cthia wrote:A Short Victorious WarLike Honor's last ship, Nike had three fusion plants, yet her energy requirements were huge compared to a heavy cruiser's. HMS Fearless could have operated on a single plant, but Nike needed at least two, which gave her only one backup. She needed Fusion Three back before she could be considered truly operational, and from the look of things, getting it back was going to take far longer than Honor cared to think about.
MaxxQ, do you have — or is there any other — renderings showing locations of fusion plants in relation to each other and to the overall length of the ship? Especially ships with three fusion plants. How many fusion plants, has a Superdread?
*I* don't have any of that info, as all I'm currently working on are exteriors. However, I'm sure Tom Pope or a couple of other folks have that info tucked away somewhere.
What I can say is that, IMO, *ideally* all plants should be as far from each other as physically possible, as well as placed inside the armored core hull - the secondary internal armored hull inside the main hull and where all critical systems *should* be located.
Note that there's a few qualifiers in there. That's because you almost *never* have "ideal" conditions to get to put things where you'd like to put them. Since I'm currently working on the Nike (the current, Keyhole-equipped Nike-class BC) - Reliant is finished but won't be posted until all BCs are finished - and because the tetev you quoted also uses a Nike (the smaller, earlier Reliant-class BC), I'll use her as an example.
Three fusion plants... ideally, there should be one as far forward as possible, one aft, and the third exactly between them. This is to provide enough separation to prevent battle damage from taking out more than one at a time. More than likely - and I'm not saying that's how it is, because I honestly don't know - the middle plant is probably closer to one or the other plants, and the fore/aft plants may not even be as far forward or aft as they possibly could be.
The fore/aft plants should ideally be located near the ends of the tapers, but not all the way to the impeller rings, as the impeller rooms are in that location. At best, for the Reliant-class Nike, I'd say the fore/aft plants are roughly 500-550 meters apart.
As for how many fusion plants an SD or SD(P) has...? I really don't know for sure, but at a guess, I'd say no less than four, and maybe five. Then again, they may only have three, if they use larger plants.
Side note: Sorry I haven't posted new renders lately. Since I got here in S. Carolina, I've actually been working five days a week, so I don't have as much time to work on these as I did when I was unemployed. I'm starting to settle into a routine, and it may take me a couple weeks for each ship now, instead of 2-2.5 days per ship. Quite possibly, it may go longer than that, as I'm getting to ships that need special things that I don't already have premade meshes for.
Forex, I just finished a Keyhole 1 platform for the Nike earlier today, and have finally started on the Nike herself. The KH1 took me two days to do, and there still might be some changes made before I can "attach" it to the Nike. However, once the model is done, I'll be able to reuse it for the KH1 version of the Agamemnon BC(P) which comes after the non-KH1 Aggie, which comes after the Nike.
The Aggie is one ship where I will be breaking with my rule of only doing ships that have lineart in
House of Steel. I will be doing the non-KH version first (that's the version in the book), then the KH version, then possibly the Duke of Cromarty, neither of which have art in the book.
The Aggie herself is going to take a little longer than normal as well, due to having to bring in pods, set them up the way they would be stowed, and hopefully they'll fit into the pod bay with the dimensions I have. Plus the somewhat different aft taper and hammerhead are going to be new to me, which might take a little longer than usual.