Post by Ravished Improbability on Sept 8, 2018 7:37:02 GMT
Artillery Ships and Siege Battleships
Two unique classes of battleships exists in the CCSS. They are design for something other than brawling it out with other ships. They are instead design for blasting space rocks and other large objects into oblivion. They are called artillery ships by some. The name does not quite do the ships justice for they are not glass cannons. The ships still have much of their secondary guns, meaning they can still quickly hammer ships smaller than a battleship into twisted wrecks. These ships of which are named after thunder gods.
The Perun is the test bed for the design concept, built onto the hull of an old heavy cruiser. The ship strips out the heavy lasers to mounts a full eight of the standard Magnetic Acceleration Cannons around the central spine. The ship was able to chain fire the MACs to devastating effect in tests. Those same tests showed that the artillery cruiser was easily flanked and without the heavy lasers to provide return fire. Refitting the ship with additional thrusters helped keep it from being as easily flanked by a single ship. Further modifications wedged in a pair of capital ship grade free electron laser generators by moving the hangers into the newly added sponsons bolted onto the drive pod in between the main radiator vanes. The ship was not the most successful do to the many issues with that the small size made worst. When properly escorted, the Peruns eight MACs can prove to be a fleet breaker.
The Aktzin is an another experimental design attempting to solve the issues of the previous design. The Aktzin is one of the weirder ships of the CCSS Navy with the nose of a heavy cruiser and rear of a battleship. The ship attempts to solve the flanking issue by mounting the each rail gun onto its own turret. The ship is able to mount six of the turrets in two rings of three with the second ring offset by 60 degrees. All six of the MACs can fire forward, but only a maximum of five of the guns can be used in a broadside. The forward two habitat rings of the battleship section have been removed to make room for the power systems for the aft ring of MAC turrets. The heavy weapons in the cross-guard provides the ship with much needed firepower for closer range engagements where the slow turning turrets are at a disadvantage. The design proved to expensive to maintain and battle damage to the turrets usually required a shipyard to fix. She was later stripped of her forward MAC turret ring and refitted to mount a fix battery of MACs much like the Perun. The stripped out turrets and rings are stored as spares at the yard to speed up future repairs. The refit also restores the anti-ship railguns and missile batteries, as well as greatly increasing the defensive weapons in the nose to something suiting its size.
The Raijin is the first of the CCSS's true siege type battleships and lead ship of her class. The Raijin is unlike any other battleship that proceeded her. While she is able to go toe to toe with other capital ships, she was not designed for ship to ship fighting. To make room for the cluster of three giant 7.5 meter bore Magnetic Acceleration Cannons, each packing more firepower than the entire multi gun MAC battery of a standard battleship, much of the internal weapons have been deleted and many of the other critical systems relocated. Extra internal bracing reinforces the inside and support guns and massive banks of power cells needed to fire the cannons. Thick armor separates the individual guns and their power banks, and an additional firewall separates the guns from the extra fusion reactors needed to charge up the guns huge power cells.
While pretty much all the heavy lasers are removed and much of the missile magazines, the battleship retains all the weapon systems mounted in between the main hull and outer armor including the heavy batteries of anti ship railguns and missile launchers. The battleship actually sports extra anti-ship railguns in place of the emitter turrets for the heavily lasers to make up for some of the firepower. The full size volleys of anti-ship missiles provides much of long range defensive fire for the ship. The ship does put some of those secondary reactors into powering a token handful of Fusion X-ray Lasers. Much of the laser fire is through the Optical Phase Array Laser panels which is left to play double duty as antimissile defense and anti-ship offense. The defensive batteries are pretty much no different than a normal battleship.
The Marduk is the sister ship to the Raijin and the second ship of the class. Learning from and improving on the design of the Raijin, the Marduk fits an additional super MAC inside its nose for a total of four of the massive cannons without sacrificing any more internal volume or any of the safety partitions. The Marduk features a basket hilt design around the habitat that beefs up the cross guard and greatly increases the ships mid range firepower. The Marduk features a much improved missile battery and deeper magazines.
The Zeus is currently the only ship of her class. Like the Raijin she had much of the standard weapons omitted and in its place a much heavier spinal weapon battery installed. Unlike the Raijin, the superweapon is the single largest array of X-ray, Free Electron, and Optical Phase Array Lasers ever assembled on a single ship. The laser array is so big that the entire nose of the ship needs to open up to expose the primary firing port and additional radiator panels unfold out to vent the massive heat generated by the laser array. The Zeus looks much like a grappling hook when using the main laser, the triangular radiator arrays hinging out from the front of the ship like the prongs. The side of the extended radiator facing the enemy is solid armor covered by many OPAL pannels. The back of arms and the armored recesses the arms folded out of forms a giant liquid droplet radiator to cool the ship.
The massive laser array is able to throw its punch over a longer effective range compared to the mass driver when operating against moving targets, being able to hit the target before it detects that the ship has fired. Like all lasers the energy armament suffers from divergence and diffraction which causes a sharp decline in the energy density of the beam pass a certain point. With a massive amounts of laser power and effective lens size of six kilometers it can focus that energy quite far away before the laser no longer has the energy density to do damage. The huge array of lasers means the Zeus is not limited to firing the entire power of the array at a single target. Groups or even single lasers are easily able to be focus on different targets allowing the Zeus to shotgun entire fleets with laser fire.
All this laser power comes at a price, the Zeus is lacking in missiles and anti ship railguns on the forward section. And the massive extended arms and radiator sails make the ship much bigger target when using the full power of the array. Like the Marduk, the Zeus is fitted with the heavier 'basket hilt' style cross guard to restore some of the missing ship to ship firepower and compensate for concentrating the majority of the ships laser power in the forward aspect. The basket hilt provides weapon emplacements that cover the other aspects of the ship.
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CCSS Interceptor Squadrons
From the largest to the smallest warships. The Interceptor Corvette is the smallest warship in the CCSS Navy at about an eighth the tonnage of even a guard ship. What they lack in firepower they make up for in speed. They pack a souped-up version of the drives used by guard ships that gives them a normal acceleration of over ten gravities.
The high acceleration allows these ships to run down and harass enemy fleets while heavier ships are still maneuvering to cut them off. They also make good scouts having enough speed and armor to skirt the edge of the enemy defenses to get better sensor data. They also make great courier ships for rapidly delivering messages and packages to distant fleets.
The small ships are design for short, high speed, brutal, hit and run combat. These ships dash in like missiles under insane acceleration through the enemy fleet defenses to deliver their payload of railgun fire and short and medium range missiles in the few moments they are in range. The Interceptors flip over as they pass the enemy to keep the heaviest armor pointed toward the enemy and to continue to engage as they coast out of the enemy's weapon range, before they finally use the powerful engines to decelerate back down to normal speeds. With such short engagement windows to hit there targets, the fire plan is programmed in advanced by the crew and targeting and engagement done by the computers during combat. There is simply to little time during the fight for the crew to do more than help the computers pick out the targets for the guns and missiles.
To allow the ship and crew to survive the brutal acceleration, many of the normal amenities common on CCSS ships have been omitted, and the ship's frame is heavily reinforced to take the strain. While it does have crew quarters, showers, mess hall, and even recreation facilities the ship is not designed to be the permanent home for the crew. Ideally the interceptor crews will be berthed on the tender or station the ship is assigned to and the small crews of 25 rotating out routinely with those on the station to prevent boredom and fatigue. The tiny 70-meter diameter habitat ring is spun to generate between 0.3 to 0.33 gravities. Just barely enough gravity to be comfortable while the engine is shutdown and the habitat module can be used. It is enough though to give a sense of down while eating, sleeping, or generally having some relaxation time.
During combat operations the entire crew evacuates the habitat ring and takes up battle stations inside the armored modules located at the core of the ship where they would have maximum protection. Not that 60-ish meters of side armor is enough against some of the ship to ship weapons, especially when the outer armor layer is only half as thick as a normal warship. The ships best defense is its small hard to hit size and acceleration that minimizes the time they are inside the enemies weapon range.
There is 25 work stations with acceleration couches for the crew in the three primary armored bunkers at the center of the ship, one for bridge, one for engineering, and one for the CIC/secondary bridge. There are also three other 'lounge' bunkers with 20 acceleration couches each for passengers. Each of the bunkers are designed to serve as a life boat and have there own internal secondary life support systems. The ship also has four small standard life support algae plants rated for 30 persons each.
The extra seating allows the Interceptors to quickly pull the crews from other ships in the squadron that are to damage to slow down before returning to base.
