Question regarding yardships

[ABADDON]

I was just wondering if yardships like the Newgrange and Faslane are actually able to construct new warships from the scratch by receiving the necessary parts via dropship or if it's maintenance and repairs only.
I was just reading the Newgrange's fluff in tro 85 supplemental and about the faslane on sarna, but there are more or less contradictory information given that allow no clear answer from my perspective.
Any help is appreciated. :)

[Medron Pryde]

Short answer:
Yes

Longer answer:
Maybe

Serious answer:
It makes sense that they could basically rebuild or repair or build anything, ala a BattleMech repair bay that can, given time, build a new 'Mech out of parts.

[ABADDON]

Well, not exactly the definite answer I was hoping for, but it'll do.   :P
thx

[Trenchknife]

Yer first mistake was asking for a definitive answer!!   :D

[cray]

I was just wondering if yardships like the Newgrange and Faslane are actually able to construct new warships from the scratch by receiving the necessary parts via dropship or if it's maintenance and repairs only.

If other factories are delivering all the complicated parts and the yardships are just doing the riveting, sure. But you can also build a 'Mech in a stone age barn if other factories are supplying the parts.

[jimdigris]

I suspect that they could build all the parts, but it would take much longer and be more expensive than a traditional yard and supplemental factories.

[ABADDON]

All right, now I more or less have some kind of a "definite" answer. thx a lot, everyone.  :)


edit: though one more question. How does this work usually? Are the factories necessary for the individual parts like Lithium fusion battery, fusion plant, KF core etc. planetside near the actual shipyard, are the factories IN the shipyard itself or are they literally everywhere across a realm, like it was described in the Mjolnir's fluff?

[cray]

edit: though one more question. How does this work usually? Are the factories necessary for the individual parts like Lithium fusion battery, fusion plant, KF core etc. planetside near the actual shipyard, are the factories IN the shipyard itself or are they literally everywhere across a realm, like it was described in the Mjolnir's fluff?

Depends on the company and the product. Boeing clustered a lot of different factory stations at the Galax Megaplex, though Boeing had to import fusion engines from Terra for its Fox production at a different shipyard (not at Galax).

In most cases for something as complicated as a KF drive vessel you'll see some imports from specialists, just like airplane companies today always buy outside jet engines and avionics.

It's never concentrated in a single super-duper shipyard. Even the flexible yardships would probably have to resort to stocks of spare parts for things like electronics.

[Cannon_Fodder]

The mobile shipyards are able to swap out destroyed KF-cores with a delivered replacement. That process has been described as cracking the warship open like pistachio, replace the core, then reassemble the shell. If they can pull that off then building one from scratch with the delivered parts should be possible.

[Gracus]

Depends on the company and the product. Boeing clustered a lot of different factory stations at the Galax Megaplex, though Boeing had to import fusion engines from Terra for its Fox production at a different shipyard (not at Galax).

In most cases for something as complicated as a KF drive vessel you'll see some imports from specialists, just like airplane companies today always buy outside jet engines and avionics.

It's never concentrated in a single super-duper shipyard. Even the flexible yardships would probably have to resort to stocks of spare parts for things like electronics.

Did the yard never develop the ability to construct fusion drives for the Fox and Avalon?  That would suggest they continued receiving components from Terra even after the Wobblie takeover, or that they had stockpiled sufficient drives to continue production through the end of the civil war. 

[Marwynn]

Do you guys know if Intersteller Operations is going to be covering factory/yard rules? Oh how I wish it were so... but alas, I wish many things were so.

That said, would the KF core be considered an integral part of the keel considering its sheer size and mass? Or is just another component like a Naval Autocannon battery?

[Cannon_Fodder]

Do you guys know if Intersteller Operations is going to be covering factory/yard rules? Oh how I wish it were so... but alas, I wish many things were so.

That said, would the KF core be considered an integral part of the keel considering its sheer size and mass? Or is just another component like a Naval Autocannon battery?

