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The Expanse MCRN Raptor-class Fast-Attack Cruiser
Whew; and another space ship design! THis time from a new universe. For those not in the know: the Raptor-class fast-attack cruiser is one of the ships yet to make the jump from the Expanse books to TV... so I decided to take a shot at seeing what it might look like. Did my best to replicate the angular/sloping armor style of the MCRN without going too detail-crazy to save on my sanity.
Basic idea here being: strip the ship down to make it as fast as possible, drawing some inspiration from the Manticore-class ships from Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. The idea behind the engine arrangement being that the outer two could act to cantalever the ship through combat maneuvers. Basic tactic: close as fast as possible while presenting as narrow a target as possible. Also gave her some specialized torpedoes: basically designed to detonate before impact and turn into a cone of shrapnel which would be virtually impossible for PDCs to take out.
Stats:
- Class: Raptor-class
- Role: Fast-Attack Cruiser
- Affiliation: Martian Congressional Republic Navy (MCRN)
- Length: 180 meters
- Width: 60 meters
- Drives: 3x RT-9A “Phoenix” Series High-Performance Epstein Drives
- Armaments:
- 1x V-11 “Dirk” light axial railgun
- 8x Burst-fire rapid-reload Torpedo Tubes
- 10x Nariman Dynamics rapid-targeting PDCs
- Specialist G-shelter barracks rooms to protect non-essential personnel against the effects of high-G combat maneuvers
- 1x Chariot-class dropship in purpose-built berth
Quibbles: the PDCs are very slightly too large in comparison to the ship; but that's mostly because I made them in the small size-comparison shot first which in retrospect was a bad idea... but it did allow me to get the proportions I wanted correct.
Basic idea here being: strip the ship down to make it as fast as possible, drawing some inspiration from the Manticore-class ships from Battlestar Galactica Deadlock. The idea behind the engine arrangement being that the outer two could act to cantalever the ship through combat maneuvers. Basic tactic: close as fast as possible while presenting as narrow a target as possible. Also gave her some specialized torpedoes: basically designed to detonate before impact and turn into a cone of shrapnel which would be virtually impossible for PDCs to take out.
Stats:
- Class: Raptor-class
- Role: Fast-Attack Cruiser
- Affiliation: Martian Congressional Republic Navy (MCRN)
- Length: 180 meters
- Width: 60 meters
- Drives: 3x RT-9A “Phoenix” Series High-Performance Epstein Drives
- Armaments:
- 1x V-11 “Dirk” light axial railgun
- 8x Burst-fire rapid-reload Torpedo Tubes
- 10x Nariman Dynamics rapid-targeting PDCs
- Specialist G-shelter barracks rooms to protect non-essential personnel against the effects of high-G combat maneuvers
- 1x Chariot-class dropship in purpose-built berth
Quibbles: the PDCs are very slightly too large in comparison to the ship; but that's mostly because I made them in the small size-comparison shot first which in retrospect was a bad idea... but it did allow me to get the proportions I wanted correct.
Category Artwork (Digital) / Fanart
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 1280 x 908px
File Size 210.5 kB
Listed in Folders
Neat design, im a huge fan of the Expanse and hard sci fi, and I'm developing a world and story that is influenced by the Expanse, Children of a Dead Earth, Darkeye, amongst other works in terms of fast, interplanetary space travel through fusion torch drives(in this case helium-3 fusion), and uplifted animals(in this case they're either what we call "feral" or more recent "semi-anthro"(think Zootopia style), I basically did a lot of research to see which technologies are plausible.I figured most warships would have Gauss guns, missile launchers, PDCs and/or chain gun/autocannons, and of course combat takes place at very long range etc.
Nice; yeah, I quite love the series as well, and the genre of "hard realism sci-fi" is a very cool little sub-genre of science fiction.
Cool setting idea: reminds me a bit of the "Uplift" universe... where-in humans had uplifted both Chimpanzees and dolphins to be member species of their little federation.
As far as "realistic" space combat goes, yeah; that tends to be the sort of tech that is msot plausible:
- PDCs - Tend to be extremely rapid-fire kinetic weapons of some sort, much like the Close-in-weapon-systems used on modern navy ships. With no atmosphere, their effective range increases significantly, particularly if paired with computer-aided targeting rather than manual.
- Coil-guns or Rail-guns - Usually used as the "heavy weapons" or "artillery" of space combat; given that they'd have a much harder punch than PDCs, but a far lower fire rate. Accelerating a projectile sufficiently fast also would mean that it would be basically unavoidable within a certain distance. It does also mean that the projectiles of such a weapon would probably completely perforate its target.
- Guided missiles/Torpedoes - A fairly effective choice given that, due to their extremely favorable thrust-to-mass ratio, there'd probably be no means of evading them through "fancy flying" as it were and they would have to be intercepted, either by PDC fire, chaff, flares or via missile-interceptors (basically a small, extremeely fast missile with no warhead designed to just impact and destroy another missile)
- Flak-cannons - Whether they'd be a derrivitive of the rail/coil/gaus guns or PDCs: a flak gun would actually be quite effective against strike craft or missiles; basically fire a shell that explodes into a cloud of shrapnel ala the torpedoes in the design above.
- Lasers or Particle beams - Probably the most theoretical and power-hungry of the lot on this little off the top of my head list; but incredibly effective given their range would be immense and they'd strike a target near instantaneously. The USS Sulaco and USS Sephora from Aliens have these as their axial-mount weapons, as does the Omega and Warlock-class Earth Alliance ships from Babylon 5.
Cool setting idea: reminds me a bit of the "Uplift" universe... where-in humans had uplifted both Chimpanzees and dolphins to be member species of their little federation.
As far as "realistic" space combat goes, yeah; that tends to be the sort of tech that is msot plausible:
- PDCs - Tend to be extremely rapid-fire kinetic weapons of some sort, much like the Close-in-weapon-systems used on modern navy ships. With no atmosphere, their effective range increases significantly, particularly if paired with computer-aided targeting rather than manual.
- Coil-guns or Rail-guns - Usually used as the "heavy weapons" or "artillery" of space combat; given that they'd have a much harder punch than PDCs, but a far lower fire rate. Accelerating a projectile sufficiently fast also would mean that it would be basically unavoidable within a certain distance. It does also mean that the projectiles of such a weapon would probably completely perforate its target.
- Guided missiles/Torpedoes - A fairly effective choice given that, due to their extremely favorable thrust-to-mass ratio, there'd probably be no means of evading them through "fancy flying" as it were and they would have to be intercepted, either by PDC fire, chaff, flares or via missile-interceptors (basically a small, extremeely fast missile with no warhead designed to just impact and destroy another missile)
- Flak-cannons - Whether they'd be a derrivitive of the rail/coil/gaus guns or PDCs: a flak gun would actually be quite effective against strike craft or missiles; basically fire a shell that explodes into a cloud of shrapnel ala the torpedoes in the design above.
- Lasers or Particle beams - Probably the most theoretical and power-hungry of the lot on this little off the top of my head list; but incredibly effective given their range would be immense and they'd strike a target near instantaneously. The USS Sulaco and USS Sephora from Aliens have these as their axial-mount weapons, as does the Omega and Warlock-class Earth Alliance ships from Babylon 5.
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