New Honorverse renders uploaded

Hmmm... only 23 days since I started this thread and I've completely built three new ships. Well... not "completely built" as they are always Subject to Change™, but they're far enough along that it's only the minor details that still need to be done.

Not bothering with specs, as those are all readily available in HoS, although for those that don't have the book, I suppose I (or someone) could post them here.

Anyway, enjoy!

http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274940
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274944
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274947
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274950
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275433
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275436
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275440
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275444
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275447
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275655
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275657
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275663
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275665
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/G ... -471275892
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/G ... -471275896

Edit: I suppose I'm getting a little faster and better at this, although it helps that much of the detail is copy/pasted with only slight modifications such as scaling or adding little touches. See if you can spot the generational differences between the older ships and the newer one. Some are pretty obvious, but others may be a bit difficult to spot.

MaxxQ wrote:Hmmm... only 23 days since I started this thread and I've completely built three new ships. Well... not "completely built" as they are always Subject to Change™, but they're far enough along that it's only the minor details that still need to be done.

Not bothering with specs, as those are all readily available in HoS, although for those that don't have the book, I suppose I (or someone) could post them here.

Anyway, enjoy!

http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274940
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274944
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274947
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -471274950
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275433
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275436
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275440
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275444
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/C ... -471275447
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275655
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275657
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275663
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/R ... -471275665
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/G ... -471275892
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/G ... -471275896

Edit: I suppose I'm getting a little faster and better at this, although it helps that much of the detail is copy/pasted with only slight modifications such as scaling or adding little touches. See if you can spot the generational differences between the older ships and the newer one. Some are pretty obvious, but others may be a bit difficult to spot.

Incredible work Maxx. Simply incredible. Before I'd known it, over an hour had slipped away on this thread! Your talents are exceeding "our" goodness. All except mine. I've been a good boy, I deserve this.

But yes, can 'someone' post the specs. I do have the book, but having them here along with the renderings would be so much more convenient and I for one will be spending loads of time on this thread. Err ... 'more' time that is.

And Maxx ...

Much Thanks.

MaxxQ wrote:Hmmm... only 23 days since I started this thread and I've completely built three new ships. Well... not "completely built" as they are always Subject to Change™, but they're far enough along that it's only the minor details that still need to be done.

Not bothering with specs, as those are all readily available in HoS, although for those that don't have the book, I suppose I (or someone) could post them here.

Anyway, enjoy!

One difference that really leapt out at me in the renders is how much longer the Roland's hammerheads are compared to the more conventional ships. I'd noticed in passing in HoS, but having the 4 ship comparison really brought it home.

IIRC RFC said the nodes have to lie in a fairly specific area with regards to both % of maximum beam (width) and also % of the distance along the length - and the proportions on the Roland are noticeably difference from conventional.


I wonder if the Roland's "overlong" hammerheads are just one more thing made possible by the advanced node designs (like the Beta-squared nodes) Manticore has been developing.

cthia wrote:
Incredible work Maxx. Simply incredible. Before I'd known it, over an hour had slipped away on this thread! Your talents are exceeding "our" goodness. All except mine. I've been a good boy, I deserve this.

But yes, can 'someone' post the specs. I do have the book, but having them here along with the renderings would be so much more convenient and I for one will be spending loads of time on this thread. Err ... 'more' time that is.

And Maxx ...

Much Thanks.

Thanks, and I guess I'll get to posting those specs a little later.

Jonathan_S wrote:One difference that really leapt out at me in the renders is how much longer the Roland's hammerheads are compared to the more conventional ships. I'd noticed in passing in HoS, but having the 4 ship comparison really brought it home.

IIRC RFC said the nodes have to lie in a fairly specific area with regards to both % of maximum beam (width) and also % of the distance along the length - and the proportions on the Roland are noticeably difference from conventional.


I wonder if the Roland's "overlong" hammerheads are just one more thing made possible by the advanced node designs (like the Beta-squared nodes) Manticore has been developing.