Strategic Operations pg 130 has a section titled repairing stranded jumpships. Thats more about delivering the new core rather then the actual repair process.

[cray]

Did the yard never develop the ability to construct fusion drives for the Fox and Avalon?

I have no idea. I wouldn't bet on the yard building the engine, though, that'd be handled by an outside contractor.

Do you guys know if Intersteller Operations is going to be covering factory/yard rules? Oh how I wish it were so... but alas, I wish many things were so.

It'd be a pain in the ass to have them. The rules would be too easy to abuse and would open up continuity questions. "If it's so easy to build a factory, why didn't the 3rd SW have more?" etc.

[Marwynn]

Well, that is true. Even if the factories required specialized materials and equipment to produce naval-grade things, it'd still be problematic.

Alas...

[verybad]

It might be interesting, but having specific rules for factories would limit the designers working with the universe rather than free up players.

Any player or group worth their salt can simply make house rules for factories if they want them, or just say "This faction built a new JumpDrive factory in orbit around planet X, it can build 3 Star Lord drives per year and a new line is being built nearby that will have the ability to build warship drives up to 350K tons. This faction's enemy is hiring you (your mercenary team) to provide cover while our agent (Miss Seksi over there in the black leather pants) infiltrates the line and insert this software into it....which will result in flawed jump drives that misjump after 100 or so jumps...

Rules for actual production can be generalized in the advent of a strategic game. 100 billion c-bills on one planet will get you less than on another, so generalized rules are actually more accurate in terms of the way things actually work.

[tekteam26]

Strategic Operations pg 130 has a section titled repairing stranded jumpships. Thats more about delivering the new core rather then the actual repair process.

It's kind of ironic that in some accounts or opinions, the K-F core is considered an integral part of a WarShip's or JumpShip's structure, hence the reason why WarShips without K-F drives or monitors cannot exist. Yet, at the same time, the canon readily states that a WarShip's K-F core can be completely removed and replaced with a new core as though it was merely a module or component of the WarShip and that the structure of the WarShip would not collapse once the K-F drive core was removed.

[Aerohead]

Collapse?? NO.  be rendered useless under thrust, I can see that.  A warship in drydock experiences no stress to its hull whatsoever.  Aside perhapse the stress of being cracked open for major internal surgery.

[cray]

Collapse?? NO.  be rendered useless under thrust, I can see that.  A warship in drydock experiences no stress to its hull whatsoever.  Aside perhapse the stress of being cracked open for major internal surgery.

Well said.

Real oceanic warships can and have had core structural members (keels) repaired, like the USS Samuel Roberts. It's generally not cost effective to do so (as also noted for KF core replacement), but has been accomplished when it's a matter of national pride or wartime emergency.

[rlbell]

I suspect that they could build all the parts, but it would take much longer and be more expensive than a traditional yard and supplemental factories.

The ability to make bits from raw materials would be limited.  One of the big problems is manufacturing microelectronics.  The best that could be hoped for is that the yardship has a line for producing Field Programmable Logic Arrays, so that the functionality of any particular rack mounted board not found in spares could be breadboarded with purpose burned FPGA's.  Small (relatively speaking) structural members can be custom made by welding and machining bits of stock material, but large castings are out.  Unless a yardship included foundries to smelt metals and rolling mills to reshape billets into appropriately sized bar stock and sheets (and ships are made of steel), it will need the support of an industrial city (if it does include these facilities, it is an industrial city).

Moving down to Earth, a car assembly plant could  manufacture nuts and bolts with the machining facilities available to the millwrights that maintain the equipment, but they could not make the nuts and bolts fast enough to keep the plant running if external sources of threaded fasteners wewre unavailable.  To gain some appreciation for the problems of complete vertical integration of a manufacturing process on a single site read up on the Ford Motor Company's Rouge River Facility. 

