French Paris class Cruiserby Bryn Monnery Models and Feedback by Laurent Esmiol Thanks, as ever, to Dan Hebditch
IFS Dunkerque in cruise mode near Nouvelle Boucle in the 11 Leonis Minoris star system. (Image courtesy of MSIF Media Operations.)
Some Ship Definition Issues When I first picked up Star Cruiser, I accepted it's ship definitions easily. A destroyer was a destroyer etc. However, I realised that the SC ship definitions didn't fit with RW definitions, so in this article, you may need to convert back too SC definitions, thus:
This is far more intuitive, and based on actual descriptions of a vessels capabilities rather than arbitrary definitions. A Short History of Star Cruisers The modern space cruiser operates much the same as her sea bearing forbearers, both surface and submarine did. The role of the cruiser is to seek independent action with enemy, both merchant and military. As such she is equipped almost certainly with a nuclear drive, and capable of long range cruises. Her principle allies are stealth, surprise and aggression. Cruisers tend to operate from ambushes, and are often described as pirates. Indeed, the principles on which pirates and war cruisers operate are virtually identical, and cruisers are the main counter piracy weapon. In virtually all wars since the 1st Rio Plata War, Cruisers have been involved. Indeed the 2nd and 3rd Rio Plata Wars saw no fleet actions, but rather squadrons of cruisers and frigates skirmishing over distant suns. The cruiser really came into its own in the Central Asian War however. The Manchu's did not believe in fleet actions, if they could keep them supplied, raiding cruisers could inflict far more damage on the French Union than a Battlefleet ever could. Manchu cruisers almost brought the French Union down in the first years of the war. Raiding out of a series of hidden bases along the French Arm, a mere dozen or so Manchu ships kept the MNS (Marine Nationale Spatiale, the French Space Navy of the time) pinned to defending lines of communications, and the loss of merchant shipping was critical. Using the old expression "to catch a poacher, you send a poacher", the MNS commissioned some of the finest warships mankind have ever seen. The early Marechal class were good but not perfect, however the Patrie class were perfect killers. The Manchu's managed to keep raiding until the end of the war however. The following War of German Unification saw 2 Battlefleet encounters. The first, at Alpha Centauri saw a French Battleship and Frigate engaged by a larger German fleet of 2 Battleships and a Cruiser, however, the more experienced French managed to separate the Germans and destroy the German Battleship Köln (Cologne). The second, the Battle of Hochbaden, was the largest space action ever fought by humanity. The Battle of Hochbaden was Frances attempt to support anti-unificationists in the former Bavarian colony of Hochbaden. It was a complex plan involving 2 separate battle fleets, and the first major combat deployment of a Carrier, the FS Charlemagne. The French plan was for a feint attack to draw a major German Squadron, with 2 Battleships and support into a weak French battlegroup, from whence the heavy attack group would ambush the Germans. However, the courier Marathon carrying the dispatch to spring the ambush was intercepted and downed by the German Cruiser Seydlitz, winning the final space engagement of the German War. The Paris class
Dunkerque and Lorraine depart Earth on their first active patrol. (Image courtesy of MSIF Media Operations.)
