Year 1916 A.C. Hot Season, Design Phase
Proposal: Odysseus Class Interceptor
The Odysseus is a small craft, compared to the Orleans and the Gandiva. Measuring in at 5 meters long, the small witdh of the body compared to its length make the Odysseus look very similar to a crossbow bolt, down to even the small fletching like wings it posses and a deadly "tip"
The Odysseus is built to be the fastest and most maneuverable flyer in the sky, with a long crossbow bolt like body with their Fletching like wings located at the back third and stretching all the way to the tail.
These three fletching-like wings are designed with alighted cealium at their edges, like the system that pushes the Caliburn forward. When all three are activated, the craft moves forward at incredible speeds, approaching 152km/H or terminal velocities as our scientist know it. This should make the Odysseus 20km/H faster than the Charybdis.
By deactivated or activating the Aligned cealuim located at the butt of the craft and the tips of the wings, the pilot can turn the Odysseus, making it damn near dance through the sky.
Located at the tip of the ship is the only weapon it possesses, a 40mm automatic cannon that has been wrapped in K-wool to prevent its firing from tearing apart the ship from backlash due to its small frame. The shells of this 40mm autocannon have been modified to better preirce hard armor, via a tip made of tungsten cardide, with a much higher shock capacity than regular steel, as well as a steel jacket.
The Odysseus speed and maneuverability gifts it all the time in the world to line up the perfect shot on its target, at which point it will be child's play to take down the enemy while avoiding retaliation.
While it is capable of making attack runs on ground targets via diving, the Odysseus has one purpose. To hunt down and tear the charybiduous from the sky, dodging any return fire while tailing the ship before initiating a killing blow.
to facilitate this, an Orleans has been stripped off its gorgon, Making room for a pair of launchers for the Odysseus. These launchers, are basically a set of metal rail that the Odysseus wings and main body slot into.
When launching, the Odysseus pushing itself along these railing, launching from the ship. Orleans crewman keeps the rails covered and cleaned in between launches.
When the Odysseus is required to slow down to land, it will cut power to its Gravity propulsion, slowing itself down. Then, If that doesn't slow it down fast enough, the odyssues will deploy 6 small panels around the body of the ship. These panels contain aligned calcium pointing in the opposite direction of the nose of the ship, and when activated create a steady but weak gravity field that will help to slow the ship down, like a car brake.
Of course, the Odysseus eats A LOT of power and will burn through its magazine relatively quickly in a dogfight, even with the best shots possible. As such, the Odysseus has been designed to land on a Mother Orleans, carefully guiding itself back into the launcher mechanisms much wider receiving end with ease. During which the crew of the Orleans will replace the promethium rods, refill ammunition and other small maintenance issues.
These Mother Orleans are more convenient compared to a Landing strip due to their ability to match a frontline, But will still be some distance away from the front, never growing to close.
In the event of a Charybdis raid, it is estimated that they would need to combat both ships that are in progress of leaving the carriers, guarding the carriers and returning to the carriers. A proverbial kicking of the hornet's nest.
Difficulty: Ludicrous
Result: 0 (2+2-4) =
Utter FailureWhat we
tried doing was making a gloriously massive step forward in aviation while our previous experience consists entirely of large boats and the suicide bomb that is the
Icarus. What we
actually did was build large metal darts we can launch from an
Orleans designated as a
Mother Orleans. It can be launched manned or unmanned to similar effect: that is, the effect of being flung nose-first into the earth. We didn't really do much more than make the basic body - no weapons, no armor, no propulsion system, no back to the pilot's seat - so at least it doesn't cost too much. It also doesn't
do much more than kick up some dirt.
The
Odysseus costs
6 Ore, making it
(CHEAP). A
Mother Orleans costs no more than a normal one and are instead available at the rate of the
Odysseus, replacing it's whole 155mm
Gorgon payload for a catapult-like launcher system and a pair of one-use oversized lawn darts.