[tekteam26]

Collapse?? NO.  be rendered useless under thrust, I can see that.  A warship in drydock experiences no stress to its hull whatsoever.  Aside perhapse the stress of being cracked open for major internal surgery.

So you want the K-F drive to be an integral member of a WarShip's structure? From an engineering standpoint, that is one of the most poorly thought-out concepts imaginable. Consider this; a K-F drive core is essentially a cryogenically cooled, superconducting hypercapacitor sitting inside of a giant thermos bottle. The very LAST thing that you would want to do is to subject it to the stresses and strains of having to support the accelerations of a maneuvering WarShip. The twisting and bending moments alone would cause massive leakage of the supercooled helium and rupture of the seals, not to mention microfractures of the germanium alloy core itself that can destroy the core's ability to store a charge and create the jump field. The K-F core actually would need to be isolated from the internal structure of the ship by shock mountings attached to the core so that it would carry as few of the bending and torsional loads as possible, not the other way around.

From an engineering standpoint, not having the K-F core installed actually lessens the load on the real internal structure of the WarShip.

[cray]

TekTeam, if you're worried about canon fluff invalidating your homemade monitor rules, don't. You can do whatever you want in your home game. I'm just nitpicking here:

The K-F core actually would need to be isolated from the internal structure of the ship by shock mountings attached to the core so that it would carry as few of the bending and torsional loads as possible, not the other way around

The KF core SI rules make it clear the KF core is not limited to the helium bottle and titanium-germanium core. Those in WarShips, notably, have a tolerance for enormous physical damage (their SI values) with altering their functioning in the least. That's highly indicative that KF cores include a fair amount of beefy structure because, IMO, the brittle intermetallic Ti-Ge core aren't going to tolerate a single capital point of damage. Whether that structural strength is directly in the helium bottle or some primary structural shell doesn't matter - the KF core still has a significant structural integrity of its own.

So you want the K-F drive to be an integral member of a WarShip's structure? From an engineering standpoint, that is one of the most poorly thought-out concepts imaginable. Consider this; a K-F drive core is essentially a cryogenically cooled, superconducting hypercapacitor sitting inside of a giant thermos bottle.

There's a large body of real world engineering for high-strength cryogenic containers able to carry several hundred times their own weight, endure high accelerations, endure shocks and oscillations that would shake another structure apart, and act as primary structural members for high performance vehicles. Structural failures in these "thermos bottles" have been unknown for 50 years; it's the engines, guidance, fairings, and payload that fail.

not to mention microfractures of the germanium alloy core itself

You don't rigidly couple the Ti-Ge core to the shell of the helium bottle. Because there's always going to be some difference in rigidity between a solid bar of one material and a hollow shell around it. There'll be some compliance in the connectors to handle that differential wiggling.

[Aerohead]

So you want the K-F drive to be an integral member of a WarShip's structure? From an engineering standpoint, that is one of the most poorly thought-out concepts imaginable. Consider this; a K-F drive core is essentially a cryogenically cooled, superconducting hypercapacitor sitting inside of a giant thermos bottle. The very LAST thing that you would want to do is to subject it to the stresses and strains of having to support the accelerations of a maneuvering WarShip. The twisting and bending moments alone would cause massive leakage of the supercooled helium and rupture of the seals, not to mention microfractures of the germanium alloy core itself that can destroy the core's ability to store a charge and create the jump field. The K-F core actually would need to be isolated from the internal structure of the ship by shock mountings attached to the core so that it would carry as few of the bending and torsional loads as possible, not the other way around.

From an engineering standpoint, not having the K-F core installed actually lessens the load on the real internal structure of the WarShip.

And yet it seems thats is exactly what people (in the battletech universe) have been doing for several hundred years.  Seems to work out fine.  I like canon.  It works for me. 

I dont pretend to be a structural engineer or anything,  but it makes sense to me that ANYthing that occupies nearly 50% of an objects mass, becomes an integral part of that objects structural integrity.

[Cannon_Fodder]

Having the core be a structural member seams pretty silly.

