New Honorverse renders uploaded

Duckk wrote:

dreamrider wrote:Well, adding Keyhole to BC(P)s pretty much pre-supposes a new generation of BC(P) designs. I think we know from various Pearls and other comments of tMWW that THAT isn't going to happen, at least not for Manticore.

???

Aggies have Keyhole...

Yep... in fact, later tonight or tomorrow, I plan to start making the Keyhole Refit Agamemnon, followed by the Queen's Yacht/Transport Duke of Cromarty, which also has Keyhole. Those should get done fairly quickly, as it's just a matter of adding the divot and rearranging some surface mount stuff.

I'm still confused by how adding KH1 makes it easier to destroy an aggie. The KH1 should be along the pod bay, so you might have an increased chance of a firepower kill by penetrating the pod bay, but not into the core of the forward ship.

So I'll look forward to your pictures.

kzt wrote:I'm still confused by how adding KH1 makes it easier to destroy an aggie. The KH1 should be along the pod bay, so you might have an increased chance of a firepower kill by penetrating the pod bay, but not into the core of the forward ship.

So I'll look forward to your pictures.

According to HoS, the addition of KH1 thinned the armour over the reactor core. This means hits in that area are more likely to get through.

House of Steel states that the Keyhole refit cost the original Agamemnons half of their broadside grasers. That would indicate that the Keyhole bays are located forward of the pod bay. It could be that the Agamemnons aren't wide enough to fit the Keyhole bays alongside the pod bay.

Dafmeister wrote:House of Steel states that the Keyhole refit cost the original Agamemnons half of their broadside grasers. That would indicate that the Keyhole bays are located forward of the pod bay. It could be that the Agamemnons aren't wide enough to fit the Keyhole bays alongside the pod bay.

That makes no sense. You remove some pods if needed, placing it over the core hull seems pretty much like the worst possible place. You already have limited space there due to the pod bay, you can't really afford to lose any more.

kzt wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:House of Steel states that the Keyhole refit cost the original Agamemnons half of their broadside grasers. That would indicate that the Keyhole bays are located forward of the pod bay. It could be that the Agamemnons aren't wide enough to fit the Keyhole bays alongside the pod bay.

That makes no sense. You remove some pods if needed, placing it over the core hull seems pretty much like the worst possible place. You already have limited space there due to the pod bay, you can't really afford to lose any more.

You can afford to lose space there a lot more than in the pod bay. The Agamemnons were short of ammunition to start with. They could afford to lose energy weapons a lot more readily than pods.

The reality, of course, is that put Keyhole into the Agamemnons was a serious compromise in an already flawed design concept.

kzt wrote:

Dafmeister wrote:House of Steel states that the Keyhole refit cost the original Agamemnons half of their broadside grasers. That would indicate that the Keyhole bays are located forward of the pod bay. It could be that the Agamemnons aren't wide enough to fit the Keyhole bays alongside the pod bay.

That makes no sense. You remove some pods if needed, placing it over the core hull seems pretty much like the worst possible place. You already have limited space there due to the pod bay, you can't really afford to lose any more.

Even if you cut back on pods to squeeze in the Keyholes you'd proably still want them at the forward end of the pod bay. Otherwise they'd create a bottleneck because if they're deep enough that it costs pods its because their recess is causing intrusion in the pod bay; so you can run the rails past it.

You could potentially keep the top and bottom rail and just have them block the side rails. But again, if that's done mid-bay then you have to shuffle any pods forward of them over onto the top/bottom, past the obstruction, and then back down onto the side rails. Easier to simply put the keyholes at the forward end and make the side rails shorter than the top/bottom rails. (Unless you want to shorten the entire pod bay, but then you're giving up more pod capability than I think you'd need to)


But depending on where the reactor is it's possible than an shot angled somewhat forward through the keyhole recess could have less depth to go through to reach the reactor than in the original non-keyhole Aggie design. The Keyholes don't need to be directly outboard of the reactor to give some shots a less protected path to reach it...



I'm looking forward to Maxx's renders of the Keyhole Aggie - be interesting to see where he puts them.

Dafmeister wrote:House of Steel states that the Keyhole refit cost the original Agamemnons half of their broadside grasers. That would indicate that the Keyhole bays are located forward of the pod bay. It could be that the Agamemnons aren't wide enough to fit the Keyhole bays alongside the pod bay.

