25 minutes ago, Alpha Xg1 said:

Yeah! HOLY ^Tooooooooooooooot^

Wouldn't DARE to quote @GiledPallaeon

So I thought to quote @Ardaedhel instead.

That's a whole lot of text! WALL of text!! I'd dare say that, that one single post is the equivalent of the entire amount of text (barring images/video content etc.) in the X-Wing Gunboat Thread!!!!!

MAN...I don't think I'm going to get any work done at all today! HAVE to sit down and analyse as @FoaS put it, dissertation!

If it's worth doing. it's worth overdoing. For the record, I didn't plan to write that much per se, just that I had thoughts, and then I had more thoughts, and then I looked up and I was six paragraphs in and only through two bullets.

I generally agree with all the points about *sea* warship design (nitpicks about Richelieu's design lineage aside - note that the French naval general staff moved to the Gascogne arrangement and would've done so for Clemenceau had this not involved a major delay). Apart from educational purposes I'm not sure how they are applicable to rules of thumb explicitly intended for the Star Wars setting. I'll definitely say that not every SW fan is going to agree with them, since it depends on certain interpretations of how the technology is supposed to work.

Specific comments:
I'm going to respond point by point, and hopefully the formatting will be clear enough.

Sleek as in slim, correct.

"I can achieve the same number of weapons and have a sleeker exterior by deploying all the weapons in retractable turrets. All of those turrets will involve a lot of additional work to not compromise the armor, but I can still get a "sleek"/less greeblehauled look."

You can. I'm not sure it would be worthwhile from a complexity, cost, and structural stability viewpoint, but it is possible. However, we basically never ever see retracting turrets in SW, and considering each one can output power to destroy cities (and recoil to match), this doesn't really pass the sniff test re structural strength to me.

"Regarding such a slimmer ship. I will make a few points. First, it stands to reason that such a ship would offset its inability to mount a large main engine with multiple distributed smaller engines."

Agreed. My mention of the square-cube law does NOT make any special mention of propulsion. Ship power in terrestial (real world) terms is about propulsion, since firepower and protection are "baked in" to the munitions and structure and not actively generated by the ship. However I make the assumption that SW reactors are not explicitly linked to propulsion. Rather the energy generated from the reactors are converted by different ship systems into appropriate outputs: energy weapon fire, shields, and energetic "ions" that are shot out of the ship to provide motive power. Acceleration will be correlated to power, but not actively linked in the sense of a fuel combustion heat being linked to a turbine via steam. In principle, this is sort of like the IEP systems you mentioned in more modern day ships (though turbo-electric drive was a thing a long time ago).

"For being underarmed, I will point out that I am not necessarily limited to less weapons output (provided I have equal power generation)"

Absolutely correct. There would be other ways to short-circuit the link between power generation and firepower, for instance missile warheads. But you can also have fewer bigger guns.

"There is a similar effect for shields. While Executor on the whole probably has less power generation available than Wrath, if she is equipped with the same shield generators she can reactively shunt power from generator to generator, improving the shields selectively."

Here's were we will diverge. I posit that shields, being actively generated and maintained, are better when concentrated over a smaller area; the relationship is that strength is inverse to area covered. If we disagree here, then that's that; to my knowledge there is not a canon view on this. A slimmer ship does have a smaller area to cover, but if it cannot reduce its surface area to volume ratio, it will (in this reading) be proportionately more poorly protected.

"A sleeker ship will have fewer protrusions, whether weapon mounts or greebles, so its armor and shields do not have to account for these exterior features."

No. Turrets are a miniscule contributor to surface area. I'm happy to provide excruciatingly detailed numbers on demand to prove the point. The basic hull shape is massively more of a factor in overall surface area, even for a ship with as many turrets as Wrath. Also, a retractable turret ship would be unable to fire to gain a very small decrease in surface area, while we're talking about retractable turrets.

"If shield strength is proportional the surface area of the shield and to shield strength (and if the shields do not have to map exactly to the surface they are shielding), a slimmer ship can get away with shielding a smaller surface area, an edge to the movie ship versus FS's."

Again, I think shield strength is proportional, but *inversely* proportional, to surface area.

"This means Executor's main armor and shields are, on average, likely harder to penetrate than Wrath's per unit power, given that the latter has far more points where the armor or shields have to break, bend, or otherwise be compromised so that Wrath can mount all her weaponry."

Armor strength has nothing to do with surface area. Armor weight will, so (again in my reading of the setting) a ship with a lot of surface area (and hence a lot of armor), but little reactor, will be harder to move at the same acceleration.

This all isn't that I have a dog in the fight about the specific Wrath vs Executor arugment. I actually don't care. I think Executor is the prettier ship. But I do think that in general, more concentration of power gives one ship a tactical advantage. It will be an advantage strategically until one side cocnentrates so much that it is no longer efficient, and the other side can in the aggregate bring more firepower distributed across more ships for the same resources.