The Paris class were started in 2289, and finally the first hull was laid in 2294, the only new class authorised by the new Imperium. Designed to encompass the latest technology into an extremely efficient hunter killer package. The Paris emerged from dock in 2297, and was placed into service on Bastille Day, 2298. The ship was not revolutionary, but rather evolutionary, representing the sum of human starship building knowledge. Her two sisters, Lorraine and Dunkerque emerged in 2298 after an intense competition between the two builders to build theirs first. The Dunkerque was to be the last of the class, which while exceptional proved too costly even for the rich French Empire. The replacements for the older Marechal class, the Pluton class would be less capable, closer to the Patrie class in terms of sheer power, although learning from the Paris, the cuts would be in areas such as numbers of weapons, and some speed, rather than in stealth. The Lorraine and Dunkerque together are assigned to the 10e Division de Chasse, part of the Force Stratégique de Croiseurs, a group of 5 cruisers not assigned to specific French Fleets, and tasked with independent action against the enemy in time of war. Their first duty was during the Nouvelle Bretagne crisis of 2298-2299. Nouvelle Bretagne was a barely terracompatible world in the 11 Leonis Minoris star system, approximately 40 light years from Earth. Originally surveyed by a joint Franco-Bavarian expedition in 2279-84, it showed some extremely high mineral concentrations, and possible tantalum, but the survey was called off due to the Central Asian War. In 2298 Germany launched an independent mission to the world, renaming it Neues Rheinland. France tasked DC-10 to clear the "squatters" from the system. On arrival, DC-10 was faced with a small naval squadron consisting of the German Cruisers Holstein and Westfalen. A German transport ship had landed a party of mineral prospectors on the surface. The incident was essentially a waiting game, with the French cruisers aggressively making incursions into the planets space from hiding places in the outer system, trying to provoke the Germans into firing. The German Commander, Kaptain von Ruffenbeck, knew he was outgunned, and waited as long as possible, hoping for reinforcements that never came. Eventually, with his life support becoming strained, he ordered the abandonment of the system to the French.
On their return to Terran Space, Vice Admiral Rochemont grabbed the Division, and immediately tasked them. The pirate known as Le Prince Pourpre raided the supply ship Soleil Rouge en route to Nous Voila in the Beta Canum system. Suspecting that the pirates must have a base in the area, DC-10 was dispatched to hunt down the Prince. It was the Dunkerque that found the base, in the DM+50 1832 system, however, the Prince ship was absent, so she powered down and waited. 7 weeks later, the Princes ship, a converted Éléphant class transport appeared, towing the supply ship for stripping. While the ship was a treasure trove of electronics and materials, it was the tantalum the pirates wanted. The Dunkerque, rather than fighting an open space engagement, with the costs and risks associated with it, allowed the pirate to dock and start stripping the Rouge Étoile. With the pirates occupied, the Dunkerque's marines launched from her with several crewmembers in E-suits, and boarded the pirate ship, seizing control of her weapons systems and destroying them. The Dunkerque powered up, cauterised the bases weapons with laser fire and politely asked the pirates if they "would please fail to surrender so I don't have to bother feeding you", however, surrender they promptly did. 6 weeks later the Dunkerque and Lorraine entered Premieres flight control zone in company of 2 starships, each manned by prize crews of the MSIF, and recieved their prize money. They returned to Earth for a refit and crew rotation in June 2300, the crews having been in deep space for 16 months with only 1 month downtime, way beyond the safe limit. All her crew were reassigned Earthside for 18 months to heal, while a new crew took over their ships.
IFS Paris at battle readiness. (Image courtesy of MSIF Media Operations.)
The Paris has spent the last 2 years operating in the Escadre de Chasse Spécial, the French Navies Opposition Force (OpFor) for exercises. She is assigned currently to Sternjagdgruppe X, a simulated German Battlegroup, where she is acting as DSKMS Kaiser on exercise. Her crew are known to be extremely knowledgeable when it comes to German Tactics, her CO, Captaine Patrice Quebecois, having been CO of FS Aconit at the 3rd Battle of Alpha Centauri.
Paris class Cruiser
IFS Dunkerque, with missile doors closed, taken from the bridge of the DSKMS Holstein during the Nouveau Bretagne crisis of 2299. Note that despite being well within weapons range, and being on an obvious attack course, the spin capsules are not retracted in battle readiness. This type of cat and mouse affair ("is he attacking or is he just toying with me?") characterised the bloodless Cruiser duels of the crisis. (Image courtesy of DSKM.)
