DITL Carrier

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What size vessel?

Poll ended at Sat Sep 29, 2012 9:41 pm

Small (Steamrunner)
3
33%
Medium (Sovereign)
2
22%
Large (Son'A Battleship)
4
44%
 
Total votes: 9
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Teaos
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DITL Carrier

Post by Teaos »

So I was looking over the archive and found the old Paladin design threads where we designed a Federation Battleship from the ground up.

I had totally forgotten how involved that was and how interesting it was to try to create a balanced ship.

Added to that I am currently rereading the unity Saga over in SFDebris, which anyone who has read it knows massively mixes up the Star Trek and Star Wars universe. Featured are fighter wings which are nonexistent in the Trek Universe but feature a lot in Wars. The closest we see in Trek are the Dominion Bugs and the smallest scale of BoP. Both of which are shown to actually be rather effective in combat.

So I propose once again going from the ground up and trying to design a ship that fits into the Federations fleet post Dominion War.


Set one or two years after the Paladin went into full scale production. We can assume the original design run of 12 Paladins have been fulfilled and after proving successful they have been put into long term production with the ship yards putting out between 6-8 a year.

Starfleet has officially split into two wings, Military and S/E. With one overall budget split between the two departments decided every two years by the Federation Council or by emergency executive order.

Current ship building models are:-

Military

Battleship – Paladin – Heavy Battleship, minimal luxury, average endurance.

Diplomatic Cruiser – Soverign – A battle ready cruiser but with a higher level of comfort and scientific equipment, used for a display of force but can also be used diplomatically. Long endurance.

Escort/Firgate – Defiant – Short range escort class vessel.

Tactical scout – Prometheus – Fast, heavily armed, average armor, average endurance.
Torpedo boat/Destroyer – Akira – Fast with heavy Torpedo armament, average protection.

Medical –Olympic – Hospital ship


Science/Exploration wing:

Long range explorer – Galaxy class – Long endurance, high scientific and luxury rating.

Work Horse – Nebula – Used for a variety of missions across the breadth of the Federation

Long range scout – intrepid - Long endurance and moderate luxury and scientific potential.

Science scout –Nova – Used for mission in core systems.

Redundant fleet – All classes of ships produced pre 2365 – used for low risk missions within the borders of the Federation.


Any class of ship specifically not mentioned is no longer in Production and fall under redundant fleet and under command of Science and Exploration wing.

So now we add a dedicated Carrier. We will design specific craft to be used concurrently with it during the design process.


To start with we have to allocate our resources.

The Carrier project has been allocated 30 million tons of resources by Starfleet’s military wing. An allotment that would build the equivalent of 6 GCS. If the project proves successful a yearly allotment of 20 million tons we are allocated.
Here are some examples on sizes of other ships:
Nova 127,000

Defiant 355,000

Steamrunner 375,000

Intrepid 700,000

Akira 3,055,000

Sovereign 3,500,000

Galaxy 4,960,000

Paladin – 5,200,000


You my fellow DITLers are have to first decide how to best use this allotment, the distribution of resources. The options that have been presented are as follows:-

Small carrier run = about 80-90
Small Carrier of size similar to Akira, 300,000 tons a piece excluding fighters
Craft allotment 120
Build time, 12 months

Medium carrier run = 8-9
Medium Carrier of size similar to sovereign, 3,000,000 tons excluding fighters
Craft allotment 2,500
Build time, 18 months

Large Carrier run = 3-4
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


Starfleet is capable of supplying almost any number of Shuttlecraft at the moment and can retrofit some facilities to produce up to 500 fighter/bomber class ships a year with no additional cost, anything over the 500 number we will need to spend 500,000 tons of the initial start up resource allotment to expand the facility to produce 500 more craft a year.

Below are the craft a ship like this would carry, the design process will happen in several stages like last time. Depending on the design process the allotment for each vessel can go up or down depending on if with add more features to the carrier or strip them away, right now is what the designers would consider a middle ground number for a craft of the stated size. So while designing the vessel you must keep in mind the cost of the vessels in over all resource requirements.


Fighters:
Light fighter – 12 tons – space 1 allotment – no armor, high agility, Beam weapons only, no warp

Medium fighter – 20 tons –space 1.25 allotments– light armor, good agility, Beam/phase canon weapon and single torpedo tube, warp 6

Heavy fighter – 35 tons -1.75 allotments - medium armor, average agility, Torpedo tube, beam weapon and dual phase canon. Warp 8

Bomber – 40 tons -2.25 allotments - Medium armor, Beam weapon, Two torpedo tubes.

Shuttle – 40 tons – 3 allotments- multipurpose light craft

Troop ship - 80 tons – 5 allotments - Medium armor, no warp. For deployment of troops onto planetary surface or space station, holds 240 troops.

Yacht – 75 tons -5 allotments- Captains private vessel, high luxury, warp 8.5.