The weapons fit on these small ships are also rather unique. The small size and hit and run tactics requires a load out that maximized salvo size even at the cost of ammunition endurance. The nose of the ship bristles with fix mounted anti ship railguns with even more of the railguns in turrets. One fusion X-ray laser with three to four laser turrets for complete coverage around the ship sits deep in the nose to give the ship a minimal of long range fire. The rest of the ship's nose is given up to a massive array of single shot mid-range anti-ship missile tubes. The ship does has the common array of defensive weapons, but the OPAL panels are mounted on triangular ridges to maximize array area while reducing the amount of hull surface they cover. At the rear of the ship between the habitat ring and drive pod is a small hanger with modified high gravity armored drop pods to serve as the ships shuttles. Mounted around the drive pod are rapid fire mine dispensers. The final bit of weapons on the Interceptor are the rings of externally mounted large long-range anti-ship missile pods that provides the ship with its biggest opening punch and greatest defense by making the enemy ships divide their defensive fire on the bigger threats of the missiles.
Interceptors expend most if not all their ammo in their attack run and must meet up with specialized tender or return to base to switch out crew and have the ship repaired and restocked.
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Interceptor Tenders are modified destroyer hulls. These fast ships are normally fitted with cradles for twelve of the Interceptors, though some are fitted to carry as many as sixteen of the small ships into battle. The Interceptors are carried in rings of six to eight around the hull. With the full load of interceptors docked the tenders are ungainly difficult to maneuver ships but retain much of the destroyers high acceleration, still easily achieving 2 to 2.5 gravities of acceleration.
To make room for the cradles, ammo magazines, spare parts, and machine shops for the smaller ships, the rugged destroyers hulls are stripped of half their heavy weapons. They keep there main MAC cannon and forward heavy lasers and missile launchers. The fields of fire of many of the tender's turreted weapons are blocked by the cradles and interceptors. The docked Interceptor's own outward facing weapons are typically employed in the defense the Tender. The control towers in line with the cradles also double as flak towers in the defense of the ship.
The rear half of the nose cone is given up to the support of the Interceptors. Most of it is replacement anti-ship railguns and stocks piles of missiles to quickly rearm the small ships. There are also large stocks of internal bracing, hull plating, and armor to patch over battle damage. The tenders are equipped to rearm the Interceptors in a few hours, and fully repair moderate combat damage in under a day. To achieve these quick turn around times most of the repair crews are trained shipwrights equipped primarily with cutters. The major emphasize is more on tearing out the damage systems and replacing them. 'If its not a quick fix, pull the whole sub-assembly and replace it' is the workers mantra for the Interceptors. The damage parts are refurbished or recycled at leisure inside the machine shops of the tender.
The tenders are typically escorted by a standard destroyer or fast frigate to allow the tender to move fast without leaving behind its escorts.
Two unique classes of battleships exists in the CCSS. They are design for something other than brawling it out with other ships. They are instead design for blasting space rocks and other large objects into oblivion. They are called artillery ships by some. The name does not quite do the ships justice for they are not glass cannons. The ships still have much of their secondary guns, meaning they can still quickly hammer ships smaller than a battleship into twisted wrecks. These ships of which are named after thunder gods.
The Perun is the test bed for the design concept, built onto the hull of an old heavy cruiser. The ship strips out the heavy lasers to mounts a full eight of the standard Magnetic Acceleration Cannons around the central spine. The ship was able to chain fire the MACs to devastating effect in tests. Those same tests showed that the artillery cruiser was easily flanked and without the heavy lasers to provide return fire. Refitting the ship with additional thrusters helped keep it from being as easily flanked by a single ship. Further modifications wedged in a pair of capital ship grade free electron laser generators by moving the hangers into the newly added sponsons bolted onto the drive pod in between the main radiator vanes. The ship was not the most successful do to the many issues with that the small size made worst. When properly escorted, the Peruns eight MACs can prove to be a fleet breaker.
The Aktzin is an another experimental design attempting to solve the issues of the previous design. The Aktzin is one of the weirder ships of the CCSS Navy with the nose of a heavy cruiser and rear of a battleship. The ship attempts to solve the flanking issue by mounting the each rail gun onto its own turret. The ship is able to mount six of the turrets in two rings of three with the second ring offset by 60 degrees. All six of the MACs can fire forward, but only a maximum of five of the guns can be used in a broadside. The forward two habitat rings of the battleship section have been removed to make room for the power systems for the aft ring of MAC turrets. The heavy weapons in the cross-guard provides the ship with much needed firepower for closer range engagements where the slow turning turrets are at a disadvantage. The design proved to expensive to maintain and battle damage to the turrets usually required a shipyard to fix. She was later stripped of her forward MAC turret ring and refitted to mount a fix battery of MACs much like the Perun. The stripped out turrets and rings are stored as spares at the yard to speed up future repairs. The refit also restores the anti-ship railguns and missile batteries, as well as greatly increasing the defensive weapons in the nose to something suiting its size.
