OTHER CONCEPTS | SPACESHIP DESIGN & SPACE WARFARE | PART 3 - A PRACTICAL APPROACH

OUT TO THE BATH TUB FIELD TESTING

It's been one year since the last time we talked about Space Warfare here on Hard Sci-Fi.

Let's recap what happened of the course of the previous two posts:

PART 1 - MOST SHIPS IN SCIENCE FICTION MAKE NO SENSE

PART 2 - WHY COMMON COUNTER ARGUMENTS MAKE EVEN LESS SENSE, EVEN IN-UNIVERSE

In Part 2, I left the post on a cliffhanger about disruptive camouflages - highlight to a more sci-fi approach to Dazzle camouflage.

Amongst other types of camouflage, I had also included chemicals that disguise the ship as another object like a comet, and reflective panels that can be tweaked in order the flash light-rays into or away from the enemy (also known as mirrors).

This time, I'm willing to test some of those approaches, in a simple observation test, simulated in a 3D modeling software.

So, meet our test ships:

NSC 042 - SCITALIS

This design is inspired by the myriad of accurate and cool-looking spaceships created by MarkPoe

The Nuclear-Powered Support Cruiser 's role is to ensure the security of high-value targets by supporting the escort effort with massive suppressive firepower, hence why it has a ridge along it's hull, from where 75x 80mm Fast-Pace Artillery guns (FPA), and 6x 300kg Kinetic-Kill Disperser weapons (KKD) - per side.

So basically each broadside holds 75x machine guns and 6x shotguns.

Why this ship carries relatively small machine guns and a couple of shotguns are because of two reasons.

1. The sharp acute holes of the bullets are meant to be very hard to find and repair compared to the amount of damage to O2, electronics and heatsink systems on the enemy - firing along a path line grants more potential hits and suppressive fire. 

2. Shotguns are crude in space, and mainly if the enemy is accompanied - granting sector clearance nearby because of the nearly invisible but deadly pellets (and there is 300kg of them per shot), such weapons can also intercept HTK vehicles and drones inbound, making very large projectiles or missiles not so useful from certain angles.

The name Scitalis, refers to the medieval beast that sports beautiful shiny marks - pretty straight forward.

The four plates are shielding the fuel tanks against debris and projectiles, the two skirts are sections of parabolic surfaces, so incoming kinetic projectiles are ricocheted away from the ship's hull, the internal reflection angles were carefully chosen so any shots fired against them wouldn't redirect the bullets to sensible parts of the beaming and engines.

The standard combat instance for this ship would then be facing the enemy at 3/4, with minimal exposition of sensible parts and maximum weapon coverage (like the top-right window view).