Bellerophon

This is the Best Dreadnaught ever made. It seems this would be a Better Choice than making the Nike.

It doesn't take much more time than a Nike to build, with 32 Mk23 Fusion missiles and 4 Apollo missiles. Plus 18 Lasers not Grasers, Energy Weapons become more and more the forgettable weapon system. 18 Lasers should be as good as 12 Nike Grasers if need be. Plus the Lasers use less power and could be used in a Anti Missile mid range addition. Add in the PD and CM. Keyhole II makes the Bellerophon so much better than the Nike.

The Bellerophon would have all the Armour spacing and even more Armour than the Nike. Add in 8 Mk23 and one Apollo (in the broadside with the other 4). plus 4 Lasers and PD and CM in the Hammerheads.

More Range. More Accuracy. 30% more Missiles. More Armour and while it would give up a little bit of Acceleration, at 475-480G 80%. It is faster than Anything that might hurt it and the 18 +4 SD Lasers each Broadside and Hammerhead can Destroy anything faster than it. Let alone knock down their sidewalls.

Space from Modern Automation and the 15 Grasers offers space for More of Everything. Telemetry Keyhole II and more CM and PD emplacements. In the near Future the DDM Mk16 missiles of the Nike are going to get it in trouble. A Bellerophon would be that Trouble. Against a Nike the Bellerophon would roast it. It could hold its own against even a Pod Layer. Armour internally even deeper than the old school SD and the SD(P) lets it absorb anything that gets through its more powerful Sidewalls.

Stacked 160 Mk16/23's plus 20 Apollo fired into any aspect. A Single Stacked Salvo is Equal to the 4 Saganami C Salvo's. And it can carry more Missiles than even the Nike. At least three times the number of Missiles than the 4 Saganami C. And with Mk23 tubes and Keyhole II it could paint a 60 Gm Line in Space not the 40 Gm range they assumed.

Although 6 BC wouldn't have even attempted charging what appears to be a SD.

For Peace duties a Bellerophon Can do everything a Nike can do. Even fire the Mk16 missiles (It would carry a few Mk23's). Plus Apollo works with Mk16's too.

At 475G Acceleration it is faster than any non GA ship. No GA ship faster than it could keep it in range.

Crew levels with modern GA technology should be around 500-600 crew plus 400-500 Prize crew and Marines. Add 1000 plus brig and it can do anything that needs doing.

Lord Skimper wrote:This is the Best Dreadnaught ever made. It seems this would be a Better Choice than making the Nike.

The Bellerophon class? That one class the RMN was building in the buildup towards the first war against Haven because they were unable to secure funding or shipyard space to build Superdreadnoughts?

It doesn't take much more time than a Nike to build, with 32 Mk23 Fusion missiles and 4 Apollo missiles. Plus 18 Lasers not Grasers, Energy Weapons become more and more the forgettable weapon system. 18 Lasers should be as good as 12 Nike Grasers if need be. Plus the Lasers use less power and could be used in a Anti Missile mid range addition. Add in the PD and CM. Keyhole II makes the Bellerophon so much better than the Nike.

So.... it's not a Bellerophon anymore, is it. You're talking about a complete, from the ground up redesign. A completely new ship class in the 7 Mt range.

And that's before the bullshit you're posting. Yes, the Bellerophon had a 33 missile broadside. That doesn't translate into space sufficient to mount 32 Mk23 and 4 Apollo launchers though (not to mention their magazines), even if you do cut the energy armament as much as you want to.

The Bellerophon would have all the Armour spacing and even more Armour than the Nike. Add in 8 Mk23 and one Apollo (in the broadside with the other 4). plus 4 Lasers and PD and CM in the Hammerheads.

Again, not enough space. The Belle's chase armament was 7 missile launchers, 2 lasers and 3 grasers. That is not enough space to fit 8 mk23 launchers, an apollo launcher, a couple lasers and defensive armament. (And it raises the question why you want to have chase missile launchers, there's no reason to have them given the capabilities of RMN MDMs).

More Range. More Accuracy. 30% more Missiles. More Armour and while it would give up a little bit of Acceleration, at 475-480G 80%. It is faster than Anything that might hurt it and the 18 +4 SD Lasers each Broadside and Hammerhead can Destroy anything faster than it. Let alone knock down their sidewalls.

