3DYet another restart...

SebastianP

I started over on the hull shape of my ships (again...) with the goal of making some related but subtly different hulls of different sizes for my fleet. I reused the larger turrets and the superstructure from the previous batch as placeholders, as well as the engines (though I'm not as pleased with their mounting arrangements)....



The ships in this shot are from foreground to background a destroyer, a light cruiser and a heavy cruiser, using a similar relative armament to those of US WWII designs. The "five-inch equivalents" are really crude, and will be replaced as soon as I figure out what to do with them, but the triples are more or less what I want as they are.

These ships aren't supposed to have any armament that doesn't have a WWII equivalent (or at least a modern equivalent), i.e. no broadside ports except for torpedoes.

I'm kind of stuck on how to attach the engines, though. The current way is really clunky...

Cheers,

SP

Morpheus

Nice ships, about the engines, maybe you could place them just like current naval ship propeller, just replace the propeller with a rocket engine.
I always love the space boat design.

Aresius

So a bit more on the af and directly attached to the main hull?
Well, would be a possibility, but known Sebastian, the place of the engines should be where they are indicated now. Why not maing it like some half cap, as if the wings with the engines are really that, wings (or if you like; bridges to an illusionary trimaran-shaped extention), only that they are as thick as the main hull, sort of a gigantic shield to the engines.
Or do they need an intake?

So far, looks good, but I'm beginning to wonder if you will ever finish them once...
BTW, for me personal, the first incarnation still is the best.

Meph

Naa man, they're good where they are, just change their shape to fit the shape of the hull. Y'know, not so round but more angular, and perhaps blend them a bit more with the body or the 'winglets' that they're attached to.

SebastianP

I'm still pretty stuck on the idea of a well deck at the stern, for ship's boats or even missile pods (Harrington-style) which is why the engines are situated amidships. I'm still contemplating the shape of the pods, these are a holdover from a previous experiment based on the F-22's exhausts. I may return to a variation of the two-way pods I had earlier.

Big revision this time. To start with, I've stripped most of the details off the bridge structure front and sides, since the old deck height would be wrong for this incarnation of the ships. I've also massively remodelled the deck terrassing, mostly based on drawings of the WWII equivalents of these ships (US Navy cruisers).



I've also flattened the main deck, and started planning out the "air facilities" at the stern end. I'm not completely sure how to go about it, I really would like to add some kind of homage to WWII seaplane catapults :-)

Further planned features include peripheral VLS launchers, a completely new bridge structure (though I'm keeping the masts), and a visually distinctive lower citadel...

Cheers!

SP

Aresius

Hm. By now the engine part looks quite .. well, mixed. As if the engines are just tucked on there and a single show with a Magnum blows it off.

SebastianP

How about this alternate engine arrangement?

Tochiro76

Take a look at echelon pc game and look at the capships in there. They look kinda like naval ships but the hover instead of float with big engines underneath. They don't all look good but present some interesting idears for ship design. Also you might try just moving your main engines back towards the rear just a bit.

Aresius

I like your new idea about the arrangement.

SebastianP

After lots of procrastination I started over completely on the engine layout, upgraded the old heavy cruiser to a battlecruiser (bigger turrets), and made a new heavy cruiser that's a little less "fat" than the old one. In addition, the old ugly placeholder twin turrets have for the most part been replaced with a much nicer looking model (at least in my opinion...)





Still not sure exactly where I'm going with everything, but wherever it's going, it's slowly getting there at least... :-)

SP

Dr.Sleep

Wow! You are one of my heroes, b.e.a.utiful ships!:D I liked that "X" placing of engines, but this looks more durable and is better to ship design...

Meph

yeah, slowly but surely, the engine design is coming together and starting to fit in with the general 'feel' of the ship. Good job mate!

SebastianP

Thanks for the kind words. I've made some more progress on the engine nacelles, and added the PVLS system I've had in mind for a bit to the battlecruiser:







The VLS cells are based on a mesh I tried to make of the real thing some time ago, only scaled up to fit a spaceship instead - each hatch is four meters across, rather than the 60-80 cm (or so) of the real thing. So far, I've put in 2300 cells or so, but there's still room for more... :-)

I'm not completely sure about what to do with the sides of the ship, really - they need *some* form of variation, but I don't really want to do a bunch of raised panels and whatever, or (*shudder*) greebles...

Cheers,

SP

Vigilante

SebastianP wrote: »

I'm not completely sure about what to do with the sides of the ship, really - they need *some* form of variation, but I don't really want to do a bunch of raised panels and whatever, or (*shudder*) greebles...

Heat projectors/sinks? AEGIS-style AESA radar plates? Small craft embark/disembark bays? Exhaust ports? Look at current naval designs. They have tons of flat surfaces for superstructure, yet are not sparse on details. Hell, some of them even have ladders and pipes running on the outside(you would think that'd totally invalidate low-rcs, but hey). There's plenty of other examples of simple shelves extending out of the hull to hold SeaRAM or radar installations.

Some reference material from current wet-navy subjects for ya:
AEGIS
LCS-1
LCS-2
USS Mesa Verde (LPD-19)

Hope this helps in some way.