The Raijin is the first of the CCSS's true siege type battleships and lead ship of her class. The Raijin is unlike any other battleship that proceeded her. While she is able to go toe to toe with other capital ships, she was not designed for ship to ship fighting. To make room for the cluster of three giant 7.5 meter bore Magnetic Acceleration Cannons, each packing more firepower than the entire multi gun MAC battery of a standard battleship, much of the internal weapons have been deleted and many of the other critical systems relocated. Extra internal bracing reinforces the inside and support guns and massive banks of power cells needed to fire the cannons. Thick armor separates the individual guns and their power banks, and an additional firewall separates the guns from the extra fusion reactors needed to charge up the guns huge power cells.
While pretty much all the heavy lasers are removed and much of the missile magazines, the battleship retains all the weapon systems mounted in between the main hull and outer armor including the heavy batteries of anti ship railguns and missile launchers. The battleship actually sports extra anti-ship railguns in place of the emitter turrets for the heavily lasers to make up for some of the firepower. The full size volleys of anti-ship missiles provides much of long range defensive fire for the ship. The ship does put some of those secondary reactors into powering a token handful of Fusion X-ray Lasers. Much of the laser fire is through the Optical Phase Array Laser panels which is left to play double duty as antimissile defense and anti-ship offense. The defensive batteries are pretty much no different than a normal battleship.
The Marduk is the sister ship to the Raijin and the second ship of the class. Learning from and improving on the design of the Raijin, the Marduk fits an additional super MAC inside its nose for a total of four of the massive cannons without sacrificing any more internal volume or any of the safety partitions. The Marduk features a basket hilt design around the habitat that beefs up the cross guard and greatly increases the ships mid range firepower. The Marduk features a much improved missile battery and deeper magazines.
The Zeus is currently the only ship of her class. Like the Raijin she had much of the standard weapons omitted and in its place a much heavier spinal weapon battery installed. Unlike the Raijin, the superweapon is the single largest array of X-ray, Free Electron, and Optical Phase Array Lasers ever assembled on a single ship. The laser array is so big that the entire nose of the ship needs to open up to expose the primary firing port and additional radiator panels unfold out to vent the massive heat generated by the laser array. The Zeus looks much like a grappling hook when using the main laser, the triangular radiator arrays hinging out from the front of the ship like the prongs. The side of the extended radiator facing the enemy is solid armor covered by many OPAL pannels. The back of arms and the armored recesses the arms folded out of forms a giant liquid droplet radiator to cool the ship.
The massive laser array is able to throw its punch over a longer effective range compared to the mass driver when operating against moving targets, being able to hit the target before it detects that the ship has fired. Like all lasers the energy armament suffers from divergence and diffraction which causes a sharp decline in the energy density of the beam pass a certain point. With a massive amounts of laser power and effective lens size of six kilometers it can focus that energy quite far away before the laser no longer has the energy density to do damage. The huge array of lasers means the Zeus is not limited to firing the entire power of the array at a single target. Groups or even single lasers are easily able to be focus on different targets allowing the Zeus to shotgun entire fleets with laser fire.
All this laser power comes at a price, the Zeus is lacking in missiles and anti ship railguns on the forward section. And the massive extended arms and radiator sails make the ship much bigger target when using the full power of the array. Like the Marduk, the Zeus is fitted with the heavier 'basket hilt' style cross guard to restore some of the missing ship to ship firepower and compensate for concentrating the majority of the ships laser power in the forward aspect. The basket hilt provides weapon emplacements that cover the other aspects of the ship.
-----
CCSS Interceptor Squadrons
From the largest to the smallest warships. The Interceptor Corvette is the smallest warship in the CCSS Navy at about an eighth the tonnage of even a guard ship. What they lack in firepower they make up for in speed. They pack a souped-up version of the drives used by guard ships that gives them a normal acceleration of over ten gravities.
The high acceleration allows these ships to run down and harass enemy fleets while heavier ships are still maneuvering to cut them off. They also make good scouts having enough speed and armor to skirt the edge of the enemy defenses to get better sensor data. They also make great courier ships for rapidly delivering messages and packages to distant fleets.
The small ships are design for short, high speed, brutal, hit and run combat. These ships dash in like missiles under insane acceleration through the enemy fleet defenses to deliver their payload of railgun fire and short and medium range missiles in the few moments they are in range. The Interceptors flip over as they pass the enemy to keep the heaviest armor pointed toward the enemy and to continue to engage as they coast out of the enemy's weapon range, before they finally use the powerful engines to decelerate back down to normal speeds. With such short engagement windows to hit there targets, the fire plan is programmed in advanced by the crew and targeting and engagement done by the computers during combat. There is simply to little time during the fight for the crew to do more than help the computers pick out the targets for the guns and missiles.
