Our ship - Shields
Posted: Tue Jul 15, 2008 1:36 pm
Our Ship:
So far we have come to the decision to build a Federation Battleship based in the year 2390; it is of GCS and Sovereign size.
As a battleship it is going to be out fitted with 60cm ablative armour with a high density double hull. This reduced the final production run of the ship by six ships from the original twenty giving us a run of fourteen ships. It also drops its final speed by 12% and agility by 24%.
Now we decide on the shield power and type and energy supply:
You get 3 votes this time. One for the power of the shield, one for the type of shield and one for the power supply.
Since the Pros and Cons are more complicated this time you will have to read bellow to know the cons of each choice.
This will take a bit more thinking that the armour since it revolves around the power supply of the ship.
Firstly here are some examples of current shield strength of other ships. These figures are taken from DITL and are thus not hard canon but for our uses they are good enough.
Sovereign 5.7 million Terra joules
Dominion Battleship 4.64 million TJ
Galaxy 2.7 million TJ
Defiant 2.37 million TJ
D'Deridex 2.3 million TJ
Negh'Var 2.16 million TJ
Scimitar 2.16 million TJ
Akira 1.88 million TJ
Working out the pros and cons of this one were harder than it was for other since the cons don't come in to play until latter.
The Pros and Cons for power:
Pros: Quite obvious. The stronger the shield, the better the protection.
Cons: For every 1 million Terra Joules of energy feed into the shields over the beginning amount of 2 million TJ the size of the power plant of the ship will increase by 4% of its original volume.
Higher energy shielding will also increase the rate at which the emmiters will need to be maintained and refitted due to the highr volume of power they channel.
Example: We decide the shields will be 4 million TJ's. That would increase the size of the power plant 8%. If the power plant was originally taking up 20% of the internal volume of the ship in total, it will now take up almost 22% (20x1.08=21.6). That figure takes into account of everything related to the power plant ie the core its self and all related systems.
Pros and Cons for type:
Pros:
Bubble shields:
Require a lot less maintenance and are less likely to fail during battle. Due to the simplicity of the shielding, given time power can also be redirected from one area of shielding to another during battle essentially recharging the damaged area.
Form fitting shields:
Reduce the surface area of the shields and thus since the same amount of power is feed into them they are more powerful. Depending on the shape and size of the final ship this could very well be over double the strengh per square meter.
It also reduces the apparent size of the ship in total and would thus allow greater maneuverability in close quarter fighting. It also presents a smaller profile to the enemy thus making it slightly harder to hit.
Cons:
Bubble shields:
Cover a larger surface since they have to expand in a bubble over the whole ship. This makes them weaker over all and are thus able to take fewer hits before failing.
Form fitting shields:
Require many more shield emitters and of larger size to be able to hold its shape. They thus require more maintenance and more engineering crew to maintain them.
Due to their complexity it is far more difficult to re direct power and you are thus pretty much stuck with shield damage until the battle is over. Due to the extra effort they need to hold the shield in the conforming shape needed they "waste" upwards of 15% of the power feed into them maintaining this shape.
There could also be a slight issue of "Bleed through" damage when powerful hits strike the shields. A small portion on the strike may break through the shield to the ship bellow even if the shields don't fail out right. This is not an issue on bubble shields due to their distance from the ship.
Pros and Cons of independent power supply:
Pro: By having its own power supply independent of anything else the shields will not fail if the warp core goes off line or other such issues.
Also by not powering up the existing power supply (Probably the warp core) it becomes less fragile as the seem to get twitchy the bigger they get.
Cons: Since it will be a totally new power system it will increase the production time of the ship by one month past the original build time. This is due to the complexity of adding in another power unit.
Since it is a completely new system it will take up more room than just increasing the power out put of the existing power supply.
For every 1 million TJs of power feed into the shields the independent power unit will take up 1% of the internal volume of the ship.
Thus if we wanted a 6TJ shield that would take up around 3.2% extra space by just powering up the existing power supply or 6% if we go independent.