I also think my particular reading of the technical background drives ships towards concentrating more pwoer (energy and firepower) rather than spreading them out. I'm happy to elaborate if anyone is interested.

This dissertation has turned into a dialogue, and I love it. I could sit here for hours reading you guys going back and forth on this.

1 hour ago, Fractalsponge said:

I generally agree with all the points about *sea* warship design (nitpicks about Richelieu's design lineage aside - note that the French naval general staff moved to the Gascogne arrangement and would've done so for Clemenceau had this not involved a major delay). Apart from educational purposes I'm not sure how they are applicable to rules of thumb explicitly intended for the Star Wars setting. I'll definitely say that not every SW fan is going to agree with them, since it depends on certain interpretations of how the technology is supposed to work.

Specific comments:
I'm going to respond point by point, and hopefully the formatting will be clear enough.

Sleek as in slim, correct.

"I can achieve the same number of weapons and have a sleeker exterior by deploying all the weapons in retractable turrets. All of those turrets will involve a lot of additional work to not compromise the armor, but I can still get a "sleek"/less greeblehauled look."

You can. I'm not sure it would be worthwhile from a complexity, cost, and structural stability viewpoint, but it is possible. However, we basically never ever see retracting turrets in SW, and considering each one can output power to destroy cities (and recoil to match), this doesn't really pass the sniff test re structural strength to me.

"Regarding such a slimmer ship. I will make a few points. First, it stands to reason that such a ship would offset its inability to mount a large main engine with multiple distributed smaller engines."

Agreed. My mention of the square-cube law does NOT make any special mention of propulsion. Ship power in terrestial (real world) terms is about propulsion, since firepower and protection are "baked in" to the munitions and structure and not actively generated by the ship. However I make the assumption that SW reactors are not explicitly linked to propulsion. Rather the energy generated from the reactors are converted by different ship systems into appropriate outputs: energy weapon fire, shields, and energetic "ions" that are shot out of the ship to provide motive power. Acceleration will be correlated to power, but not actively linked in the sense of a fuel combustion heat being linked to a turbine via steam. In principle, this is sort of like the IEP systems you mentioned in more modern day ships (though turbo-electric drive was a thing a long time ago).

"For being underarmed, I will point out that I am not necessarily limited to less weapons output (provided I have equal power generation)"

Absolutely correct. There would be other ways to short-circuit the link between power generation and firepower, for instance missile warheads. But you can also have fewer bigger guns.

"There is a similar effect for shields. While Executor on the whole probably has less power generation available than Wrath, if she is equipped with the same shield generators she can reactively shunt power from generator to generator, improving the shields selectively."

Here's were we will diverge. I posit that shields, being actively generated and maintained, are better when concentrated over a smaller area; the relationship is that strength is inverse to area covered. If we disagree here, then that's that; to my knowledge there is not a canon view on this. A slimmer ship does have a smaller area to cover, but if it cannot reduce its surface area to volume ratio, it will (in this reading) be proportionately more poorly protected.

"A sleeker ship will have fewer protrusions, whether weapon mounts or greebles, so its armor and shields do not have to account for these exterior features."

No. Turrets are a miniscule contributor to surface area. I'm happy to provide excruciatingly detailed numbers on demand to prove the point. The basic hull shape is massively more of a factor in overall surface area, even for a ship with as many turrets as Wrath. Also, a retractable turret ship would be unable to fire to gain a very small increase in surface area, while we're talking about retractable turrets.

"If shield strength is proportional the surface area of the shield and to shield strength (and if the shields do not have to map exactly to the surface they are shielding), a slimmer ship can get away with shielding a smaller surface area, an edge to the movie ship versus FS's."

Again, I think shield strength is proportional, but *inversely* proportional, to surface area.

"This means Executor's main armor and shields are, on average, likely harder to penetrate than Wrath's per unit power, given that the latter has far more points where the armor or shields have to break, bend, or otherwise be compromised so that Wrath can mount all her weaponry."

Armor strength has nothing to do with surface area. Armor weight will, so (again in my reading of the setting) a ship with a lot of surface area (and hence a lot of armor), but little reactor, will be harder to move at the same acceleration.

This all isn't that I have a dog in the fight about the specific Wrath vs Executor arugment. I actually don't care. I think Executor is the prettier ship. But I do think that in general, more concentration of power gives one ship a tactical advantage. It will be an advantage strategically until one side cocnentrates so much that it is no longer efficient, and the other side can in the aggregate bring more firepower distributed across more ships for the same resources.

I also think my particular reading of the technical background drives ships towards concentrating more pwoer (energy and firepower) rather than spreading them out. I'm happy to elaborate if anyone is interested.