To allow the ship and crew to survive the brutal acceleration, many of the normal amenities common on CCSS ships have been omitted, and the ship's frame is heavily reinforced to take the strain. While it does have crew quarters, showers, mess hall, and even recreation facilities the ship is not designed to be the permanent home for the crew. Ideally the interceptor crews will be berthed on the tender or station the ship is assigned to and the small crews of 25 rotating out routinely with those on the station to prevent boredom and fatigue. The tiny 70-meter diameter habitat ring is spun to generate between 0.3 to 0.33 gravities. Just barely enough gravity to be comfortable while the engine is shutdown and the habitat module can be used. It is enough though to give a sense of down while eating, sleeping, or generally having some relaxation time.
During combat operations the entire crew evacuates the habitat ring and takes up battle stations inside the armored modules located at the core of the ship where they would have maximum protection. Not that 60-ish meters of side armor is enough against some of the ship to ship weapons, especially when the outer armor layer is only half as thick as a normal warship. The ships best defense is its small hard to hit size and acceleration that minimizes the time they are inside the enemies weapon range.
There is 25 work stations with acceleration couches for the crew in the three primary armored bunkers at the center of the ship, one for bridge, one for engineering, and one for the CIC/secondary bridge. There are also three other 'lounge' bunkers with 20 acceleration couches each for passengers. Each of the bunkers are designed to serve as a life boat and have there own internal secondary life support systems. The ship also has four small standard life support algae plants rated for 30 persons each.
The extra seating allows the Interceptors to quickly pull the crews from other ships in the squadron that are to damage to slow down before returning to base.
The weapons fit on these small ships are also rather unique. The small size and hit and run tactics requires a load out that maximized salvo size even at the cost of ammunition endurance. The nose of the ship bristles with fix mounted anti ship railguns with even more of the railguns in turrets. One fusion X-ray laser with three to four laser turrets for complete coverage around the ship sits deep in the nose to give the ship a minimal of long range fire. The rest of the ship's nose is given up to a massive array of single shot mid-range anti-ship missile tubes. The ship does has the common array of defensive weapons, but the OPAL panels are mounted on triangular ridges to maximize array area while reducing the amount of hull surface they cover. At the rear of the ship between the habitat ring and drive pod is a small hanger with modified high gravity armored drop pods to serve as the ships shuttles. Mounted around the drive pod are rapid fire mine dispensers. The final bit of weapons on the Interceptor are the rings of externally mounted large long-range anti-ship missile pods that provides the ship with its biggest opening punch and greatest defense by making the enemy ships divide their defensive fire on the bigger threats of the missiles.
Interceptors expend most if not all their ammo in their attack run and must meet up with specialized tender or return to base to switch out crew and have the ship repaired and restocked.
-----
Interceptor Tenders are modified destroyer hulls. These fast ships are normally fitted with cradles for twelve of the Interceptors, though some are fitted to carry as many as sixteen of the small ships into battle. The Interceptors are carried in rings of six to eight around the hull. With the full load of interceptors docked the tenders are ungainly difficult to maneuver ships but retain much of the destroyers high acceleration, still easily achieving 2 to 2.5 gravities of acceleration.
To make room for the cradles, ammo magazines, spare parts, and machine shops for the smaller ships, the rugged destroyers hulls are stripped of half their heavy weapons. They keep there main MAC cannon and forward heavy lasers and missile launchers. The fields of fire of many of the tender's turreted weapons are blocked by the cradles and interceptors. The docked Interceptor's own outward facing weapons are typically employed in the defense the Tender. The control towers in line with the cradles also double as flak towers in the defense of the ship.
The rear half of the nose cone is given up to the support of the Interceptors. Most of it is replacement anti-ship railguns and stocks piles of missiles to quickly rearm the small ships. There are also large stocks of internal bracing, hull plating, and armor to patch over battle damage. The tenders are equipped to rearm the Interceptors in a few hours, and fully repair moderate combat damage in under a day. To achieve these quick turn around times most of the repair crews are trained shipwrights equipped primarily with cutters. The major emphasize is more on tearing out the damage systems and replacing them. 'If its not a quick fix, pull the whole sub-assembly and replace it' is the workers mantra for the Interceptors. The damage parts are refurbished or recycled at leisure inside the machine shops of the tender.
The tenders are typically escorted by a standard destroyer or fast frigate to allow the tender to move fast without leaving behind its escorts.