Ships
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Have spaceship, will travel
- Understandably, a space-based game tends to revolve around the ships necessary to travel from planet to planet, from station to station. TDZK is no different, providing more than a few options to ply the space lanes, or other ships, for that matter.
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Size Comparisons and Chassis Summaries
- As stated before, the major detail clash is the size of the ships. When we think about "modern science fiction" like Star Wars we see small fighters and shuttles running around. These are not in TDZK for two major reasons:
- 1.) Technology simply cannot shrink reactors and engines to that size. To make a ship capable of Subspace travel, you need massive field generators and engines and anything smaller than the size of a football field won't cut it.
- 2.) Fighters simply are no longer tactically valuable. Modern targetting systems and computer-controlled drones will rip a ship like that apart.
- To put a few things in perspective, here is a fairly comprehensive list of relative sizes:
- Cargo Holds - A cargo hold is approximately 10 cubic meters. When you think about a cubic meter, you must visualize it. It's quite large.
- Frigate - Smallest manned vessels in standard spaceways. About 100 to 120 meters long, with a crew of 5 to 10, depending on the level of automation in the vessel. Most of its bulk is in its engines and cargo hold.
- Interceptor - About the same as a frigate, but slighter longer and less wide and tall. More hardpoints and armor/shields. Sleek and deadly. Same crew size as a Frigate.
- Freighter - 3500 cubic meters of cargo space is really, really big. These ships are at least 175 to 250 meters long. Also about the same crew size as a Frigate, since most of the space is cargo space.
- Resourcer - Same deal. A freighter with resource manipulators and some drone hangers. (More later.)
- Cruiser - Your all purpose ship. 300 to 400 meters long. Everything you could possibly want. Crew size of 20 to 30.
- Corvette - Light Cruiser with better combat capabilities and more speed and maneuverability. Still about 275 to 325 meters long. Similar crew size to Cruisers.
- Drone - These are the closest things to fighters you will find in TDZK. By ripping out all life support and long distance propulsion, you get the MDV mark III Multipurpose Drone Vehicle. Depending on its configuration, it's about 45 feet long, 15 feet high, and 30 feet across, which makes it slightly longer and much bulkier than a modern day jet fighter.
- Carrier - Now think about what it takes to house and maintain 100 of those larger-than-jet-fighter Drones. Makes modern day aircraft carriers look like children's toys. 600 to 700 meters long. Usually has a crew of 70 to 90.
- Destroyer - Big, tough, mean. 450 to 550 meters of pure offensive power. Big engines to compensate for its mass. Huge power grid. Crew size of 50 to 70.
- Battleship - Bigger, tougher, meaner. 600 to 700 meters of armor plating thicker than you are tall. Largest legal power grid available for ships. Huge weapons hardpoints. 80 to 100 crew members.
- Dreadnaught - The grand-daddy of all warships. Swats aside Drones and Frigates like flies. Laughs at Corvettes and Cruisers before squashing them like bugs. Bites large chunks out of Destroyers and Carriers and begs for more. Standard command ships for elite Border Patrol battlegroups are at least 1,200 meters long. If this ship has its guns pointed at you, you'd better start praying. At least 300 to 400 crew.
- Port or Station - If a Dreadnaught can dock to it, it's gotta be huge. Usually home to anywhere around 10,000 to 100,000 colonists, workers, and scientists. Level 1 outposts are about 3,000 meters long/wide and Level 10 colonies are about 7,000 to 8,000 meters long/wide. Defender Fusion Cannons the size of Frigates defend it, making it quite a challenge.
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Design Information
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Design History
- Older ships were larger. Modern ships are smaller and faster, but during the Deriv-Zallus racial war ships could reach up to a kilometer and a half, and were literally nothing more than moving weapons platforms. Of course, modern weapons also hit harder and there isn't much need to have so many of these.
- Larger ship = easier to hit, more expensive, more hardpoints.
- Smaller ship = harder to hit, more efficient, lesser hardpoints.
- Larger ship = easier to hit, more expensive, more hardpoints.
- It's a tradeoff. Since the Federation is at (relative) peace, the need for uberbig ships has faded. Only recently had the new Dreadnought ship class been necessary.
- Federalization breeds Standardization. With the Federation and Andromeda controlling the majority of warship production, and the major legal corporations strongly influenced if not directly under their heels, weapons and equipment has reached the point where anything can go anywhere, with a few tweaks and some installation hassles.
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Primaries
- Primary hardpoints are true hardpoints: a wide, round pit ringed with bearings and electronic connections. At the base of the hardpoint, an oversized power coupling gives the weapon near-direct access to the ship's power supply. Weapon modules are large affairs, even for small ones. What is seen above-hull is typically small as to reduce damage from enemy weapons fire, but the module itself has to fit the 20-meter wide hardpoint mount. Smaller ships have smaller mounts, but the typical Destroyer has rather large hardpoints.
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Secondaries
- Secondaries are easy to install. A ship's "secondary hardpoints" aren't actually hardpoints at all.
- The preferred method of missile propagation in modern shipbuilding is the Multiammunition Missile Launch System, or MMLS. A ten-meter diameter magnetically driven launch tube attached to a reprogrammable/changeable missile storage rack allows a single unit to fire any rocket, missile, bomb, or torpedo in circulation, provided the MMLS model is large enough to accomodate it. Ammunition capacity is limited by the MMLS's storage space and Federation regulations about ship warhead count. Naval patrols regularly scan civilian warships, and will usually open fire on those who disobey safety regulations.
- Typically, you are firing a missile out of a tube that may be two or three times the diameter required for it to fit through. It's safer to eject the projectile before letting it fire.
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Sensor Abilities
- Ships, particularly military or combat-oriented ships, are armed with a dizzying array of sensor packages. Normal light scanners, subspace distortion readers, ion/particle scanners, radiation sensors, and magnetic field readers. Unfortunately, most of these are useless against a truly dead ship, especially if it's hidden in an asteroid field or debris field.
- A derelict ship could be detected at a distance of perhaps two hundred million kilometers, if it were floating in empty space. Note, however, that it could easily be mistaken for just another floating rock. In a cloud or field of some sort, that distance is drastically reduced, and in a debris field, you might not stumble on the ship until you were right on top of it.
- A powered up ship is another issue. An uncloaked, uncoated, medium-tonnage vessel can be detected with moderate difficulty at ranges of around six hundred to seven hundred million kilometers, assuming perfect visibility and no spatial anomalies. A cloaked ship could easily sneak within a thousand kilometers without the other ship knowing it's there.
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Miscellany
- Frigates can take anywhere from two weeks to a month to construct, depending on its purpose. Destroyers and Carriers take around four to five months to construct, and Dreadnaughts can take anywhere from six months to a year to finish.
- The science team that came up with the advanced null composites that form TacNull sheathes was primarily Zallun, and most of the structural supports within the Naval dreadnaughts are based off of Zallun designs, which have superior physical strength.
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Prominent Ships
- Several canonical ships have been mentioned and play prominent roles in TDZK history. They include:
Categories: Canon | Technical | Ships