I will provide a more detailed reply later, hopefully tomorrow, maybe Friday. It does sound like we actually agree on 90% of the stuff we're discussing, just some terminology problems, and have divergent backgrounds and philosophies that are driving the other 10%. Which is fine by me, divergent design philosophies create the solution space with the best choices in it.

Holy crap, a wild Sponge appeared!

Love your work in general, man.

We do see retractable missile turrets in TFA.

For me, "sinister geometry" matters a lot in Imperial capital ship design - almost as much as greebles - and when the geometry is distorted or broken - the design looks a bit less good.

So - oversized reactor bulges, overly blunt bows, and port/starboard engines that stick out too far from the rear of the ship, breaking the rhrombus shape too much - these make the ships look a little bit less graceful, than they could be. Hangar bays too, when the area around them is too raised from the hull, can make a difference.

12 hours ago, GiledPallaeon said:

If it's worth doing. it's worth overdoing. For the record, I didn't plan to write that much per se, just that I had thoughts, and then I had more thoughts, and then I looked up and I was six paragraphs in and only through two bullets.

I've learned to go grab a drink and a snack before diving into one of your posts/essays. They're always a good read and always informative. Looking forward to the day when I pick up a book about the history of naval warfare with your pic on the jacket.

I'm sorry but that is far too busy a design, if it weren't for the color scheme and triangular shape it wouldn't look Imperial at all and even then its only because theres an ISD in the picture. Theres no detailing balance on the ship at all.

Whats most annoying is that I absolutely love the design of the ship otherwise especially in profile and straight on, its very imposing and intimidating.

Just now, Forresto said:

I'm sorry but that is far too busy a design, if it weren't for the color scheme and triangular shape it wouldn't look Imperial at all and even then its only because theres an ISD in the picture.

It's not supposed to be Imperial, it's supposed to be Republic KDY - and 200 years earlier Republic at that.

IMO it would look better if they didn't break the geometry of the belly wedge so much.

Ways of putting the geometry back:

Remove all the greebling around the bow - instead, have a standard pointy bow.

Remove the extensions that enable the portmost and starboard-most engines to fit - instead give it smaller engines at those edges of the ship.

Remove the bulking out of the margins of the hanger - hangar edges should be much more subtle.

It's deliberately supposed to be a throwback. Here's a reference sheet for when I was designing it. I wanted it to look like it sat early on in the Acclamator -> Venator -> Victory -> Devastator visual progression.

Just now, Fractalsponge said:

It's deliberately supposed to be a throwback. Here's a reference sheet for when I was designing it. I wanted it to look like it sat early on in the Acclamator -> Venator -> Victory -> Devastator visual progression.

Excepting the Venator, most of those have very sharp bows.

10 minutes ago, Ironlord said:

Excepting the Venator, most of those have very sharp bows.

Yes, and I wanted something different. If you need a sharp bow to be considered a star destroyer...

Acclamator also had a blunt bow as well. The aesthetic was to build up structures from the basic shape, like the comics ship and the concept sketch with the ziggurats rising from the basic wedge. Extending that to the prow flowed from that. Plus, it's really supposed to look a little out of place as an Imperial ship - close and in the same lineage, but different.

I love the design, but it's buried under far too much greebling that distracts from the beautiful form work you've done.

It's really that dorsal area along the middle jutting out from the bridge area that just seems mesay and indistinctive. The ridge itself is cool it's just covered in too much junk on top.

I hope I'm not sounding overly harsh, I think you have a really great ship here which is why I'm taking the time to give feedback.

Just now, Fractalsponge said:

Yes, and I wanted something different. If you need a sharp bow to be considered a star destroyer...

It's an interesting-looking ship - but in many ways, it's the inverse of the Wermis, Crimson Jack, and Tagge battlecruisers.

They have a steeper-sloped underside, and an almost-flat top side, and no belly dome at all.

That extremely flattened (moreso than on an ISD) hexagonal module behind the bridge module - using that, with 4 domes (raised less high from the hull than an ISD's domes are) might make for a good Tagge/Crimson Jack Battlecruiser though.

@Fractalsponge
So I took some time to digest it, and I gotta say, I actually really like it.

I very much dig the bridge module - it's much heavier than what you normally see and its both very different but recognizeable. I also appreciate the slight VSD homage in the nose of the bridge.
I'm digging the way that you raised the angle of the upper hull halfway up. I do wish that there was some sort of ridge to let my eye catch on that difference in angle of attack just a touch more.
I very much like the area around the hanger bay - it's a welcome change from the typical cutout.
I'm not sure how much I like the lower protrusions at the stern - I feel like the outer pair of engines would be better off smaller.
I also feel like the dorsal greeble "fin" / "balcony" would do better to be lower and wider, though the general shape of that bit of geometry is a good shape (reminds me a tad of the Belator, but less refined and more greebly).