Proposal: The Sky Tyrant
The Sky Tyrant is the world's first true sky battleship. It is almost 350 meters long and mounts several Jotunn cannons as it's main weapons in two triple barrelled turrets. These cannons utilise vast amounts of k-wool to stop the recoil from the cannon form affecting the ship. Similar to the Halberd the barrel of each cannon can slide back into the turret a distance, compressing gas as it does so. K-wool is used throughout the turret mechanism to protect it from its own recoil. Its reload mechanisms are considerably redone as the winch systems are replaced by a caelium hover sleds which can better handle and manoeuvre the heavy shells and thus speeding up the reload. The shells are loaded from an armoured magazine deeper in the ship and lifted into the turrets via the caelium sled. Once in the turret, the turret auto loader pushes the shell and its propellant into the cannon. The barrel and shells are upgraded with tech from the Halberd-b. The shell's outer casing is made from aligned Caelium and the barrel of the upgraded Jotunn uses C-null steel to stop the gravitational distortions. Two new shell types have been added; The first is the HESHRP, Also known as High explosive shrapnel. This shell has been designed with a timer detonator, a altitude detonator and an impact detonator due to its multiple purposes.
The shell is a large shrapnel bomb, design to explode and create A massive amount of deadly shrapnel from its lead body (Lead being a soft and dense metal is ideal for shrapnel, not to mention cheap). As one can guess, when a 420mm shrapnel shell detonates, it causes a large spread of flying debris. With it multitude of Detonators, it is foreseen that the HESHRP will see its uses as both a bard wire shredder, Anti-Infantry weapon and a weapon against the enemies perahudaras and Charybdis, which saw continued use this year. Hopefully, The explosive force of a 420mm shell and the Charybdis's own momentum will see that The shrapnel from the HESHRP will be able to puncture its armour, albeit this may be a long shot. The second shell is the WHKM420mm, Which is essentially a massive shell, filled with upscaled Wickerman bomblets. When the timer inside the shell times off, the Cluster Munitions detonates, scattering hundreds of White phosphorus bombs around the area. This can be used to both Offensively burn the enemy alive, via its incendiary properties, as well as to create massive smokescreens to protect our forces, without relying on a thrown grenade to do so. In addition to this the standard Rime rounds are modified with an altidude detonator allowing them to airburst. The flanks of the ship are protected by numerous turreted 60mm auto-cannons. These enclosed turrets are powered by electrical motors and have fast traversal. In addition to high explosive and ap shells these guns are provided flak shells for air defence. Additional auto-cannons are mounted on the underside and deck of the ship though in fewer numbers than the flank guns. The main cannon is supplemented by a battery of twelve Gorgon cannons for long range bombardment.
In terms of armour the Sky Tyrant's armour is extreme. It is encased in a 500mm composite of alternating layers of K-wool and c-steel. Except for the outer couple of layers which have d-promethium dust alloyed into normal steel. This causes the outer layers to be perpetually and preternaturally cold. This makes it extraordinarily difficult to melt through which is the standard method for defeating armour. In addition to this, the ship mounts extensive gravity deflection systems. Any incoming fire must defeat all these systems to stand any chance of harming the internals of this massive ship. The ship's superstructure is c-steel and is built to be very durable. There are extensive k-wool inserts inside the superstructure, this means impacts don't travel through the ship. It also counters some of the natural stress that a vessel of this size puts on its structure.
Normally operating radios requires long-range receivers to be close by but the Sky Tyrant has it's own radio system which can project radio coverage into areas where it is attacking. This way it can act as command and control for allied attacking forces. The ship houses a massive gyroscopic stabiliser. It's a series of interconnected rings that can move freely with a flywheel in the centre. The flywheel is spun up by an electrical motor and the conservation of angular momentum means that the energy in the flywheel counters any rocking of the ship. However, due to the size of the vessel, the stabiliser must also be fairly sizable to be relevant. Believing that the development and deployment of strike craft and interceptors to be an inevitablity the Sky Tyrant's designers have futureproofed the ship by adding an internal hanger. A pair of launch shutes can launch the aircraft out of the bottom of the ship. This keeps hull openings small and the interior of the launch shute is further armoured, this is backed up by an increased density of grav deflectors around the shute which repeal incoming fire. A caelium bouy is lowered from the flight shute. Returning fighters are to dock with the bouy or capture the cable that connects it to the ship, once that happens they can be whinched up into the hanger. Thick armoured doors protect the launch tubes when not in use. The power systems are impressive with numerous redundant caelium generators located throughout the ship backed up by enlarged capacitor banks to deal with grav deflector power drain. These generators feed the power-hungry flight rods. These flight rods are powdered caelium rods that are partially encased in null steel except for the underside of the rod. This focuses the effect and increases the lift efficiency allowing the ship a greater flight ceiling than you'd otherwise expect. They are dispersed throughout the ship's internals.
