The THS Spaceship Thread

[Kitsune]

I open this thread to collect new and interesting ship designs, with which our PC's (or NPC's) can boldly go where no man has gone before.

I start with a design of my own:





Many military experts of the early 22nd century believe that the trend in space warfare is going towards slimer Space Dominance Vehicles, so called LSDV’s. But the most prominent LSDV class in service, the LSDV-5 Hermann Oberth class, as well its variant, the LSDV-6 Soldati, turned out to be weakly armed, equipped with barely adequate sensors, and generally having a rather limited capability profile, greatly disappointing the expectations of especially Germany's Raumwaffe.

With a new German government’s willingness to spend more money for defense, while promoting a “lighter-but-more-advanced-is-better” doctrine at the same time, Systems Technologies newly formed space-ship development division Astrion proposed a new LSDV design of greatly increased abilities.

In spring 2098 the German government signalled its support for the LSDV-7 project, which led to a controversity in Germany, since the LSDV-5 (Herrmann Oberth class) had just been introduced…many saw it as proof that System Technologies had used its power to influence the German states decision making, with the aim being to pocket more tax money. The very high price for one LSDV-7 ship did not help to dispel this suspicion.

Nonetheless, the building of a prototype ensued, named “Fomalhaut” (pronounced "Foh-mull-low"), which was ready for field testing in autumn 2101, within record time.

The Fomalhaut prototype proved to be impressive indeed, featuring unpreceeded performance characteristics and versatility. It’s a very sleek design, measuring a mere 45 feet wide on average and 195 feet long. The front is sharply sloped, although it is not streamlined: the hull is a slightly flattened cylinder with a surface consisting of a multitude of plane surfaces giving it a somehow fractal-patterned appearance. The radiator wings are of a similar design as those of the Hermann Oberth class. Compared to the LSDV-5 ships, sensors, front armor and especially the weaponry have been significantly upgraded. Also, the living quarters are more generous, the Fomalhaut has ample space for a human crew of five and up to eight Commando soldiers for boarding operations.
The most interesting feature of the Fomalhaut is the unique HT/HI AM pulse twin drive. This enables the LSDV-7 ships to combine the long range capabilities and Delta-V of the SDV-90 Resolution/Gram class ships with an acceleration capability during space combat which exceeds those of the Hermann Oberth class. In case of an emergency, both drives can be used at once, resulting in an acceleration on par with an AKV. However, this can be sustained only for about 18 minutes (with extended radiator wings), because of rapid overheating.

Typical payload is 500.3 tons. This includes either four Greif (Griffin) class AKV's or three Griffins and one MRF-5 “Störtebecker” class Personnel Deployment Vehicle (PDV) for boarding operations, as well as five human crewmembers, a fire team of up to eight Space Commandos, cybershells (4t weight assumed for all crewmembers, wether biological or mechanical, and their possessions/equipment), 25t cargo and 9 coilgun ammunition packs.

From October 2101 on, the Fomalhaut conducted test flights in Earth-Lunar space. A succesful deep space testing mission to Aletheia Station and back was conducted in spring 2102.

In early 2103 the ship was finally approved and entered service with the German Bundesraumwaffe on February 1st of that year. However, it was renamed to "Orion", which also became the official name of its class. Further vessels are to be named after stars with names like Sirius, Rigel and Altair being planned.




System Technologies Astrion LSDV-7 (Orion class, former prototype name Fomalhaut)


Crew: Commander (Leadership, Shiphandling, Tactics); Pilot (Piloting (High-Performance Spacecraft)); Navigator (Astrogation, Electronics Operation (Communications), Electronic Operation (Sensors)); 2 Weapons Officers (Gunner (Beams), Gunner (Railgun)); 20 Engineers (Mechanic (Antimatter Drive), Mechanic (Robotics), other Mechanic as appropriate); Medic (Diagnosis, Physician, Surgery). The usual human/parahuman crew numbers five persons (for example Commander, Navigator, one Weapons officer, one Mechanic and the Medic are human/parahuman), the rest are cybershells. The LSDV-7 has enough room to carry up to 8 infantry and associated equipment.

Design:
Cylinder (195’ x 45’, 631.8 spaces), diamondoid structure, extra-heavy frame, smart; cDR/cPF 80/10F, 5/1S, 10/1B (nanocomposite armor). Hull radiators (19 ksf); folding radiator wings (2 x 25 ksf). Chameleon surface.

