Oh, a triple-hulled design. Normally you see Double.

Are the hull plates scaled overlapping, or just double-layered? Oh, misread, they're over the foam cells in an overlapping pattern, center of the plate over the corners of the hex cells.

This would probably be reserved for the larger warships only, the ones that are expected to have a smaller T:M ratio, assuming that smaller ships have any effective speed differences. And just the construction alone would be expensive.

I was thinking it'd be a paint in the arse to fix this should a hit be scored deep enough, but A) If a hit scores deep enough the innards are screwed overly much, and B) The hexes look relatively easy to replace.

My only concern would be what's the power source? If it's fusion bottles, it's a PITA to cut through the hull to replace them if need be, and you can forget SCRAM capabilities on hulls like this.

Yeah, this would only be on the biggest of the big, where you're expected to be receiving relatively heavy hits from time to time... and yes, it would take quite a while to fully repair the structure in case of deep hits. The gaps in between the main plating and the second armour layer are big enough to allow for the replacement parts to be transferred over, and the composite hexagons themselves are structured such that parts of several damaged plates can be combined to some degree. Of course, replacing some of the internal plates gets bothersome, since you'll need to take apart quite large areas of the outer plates to access them properly, but that's why field repairs will often consist of simply filling in the holes as best as possible, waiting for full replacement later.

Also, the armour hexagons would be offset/overlapping each other as you go down the layers, to minimise the risk of something simply breaking through the (maybe welded?) seams. The foam ones would also be somewhat offset. Think of the offsetting/overlapping as sort of in a spiral shape.

Oh, the armour would also be in sections as necessary, and not just a single mass, to facilitate any sort of power source shenanigans like that... which I'm not entirely set on what it will be, as the tech is not really anywhere close to contemporary in some areas. The sections meant for separation would need to have some heavy duty edge protection to keep them from being weak spots...


Now, as for the smaller vessels, the thinnest armoured ones would probably have some fairly thin reflective compocite hexagons overlaid on foam cells, followed by composite honeycomb hexagons, with the main hull plating in double layer after a short spacing. On small ships, any bigger breach would result in sealing of bulkheads leading to the area, as long as the hit isn't big enough to just wreck everything inside the ship anyway.

Well it really does matter on power sources and what sort of weaponry you'll be facing. Shielding technology can also be a major factor, as I recall from my ventures into Starfire 3rd Edition, which is really where I'm pulling a lot of my knowledge from (And Weber's Honor Harrington series).

The reason I bring up the power plant and internal componants is because that was an issue that was brought up in Short Victorious War by Weber (Honorverse #3). Due to the drive tech generating impenetrable bands along portions of the hull, the armor there was thinner.

The Honorverse also heavily goes in for missile engagements as tech increases, with a higher focus on ECM, ECCM, and point defense - whereas in Starfire, energy based weapons become devestating, particularly the shield and armor-bypassing "Primary" and "Needle" beams.

Good ship design is really influenced by the technologies that are common and the designs and focuses of your foes. If your enemy focuses heavily on missile ships, then you'd want designs that are heavy into ECM/ECCM, heavier armor, and a lot of energy weapons - since m3 for m3 they're less likely to pack any punch close in.

And if there's a difference between 'reflective' and 'ablative', that's a major issue to consider as well. And are the drives powerful enough that ballistics can be dodged easily? Lots to work with, here.

...sorry, I focus heavily on military combat design, and then imperial-level logistics <_<;

Yeah, a big part of the universe is that long range engagements have become less feasible due to anti-missile defenses rendering guided missiles a poor choice for anything other than small craft interception, absorptive energy fields becoming a norm and largely nullifying explosive projectiles and hindering energy weapons, lasers becoming basically useless, while charged particle and plasma weapons still being capable of bringing shields down relatively quickly, while kinetic weapons have trouble going through the kinetic field created by the interplanetary drive system at long distances... and the drives themselves being such that traveling within a few hundred kilometers from something isn't really a problem anymore. Really, the biggest problem is now disengaging something, since the kinetic fields from the drives is also very easy to use to prevent a ship moving past, forcing it to either expose the sides and/or rear, or do manouvers such as boosting past on thrusters alone... The energy shields and the kinetic field are largely linked however, and disrupting the shield is enough to severely weaken the kinetic field's effect on incoming ballistics and interference of opposing drives.

Anyway, with the ranges being as short as they are, ballistics are definitely viable, and in some cases preferred option, since one of the two major sides has a focus on energy weapons and protection as such, and their shields are focused on endurance, while the other has had a lot of experience with kinetics and ballistics, and their shield systems are focused on quick engagements, which their slightly better drive and thruster systems also benefit.

