Is this Sphylight system reactionless, or does it have exhaust ports? If it's not reationless, you need to think about how so little fuel moves so much mass.
Is this Sphylight system reactionless, or does it have exhaust ports? If it's not reationless, you need to think about how so little fuel moves so much mass.
Did you miss 101 physics?? Michael Sphy discovered the Sphy Crystal which in it's natural state travels at the speed of light, grow one in an energy restricted environment and it assumes a solid form, but when fed energy it attempts to return to it's natural state, keep it constrained in an electromagnetic silo and add the internal warp which increases the local effective speed of light and you have a near 100 percent energy to motion system whose maximum speed is only reduced by the energy available to feed the crystal and the warp field.
Down side is the risk of battle damage rupturing your containment system, but come on, how many times did Enterprise have to eject it's warp core??
Fusion rockets are provided for auxilliary high gee manouvering in combat and yes, they do use valuable mass, but as an option to facing a broadside from an Antlian cruiser? Please!
Seriously, my designs are loosely based on real systems I worked with, the TPB follows the philosophy of certain RN frigate with the cruise mode high effiecient Tyne engines and the "Panic!" Olympus Gas Turbines (AKA Concorde engines).
At least the crews of the TPBs are spared the problems of the (real life) Type 42 destroyer which used fuel as both fuel and ballast, during the Falklands War more than one Destroyer was brought to the balance of capsizing or continuing to manouvre due to over extended service without access to replenishment.
Reaction Engines are seperate to the main power reactor and star drive, very much a backup system it includes steam turbines to provide backup power and a fusion motor that can best be thought of as an Afterburner, raw plasma energy from the fusion reactors is bled into the reaction chambers and mixed with water and waste oxygen from the hydrogen extraction process in a long tube designed to extract the maximum of energy. The advantage of mass guzzling engines is the immediate high gravity response. Seperate water tanks prevent an over zealous Hooray Henry fresh out of command school from dumping the entire ship's water feed tanks into the rockets in a panic. Oxygen output from the more effiecient main fusion plant is used to combine with ambient hydrogen to refuel the ship where a tanker is not available, but is a slow process due to the thin hydrogen mist available in space.
Many thanks for your interest, hope I fielded that one okay!
As soon as I started on the Hanger I realised I needed the dimensions at least of the fighters so had to start sketching out the fighter. Nothing felt right until I realised I was going against my design guides which was to match a Naval frigate. Fun as it would be to shovel in a couple of high octane fighter ships it was impractical and restrictive.
So I needed the equivilant to a light helicopter, like the Westland Wasp, this is my first draft of the Brumby, one crew member, short range, able to carry three crew in full combat armour for boarding merchantmen, a gravity warp generator so it can operate in a gravity well, though not comfortable with heavy weather. Minor cargo capacity, essential spares or luxury victuals. Phased array radar to extend the ship's own sensors and give active search capability without exposing the mother ship. Variable weapon fit, shown here with twin laser cannon pods.
I started to play with some lighting and got somewhat puzzled at the bleed through, the material has 100% opacity and the light source is set to point but it still leaks. Anyone can advise me where I am being dumb?
Oh and don't flame me for intakes in the engines, they are not, they are forward thruster nozzles, I figure a rapid ability to turn and bring weapons to bear is essential in a close quarters space flight.
With my basic Brumby shape and I can continue with the Hanger module: Arrester Gear on rails, force field projectors which funnel in an incoming and guide it into the hanger. A boat can be launched the same way, but the usual method is swim out via the maintenance cradles, leaving the recovery area free for visitors.
Overhead hoist for loading the boats into the cradles and to handle heavy gear such as weapon pods. Control room, maintenance room and airlock on the lower section of the little office blocks, spares and magazine above.
Working some more detail into the Hanger Module, below the hanger deck is the Quarterdeck, port and starboard personnel hatches that drop to form ramps, the primary means of access to the ship when on the ground, the area between is a raised traditional wood deck where the Quartermaster holds domain. A larger stern hatch for vehicle access. The rest of the deck is painted steel and serves the dual purpose of a mustering area and vehicle park, they will come later, a small contingent to guard the vulnerable grounded ship or act as a police force against insurgents. Those will come later.
