HMSS Hephaestus

[Shadow2Lead]

In the middle of a reread of the Honor Harrington books and decided to build some of the ships in StarMade. Starting with the Star Knight class heavy cruiser - rather than something more sensible like a destroyer. Oh well. Anyway after a few weeks of progress I figured I'd make a thread here to track my progress and throw out questions as they come.

Huge props to David Weber for writing the books and the BuNine folk for figuring out how to make his ships make "sense". Particular props to MaxxQ, hopefully I'll do a decent job bringing his rendering of the Star Knight to StarMade.

With that said -

Dimensions:
Length: ~524
Beam: ~65 (excluding various detailing)
Draft: ~53 (excluding detailing)

Armament:
12 ASM bays - Missile+Beam+Ion weapon bays per broadside.
3 Graser bays - Cannon+?+? per broadside. These "grasers" are intended to by high powered energy weapons.
6 Laser bays - Cannon+?+? per broadside. These "lasers" are intended to be lighter energy weapons.
8 Countermissile tubes - Cannon+Beam turret.
8 Point Defense Lasers - Cannon+Cannon turret.


Pictures:

Spoiler

Here is the full port broadside. At the moment I am building a variety of interior rooms and passages on top of the ship rather than the inside so that it's easier to compare different options, so try to ignore that odd tower-like protrusion.

------
And a view of the Ventral Boat Bays. The pink cubes are placeholders so that I remember to leave a space that large for pinnaces & shuttles to dock.


-------
A close-up of flight ops. The orange lights will be tied to the rails in the boatbays when they are finished so they will light up to indicate which bays are used.

--------
Point defense turrets at the moment come in three varieties Cannon+Cannon, Cannon+Beam, Cannon+Cannon & Missile (hopefully it'll be cool if non-functional, haven't tested.) Unfortunately, on the Star Knight all its active PD weapons are on a single deck near it's ventral side meaning dorsal coverage will be terrible. when the ship is complete, if it's necessary, I'll throw a couple PD turrets on it's dorsal side.

-----
An empty weapons bay and then a view of the interior of a completed Missile+Beam+Ion docked in a similar bay. The red lit area is a very short access passage to the core. At the moment I plan to have all offensive weapons docked in similar bays, although I may have the bow weapons be built into the ship and directly controllable.

-----
The Docked Reactor access point inside "Fusion One" semi-RIP. Here come reactors which go Boom! and which can't be ejected Awkward.

----
CIC - I like the holo at the top, I don't like how few people it sits. Feels far to spacious for a military vessel. I doubt I'll put this version inside the ship. It needs a lot more than fans and more interesting flooring before it'll feel right.

------
DCC - Once I put the finished version inside the hull the green status lights will be linked to activation blocks by each rail docker. That logic might need a timer to get it to update that a weapon has been blasted off, as always: testing will be needed. Again, the way I've set it up doesn't seat as many as I'd like. I'd also love to get blue lighting in there but all the force fields just overpower them. I may try redoing the status lights as a giant forcefield / holo-image in the center and have parts of it turn off when respective systems are destroyed, but I'm pretty happy as is.

-----
The Bridge - There will also be a Flag Bridge once I figure out what I want in it. But for now I'm fairly happy with the "Captain's Bridge". I'll probably end up removing the display blocks I placed trying to do a 3d image of the ship in the red forcefields. It's just not dense enough to look good. If we ever get display blocks that can 3-5 layers of depth they will definitely come back.

Questions:
I took the pictures with F6, is there a setting somewhere to get the background to stay?
I have cameras on each broadside so theoretically beam/cannon weapons there could be useable - would they be useful?
How deep do you expect armor on this size ship to be? (At the moment it is 2 blocks of advanced armor on the outer skin. Followed by 1 block of advanced armor around each weapon bay. But I have no idea how much is needed/useful in Starmade.)

 

[StarWars1981]

Well, let's get some pictures of the source material first, please. And some more info on those weapons, for those of us who haven't read that series. But hey, lookin' nice.

First off, scrap the weapons bays as a primary offensive option. Scrap ALL broadside-based weapons for primary offense. If you're mounting turrets in those bays, switch them to an overlarge decorative point-defense with a ton of firepower for when missiles get health. Those bays do NOT look big enough to mount a truly super-effective main weapon turret, so perhaps a secondary system for targeting lighter vessels (i.e. small frigates, fighters/bombers, gunships).

