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MaxxQBuNine — RolandClassDD 004
Published: 2014-07-28 05:48:03 +0000 UTC; Views: 1714; Favourites: 8; Downloads: 0
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Is the small open bay forward of the boat bay for launching EW and/or recon drones?
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Yes. The normal setup is for the drones to launch via the boat bay(s), but with the Roland's small size, the drone storage is separate from the boat bay.
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Any chance I could use this or other ship images on an Honorverse-related web site?
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Probably not - maybe. While I created the models and the images, they belong to BuNine and David Weber. While I'm a member of BuNine, I can't make that decision on my own. I *can* run your request up the chain, but I just want to warn you that you may not be able to get permission to use any of these images. OTOH, if you *do* get permission, I can make custom renders for you, although they will need to include the copyright text and BuNine logo seen on my later images - I really need to go back and re-render all my early stuff to match the later versions with the B9 patch and logo.
Edit: Is your site up and running? If so, could I have a link?
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Nice picture with some minor faults. For example: A Roland-DD has no missile-launchers in its broadside. Instead, she has 6 missile-lauchers in each hammerhead. So, in case the oval rings in the hammerhead we look at are, indeed, missile-launchers, there are 2 too much and the 5 similar rings on the broadside are simply superfluous.
With so much missile-firepower as to be seen in this picture we speak of 26(!) launchers (8 in each hammerhead an 5 in each broadside). That could be the next evolution of the Roland-Class-DD - say, a Roland-B. Or, probably more suitable, a Light Cruiser "from Hell" 
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You *are* aware that I'm a member of BuNine, the people who wrote the tech specs and everything *except* "I Will Build My House of Steel" in House of Steel, right? I'm named in the book as a contributing artist. HoS is the most current canon for the Honorverse, with David Weber's full support and blessings. If the line art and specs in HoS differ from previous textev, then HoS supercedes that previous info. These renders I've been doing are actually official, take-it-to-the-bank illustrations of Honorverse ships - but are subject to change at any time, due to David changing his mind about something, or we figure out a way to do something that might change external features.
You might want to check out HoS, if you have it, because if you do, you'll see that each hammerhead has *six* missile tubes and two *grasers*, and each broadside has five *lasers*. The confusion might come from the fact that all weapons hatches on RMN ships are the same size, regardless of the size of the weapon behind them. They are designed to be only as large as the largest weapon - in the case of the Roland, that would be the Mk-16 Dual-Drive Missile, at a little over 2 meters in diameter, plus the missile tube, which adds another meter to the diameter. On larger ships such as BCs, DNs, and SDs, the lasers and grasers are larger than the missile tubes, so while energy weapons might look lost in a weapons port on a Roland, the opposite is true for the larger ships. This was a conscious design choice to have all weapons hatches the same size, for a consistent look.
BTW, the outer six ports on the hammerhead(s) are the missile tubes, and the two inner ones are the grasers.
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Yes, I know you are from Bu9. But nonetheless you should give the Grasers a different look from the missile-launchers. Maybe not spheric or oval, but oblong or quadratic. Or at least a different size. Or a slightly different color. Something like that. That would help to avoid the misunderstandings like the one I had with your picture.
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Not my decision. Tom Pope - with input and approval from David Weber - has decided that RMN weapons ports are identical, whether they are energy weapons ports, or missile ports. Even if it *were* my decision, I would probably do the same thing, for four reasons:
1) In the Honorverse, there's no point in differentiating the look of the ports, except "because you can". At the ranges these battles take place, it's not like one can determine which weapons are where.
2) Even within energy weapons range, one can't do pinpoint targeting in the Honorverse. So, it's not like you can decide to only take out the energy weapons, and you make your decision based on which port is which.
3) BuNine is staying away from "the rule of cool", and trying to be as realistic as possible with a fictional universe that uses a fair bit of handwavium. We aren't designing these ships to look cool like from Star Wars or Star Trek. That's why RMN ships and PRN ships (as well as those from Grayson, the Andermani, the Solarian League, etc.) will all look very similar in overall appearance, only differing in details. Whether those details include different ports/hatches for different weapons in other navies, I couldn't say. We haven't really gotten that far yet for the Peep and Andie ships for the next companion. I *do* know that Peep weapons hatches will open differently from RMN hatches, but that's about all I know at this point.
4) There's already indicators on most of the ships (the Roland is actually an exception - in *many* ways besides what we are discussing here) as to which port is which, if you look closely enough. On the broadsides, you can see small black domes and small "radar" panels (the yellowish hexagons). These are "on-mount" backups for the main LIDAR (domes) and radar/telemetry panels (the big yellowish hexagons). Domes are placed over (or under) each energy weapon mount, and telemetry panels over (or under) missile tubes. OTOH, for PDLC mounts and CM tubes, it's usually one dome/panel for every four or five mounts.
I've had similar discussions like this elsewhere, where people have commented that the ships all look very similar, and my usual answer is, "So do real-world naval ships, and tanks, and cars, and aircraft, and so on and so on..." The point being that when a design is found that works, it gets copied, differing only in minor ways. Visually, anyway. A prime example is a couple years ago, a news outlet showed a photo of several naval ships in a convoy, and said they were American ships. The thing is, they were actually Russian ships, but the only way one could tell was by the type of radar, and the tower configuration. We are trying for that sort of "realism" in BuNine with the ship designs.
