Shipbucket

Hi all,

Well, I've kinda-sorta got a first ship, still pretty heavily in WIP stage, but thought I'd post it and get comment on it before I go further - fully cognisant of the fact that it needs further work, more hoping to get your impressions and feedback on the whole concept.

Anyway, without further ado, I present the AU ship ARF Drachenodem Atem - this'll be a good test of my google-fu, too, as well, for that should be "Dragon's Breath"
Old Version - http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 945as2.png

Revisited version http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 5v2as1.png

Revisited revisited version http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 5v3as1.png

Revisted^3 version http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 5v4as2.png

Revisted^4 version http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 5v4as4.png

Revisted^5 version http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 5v4as5.png

Revisted^6 version http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 5v4as6.png

Revisited^7 (and hopefully final (HA!)) http://www.majhost.com/gallery/apdsmith ... 5v4as7.png

Revisited^8:


I suspect this is going to be a little brutal, but don't hold back. The more comment it gets, the better the design gets, even if it's just to say "arm the scuttling charges and be done with it!"

APDSmith

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Well, it's good that you're ready to take critique, becouse you will probably be facing a shitstorm. I won't say delete the entire drawing though.
Firstly: The gigantic gatling turrets. They WILL NOT work. The gatling principle for guns stops being effective around 30~mm(AFAIK). And it's practicaly impossible at the size of your guns. Also, turrets of that size as wing mounts: Bad idea. You usually want to place the bigger turrets in the centerline.
Secondly: The hull does not fit with the superstructure(The superstructure and armament mostly looks like late WW2 German design with some NW elements thrown in), since it looks mostly like a fairly modern ship, mainly the aft(the bow is fine).
Those are the main issues making this ship unworkable.
Other things that should be mentioned, if nothing else for future reference:
The dome-shaped directors are for heavy AA guns, such as the 10.5 cm/65 SK C/33, none of which are present on this design. I'd also mount(at least the fore ones) one level higher, but that's my oppinion.
For a ship this size, at least 8 eight-inch guns would be expected.
If you use larger "chunks" from someone else's drawing(hull, superstructure, funnel, etc) you must credit. You should also post the ship in a proper template.

Good luck.

wtf are those guns.

Those guns would also be to heavy to mount on the side, they should be mounted on the center-line.

It's hard to evaluate a concept (aside from the gatling issue and the likely ~200ft beam) without knowing what it is supposed to do or what it is supposed to be.

What mission, precisely, are you attempting to tackle? From when? When we know this, we can think about what the problem requires and what some reasonable solutions might be.

At the moment, I can equally ask you:

• Why all of the stupid little small-caliber guns? (if the design is circa 1910)
• Why do you have above-water torpedo tubes? Where are your medium-caliber guns to fight off destroyers? (if the design is circa 1930)
• Where are the copious blind-fire directors to fight off air attack? (if the design is circa 1950)
• Why isn't it just a VLS-farm? (if the design is circa 1990)

There are lots of detail problems that exist outside of these questions, but find the right forest before we start critiquing the shapes of the trees.

When I see those gatling guns,I see you problaby played Warship Gunner 2...

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Besides weight distribution and structural support the other reson to have your largest mounts centerlines and preferably unimpeded by superstructure as much as possible is that these are your largest, most expensive and generally most protected weapons specifically geared to take out your most capable enemy (generally so etching that looks like you). So having them side mounted like that means that you can only have two of those primarily mounds in action against an enemy at anyone time and in some cases only one (since none are super firing over others), where as in a centerline super firing configuration you usually will have all four in action for pretty much 240 degrees of firing arc and maybe more.

Is this person the same person as APDAF? The same guy with his same amazingly bizarre (stole that from happy Gilmore, couldn't resist) designs and his same ability to pretty much ignore any and all advise anyone gives him? I mean...aren't the name even almost the same? Maybe it's just me

Science fiction ships really need to go into the non-Shipbucket forum to avoid confusion.

Aside from the things mentioned above, here a few thoughts I had:
-You are a bit heavy on those small rangefinders, maybe move a few of them aft.
-The larger AA-rangefinders could be a level or so higher.
-Also if you use radars, the main rangefinder-tops would also carry them, not just a single antenna on the mast.
-Going by real life examples, both sets of torpedo tubes should face forward
-The platforms for those 30mm quads look a bit small to me.

Regarding the name: Drachenodem itself means Dragon's Breath. Your ship is currently named Dragons' Breath Breath, if you translate Drachenodem Atem literally.

Otherwise, I would say your ship looks stylistically very good. You defineatly seem to have some talent.

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Any help and source material is always welcome.

Hi all,

I can see a lot of suggestions there, some helpful, some not, so probably best to address them in order.

