Actually the USN & now the PRC (maybe the UK too) doesn't see the CVN as too much of anything except a critically necessary asset. The opposing view is usually, in my experience, promoted by those unwilling or unable to construct such vessels.

On Saturday, June 13, 2020, 06:28:32 PM MST, xxxxxx@gmail.com <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:


We have built some large ships on this burg we live on for war, but generally they are now seen as very large targets (and costly to maintain, crew, and to lose). We tend to build frigates, destroyers, and for the major powers, some cruisers, but most of them are of limited scale compared to some prior constructions. Very few nations build air craft carriers of any size. Very few nations field massive fleets.

If that was the context, you might well just not see a lot of very large ships.

Is that a tech limitation? Maybe to an extent (but with nuclear plants and modern alloys and design), but maybe that's not the limit. It's a usual use case limit.

The Germans and Russians built some massive tanks at the end of WWII but they were often less effective than more of the intermediate mass tanks - got stuck, hard to maintain, didn't fit places, larger silhouette, and if you lose it, you lose a bigger % of combat power than losing a smaller tank. Maybe that logic also applies here.


On Sat, Jun 13, 2020 at 9:08 PM Thomas RUX <xxxxxx@comcast.net> wrote:
Evening from WA kaladorn,

I was disappointed with CT LBB 2 limiting the maximum hull size to 5,000 tons since historically someone is always going to push the limit and at some point succeed.

Tom Rux
On June 13, 2020 at 5:21 PM xxxxxx@gmail.com wrote:


I have a thought for a possible alternative TU:

We state that it takes a fair whack of energy to open a rift in spacetime to allow you to hop to another spacetime (Jump space).

We also state that the energy equation sees the energy increase with the surface area of the rift (so a squaring of energy requirements, perhaps with a characteristic of a minimum investment to get any size open). You could toy with the specifics, to get the math you like.

You could consider using standard Traveller efficiencies and then set the jump energy required by tonnage to lead to particular limits... maybe your biggest ship is 50,000 dTons... or maybe 5,000 dTons.

Or maybe, interestingly, you tear open a hole *in front of your ship* using a field effect and then you fly into it and something as I described with the power required as a function of the surface area of the rift. This would tend to make ships in this universe that needed to jump use very long cylindrical ships (or needle) such that their widest point was a modest size.

The rationalization is that if it was easy to open large rifts in our spacetime, then cosmic event would case many more of those. As it turns out, scientificators* have discovered that the matrix of all spacetimes has a characteristic that opposes such rifts being created (hence the whack of energy) and it also makes the costs of larger rifts brutal so as to effectively allow a more very small holes than big ones.

In such a setup, ship sizes may be smaller (because the 20 mile long, 10m across cylinder better not go anywhere near any gravity well ever....).

Now if you had the 'basic energy required for any size of hole' set right and had the lesser efficacy of power plants that are small, it would preclude fighters and jump message torps.

This might satisfy the CT players who don't want ships bigger than 5,000 tons or so. 5,000 tons is still huge compared to a 200 ton PC ship. No 500K Dton massive Dreadspheres.

Another side effect of having a frontal surface area that is minimized (so  you can pass through smaller jump windows) is that the optimal shape for interior volume (hence a good transport?) is the least optimal in this setting. A long rectangular prism shape might work, but you could establish structural ratio limits to limit maximum tonnage.

Tom




--
“The only stable state is the one in which all men are equal before the law.” ― Aristotle

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