OTOH, Evergreen are going in the opposite direction with the comics and the upcoming movie. They are trying to make it easy for non-fans to be able to tell at a glance the differences in the ships. I imagine they will also be doing what you want me to do with the weapons ports on my ships - making them different from each other to avoid confusion. All I have to say about that is the same thing I always say: there's movie canon, and there's book canon. BuNine does book canon, and is the closest and most accurate to textev as we can make it without crawling inside David's head (not to say we haven't tried 
I apologize if you feel like I'm being dismissive, but as to changing the ports, it ain't gonna happen.
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All right, I understand that. On the other hand, there are on occasion some scenes in the books, where someone looks at a vessel (like ... oh, Admiral Byng, as he met Admiral Gold Peaks NIKEs in Monican Orbit) from the outside - and can clearly see the difference between missile launchers and energy weapons. There is textev (later in the book - iIrc during the confrontation between Byng and Gold Peak in New Tuscany) where Byng and his Flag Captain discuss the possibility of shipbased Multidrive-Missiles, and Byng said something to the effect, that 'they had seen the missile-launchers of the NIKEs at Monica' ... how did the Sollies do that, if there were no optical difference between missile launchers and energy weapons? After all, in Monica, they were no more than 8.000 (?) km away - in the clarity of space. So, if you make your pictures after 'book canon' - how does that minor fact fit in?
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Telemetry panels and LIDAR domes. The designs may be different, but not so much that one couldn't figure out which is which and determine the number of tubes vs. energy weapons.
As for how "they had seen the missile-launchers of the NIKEs at Monica", Terekhov was sitting there for a month with his weapons ports wide open keeping guard on the station/planet/Sollie battlecruisers until Khumalo and his merry bunch got there. I'm sure somewhere in the station, there were high-power lenses and video recorders going.
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And how does the scene in "Honor among enemies" - Honors 1st meeting with Admiral Grossherzog von Rabenstrange aboard his own SD - fit in? Honor definitely doesn't have Telemetry panels or LIDAR Drones available at that time - she was aboard an Anderman pinasse, remember? 
Or is it a special manticoran trick for help to disguise what is what in their weapons mix? After all, the Peeps/Havies seem to follow the Andie path, too, else some of Hamishs thoughts on his way to Honors havenite Battlecruiser (in the prolog to Ashes of Victory) don't make much sense, too ... Somehow, that's a little bit hard to believe, at least for me.
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Telemetry panels and domes (not drones) on *RMN* ships. That's how *other* ships are able to discern what weapons mix *RMN* ships have. The panels and domes are for RMN ships' weapons targeting, not for figuring out what other ships have.
As for Honor aboard an Andermani *pinnace*, you might want to go back a couple posts and re-read where I wrote that what *other* navies do may be different from what the RMN does. It may be that Andy ships *do* have different hatches/ports for their weapons mounts. She's a trained naval Captain/Admiral, who studies everything she can about other navies, and she would be very familiar with the hull layouts of various ships, just as anyone in any real-world military would be able to pick out the differences in military vehicles, whether on water, land, or air. Same thing goes for Hamish - again, we haven't decided what the ships of other navies will look like, but there's always a chance that weapons ports will be different between energy weaps and missile tubes for *other* navies.
They're just not different for *RMN* ships.
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We will consider it. However, keep in mind that there is nothing in that textev you quoted that indicates the *missile ports* look different from the energy weapons ports. Only that *something* indicates that there are fewer missile ports. There could be other indicators that show which port is which. Maybe the Andies number their weapons ports "M1, M2, L1, G1", etc.
Edit: There already are, and there will continue to be discrepancies between textev and what we at BuNine create. Part of the reason is that we find out that what David had in mind when he wrote whatever doesn't work when drawn either as line art or built as a 3D model. If everyone complained about every discrepancy, I'd be too busy explaining the reasons to make anything else.
As for strongly urging me to do anything... I would suggest that you not hold your breath. Again, I apologize if that comes across as antagonistic, but in return, I can say that *you* are coming across as very demanding, and are dismissing the fact of who we are and who we have direct contact with. The fact that I've been able to refute every bit of textev you've mentioned with logical reasoning, and yet you continue to persist in practically demanding we change what we're doing to satisfy *your* desires, indicates that this conversation may be coming to an abrupt end soon.
I have no objections to people questioning design decisions, as long as they are respectful about it and can accept our/my explanations without resorting to "strongly urging" changes. You can *suggest* changes, but just because you suggest them and we/I read them, doesn't mean they will be implemented. I hate the new Star Trek, but I sure as hell am not going to "strongly urge" JJ Abrahms to change it for my personal satisfaction. I don't like some other folks' interpretations of Honorverse ships, but just because I have an inside line to the creator of the Honorverse on what they look like, I'm not going to tell them to change what they're doing.
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Then I strongly urge to you to vote for the different look of missile launchers and energy weapons for other navies. Else it would contradict to textev in "War of Honor, Chapter 9 (page 168 of the 1st HC-ed)":
"A sidemorian analyst claims, that VISUAL IMAGERY (Capitals by me) of one of the IAN's new Thor-class battlecruisers shows fewer missile ports then the class is supposed to have" -
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