KHT:
Yep, expected a kicking, got a kicking. I could have made things easier on myself, however, by explaining what on earth was up with the design. So, here we go:
The unfeasible gigantic gatling gun (My personal reference for it is "The Stupid Gun"):
This was an attempt to provide an (admittedly unrealistic) resolution to the big problem any big ship is going to have in the WWII timeframe. Specifically, as soon as it becomes worthwhile tactically, it becomes worth killing, and, by and large, with the quality and quantity of air power generally available, it's going to cost less to kill it than to build it. Now, the easiest way to weather any fight is to simply not get hit - that's how modern ships fight - but, being in the WWII sort of timeframe, options are more limited, so The Stupid Gun is designed to be a high-calibre, high-RoF DP gun that simply kills stuff before it gets close enough to be a problem. The high-calibre is necessary to actually get the shell to a long range, the high-RoF is due to the abominable accuracy of AA fire during that period.
The unfeasible ship (as per DG, the "Dragon's Breath Breath"):
This ship was designed to provide the cheapest possible test bed for The Stupid Gun. As such, it's light - much too light, the AU designers were expecting a life of 10 years but actually got 30 months out of the ship before it developed a crack in a heavy storm and was scrapped not long after, following an unpromising hull survey.
The gun layout is designed for redundancy rather than absolute efficiency, which is what compromised the hull so badly. It's supposed to be arranged so that at any point of the compass, two of The Stupid Gun can be brought to bear, but looking at the deck plan I messed that up a little. Between eight-and-a-half and nine-and-a-half degrees off the bow, you're only at risk from one weapon, but the same bearings aft will get you in the sights of three of them (at a cost of trashing the ship's boats, crane and possibly torpedo tubes along one side) - in AU, this is because the reliability of the weapon was not known at the time of design.
Point taken about the hull, I thought it wasn't that bad but will take another look at that.
Completely right about the directors. Silly, really, the whole point about the Stupid Gun was to increase the AA range, yet I've left it with directors that won't let it shoot straight at that increased range. Back to the drawing board on that one!
As I read your comment I get a sinking feeling ... yep, on checking the 8-in guns the barbette width is the same as the twins. It was supposed to be a triple, but that won't work with that width ...
While the style is drawn from existing SB artists (I like the way the DG_Alpha and Garlicdesign detail the ships, I feel it really brings them to life) everything that's not in the top left "parts bucket" has been drawn by me (on re-reading, with the exception of the bridge "parts bucket" for the range-finders) - the hull probably looks odd because of that!
With regards to template, if it gets to a stage where it's generally an OK drawing (apart from the - hopefully few - breaks with reason) will certainly template it. Thought that would be premature at this stage.
Heuhen:
Completely right, and in fact in the AU it breaks the ship. However, they were put there so that if one mount failed there would be another mount available to cover. In the AU, once the design is improved and the reliability known, the subsequent ships have a single Stupid Gun fore and aft.
erik_t:
The ship's mission is to test The Stupid Gun for use as an AA/DP weapon. The full design spiel is up top, I think that covers everything - if not, let me know.
Biancini1995:
Nope, never heard of it until you mentioned it. Was it a good game?
Shipright:
Agreed, it's a flawed design. However, I hope the spiel up top has detailed why it's flawed.
sabotage181:
I believe that such a prejudicial, disdainful post is atypical for you, but I'll spell it out. I'm not APDAF. Were I APDAF I'd be insulted at the insinuation that I'm multi-accounting, which, even if it's not banned, is poor etiquette - for all that APDAF has submitted daft designs (not that I'm casting stones!) that's all he's done. Don't you think you're being a little harsh on him? I think even a cursory analysis of spelling and grammar (i.e., reading my posts) would make it obvious that I'm not APDAF, anyway. As for the name, well, sorry, but it's my name. I do hope that I've not ignored any advice that has been given, to be honest I don't think I've received enough to ignore a significant fraction of it yet.
klagldsf:
Not a problem to move it. I only placed this here because I still regard myself as very much a beginner, but happy to place it wherever is most appropriate. Or are you referring to removing the picture and placing it on another site? I'm not sure precisely what you mean...
DG_Alpha:
I think I'm going to be re-doing the superstructure a little because I messed up the 203mm triples, but I agree, not practical to have most of that stuff in one place.
I seems I'm going to be re-doing the range-finders anyway, but yes, you're right.
The main and aft rangefinders are actually rangefinders-radar office-battle observation posts, and are intended to have radars mounted on the front, just wanted to get general comment on the ship before I did it. That's why they don't have the ladder up the front like the fore rangefinder does.
Torpedoes, fair comment, will do.
30mm, you are quite right. Will make a note to cover that in the general re-do of the superstructure.
Re: the name, will change it. Strangely, if you type that into google translate, it comes back as Dragon's Breath - have I managed to break google (slightly)?
Thank you for the comment - the style is borrowed from yours and GD's (and lots of other SB artists - I am constantly amazed by the detail and effort that goes into the drawings here) - but so far, the design is mostly based on geometry, physics and pig-headedness!

Regards,
APDSmith

edit:I can spell "spiel", no, really I can...

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