Second, I'd take maybe every third PD turret along that massive bank and make it a fake that doesn't actually move. Otherwise the number of cores is gonna kill you. Also, Cannon-Cannon ONLY on the PDTs, anti-missile defenses are unreliable on servers without super-targeting-AI. Cannon-Beam is pointless as they won't hit anything at max range, and oh by the way, you can rarely fire missiles from outside that max range, because they have issues like tracking, sector jumping, and actually seeing the target. But anyways, autocannon are the only option, really. Missiles do NOT target other missiles.

Armor is necessary. On a ship that big, 2 blocks advanced is probably good, but I'd quadruple that or better on the bow. On that ship, actually, a 10-block-deep frontal armor plate is NOT overkill. That thing is not going to maneuver - at 260m, my light missile cruiser moves painfully slow, and at 624m, you're going nowhere fast. Keep your bow pointed at the hostiles, and the biggest weapons just behind that. Shielding - 3 mil is probably a light shield load at that size. Regen - 250K at LEAST on a 3 mil shield base. Remember that combat regen is lower and docked reactors/shield injectors no longer work in the current version. Remember that advanced armor is super-heavy, so if you've got regions that you cannot see a battle (involving the enemy doing his best to dodge your primary weapons first, and turrets second, to find a blindspot, and you trying to match his moves to fire, or do it to him if he's bigger) damaging, then strip armor off for a single hull layer. MOST exposed systems are ugly and also stupid vulnerable. Like, explosive suicide type vulnerable. Thrust req for basic maneuvers is going to be through the roof, you will NOT be making strafe runs.

JUMPDRIVE! Multiple. I.E. 3-4 or even 5. 2-3 of those need to be maximum charge rate. This is going to be your primary mobility even in short-range operations. And if you've gotta bail on a location, it's best to be able to bail out of the star you land in, too.

Docking Bays - they don't look big enough to fit any real fighters in there. Shuttles, yes, but combat vessels - no. I could be wrong with my sense of scale, in which case, maybe they'll work, but they don't look that big. Go nuts with them, that kind of thing can look just awesome.

Ship Hull: Bottom is kinda bare right now, try to find something to spruce it up a little. But hey, nice looking vessel so far. PDTs on the upper hull are a necessity, and end-on fire is an absolute requirement for warships that big. So you're probably going to need to deviate from canon design to add some real heavy weaponry (for a COMBAT ship, a RP ship is much different) to the aft and bow sections.

And last of all, I recognize this is long-winded. I want to give you all the help I can think of for this. We're a helpful bunch here at SMDock, we want you to succeed with everything you do. I mean nothing here as an insult or in a derogatory manner, this is my best effort to help you understand the game mechanics in relation to that ship. I hope you can finish this vessel - it'll take you awhile even working from a source, but it will be worth it. Just don't join a serious PvP server til you've tested it against other vessels on your own. Be a bit embarrassing for an essential component to be *ahem* disconnected when you need it or *ahem* perhaps uninstalled completely .... well ... good luck....





Space is an Ocean Trope!

 

[JinM]

Armament:
12 ASM bays - Missile+Beam+Ion weapon bays per broadside.
3 Graser bays - Cannon+?+? per broadside. These "grasers" are intended to by high powered energy weapons.
6 Laser bays - Cannon+?+? per broadside. These "lasers" are intended to be lighter energy weapons.

I have cameras on each broadside so theoretically beam/cannon weapons there could be useable - would they be useful?
How deep do you expect armor on this size ship to be? (At the moment it is 2 blocks of advanced armor on the outer skin. Followed by 1 block of advanced armor around each weapon bay. But I have no idea how much is needed/useful in Starmade.)

So I assume you want to make your ship as efficient for multiplayer combat as possible, and are not intending to design your armor and weapons around any RP ideas? Because that is important to answer first.

Having weapons for broadside combat is only usefull if you fight against a lot of enemies and they might swarm around you. The turning speed of your long ciggar might be not that sensational. Every weapon that you mount on the side is a lost weapon to the front. It all depends on the purpose of your ship and the type of multiplayer server you play on. Some only make 1 on 1 combat, then you intend to only show your nose to the enemy anyway.

There are several theories for armor. Some say only use 1 block deep armor and invest everything in shield blocks, other people tell that armor should be 6 block thick at the sides and 20 block thick at the nose. I didn't do the math, but maybe some dude allready did it and you just need to google the answer.

But you did some nice work allready. I suggest you go for a RP combat style instead, because the ship is not usefull for real multiplayer combat anyway. Its too long and I think you want to have fun instead of just invent another multiplayer combat ship. Design it as you want it and ignore whats most effective for multiplayer combat, because it might be more fun to build as you like and use some phantasy, instead of sticking to the pro-gamer efficiency plan. Starmade is about having freedom in design and creating what you like to play on as a warship, and not in limiting yourself to the most combat efficient ship-setups.

