DITL Carrier: Shields

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Shields

Poll ended at Mon Oct 08, 2012 10:40 pm

Bubble shield
6
32%
Form fitting shield
0
No votes
2 Million Terra Joules
0
No votes
3 Million Terra Joules
0
No votes
4 Million Terra Joules
2
11%
5 Million Terra Joules
0
No votes
6 Million Terra Joules
1
5%
7 Million Terra Joules
0
No votes
8 Million Terra Joules
4
21%
Independent power supply
2
11%
Not independent power supply
0
No votes
Split Power
4
21%
 
Total votes: 19
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Teaos
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DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Teaos »

DITL Carrier

So far we decided on a large scale carrier:

Large Carrier run = 3 per year
Larger than anything currently in the Federation, 7,000,000 tons, excluding fighters
Would need to dedicate 5,000,000 of initial start up resources to help customize specialized drydock facility to build.
Craft allotment 10,000
Build time, 30 months


Using the “standard” allotments for a ship of this size here is how the internal volume breakdown of the ship stands. For every major category of the ship we will have a poll and discussion,.

Carrier with base line stats:
Power systems: 15% (warp speed 9.90, standard power shield)
Craft allotment: 30% (unto 10,000 units of light craft, less for heavier larger craft)
Weapons: 3% (a few torpedo tubes and phaser arrays)
Crew accommodation: 7% (Standard level, like Voyager)
Diplomatic facilities (2%, rooms and meeting rooms)
Cargo: 15% (2 years independent operation)
Essential misc: 5% (sickbay, mess, training rooms, gyms)
Industrial: 0% (a future poll will be for if we want to install an industrial plant to replicate ship parts, repairs, fleet support ect we assume at the moment there are basic repair facilites like all starships have, this is a full proper industrial capability)
Civilian: 0% This is for if we wish the ship to be used in peace time for supporting colony evac, settlement, refugees, rescue.
Free space: 23%

So every poll we will tweek these either making them stronger or weaker then working out layout, If we have space free at the end we get more space for fighters. If we want to make it faster we make the power systems bigger, more weapons, more space but more power as well.

This week: Shields
So first up is shields.
Currently our standard warp core is powering a 4million TJ standard shield.
You get 3 votes this time.
One for the power of the shield
One for the type of shield
One for the power supply.

This revolves around the power supply of the ship, the more powerfui the shield the bigger the core, which leads to more instability.

Firstly here are some examples of current shield strength of other ships. These figures are taken from DITL and are thus not hard canon but for our uses they are good enough.

Paladin 7 millionTJ
Sovereign 5.7 million Terra joules
Dominion Battleship 4.64 million TJ
Galaxy 2.7 million TJ
Defiant 2.37 million TJ
D'Deridex 2.3 million TJ
Negh'Var 2.16 million TJ
Scimitar 2.16 million TJ
Akira 1.88 million TJ

Working out the pros and cons of this one were harder than it was for other since the cons don't come in to play until latter.

The Pros and Cons for power:

Pros: Quite obvious. The stronger the shield, the better the protection.

Cons: For every 1 million Terra Joules of energy feed into the shields over the beginning amount of 4 million TJ the size of the power plant of the ship will increase by 5% of its original volume.

Higher energy shielding will also increase the rate at which the emmiters will need to be maintained and refitted due to the higher volume of power they channel. Also the larger the core the more unstable it becomes

Example: We decide the shields will be 6 million TJ's up from the Current 4 million. That would increase the size of the power plant 10%. If the power plant was originally taking up 15% of the internal volume of the ship in total, it will now take up almost 16.5% (15x1.1=16.5). That figure takes into account of everything related to the power plant ie the core its self and all related systems.

Pros and Cons for type:

Pros:
Bubble shields:
Require a lot less maintenance and are less likely to fail during battle. Due to the simplicity of the shielding, given time power can also be redirected from one area of shielding to another during battle essentially recharging the damaged area.

Form fitting shields:
Reduce the surface area of the shields and thus since the same amount of power is feed into them they are more powerful. Depending on the shape and size of the final ship this could very well be over double the strength per square meter.

It also reduces the apparent size of the ship in total and would thus allow greater maneuverability in close quarter fighting. It also presents a smaller profile to the enemy thus making it slightly harder to hit.

Cons:
Bubble shields:
Cover a larger surface since they have to expand in a bubble over the whole ship. This makes them weaker over all and are thus able to take fewer hits before failing.


Form fitting shields:
Require many more shield emitters and of larger size to be able to hold its shape. They thus require more maintenance and more engineering crew to maintain them.