30% more missiles, huh? How do you figure that without a massive increase in overall size?

Space from Modern Automation and the 15 Grasers offers space for More of Everything.

Space you already used for the Mk23/Apollo launchers and magazines.

Telemetry Keyhole II and more CM and PD emplacements. In the near Future the DDM Mk16 missiles of the Nike are going to get it in trouble. A Bellerophon would be that Trouble. Against a Nike the Bellerophon would roast it. It could hold its own against even a Pod Layer. Armour internally even deeper than the old school SD and the SD(P) lets it absorb anything that gets through its more powerful Sidewalls.

So not only do you have deeper magazines of larger missiles than a Nike can carry, you also want heavier armor than what was mounted on SDs with over a million tons more worth of mass to play with. Got it. Was there some sort of hammerspace tech the RMN developed that only you know about or something?

Stacked 160 Mk16/23's plus 20 Apollo fired into any aspect. A Single Stacked Salvo is Equal to the 4 Saganami C Salvo's. And it can carry more Missiles than even the Nike. At least three times the number of Missiles than the 4 Saganami C. And with Mk23 tubes and Keyhole II it could paint a 60 Gm Line in Space not the 40 Gm range they assumed.

So, to sum up: You want a 7Mt ship, with 80 onboard Mk 23 launchers, 10 onboard Apollo launchers, and a magazine in excess of 14400 missiles just for those (Sag-Cs carry 1200 missiles). Actually, let's talk about that for a moment. A Sag-C carries 1200 missiles, and weighs about half a million tons. A Nike, at 2.5 million tons, carries 6000 missiles. So far so good, there seems to be a linear relationship developing. Based on that, a ship carrying 14000 missiles would have to be in the 6Mt range. But! That's for Mk 16s only. For Mk 23s, well. We don't know exactly how much bigger and heavier a Mk 23 is compared to a Mk 16, all we know is that they cannot be mounted on something the size of a Sag-C in useful numbers. Just incidentally, an Invictus-class carries about 1100 pods, each loaded with 8 Mk23s and an Apollo missile, or just about 10000 missiles. Please explain to me how you can fit fixed magazines holding more missiles inside a hull 1.7 Mt lighter while also carrying heavier armor and Keyhole 2. The entire point of SD(P)s is that they sacrifice a lot in order to maximize the amount of missiles carried, please tell me what magic you're using in order to pull off your design goals.

The E wrote:So, to sum up: You want a 7Mt ship, with 80 onboard Mk 23 launchers, 10 onboard Apollo launchers, and a magazine in excess of 14400 missiles just for those (Sag-Cs carry 1200 missiles). Actually, let's talk about that for a moment. A Sag-C carries 1200 missiles, and weighs about half a million tons. A Nike, at 2.5 million tons, carries 6000 missiles. So far so good, there seems to be a linear relationship developing. Based on that, a ship carrying 14000 missiles would have to be in the 6Mt range. But! That's for Mk 16s only. For Mk 23s, well. We don't know exactly how much bigger and heavier a Mk 23 is compared to a Mk 16, all we know is that they cannot be mounted on something the size of a Sag-C in useful numbers. Just incidentally, an Invictus-class carries about 1100 pods, each loaded with 8 Mk23s and an Apollo missile, or just about 10000 missiles. Please explain to me how you can fit fixed magazines holding more missiles inside a hull 1.7 Mt lighter while also carrying heavier armor and Keyhole 2. The entire point of SD(P)s is that they sacrifice a lot in order to maximize the amount of missiles carried, please tell me what magic you're using in order to pull off your design goals.

I agree with the rest of your assessment of Skimper's latest acid trip, but pods are less space efficient than magazines. If you were willing to build fixed magazines that were as big as the pod bay of an Invictus they could hold some unclear additional number of missiles (15-20% more?). N the other hand current podnaughts do seem to devote more volume to pod bays than older design did to missile magazines...

Jonathan_S wrote:I agree with the rest of your assessment of Skimper's latest acid trip, but pods are less space efficient than magazines. If you were willing to build fixed magazines that were as big as the pod bay of an Invictus they could hold some unclear additional number of missiles (15-20% more?). N the other hand current podnaughts do seem to devote more volume to pod bays than older design did to missile magazines...