@GiledPallaeon, @Fractalsponge: While I love the dialogue, I think it would benefit from writing down a number of basic assumptions about how Star Wars works. Without that common ground I fear that, as interesting as it may be, much of the to-and-fro between you two will ultimately be futile.

Although, to be honest, I started writing a few of my own key assumptions (call them headcanon if you will) and gave up shortly thereafter, because frankly nothing in the Star Wars universe follows any logic whatsoever... except the rule of cool. So, y'know, whatever looks good is fine by me.

FWIW, this is where I had gotten to before becoming fully convinced of the futility of the exercise:

I dunno, I've always enjoyed Fractal's designs in some way, enough that I wouldn't question too much of his design direction.

For the Procurator, there's so much I enjoy about this ship. I like the rear-mounted 'ears' on the bridge section. I like the command area is a raised deck rather than terraces. I like the greeble concentrations, and I like the old-style engine cluster arrangements. It's a lovely ship, and I wish we had one to play with for Armada.

*swoon*

I LOVE this thread, and all its contents....SO MUCH!

6 hours ago, DiabloAzul said:

@GiledPallaeon, @Fractalsponge: While I love the dialogue, I think it would benefit from writing down a number of basic assumptions about how Star Wars works. Without that common ground I fear that, as interesting as it may be, much of the to-and-fro between you two will ultimately be futile.

Although, to be honest, I started writing a few of my own key assumptions (call them headcanon if you will) and gave up shortly thereafter, because frankly nothing in the Star Wars universe follows any logic whatsoever... except the rule of cool. So, y'know, whatever looks good is fine by me.

FWIW, this is where I had gotten to before becoming fully convinced of the futility of the exercise:

1. Most sources can't be trusted: there is a massive degree of inconsistency between the movies, novels, comics, sourcebooks, visual guides, etc. In case of doubt, I always choose an answer that fits the facts observed in the original trilogy.
2. Shields are essentially ablative: no penetration is possible until the shields in the target area are completely depleted. This explains why ships have a large number of small guns rather than the reverse - overall DPS is far more important than the power of an individual shot. Larger guns may nevertheless be useful for e.g. planetary bombardment.
3. Shield power requirements are dominated by total strength, not protected volume: Surface area may be a factor, but it cannot possibly be dominant over shield strength. Otherwise large warships (let alone the Death Star) would simply not be viable. A plausible relationship may be P = k1A + k2Rmax^2, where A is surface area and Rmax is total energy dissipation capacity. Regeneration rate (dR/dt) is likely a similar function.
4. Shields are more efficient than armor: regenerative, reliable, and comparatively light (even after factoring in reactor mass). Together with the above, this is one of the key factors giving designers freedom over the overall shape of a warship. Armor-dominated ships would tend to look far more compact than they do.
5. Cooling is not a significant factor: In the real world, heat dissipation is a very real issue wherever large amounts of power are generated, discharged or otherwise involved. This necessitates correspondingly large surface areas devoted to radiators, especially when a cooling medium like water is not available. While this would be a cool way of explaining/handwaving the overal shape of the Executor and even ISDs, there's no real canonical evidence that heat plays any significant role in Star Wars, beyond the tiny thermal exhaust port in the Death Star (by far the item in need of most cooling).
6. Warship shape is not dominated by gun placement: Although a popular theory, the wedge-shape of Star Destroyers cannot be explained simply by the need to concentrate forward-facing firepower. It sounds cool, but it's just not consistent with the placement of the main armament (the 8 heavy TL turrets are clearly not arranged to fire forward! It's a bit of a baffling layout, to be honest). If gun placement were the driving factor, the main armament would be positioned either along the longitudinal trench or along the ship's spine, perhaps both dorsally and ventrally. Just have a look at a head-on view of an ISD. How many turrets can you see? Now duck ever so slightly off-axis, how many turrets can see you?

I'm going to start here, and then go back to your comments, @Fractalsponge, because otherwise as @DiabloAzul pointed out, we're going to be speaking different but related languages.

1. YUUUUUUP. My memory of Star Wars physics/engineering is a bit of a hodgepodge, so I can't always source to anything other than "That's how I've always remembered it." Usually the films are useful here, but not always.

2. & 3. I'm going to address these together, because it's more convenient and logical that way. Shields are definitely ablative, but there are a couple caveats I've always held. First, shields over a large ship are not best thought of as one contiguous bubble, but as several interlocking bubbles. This grows increasingly true for larger ships, especially ones with odd geometries where a large bubble a large distance from the ship is covering a lot of excess space. Further, DPS is the best way to burn down shields, especially for the firepower used by large capital ships (there does appear to be an upper limit on the size and output power of a gun battery, at least for diminishing returns) against each other's shields, but particularly large guns can penetrate shields with good hits. Notably this is the supposed purpose of the Munificent class frigate's (giant) main guns in her bow. Additionally, it does appear sufficiently large hits (relative to shield strength) can cause feedback into generators, thus the shaking often seen after solid hits.