Yeah, the Roland is pretty much an oddball, as a quick glance at HoS will show. Most of the reason the hammerheads are so long is because they contain *all* the Mk-16 tubes the ship carries, which requires an interesting take on the magazines. Not to mention, longer tubes are needed forward to give the missiles that extra push when the ship is accelerating.

Just remember that the required dimensions for the impeller ring locations are only for what's between them, and not for what extends beyond them. Otherwise, either merchies would have hammerheads as well, or warships wouldn't have them. Yeah, there's a little bit that extends beyond the rings on merchant ships, but not as much as a warships' hammerheads.

I followed the art in HoS (well, a PDF of the *original* art, not what appeared in the book) pretty closely. I also checked my numbers several times, because those outsized hammerheads really throw off the look of the proportions. Also, you can look at the SD's in the book and see there's a much lower relationship between the length and the apparent diameter than even the Roland.

TBH, I'm not even sure what the ratio is, so I can't just rattle off numbers for you. I basically just go with what I have in front of me, which is only a little bit more than what anyone else here has.

There's also a lot of things that still need to be worked out. For example, I based my PDLC mounts off of Russ Isler's work in the earlier books, but apparently, that's not really a "final" design. So for now, what you see as PD clusters are just placeholders. OTOH, I can explain exactly why I made them like this (or rather, I can see what Isler was thinking when he did it, and I expanded on it), and how *I* envision them working. Whether the final design turns out similar or not, I have no idea.

*****

Edit: Here's the specs on the ships as written in House of Steel. I've also added notable ship names of each class.

Falcon-class destroyer
Mass: 70,500 tons
Dimensions: 355 × 42 × 24 m
Acceleration: 523.6 G (5.134 kps²)
80% Accel: 418.8 G (4.108 kps²)
Broadside: 3M, 4L, 3CM, 4PD
Chase: 1M, 2L, 2CM, 2PD
Number Built: 88
Service Life: 1851–1916

HMS Hawkwing was a Falcon-class.

Chanson-class destroyer
Mass: 78,000 tons
Dimensions: 367 × 43 × 25 m
Acceleration: 520.7 G (5.107 kps²)
80% Accel: 416.6 G (4.085 kps²)
Broadside: 3M, 3L, 4CM, 4PD
Chase: 2M, 1L, 2CM, 2PD
Number Built: 204
Service Life: 1867–present

HMS Troubador was a Chanson.

Roland-class destroyer
Mass: 188,750 tons
Dimensions: 446 × 54 × 45 m
Acceleration: 780 G (7.649 kps²)
80% Accel: 624 G (6.119 kps²)
Broadside: 5L, 10CM, 9PD
Chase: 6M, 2G, 6PD
Number Built: 46+
Service Life: 1920–present

HMS Tristram was a Roland

Star Knight-class heavy cruiser
Mass: 305,250 tons
Dimensions: 523 × 63 × 53 m
Acceleration: 509.3 G (4.994 kps²)
80% Accel: 407.4 G (3.995 kps²)
Broadside: 12M, 6L, 3G, 8CM, 8PD
Chase: 3M, 1L, 5CM, 5PD
Number Built: 74
Service Life: 1893–present

HMS Fearless, yada, yada, yada

The Roland is great, but I have a minor query.

The missile launchers.

I'm assuming that the launchers are the three protrusions on each flank of the hammerhead since there are eight hatches on the end of the hammerhead, yet textev suggests that the six launchers are arranged closer together and sharing reload equipment (putting them at risk of a single hit destroying something vital), so I always pictured them as arranged in a circular arrangement with the hatches actually on the flat end of the hammerhead.

Sorry if I've just forced you to re-design the whole thing...

Michael Everett wrote:The Roland is great, but I have a minor query.

The missile launchers.

I'm assuming that the launchers are the three protrusions on each flank of the hammerhead since there are eight hatches on the end of the hammerhead, yet textev suggests that the six launchers are arranged closer together and sharing reload equipment (putting them at risk of a single hit destroying something vital), so I always pictured them as arranged in a circular arrangement with the hatches actually on the flat end of the hammerhead.

