2(I usually skip the ^2 part, I know it's wrong, but I'm just lazy in typing those things ), but as you can see in the info above, it's acceleration in close to 1m/s (^2 ), which is close to 0,1g, not our earthlike gravity, only a tenth of it, but still something. And with the amount of delta V it has, it could only maintain its acceleration for about 10 days, and that's if you're planning to dry it out, in practice, it would usually turn on it's engine for a day, or maybe even less. Even a single day of acceleration would give it a velocity of more than 80km/s, which could get it from Earth to Mars (in an average distance) in about a month, and in that month long journey, only the first day would the centrifuges be collapsed, the rest of the trip, they'd be spinning.
Sure, the rest of the ship outside centrifuges would be in zero g, but hey, it's a warship, not a hotel, you can't have it all

One problem with constantly spinning centrifuges that some authors like to forget, is that they DON'T WORK while the engine is on. A centrifuge creates a sensation of gravity in one direction, but when the engine is on, that direction would be shifted to the side the engine is on. So instead of it being towards the deck floor inside the centrifuge ring, it would be...well towards the deck floor, and a bit to the side, depending on how fast the ship is accelerating. That can work with really low acceleration ships(but it would still complicate thing at times), or with some angled centrifuges, but that would definitively complicate the design. Which, again, is why I like this design with foldable centrifuges

I think almost any spaceship would carry coolant, something to suck in heat from engines, computers, life support, weapons if it has them(pretty much anything), and carry that heat to radiators. A warship would probably carry additional coolant, in case it loses some, since it's an essential commodity. So if the situation is dire, in a way I think it's common sense that you'd have some ability to perform an emergency coolant flush, and cool yourself off. It would be terribly wasteful, but if it's that or burning up, I'd choose wasteful! It's also added weight that the ship carries, and that's a bad thing, but again, you can't have it all

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Eman-Ekaf In reply to Do-Mo [2015-12-18 22:36:32 +0000 UTC]

Nice. Helpful information. I was concerned that accelerating constantly would only be possible for a short time but I never really thought about how long it would take to react the universe's "speed limit" haha. On the one I built in-game, it didn't have gravity unfortunately and was a bit smaller so would likely run for a shorter time, and I used cargo containers at the front rather than heavy armour so I could keep weight down (depending on their contents I guess), carry more items, and they could also act as a sort of stand-off armour as well. just an idea but no clue if it would actually work.

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Do-Mo In reply to Eman-Ekaf [2015-12-22 14:51:13 +0000 UTC]

Cargo containers at the front are a good idea, especially if lots of cargo is carried, that way there is no limit as to how many cargo containers you can add, when I start making bulk freighters, I'm pretty sure all of them will have cargo at the front. And yeah, it would work as "extra armor", and you have some real-world examples of that, if you haven't already, try googling "whipple shield", and you'll see how even thin layers of armor can help if they are spaced apart. Something similar is applied in German main battle tank Leo 2, spaced armor, which also helps to direct explosions while inside armor, so it can basically went out some of the damage received. But beyond that, practice has shown us that layers of different materials, of different densities act much better than just some solid blocks, which can be seen in M1 Abrams sandwich armor. And if you want to go even further than that, check out Israeli Merkava IV main battle tank, which is arguably the most armored and protected tank in the world, and what they did, after the armor and everything, is they placed the tank engine in a position where it too could act as a bit of added defense, so if they get hit by something, it needs to go true armor AND the engine, and only then can it harm the crew. So yeah, cargo containers, and just about anything else will help when taking a hit

Oh, and there is a cool idea about the speed limit, yeah, you can never reach or exceed the speed of light, but that shouldn't really matter to you if you're on a constantly accelerating spaceship. Imagine a hypothetical spaceship that has 1g of acceleration (so close to 10m/s^2), after a while it would get close to the speed of light(pretty fast actually), but from the ships point of view it would keep accelerating, when in reality the perception of time on it would slow down. So while in the rest of the universe, thousands and thousands of years would pass, if you're on that ship, it would only take you about 10 years to reach the center of our galaxy. And while billions and billions of years passed, from the inside it would only seem close to a 100 years to reach the end of visible universe. It's an interesting idea, practically within a human lifetime, you could reach farther than we can see There is a good book called "A world out of time" that play with this idea, and how it's basically a time travelers device

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Do-Mo In reply to beltminer [2015-12-02 11:58:57 +0000 UTC]

You're right, it's completely Pilgrim Observer inspired, I like the idea of a gimbaled centrifuge, something that can provide a sensation of gravity in same direction, no mater if the ship is accelerating or drifting. While I did play with other version of a gimbaled centrifuge I think this one is my favorite. I also like how it can give a bit of a "turtle" feel to a warship, fold everything in, create a smaller target, protect the crew section...turn a thin neck into an armored citadel

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Michel-Lamontagne In reply to Do-Mo [2022-09-09 03:31:10 +0000 UTC]

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