The Paris is an 80 meter long starship divided into 3 main sections, the bow section, the spin arms, and the stern. Starting from the very front and working back, the first thing encountered is the navigational radar antenna and the first passive receiver. The passive array is a synthetic aperture array, with 38 1 meter diameter receivers on the hull. Behind his the hull proper starts. The first section of the bow is the missile launchers, a hard vacuum area where the 5 missile launch tubes are situated. Behind them are 3 more missiles in each launcher assembly, awaiting their turn to be launch ready. To maintain the missiles, a lot of automation is used, and if one goes down, the hull hatches must be opened and the device manhandled into the docking bay for repair. The weapon is held in a disposable cradle. When a missile is launched, the cradle is launched with the weapon on by a gauss accellerator, but it stays tethered to the ship, and so warping with the ship. Upon detaching from the cradle, the weapons own drive immediate activates and propels the weapon under the command of the gunner driving her. The tether is then popped, the cradle is free, and another missile cradle is moved up. Behind the launchers is the Centre Tactique, the fighting bridge from where the combat systems are controlled. It houses 18 men, and is adjacent to the accommodations access. The CT consists of 18 computer workstations which control the lasers, submunitions, missiles and lander operations. Behind this is a zero G common room for the CT officers. When on alert, all tactical crew are required to be within 2 minutes of the CT, so this is their for them. On extended alerts the tactical officers often sleep in here. Directly behind the common room is the spin decoupler, this allows access to the spin section whilst spun up. The zero G decoupler is a lot like some old fairground rides. The floor is rotating at one cycle every 20 seconds, and 2 access hatches allow the crew to crawl up into the boom arms. In the boom arms themselves contain the sections of the ship with gravity, varying from 0.15 to 0.2g, depending on where you are. Each contains 44 crew quarters of between 10 and 20 cubic meters each, and the communal facilities such as the washing facilities, the 2 galleys, and the entertainment facilities. Also, the ships main medical centre is located on boom arm 1, staffed by the ships surgeon and 2 nurses. The secondary medical centre is located on the 1st main deck of the aft section. In battle, the wounded are placed in one of 12 automeds to stabilise them until after the battle. Back in the main section, the spin machinery is located behind the spin decoupler, consisting of the large driving motor and the flywheel momentum storage system. The gyroscopic counterbalance system is located at the ships aft, next to the stardrive system. We are now into the main body of the ship, and a deck system operates in this area. There are 5 nominal "decks", aligned across the ship, with the floor pointed to aft. This is so when the reaction thrusters are fired the gravity field aligns to the "floor". Even at full thrust, the reaction thruster only generates 0.3g's and is primarily for orbital operations, as the vessel is not atmosphere capable. Starting at deck 1, we find ourselves on the Command Bridge, the Centre De Commande. This consists of 9 computerised workstations, and 3 command stations. They are laid out so that so the 2 most important stations, navigation and helm control are in front of the captains station. To the right of the captains station is the XOs station, and to the left is the Marine Forces commanders station, and arrayed in a semi circle behind him are the 7 operations stations (communications 1, communications 2, fusion plant monitor, warp drive monitor, power systems monitor, analysis/ science officer and computer systems officer). Deck 2 is the flight control deck. Here is a 840 cubic meter hangar, capable of allowing several varieties of French military small craft to land. Often carried is a Rochard-Ligget S-19 spaceplane. On this deck is also situated the machine and electronics shops that can repair parts, or fabricate new parts. Deck 3 is the cargo deck, and also includes the fuel storage areas. Deck 4 is the largest deck, and consists of the primary engineering space. The engineering consists of a Rochard-Ligget type 6 90MW fusion reactor. The reactor is sealed and contains sufficient fuel for 15-20 years of operation, depending on how much plasma is used in the reaction jets. The core itself is fairly small, a mere 8 meter triple tokamok, surrounded by heat exchangers and the radiation screen. Due to the extreme heat and humidity in this area, it is fairly unpleasant, and engineering is avoided by most people. Manoeuvring is via small plasma thrusters mounted on the hull. These feed directly off exchanged fusion plasma like the main reaction thruster. The final deck is the smallest, the secondary engineering space. This contains the stutterwarp drive itself, the gyroscopic compensators which stop the torque of the spin section affecting the ships course, and the reaction bells for the orbital drives.