So far we have come to the decision to build a Federation Battleship based in the year 2390; it is of GCS and Sovereign size.
As a battleship it is going to be out fitted with 60cm ablative armour with a high density double hull. This reduced the final production run of the ship by six ships from the original twenty giving us a run of fourteen ships. It also drops its final speed by 12% and agility by 24%.
Now we decide on the shield power and type and energy supply:
You get 3 votes this time. One for the power of the shield, one for the type of shield and one for the power supply.
Since the Pros and Cons are more complicated this time you will have to read bellow to know the cons of each choice.
This will take a bit more thinking that the armour since it revolves around the power supply of the ship.
Firstly here are some examples of current shield strength of other ships. These figures are taken from DITL and are thus not hard canon but for our uses they are good enough.
Sovereign 5.7 million Terra joules
Dominion Battleship 4.64 million TJ
Galaxy 2.7 million TJ
Defiant 2.37 million TJ
D'Deridex 2.3 million TJ
Negh'Var 2.16 million TJ
Scimitar 2.16 million TJ
Akira 1.88 million TJ
Working out the pros and cons of this one were harder than it was for other since the cons don't come in to play until latter.
The Pros and Cons for power:
Pros: Quite obvious. The stronger the shield, the better the protection.
Cons: For every 1 million Terra Joules of energy feed into the shields over the beginning amount of 2 million TJ the size of the power plant of the ship will increase by 4% of its original volume.
Higher energy shielding will also increase the rate at which the emmiters will need to be maintained and refitted due to the highr volume of power they channel.
Example: We decide the shields will be 4 million TJ's. That would increase the size of the power plant 8%. If the power plant was originally taking up 20% of the internal volume of the ship in total, it will now take up almost 22% (20x1.08=21.6). That figure takes into account of everything related to the power plant ie the core its self and all related systems.
Pros and Cons for type:
Pros:
Bubble shields:
Require a lot less maintenance and are less likely to fail during battle. Due to the simplicity of the shielding, given time power can also be redirected from one area of shielding to another during battle essentially recharging the damaged area.
Form fitting shields:
Reduce the surface area of the shields and thus since the same amount of power is feed into them they are more powerful. Depending on the shape and size of the final ship this could very well be over double the strengh per square meter.
It also reduces the apparent size of the ship in total and would thus allow greater maneuverability in close quarter fighting. It also presents a smaller profile to the enemy thus making it slightly harder to hit.
Cons:
Bubble shields:
Cover a larger surface since they have to expand in a bubble over the whole ship. This makes them weaker over all and are thus able to take fewer hits before failing.
Form fitting shields:
Require many more shield emitters and of larger size to be able to hold its shape. They thus require more maintenance and more engineering crew to maintain them.
Due to their complexity it is far more difficult to re direct power and you are thus pretty much stuck with shield damage until the battle is over. Due to the extra effort they need to hold the shield in the conforming shape needed they "waste" upwards of 15% of the power feed into them maintaining this shape.
There could also be a slight issue of "Bleed through" damage when powerful hits strike the shields. A small portion on the strike may break through the shield to the ship bellow even if the shields don't fail out right. This is not an issue on bubble shields due to their distance from the ship.
Pros and Cons of independent power supply:
Pro: By having its own power supply independent of anything else the shields will not fail if the warp core goes off line or other such issues.
Also by not powering up the existing power supply (Probably the warp core) it becomes less fragile as the seem to get twitchy the bigger they get.
Cons: Since it will be a totally new power system it will increase the production time of the ship by one month past the original build time. This is due to the complexity of adding in another power unit.
Since it is a completely new system it will take up more room than just increasing the power out put of the existing power supply.
For every 1 million TJs of power feed into the shields the independent power unit will take up 1% of the internal volume of the ship.
Thus if we wanted a 6TJ shield that would take up around 3.2% extra space by just powering up the existing power supply or 6% if we go independent.