Sure, but at the same time, the rest of skimper's fever dream calls for very heavy armor, a large crew compartment, and whole lot of defensive equipment (not to mention that it is unclear whether or not the 14400 missile figure he set as a minimum number includes Apollo control birds). With all of that factored in, I strongly doubt that this thing could hold that many missiles, let alone carry much more than what an Invictus can (and bear in mind that an Invictus is 1.7 Mt heavier than this notional 7 Mt ship). Also consider that an Agamemnon still carries around 4400 missiles; this is actually right on the money for the "500kt displacement = 1200 missiles" curve that the Sag-C and Nike fall into.

Jonathan_S wrote:

The E wrote:So, to sum up: You want a 7Mt ship, with 80 onboard Mk 23 launchers, 10 onboard Apollo launchers, and a magazine in excess of 14400 missiles just for those (Sag-Cs carry 1200 missiles). Actually, let's talk about that for a moment. A Sag-C carries 1200 missiles, and weighs about half a million tons. A Nike, at 2.5 million tons, carries 6000 missiles. So far so good, there seems to be a linear relationship developing. Based on that, a ship carrying 14000 missiles would have to be in the 6Mt range. But! That's for Mk 16s only. For Mk 23s, well. We don't know exactly how much bigger and heavier a Mk 23 is compared to a Mk 16, all we know is that they cannot be mounted on something the size of a Sag-C in useful numbers. Just incidentally, an Invictus-class carries about 1100 pods, each loaded with 8 Mk23s and an Apollo missile, or just about 10000 missiles. Please explain to me how you can fit fixed magazines holding more missiles inside a hull 1.7 Mt lighter while also carrying heavier armor and Keyhole 2. The entire point of SD(P)s is that they sacrifice a lot in order to maximize the amount of missiles carried, please tell me what magic you're using in order to pull off your design goals.

I agree with the rest of your assessment of Skimper's latest acid trip, but pods are less space efficient than magazines. If you were willing to build fixed magazines that were as big as the pod bay of an Invictus they could hold some unclear additional number of missiles (15-20% more?). N the other hand current podnaughts do seem to devote more volume to pod bays than older design did to missile magazines...

We do know the same pod can fit either 14 MK16s or 10 MK23s. We also know each pod comes with a microfusion reactor and a tractor beam, as well as the casing. My guess is a MK16 is pretty much two thirds the volume of a MK23 - that would make for about 10,000 MK23s on a Belly-sized tube waller, if the linear scaling shows 14-15k MK16s.

But yeah, the RMN isn't going to do anything with the Bellerophon hulls they still have lying around. When the new yards come online, they're going to be far too busy building new designs that look like whatever RFC's ideas of the next stage in the Invictus/Nike/Sag-C/Roland's evolutions are, possibly tempered by Bu9.

It's like saying instead of building a Gerald Ford CV, lets put a nuclear reactor and jet fighters in a rusty old Yorktown hull.

Size relationship of missiles: http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -465723294

MaxxQ wrote:Size relationship of missiles: http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -465723294

Care to share the numbers behind the drawings??

Theemile wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:Size relationship of missiles: http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/F ... -465723294

Care to share the numbers behind the drawings??

These are rounded (not saying up or down):

Mk-23 ACM - 18m
Mk-23 - 17m
Mk-16 - 13m
Mk-13 - 12m
Viper - 6m

Although, since I've mentioned elsewhere what the dimensions are for the laserheads - well, at least length - the cutaways should allow someone to make a somewhat more accurate guess at the overall dimensions, once one accounts for perspective.

It's amazing how skimper manages to get you all up in a tizzy with some stupid suggestion and then the thread just keep going and going like a zombie...

It's almost like his agenda for posting the stupid suggestions is to get this type of zombie-threads going..

To be fair, he does sometimes inspire reasonable thoughts in others.

Joat42 wrote:It's amazing how skimper manages to get you all up in a tizzy with some stupid suggestion and then the thread just keep going and going like a zombie...

It's almost like his agenda for posting the stupid suggestions is to get this type of zombie-threads going..