On Jun 15, 2020, at 8:29 PM, Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

IMTU, I make jump drives for larger volumes progressively less efficient. That is, the jump drives get larger and more power-hungry, the larger the hull being jump becomes. A 5000 dton hull is as big as you can get and still have a jump-capable vessel (after installing everything else a ship needs to function).

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 11:18 PM <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

Yes, I'd think so. My point was that if you had a limited size of jump window area, then your ships would tend to be smaller and longer but you can only push that so far, so 500K dTon battlewagons probably aren't that likely for the sorts of reasons you mention. 

BTW, nothing in the game prevents you from taking the broad swath of how much space systems take and going and making a ludicrous design. Some end up that way by accident or without due consideration of various use cases. There probably need to be some ideas about ship size and design for very large ships vs. small ones.

On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 10:06 PM Richard Aiken <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

The OP mentioned "20 km long, 10m wide" ships not daring to come close to a gravity well.

I would add that they should also only ever attempt to change vector VERY SLOWLY. Unless that hull is built from space-elevator-grade material, it will snap like a twig under any significant degree of lateral thrust.

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 3:54 AM <xxxxxx@gmail.com> wrote:

It's of great utility for its air wing and the fact that the places they are being deployed and where their air wings strike are usually not equally capable opponents with major subsurface or other similar sorts of threats to the CVN. There are also not as a rule conflicts of mass violence between major players. 

The reason I believe that is: 

It is no longer cost-effective for any great power to take another on in a broad conflict. The losses, to both sides, could be crippling, and the next power or two might then get suddenly much more threatening because of the losses the two combatants might expect in a tightly fought campaign (regardless of who wins). 

Additionally, there has been for a long time historically a good reason to invade and conquer: Remove a threat and gain their land and perhaps absorb their people but mainly their resources. There is still some of that motivation out there, but it can be quite miserable to hold an unassimilated population. And the economic returns are questionable. 

There are far better returns by: 

a) Threatening or actually smashing smaller, lower-tier powers sitting on resources or that are in the way of territorial growth

b) Working via intelligence and foreign policy combined with provision of services or products that tend to drag trade into what may once have been a largely military situation... and by fighting by means other than war

c) Forming a passable relationship in a common market where all can profit (with the caveat that no big power really does much about what another big power does locally in their neighborhood)

Russia, China, and the US are the pre-eminent military powers. There has been no war. Short of lunacy, there will not be one. China's growth has been economic and they've largely used that reality to fend off just criticisms about their human rights (what are they?) and to threaten to cut off key goods provided to their notional enemies. The trade card is worth more to countries involved than any war could return. 

Russia had been on a good path for a bit, then reverted to type due to economic issues, old school players, and the masterful job of PR done by a leader that effectively controls almost all radio and TV stations which many Russians still get news from. And everyone likes it when you are pushing threats further out and rebuilding an Imperial past...

With the amount of money Russia has spent re-arming, they ought to be pretty formidable in some localities. There is little sense for the US and Russia to fight - Russia wants to do its thing and worry about annoyances in the former Republics while the EU struggles not to disintegrate. The US has little profit in any continental adventurism and the sooner the US gets off of the hydrocarbon economy, the sooner they can not bother fighting in the ME or with Russia over fossil fuel resources. Both can muck about in smaller countries and sometimes play cold war games, but no point of fighting. 

I suspect for most major powers, that means that they are unlikely to lose a CVN (the folks who could have high odds of sinking one aren't going to) and that makes it a great mobile airbase to whack second and third tier countries. But even some of those they will only bomb and depart - there's no profit in a full campaign (Iran for instance). 

Europe, which looked for a while like its united wealth and power would make it a world player, has worked the last years to come apart and that now has more of the attention than trying to become a global superpower militarily. 

All that is to say that carriers are useful if your foreign policy requires you to threaten or actually raid various lower tier powers the world over. Other than that, it would be a great expense. And if a real fight with a major power would ensue, the loss of these large targets would be pretty expensive in lives and costs. 

We are more likely to see internal collapse in China, the US, or maybe Russia in the next 30 years than we are a war between any 2 or all 3 of those powers that is global (and we will see deployments to places where any two powers or all three can carve up other smaller countries or regions). 

On Sun, Jun 14, 2020 at 2:23 AM Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml list) <xxxxxx@simplelists.com> wrote:

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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"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester (fictional monster hunter portrayed by Jensen Ackles)

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Richard Aiken

"Never insult anyone by accident."  Robert A. Heinlein

"I studied the Koran a great deal. I came away from that study with the conviction there have been few religions in the world as deadly to men as Muhammed." Alexis de Tocqueville

"We know a little about a lot of things; just enough to make us dangerous." Dean Winchester (fictional monster hunter portrayed by Jensen Ackles)

"It has been my experience that a gun doesn't care who pulls its trigger." Newton Knight (as portrayed by Matthew McConaughey), to a scoffing Confederate tax collector facing the weapons held by Knight's young children and wife.

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