Ship Statistics
Original Date of
Design: 2289-2294
Warp Efficiency: 3.95; Power Plant: 90 MW fusion (Fuel: 200 tons for lander); Range: 7.7; Mass: 5,917.375 tons (excluding lander); Cargo Capacity: 860 m3; Comfort: 0; Total Life Support: 88 people for 180 days; Ordnance Carried: 20 Ritage-2 missiles in 5 launchers; Crew: 88 (19 Bridge, 18 TAC, 13 Engineering, 2 Small Craft Maintenance and Pilot, 20 Troops, 12 General Maintenance, 3 Medical) Movement: 8; Targeting Computers: +2; Radiated Signature: 3 (6); Screens: None; Armour: 2; Radial Reflected: 5; Lateral Reflected: 6; Radial Profile: -2; Lateral Profile: +1; Manoeuvrability: 8 Hull Hits: 48/12/24; Power Plant Hits: 60/12 Surface Fixtures Weapons:
8 x1+1dbl masked turrets (2x 1234, 2x 1238, 2x 5678, 2x
4567), all UTES equipped Critical Hits, Crew Section Bridge:
Captain; Executive Officer; Navigator; 2x Communications;
Helm; 2x Engineer; 3x Computer Damage Control: 6 (2 teams) Price: MLv506.955 exclusive of lander Tantalum Usage: 158 points
Technical Notes This design is slightly variant from the SC Naval Architects Manual, and the differences are listed here: 1. Fusion Reactor The Statistics used for
the reactor are: Based on a mass of 33.33 tons per MW, and a price of output/2 2. Custom 68MW Stutterwarp Drive Since I know the underlying formulae for stutterwarp drives, I used 68MW (the power remaining after systems), which has statistics of: 68MW NM Stutterwarp; Volume: 55.1; Mass: 64.7; Price: 85 3. Workstation costs and software You don't pay for either in the standard design. A finished cost (including software) of Lv300,000 each was used. 4. Target Computers Based on the boxed set, each TC is associated with a weapon rather than one per ship, which kind of makes sense. Therefore multiple TCs are installed. 5. Life Support The SC Life Support is O2 only, and doesn't cover CO2 scrubbers, food, water etc. The higher figure of 20kg per man-day all in was used. 6. Advanced Composite Armour All other armours follow a reasonable curve, except for this one, so the armour multiplier was increased to x2, still superior but not as unbalancingly so. 7. Unarmoured spin capsules The spin capsules, as per the Suffren, are not armoured, and nor are their hull hits included. 8. Maintenance Crew This was derived from FF&S, and is essentially one per 500 tons of ship (certain parts excluded). They don't add to DC teams, but do make the ship better able to withstand prolonged cruises. BTW, a massive degree of automation was assumed, in a modern wet naval ship this category would be 120, not 12. 9. Crew Battlestations and Command Crew In addition, I added a few extra crew slots, such as Tactical Centre Commander. In addition, some existing crew got battlestations. 10. The Cost It's been mentioned that the cost is a lot more than other designs. Due to paying for stuff that comes free, it does appear that way, but in fact it isn't. For example, while the book cost of a Kennedy is 154 million, after all the free bits are paid for it's closer to 700 million, and that's before ground crew are paid for. 11. Surface Area The ships has quite literally it's surface almost completely covered by stuff. The hull masking takes about 80% of available surface area, which is why the ship is silver, to selectively radiated thermal radiation away. 12. Fuel Although not a requirement, I'm assuming that reaction fuel for orbital and manoeuvre burns is included in the power plant. The ship will require refuelling, not for the power plant, but for the manoeuvre thrusters. To make a turn in SC will require expending roughly 200kg of reaction mass. Making the assumption that 10% of volume is reaction thruster fuel, then the ship can only make 315 Combat Turns (defined as 60 degree turns in actual combat, nav turns can be more leisurely and consume less fuel) before refuelling. Obviously orbital burns will also consume part of this fuel. I assumed a 8000mps plasma thruster with hydrogen reaction mass in the above calculation. 13. Manoeuvrability The Manoeuvrability of 8 indicates the vessel may make 8 60 degree (1 facing) turns per combat turn. This was derived from the same formulae used to derive spin gravity values. Since this is a military ship, the ends of the ship were allowed to experience 3g's during turning. In one minute the ship can do 8 complete turns, which (when acceleration times etc. were included) was made 8 60 degree combat turns. Use the lower value of this or combat speed. To use, allow 1 turn for every movement point used, upto the manoeuvrability rating, whether or not the MP was used in forward propulsion. |