Due to their complexity it is far more difficult to re direct power and you are thus pretty much stuck with shield damage until the battle is over. Due to the extra effort they need to hold the shield in the conforming shape needed they "waste" upwards of 15% of the power feed into them maintaining this shape.

There could also be a slight issue of "Bleed through" damage when powerful hits strike the shields. A small portion on the strike may break through the shield to the ship bellow even if the shields don't fail out right. This is not an issue on bubble shields due to their distance from the ship.


Pros and Cons of independent power supply:

Pro: By having its own power supply independent of anything else the shields will not fail if the warp core goes off line or other such issues. This power supply is only used for the shields

Also by not powering up the existing power supply (Probably the warp core) it becomes less fragile as they seem to get twitchy the bigger they get.

Cons: Since it will be a totally new power system it will increase the production time of the ship by one month past the original build time. This is due to the complexity of adding in another power unit.

Since it is a completely new system it will take up more room than just increasing the power out put of the existing power supply.

For every 1 million TJs of power feed into the shields the independent power unit will take up 0.75% of the internal volume of the ship.

Thus if we wanted a 6TJ shield that would take up around 4.5% extra space where as running it off the standard core would increase size by 3%


Split power:
This is a new option since the size of the ship is large enough to support it, the shields are run off the same core as everything else but there is two warp cores. The power use is split between them with it up to the engineering and command crew to decide what systems to run of which core.

Pro: Being two smaller cores they are inherently more stable than larger ones. Also if one does fail out right the ship can still run off one core, albeit at a greatly diminished capacity.

Con: Since you have a double system the size involved is higher. As a guide line a split core would work out to take 25% more space than the size requirement of a single core. Example: A single core supporting shields of 6 million would be 16.5%, a split core would be 20.6% (16.5% x 1.25 = 20.6)

3 votes, you can change you vote in the future if you wish.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Deepcrush »

Bubble shielding, 8m TJs on a split power supply. Defense is the key a ship like this, being able to survive and continue delivering her cargo to the battlefield. Her defense should be such that even if an enemy capital ship breaks through to her, their fire is next to meaningless.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Teaos »

I agree string shielding is important. Mostly because this is a huge vessel which will omst likely not be very agile and even if it were would have to stay rather stable so the craft could land. Which really pastes a giant bullseye on it for other enemy capital ships. You can pretty safetly bet that this thing will have all the big guns pointing at it and even with frigates in support its gonna be pounded.

Bubble shields would come in handy due to the heavy craft movement around it.

And I do like the idea of split core. This vessel is large enough to support it and it does provide a nice back up.

So yeah... i guess I agree with Deep... *Grabs hard liquor*
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Deepcrush »

A ship like this doesn't have to be very agile, in fact if she is even close to that of a GCS then that should be good enough.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Teaos »

Probaly around the same as a GCS, maybe slightly less or more depending on how much armour we slap on her.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Deepcrush »

Her armor should be freakish in Trek terms. No more of this 20cm or 30cm nonsense for ships as much a piece of art but a pure and simple warship. Anything not 1m plus shouldn't even be considered.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Teaos »

For a carrier? I gotta disagree, Armor vital areas but I would rather it have lighter armor and be fast and more agile.

Also that level or armorment would reduce the amount of vessels they can build. With only X amount of resources available more spent on each individual ship reduces the total number.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Deepcrush »

Teaos wrote:For a carrier? I gotta disagree, Armor vital areas but I would rather it have lighter armor and be fast and more agile.
A ship of this size is already too large for agility to be an advantage. Her primary advantage will have to be survival, ability to withstand the attacks that will likely be focused on her.
Teaos wrote:Also that level or armorment would reduce the amount of vessels they can build. With only X amount of resources available more spent on each individual ship reduces the total number.
The numbers of ships lost in production would be minimal. That level of armor still only changing the mass by however much is in need of the shape's design. If she's based off of the dual saucer with tucked internal pod/nacelles then you'd only have to armor about 2/3 the external hull as much the rest would be covered and also be launch bay doors and nacelles lengths. Again, its a minimal loss at that point but provides and incredible safety advantage to a ship which we all agree will be a prime target.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Teaos »

I agree up to a point, but 1m+ armor I think is pushing the limits of resources. 30-60 is far more realistic, maybe more over key areas.
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Re: DITL Carrier: Shields

Post by Deepcrush »

Well, considering that depending on design those key areas could in fact be kept away from open targeting. Much of the exposed hull would be just solid mass, easily armored and produced leaving nearly half the mass of the ship internal. 30cm is useless seeing the power of ships in the time frame and even 60cm still doesn't confer much an advantage. If you're going to build a fleet ship, you have to treat it as such down to every detail.
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