I would also agree that overall emitter power is a much more important variable to shield strength than area/volume shielded, but I would expect the function to be more along the lines that power per unit area is important for systems of equivalent output. Though that does also imply the system with smaller area per emitter has more emitters, and thus engineering backend to deal with it, a limiting factor unto itself.

4. Yes. Energy is cheaper than metal/whatever it is Star Wars starships use, and you don't have to cut it away to replace minor damage, unlike the scoring seen on armor.

5. I've always written that off that they can use the shields to emit the excess heat as radiation into space (yeah, "space magic reasons"). I do remember distinctly from the radio play that it can be a factor on high-performance ships like the Tantive IV. In that version, Devastator is able to catch the corvette because the shot seen on film, the only explosion shot, destroyed the ship's radiator, forcing Captain Antilles to shut down the reactor, and thus the main drives, lest the reactor go overboard and incinerate the ship in some sort of runaway meltdown type thing. Generally though, yeah just handwave it.

6. Yeah, don't get it, definitely rule of cool, but I'll run with it.

Now then

On 9/13/2017 at 11:49 PM, Fractalsponge said:

Sleek as in slim, correct.

"I can achieve the same number of weapons and have a sleeker exterior by deploying all the weapons in retractable turrets. All of those turrets will involve a lot of additional work to not compromise the armor, but I can still get a "sleek"/less greeblehauled look."

You can. I'm not sure it would be worthwhile from a complexity, cost, and structural stability viewpoint, but it is possible. However, we basically never ever see retracting turrets in SW, and considering each one can output power to destroy cities (and recoil to match), this doesn't really pass the sniff test re structural strength to me.

Yeah, I figured that was definitely vocabulary, so I made a note of what words I would be using, and moved on.

Oh God no, I definitely wouldn't do it without an exceptionally good reason. Corners in armor aren't called corners; the word is targets. The closest that could pretend to be acceptable is weapons hidden behind gun ports, like we see on Invisible Hand during the Battle of Coruscant. I'm not a huge fan of those either, because they put the onus of maneuvering on the shooter instead of the target, but in isolated cases (citing the Munificent and Recusant here), I can see the appeal.

On 9/13/2017 at 11:49 PM, Fractalsponge said:

"Regarding such a slimmer ship. I will make a few points. First, it stands to reason that such a ship would offset its inability to mount a large main engine with multiple distributed smaller engines."

Agreed. My mention of the square-cube law does NOT make any special mention of propulsion. Ship power in terrestial (real world) terms is about propulsion, since firepower and protection are "baked in" to the munitions and structure and not actively generated by the ship. However I make the assumption that SW reactors are not explicitly linked to propulsion. Rather the energy generated from the reactors are converted by different ship systems into appropriate outputs: energy weapon fire, shields, and energetic "ions" that are shot out of the ship to provide motive power. Acceleration will be correlated to power, but not actively linked in the sense of a fuel combustion heat being linked to a turbine via steam. In principle, this is sort of like the IEP systems you mentioned in more modern day ships (though turbo-electric drive was a thing a long time ago).

"For being underarmed, I will point out that I am not necessarily limited to less weapons output (provided I have equal power generation)"

Absolutely correct. There would be other ways to short-circuit the link between power generation and firepower, for instance missile warheads. But you can also have fewer bigger guns.

"There is a similar effect for shields. While Executor on the whole probably has less power generation available than Wrath, if she is equipped with the same shield generators she can reactively shunt power from generator to generator, improving the shields selectively."

Here's were we will diverge. I posit that shields, being actively generated and maintained, are better when concentrated over a smaller area; the relationship is that strength is inverse to area covered. If we disagree here, then that's that; to my knowledge there is not a canon view on this. A slimmer ship does have a smaller area to cover, but if it cannot reduce its surface area to volume ratio, it will (in this reading) be proportionately more poorly protected.

I can easily accept the assumption that reactors are not necessarily directly linked into drives. I've got precious little idea how you translate the power from a hypermatter annihilation reactor (whatever space magic that is) into electrical power (I'm just going to assume it's electricity for the sake of convention), but that sounds a lot like an oversized fusion reactor, and that is physics I won't touch with a forty foot pole. I do apologize, mostly as a factor of (effectively) one single writing pass and no one to proofread, I bounce back and forth on some terms, particularly "engine". I'm used to "engine" meaning power generation, whereas "motor" or "drive" means propulsion. Given that that is very much not the convention (at least where I live in the United States) for cars, the means of transportation we encounter every day, I can see where confusion would arise. Especially later I tried to use the term drive or propulsion whenever I specifically meant those things, but I did also bounce back and forth on engine and reactor. That's probably a function of how I was taught to write, never repeat words close together when you can get away without, but it's no excuse.

