MaiShirunaiispretty
Corporal
Reged: 12/20/08
Posts: 58
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Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
#153006 - 12/20/08 12:06 PM (207.160.205.13)
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Can someone clarify the Nightlord as being a battleship WarShip or not? If memory serves me correctly, then it seemed like I read somewhere in BattleSpace Sourcebook that a battleship WarShip is a multimilliion ton vessel. And if memory also serves me correctly, then it seems like I read that the Nightlord is a 1,200,000 ton WarShip. So how is it that the Nightlord is a battleship when it's not multimillion tons (it's not at least two million tons)? For that matter is the Texas and McKenna WarShips still considered battleships? Do you round up/round down tonnages to nearest million to determine if a WarShip is a battleship? Nightlord seems like it's a light cruiser or maybe a heavy frigate. A frigate is a medium sized WarShip and half 2.5 million tons is 1.25 million tons.
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Lafeel
Sergeant Major
Reged: 01/02/08
Posts: 398
Loc: 104, Reykjavík, Iceland
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: MaiShirunaiispretty]
#153013 - 12/20/08 01:52 PM (157.157.75.183)
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It is. If only for being over a million tons in mass.
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http://www.Lafeel.dragonadopters.com/dragonimage_19858_5019_pixel
http://www.Lafeel.dragonadopters.com/dragonimage_3877_5019_pixel
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MaiShirunaiispretty
Corporal
Reged: 12/20/08
Posts: 58
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: Lafeel]
#153017 - 12/20/08 03:48 PM (207.160.205.13)
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So how does a designer determine if a WarShip is a corvette, destroyer, frigate, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battlecruiser, or battleship?
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Wow, those bracing maneuvers sure do come in handy when firing proximity fused precision cluster flak ammo at a Balancer LAM. Unfortunately they make my 'Mech an immobile target for that LAM. Oh well, at least I'm getting partial cover.
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MacLeod
Sergeant Major
Reged: 06/16/02
Posts: 330
Loc: Santa Cruz, California
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: MaiShirunaiispretty]
#153025 - 12/20/08 04:01 PM (169.233.104.154)
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Other than calling it a battleship for being over a million tons, it's a question of its battlefield role. For that, look ship classes up on Wikipedia for a better idea.
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Drugs don't kill people, pancreatic cancer kills people.
... and whoever heard of a drug that causes pancreatic cancer?
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Lafeel
Sergeant Major
Reged: 01/02/08
Posts: 398
Loc: 104, Reykjavík, Iceland
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: MacLeod]
#153029 - 12/20/08 06:38 PM (157.157.75.183)
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There is that too, but sheer tonnage is the simplest explanation.
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http://www.Lafeel.dragonadopters.com/dragonimage_19858_5019_pixel
http://www.Lafeel.dragonadopters.com/dragonimage_3877_5019_pixel
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Cray
General
Reged: 07/27/01
Posts: 4131
Loc: North America
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: MaiShirunaiispretty]
#153030 - 12/20/08 06:51 PM (97.97.243.184)
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Quote:
So how does a designer determine if a WarShip is a corvette, destroyer, frigate, light cruiser, heavy cruiser, battlecruiser, or battleship?
Because someone tells him it constitutes a cruiser, frigate, etc. Seriously: the terms are almost arbitrary and vary from decade to decade, navy to navy, person to person.
The US Navy's experience with cruisers is a good example. Once upon a time, cruisers were just ships that, well, cruised long distances and dealt with problems all over the world. They weren't as big and bad as battleships, but they were more versatile. Then people started building ships out of iron and steel, and using steam engines, and new classifications appeared: armored cruisers, protected cruisers, etc. Sometimes cruisers got tied down to big fleets and were used as mini-battleships or super-sized destroyers instead of cruising everywhere independently.
In the 1910s and 1920s, people were feeling their way toward battle cruisers and (using the term loosely) super cruisers. Battle Cruisers were *generally* considered to be ships as big as battleships, armed like battleships, but as fast as cruisers and with much lighter armor than battleships, but the usage varied from navy to navy. Battle cruisers blurred into "super cruisers" or "large cruisers," which were just extensions of the original cruiser idea: an enlargement of a ship designed for long range cruising and "problem solving." The best example of the "super cruisers" are the US's WW2 "Alaska class," which are often considered battle cruisers depending on who you ask (because they did have a lot of battle cruiser characteristics), but the US didn't intend to use them as battle cruisers and thus only considered them "large cruisers" because they had bigger guns and thicker armor than the treaty-defined "heavy cruisers."
In other words, the designers' intentions also define what class a ship is.
Speaking of treaties, the Washington and London Naval Treaties came along and invented - on paper - new types of cruisers: light cruisers and heavy cruisers, defined by the size of their guns. Heavy cruisers had 8" guns, while light cruisers guns smaller than 6.1". That was it: some geeks in suits and ties created classes of warships on paper. They separately limited cruisers to a certain maximum tonnage, but a light cruiser and heavy cruiser could have the same tonnage (and same armor, and same speed) - they were only defined (on paper) as having different guns.
