Re: New ships!

Gah. Sorry about the double post, folks...

Phil Atcliffe wrote:

> >But what about the FT921 OU Heavy Fighters? *Are* you going to get
them 
> from Nic[?] <
>
>Hope so.

Pray for it to happen. And make sure the deity of your choice
understands 
that you *mean* it, too...

> >It would be possible to make a mirror image of the CVL's hangar pod
to 
> make a BB-sized trimaran >carrier... but that'd take even more time,
and 
> it'd *still* be smaller than the CVLs of other fleets, so >I'm not
really 
> sure that it'd be worthwhile.
>
>Smaller, but not necessarily smaller in terms of punch.

The only way it can be smaller in terms of *size* than the other
nations' 
CVLs and yet avoid being smaller in terms of *punch* is by skimping on 
either engines or survivability. Skimping on survivability goes directly

against the established OUDF design doctrine; skimping on engines would 
mean a thrust-2 carrier unable both to catch the enemy to use its punch
and 
to escape in case its punch turns out to be insufficient.

>  Frankly, the CVLs of the major powers are rather overly large for
what 
> they carry. The NAC's Invincible class is a good example; I refuse to 
> believe that the contents of the command pod of an Ark Royal takes up 
> _that_ much space in that big hull!

The command pod of an Ark Royal is as big as or bigger than an entire
NAC 
DD,  ie. Mass 30 or more - and that's without counting the pod's long 
"neck". The Ark Royal also has bigger engine pods than the Inflexible,
but 
that extra Mass is easily accounted for by the Ark Royal's larger
engines - 
18 Mass bigger than those on the Inflexible.

So what does the Ark Royal use its 30+ Mass command pod for? Well, the
main 
part of it has to be those 18 Mass of stuff which the Inflexible carries
in 
its main hull but the AR has to put somewhere else due to its larger 
fighter group. With the AR's larger engine pods already being taken up
by 
her larger engines, the only place left is the command pod. On top of
that 
the Ark Royal's screen generators are 6 Mass larger than the
Inflexible's, 
and she has an extra Class-2 battery using up another 3 Mass... throw in

the command pod's hull structure and armour, and you've already
accounted 
for its entire Mass.

>Let the OU design philosophy be small, fast, flexible hulls that carry 
>adequate to heavy weapons loads.

Ships which are small, fast *and* heavily armed are by necessity 
glass-jawed - their small hulls don't have enough Mass left over for
hull 
integrity and defences once they've bought all those engines and
weapons.

That's the exact opposite of the OU's BORON design philosophy: BORON
ships 
are extremely durable for their size, but most of them are only
moderately 
fast (thrust rating 4) and their armaments are short-ranged (though
quite 
powerful once they get into range).

> >It'd require that the OUDF is rich enough to afford warships that
large 
> (not to mention capable of >building them), too :-/
>
>And what makes you think it's not?

The dual facts that 1) the OU has a tiny population compared to its
rivals 
and 2) Alan Brain who has written the OUDF background has stated pretty 
explicitly that the OUDF is hard pressed to build even a reasonable
number 
of battleships and battlecruisers, with the battleships being the
largest 
units the OU's naval yards are technically capable of building...

>Hey, if the Japanese and the srizonified FCT can have entire bl**dy 
>fleets, the OU deserves one!

The Japanese have somewhere between ten and twenty times the population
of 
the entire OU, and the nation is heavily industrialized. While I'm not
sure 
exactly how large the FCT is population-wise, it is quite safe to bet
that 
both its population and economy are bigger than the OU's.

Until the ScanFed starts fielding heavy capitals, you have no realistic 
grounds for complaining about the OUDF's small size :-/

Later,

Oerjan
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry