Aurora C# Screenshots

[bean]

Maybe "front-load armor" would be an even better term/description.

Faceplate is the standard in the hard space warfare community.

Agreed. However, you could also argue that the increased crew count also takes into account mechanics, mission specialists, and system specialists that come aboard and not just the crewmen, gunners, commanders, and engineers.

No, even counting them, I think that Aurora ships are over-crewed.  Modern wet navy ships have big crews because of damage control requirements.  But fires in space are pretty easy to control (hint: let all the air out) and spacecraft don't sink.  The prime job of real-life damage control is not to put the ship back in action, but to keep it from sinking.  That doesn't apply in space. 
The fact that you have a large crew means you need to keep them busy.  That means that lots of things which would be pretty trivial to automate haven't been automated, although this is changing.  Also, it's not really feasible to have someone run around tightening bolts on a fusion rocket.  The place where you're most likely to have problems is the life-support system.  Reduce the crew, reduce the amount of life-support needed, and the number of crewmen needed to keep it working.

[Drizzt321]

This is more a quirk of the Aurora armor model than anything.   If the model was more sophisticated, you could only armor the bits that are important to fighting the ship, not the crew quarters.
(The belt is only part of a battleship armor scheme, and not the most important one by the end of that era.   The actual phrase you're looking for is all-or-nothing armor. )

Yes and no.  With spaceships you can get fire coming from basically any angle, possibly.  Yes, some is more likely than others, but then we need to consider _where_ the crew quarters and other such low armor areas are physically located on the ship, as well as what's on either side and if that needs to be armored up heavily.  And what happens if the crew quarters is penetrated, explosives can cause over-pressure so now you need to heavily armor the bulkheads and other such interior above what you might need to rather than having (relatively) even all or nothing armor around the outside of the ship.

Then we also need to consider, are the engines/exhaust such that they can't be armored, or armored as heavily? How can we protect them?

For the sake of a game. . . generally, not something to be modeled.  Unless you're very masochistic.

What tradition?  Traditionally, submariners hot-bunk, but nobody else does, except maybe on small boats.   

So, I think I was mixing some (aside from submarines) thoughts in my head with 4-high bunk stacks vs hot-bunking.  The former is common, even on larger ships (although the largest may not be quite so bad), while the later is either emergency or extremely small vessels/submarines.


Going back to the armor, unless something produces impenetrable bands (e. g.  Honorverse), then armor probably needs to be all-or-nothing.  Maybe concentrating somewhat forward instead of aft if you have a nimble vessel with forward oriented weaponry (say, spinal weapons).  But now we need to take into account positioning of weapons, armor, impact of weapons fire (as well as type), ability to turn quickly (or not) of the vessel, etc. 

As I said, generally not something in most games I'd be concerned with.  It's fun to discuss and imagine though

[83athom]

Then we also need to consider, are the engines/exhaust such that they can't be armored, or armored as heavily? How can we protect them?

There are types of engines that can be completely internal as they are reactionless. One example is gravity based drives (almost a spot on equivalent to the one in Aurora). Another is a magnetically based one, and another is a non-ftl warp drive. Some sci-fi universes go really weird with quantum entangled drives and whatnot. The point is that not all engines need an exhaust to propel the ship in space.

[Zincat]

Uh, sorry if sound a bit rude but... this 4 pages long discussion on crew reduction and armor bands, wouldn't it be better to move it to its own thread? Rather than the screenshots comment thread.

Because it has nothing to do, directly, with screenshots...

[bean]

Yes and no.  With spaceships you can get fire coming from basically any angle, possibly.

Yes, and I expect that different types of ships would have different armoring schemes to deal with that possibility.  For instance, the belt armor of battleships was designed based on a 90 degree target angle (shooter is directly abeam) while that of cruisers was based on a 60 degree target angle (shooter is 30 degrees fore or aft of abeam).  This meant that cruisers had relatively lighter belt armor, because of the increased obliquity of their belts in the analysis.  The Aurora equivalent would be a scout with armor only directly aft vs a cruiser with armor both aft and forward, and maybe a bit on the sides.

Yes, some is more likely than others, but then we need to consider _where_ the crew quarters and other such low armor areas are physically located on the ship, as well as what's on either side and if that needs to be armored up heavily.  And what happens if the crew quarters is penetrated, explosives can cause over-pressure so now you need to heavily armor the bulkheads and other such interior above what you might need to rather than having (relatively) even all or nothing armor around the outside of the ship.

Unlikely, but possible.  The exact sizes of the various parts are going to play a big role in this.

For the sake of a game. . . generally, not something to be modeled.  Unless you're very masochistic.

I'm an engineer who reads textbooks on warship design for fun.  Yes, I am that masochistic.

So, I think I was mixing some (aside from submarines) thoughts in my head with 4-high bunk stacks vs hot-bunking.  The former is common, even on larger ships (although the largest may not be quite so bad), while the later is either emergency or extremely small vessels/submarines.

Most racks these days are 3-high coffin racks.  If the deck isn't that tall, then they remove the coffin lockers and give the occupants more stand-up lockers instead.  But at least on Iowa, all of the non-chief enlisted quarters have 3-highs.  (They're more comfortable than you think, although tricky to get in and out of.  Also, if you aren't paying attention, it's easy to gash your head.)

Going back to the armor, unless something produces impenetrable bands (e. g.  Honorverse), then armor probably needs to be all-or-nothing.  Maybe concentrating somewhat forward instead of aft if you have a nimble vessel with forward oriented weaponry (say, spinal weapons).  But now we need to take into account positioning of weapons, armor, impact of weapons fire (as well as type), ability to turn quickly (or not) of the vessel, etc. 

All-or-nothing isn't quite the same as having directionalized armor, but I generally agree with you.

Uh, sorry if sound a bit rude but... this 4 pages long discussion on crew reduction and armor bands, wouldn't it be better to move it to its own thread? Rather than the screenshots comment thread.

Because it has nothing to do, directly, with screenshots...

The admins may or may not bother.  This happens a lot here.

[sloanjh]

Uh, sorry if sound a bit rude but... this 4 pages long discussion on crew reduction and armor bands, wouldn't it be better to move it to its own thread? Rather than the screenshots comment thread.

Because it has nothing to do, directly, with screenshots...

The admins may or may not bother.  This happens a lot here.

I'm pretty sure that Zincat was trying to politely call "thread drift/hijack" - he's been on the board enough to know that "This happens a lot here".

On "The admins may or may not bother", two things:

1)  I (and I suspect Erik) try to defer to the community and wait until someone actually requests a thread split rather than unilaterally doing it.
2)  It's a pain in the rear to do the split, and I'm always worried that I'll end up deleting someone's (or all of the) content, so it's not something I'm real keen to do.  It would be much better for me (and I suspect Erik) if the community managed the issue itself.

So here's a request/proposal for everyone:

When you see yourself getting ready to contribute to a drifting/hijacked thread (for example after 4-5 posts on a topic), please unilaterally open up a new thread with cross reference - something like "I've noticed this thread is starting to drift, so I've started a new one [link]" (and a corresponding link at the start of the new thread).

Given the number of times that Zincat's post has already been thanked and the fact that this happens a lot, I think a lot of people will appreciate this, myself (and I suspect Erik ) included.

As for this thread, frankly I quail at the prospect of going through and splitting this one out.  If someone really wants me to I'll do it, but for the moment I'd rather be lazy and leave it as it is

Thanks,
John

[83athom]

Technically this long line of discussion did branch out from a change to C# aurora. It just evolved rapidly.

[mikew]

It very much is a constraint, as any book which even tangentially touches on submarine design will tell you.  Making the submarine bigger makes it slower, noisier, and more expensive.  A submarine's resistance is volume-dominated, in a way that a surface ship's isn't.  There is a definite reason why submarines still hot-bunk and surface warships don't. 
Spacecraft volume is much cheaper to add relative to submarines, because the structure is much lighter, and doesn't add extra resistance on top of that.  I'd be surprised to see hot-bunking on spacecraft.

There seems to be some miscommunication here - I never said that volume wasn't a constraint on submarine design.  I said that DENSITY (or mass, to be more precise) wasn't a constraint upon that volume, since it is relatively easy to adjust the overall mass by the addition or removal of ballast to ensure that the mass falls within the required range.  Submarine internal fittings aren't generally built to save mass, and doing so would allow mass to be reduced, while adding ballast would both increase density and allow the design "trim" to be fine tuned as necessary.

By the way, you don't see hot bunking on spacecraft, but that is probably more due to the fact that they don't have bunks - there isn't room because they can't afford the mass or volume.  Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crews slept at their duty stations.  In the ISS, crewmembers use sleeping bags strapped to various surfaces throughout the station.

Mike

[IanD]

There seems to be some miscommunication here - I never said that volume wasn't a constraint on submarine design.  I said that DENSITY (or mass, to be more precise) wasn't a constraint upon that volume, since it is relatively easy to adjust the overall mass by the addition or removal of ballast to ensure that the mass falls within the required range.  Submarine internal fittings aren't generally built to save mass, and doing so would allow mass to be reduced, while adding ballast would both increase density and allow the design "trim" to be fine tuned as necessary.

By the way, you don't see hot bunking on spacecraft, but that is probably more due to the fact that they don't have bunks - there isn't room because they can't afford the mass or volume.  Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crews slept at their duty stations.  In the ISS, crewmembers use sleeping bags strapped to various surfaces throughout the station.

Mike

Remember even the RN WW1 BBs did not use bunks but hammocks so did not use hot bunking and I am not sure the KGV class didn't use hammocks. The Whitby class frigates used hammocks in some messes at least until their 1968 refit and the County class GMD Fife when refitted as a training ship had one mess using hammocks.

[bean]

There seems to be some miscommunication here - I never said that volume wasn't a constraint on submarine design.  I said that DENSITY (or mass, to be more precise) wasn't a constraint upon that volume, since it is relatively easy to adjust the overall mass by the addition or removal of ballast to ensure that the mass falls within the required range.

I'm slightly confused here.  Yes, ballast is helpful, but it's weight and volume you're spending money on and hauling around that you don't strictly need.  In practice, ballast is mostly there to provide margin for future systems to be installed. 

Submarine internal fittings aren't generally built to save mass, and doing so would allow mass to be reduced, while adding ballast would both increase density and allow the design "trim" to be fine tuned as necessary.

Of course submarine fittings aren't built to reduce mass.  There's no particular reason to do that.  So long as the lightweight bunk and the normal bunk are the same size, spending extra money on the lightweight bunk just buys you a tiny bit of extra margin for future growth.  It doesn't make the submarine smaller or lighter. 

By the way, you don't see hot bunking on spacecraft, but that is probably more due to the fact that they don't have bunks - there isn't room because they can't afford the mass or volume.  Mercury, Gemini and Apollo crews slept at their duty stations.  In the ISS, crewmembers use sleeping bags strapped to various surfaces throughout the station.

This isn't particularly relevant.  Modern spacecraft are horribly mass-limited.  The ones in Aurora aren't.  And having some degree of privacy is very important to long-term psychological health.  NASA recognizes this, and planned Mars missions usually have much better crew quarters than ISS.  (Which was originally supposed to have private rooms, but that module was cancelled.)

Remember even the RN WW1 BBs did not use bunks but hammocks so did not use hot bunking and I am not sure the KGV class didn't use hammocks. The Whitby class frigates used hammocks in some messes at least until their 1968 refit and the County class GMD Fife when refitted as a training ship had one mess using hammocks.

The RN was at least 30 years behind the USN in shipboard habitability during that era.  They came up with justifications for it, but in practice, it was just them being stubborn.  Hammocks may not technically be hot-bunking, but if one watch takes their hammocks down, and another puts theirs up on the same hooks a few minutes later, it comes to the same thing.  The space is re-used, even if the bedding isn't.

[IanD]

The RN was at least 30 years behind the USN in shipboard habitability during that era.  They came up with justifications for it, but in practice, it was just them being stubborn.  Hammocks may not technically be hot-bunking, but if one watch takes their hammocks down, and another puts theirs up on the same hooks a few minutes later, it comes to the same thing.  The space is re-used, even if the bedding isn't.

Everyone I have talked to who have used hammocks said they were much more comfortable in rough weather than a bunk. The principle problem was getting into them if one had visited the local hostelries that evening.   From a spacecraft perspective a netting hammock makes sense if your mess is in a weightless part of the ship. It would also allow the mess to be repurposed easily and quickly. Thus it depends on your tech, if you have artificial gravity its probably bunks, if its centrifugal force it can be both, if your ship has no way of generating artificial gravity then the hammock is preferable (see international space station).

[bean]

Everyone I have talked to who have used hammocks said they were much more comfortable in rough weather than a bunk. The principle problem was getting into them if one had visited the local hostelries that evening.   From a spacecraft perspective a netting hammock makes sense if your mess is in a weightless part of the ship. It would also allow the mess to be repurposed easily and quickly. Thus it depends on your tech, if you have artificial gravity its probably bunks, if its centrifugal force it can be both, if your ship has no way of generating artificial gravity then the hammock is preferable (see international space station).

It's not just hammocks vs bunks that was the issue.  The use of the mess decks for birthing is a bad idea, which the RN has dropped, and the USN dropped pre-WWI.  It's also a social space, and where people eat their meals.  This is not particularly good, as when you have weird watch schedules, you have multiple people in the same space at the same time doing different things.  The RN's galley facilities weren't as good, either, and in some classes (I believe the Flowers were prominent among their number) the mess was separated by an open walkway from the galley.  That meant the food was soaked with freezing seawater before it got to the men.  That would have been totally unacceptable to the USN.  USN sanitary facilities were likewise much better.  Give people birthing separate from the mess, regardless of what sort of things they're sleeping in. 
(Also, we're in space, so rough weather doesn't exist.)

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

It's not just hammocks vs bunks that was the issue.  The use of the mess decks for birthing is a bad idea

I think I would definitely agree with you here, although this could be more of problem now mixed crews are more prevalent

[bean]

I think I would definitely agree with you here, although this could be more of problem now mixed crews are more prevalent

I think if you told the RN of WW2 about the idea of sending women aboard warships, they'd probably have died of heart attacks.

I did do some reading on the issue, and D.K. Brown, in Nelson to Vanguard, is not complimentary towards the British.  On bunks v hammocks:

It was also claimed that hammocks were more comfortable than bunks in rough weather, though there was no obvious desire amongst officers, most of whom had used hammocks, to give up their bunks

[Steve Walmsley (OP)]

I think if you told the RN of WW2 about the idea of sending women aboard warships, they'd probably have died of heart attacks.

I was referring to 'birthing vs 'berthing'