Approved Starship The Atsushi

[Akio Kahoshi]

Babylon 5

Intent: To provide a prototype for the Kahoshi-class ship, and to act as the Emperor's flagship.
Development Thread: First field test Discussing the problems encountered
Manufacturer: Imperial Shipworks
Model: Prototype Kahoshi-Class
Affiliation: Atrisian Empire
Modularity: None
Production: Unique
Material: Durasteel
Description: The Atsushi is the prototype of the Kahoshi-class battlecruiser, originally tested in the field at the battle for Csilla. The original test went poorly when design flaws came to light, and the ship was brought back to dry dock to redesign. While the flawed electrical system was being redone, the ship itself was also modified.

Originally the front of the ship had mounts for heavy axial laser canons like the Gyon, but success in production of the Ship Hypervelocity guns on other Imperial ships changed the plans. Lacking the structural integrity to mount the weapons on a turret, the ships five SHV-9s are located in a fixed position in the front part of the ship.

The SHVs work by drawing power from the partial shields while firing. As these shields need to be lowered to fire anyway, this saves energy cost over all. However there is a small delay (approximately 12-seconds) between the weapon stopping and the shields coming back up. During this time the weapons are vulnerable to a well aimed attack, but guarded but the ships extending hull on all sides except forward. The rest of the ship remains unguarded against any physical attacks, except that can be defended by its point defense and flak. The flak guns are designed solely for operation during the firing windows.

They fire 60 slugs per minute, but are limited to ten second bursts every ten seconds. Because these are fixed mount, unlike the turreted version used with the smaller SHVs, these weapons are much harder to aim. The entire ship must be rotated in the direction they are being fired, and even a small miscalculation has a significant impact in long range. Targeting a ship below 1500 meters in length is extremely difficult. However when these weapons do hit, they are devastating. The slugs pass through ray shields and overload any particle shielding in short order. Once past the shielding, the slugs wreck havoc on the hull and internal compartments of the targeted ship.

The Atsushi has six shield generator domes running along its center portion. Designed to be a generally balanced front line battlecruiser, the Atsushi still shows some signs of Atrisian Empire Naval precedence in that it lowered the number of weapons it could support (approximately 100 turbolasers) in exchange for increasing the hanger size by two squadrons. The full production version would revert back to modern conventions.

Classification: Star Battlecruiser
Role: Flagship
Height: 450 meters
Width: 750 meters
Length: 2000 meters
Power Core Generator/Reactor: Solar Ionization Reactor
Hyperdrive Rating: 1 (Backup 10)
Minimum Crew: 8,600
Optimal Crew: 41,580
Armaments


(5) Ship Hypervelocity Guns (SHV-9s fixed in forward fire position equal to 50 turbolasers)
(10) Heavy turbolaser batteries
(30) Turbolaser batteries
(10) Ion canon batteries
(40) Heavy turbolasers
(20) Heavy ion canons
(120) Turbolasers
(70) Ion canons
(50 Quad laser canons
(30) Point-defense lasers
(20) Flak guns
(30) Tractor beams


Hangar:

(9) Fighter/bomber squadrons
(6) Lambda or equivalent shuttles
(10) Gorgon-class bombers
(12) Stormtrooper transports
(4) Assault shuttles
(20) AT-SA's with Barges
(60) Harbringer Tanks with Barges
(1) Prefabricated base
Assorted repair and recovery vessels

Non-Combative Attachments:

Shield/sensor domes (6)
Command and Control Suite
Advanced C4I Facilities
DER [Dedicated Energy Receptor]
HSI [Hyperwave Signal Interceptor]
Ranger Transceiver
Audience Chamber
Escape Pods
Other standard capital ship attachments

Passenger Capacity: 1 Stormtrooper Legion (Emperor's Own), 750 other
[SIZE=11pt]Cargo Capacity:[/SIZE][SIZE=11pt] 43,125 metric tons
Consumables: 5 years
Sublight Speed and Maneuverability: 8[/SIZE]

 

[Domino]

Okay, just to keep things simple, the lower the number on those HV guns, the higher the caliber. 4 is the planetary based ones, 9's are on the Isard, and the Unity uses 11's. Otherwise people are going to need to make reference charts as they bounce all over the place. You're also over the fighter/bomber limit by four squads and I'm not even sure how far over you are with the tanks and walkers and other stuff. I'd appreciate you linking each item in your hanger as you're able.
@[member="Akio Kahoshi"]

 

[Akio Kahoshi]

...I blame the SHVs on Cyrus he totally didn't catch that when I put the stats together >_>. Changed.

For the squadrons, a command ship lists seven squadrons for a balanced ship. As this is a unique ship I was hoping to exchange 100 of its turbolasers (the current total is 600) for the three squadrons.

Links have been added for the TGE tech in the hanger, and I lowered the stormtrooper transports by four realizing that the assault transports were supposed to be part of that figure.

@[member="Domino"]

 

[Domino]

Alright, several other little things, I'll let you do the trade off for the three squads you mentioned in the description though. Counting the bombers as assault ships since they aren't like normal fighter sized bombers.

