Icaran Shipyards (Fleet Pictures)

[Starhawk]

Well the title pretty much explains it all I decided to do a render of the Icaran shipyards with respective ships under construction and in protective formation.

(note when thinking scale remember each SD is 3km long)

[David E. Gervais]

Very nice renders, you should put them (or pic one) up on the se.net gallery.

Just a thought.

Cheers!

[Hunpecked]

Pretty. Looks like a lot of work went into them.

A few comments:

1. In stock SE IV a space shipyard (400 kt) is actually much smaller than the biggest ships it can build (e.g. dreadnought, base ship). Of course Starhawk's mod may change this, or he could be interpreting the rules less than literally (e.g. multiple shipyards working on one ship each can also be thought of as one yard building multiple ships, as in Starhawk's illustration).

2. Given propulsion technology that can take a ship across a solar system in a month or so, a "protective formation" might extend as far as the Earth-Moon distance from the shipyard (assuming no gravity well effects).

3. The SDs lack the flag and eagle insignia of his earlier SD concept. Perhaps they were omitted to conserve computing resources?

4. The Icaran SD has a definite World War II battleship look to it; it's also somewhat reminiscent of the "Starblazers" (as it's known in the US) TV show. However, compared to its real-life cousins the fictional SD fairly bristles with weaponry that occupies most of the ship's surface on three of its four "sides". On the 1945 USS Missouri, weapon emplacements occupied a comparatively small area of the "top side" only. Of course with 1945 technology much of the armament was internal (magazines, shell-handling machinery, turret mechanisms, barbettes); Icaran technology may not require any of that.

In any case, it was quite thoughtful of Starhawk to provide some illustrations for his story.

[Starhawk]

1. Yes you are correct my mod has created a base station that is much larger than a super dreadnought.

2. Very true however for the purposes of style and function within that picture I decided to put a much tighter formation than one that would normally be seen in a battle fleet with the Icaran level of Technology.

3. I did this for that picture because it was quite a load on my computer to have that high a poly count.

4. You are again very correct the Icaran starships of Battlecruiser on up are inspired by WWII British and US capital ship designs.

I've never seen starblazer's

As far as the guns go, the Icaran Main batteries were estimated by a friend of mine to be about 150 meters long and almost as wide due to the fact that the SD is 3 kilometers long and the guns are so huge in comparison.

As far as internals go, the Main batteries each have a micro quantum reactor to provide energy to the I-Laser cannons which provide 2 terawatts of power in each shot. The turrets also house a 150 man gun crew which includes engineers, DC teams, targeting and sensor techs and gunners who actually fire the weapon.
This crew may seem excessive but this isn't star trek and the Icaran ships are just to large to have a single computer dictating the firing and targeting of every weapon on board as well as handling the myriad other essential systems, plus the crew allows for redundancy and immediate access to repair the turret should it take damage.

The secondary turrets (secondary are the smaller cannons laid braodside in the center of the hull) do not have a micro quantum reactor but instead carry fusion "charges" which are two shot "reactors" that provide a 500 megawatt power output per shot. These charges are loaded in similar fashion to the way a modern warship would load a shell however they are not ejected and dispensed they are instead removed and recharged off of the main reactors for re-use. These smaller turrets only have a crew of 75.

The point defense batteries are (frag) cannons (frag being short for fragmentation) which fire bursts of highly charged matter similar to Plasma. It's pretty much a solid shot weapon that uses auto-loaders to load the charge into the gun and fire it.
The crew of these turrets is only 18 men and women because they do not have the DC parties or engineers that the primary and secondary batteries have.

[Starhawk]

And here is a Flag Monitor being escorted by a SD Division

[Hunpecked]

Star Blazers: Japanese anime from the '70s & '80s; known as "Space Battleship Yamato" in Japan.

http://www.starblazers.com/home.php

So on the SDs "...the Main batteries each have a micro quantum reactor to provide energy to the I-Laser cannons which provide 2 terawatts of power in each shot." Yup, that explains it.

Thanks for the shots of the Flag Monitor and escorts. I look at those ships bristling like porcupines and all I can think is, "Got guns?"

[kerensky]

Sweet!