Just visible is a laser turret watching the hatches in case they are stormed.
Er, you do know that, in the modern Navy, a Quartermaster is an enlisted navigation specialist? The person who has domain over the quarterdeck is the in-port Officer of the Deck... who, on small ships, sometimes is a Quartermaster, but more often is a Master at Arms, or a Machinist's Mate, or even a Hospital Corpsman. :cool:
Nope, left it ten years ago when a Quartermaster was the duty non-com in charge of the gangway with his boy wonder the Bosun's Mate, again an honoury title loaned for the period of his duty. Suspect we are talking different navies! In the RN the Buffer or Bosun is in charge of the deck overall under the First Lieutenant. An assistant to the Navigator is the Navigator's Yeoman, or just Yeo. But things change so I can only repeat, that was the way it was (when men were made of iron and ships were made of wood)
To my imaginary Navy now, a couple of charged particle beam weapon turrets give further defence to the vulnerable point of the ship, these are just an atomic version of a flame thrower.
The Hanger module is complete now and ready for assembly.
Have not played with them yet, will give them a go, was not thinking along those lines. I know that the greater the intensity of the light source the worse the bleed, and the darker the colour of the containment the less "shine through" I see, almost as though lighter materials were less opaque. But newbie to lighting so bound to be down to me.
Moving on, assembling the hanger and opening the hatches it is immediatley apparent the side hatches form too steep an angle to be used as ramps, will have to rethink that, the vehicle hatch works well, the circular boat launch hatches retract iris fashion. the main recovery hatch - er, does something, not sure what yet, it was going to hinge up inside but that turns out to risk clonking the Brumby and fouls the overhead handling gear. I am thinking to fold it out to form an extended approach runway, if I add rails to the inside the arrester gear can actually leave the ship then to help gather in the approaching boat.
View of the main hull now fully assembled. Superstructure is next, that gives me some misgivings, logically the ship does not need any, the Bridge should be a command centre in the safety of the main hull, with VTOL courtesy of the gravity warp motor there is no benifit to putting a conning tower style arrangement on top. I am very aware I am applying my own predjudices to the design: ship's have superstructure, even submarines.
I will offer the feeble defence of the line that has been included in every RN warship procurement specification since before Nelson "The ship must be pleasing to the eye."
Been a while since I posted, started on the armoured vehicles and decided this was a good time to learn materials, phew! Lot to take in.
Anyway, started with my light tanks, the storyline called for these to be surplus Para-Police Urban Suppresion Vehicles up-gunned and up-armoured to give hard hitting perimeter defence on the ground, securing a small Marina for instance to use as a base. I was rather pleased with the result until I made the mistake of showing them to a couple of REME lads (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) from the Desert Rats 4th Armoured.
When they had done laughing their proverbials off I was advised of some basic tenants of tank design, such as:
Sloping armour
Bezier (main hull mounted) machine guns are useless, no matter how good they seem in war films
If you want to carry troops then the engine has to go to the front
Someone who has never even seen a tank in real life should not try to design one!
Anyway after a sobering visit to Catterick with the lads, spending a day crawling through the wrecked vehicles brought back from Afghanistan for repair I wiped my design and am starting from scratch.
Main gun is a 60mm high velocity armour piercing cannon, I am fully animating the vehicle as another exercise. Auto load is very loosely based on the design from a cigerette machine manufacturer in WWII which was used to automate oversized guns in U-Boat attack aircraft and on RN Dogboats. With an added feature of my own that allows handling of multiple munition types, smoke for instance, and non lethal Sandman gas shells.
I suppose I could have made it some sort of beam weapon but I honestly believe the projectile firing gun will be around for a long long time yet and it seemed a logical choice for a vehicle that has a very real risk of falling into the hands of rebels, once they run out of shells all they have is a very heavy club.
