Diamond Class Assault ship.

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Graham Kennedy
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Diamond Class Assault ship.

Post by Graham Kennedy »

The Diamond class is the Coalition's version of ships like the US Wasp class LHD. As regular views will know, one of the aims of the whole Coalition universe is to illustrate my view on the ultra-large ships common in sci-fi. My contention is that artists put such ships into their stories or movies without any real sense of how big they are, and what that would mean.

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So, the Diamond class is 7,325 metres from nose to tail - that's 4.55 miles. The total volume of the hull is over ten billion cubic metres - arranged as a cube this ship would be a building 1.3 miles on a side and 538 stories tall.

The upper section of the hull is largely devoted to accommodation for the troops, which is why there are lots of widow rows there. Window rows are a little iffy on a warship, frankly, but I wanted something to give a sense of scale. Besides, these ships aren't armoured to anything like the extent that a navy warship is.

The levels behind those windows have a combined deck area of over 470 square kilometres. There is accommodation there for eighteen million troops. If it seems high, notice that it gives an average of 26 square metres (281 square feet) per person. Plenty to give every single soldier their own room, if needed. In reality only officers would have even shared room, most would live in barracks. There's also all kinds of support areas in these spaces - food storage, galleys, rec areas, training areas, etc.

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You'll notice that Coalition ships typically have a 'head' at the front of the ship. The form of FTL travel the Coalition (and most galactic powers) use involves through a rift into midspace. Midspace isn't an alternate universe as such. Think of the multiverse as being like a very large piece of foam; each bubble is a universe. Midspace isn't another bubble - it's the soap. It also contains an energy barrier not unlike Trek's galactic barrier, which is what keeps the universes of the multiverse separated. Nothing known can penetrate this barrier, which is why there is no alternate universe shenanigans in the Coalitionverse.

Anyway, midspace is a violent and unpredictable place. The energy barrier flares constantly, spewing out large and powerful 'storms'. Some minor, some the midspace equivalent of hurricanes. Some are even permanent, which means there are areas of midspace you just can't pass through - and hence areas of the galaxy you just can't get to, at least via FTL. The ability to batter your way through adverse 'weather' in midspace is something you have to master to be considered a galactic power. Such operations are hard on the ship, and so the bows tend to be reinforced.

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You can see the red-glowing thing on the nose. This is the rifter, which allows a ship to pass into and out of midspace. Behind it you can see small features on the ventral edge of the lower hull. These are launchers for KE missiles, seventy two of them in all.

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The aft end, showing the sublight propulsors. Note also the side mounted structures; these contain the midspace shunts (engines). Most Coalition ships mount these internally, and this is an old-fashioned element harking back to the Eleska class.

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The main launch/landing bay, in the bottom of the hull. That bay passes right through the hull, with another aperture at the rear end. It's arranged that way so that a ship can approach and land from ahead or behind, overshooting and continuing on back into space if needed. That aperture is 500 metres (1,640 feet) wide. There are also a profusion of other bays, as you can see. The smallest of them can take a mule class transport with ease.

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The dorsal surface. Most Coalition ships have a structure of some sort here, usually a single one. I decided to play with the idea of a 'city' on top of the hull, again to give some sense of scale. Not sure how practical this is, and at some point I may change it.

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The Diamond class is not particularly heavily armed. Here we see a row of Mark 2 AMP cannon for defence; there are thirty two of those in all. Also there's a row of thirty eight plasma cannon. These are the same weapons mounted on the Askad-Tarell class surface bombardment unit. They're artillery for supporting ground assaults, essentially. The AMP cannon aren't much good for that, too powerful (multi-megaton) and too much radiation crap spread around by the detonations. The plasma cannon can blow your house up whist only breaking the windows on the houses on either side.

If this seems like an extreme design, think about how many soldiers you'd need to take on the entire Earth's combined armies right now, and then occupy the whole world afterwards. And bear in mind - an interstellar war might involve mounting a hundred thousand such campaigns.
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Re: Diamond Class Assault ship.

Post by Teaos »

I love the texturing on it, looking at this then your first ones you have gotten a lot better over time. I could see these being in a legit online game or similar.
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Re: Diamond Class Assault ship.

Post by Graham Kennedy »

Thanks! Yeah, in the early days I had this mental thing where the far future had advanced materials that were super smooth and perfect... because I had no idea how to do textures so I tried to convince myself that I didn't need them, lol. I'm still far from an expert on texturing, but I remember the first time I textured a ship and was like "whoa, that looks SO much better!"
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Re: Diamond Class Assault ship.

Post by Teaos »

I think I read somewhere, hell it may have even been you, that since ships never are in atmosphere, that they have no need to be stream lined. Like the Borg cubes.

Thus when making them people don't both with smooth lines and such, when you need to replace armour you weld a bit ontop of the damaged bit, cause why the hell not. Weight is not much of an issue it seems, so the older the ship the more random it looks.
What does defeat mean to you?

Nothing it will never come. Death before defeat. I don’t bend or break. I end, if I meet a foe capable of it. Victory is in forcing the opponent to back down. I do not. There is no defeat.
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