I was waiting for someone to call me on turbo-electric drive trains, which to my knowledge have existed since USS New Mexico (BB-40). My understanding of the difference is mostly one of intent. Turbo-electric drives are trying to bypass the need for complex (and heavy) gearboxes between high RPM turbines, and low RPM things like wheels or propellers (thanks cavitation, not). Generating additional electric power for the ship is something of a side effect, since New Mexico was commissioned in 1918, back when the utility of electricity on a warship was much more limited than it is today. The other big difference is the generators. Turbo-electric implies that the primary source of energy is turbines. IEP uses both turbines and diesel power, using diesel for efficient low-level power, and spinning up turbines for times of high output (like combat).

So we agree on shields; effectiveness is inversely proportional to area covered (I don't think I actually use that word in the reply to DA, I may go do that in a minute). Definitely no canon fluff on how in God's name it works (*glares out from computer screen at LFG intern assigned to read this and deal with it). And yes, per unit volume, Executor is much less protected than a ship of equal volume. However, Wrath (arbitrary point of comparison of near equal size, though not mass) is not a ship of equal volume, she is a ship of greater volume, with a more complex basic geometry. The surface area requiring shielding is thus larger than Executor. Now, I freely admit I have not and do not plan to sit down and sort out what the ratios are here for increased power generation versus increased surface area; I'm going to state that it is possible that ratio is such that Executor wins out at the end of the day (though square cube says it probably won't, thanks math).

On 9/13/2017 at 11:49 PM, Fractalsponge said:

"A sleeker ship will have fewer protrusions, whether weapon mounts or greebles, so its armor and shields do not have to account for these exterior features."

No. Turrets are a miniscule contributor to surface area. I'm happy to provide excruciatingly detailed numbers on demand to prove the point. The basic hull shape is massively more of a factor in overall surface area, even for a ship with as many turrets as Wrath. Also, a retractable turret ship would be unable to fire to gain a very small decrease in surface area, while we're talking about retractable turrets.

"If shield strength is proportional the surface area of the shield and to shield strength (and if the shields do not have to map exactly to the surface they are shielding), a slimmer ship can get away with shielding a smaller surface area, an edge to the movie ship versus FS's."

Again, I think shield strength is proportional, but *inversely* proportional, to surface area.

"This means Executor's main armor and shields are, on average, likely harder to penetrate than Wrath's per unit power, given that the latter has far more points where the armor or shields have to break, bend, or otherwise be compromised so that Wrath can mount all her weaponry."

Armor strength has nothing to do with surface area. Armor weight will, so (again in my reading of the setting) a ship with a lot of surface area (and hence a lot of armor), but little reactor, will be harder to move at the same acceleration.

This all isn't that I have a dog in the fight about the specific Wrath vs Executor argument. I actually don't care. I think Executor is the prettier ship. But I do think that in general, more concentration of power gives one ship a tactical advantage. It will be an advantage strategically until one side cocnentrates so much that it is no longer efficient, and the other side can in the aggregate bring more firepower distributed across more ships for the same resources.

I also think my particular reading of the technical background drives ships towards concentrating more power (energy and firepower) rather than spreading them out. I'm happy to elaborate if anyone is interested.

Regarding that first one, as well as your last quote of me in this block, I think I misstated my point. Yes, overall the additional surface facings of turrets, superstructure, greebles, etc. are minimal on the overall surface area of the ship, and that surface area is much more closely related to the volume and general geometry of the ship. My point here is that handling those greebles, whether the shield is somewhat Star Trek-esque in that it's a standoff bubble around the ship at some arbitrary distance or more directly on the surface, they do add additional area, and more importantly, additional geometry. I can only assume that shields will act similarly to armor, and not at all be happy about corners or sharp angles. (Upon a mental consultation, shields are probably effectively surface hugging, given the distance at which we saw Rebel fighters skim Intimidator and Persecutor in Rogue One, and the range at which the Millenium Falcon evaded the Avenger by skimming her bridge in the Hoth asteriod belt and the Executor by flying down her beam trench at Cloud City.) My point here isn't that necessarily Executor's armor or shields are actually stronger than Wrath's, but that the latter has the more complex geometry that will create more weak points that can be targeted than Executor (excepting that cityscape some moron slapped down her dorsal area). In particular, Wrath's weapon mounts mark areas where the armor has to be compromised, in order for power to reach those weapons. Now, I can only expect she mounts heavy turret armor and barbettes like naval battleships before her, but well aimed fire still poses a sizable threat to those points. I do see how that point got lost in translation between my head and the keyboard though.