After WW2, construction of "real" cruisers almost halted while nations came to terms with shrinking budgets, nuclear bombs, nuclear power, guided missiles, and the battle lessons of WW2 (carriers rule, battleships drool). The US kept designing cruisers on paper because the bulky and crude guided missiles needed bigger ships than frigates or destroyers, but never went anywhere with them.
Finally, the US tried to put guided missiles and nuclear power together with an experimental guided missile **destroyer,** the Long Beach, in the 1960s. This ship was about 10,000 tons (as big as most pre-WW2 "treaty cruisers" and as big as 1900AD battleships), but it was a destroyer. Then the admirals thought about it a bit and relabeled it a cruiser. The Ticonderoga-class cruisers also started as non-cruisers (IIRC, they use the Spruance-class destroyer's hull) but got relabeled as cruisers at the whims of admirals.
I mentioned some historical comparisons of the Long Beach destroyer/cruiser/thingamabob, and that's worth exploring. The US's Des Moines-class cruisers, designed and started during WW2 and finished just after, were the baddest and meanest heavy cruisers built. (Of course, the ill-defined battle cruisers and large cruisers were, well, larger). They had the rapid fire, auto-loading 8" guns that could hose a target with 330-pound shells, which is just what the US really needed in its cruisers at the start of WW2 but never got until after the war. The Des Moines were about the same tonnage as the 1905AD groundbreaking British battleship Dreadnought, give or take a percent. But you know what? The Dreadnought was still a very different animal than a cruiser, despite the tonnage. The Dreadnought had vastly thicker and more armor than the Des Moines, and much bigger guns. (Kind of raises the question of what the Des Moines did with all its tonnage, right?)
What are the lessons here? Well, when designating a ship class...
1) Tonnage doesn't matter much, except when it does.
2) Weapons and armor can be all over the place, except when a Navy decides to hold to some standard classification of ships.
3) Navies can redesignate ships to bypass laws or treaties, get things funded (sometimes governments will set aside certain budgets for different ship classes, so if you want to get cruiser money for destroyers, call your destroyers "cruisers"), or to satisfy the whims of admirals and politicians
4) From decade to decade, classes differ - except when they don't
5) From navy to navy, classes differ - except when they don't
6) Classes may depend on actual usage (witness how the Alaskas were "large cruisers" instead of "battle cruisers")
So why is the Nightlord a battleship? Because someone said it was. Or because it was intended to be used like a battleship. Or because for its builders, it was big enough to be a battleship. Or because at that time, its builders said it had the characteristics of a battleship.
For another navy, the Nightlord might be a corvette or a frigate or big gun blowy-up thingamabob.
The same applies to any other ship "class" in BattleTech. You're looking at vessels built centuries apart by many different nations. Any class is a loose term at best. This is discussed in the new BattleTech book "Strategic Operations," in its chapter 14, "aerospace operations." (Or chapter 8, aerospace technology. I forget which.)
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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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Lafeel
Sergeant Major
Reged: 01/02/08
Posts: 398
Loc: 104, Reykjavík, Iceland
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: Cray]
#153033 - 12/20/08 06:59 PM (157.157.75.183)
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To give some sort of comparison, lets compare the DCA Navy in my, entirely non canonical, timeline
Corvettes: Absolutely no more than 300.000 tons, dedicated escort vessels for either large warships or unarmed jumpships, albeit with a very heavy (but focused up front) anti ship armament for their size
"Light" Destroyers: From corvette size to 500.000 tons, basically super corvettes, primarily squadron flagships for corvette squadrons.
"Heavy" Destroyers: 510-700.000 tons, "maids of all work", ie the classic destroyer roles
Frigates: 700-800.000 tons, raiders, pure and simple
Cruisers: 800-990.000 tons, ship killers, pure and simple.
Carriers: same tonnage span as the cruisers, self explanatory.
Battleships: anywhere from a million tons to two and a half million tons. Fleet flagships.
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GundamMerc
Private
Reged: 11/07/07
Posts: 35
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: Lafeel]
#154244 - 04/02/09 07:00 AM (216.48.130.13)
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Cray, that was a very informing post.
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Karagin
General
Reged: 04/21/01
Posts: 6324
Loc: Ft. Hood TX (Killeen)
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: MaiShirunaiispretty]
#154649 - 04/25/09 12:22 AM (79.141.17.231)
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Simple, somewhere along the way the writers changed the weight, but not the name. Then they either retconned it out or forgot about it. Be happy it didn't end up being another wonder toy for the WoB.
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Karagin
Given time and plenty of paper, a philosopher can prove anything.
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Cray
General
Reged: 07/27/01
Posts: 4131
Loc: North America
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Re: Nightlord WarShip really a battleship?
[Re: Karagin]
#154691 - 04/27/09 06:18 AM (147.160.136.10)
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Quote:
Simple, somewhere along the way the writers changed the weight, but not the name.
When did the Nightlord's tonnage change?
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Mike Miller, Materials Engineer
Disclaimer: Anything stated in this post is unofficial and non-canon unless directly quoted from a published book. Random internet musings of a BattleTech writer are not canon.
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