If you plan on having a pvp efficient battleship, you better learn all the stuff in this ship, and build another battleship with the pretense for multiplayer pvp.

 

[Karride]

Finally! I've been waiting for someone to make a Fearless or Nike.

As others have said, Honorverse ships dimensions and armaments will probably not translate into a viable fighting ship in SM (part of the reason why I never made any).

But that being said, just go for a good Role-play style ship, nothing wrong with that, and I'd love to walk around in a Star Knight class.

 

[Shadow2Lead]

Well, let's get some pictures of the source material first, please. And some more info on those weapons, for those of us who haven't read that series. But hey, lookin' nice.

....

Space is an Ocean Trope!

Space is an Ocean Trope? More like Space is an 18th century ocean complete with sails and cannons! Seriously, the source material is Horatio Hornblower in space. Which is awesome.

Here is a 3 minute YouTube video flyby of the ship and the docking bay (links to lots of pictures in the video description if you're interested.)

I am going to keep it as a primarily broadside weapon based ship - which it sounds like makes it 90% RP & 10% Combat regardless of what else I do. I hope we get controls which support non frontal weapons better in the future, but for now that's just how it is. Perhaps some of the weakness can be alleviated by configuring thrust to favor turning & rotation over forward/backwards?

Great info on PDTs, armor, shields, etc. Even doing something with broadside weapons, I'd like to have it as effective as possible within that constraint, so thank you! And definitely don't worry about anything coming across as insulting or whatnot, I fully appreciate all the information and it's not insulting at all.

The weapon bays each are roughly 1300 blocks. 550 of which are weapon blocks, the rest are armor, shields, shield regen, power and enough power regen to fire the weapons. (Missile+Beam weapons are likely going to need to draw power from the ship.

So I assume you want to make your ship as efficient for multiplayer combat as possible, and are not intending to design your armor and weapons around any RP ideas? Because that is important to answer first.

....

There are several theories for armor. Some say only use 1 block deep armor and invest everything in shield blocks, other people tell that armor should be 6 block thick at the sides and 20 block thick at the nose. I didn't do the math, but maybe some dude allready did it and you just need to google the answer.

This is definitely going to be RP first, combat efficient second. The design constraints are going to prevent it from being effective in StarMade - which I'm fine with. Regarding armor, 6-20 blocks. Whelp. I assume that's because piercing cannons mean you really need a lot of depth regardless of the quality of the armor?

Finally! I've been waiting for someone to make a Fearless or Nike.

As others have said, Honorverse ships dimensions and armaments will probably not translate into a viable fighting ship in SM (part of the reason why I never made any).

But that being said, just go for a good Role-play style ship, nothing wrong with that, and I'd love to walk around in a Star Knight class.

Heh, fortunately I wasn't crazy enough to try and build the Nike. It would've been glorious if I ever finished it, but that if is the key word there. For now I'm going to stick with the CA Fearless and probably start simultaneously working on either a Shrike LAC or a DD at the same time so I can switch between them depending on mood. With the shrike measuring 71m x 20m x 20m and having an entirely frontal armament I'm hoping it will both be an effective ship in StarMade and have weapons the AI can understand. This will also help me wait for the Quarters update to come out before I do the entire Star Knight interior. (I figured out how to make docked reactors just in time for them to be replaced and I'm eager to avoid doing that with something much more fundamental to ship design.)

And now, a few more pictures that I couldn't add before due to the 10 picture limit:

Spoiler

This is one of the missile weapons bays detached from the ship.
-----

Here is a view of some of the aft dorsal detailing. In universe the hull is grown so it's supposed to be perfectly smooth, but that can look rather boring so I may add some greebling at the very end if it's too dull and drives me crazy. (The hole is where the docked reactor used to be.)
------

This is a partially completed "decoy" ie. pair of point defense turrets on a stick. There will be two of these on each broadside which will be able to deploy roughly 30m from the hull via rails inside the ship. Together the 8 turrets will have decent arcs to defend the dorsal and ventral surfaces and will also fit fairly well with the IP given the limitation that we only have active missile defense blocks at the moment.
------

Here are a variety of passages I've tried so far. Having them so narrow while still looking halfway decent is definitely a challenge. But frankly even a meter wide seems crazy to me for a military ship so passages wider than 2m are going to be rare or just not exist. (The blocks on the right are the result of me placing all the different block types to see which had useful sides.)