Yeah, I'll get better about including "inverse". Sorry about that.

I'm mildly surprised you don't favor your own ship (I don't think you designed Executor...). And you have succinctly stated the age old issue of swarm versus (at least in Armada) the death pickle. My own personal opinion is that the limit that should be used for a force when developing is to choose the ship that offers the most economical firepower/mission capabilities, and can be built and deployed in sufficient numbers to meet that force's needs. The trend there obviously is for (relatively) smaller ships, with greater speeds and ranges, but that is also a view developed in and for the real world and maritime application. But that is delving into another topic probably better served for the other thread maintained basically just for my rants. To your last point, that is reasonable. That Executor does that to at least a certain degree is one of the only reasons the Imperial Admiralty would have built the thing.

On a side note, I do dearly love your work, and would kill (ok, exaggeration, maim) someone to get my hands on a somewhat cleaned up 3D model of the Bellator I could take to some of the 3D printers I have access to to create it as a Epic Play ship and get that kickstarted for my own local area. What is one tactical area or mission set you don't think you've fully explored for Star Wars that might be interesting to dive into?

My main question: why can't LFL design ships for the sequel trilogy like Fractal can?

Been a long time fan, just chiming in to say it's awesome to see you post on the Armada forum! You should get the FFG guys to hire you for their mold design as well (if any FFG overlords are listening...)

Also, one more side note: FFG's ISD model is slightly stubbier than the studio model, which actually results in a larger angle, which results in all the turrets superfiring forward. Is it ideal? Nope. But it's better than the studio model's gun layout.

LFL has tapped Fractal in the past regarding some work for the Essential Guide to Warfare. I emphatically agree that when it comes to defining background starships and vessels not illustrated well, Fractal provides beautiful elaborations. The Gunboat X-WIng is getting is heavily inspired by Fractal's take on the design, which IMO is the best of all the ones out there.

Turbo-electric also eliminated vulnerable steam lines and offered much quicker reverse power. Reduction gearing was already well established by this point. I bring up turbo electric not because it uses turbines, but for the discontinuity between the liberation of energy from fuel and the application of motive force to the environment. There's an intermediate (here an electric motor) between the two steps. Had diesels been mature enough in 1918, they would've been a good pick, though heavier. Prinzregent Luitpold had some diesels (I guess it would be what, CODAS?). Large warship sole-diesel drive weren't introduced until the Panzerschiffe, and it's instructive that the Germans did not think the state of the art advanced enough to make Scharnhorst and Bismarck motorships, instead going with higher performance steam.

"Regarding that first one, as well as your last quote of me in this block, I think I misstated my point. Yes, overall the additional surface facings of turrets, superstructure, greebles, etc. are minimal on the overall surface area of the ship, and that surface area is much more closely related to the volume and general geometry of the ship. My point here is that handling those greebles, whether the shield is somewhat Star Trek-esque in that it's a standoff bubble around the ship at some arbitrary distance or more directly on the surface, they do add additional area, and more importantly, additional geometry. I can only assume that shields will act similarly to armor, and not at all be happy about corners or sharp angles. (Upon a mental consultation, shields are probably effectively surface hugging, given the distance at which we saw Rebel fighters skim Intimidator and Persecutor in Rogue One, and the range at which the Millenium Falcon evaded the Avenger by skimming her bridge in the Hoth asteriod belt and the Executor by flying down her beam trench at Cloud City.) My point here isn't that necessarily Executor's armor or shields are actually stronger than Wrath's, but that the latter has the more complex geometry that will create more weak points that can be targeted than Executor (excepting that cityscape some moron slapped down her dorsal area). In particular, Wrath's weapon mounts mark areas where the armor has to be compromised, in order for power to reach those weapons. Now, I can only expect she mounts heavy turret armor and barbettes like naval battleships before her, but well aimed fire still poses a sizable threat to those points. I do see how that point got lost in translation between my head and the keyboard though."

For guns, weapons fire proceeds through rapidly flickered on-and-off shield windows - I don't think turrets protrude from the shielding. The relative efficacy of armor seems to be quite low also compared to shields.

I don't think shields work like that around corners. Even if they do, I doubt those corners would be targetable when ships are manuevering at range. It goes down to how shields work in SW, which is poorly defined. My personal thinking is that shields are slightly stand off from the hull, and projected in panels that can be angled for deflection, and occasionally might open some gaps for fighters to exploit. So I don't think there is a...fractal calculation in surface area for shields, as in things like rivets get their total area summed for shields. Even things like deckhouses etc. probably aren't; I don't think every corner is important, otherwise ships would never have major surface protrusions and just be perfect geometrical solids - why even risk such a fundamental element of warship capability as survival under fire? Also, if we are measuring on a total surface area basis (all greebles and such), Executor is much much higher area.

