Rincewind wrote:MaxxQ wrote:Just checked HoS again after a thought. The shortest LACs are 71m long. A Nike is 129m wide. With no armor, that means that a Nike-sized LAC carrier would be 13m too narrow for nose-to-nose LAC parking. You would need to widen a Nike - at a minimum - 50m to accomodate LACs in a similar manner to standard CLACs (that accounts for the extra 13m needed, plus room for armor and accessways between LACs on opposite broadsides from one another). Note that that's just a few meters less than the width of the Flight II Hydra.
But why put the launch bays transversely? Why not put them in
longitudinally? Granted, this would take up a lot more of the hull length but you would be able to mount some on either side of the main hull. Also, you were referring to a
Nike sized CLAC. Having looked at the specs again in
House of Steel the mid hull section is proportionally shorter, about 33% of the total length, compared to other battlecruisers where the mid hull section is longer; (about 40% for a Flight I
Reliant & 42% for an
Agamemnon). As we are talking about a Nike sized hull then increasing the mid hull length & shortening the tapers would give us more room to mount LAC bays.
You could mount them logitudinally, sure. But so far, there's no indication the RMN (or the RHN, for that matter) wants to. Even the Wayfarer launched LACs perpendicular to her long axis.
Also, I think you're looking at things backwards with regards to the battlecruisers (BTW, I keep referring to the Nike, because the OP said a Nike-sized carrier) and their mid-hull lengths - the Nike's mid-hull isn't short relative to the others. The Aggie's mid-hull is longer than normal (actually, pretty darn close to exactly the same length as the Nike mid-hull), to accomodate the pod bay as well as broadside weapons:
http://maxxqbunine.deviantart.com/art/B ... -485504728Either way, I see no problem with extending the mid-hull and shortening the tapers, unless there's a good reason that I don't know about for it to NOT be done.
Rincewind wrote:Assuming a hanger bay 80m x 24m x24m & a mid hull section lengthened to about 45% of overall length & hull depths & widths being approximately the same you could mount two rows of 5 bays & 1 interrupted row with two 2 bays for a total of 14 bays per side. Furthermore, with the bays mounted longitudinally you could still have sufficient hull depth to have two LACS per bay & have a core hull. Granted they would not be as efficient as having one LAC per bay in a regular CLAC; (you could only launch half the LAC Group simultaneously & they would be more vulnerable), but it would still allow you to carry a worthwhile number of LACS 56 on a much smaller hull.
Where are you planning to fit the missile loading equipment for the LACs?
You've left 9 meters between nose and tail of lined up LACs. Trust me when I say that 9 meters is NOT enough room, especially when you will also need to add access corridors and cofferdamming between them. Or do you plan to have it as one long bay, not separated by any sort of armor?
Never mind where the reloads and associated magazines are going to fit
Where's the hull armor going to go (based on your assumption that you could fit two LACs per bay)?
Just going by your 80x24x24 dimensions, that works out to 96 meters, leaving just 33 meters to accomodate the core hull (as you mentioned) and the armor. Considering the armor on a Nike is no less than 10 meters thick, that leaves 13 meters for a core hull, which, BTW is ALSO armored. Let's be conservative and say the core hull armor is only 2 meters thick (most likely thicker, but we haven't gotten that far yet), which leaves us with a core hull interior width of only 9 meters at its widest point - at the centerline. That's only for your centerline placed LAC bays - it'll be even less for the upper and lower lines of bays, since, you know, the hull is curved and gets narrower the farther up or down you go.
Of course, if you're only talking a single LAC per bay, then sure, you could do that. But then you don't get the numbers - 28 as opposed to 56.
Did you account for the fact that the width of a LAC DOES NOT include the gravitic array blades?
Counting the blades, a LAC is more like 25-26 meters wide. Plug those numbers into the above bit about how much room is available and do the math.
IOW, you will STILL need to widen a Nike-based or -sized BC to accomodate LACs in sufficient numbers to make something like that worthwhile.
Rant begins:
<sigh> This is the sort of thing that I have to deal with when someone brings up a "brilliant" way to stuff more crap into a given hull: they all look at the external dimensions, and NEVER take into account armor thickness, or where all the ancillary support equipment is going to fit. I don't resent it, but it does tend to get repetitive after the seventh or eighth time of reminding someone. Sometimes I wish some of you knew 3D modeling and could build a mesh that would accomodate everything you want, but also include all the necessary armor and such that is REQUIRED for warships.
This is Skimper's biggest problem - he sees the size of the weapons ports compared to the size of the rest of the hull, and assumes that that's the size of lasers, grasers, missile tubes, and defense clusters. He doesn't even realize (or just outright dismisses it as unimportant) that what's behind the weapons port is about three times as big, and a hell of a lot longer, and THAT doesn't even include magazines for the attack missiles or CMs. I spent a week remodeling (over and over again) a cross section of the Star Knight, trying to get the required hull armor thickness, the armored core hull, and the missile tubes and magazines to fit without having to cut notches out of something (outer hull armor, core hull, etc.).
/rant
Edited for a stupid 1 meter difference error on my part. Math is hard
.