This is a first draft at the front of the tank, the driver's compartment. The blade betrays it's origins as a riot vehicle, my own version of reactive armour also represents hours of hair pulling as I struggled to master the techniques of baking and UUV wrapping, as you can, still got a long way to go!
And a peek inside, Engine will be an air breathing Hydrogen turbine, not totally suitable for colonial operations where many worlds have no atmosphere, LOX tanks will add limited capability, but at the expense of vulnerability. I had assumed the last place you put a tank engine is in the front, but apparently it is common in lighter vehicles, but you need a crane to get the air intake grill off as it forms part of the armour.
Thanks for the comments, my Urban Pacification Vehicle interior re-thought, the autoloader has also been revised, the arm can be seen mid pivot, only the bottom shell rack rotates to feed it, the upper ones feed shells down into empty slots. Animation is pretty cool but has shown I need an empty shell catcher and some way to simulate muzzle flare, next week maybe.
60mm cannon still, Gunner/Commander, Driver and assault squad of six, their benches make handy independent rear wheel drive motor housings. No need for tracks, this is designed for urban use, not cross country.
Partially skinned, starting to get the hang of baking, I used Hex cylinders at random heights, based on an experimental armour I was shown where the idea is to deflect and disperse a HEAT round, the real thing used layerd rectangles but it just looked scruffy when I tried that. The turret will get wrap around reactive armour, I have not decided about the top though, a vulnerable point in urban combat where an insurgent can lurk in an upstairs window and fire an RPG straight down.
Not decided on the co-axial anti-personnel weapon yet, toying with the idea of a coherant electron blaster, a lightning gun if you like, up side is can be set to non-lethal levels, down side is hopelessly inaccurate as the beam tends to find the best earthing points around, but I think it would put the fear of God in your average rioter.
The Tank, or Urban Suppresion Vehicle, is not complete, still lacks a lot of detail, but a test drive into the vehicle flat seemed timely, there is ample room for two, and for some futuristic jeeps to follow.
Coming to an end on this project, my intent was to build an internal rather than an external model and on that basis I will give myself a C for effort, it has been an awful steep learning curve and I am looking forward to my next project with some hard lessons learned!
First the internal layout of the Bridge, my heart was not in this since I cannot bring myself to believe a future space warship would place it's tactical crew in such an exposed position, but what the heck, it's not real
Peeking inside the Superstructure, I added an atmosphere processing and storage plant with the idea that the ship could augment it's supplies from gaseous worlds, below is a second hydroponic unit and a suite of offices which include a gym and the Captain's own pantry, right forward is the Captain's Space Cabin with a viewing gallery, and aft another gallery called the Sundown Deck, a familiar concept to fellow RN Senior Rates.
But the real fun is the ability to send a camera down inside the ship and let my imagination and pen run riot. Here I re-visit where I first set foot on the ship early in the build, Fire Control.
Here though is were the real work has gone into this model, next time I will concentrate on a more traditional "exterior" one, but it sure has been fun!
I mainly wanted the interior of this model to help me with a novel, but now that I have firmly written myself into a corner on the way to the Orion Nebula I thought I would go back and visit the exterior. I seem to be in a minority of one in thinking a sleek smooth ship is more realistic, so I am bowing to convention.
It is not in me to add random Greeblies, or whatever so I set bounds on myself:
The interior must not change, at least significantly since I had used the interior maps
Each add on must have some purpose.
I have started with the Weapon Module and the first step is to tighten the hull and add shape to it, exposing part of the guns and torpedoes, a reasonable method of improving heat dissipation.
Now I work on it a panel at a time, drawing mainly on my own experience of the bits that get stuck on warships and extrapolating to a space going one.
Left to right, top to bottom then: Emergency smoke venting unit with a blow off plate in case of fan failure, complete with airlock and rungs for maintenance of the fans... Atmosphere testing station... Below that an ECM unit to decoy missiles and confuse radars. Then a big lateral phased array radar.
Posts
Did you miss 101 physics?? Michael Sphy discovered the Sphy Crystal which in it's natural state travels at the speed of light, grow one in an energy restricted environment and it assumes a solid form, but when fed energy it attempts to return to it's natural state, keep it constrained in an electromagnetic silo and add the internal warp which increases the local effective speed of light and you have a near 100 percent energy to motion system whose maximum speed is only reduced by the energy available to feed the crystal and the warp field.
Down side is the risk of battle damage rupturing your containment system, but come on, how many times did Enterprise have to eject it's warp core??
Fusion rockets are provided for auxilliary high gee manouvering in combat and yes, they do use valuable mass, but as an option to facing a broadside from an Antlian cruiser? Please!
Seriously, my designs are loosely based on real systems I worked with, the TPB follows the philosophy of certain RN frigate with the cruise mode high effiecient Tyne engines and the "Panic!" Olympus Gas Turbines (AKA Concorde engines).
At least the crews of the TPBs are spared the problems of the (real life) Type 42 destroyer which used fuel as both fuel and ballast, during the Falklands War more than one Destroyer was brought to the balance of capsizing or continuing to manouvre due to over extended service without access to replenishment.
Reaction Engines are seperate to the main power reactor and star drive, very much a backup system it includes steam turbines to provide backup power and a fusion motor that can best be thought of as an Afterburner, raw plasma energy from the fusion reactors is bled into the reaction chambers and mixed with water and waste oxygen from the hydrogen extraction process in a long tube designed to extract the maximum of energy. The advantage of mass guzzling engines is the immediate high gravity response. Seperate water tanks prevent an over zealous Hooray Henry fresh out of command school from dumping the entire ship's water feed tanks into the rockets in a panic. Oxygen output from the more effiecient main fusion plant is used to combine with ambient hydrogen to refuel the ship where a tanker is not available, but is a slow process due to the thin hydrogen mist available in space.
Many thanks for your interest, hope I fielded that one okay!
So I needed the equivilant to a light helicopter, like the Westland Wasp, this is my first draft of the Brumby, one crew member, short range, able to carry three crew in full combat armour for boarding merchantmen, a gravity warp generator so it can operate in a gravity well, though not comfortable with heavy weather. Minor cargo capacity, essential spares or luxury victuals. Phased array radar to extend the ship's own sensors and give active search capability without exposing the mother ship. Variable weapon fit, shown here with twin laser cannon pods.
Oh and don't flame me for intakes in the engines, they are not, they are forward thruster nozzles, I figure a rapid ability to turn and bring weapons to bear is essential in a close quarters space flight.
2) Is radiosity turned on in the render engine?
3) Remind me what software package you're using?
Overhead hoist for loading the boats into the cradles and to handle heavy gear such as weapon pods. Control room, maintenance room and airlock on the lower section of the little office blocks, spares and magazine above.
3DS Max 2011
Just visible is a laser turret watching the hatches in case they are stormed.
To my imaginary Navy now, a couple of charged particle beam weapon turrets give further defence to the vulnerable point of the ship, these are just an atomic version of a flame thrower.
The Hanger module is complete now and ready for assembly.
Have not played with them yet, will give them a go, was not thinking along those lines. I know that the greater the intensity of the light source the worse the bleed, and the darker the colour of the containment the less "shine through" I see, almost as though lighter materials were less opaque. But newbie to lighting so bound to be down to me.
Moving on, assembling the hanger and opening the hatches it is immediatley apparent the side hatches form too steep an angle to be used as ramps, will have to rethink that, the vehicle hatch works well, the circular boat launch hatches retract iris fashion. the main recovery hatch - er, does something, not sure what yet, it was going to hinge up inside but that turns out to risk clonking the Brumby and fouls the overhead handling gear. I am thinking to fold it out to form an extended approach runway, if I add rails to the inside the arrester gear can actually leave the ship then to help gather in the approaching boat.
I will offer the feeble defence of the line that has been included in every RN warship procurement specification since before Nelson "The ship must be pleasing to the eye."