And while we're at surface area, here's a very simplified example. The box on the left and the box on the right have exactly the same volume. The box on the left however has over 2x the surface area as the one on the right. So if we assume that shielding directly depends on power (assuming same number of generators and such), and that reactor size is dependent on internal volume, that means that the flatter box has half the shielding (in terms of power/area) than the box on the right. Same volume, dramatically different surface (and shielding) area. If those boxes were the size of star dreadnoughts, then a heavy turbolaser turret is the size of the small red box on the surface of the box to the left. Do you see it? The difference in surface area between the two big hull shapes is about...15 THOUSAND turrets. It's not a coincidence that I'm choosing a long, wide, thin, flat shape compared to a shorter compact shape - it is similar in principle to the hull form differences of Executor vs Wrath.

My scaling curves from existing size comparisons suggest that hypermatter reactors are more efficient (in terms of power/volume) as they get bigger volume wise. So an identical volume high surface area shape is also less able to mount very high volume reactors, compounding its survivability issues.

Let's get back to Executor/Wrath for a moment. I think Executor is prettier, but I absolutely do expect Wrath to win. It's just not a hill I'm willing to die on, since I don't know exactly what Executor can do. But I do estimate Wrath is producing about twice the power of Executor, on a hull form that should be more efficient for shielding by about 2x. This depends on what you think Executor is packing reactor wise. I don't expect the difference in power to diverge too much from 2x, but Wrath will have a substantial (if not necessarily overwhelming) advantage in power, and thus firepower, and thus shielding, compounded by hull form advantages. In real life terms I think Executor is a battlecruiser - lethal vs everything smaller because of its speed and firepower, but not so good vs its own size ship, in this case because there really aren't any in the same size group until stuff like Wrath and Sovereign/Eclipse come around.

Modern ships seem to be moving towards distributed lethality, with things like CEC and mass Kalibr shooters showing up in different places. But in the real world, no ship can take a hit from the best wweapons available (say a tactical nuke). SW however I think drives ships bigger vs equivalent firepower in a swarm of small ships. Why? Shields. If a ship isn't killed outright, then all it has suffered is shield depletion, and after cooling it is usable again. In a big ship vs a swarm fight, with the same aggregate firepower on each side, the big ship might kill a proportion of the swarm with each exchange of fire (for Executor or Wrath vs ISDs we're talking maybe 200-400:1 for a single ship exchange, so gross overkill per volley). At a reasonable but not 100% hit rate, the dreadnought is never driven past its dissipation rate or shield surge capacity, but a small ship in the swarm gets overwhelmed and destroyed. It breaks Lanchester's relationship quite badly, because one side never loses shooters. So ships get bigger so that they can provide the overmatch in this type of situation.

Also, if you like Bellator, you might want to see my latest renders: https://www.artstation.com/artwork/oeOxm

Maybe this ship's shield domes and tractor beam targeting array, match those of the much later Imperial I (first Procurator was around 200 years before ROTS) because it's a late-model example?

TEGTW page 167

“Bristling with weapons, the twenty-five-hundred-meter Procurator was the template for a series of ever-larger KDY battleships, nominally built to protect Kuat sector but really aimed at attracting contracts from wealthy Core planets, sectors, and powerful mercantile fleets. By the time of the Clone Wars, dozens of battlecruisers defended Core and Colonies sectors. The Procurator-class Star Battlecruiser was refined several times before being supplanted by a four-thousand-meter descendant, the Praetor class, though the Ruusan Reformations limited both classes’ hyperdrive capabilities and armament.”

The pic of it next to an ISD makes it look at least twice as long - and Fractal's original concept description was:

So I’ve been thinking about a 3-4km star battlecruiser. I wanted an old-timey comics feel to the design, so I started messing about, then realized that I had a hull that would work – my old Victory-class concept, which obviously wouldn’t be a destroyer now. That had a deliberate mix of PT and OT elements (makes sense, right, late Old Republic/early Imperial design). So I started scaling, then grafting on superstructure bits. I tried making the bridge a little different (in my mind this design is definitively Old Republic KDY, maybe even older than the standard hexagonal bridge module, but refitted for the Clone Wars and Imperial era). Here’s what I got.

and later in the thread:

It’s something like 3.5km.

So - it could be a late-model Procurator which is larger than early-model ones.

Like the late-model Praetor (Praetor II - larger than standard Praetor) or the late-model Mandator (Mandator III - larger than Mandator II and standard Mandator).

On 9/12/2017 at 5:06 PM, thecactusman17 said:

I like the design, but I admit the raised dorsal side makes me think of Hive capital ships from Destiny

Its a Bullwark... nonononono