Also, a note about the drive systems, is they are slower than light, in a way "gliding" on the boundary of realspace and sub/hyperspace (Yeah, I've been heavily inspired by Asimov's Nemesis for this), with the main method of interstellar travel being to pass through sub/hyperspace to momentarily bridge two points in realspace... however that is a very costly move in terms of fuel and energy, and has to be conducted quite far from major gravity wells, usually the limiting factor being the star, so a fairly long trip to the outer reaches of a system is required. Civilian traffic either uses connected "gates", or "slowboats" if the distance isn't too far between the stars, such as in the event of binary systems.

Oh, and a note about the armour layout, is that the sealant foam is rather heat resistant, so it acts as a fairly decent armour against energy weapons by itself as it boils away. The composites themself aren't terribly effective against energy weapons, especially the charged particle weapons, as those tend to cause shockwaves that crack the plates, eventually breaking them apart after repeated impacts.

hey at least it's well protected from micro meteorites. :D

Oh definitely, would be shameful to get a warship destroyed simply from an incidental impact of space debris :b

The best defense against shaped charges, eg plasma has been found to be another plasma, eg a layer of explosive on top of the armor.

Of course, even that can be beaten, it just makes the missiles more complex.

In the Bujold (Vorkosigan) universe, although they aren't heavy on war, they have an almost perfect defense against both plasma and laser type weapons. The latest and greatest is directed gravity beams. Both defenses are active, and hence can be overwhelmed, but the plasma defense sends your attack back at you, hard to overwhelm.

Excluding "weird" weapons or super science, most offensive weapons are mostly just variations on a few themes. Fast moving objects, bright lights, plasma's.

Now think of how to maintain it.

I would have an outer pressurized space sealed off from the inner pressurized area. If the pressure drops there you know you have a leak somewhere and the redundant inner pressurized hull is saving you.

That is sort of the idea actually, the sealant bots are working in a half-atmosphere or lower, so that they can more easily divert to sources of leaks, and the outer pressurised space is divided into smaller compartments. Similar story with the inner pressure hull which is the one that has easier crew access, but is also largely redundant, just full atmosphere, and a much smaller quantity of patrolling sealant bots.

The half-atmosphere area would be useful for conducting EVA operations, for acclimating to lower pressures in space suits. Unless of course that problem has been solved at some point.

Pretty tough hull design. Probably has more space between the hulls than needed though to deal with explosions and plasma.

There are some stuff that can be easily added for defense against energy weapons. Hard carbon base ceramic pellets can play havoc with both kinetics and energy weapons. The hard nature breaks up projectiles while the pelleted nature spreads the load. Plasma have a hard time heating them up do the the high temps needed to vaporize it and the pellets also disrupt the flow much like large rocks in a river. Lasers act heat beams or kinetic slugs depending on how its set, either heating up the material to melt through or sending enough energy in a short pulse to vaporize a section of hull material in an explosive manner.

Active coolers can probably help against energy weapons by increasing the needed energy to melt/vaporize the material. So possibly could angled slates between the hull layers to cause projectiles to bend or through the thicker diagonal cross section of the plate.

Check out:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Composite_armour
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chobham_armour

I love designing "realistic" sci-fi armors. Tossing science out the window is also fun.

A nifty, in the sense of ultra-cheap yet effective, armor for spaceships is pykrete:
Water-ice with a percentage of organic ( and optionally metallic ) fibers in it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pykrete

The raw materials are cheap, yet the stuff is very resiliant to mechanical impact and easy to repair ( just add slow heat and some water ).
Shaped charges loose a lot of their effectiveness as the fibres are undirected, thus literally spread the effect of the thermal lance into all directions.
Installing some of the fibres in an ordered way, such as chevron armor, help to intentionally route a thermal lance.

A laser will pass through clear water ice with little to no effect, will charcoal organic matter ( and carbon is a very good , as thermally stable, component of nonreflective anti-laser armor ) and be reflected / scattered from metallic dust in the compound.

Pykrete surely is no "real" armor, as basically every weapon can damage it. But it takes a lot bang for the buck.
So, when you have some installation where weight is only of secondary concern, like a space station or some vessel thats moving slowly anyway,
then Pykrete will be your budgets best friend.
And telling the crew you got 10 Meters of high impact resilient and partially self-heaving armor ( as every laser hit will melt some water and the resulting vapor will fix damages from mechanical impacts by condensing and refreezing in the cracks ) does a lot for crew morale.