[Corhellion]

I can answer two of those questions easily.

The Krogg ships look different strictly because their ships are alive. They're animals, controlled by a central Krogg Telepath in the "brain" of the creature. They fire spines with ultra concentrated acid in them as well as "Neuro-pulses"...Think something like that of an eels electric shock..only...much more powerful and more lightning like.

And there are turreted ships, but strictly for the sake of the arguement. Actual Turreted ships won't come into play until the far future.

also: http://www.icebergpublishing.com/equations/warspace.asp

That's straight from the author. of your doubts and questions will be answered on that page.

[aldo_14]

Originally posted by Corhellion


 

Aren't there absolutely sodding massive weapons coverage gaps on the front, top and bottom there?

[Shrike]

Originally posted by Corhellion
Ialso: http://www.icebergpublishing.com/equations/warspace.asp

That's straight from the author. of your doubts and questions will be answered on that page.

I did flip through that, and as someone who's written (on an amateur basis, but that's irrelevant) everything from far-future space combat to age of steam ironclads to some outright ahistorical stuff (technomagic, etc) it's all stuff that I know on pretty much an instinctive level now.  There was a few errors in it as well, like the comment about US carriers versus UK carriers - The US carriers were better at dealing with kamikazes not due to their design but because they carried a whole ton more planes than the UK designs.  I believe he also exaggerates ramming tactics WRT to late 19th century ironships.

Anyhow, that's not important.  What's important and always damaging to suspension of disbelief is why technologies that exist today don't exist in the future.  Like the aforementioned turrets; why don't these ships have them?  Is there some technical issue involved with not putting some weapons in turrets?  What kind of weapons are they?  The same can be seen in the Honor Harrington books.  Only recently has the ability to fire guided missile off-bore been developed.  It's rather silly that a common technology nowadays would not be available in the future.

[Corhellion]

*removed*

[Shrike]

Originally posted by Corhellion
...Alright...Shrike...The guns the Earthers use are ****ing huge Energy Cannons...20 metres in diameter, and they need a crew of 4-5 *each* to properly man.

Well, 4-5 people each isn't much.  WWII battleship main turrets had 30-odd guys.

Anyhow, not important.

The Humans use guided missiles that are fixed in a forward position...they don't have turrets cause they don't have them! [/B]

I believe you meant to say they don't need them.

The reason being is that if you put guns in turrets, you can only fit a few on the top, bottem, and sides, with AA guns in various places. Compare about 20 turrets of 3 guns each overall (60 guns) then compare that to a 175 gun warship...two broadsides of 75, fore with 15 and aft with 10 with more coverage.[/B]

Except you can have those 60 guns firing in addition to your broadsides.  Plus said guns will have significantly superior arc of fire.

Is it that hard to just say: "**** it! It's not real life, it works for the story, that's good enough."[/B]

Well yes.  Suspension of disbelief requires a reason to suspend disbelief.  Even if it's as simple as 'The guns are a hundred meters long and can't be mounted in turrets due to their size'. (well, if they have 20 meter bores these ships are obviously ****ing huge, far larger than I had guessed and a hundred meter turret would hardly be 'too big', but you know what I mean)

[Flipside]

Well, congrats on getting published, exposure is teh good.

I'm not a massive Sci-Fi fan, being more into the Mythical Fantasy, possibly because it is a ot more possible to make the leap into believing things without question, I've actually seen glaring tactical mistakes about the role of Pikemen (who get referred to as Spearmen far too often and both played completely different roles in combat) etc, but when you're reading fantasy, that's just decoration.

I suppose the important part is that you got your pictures on the front of a book which is being published. And the ships you made are from those books, so you are kind of obliged and constrained.

My own personal advice would be to leave defending the book to the author, and work on your portfolio if you plan to do something like this reguarly.

[Nuclear1]

Congrats on the publishing.

Those ships remind me vaguely of the Khar-Toba ships from Homeworld, oddly enough...

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Shrike
*starts coughing uncontrollably*

Honorverse ships are silly with sillytech.  Nothing that's Napoleonic warfare in space is remotely realistic.

Anyhow, it looks like the author said 'I like honorverse ships' and then thought of a way to copy them without copying them.

Given the source materiel they look ok, but the source materiel isn't providing a terribly interesting design.

Need something for the cough?

Of course its sillytech and the ships are silly. ALL scifi ships are silly. There hasn't been one single non-silly scifi ship every created. They all depend on silly tech. What's your point?

Science fiction is as much about gee-whiz as it is about 'realistic'. And that's just silly.

[kv1at3485]

Bah.  Science fiction isn't about being 'realistic'.  It's about being plausible.  You can throw as much magical gee-whiz tech into the mix as you want.  But if you don't use the tech logically and appreciate its implications, then it's no longer sci-fi... it's fantasy.

