Art Rizzo's Art (Building a Battleship)

So, there are a couple of things I want to accomplish with this civilian-grade 750 meter battleship.

• First and foremost, I want this to resemble(to a reasonable degree) the battleships of WWII. I think I've done that but I'm still open to ideas.
• Second, I want it to have that broadsider, punching bag feel. Sooo, I'm looking for ideas on how I can make this ship a shield monster. I'm considering making those 'torpedo' things shield boosters/extenders that can be launched and flown from the bridge. This ship is going to primarily see use against raiders preying on cargo ships so it would be nice to be able to send them away to protect a damaged ship.
• Third, NO AETHER WEAPONRY. These guns need a hefty BANG. I'm looking into several types of weaponry for a salvo with enough kinetic energy to displace the ship(like WWII battleships).

Point-defence anyone? It'll have have to be shooting lasers or the ammo bill is going to get outrageous!


Aerospace fighters

 

[Alex Hart]

Nooooiiiiiceee

 

[Rizzo]

Candon rough sketch

 

[Ametheliana]

O wow! He's so handsome!

 

[Rizzo]

Destroyer with a Dreadaught game theme.

 

[Zack]

It bothers me that the engines are mounted so off center of gravity. The ship would end up flipping end over end if you turned them on.

 

[Rizzo]

I'm planning on adding more thrusters, but those engines are right where I wanted them.
Where would you advise putting them?

 

[Zack]

1) Play Kerbal Space Program, go into sandbox mode and try and build an airplane. You'll quickly understand what I mean.

2) Move them up a bit, or add more engines further up to balance things out.

That type of engine placement works for a boat because even at maximum speed gravity and boyancy are much stronger forces than the engines. Gravity keeps pushing the front of the boat down faster than the engines push it up and boyancy keeps the front and the back of the boat roughly at the same height.

In space, all you have are your engines. So if you have an engine on the far right turned on, it will push the craft forward and spin it. You need a second engine on the far left side to balance out that spin so that the craft only goes forward.

In this case the engine's midsection is about level with the bottom of the ship. Without engines above to balance things out that force will push the ship forward, and spin the ship with the front going 'up' and the axis being wherever the center of gravity is.

You have a lot of lee-way regarding the center of gravity btw, so don't worry about getting it exactly right. However you should expect about the same amount of mass to be above the engines as below. Similarly you'd need about the same amount of mass to the right of the engines as to the left... however your ship is symmetrical right to left so that isn't an issue here.

I think you have two good options:

Option 1) Remove the rear-most turret and move the rear launch area / bridge up. Then move the engines up so that they are a bit closer to where the rear launch area is right now. You can easily say there is some heavy stuff in the bottom of the ship to balance out the lighter weight towers and such that are on the top.

Option 2) Balance out the bottom of the ship by adding stuff. You can always add more stuff to the bottom of the ship to even things out. Turrets, launch bays, ect. It also may make sense to put some bomb-release gear there or some kinda moon pool.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Hum... Despite it looking pretty cool overall, I do have to agree with Zack on this one. It's all art-gineering of course, but the design does otherwise look realistic enough to immediately bring a straight-up boat to mind.

Absolute easiest way to fix this, at least visually; Maybe add some canards, or perhaps one large fin, to the front-forward of the hull?...



I feel your pain about changing stuff, but it really is just about the silhouette. ;I

 

[Rizzo]

How did you add that fin? That's pretty cool and I could see that working to keep stability in water like a sailboats fin.

The idea of this ship is that it can fight more effectively on a planet, so I definitely want it to look like a boat as much as possible. It's a theme I'm running with. There was an old anime who's plot ship actually was a battleship refitted for use in space which was kinda an inspiration but I've mainly been fascinated with Dreadnought since I began my first battleship.

Option 1) Remove the rear-most turret...

You are dead to me

 

[Zack]

Space Battleship Yamato

The latest anime remake I did kinda like for their efficient use of space inside the battleship for storing fighters and support craft. The main ship had a rotating fighter magazine that would drop them out the rear bay door... since they were in space... and they don't need a runway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvl6uVweAhE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4phT2Vukvn0

I forget where I was going with this...

Spaceships for use near the surface! You should add some stuff in near the bottom for dropping off soldiers, drones, or whathaveyou.

Fins can always be added for use as radiators.

Edit:

Right! Send me the model so I can play with it!

 

[Rizzo]

Sure, I can send it when I get home. I think I'll put some smaller engines just beneath the tower(the tallest point of the ship, carries long range sensory equipment). I like the idea of bay doors and stuff below the waterline, but I don't want it to draft too deep so that it can maintain a low altitude and minimize its profile as much as possible. It would sure suck to drag your super awesome radiator keel across the cliff of a canyon and lose cooling capacity!

 

[Primitive Polygon]

How did you add that fin?

Potatoshop + emboss filter, lol.

Hum. Putting a radiator there actually does make sense, since you could fire continuously when it was stuck in the water, but I'm not sure that a lot of SARP designs even have cooling. Like, I don't think Aether generators need much of it. It came up in the OIF Salvation plot.

Making it a radio antenna, shield projector, or some kind of hyper drive field thing could also work.

 

[Zack]

BLAAAH! THIS IS SPACE!

You need tons of cooling! Radiators should be a very large part of your ship and aether reactors require massive amounts of cooling.

I made this case a while back, and some people did start putting radiators on their ships... so that's a plus... anyways:

Space isn't cold. Space is a great insulator since the only way you can get rid of heat is by radiating it away. There is no wind blowing by you to cool you off or any physical things nearby to help even out the temperature like here on earth. Where on earth you can be in a cold room and start to cool down, in space the only way you get colder is if you are actively radiating that heat away.

Everything you do generates heat, including walking around, life support, your aether reactor, and especially firing weapons. If you aren't actively radiating all this heat away from your ship then that heat just stays with the ship. Even basic activities like running life support will eventually cook the crew alive.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Don't look at me! All the ships I make are covered in 'em!

I just didn't want Rizzo to feel like he has to, when not many other people bother.

 

[Rizzo]

To justify the massive firepower this series of vessels will be packing cooling is going to be critical. I'm planning on going with a huge liquid cooling system that will bleed off steam on occasion.

 

[Rizzo]

Assault rifle w/G-TAM, light machine gun, shotgun, sniper, in that order.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Neat! I like the barrel casing on that last one in particular.

 

[raz]

Beefy Barrels.

All look like really rad sci-fi guns. Can't wait to seem 'em in action here!

 

[Zack]

Finally got around to adjusting the engines, I also only use the regular doga because I'm too lazy to setup the other stuff so here is more of what I had in mind Riz:
View attachment 8451
View attachment 8452

 

[Rizzo]

This is it, my final version of the medium(?) mecha. Its primary armaments consist of two very heavy laser cannons, some sort of missile or other salvo battery and if you look under the chin you'll see a laser device. that is actually going to be a sort of laser based flamethrower that will be very nice. The dark gray will be some sort of heavy armor and there will be CQC abilities, you'll see, it'll just require an experienced pilot with a well-trained PiCo. I feel I should mention that I intend for this thing to be hitting over its weight class. I will be justifying this through its limited mobility and CQC abilities. In fact, I might even make a variant with hands. for a little more flexibiliy but this is the heavy-hitter, right here. It's big, loud, and an intimidating sight to behold when driving a jeep!