Shipbucket

where the hell have you heard warships operate at low speeds? there are certain warships that do, but the combatant certainly not!

let me put it in an short list.
traditional:
-normal efficiency
-the rudders need an flow to work properly, so at low speed their effectiveness goes down
-relatively cheap and fault proof to produce and operate

azimuth:
- more efficient then traditional
- no more rudders needed, and the manouvrability is about the same for every speed (at high speed it goes even down somewhat, depending on the design)
- low reliability and difficult to maintain
- relatively expensive

azipod:
- less complicated then azimuth
- slightly less efficient due to the larger cross section of the pod (the engine has to fit in)
- no more rudders needed, and the manouvrability is about the same for every speed (at high speed it goes even down somewhat, depending on the design)
- reliability is good (electrical engines....) but has problems sometimes because it is relatively new, I have yet to learn of an warship that uses them (I might have forgotten though)
- expensive as hell

I do not know what I would choose for this ship, as I would never even try to draw something like this......
ow and correct me if I say something wrong, I am doing this out of the top of my head in between my homework, late at night.....

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Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

"warships spends the majority of their time trundling about at surprisingly low speeds so a bulbous would be little more than extra weight.. (AFAIR a Burke spends abut 3% of its sea time above 18kts)" ~Thiel on bulbous bows. Even if he's right about the bow in and of itself, was I not supposed to take "Warships operate at low speeds" from that? If not then I misunderstood where he was going with his comment.

And ok, do you think they might become more seen in the future after kinks have been worked out, and prices manage to go down? Or would they pretty much be civilian and special use only?

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

I told him that. Warships spends more than 90% of their time puttering along at less than 15 knots. Of course, they tend to be going rather a lot faster when they're shooting, but for everyday work 15kts is more than enough.

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That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

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Source Materiel is always welcome.

So the question then is, build a combat ship to perform best during combat, or during the day to day grind?

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

What do you think?

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)

well, that depends on what you see as low speeds and what as fast.

explaining this would take a lot of time, which I don't have right now....
keep in mind that you are now designing an ship that is novel in the world. for parts like this I mostly advice 'if it isn't used on quite a few on planned or real ships, do not use it or at least do a lot of research before using it. right now, your entire ship fit's in that category. and this is exactly why all the bucketeers advice to do some real ships first..... you learn what is possible and what not.

EDIT: sniped by thiel.

warships are build for high speeds..... at least they were. right now seakeeping and systems start to take first place (ok, in case of the zumwalt not seakeeping, and in case of the LCS still speed, but I like to look at european designs in this case ) but as said above, to really explain warships, I would have to write entire books over here...... about knowledge I don't even have.

_________________
Drawings are credited with J.Scholtens
I ask of you to prove me wrong. Not say I am wrong, but prove it, because then I will have learned something new.
Shipbucket Wiki admin

The problem here is that you're looking for a simple and consistent solution to a problem that has neither.

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“Close” only counts with horseshoes, hand grenades, and tactical nuclear weapons.
That which does not kill me has made a grave tactical error

Worklist

Source Materiel is always welcome.

Both electrical and mechanical systems exist.

I would think combat, but it sounds like that's not always the case.

And the problem with drawing existing designs to learn how to make new designs is... it doesn't work. To learn how to make new things you have to go deeper than just copying existing things, you have to learn why they were made the way they were. With my gun designs I've done a total of about 2 recreations of real world guns, and learned nothing from simply copying them. What I have done is spent weeks reading articles and pages and whatnot about how certain firearm technology came to be, how certain tech works, pros and cons of contradicting tech, things like that. I can do that with guns because they are much much smaller and less detailed than ships. To learn the kind of in depth theories I know about a single type of gun tech, with a ship, I'd have to sit down and study a thousand different things.

I can look at a real ship and think "Ok, it uses this, but why?" The why is the important part, not the fact that it uses it. Looking at an M4 I can see that it uses a direct impingement system, why? Because the designer felt the pros and cons were better than the other possible systems (which I won't get into here). Now that I know that, I can make my own choice on which system I feel is 'superior'. Many believe that the M4's D.I. system is a bad idea. Just because real life does something doesn't mean it's the best thing to do. I could look at 20 real world ships and see that they all use a traditional propulsion system, why? Probably because the others are too expensive for what they give in return, and not necessarily because traditional propulsion is actually better. In many cases it could be because the designer, or the government funding the designer, isn't willing to risk pushing the envelope. They don't want to have their money go down the drain if it doesn't work. Which is fine, but progress demands risk.

I'm saying this generally really, if I personally ever plan on using tech like the azipod in a design, I will do a bunch of research on it first. But the thing I excel in is taking a design and making a good sounding theory to improve it. So if I did decide to use an azipod, I'm sure I'd have some nice little diagrams showing why I think my improved azipod would be a fairly sound idea.

But I've rambled way too much now, sorry about that. What I've taken from this so far is that while combat ships spend most of their time chillin in port or just cruising from point to point, I'd rather design one for peak combat performance. And that azi-things are too expensive in the current day and age to make them viable on combat ships. In the future, I personally would greatly appreciate the added handling at the expense of complexity, when price is no longer as much of an issue.

(Also for the record, I told my fencing instructor the same basic thing about drills vs on hands learning, I hold this viewpoint almost everywhere in my life)


Edit:
Every problem has a solution though, simple or complex. I do suppose that if a nation had a problem with fuel they'd be more worried about the daily grind, if they fought often they'd prioritize performance. And of course it could infinitely more complicated lol

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Equality is by nature unfair ~ Hail Britannia.

If you want to draw a real ship WELL, you have to study it... you have to know what every single part is, what it does, where it goes, when it was added, etc. Drawing real ships WELL takes MUCH more talent, skill, and time invested than drawing AU ships.

I know what I know about ship design from all the time spent drawing real ships... and not just drawing them, but reading about them, building models of them, and researching them as much as I can.

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USN components, camouflage colors, & reference links (World War II only)