 

[jayman38]

Use Tab-G to remove the HUD, and then you should be able to capture stars with the F5 screenshot capture function. Tab-G is a toggle, so just use it again to bring the HUD back.

 

[Madman198237]

Well, StarWars seems to have got here first to grill you over the coals, so I'll just add a little thing or two. A meter wide is small for a warship, EXCEPT for crawlspace. Yes, warships are extremely space-efficient, but all passageways are wide enough for at least TWO MEN to pass abreast. This is because you can't afford traffic jams when moving to battle stations, damage control positions, or evacuation, or some combination thereof. There's not time to have a one-person-wide corridor. So remember, 3 meters wide is REASONABLE...unless you're going for a submarine outlook, in which 2m wide, and you squeeze past the other person in the almost-two-people-wide corridor.

 

[Shadow2Lead]

I just visited the Intrepid and the Growler in NYC and those passages... well in the Growler walking one abreast could be challenging in some parts of the sub. But those are rather old so perhaps things have changed I'll try to take a look for some modern ship and sub pictures with decently easy to figure out scale. Come to think of it I ought to lay out a bunch of rulers and remind myself what a meter actually is, since while I'm quite used to doing math/physics with meters. I don't think I've seen a meter stick in fifteen years so i might be thinking they are bigger than they are.

 

[Xacktar]

I never thought I'd see an Honorverse ship here. Awesome!

 

[Madman198237]

Intrepid and Growler are WWII diesel boats, right? Those are incredibly cramped, and, anyway, a submarine is usually not a good reference for naval design, since they take space-saving to the max and beyond.

 

[Shadow2Lead]

Intrepid was WWII - Vietnam. Growler was a nuclear missile (not power) submarine used during the very beginning of the Cold War. Eh, whether you go subsurface or surface for your design inspiration really depends on which design philosophy you think will prevail for warships inspace. Generally tv/movies go for surface or even a bit more spacious since they don't really want that claustrophobic feeling (and I imagine it's infinitely easier to get interesting camera angles if you give yourself more space.) In this particular case of "Space Is An Ocean" I'm more tempted by the submarine sense of scale since the author makes a point of emphasizing throughout the series how much more cramped military ships are than civilian ships let alone buildings on planets. However - they do only have bunk beds, rather than the triple or even quadruple bunks on the Intrepid and Growler... which is a reasonable indication that space is at less of a premium than in those ~WWII ships. I'll make more passages with more widths and see what ends up feeling appropriately tight but workable walking around.

Started work on a Shrike LAC which is this universe's combination of WWII strafing fighters and torpedo bombers. Ended up making it 71x21x21 rather than 71x20x20, the way it is supposed to be, because dealing with even symmetry around the z-axis annoyed me and I'm sure I'd've messed it up at some point and not noticed for days. There are a bunch of different renderings of various levels of canon floating around online. I'm working primarily off the House of Steel line drawing which ought to be "most canon", but was amusingly slightly out of scale (at least in the kindle version.)

Shrike Pictures:

Spoiler

The basic hull shape is probably going to stay the same. But when I put in the four pd turrets in they will probably change the silhouette significantly no matter how much I try to minimize that.
-----

Another shot. (That is a tiny aft boat bay to evac from.)
-----
Edit: The Shrike will have more color later. I've started with grey and will start "painting" over with suitably bright fighter colors.

Star Knight Pictures:

Spoiler

First draft of a ship/nation crest for the boatbay. It's going to need a lot of revision before it communicates "Manticore" successfully. And hopefully with a lot less height. But, gotta start from something.
-----

Auxiliary Control. For that awkward moment when the bridge is destroyed.
-----

The Shrike at an ominous angle from the Star Knight's observation lounge/dome.

 

[Scypio]

In this particular case of "Space Is An Ocean" I'm more tempted by the submarine sense of scale since the author makes a point of emphasizing throughout the series how much more cramped military ships are than civilian ships let alone buildings on planets.

I would use slabs for the walls. It will give the sense of a large space while using in fact a very small one.

 

[Jojomo]

Well, StarWars seems to have got here first to grill you over the coals, so I'll just add a little thing or two. A meter wide is small for a warship, EXCEPT for crawlspace. Yes, warships are extremely space-efficient, but all passageways are wide enough for at least TWO MEN to pass abreast. This is because you can't afford traffic jams when moving to battle stations, damage control positions, or evacuation, or some combination thereof. There's not time to have a one-person-wide corridor. So remember, 3 meters wide is REASONABLE...unless you're going for a submarine outlook, in which 2m wide, and you squeeze past the other person in the almost-two-people-wide corridor.