[Shrike]

Originally posted by mikhael
Need something for the cough?

Of course its sillytech and the ships are silly. ALL scifi ships are silly. There hasn't been one single non-silly scifi ship every created. They all depend on silly tech. What's your point?

Science fiction is as much about gee-whiz as it is about 'realistic'. And that's just silly.

Please.  

There's nothing 'well designed' about Honorverse ships.  They use broadsides in space - broadsides having gone completely out of style a century before we even reached the moon.  Only recently have they figured out that guided missiles can make 90 degree turns.  They still haven't figured out the 'turret'.  There's few things worse for suspension of disbelief in military scifi (or almost any scific, really) than the omission of extremely common, fairly simple technologies.

If you're going to go napoleonic in space, at least go for the Lt Leary series, which does a far better job of achieving the feel without needless dumbing down whoever designed the ships.  (Guided missiles and turrets . . . but the ships have actual sails, which are the FTL system)

Originally posted by kv1at3485
Bah.  Science fiction isn't about being 'realistic'.  It's about being plausible.  You can throw as much magical gee-whiz tech into the mix as you want.  But if you don't use the tech logically and appreciate its implications, then it's no longer sci-fi... it's fantasy.

And napoleonic warfare in space is plausible?

I have nothing against Napoleon In Space per se (although it's very rapidly becoming a cliche in North American scifi, much to my annoyance - I'm not that fond of it) but HH strives to combine that with scifi futuretech and IMO fails.  As I said the lack of all-aspect engagement abilities is the biggest, one that is hardly an insurmountable problem even with wedges.  Don't try and make space warfare into napoleonic naval warfare, the paradigms are just too dissimilar to work.  Aim for the feel, not the specifics.

My opinion is that Weber in achieving the specifics completely missed the feel.

[kv1at3485]

Originally posted by Shrike
And napoleonic warfare in space is plausible?

Perhaps.  It could happen if a design uses phased array emitters.  Although I would suspect that such emitters would primarily be used as point defence against nuclear missiles.  No need to train the weapon.  The short range of a beam fired at a horrendously oblique angle is acceptable.  It's difficult to disable the entire emitter short of burning it completely off the hull by a near nuclear explosion.

(I guess you could have small multi-faceted 'radome turrets' if you wanted, but I always thought having a large area emitter surface would be superior.)

But assuming two opposing ships got 'close enough' (depending on relative velocity and all), then yes: broadside.

[Shrike]

A broadside that happens by chance is not the same as a deliberate attempt to generate such an engagement.  Nor is extremely oblique angles of fire generated by large phased-array laser systems going to give you a very 'Napoleonic' technology, which is characterized by a large number of individual weapons (cannons) of which larger ships tend to carry both a larger number and larger caliber of, furthermore, said weapons tend to have extremely poor fire arcs.  A phased-array laser system is quite the opposite, really, and a far better solution.

Honestly I never understood why nobody ever stuck a giant bloody laser down the spine of destroyers and used them to blow away enemy DDs at extreme range.

[mikhael]

Originally posted by Shrike
Please.  

There's nothing 'well designed' about Honorverse ships.  They use broadsides in space - broadsides having gone completely out of style a century before we even reached the moon.  Only recently have they figured out that guided missiles can make 90 degree turns.  They still haven't figured out the 'turret'.  There's few things worse for suspension of disbelief in military scifi (or almost any scific, really) than the omission of extremely common, fairly simple technologies.

If you're going to go napoleonic in space, at least go for the Lt Leary series, which does a far better job of achieving the feel without needless dumbing down whoever designed the ships.  (Guided missiles and turrets . . . but the ships have actual sails, which are the FTL system)

[edit]Oh never mind. Shrike, you continually remind me of why I don't come here very often anymore.[/edit]

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by Shrike
Honestly I never understood why nobody ever stuck a giant bloody laser down the spine of destroyers and used them to blow away enemy DDs at extreme range.

Depends on your version of FTL travel and how it works, don't it? Plausible for FS, not so workable for most other things.

What I never understood is why nobody has grasped the essential advantage of the design popularized by the Star Destroyer. You can fire all your guns forward because of the angled hull...not that anyone ever seems to figure that out...

[Shrike]

Originally posted by mikhael
[edit]Oh never mind. Shrike, you continually remind me of why I don't come here very often anymore.[/edit]

Shame, I was actually hoping for some sort of reply as to why you see them as particularly well-designed warships.  Oh well, bye.

Originally posted by ngtm1r
Depends on your version of FTL travel and how it works, don't it? Plausible for FS, not so workable for most other things.