SebastianP

Thanks for the links. I actually knew about most of this - I've already got AEGIS-style flat panel radars on the superstructure, for example. I've also got some similar stuff on an older version of the concept from way back when. It's just that most of the stuff I can justify adding to the sides of the hull itself is too damned small to make a difference... :-(


I'll see what I can come up with, though. In the mean time, have a group shot:



Cheers,

SP

Aresius

Now that's a great idea with the engines! Sweet work!

SebastianP

Here's another small update. Missile launchers added to both the heavy and light cruisers, and I've made the boolean cut for the aft launch bay on the heavy cruiser. Progress!



Currently, the destroyer is 1800 meters, the light cruiser is 2200 m, the heavy cruiser 2600 m, and the battlecruiser measures out to 2800 meters, give or take 50 meters or so. The superstructure, twin turrets and main gun are still common to all four at this point, with some variation in height of the superstructure due to my sinking it into the hull where neccessary. I really need to sit down and build some unique structures for each class.... Also, I'm thinking about scaling up the main gun on the battlecruiser, since it's looking a little puny. (The same gun will go on the forthcoming battleship version later).

Cheers!

SP

SebastianP

I couldn't resist drawing up the battleship as well, rounding out the whole series of gun combatants. Haven't added the missile launchers or scout ship bays yet, but you should be able to figure out what they'll look like...



Finally a major difference in the secondary turret arrangement (this is the *classic* battleship secondary battery layout, used on pretty much all the interwar and ww2 battleships) - all the cruisers, both my series and IRL, had three forward/three aft, with the exception of a couple of one-off conversions and the really old stuff with single guns on casemates. Battleships on the other hand pretty much all had five left/five right.

Group shots:





Cheers for now,

SP

arashikami

Nice work:thumb:. The designs for me have a 'Starblazer/Yamato' feel to them. Keep up the great work.

Rob

Aresius

they do have, but only marginally.
It looks wonderful.

Berkut

cool stuff, glad to see you're back at this, always liked the designs. You should bring back the northern european naval paintjobs too, they fit the designs quite well

Vigilante

Had an idea to help break up those flat hull lines. If you're not at all interested in keeping them flat, you could go with XO racks for buggeroffingly huge missiles. Say, the length of one of your battleship barrels, and quite a bit fatter. Fine for bombardment, or finishing off a heavily armored but otherwise damaged opponent, but easy to intercept.

Or, same shape and mounting, but call them decoys instead. Designed to act and look like a full-blown ship on scanners.

Just a(some) thought(s).

SebastianP

Thanks Vigi, I've actually been considering the idea since I've got some decent torpedoes already modeled, but I decided against it since externally mounted weapons wouldn't quite fit the motif... Going to use it on my "Russian" ships though. Whenever I get to them...



I started over from scratch more or less on the battleship superstructure, and I'll do the same to the others later. It looks pretty bare right now, but I've got a bunch of antennae bulbs and other stuff to place so that's temporary. I've also rescaled all the ships to 60% of their former size. That still means the smallest is a bit over a kilometer, though... :-)

Cheers,

SP

SebastianP

Slight update. Some superstructure work, the gunnery directors have been installed (and their terraces); forward-facing engines were added and the wings got some dihedral; and finally I added a pair of cruiser-sized main guns to the wingtips:





Cheers!

Meph

Slowly growing nicely.

One thing though, since you're going for braking engines, don't forget rotational engines or thursters to maneuver in 3D space ey

Aresius

Forward engines, finally someone who got that to count the forward thrust you NEED equal reverse thrust.

Nice work

SebastianP

I was going to work on the sides tonight, instead I ended up adjusting the superstructure and adding the equivalents of the 40mm quad AAA batteries to my battleship.... Strictly speaking, I added a few too many, but it's 2.40 AM here and I don't feel like figuring out which ones should go right now...



Any ideas for what to do with the big empty glacis on the forward hull (where the anchor chains would be on a real world ship) would be nice. I've considered a big missile launcher, but I'm saving that concept for a "Russian" design, and most fragile-type stuff would be a bad idea due to the nose being one of *the* most exposed areas in combat... Plus the area should be relatively clear in any case so as not to spoil the firing arcs of the forward turrets...

Cheers,

SP

liam887

some hull plating wouldnt go amiss? and windows on the superstructure?

Schimpfy

A launch bay maybe? Or a trench filled with greebles?

SebastianP

Launch bays go in the back:



It was about the only place they could go without compromizing the front or side armor. Sooner or later I may actually get around to building them... :-)

I came up with something of a solution - the space was too big and empty, so rather than fill it up, I reduced its size by shortening the ship. This was done by putting the forward turrets on pedestals, so that both of them have flat surfaces to rest on despite the deck being sloped:



Also in this pic is the "new" main turrets - the barrels are narrower and mounted differently, and the turret has a new foot. They're not nearly done yet, but then nothing ever is...

Finally, I refined the forward section of the hull to make it smoother and more bottle-nosed, like the Iowa-class battleships:



Windows and other details that depend on the scale are still on hold until I decide the final size of these things, that's why I haven't added any yet. Also, real warships don't have all that many ;-)

SP

edit: Enh. I mixed up my images. You'll get the idea, though.

SebastianP

OK, here's another update for you lot...



Here's the heavy cruiser, updated in a similar manner to the battleship. I haven't added all the AAA guns yet, mostly because I think they'll need to be redone first.. :-(

Cheers,

SP