Sorry if I've just forced you to re-design the whole thing...

If you look, there are also five white hatches on the side of the ship, for the five lasers. I think the eight hatches on the hammerhead are two groups of three missile tubes and the two grazers, with the grazers being the two more or less on the centerline, and the missiles grouped above and below. I would like to know what those grey hatches are. The only thing I can think of is escape craft ejection ports. Also, what is with all of those solar panel looking things on the top of each ship?

crewdude48 wrote:If you look, there are also five white hatches on the side of the ship, for the five lasers. I think the eight hatches on the hammerhead are two groups of three missile tubes and the two grazers, with the grazers being the two more or less on the centerline, and the missiles grouped above and below. I would like to know what those grey hatches are. The only thing I can think of is escape craft ejection ports. Also, what is with all of those solar panel looking things on the top of each ship?

... that would make more sense...
Objections withdrawn.

Michael Everett wrote:The Roland is great, but I have a minor query.

The missile launchers.

I'm assuming that the launchers are the three protrusions on each flank of the hammerhead since there are eight hatches on the end of the hammerhead, yet textev suggests that the six launchers are arranged closer together and sharing reload equipment (putting them at risk of a single hit destroying something vital), so I always pictured them as arranged in a circular arrangement with the hatches actually on the flat end of the hammerhead.

Sorry if I've just forced you to re-design the whole thing...

Nope. You're right. The six outer hatches on the hammerhead face(s) are the missile tubes. The two cetral ones are the grasers. The tubes all share a ring-shaped magazine with breaks in it for the loading equipment lined up with each tube.

The protrusions on the sides of the hammerheads are the PDLC mounts. There are no chase CM tubes.

The distance of the tubes are a result of trying to fit 120 Mk-16's into a pair of mags. Sixty missiles per ring, with two rings back-to-back with the aft ring feeding the forward ring as it empties - this is for *each* hammerhead, so 240 Mk-16's total (this is also another reason for the elongated hammerhead). Each ring contains twenty-four missiles on the inner surface and thirty on the outer surface, with a single missile at each of six breaks in the ring. The singles are in a position to be loaded while stored, but not actually "in the pipe".

Theoretically, yes, a single powerful enough hit *could* take out the entire offensive armament on a hammerhead, but I tried to design it to take that into account. Each of the six ring segments is independent of the others, and can feed two tubes, if necessary. So, while you may lose one or more magazine segments, as log as the tubes still work, you should be able to keep *something* going.

Also, the way the ring segments are set up, they can also transfer to an adjacent segment, so if a tube is lost, the missiles could still be moved to another tube. The best that can be done is to reduce the chances of a single hit taking everything out, but you can't eliminate it completely, and there's always the chance of a Golden BB, even on larger, more heavily armored designs.

I haven't modeled all the details of the magazine/tube arrangement, but it's blocked in enough that I was able to place the tubes where they need to be - I didn't just arbitrarily throw hatches in there because I thought it looked good. In fact, originally, the hammerhead face was larger, but once I got the tubes placed and checked clearances for the weapons port hatches (see the bulges on the sides of the Chanson hammerheads for what happens when you have too many weapons crammed into too small a space), I was able to make it smaller by about 10%.

crewdude48 wrote:
If you look, there are also five white hatches on the side of the ship, for the five lasers. I think the eight hatches on the hammerhead are two groups of three missile tubes and the two grazers, with the grazers being the two more or less on the centerline, and the missiles grouped above and below. I would like to know what those grey hatches are. The only thing I can think of is escape craft ejection ports. Also, what is with all of those solar panel looking things on the top of each ship?

The grey "hatches" are actually EW panels. The escape pod hatch covers are the paired circular "buttons" on the top of each ship. Although, theoretically, a Roland could take the entire crew complement out in a single pinnace.

Edit: Not the rounded-top buttons on the top surface of the superstructure, though. I haven't been told what they are, but they're in the artwork I'm working from, and I justify them as armored caps for lift tubes.