Modules:
New basic bridge; large ladar, medium ladar; large PESA; large radar, medium radar; 125 HT antimatter pulse drive; 125 HI antimatter pulse drive; 250 tanks (ultralight, nuclear pellets); 0.125 antimatter bay (12.5 grams); 4 10MJ heavy laser towers [S]; 4 2.5MJ light laser towers [S]; 2 coilguns [F], coilgun [B]; 2 new 150’ particle accelerator [F]; 3 cabin; 2 bunkroom, heavy storm shelter (1 space, encloses bridge, 1000 cPF); 4 external cradles (125t each); minifac workshop; large entry module; surgery; 5 cargo (25t).

Statistics:
EMass 4083.64t; CMass 6079.1t; LMass 7579.1t.
Cost M€ 1025.99. cHP 1918. Size Modifier [Hull] +5/+9, [Radiators] +9. HT 12. Maintenance Interval: 1.25 hours. RRA 62.5.

Performance*:
sAcc (HI) 0.1 G. Burn Endurance (HI) 50 hours. Burn Points (HI) 18000. Delta-V (HI) 55 mps.
sAcc (HT) 0.2 G. Burn Endurance (HT) 12.5 hours. Burn Points (HT) 9000. Delta-V (HT) 27.5 mps.
No airspeed.

*HI drive normally used for travelling, HT drive used in combat situations. In cases of emergency “burst acceleration” of 0.3 G is possible for short time periods.

[DrTemp]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

[...]
named the “Fomalhaut” (pronounced "Foh-mull-low"),

Why that? I know Fomalhaut is a star's name of Arabian origin, but is it really pronounced that way in German?

[...]
45 feet wide on average and 195 feet long. [/I]

While I know that the THS design system is of stubbornly Texan origin, I really doubt that a European company would not use metres in a free description of its design.

The history of the design project is a bit short- today's navy ship building projects take up to eight years.

Other than that: What is the overall cost for this design? I really like the idea of a "combined drive", but wouldn't the cost be prohibitive, even for the mentioned "variant idea"?

[Rasmus Wagner]

It's not BS.

He's pointing out that while we, as players, choose to use game rules that are written in imperial measurements, continental europeans use the far superior metric system, and the "fluff" text should reflect that.

It may be incrediby nitpicky , but it's certainly not BS.

[Kitsune]

1) The name.
"Fomalhaut" derives from an arabic name of the star in question which indeed means "mouth of the fish". That is because this (especially bright) star is part of a constellation which was said to represent a fish, and is positioned where the mouth of this imaginary fish would be. As far as the pronounciation is concerned, the one above seems indeed not to be the only one that is used. According to a dictionary it is either "fō'mul-hôt" or "fō'mu-lō".


2) The measurements. While I find it absolutely despicable that a system like GURPS stubbornly sticks to feet, pound and other such nonsense...I simply did not want to recalculate everything. I used the shipbuilding system as it was presented. That way, the ship can be much easier compared to other vessels, too.

3) The price.
Cost for a LSDV-7 type ship is around M€ 1026, which admittedly is quite expensive. But the Bundesraumwaffe states, that the Fomalhaut is considered to be a replacement for the pretty outdated Königsberg class ships...which costed M€ 1444.73 a piece. Reasoning is, that a LSDV-7 is less expensive, but able to outperform a Königsberg vessel in any way, wether it's fighting power, traffic policing, or general versatility. So what's not to like?
As far as System Technologies is concerned, their only interest is to sell some of these ships (one could atleast suspect). If they would be able to sell 10 to 15 LSDV-7's to various European or Asian nations, that would be well worth the effort.

[sir_pudding]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

1) But the Bundesraumwaffe states, that the Fomalhaut is considered to be a replacement for the pretty outdated Königsberg class ships...

Königsbergs are used almost exclusively in Earth-Luna space. The LSDV-7s "longer legs" would seem to be wasted in that enviroment.

[thtraveller]

Originally Posted by Kitsune

*HI drive normally used for travelling, HT drive used in combat situations. In cases of emergency “burst acceleration” of 0.3 G is possible for short time periods.

Variant:
None, at present. But one idea is to create an variant that uses a HT-AM/HI-fusion pulse twin drive, possibly even making this the standard LSDV-7 class.
With this drive configuration antimatter would not be needed for travelling, by still having the powerful thrust and energy output of an AM drive at ones disposal for combat situations. Also, overall cost could be reduced by ca. M€ 75…why hasn’t anybody come up with this idea before?[/I]

Because there is an apparrent serious engineering problem?

How do you make a ship that is balanced for one drive also be balanced for two? If the thrust axis for one drive is through the middle of ship how can the thrust axis for the other (and both) also be through the middle of the ship? Especially when the drives have different thrusts.