I don't know whether or not they're considered "wide enough for two men to pass abreast", and I don't claim to know that every single corridor is this way, but: corridors slightly wider than doors are common in naval ships, modern or otherwise.
You can check tour videos on youtube, or recall documentaries you've seen where junior men stand against the wall to let their superiors walk down corridors.

For ships, definitely under 2m. Probably around 1m. For the sake of gameplay and comfort I like the idea Scypio already suggested: use thin slabs to line corridors. That way you get 1.5m of walking space while using only 2m of space total.
(And if there's a naval submarine anywhere in the world with a corridor 2m wide I'll cook and eat my shoes.)

I'm an engineer who designs ships (i.e. ocean ships). Depending on the rules we're following, and the specific ship or situation being considered, gaps as small as 0.6m are considered acceptable for people to pass through. A stairway 0.9m wide would be considered generous for 1 person - 0.75m would fairly typical (and naval vessels are more cramped than typical).

Being generous with space has severe consequences on weight and therefore performance.

When ships are designed the flow of people through them is considered, and regulated, especially for emergencies. The navy would already know (on average) what flows of personnel they will have for every conceivable situation, and they will have made sure the ship can handle it. The layout of the ship will avoid (or at least minimise) two-way traffic.

 

[Gasboy]

I do have a question, do slabs actually give more room? Can a person occupy the space of the missing part of the slab?

 

[Valck]

I do have a question, do slabs actually give more room? Can a person occupy the space of the missing part of the slab?

You can stand on top of a cube with 1½ blocks of headroom. The funny thing is, you can't sit on said cube, because "this space is blocked from above" :D
I don't know the required width off the top of my head, but yes, you can squeeze inbetween a block and a slab.

 

[Scypio]

Nvm, answered before me.

As far as i know we can't sit on slabs.

 

[Shadow2Lead]

I would use slabs for the walls. It will give the sense of a large space while using in fact a very small one.

I really like this idea and have a couple passages set up like this above (1.5m width and 2m height). The best part is it only uses 8 blocks of space to move 1 meter forward - less if you have the floor and/or ceiling be useful blocks. The one thing that concerns me about it is whether or not the crew AI, once we have the quarters system, will recognize that despite there being no "empty" walking space. It would be really painful to rip out the interior passages and put in new larger ones with a full 1mx2m of empty space for the AI to see as walkable. Since I'm still relatively early in putting everything together I think for the moment I'm going to continue to just build a variety of interior spaces outside the ship and move them inside after doing a more thorough search for everything we've been told about quarters or even just wait for quarters before moving everything inside. The lift system is the only truly time intensive thing I won't be able to work on due to waiting - but, to be honest, once you've got the logic figured out those are so boring/repetitive to do I can't say I'm sorry to have to wait.

 

[JinM]

This is definitely going to be RP first, combat efficient second. The design constraints are going to prevent it from being effective in StarMade - which I'm fine with. Regarding armor, 6-20 blocks. Whelp. I assume that's because piercing cannons mean you really need a lot of depth regardless of the quality of the armor?

Definetively go for the 10 blocks deep armor, if it is for RP. 20 Might be an overkill but seriously - its fucking cool to have a real physical shield. And it looks cool if there are holes in armor too. I like it. =)

If you go for combat efficiency (what you don't do and that I think is the right choice), you would not do any armor at all but use basic hull blocks. So told me one theory: Because shieldblocks have 10% weight of advanced armor, but give the same hp - but hp that can be variable at any part of the ship and is not bound to one physical place like armor. But it is a theory and I am not that multiplayer PVP dude to test it out, that can tell some1 or locked up via google.

Keep up the nice idea and work on it! Regardless of the product, it would say the the road is the goal.

 

[Madman198237]

Hold on: You think 20 blocks is gonna stop a real cannon?

So sorry bro, but HAHAHAHA.

People build cannons with 200+ AA-block penetration depths. However, 20 blocks with absorb missiles really nicely.

 

[JinM]

Hold on: You think 20 blocks is gonna stop a real cannon?

So sorry bro, but HAHAHAHA.

People build cannons with 200+ AA-block penetration depths. However, 20 blocks with absorb missiles really nicely.

Ha. I had one idea about this in mind: Turning the defending ship sideways and don't attack with the front at all in Titan vs Titan. Then you can blow your 200m aa-penetrating cannon into a 200m wide ship and loose like 70% efficiency. ^^ I am not a megaship builder or pvper, tell me if I am wrong.