Another ship design

[Breandan]

Been working on this one off and on for months, and finally scrapped the old design this afternoon and started over from scratch. This is the result (http://ciarraide.org/images/artwork/NAU_battleship_michigan.jpg). It's in scale with the cruiser design (http://ciarraide.org/images/artwork/NAU_cruiser_concept2.jpg) I did.

[Dawn White]

So where we going in these things? And who's driving? :)

[Breandan]

well, in the books (http://ciarraide.org/images/artwork/TCOH_sample_web.html) they both get a decent speed, about 120 C/hour, but because they have short tachyon-venting aelerons, they have to spend an hour in normal space venting T-radiation for every six hours in hyperspace. However, since they won't be built for another, oh, 270 years or so, we got some wait time ;)

[Nulien]

I'll drive! I promise I won't (not) crash it into a planet! :D

[Breandan]

Could be worse, the NAU ships are relatively small by comparison (http://ciarraide.org/images/artwork/Alliance_ship_comparison.jpg) :D

[B_Delacroix]

I am partial to the ATC designs. Not because of their size, but because of the asymmetrical appearance on the Z axis.

[Breandan]

The reason the ATC ships are so big is due to the sanctuaries (http://ciarraide.org/images/artwork/ATC_destroyer_Cuaifeach3.jpg), which take up a huge ammount of the inner hull. Because the Ahruga are religiously connected to their lands, they actually take pieces of their tribes' homeworlds with them in each capitol ship. Soil, trees, water, even animals are all carried with them, as the crew are on these ships and away from home for up to a year. The large aelerons are not for aerodynamics, but for venting T-heat, a tachion*-based radiation that exists in hyperspace that builds up over time and causes molecular breakdown. This is why the ships are generally streamlined (they can go atmospheric, but use AG fields when doing so, thus making mass and surface area irrelevant), and why the bigger the ship, the bigger (or more) aelerons needed.

*the actual theoretical tachion that is a four-momentum particle similar to a quark that exists in the superluminal velocity environment created by the spacial-temporal compression of hyperspace, not the mystical and ambiguous can-do-anything-amazing-with-time-like-going-backwards-in-time-to-save-whales-and-stop-borg tachion so prevalent in Star Trek and similar

[wiccalight]

nicely thought out Breandan, the bridge on those ships are huge. how many men work on that or are they just claustrophobic?

[Breandan]

The ATC ships's bridges are where ALL of the operations are done (hence why it is at the very core of the ship)- gunners, communications, flight-ops, command deck, ship's AI core, etc. About 50 to 250 people, depending on the class of ship. The Cuaifeach-class has 120 people in tiered cockpit-seats radiating outward and downward from the command chair where the captain of the ship sits surrounded by holoscreens suspended in mid-air with readouts or images of the external environment. The critical command-linked systems like gunnery, comms, etc. are in the first tier, right around the command chair. The secondary ones like damage control, flight ops, etc. are one row out and one level below the first tier, etc. Each crewman in those seats is an armed and armoured Ahrugan warrior, and there are elite warriors around the command chair, which has its own shield, so taking the command deck ain't easy. If you do, the ship blows, so you're buggered anyway :)

[Tathaur]

I like your NAU ships - They remind me a lot of Nexus - The Jupiter Incident's human ships (Example battleship) (http://images.hugi.is/blog/85327.jpg).
I really like how they look plausible - That is actually what space warships might look like.

[Wolf]

I love the ATC ships as well. All these ships are very well thought out.

As for them looking like actual space battleships in the future I doubt it. Not because they aren't possible, but in my mind I compare it to drawings of "flying-machines" that old greek scientists and other societies drew with our modern planes.