They could of course be at opposite ends pointing in opposite directions but that doesn't allow for your idea. So drive vectoring or some sort of balance mass would seem to be required.

The ignition pulses are likely also a problem. They would likely have to be synchronised to avoid a serious vibration and/or gyration problem.

Not that this makes the idea unworkable, but it does flag it as high risk and a possible reliability issue to any potential buyer. I can see this project going way over budget ;-)

You are also dragging around 500 tons of drive that you hardly ever use. This will take some serious field demonstrations to prove to the military that you aren't better of with say another 5 AKVs instead. Again not a killer, just another hurdle to overcome.

It may be worth addressing these issues in the color text?

[Allon]

Let's see, high risk, questional reliability, probably over budget.

Sounds like a realistic military contracting to me...

[Nelson Cunnington]

Originally Posted by thtraveller

How do you make a ship that is balanced for one drive also be balanced for two? If the thrust axis for one drive is through the middle of ship how can the thrust axis for the other (and both) also be through the middle of the ship? Especially when the drives have different thrusts.

I wonder why everybody assumes that when you buy the drives for a large spacecraft, they necessarily have to be large single units. If the usual arrangement is actually four drives mounted in a square formation, then in this case the vessel might have 4 of one type and 4 of another, alternating around an octagon. (Or maybe a tight packed square for one type surrounded by a looser square of the other.)

Actually, my prefered arrangement would be five drives in a cross, normally. That way, the craft can accellerate using one drive (the centre one), two drives (either balanced pair of the outer drives), three (combination of the previous two options), four (all the outer drives), or five (all the drives). This would allow some acceleration even if one or two drives were inoperable, for example.

I wouldn't anticipate that constructive interference would be any more of a problem than it is for maritime ships with more than one engine. Even a single engine would have to be mounted in such a way as to minimise vibration to the craft as a whole. Still, "tuning" the drives might be worthwhile....

[Kitsune]

@thtraveller:

"Balancing problem": Well, that is not a very great problem: Looking at the LSDV-7 from behind you see four thrusters: one on top, one below it (that's one engine), and then there is one thruster left and one right (that's the other engine). The resulting balancing problem is not significantly larger than that of any other spacecraft. If you have any problem with this...simply assume that the LSDV-7 has FOUR drives: two 62.5 space HI drives and two 62.5 space HT drives. You may not believe this, but if you construct this vessle you will find that its has exactly the same stats as the present one :).
(And why not? If we look at todays aeroplanes, we see that only some have an single thrust engine, like the American GE F16, most have a double engine, like F14, F15, F18, Eurofighter and most Migs. Its safer that way. and that would make sense for spacecraft as well).
In any case the THS ship building system seems not to prohibit two different engines. I played by to the rules, as far as I can say. (Otherwise, it wouldn't be much fun).

"The ignition pulses are likely also a problem. They would likely have to be synchronised to avoid a serious vibration and/or gyration problem." Only if both engines work at once...and that is highly unusual. But yes, the ignition impulses have to be synchronised. No question. And there might be one whole NAI system onboard of an LSDV-7 that does just that...complete with a backup system or two. Since there are probably a lot of things on board of a spaceship that have to be synchronized, why not this one as well? It's a problem, yes. One of about 5 million engineering problems you have to solve if you want to build a spaceship.

"You are also dragging around 500 tons of drive that you hardly ever use. This will take some serious field demonstrations to prove to the military that you aren't better of with say another 5 AKVs instead. Again not a killer, just another hurdle to overcome."
Well. A Fomalhaut class ship usually drags one engine along that it does not use. True. There is no denying it. To make up for that weight, the LSDV-7 is build out of advanced, especially light materials. But what can is say? The numbers are all there: acceleration, delta-V, burn endurance, weapons, sensors, maintenance intervall and cost. Simply compare the data with other ships and decide wether it's worth it.
If one looks at the cost/efficency ratio of the Fomalhaut class, its seems to be quite acceptable. It may not beat the SDV-90 (very sound construction, that one), but its hell of a lot better than the Herrmann Oberth class or the abysmal Königsberg class. It's probably of a similiar kind as the Archangel/Angel class ships: impressive abilities for a high price.

[thtraveller]

Originally Posted by Nelson Cunnington

I wonder why everybody assumes that when you buy the drives for a large spacecraft, they necessarily have to be large single units.

Because realistically each NP engine needs a very large drive bell to shape the magnetic field - without itself melting from the radiated heat.

Multiple engines imply a huge backend to the spacecraft so that the drive bells can be spaced far enough apart to not interfere with each other magnetically or cause hot spots that would melt the bell. That means additional mass and additional engineering problems.