Correct.

kzt wrote:That makes no sense. You remove some pods if needed, placing it over the core hull seems pretty much like the worst possible place. You already have limited space there due to the pod bay, you can't really afford to lose any more.

It makes lots of sense. You're not losing more space in the habitable areas because you're removing nearly useless (in the age of DDMs/MDMs and pods) weapons already in place and simply taking up *that* space with the recess. The core armor is no thinner than it was with grasers in place. Granted, you're also removing cofferdamming, but I don't see that as much more of a problem than having rather large holes already in the hull (the weapons ports).

The Aggie is already short on ammunition for its primary weapons, and you want to reduce that limited amount even more? Considering the size of the KH1, you'd be losing somewhere around 25-30% of the pod load.

HoS doesn't show it, but any center hull space forward of the aft taper is taken up with a double layer of pods that goes between 1/2 and 2/3 the length of the center hull section. This double layer consists of a core layer of four pods arranged in a cruciform configuration - the same as what you see in the aft shot in my renders. The outer layer is an octagonal arrangement.

The Keyhole platform takes up most of the rest of the length of the center hull forward of the pod bay. There is already thin armor along the pod bay, due to the hull being wrapped so closely around the pod arrangement. At best, it looks like there's only four or five meters of armor (at the widest point of the hull - armor thins out as you go higher or lower around the curve), allowing for space for the rail transfer system (for moving pods from one rail to the next one over, or moving the outer pods to the inner rails). That's equivalent to Star Knight armor.

Also, the placement of the Keyhole means it won't be *quite* as recessed as it is on the Nike, so there's still going to be *some* room for a little extra armor - just not as much as on a non-pod, non-Keyhole BC.

Look, after working on this thing, and keeping in mind where the KH is going, we've realized that the Aggie is pretty much worse than what everyone has speculated. Too many compromises had to be made for a BC(P) design, and we at BuNine had a nice little discussion about many things that would be going on inside the limited space inside the hull. Let me put it this way - there's no room for a normal corridor along the dorsal and ventral areas in the pod bay area. At best, the corridor *might* be 1.75-2 meters tall - Honor would have to duck to walk one of those.

Jonathan_S wrote:Even if you cut back on pods to squeeze in the Keyholes you'd proably still want them at the forward end of the pod bay. Otherwise they'd create a bottleneck because if they're deep enough that it costs pods its because their recess is causing intrusion in the pod bay; so you can run the rails past it.

You could potentially keep the top and bottom rail and just have them block the side rails. But again, if that's done mid-bay then you have to shuffle any pods forward of them over onto the top/bottom, past the obstruction, and then back down onto the side rails. Easier to simply put the keyholes at the forward end and make the side rails shorter than the top/bottom rails. (Unless you want to shorten the entire pod bay, but then you're giving up more pod capability than I think you'd need to)


But depending on where the reactor is it's possible than an shot angled somewhat forward through the keyhole recess could have less depth to go through to reach the reactor than in the original non-keyhole Aggie design. The Keyholes don't need to be directly outboard of the reactor to give some shots a less protected path to reach it...



I'm looking forward to Maxx's renders of the Keyhole Aggie - be interesting to see where he puts them.

So am I, Jonathan... so am I.

So here's the Keyhole refit of the Aggie.

Let the gnashing of teeth and pulling of hair begin.

http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/A ... -486640828

You may have noticed the "corner" pods aren't exactly at 45°. They're at 35° to allow clearance for the PDLCs and CM tubes and magazines. Also, the corner rails do not rotate to the vertical position at all. They rotate to the horizontal as the horizontal rails empty, again, because of issues with the PDLC and CM mounts.

The ends of the outer layer horizontal rails have equipment to transfer pods to the inner layer of pod rails, and the gap at the far end (with a matching gap at the forward end of the inner rails just before the outer layer starts) is for rotating inner layer pods to adjacent rails. This can also be done at the extreme forward end of the inner rails.

I hope this answers some burning (or not-so-burning) questions anyone has had.

Are you only showing part of the outer layer, or is the pod bay much narrower deep into the ship? I'd assumed it was the reverse, with it narrower as it passes through the machinery spaces and wider past that.