The roof and belly of a ship is naked... here's a fix.

Dafmeister wrote:A lesson learned from the damage Wayfarer took in the Selker Rift, where one disabled pod bay door blocked three of the six launch rails. SD(P)s (at least RMN/GSN designs, though I'd be shocked if Shannon Foraker hadn't worked it out too) have six pod bay doors, each of which could only block a single rail.

Yep, but as the lucky hit against the Invictus-class as Solon showed, having all the pod rails clustered through the aft does still allow one hit which hits and open hatch, or blows through a hatch, to potentially destroy all remaining pods in the entire pod bay.

Rearranging things so pods could be deployed elsewhere (possibly through a dorsal and ventral hatch) would reduce that possibility. Of course running the pod rails to different points could cause more difficulty rerouting ship systems and passageways around those big voids.


I wonder if Apollo is going to reduce the need to rapidly roll a lot of pods. (Because of its vastly increased effectiveness) You might be willing to go with smaller opening and run say only 2 rails each to the dorsal and ventral sides. That'd reduce the impact on the rest of the ship.



Anyway just random speculation.

Jonathan_S wrote:Yep, but as the lucky hit against the Invictus-class as Solon showed, having all the pod rails clustered through the aft does still allow one hit which hits and open hatch, or blows through a hatch, to potentially destroy all remaining pods in the entire pod bay.

Though that should have just about blown the aft end of the ship off. There is a LOT of power in the pods awaiting launch.

kzt wrote:Though that should have just about blown the aft end of the ship off. There is a LOT of power in the pods awaiting launch.

It depends where they are in the launch cycle, the pods are only powered up as they're being rolled out. Also, the Invictus has, I believe, heavy armour around the pod core. Combined with the bay doors being open, that would channel any blast out of the back of the ship.

Dafmeister wrote:
A lesson learned from the damage Wayfarer took in the Selker Rift, where one disabled pod bay door blocked three of the six launch rails. SD(P)s (at least RMN/GSN designs, though I'd be shocked if Shannon Foraker hadn't worked it out too) have six pod bay doors, each of which could only block a single rail.

That's actually the reason why I have an issue with the single hatch ejection point in podnoughts. The Q-ships that were part of the proof of concept already encountered that problem and IMHO, BuShips should have taken that lesson into consideration when they designed the pod-based ships.

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I'm really not sure how the dimensions of the ships are determined but it would be a good idea if they can make the ships less 'tall' but wider (same volume, thinner profile to hit from the sides). This could lead to more area on the top/bottom sides and thicker armor on the port/starboard sides. More area, lots of places to put hatches for the pods.

Rakhmamort wrote:That's actually the reason why I have an issue with the single hatch ejection point in podnoughts. The Q-ships that were part of the proof of concept already encountered that problem and IMHO, BuShips should have taken that lesson into consideration when they designed the pod-based ships.

You mean they should do something like having an independent hatch for each pod rail with a way to deal with jammed hatches? If so you will never guess what DW has said that actual Podnauts have...

The use of multiple independent pod deployment points is something that has come up quite often here and other places and DW has said that it is likely to be a feature of the 3rd generation podlayers. There are presumably Reasons why its not been done before with there being issues with dropping pods past the impeller nodes being an obvious possibility.

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I'm really not sure how the dimensions of the ships are determined but it would be a good idea if they can make the ships less 'tall' but wider (same volume, thinner profile to hit from the sides). This could lead to more area on the top/bottom sides and thicker armor on the port/starboard sides. More area, lots of places to put hatches for the pods.

The ship's hull form is determined by the physics of the impeller drive, Warsahwski sails, and compensator. There is some flexibility but current warships are pretty much at the optimum configuration with any departure from that resulting in a loss of performance.

Dafmeister wrote:

kzt wrote:Though that should have just about blown the aft end of the ship off. There is a LOT of power in the pods awaiting launch.

It depends where they are in the launch cycle, the pods are only powered up as they're being rolled out. Also, the Invictus has, I believe, heavy armour around the pod core. Combined with the bay doors being open, that would channel any blast out of the back of the ship.

Of course, given that the current Bu9 thinking is that they charge the plasma capacitors of the pods with plasma from the main reactor (Yes, the reactors are something like 600 meters away, on the far end of the pod bay - I don't make this stuff up) the effect should be absolutely spectacular as you pour billion degree plasma at stellar pressure into the pod core. Armor won't do anything, it's like holding up a restraining order against a shotgun slug.

Assuming Honorverse has superconductors, the books say they do; there is no reason to push plasma from the reactor around. Superconductors not only have zero resistance, they effectively have an infinite current rating as well if and only if the Honorverse also has magnetic field canceling ability enabling said superconductor effective infinite current.

wastedfly wrote:Assuming Honorverse has superconductors, the books say they do; there is no reason to push plasma from the reactor around. Superconductors not only have zero resistance, they effectively have an infinite current rating as well if and only if the Honorverse also has magnetic field canceling ability enabling said superconductor effective infinite current.

I like this guy.

The E wrote:If an enemy combatant gets inside energy range of your podnought, the situation is already dire. There is no way that is going to happen unless several other parts of the situation have already gone to hell. I mean, what's the scenario here? How is this going to work? How is any ship going to be able to get into energy range of a podnought wall without being engaged?

Not necessarily, if (for example) your fleet is engaging an enemy fleet in a running battle. The tendency for admirals is to fire at the biggest, scariest, target first. So your pounding on their SDs (& back). What happens if (realizing their getting the worst anyway) the enemy suddenly detaches a group of cruisers & BCs to turn 90deg strait behind you while redirecting on your own BCs? Do you turn to keep your broadside to the BCs and give your nose to the SDs? No you keep your broadside to the SDs, use your chase on the BCs, & hope for the best.

The E wrote: Uhhh, I think you're misremembering something here. As mentioned in EoH, it was always possible to create bow and stern walls, it's just that noone had any reason to do so. It took the development of a weapons platform for which the drawbacks of a bow/sternwall were irrelevant to make it practical.

No there has always been the vulnerable ends. Having a bow wall on that BC in HotQ would have saved the Masds. But nobody bothered to give them one. If facing a catastrophic capping of the T it would be more important for a commander to temporarily sacrifice his accel for protection. So all ships always had a reason for one, but no-one ever thought to give them one

The E wrote: Could you please not use faulty historical analogies? It's not about "this isn't how things are done", it's about your unsupported assumption that things can be done that way.

Its not faulty – just because someone has come up with a non-cannon excuse why it’s not, doesn’t mean it just can’t be done. That’s not faulty (also even if plasma were being used – which is old 22nd cent S.T. tech & shouldn’t be introduced to a superconducting gav control universe). As I pointed out before. They have PISTOLS that use gav tech. how bulky are these pistols & dose someone have to carry a micro fusion plant on their back to power it? No. so why does the same weapon scaled up to naval size suddenly need this overly complicated & highly dangerous tech to support it when SC are available? Go with “no one thought of it before!” & it’s not getting support in the “old navy” niche.

Duckk wrote:It doesn't take much of a course change to get a sidewall interposed. The channel created by the sidewalls to either side is fairly narrow.

That’s not true and maneuvering anything larger than a DD is like rolling a beach whale over with a plastic shovel. Read HotQ. If turning is so easy then why couldn’t the Peep fleet at Basilisk just turn “up” & impose its belly wedges on the mass of incoming missile?