The black panels are radiators. If you look closely, you can just barely make out the tubing running back and forth in them. For the Roland, each overall radiator panel is divided into five sections, so that a single hit won't take out the entire panel.

Whether the way I have made them is "right" or not is not a point for debate. They're radiators, and until someone (from BuNine) comes up with a more "realistic" design for them, they remain as they are as placeholders.

Great rendering.

I confess that I don't like the way the missile tubes split to accept loading rather than being loaded from the end. I envision the gravity drivers being analogous to magnetic coil guns so compromising the structural integrity in this manner would be a no no. I prefer the concept included in Weber's illustration of HMS MINATOUR in EoH where the missiles for the chase tubes load from the breach end. Check the numbers but I think there is enough hull beam to allow this for broadside tubes.

namelessfly wrote:Great rendering.

I confess that I don't like the way the missile tubes split to accept loading rather than being loaded from the end. I envision the gravity drivers being analogous to magnetic coil guns so compromising the structural integrity in this manner would be a no no. I prefer the concept included in Weber's illustration of HMS MINATOUR in EoH where the missiles for the chase tubes load from the breach end. Check the numbers but I think there is enough hull beam to allow this for broadside tubes.

You're referring to the animation of the Mk-13 mag and tube, correct?

No, there's no room broadside to breechload. The Star Knight is the smallest ship with an armored core hull, and the tube and mags take up all the space between that and the main hull. As it is, the tubes are not even twice the length of the missile. That also happens to be for the SK itself, and on larger ships, there *would* be enough room for breechloading.

The Roland, because of the inordinate length of the hammerheads, has plenty of room for breechloading its Mk-16's, and that is how it's set up. The Falcon and Chanson, though, are too small and also use a similar loading mechanism to the SK, even though they use slightly smaller missiles than the Mk-13's the SK carries.

As for the grav drivers... while they may *act* similar to a magnetic rail gun, they don't work on a similar principle. Each "flat" section of the tube is a self-contained grav driver "plate" (for lack of a better term), and doesn't rely on a connection to the one next to it, except inasmuch as they need to communicate with each other for timing, the degree of power to use on the missile, and to transfer power to the "plate". As with everything else, that is not a finished mesh, but mainly just a conceptual, blocked-in model of one possible method that fits the criteria needed.

We're also trying to keep in mind the fact that some ships are older than others, and may have different ways of doing things. Then, when we get around to doing newer ships, we can make changes that would show generational differences, as you can see with the differences between the Roland and the other three ships.

Again, the issue crops up where people don't really see what goes into making these things work in a way that's plausible. Let's use the SK as an example:

The main hull of the ship is 66 meters wide.

The armor is 4 meters thick at the centerline, just a little below the lower weapons deck. At the centerline of the tubes on the upper deck, the armor is just under 3.5 meters thick, and the width of the outer hull at this point is 56 meters.

So, now we're down to a beam at the centerline of 58 meters.

The outer surface of the armored core hull is 24 meters across, so now we have 34 total meters at the centerline to play with, divided between the two broadsides, which means at most, there's 17 meters between the outer surface of the core hull and the inner surface of the main hull.

A Mk-13 is about 12 meters long. The magazine drum is 13 meters long, allowing for a little space between the missile and inner wall of the mag drum, and the thickness of the drum for armoring.

Do the math. Unless you're firing the missile through a 4 meter long launch tube - well, 6 meters, as it extends halfway through the armor - there's absolutely no way to breechload a warshot anywhere near the centerline. CM's, yes. Large missiles, no. Even a Roland couldn't breechload a broadside tube.

Another thing people forget (or at least, don't factor in when they're trying to figure things out) is that these ships are cylindrical, which causes its own problems with trying to fit a workable magazine and launcher into a broadside.

This reminds me of that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Roy Neary (Richard Dreyfus) is telling the other people about a trail up Devil's Tower leading around to where they're trying to go, and one of the guys says that he never knew that, that all his drawings were from the same side.

Roy responds, "Next time, try sculpture."