What I never understood is why nobody has grasped the essential advantage of the design popularized by the Star Destroyer. You can fire all your guns forward because of the angled hull...not that anyone ever seems to figure that out...

Honorverse ships are designed with 'chaser' mounts, weapons that fire fore and aft.  These tend to be heavier than those mounted broadsides, but I still don't see why they couldn't make exceptionally heavy chasers on smaller ships - history has proven (and physics supports it) that one large weapon is typically better than multiple small weapons when it comes to punching through armor.

Anyhow, Star Destroyers have a good design if you want massive forward firepower.  The weakness with that of course is that you have to be facing towards your enemy to shoot them - which typically means closing.  A design that emphasises one arc will obviously be weak in others.  There's no one ideal design, it is far too dependent on the technology and tactics used.  Personally I don't like the ISD design because the design is too focussed on forward fire and insufficiently so on all-axis engagements.  I'd prefer a design with a row of dorsal and ventral turrets - it wouldn't be as powerful while closing, but at almost any oblique angle the entire firepower could be brought to bear, ie, it has much more available firepower while maneuvering.

This ignores the aesthetics of course, I think ISDs look awesome.

[Swamp_Thing]

Broadsides are silly at the core. A good captain will want to expose the least ammount of surface to his enemy´s fire. So front mounted weapons make sense, because the ammount of hull surface you expose is much smaller than a broadside, where you basically paint a large target on your ship and pray they miss.
Although a broadside is good offensive strategy, a war is not exclusivelly made of offensive moves. One needs to consider that they can fire back, and as such you should make yourself the smallest target possible. The saying "a good defense is a strong offense" is a myth.
If anyone wishes to see a good example of where broadsides lost to front fighting, they need only read about the spanish Great Armada and Nelson´s tactics. The spanish ships were heavy broadsiders, while Nelson used speed and manouvering to always keep either his bow or his stern towards enemy fire, thus making his ships much harder to hit.
Having good old english oak built ships also helped, but that´s another story.

[Anaz]

@ shrike:

...

and fix your avatar(s).

[Shrike]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
Broadsides are silly at the core. A good captain will want to expose the least ammount of surface to his enemy´s fire. So front mounted weapons make sense, because the ammount of hull surface you expose is much smaller than a broadside, where you basically paint a large target on your ship and pray they miss.
Although a broadside is good offensive strategy, a war is not exclusivelly made of offensive moves. One needs to consider that they can fire back, and as such you should make yourself the smallest target possible. The saying "a good defense is a strong offense" is a myth.
If anyone wishes to see a good example of where broadsides lost to front fighting, they need only read about the spanish Great Armada and Nelson´s tactics. The spanish ships were heavy broadsiders, while Nelson used speed and manouvering to always keep either his bow or his stern towards enemy fire, thus making his ships much harder to hit.
Having good old english oak built ships also helped, but that´s another story.

Wasn't it that Nelson repeatedly crossed their T?  I know little about that engagement though, but what I envision is much more akin to 1910s+ centreline turreted ships.

Either way, large weapon arcs are a must-have.  They allow more maneuver options while fighting.  The ideal of course is a ship with the equivalent of modern VLS which has in effect total hemispherical engagement abilities (It's more complex than this in practice, of course).  This would give a ship the ability to maneuver freely while engaging the enemy with all its weapons, the ideal situation.

Originally posted by Anaz
@ shrike:

...

and fix your avatar(s).

What?  It's something I have a certain passion for, don't you like my little dissertations?  

And what's wrong with my avatars anyhow?

[NGTM-1R]

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
The saying "a good defense is a strong offense" is a myth.

...coming from you, that's friggin' hilarous.

Originally posted by Swamp_Thing
If anyone wishes to see a good example of where broadsides lost to front fighting, they need only read about the spanish Great Armada and Nelson´s tactics. The spanish ships were heavy broadsiders, while Nelson used speed and manouvering to always keep either his bow or his stern towards enemy fire, thus making his ships much harder to hit.

You earn a D- in Naval History. Nelson's brilliance lay in how his broadsides were employed. With smaller, faster ships, but less well-armed, he could not form battle line and defeat the Armada. What he could do was appear to form battle line, then, once combat was imminent, have his ships break formation and turn directly into the Spanish line, moving into the spaces between ships in battle line so that the English could bring broadside guns to bear while the Spanish could only reply with a handful of stern or bow guns.

[Anaz]

Originally posted by Shrike

What?  It's something I have a certain passion for, don't you like my little dissertations?  

And what's wrong with my avatars anyhow?

out of curiosity, how many of the HH books have you read?

and this is what is wrong with your avatars:



They're next to each other, and that bothers me for some reason. Why not just put your catgirl on top of an HLP logo like the other admins did  with their space ships...