Type 25 Battleship

[Graham Kennedy]

The Type 25 Battleship is a brand new, very secret, project undertaken by the Areldeni. It is designed to be a ship which is capable of taking on and defeating any Coalition battleship. Whilst the Type 21 is claimed to be the "approximate equal" of the Kororra class by many, this is largely based on the fact that it has about the same overall firepower from its 51 Mark 15s as the Kororra does in its 21 Mark 21s. However, the Mark 21 has a significant range advantage over the Mark 15; a sufficiently canny Coalition captain could therefore stand outside Mark 15 range and batter the Areldeni ship at will - an eminently useable tactic, since the Kororra is a faster ship than the Type 21 Battleship is.

The Type 25 is designed to not just match but exceed the Kororra. In configuration it is similar to the Type 21, though it shows a good deal of scaling up and evolution from that design. Most notably it mounts 20 Mark 23 AMP cannon, with 33 Mark 15s as secondary armament. In terms of primary armament versus primary armament, the Type 25 therefore outguns the Kororra by about 25% - with the range advantage now reversed. Once the 25 closes to within Mark 15 range, it's firepower advantage mounts still further. The ship is also equal in speed to the Kororra, allowing the two to maneuver on equal terms.

The 25 also represents a step change in terms of sensors, shields, armour, damage control and other systems.

The weaknesses of the 25 may well lie back home rather than with the ship itself. The Areldeni certainly achieved a major coup in planning, building, and fielding a ship like this in secrecy. But achieving that very secrecy likely means that the project was limited to a single facility, and so the production rate is likely to be low, at least for some years to come. Also, the 25's intended operating area can only be the Fabriana Sea, and it must be questionable whether the Areldeni can have refitted shipyards and support bases throughout this region to accommodate these monsters. These factors are likely to handicap the design in terms of its overall effect on the balance of power in the area. On the other hand, clearly the surprise fielding of this design can only be regarded as a major failure for the Coaliiton's intelligence services. One can only wonder just how profound a failure that will prove to be, and there certainly remains the worrying possibility that the Type 25 will indeed mark a new and dangerous - possibly even decisive - shift in the balance of power in the region.



Comparison shot of the Type 25, Kororra Class, and Type 21 battleships :



Out of universe : This is the big bad from the story I'm working up. It's an unknown to the characters when it appears, and is the force they will be fighting.

[Mikey]

Nicely done. It certainly shows the fact that it is more than a mere scale-up of the Type 21, yet its derivation is obvious.

[Teaos]

Wow thats a pretty massive step up in capability.

Reminds me of the Scimitar, super warship, built in secret and scares the crap out of everyone.

The Balance of super secret warship and low production run is nicely done.

[Captain Seafort]

Yamato. It's a bloody Yamato.

Very nicely done Graham.

[Teaos]

I seem to remember you stating in one of your earlier designs that the two hull design ships were signifigantly less powerful than the nwere types, yet you make this one just as fast, a bit odd.

Also I think you said something about a balance between having a thick and thus strong connecting rod, but this would reduce the efficency of the ship.

Or you could have a slender one which was weak but faster.

This one looks pretty thick so shouldnt it be slow?

[Tsukiyumi]

I imagine newer technology would negate that problem somewhat.

Very cool, Graham. Could you put one up with a 1,000 meter scale bar; 300 meters at a time made it difficult for me to scale these beasts.

[Sionnach Glic]

Very cool.

[Reliant121]

A leviathan of power.

Likey, likey =D

[Graham Kennedy]

I seem to remember you stating in one of your earlier designs that the two hull design ships were signifigantly less powerful than the nwere types, yet you make this one just as fast, a bit odd.

The Areldeni use an older, more primitive drive technology, but they have built a huge and very powerful version of it to try and match the more advanced Kororras. It's scale and bags of raw power over sophistication, basically.

Also I think you said something about a balance between having a thick and thus strong connecting rod, but this would reduce the efficency of the ship.

Or you could have a slender one which was weak but faster.

This one looks pretty thick so shouldnt it be slow?

With twin field lobes, there is a balance between agility and speed. Thick necks allow more speed, but they have big forces on them when you maneuver, so agility becomes limited lest the neck break.

The balance is always there, but higher tech levels allow better synchronisation of the two fields and so give you more leeway. Here it is in a sketched graph :

The lines show the balance between neck thickness and agility. If you stay under that line, you are fine, but if you pull a maneuver that goes up the agility scale over the line, the neck snaps and it's goodbye ship.

However, if you can synchronise the fields really well then the balance between the two still exists, but it's shifted. You get more agility for any given neck thickness. But it's still the case that if you pull a really, really hard turn, you'll snap your ship in half.

I'm actually contemplating this as being a way that the good guys might win in the end of the story.

[Teaos]

So this thing is as fast as a coalition ship, is it as agile?

[Graham Kennedy]

No it isn't.

[MetalHead]

Beautiful. As a plot device, this will work epicly. I can't wait for the release, Graham, I'll be hooked!!

[Reliant121]

I must ask Graham, not being particularly knowledgeable, how did you manage to make the shade differences in one section? I.E: if you take the bow section (where the ist trio of turrets is) you have a light gray near to the edge, and a slightly darker grey nearby. How did you manage that? is there a tool in your drawing program that allows you to use do that?

[Graham Kennedy]

The shading is done in several basic ways, depending on what bit we're talking about.

I draw the ship as a 1 pixel thick outline, then colour it a uniform shade of grey. That grey is the "flat" colour, and all hull surface that is flat to the screen has it. I always assume a light source at the top of the picture.

If a surface is flat but angled up towards the light, then I just take the hull shade, lighten it, and use a paint bucket to colour that surface differently. If the surface slopes away from the light I darken it and do the same. The greater the angle, the lighter or darker I go. If you look at the aft hull of the Type 25, you can see most of it is the middle grey, with the upper slope a lighter colour and the lower slope a darker one. They were done this way.

If the surface is curved, like the upper forward hull is on the Type 25, then I do one of two things. If the curve is constant all along the length then I use the gradient fill, filling from the normal hull colour on the flat part of the hull up to a light one at the top. Or from normal to a dark colour if the curve is sloping down away from the light. The underslung curved hull sections on my Coalition ships are done this way.

In the Type 25 this is complicated by the fact that most of the hull length is curved, but then there's a compound curve at the front too. In a way this is the easiest to do. I colour the whole section in neutral, then pick the pain brush and make it really, really big. I set the hardness of the brush to 0% and pick a really light grey. Then I just sweep the edge of the brush down the top of the curve to lighten it. It may take a bit of experimentation - a smaller brush will give you a lighter top, making it look like a tighter curve, while a bigger one will give you a more gradual effect.

Finally, on underhanging hull components I usually put a bit of shadow. This is done most often by selecting that hull area and picking a fairly small brush with a dark grey on it and just painting the shadow in. If it's a really long component then photoshop has a nifty feature where you hold shift down, click at one end, then click at the other, and it paints a perfectly straight brush line between the two points.

I hope that's explained it... ask if it's unclear!

[Reliant121]

That seems perfectly clear to me.

Merci =D