For now we are just deciding on the size of the ship. Ship lay out, armament, speed, living conditions, shape, protection, will all be decided upon in future threads.
You can change you vote if you wish.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Jim »

Why is there such a difference between your Akira size carrier and Soverign size carrier? The Akira is 3.05Mmt and the Soverign is 3.5Mmt... that is rather close, 1.15x mass ratio. The carriers based on these are 10x mass ratio difference and 20x fighter ratio difference.

I think the size depends on the use. However, the large carrier is, basically, overkill. It would be like building two Nimitz carriers and connecting them like pontoons. Just overkill and no real reason for it.

Medium carrier is a war vessel. It is designed to bring a lot of power to a fight. It is not something that you would deploy in most situations. i t would be the equivelant of a full carrier battle group now.

The small carrier is like an amphibious craft carrier or a helo-carrier or such. While not really sutable for a full force war... it is much more usefull and able to be deployed to a wider varierty of situations.

My vote would be more along the lines of the small carrier.
Troop ships - 5
Shuttles - 3
Bombers - 8
Heavy fighters - 10
Medium fighters - 40
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Teaos »

Why is there such a difference between your Akira size carrier and Soverign size carrier? The Akira is 3.05Mmt and the Soverign is 3.5Mmt... that is rather close, 1.15x mass ratio. The carriers based on these are 10x mass ratio difference and 20x fighter ratio difference.
Ah I used the wrong vessel, it was supposed to be the equivalent of a 300,000 ton vessel.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Jim »

Ho worries... I miss a lot of things here that other people take for granted so I just wanted to make sure.

I still go with a small carrir for the reasons that I mentioned.

I like the idea though. Years ago when I first found this site I proposed a carrier for Defiant's. I figured that if Defiants were so poor in comfort for the crew it would make sense to have some sort of carrier that could give them a level of comfort and companionship that would keep them toasty as opposed to being physicall and mentally tired. Maybe a dozen Defiants externally attached.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Deepcrush »

I'm going to say a large ship, truth be told you're going to have a massive crew for this kind of a venture. Even with only 500 craft and most seem to be two man, plus deck crew, plus ship crew. Anything under 3000 crew would be silly. The best use of a carrier is also going to be as a fleet flagship, so she needs to be big enough to hold defenses strong enough to handle being a prime target.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Teaos »

Wow seems rather tied... I was honestly expecting the middle one to win. Small isnt as practical and we really dont need that many of them, the large is a huge deterant and would probably do a lot of good stationed near the boarders. Middle is best of both worlds.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Deepcrush »

Problem is that the middle ground is a cruiser, and you'd be better spending that effort and space on fleet cruisers and not light carriers.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Captain Seafort »

Seventy years ago the US Navy disagreed with you.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Deepcrush »

Seventy years ago they didn't have to build a fleet carrier that was also going to have to fight close quarters with other enemy capital ships. There for requiring greater space in order to store the weapons and defenses needed to survive such engagements.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Teaos »

If this is a carrier I would imagin it has light armor and weapons, it would only be deployed with support vessel like modern carriers.

Armor is a waste since the loading doors are probably going to be large and rather obvious weak points, also it should be rather fast.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by McAvoy »

I find that any type of carrier in Trek will never be like that of USN or other sci fi series. The ship would have be kept in the rear with her own escorts unless you plan on making a Battlestar.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Deepcrush »

Teaos wrote:If this is a carrier I would imagin it has light armor and weapons, it would only be deployed with support vessel like modern carriers.
Maybe so, but as we've seen in Trek even having support ships won't be enough to keep the enemy off forever. Which means the ship will have to be able to defend itself in more then just a token action.
Teaos wrote:Armor is a waste since the loading doors are probably going to be large and rather obvious weak points, also it should be rather fast.
Just because you have doors, doesn't mean you aren't allowed to have armor. It just means you have to be careful about how you use the armor. There's also nothing to say the doors have to be any larger then the ships doing the loading. Large enough to launch and return your attack craft and supply shuttles for anything that can't be transported.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Deepcrush »

McAvoy wrote:I find that any type of carrier in Trek will never be like that of USN or other sci fi series. The ship would have be kept in the rear with her own escorts unless you plan on making a Battlestar.
Considering the nature of Trek combat, that's exactly what you'll have to do.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by Teaos »

Just because you have doors, doesn't mean you aren't allowed to have armor. It just means you have to be careful about how you use the armor. There's also nothing to say the doors have to be any larger then the ships doing the loading. Large enough to launch and return your attack craft and supply shuttles for anything that can't be transported.
Good point but I imagin the doors would still have to be quite a bit larger than the craft, not only to allow for easier landing especially in combat but also to allow slightly larger models of ships in the future.

If a craft is 2.2 meters tall I would want to doors to be at least 4 meters tall if not 6-7.
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Re: DITL Carrier

Post by McAvoy »

The USN learbed that long ago. The USS Midway despite a huge refit that made her nearly as capable as a super carrier could not use certain types of aircraft due to the hanger ceiling height. The Midway was 17.5 feet tall vs. 25 feet tall.
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