• Your second Dev thread seams to just end in the middle unless I missed something.
• The HV-9's were rated at ten guns a barrel, I can't let you go higher with the addition of the heavy classification for just 12.5 each, especially on spinal guns for something this big.
• I'm also going to need some heavier drawbacks and a slower rate of fire. Bigger slugs require a lot more power to fire and time to move into place than smaller ones.

@[member="Akio Kahoshi"]

 

[Akio Kahoshi]

The second dev thread cover the part of the electrical issues, then started going into unrelated stuff when Mirien became unable to post for awhile. After talking with Cyrus, I decided to just switch the 4 HSHVs to 5 normal SHV to save us both some grief at balancing them.

@[member="Domino"]

 

[Domino]

I'm going to go ahead and ask you to cut out a squad of fighters, you're just too close to the carrier's count.
How big is a legion? Five thousand?
What are "Advanced C4I Facilities?"
Those gravity wells will require a massive drop in weaponry.
I know this is a unique production ship but it honestly feels like it's trying to do everything, powerful guns, lots of fighters, and a big landing force which the ship guide was created to prevent. I'd suggest you reevaluate what you intend to do with this ship and where you really want it to perform.
@[member="Akio Kahoshi"]

 

[Akio Kahoshi]

A standard stormtrooper legion is equal to a modern division, so about 10k. Its about the same as the complement of a standard ISD, just added about 10% more passenger capacity as this ship is so much bigger. C4I stands for 'Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence so its the standard stuff a flag ship would carry. I removed the gravity well generators, they were a hold over from my original design, decided they were unnecessary.

@[member="Domino"]

 

[Domino]

While I'm willing to work with you on this, I've been told that to deviate from the set chart so much even on a unique ship will require a substantial development thread on its own. Your previous threads just cover enough for a 2km command ship.
I also need to know more about those shield/sensor domes, they aren't usually combined like that. Also need to know the details of the shield(s) they're projecting. If they're redundant, overlapping, ect...
@[member="Akio Kahoshi"]

 

[Akio Kahoshi]

@[member="Domino"]

I'd like to know where besides the weapons to fighter ratio this ship deviates from the chart, as I tried very hard to keep everything else within the tolerances listed. I'd like to know how I can change things to make it better. As for the shields, honestly never really intended anything special about them. They function just like the shield/sensor domes on the ISDs. There just happens to be six of them, since the ship is bigger.

 

[Domino]

That is already a pretty big deviation, especially given the size of your walkers and that while you did reduce the count, you replaced them with a lot more tanks, and don't think that I haven't noticed that you haven't dropped a squad of your fighters like I asked.
The difference between the Balanced and Carrier command ships is that they drop nearly ALL their turbolasers for seven more squads and a few more defensive guns. It comes out to about 90 guns per squad. I'm sure you can see why I'm asking for what I am.
@[member="Akio Kahoshi"]

 

[Akio Kahoshi]

You never asked me to reduce it by a squadron. You said you would allow the trade off of three squadrons in the description, which added to the seven that the chart says a balanced ship would have comes out to the ten squadrons I have listed. The walkers were a guess on our part, as the tanks are a lot smaller than a standard walker we weren't sure how many would bring us to the "45 walkers" amount on the chart. I can adjust that if necessary. I have tried to meet every request that you've asked for @[member="Domino"].

 

[Domino]

I'm going to go ahead and ask you to cut out a squad of fighters, you're just too close to the carrier's count.
I know this is a unique production ship but it honestly feels like it's trying to do everything, powerful guns, lots of fighters, and a big landing force which the ship guide was created to prevent. I'd suggest you reevaluate what you intend to do with this ship and where you really want it to perform.

Edits still have not been made.
@[member="Akio Kahoshi"]

 

[Domino]

To clear this up some, I said that before crunching the numbers and before another judge told me that I was being too loose with this. Since running the squad/gun numbers which I broke down above to show my reasoning I decided to request you drop one squad so you would be getting them at a 1:50 squad to gun ratio instead of a 1:90 with a few defensive guns thrown in or the 1:33 you're doing now. If I passed this as it is now it would be close to event tech in level which I was told was the only way barring a substantial and focused dev thread to get away from the chart so much.

I'm not asking you to change your walker/tanks, just pointing out that there's no real way to insure that they were balanced. There's a lot of strange things going on here, those HV guns for instance, yours is the only faction that's currently allowed them and depending on how you rp them they could be uber-powerful. I've refused them on other ships. Right now I'm just trying to make sure that this is fair to other people, within the set rules, and that the overall potential for abuse is limited.
@[member="Akio Kahoshi"]

 

[Akio Kahoshi]

Thank you for clearing things up. Your concerns are all valid, in all our ships we've tried to make sure the HVs aren't ridiculously over powered. I believe everything is fixed now @[member="Domino"].

 

[Domino]

The 'Sushi is approved pending secondary.

 

[Alli Vern]

Approved