Anyway, started with my light tanks, the storyline called for these to be surplus Para-Police Urban Suppresion Vehicles up-gunned and up-armoured to give hard hitting perimeter defence on the ground, securing a small Marina for instance to use as a base. I was rather pleased with the result until I made the mistake of showing them to a couple of REME lads (Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) from the Desert Rats 4th Armoured.
When they had done laughing their proverbials off I was advised of some basic tenants of tank design, such as:
Sloping armour
Bezier (main hull mounted) machine guns are useless, no matter how good they seem in war films
If you want to carry troops then the engine has to go to the front
Someone who has never even seen a tank in real life should not try to design one!
Anyway after a sobering visit to Catterick with the lads, spending a day crawling through the wrecked vehicles brought back from Afghanistan for repair I wiped my design and am starting from scratch.
Main gun is a 60mm high velocity armour piercing cannon, I am fully animating the vehicle as another exercise. Auto load is very loosely based on the design from a cigerette machine manufacturer in WWII which was used to automate oversized guns in U-Boat attack aircraft and on RN Dogboats. With an added feature of my own that allows handling of multiple munition types, smoke for instance, and non lethal Sandman gas shells.
I suppose I could have made it some sort of beam weapon but I honestly believe the projectile firing gun will be around for a long long time yet and it seemed a logical choice for a vehicle that has a very real risk of falling into the hands of rebels, once they run out of shells all they have is a very heavy club.
And a peek inside, Engine will be an air breathing Hydrogen turbine, not totally suitable for colonial operations where many worlds have no atmosphere, LOX tanks will add limited capability, but at the expense of vulnerability. I had assumed the last place you put a tank engine is in the front, but apparently it is common in lighter vehicles, but you need a crane to get the air intake grill off as it forms part of the armour.
Lot of artefacting going on for some reason.
That thing is shapoing up btw
60mm cannon still, Gunner/Commander, Driver and assault squad of six, their benches make handy independent rear wheel drive motor housings. No need for tracks, this is designed for urban use, not cross country.
Not decided on the co-axial anti-personnel weapon yet, toying with the idea of a coherant electron blaster, a lightning gun if you like, up side is can be set to non-lethal levels, down side is hopelessly inaccurate as the beam tends to find the best earthing points around, but I think it would put the fear of God in your average rioter.
First the internal layout of the Bridge, my heart was not in this since I cannot bring myself to believe a future space warship would place it's tactical crew in such an exposed position, but what the heck, it's not real
http://fantastic-plastic.com/ProjectOrionBattleshipPage.htm,http://up-ship.com/blog/?p=6898
I can see this vessel as having a Nuclear Salt Water Rocket (NSWR) drive.
It looks solid, rugged, able to deal with a lot of heat
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_salt-water_rocket
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/enginelist.php#Nuclear_Salt-water_Rocket
Gas Core HLLV http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/images/artgallery/ConvairSuperNexusDiagram.jpg
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/enginelist.php#Solid_Core_Nuclear_Thermal_Rocket~NTR-SOLID/DUMBO
It is not in me to add random Greeblies, or whatever so I set bounds on myself:
The interior must not change, at least significantly since I had used the interior maps
Each add on must have some purpose.
I have started with the Weapon Module and the first step is to tighten the hull and add shape to it, exposing part of the guns and torpedoes, a reasonable method of improving heat dissipation.
reshape weapon module.jpg
Now I work on it a panel at a time, drawing mainly on my own experience of the bits that get stuck on warships and extrapolating to a space going one.
Left to right, top to bottom then: Emergency smoke venting unit with a blow off plate in case of fan failure, complete with airlock and rungs for maintenance of the fans... Atmosphere testing station... Below that an ECM unit to decoy missiles and confuse radars. Then a big lateral phased array radar.
reshape weapon module 3.jpg
And so on, gradually building up and adding some plain panels where I can't think of bits to add.
reshape weapon module 5.jpg
A key for my own benefit in case I ever want to include exterior detail in the book.
reshape weapon module Markup.jpg