UCS Apollo

[Graham Kennedy]

I think a redesign would be the better option, unfortunately. Given that this is a hospital ship stability would be very important - you don't want the thing bouncing around in the middle of an operation. Plus it would give you space to enlarge the boat deck to allow the maximum number of patients to be brought aboard in the minimum possible time - I must say that I think the relatively poor hangar facilities are the weak point of the design at this point.

I was thinking that too. If you imagine that ship as simply being like it is now but the other way around, then instead of that little aft section for the boat deck you'd have that whole forward section which is like ten times bigger. It should be a huge improvement.

[Graham Kennedy]

Switched the upper hull around...

[Graham Kennedy]

Done some tidying up of the hull for the new configuration; top and bottom views, plus moved the sublight engine back to the rear of the ship.

[Teaos]

The one two posts ago looks like the wondows may have strectched a bit.

The shape reminds me of something but I'm not sure what.

[Graham Kennedy]

Rearranged the internal systems.

[Graham Kennedy]

Expanded boat deck... the boat deck now holds 135 craft.



And the hangar below, which holds 216 more. I've left plenty of space around the craft so there is room to move them and perform maintanence, fuelling, etc.



That's 351 craft for regular operations. With the 36 "fast reaction" craft, that's 387 total. Giving a carrying capacity of 9,288 per launch cycle.

With 18 launch portals, launching a craft every two minutes from each would let you clear the entire regular complement in about 40 minutes.

[Captain Seafort]

That's 351 craft for regular operations. With the 36 "fast reaction" craft, that's 387 total. Giving a carrying capacity of 9,288 per launch cycle.

I thought you said you were double-stacking the fast-reaction boats, which would give 72 of them, 423 total, and a capacity of 10,152 per cycle. Are you removing that feature after expanding the main boat deck?

Overall though, it certainly looks disinctive, and the new boat deck capacity is a great improvement, as is the amount of space you've provided to move stuff around.

[Graham Kennedy]

Did some calculations on the ventral aft hull, the bit where the hospital area would be. It's 20 decks deep and an average of 116 metres wide. Front to back length is hard, because of the curve at the back, but being conservative it's around 425 metres. So 116 x 425 x 20 = 986,000 square metres.

I am figuring that with space for storage of medical supplies, operating and other treatment rooms, habitation for doctors and nurses, and all that sort of thing, the ship could probably still accommodate around 40,000 patients - that would average almost 25 square metres per patient in the hospital area. You could probably cram more than that in, but I want to be conservative; given the speeds and distances in my universe it's not unusual to be months from home base, so shipping critical or long care patients back home isn't something that you can really do. Ships like this aren't a temporary stopgap until you get to a real hospital then, they are genuine proper treatment facilities. In fact it is quite possible that during a conflict a wounded man would go through treatment on one of these ships, then go through complete rehabilitation up to full recovery, before going back to the front lines.

I thought you said you were double-stacking the fast-reaction boats, which would give 72 of them, 423 total, and a capacity of 10,152 per cycle. Are you removing that feature after expanding the main boat deck?

Overall though, it certainly looks disinctive, and the new boat deck capacity is a great improvement, as is the amount of space you've provided to move stuff around.

Doh, so I did, thanks. I forgot all about that.

Sos 351 craft for regular operations, 72 "fast reaction" craft, that's 423 total. Giving a carrying capacity of 10,152 per launch cycle.

[Mikey]

Nice. I had no idea of reversing the whole craft, but I think this works well - certainly from an embarked craft perspective.

[shran]

Could you increade the ship's capacity even further by using the small pick up crafts as emergency low priority wards or something like that?

[Graham Kennedy]

I suppose it's technically possible, but it's not hugely practical. Imagine trying to increase the patient capacity of a hospital by parking a whole bunch of helicopter ambulances on the roof and treating people inside them.

[Graham Kennedy]

Okay, added some thrusters, airlocks, insignia, and a few other details. As far as I'm concerned this ship is now basically done.

I think it's turned out reasonably well, but there are a few issues I have with it. Having to flip the design end for end midway through has made the ship make more sense given the way the technology works, but I think it's lost a lot of that "cruise liner" aesthetic that I was going for in the original sketches.

Also, it's turned out rather smaller than I intended; the original plan was to have a ship "at least 2 km" long, but this one is about 925 metres; I went wrong somewhere during the early design phase. I could double it up, but that would mean re-drawing the entire ship from scratch, and I'm not keen on that, frankly. A ship capable of carrying in the region of 40,000 patients is a useful asset to be sure, but in multi-planetary campaigns there are armies of millions, for that scale a ship far larger than this is going to be needed.

I'm thinking of making this a design intended for low to mid intensity conflicts, and doing another, much larger design to be pulled out for the high intensity stuff. Although having two ships of the same generation in service at the same time to do the same job is not something I am a fan of. So maybe I will scale her up after all...

[Captain Seafort]

Also, it's turned out rather smaller than I intended; the original plan was to have a ship "at least 2 km" long, but this one is about 925 metres; I went wrong somewhere during the early design phase. I could double it up, but that would mean re-drawing the entire ship from scratch, and I'm not keen on that, frankly. A ship capable of carrying in the region of 40,000 patients is a useful asset to be sure, but in multi-planetary campaigns there are armies of millions, for that scale a ship far larger than this is going to be needed.

Alternatively you could have many Apollo-class ships to allow for greater flexibility, perhaps assigning a hospital ship to each Corps.

You'd also need some that could be detached to transport the severely injured (those who will never be fit for action again) back home.

As a guideline for the sort of numbers you're looking at, for a single set-piece attack you'd probably be looking at a casualty rate of around 25% killed, wounded and missing, based on the first day of the Somme. For longer term campaigns, as an example the Somme lasted 141 days, involved 53 divisions at various points, and cost the British and Empire forces 420,000 casualties - a casualty rate of 44%. All these numbers are based on the (incorrect) assumptions that the divisions involved were at full strength (18000 men), and receivd no reinforcements during the battle - I don't have the figures available for the total number of soliders that passed through the battle area.

[Mikey]

I agree with Seafort on this - having two or three ships rather than one of double the size would allow for greater flexibility, as well as not having to go overkill (and limit your options elsewhere) for a smaller-scale action.

As far as not having the look you envisioned - as I said, it is an organic process. I certainly think she's distinctive enough from your warships and other things we've seen.

[Teaos]

You could also specialise many smaller ship better. Ones good for injuries ones good for illness ect.