In terms of thrusters, the ship uses clusters of aligned caelium capped at one end by null steel to create propulsion. Using this the front, sides and back of the ship are covered in clusters of micro thrusters. The back of the ship has the densest coverage. This grants this behemoth surprising speed and manoeuvrability. It is perfectly capable of flying sideways and the staggering number of these thrusters means that even significant loses of them will not impede the ship much.[/spoiler]
Difficulty: Hard
Results: 3 (3+1-1) 11 (6+6-1) =
MasterworkAll of our attempts at making smaller ships have failed, and so it only makes sense that our design with the most investment in both manpower and resources would be our most glorious.
The Sky Tyrant is a massive 350m long behemoth requiring a crew of 2000 to keep running at all times, and is expected to land only to resupply and scrapings (see below), at least during wartime. Two triple-barrel 420mm guns make up the primary armament of the ship. The
Jotunn barrels the guns are modeled after have been modified to work similarly to the gravitic barrels of the
Halberd, with all the necessary modifications to improve reliability. The gravitic acceleration increases muzzle velocity to nearly 1000m/s and range is 20km - at ground level. An abundance of K-Wool padding reinforces the weapons in order to prevent recoil from the massive guns acting on the ship. A complex system of caelium sleds replaces the winch system required to load shells from the heavily armored magazine. The guns take four minutes to reload and can utilize the newly developed High Explosive Shrapnel rounds (timer and impact detonators were worked on - altitude not so much, due to our own, y'know, altitude) as well as WHKM420mm, which delivers a payload of many, many
Wickerman-like explosives. Twelve
Gorgons utilizing a similar variety of armament supplement
The Sky Tyrant's bombardment capabilities. Dozens of 60mm autocannons utilizing HE and AP rounds bristle along the deck hull of the ship to provide close-in protection.
500mm of K/C Composite armor, composed of alternating layers of K-Wool and C-Steel, line the ship. The outermost layers of the armor are "Cold Steel", regular steel with powdered D-Gavrillium mixed in during the smelting process. This metal is always freezing to the touch, though not nearly as dangerous as raw D-Gavrillium. Notably, the cold armor causes condensation to build up on the ship, both producing ice that requires regular removal as well as forming a cloud-like mist around the ship. K-Wool throughout the ship's structure aids to both reduce impacts from enemy fire as well as the natural stresses put on
The Sky Tyrant. Gravitic shield emitting systems line the ship top and bottom, and thanks to the K-Wool reinforcements in the ship, can be held on for
very extended periods of time (though they need to be deactivated for shots to come
from the ship through their fields).
As for auxiliary systems,
The Sky Tyrant houses a full radio suite to provide the advantages of centralized radio communication to an offensive, as well as a massive gyroscopic stabilizer. A hangar housing two
lawn darts Odysseus' and launch chutes for each also take up space near the bottom of the ship. A series of large, redundant GavGenerators and capacitor banks provide power to the ship, including the lift and propulsion systems. Said lift system consists of powdered caelium rods nearly completely covered in C-Null Steel and propulsion is made up of C-Null Steel-capped Aligned Caelium thruster clusters positioned across the hull of the ship, though the vast majority are housed on the rear in order to push the ship forward. Overall the ship has a ceiling higher than our men can go without proper life support to tackle the thin air and extreme cold (made worse by the constant chill permeating the ship).
The Sky Tyrant is the culmination of our current military technology in one package. It will always be a
(NATIONAL EFFORT) and is considered an
(OFFENSIVE) design.
----------------
The Sky Tyrant is sure to be the jewel of our forces. To celebrate the maiden flight of the ship we have granted extra resources to your efforts, giving you a
second revision this phase. We are so glad the only project you've worked on this season has gone so well. We have also
placed charges on and destroyed the bridges to Harren as per your direction.
IT IS NOW THE REVISION PHASE.
Poll
3 (15%)
Author
Topic: Industrialized Warfare: Abbera Thread / 1917 A.C. Cold Season (COMPLETE) (Read 75383 times)