I doubt there are spare K-F cores laying around. I always though a yardship with reinforced repair facilities would remove the destroyed core along with with any other component that would interfere with jumping. Then jump away to a safe spot to wait while a spare core is constructed. Maybe even hand off the Jumpship/Warship to a space station via naval tug and let it wait for repairs there.

[cray]

Having the core be a structural member seams pretty silly.

It's a two-way street, thanks to the action-reaction nature of structural stresses. If you sufficiently brace a KF core to keep it safe, protected, and granted the non-trivial structural integrity values of KF cores, then those braces work back against the surrounding vehicle. In other words, if there's a structural beam that exerts up to 100 tons of force to hold a KF core into place, the beam is likewise pressed back with 100 tons of force.

And when that isolated core is 50 or 95% of the ship's mass, you damn well better secure it to the rest of the structure well or sudden maneuvering will have that tough core come ripping through the rest of the ship like a battering ram.

I doubt there are spare K-F cores laying around.

In the Succession Wars era, no, there weren't a lot of spare cores lying around. But neither were there yardships. If you were going to repair one of the invaluable ships (as opposed to writing it off and building a new), you either found a spare core or built one, then jumped it to the stranded ship.

And in eras when there were yardships, it usually wasn't worth the cost of replacing core - it was about as easy to build a replacement ship.

I always though a yardship with reinforced repair facilities would remove the destroyed core along with with any other component that would interfere with jumping. Then jump away to a safe spot to wait while a spare core is constructed. Maybe even hand off the Jumpship/Warship to a space station via naval tug and let it wait for repairs there.

Read Strategic Operations pg130, "Repairing Stranded JumpShips."

[Cannon_Fodder]

It's a two-way street, thanks to the action-reaction nature of structural stresses. If you sufficiently brace a KF core to keep it safe, protected, and granted the non-trivial structural integrity values of KF cores, then those braces work back against the surrounding vehicle. In other words, if there's a structural beam that exerts up to 100 tons of force to hold a KF core into place, the beam is likewise pressed back with 100 tons of force.

And when that isolated core is 50 or 95% of the ship's mass, you damn well better secure it to the rest of the structure well or sudden maneuvering will have that tough core come ripping through the rest of the ship like a battering ram.

I know that the bracing to hold the KF-Core in place would provide a large amount of structural support to the vessel. But not the core its self.

Read Strategic Operations pg130, "Repairing Stranded JumpShips."

I miss spoke more then anything. It more how I "feel" yardships "should' work.

Repair facilities do not effect the cost of the KF-Core like docking collars. Meaning it doesn't allow the vessel inside to jump with the yard ship.

[cray]

I know that the bracing to hold the KF-Core in place would provide a large amount of structural support to the vessel. But not the core its self.

Oh, no, of course not. But the "KF core" of a JumpShip or WarShip consists of more than just a bar of titanium-germanium. As I noted earlier, the "balance of plant" equipment is where the structural strength is. I wouldn't put much stress on a brittle intermetallic chilled to 4K.

[Cannon_Fodder]

Oh, no, of course not. But the "KF core" of a JumpShip or WarShip consists of more than just a bar of titanium-germanium. As I noted earlier, the "balance of plant" equipment is where the structural strength is. I wouldn't put much stress on a brittle intermetallic chilled to 4K.

Basically, even with the titanium-germanium, in theory, a Jumpship/Warship will still function as normally (other then not jumping).

[cray]

Basically, even with the titanium-germanium, in theory, a Jumpship/Warship will still function as normally (other then not jumping).

Hoping for monitors?

[Cannon_Fodder]

Though there's an odd lack of monitors in BT. The closest you get is to those tonnages without a KF core is the SI 1 space stations.

I always found that puzzling too. Maybe Warships were salvaged with more frequency then canon suggests or they are scuttled to prevent capture.

[cray]

Psst. Last post was edited before your new post landed. :)