Shipbucket

The nation of Grandia, due to its many islands and rivers, has decided upon a contest to design the next river monitor in service.
A note- this is not an official challenge, just a fun design challenge (for more details, you can see the grandian au post).
Anyways whenever you want you can post you're design, and once we have designs a winner will be picked.
Here are the specs- the rest is up too you. Remember, this is a modern setting (and a river monitor so dont make it huge)

It will have a crew of 74
A minumum speed of 12 knots
Either the British 4.5 inch or French 100 mm gun (only 1 is required) as the main weapon
2x40 mm Bofurs guns for anti-drone or basic anti air use
6x20 mm cannon for close in shore support and whatnot
Able to carry 1 helicopter, although a hanger is not a requirement.
It must also carry 2 medium or heavy mortars.
The rest of the design is up too you, ship designers. I look foreward to see what you come up with.

Looking forward what you are going to draw for this Maxwell john.

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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

Aha thank you
Unfortunately I dont have any real software to draw- I did one by hand but its really off scale. I made the post too see what people would come up with to fit the criteria. If you want I can show my drawing but its not good.

Well you can without any problem use the integral Paint program in every windows. Or download Paint.NET or GIMP, free and open-source programs. Couple of minutes and you can start drawing in pixels as much as you want.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

Indeed. But I still do not fully understand what you mean by pixels
I understand that all the ships are in effect a collection of pixels. However it seems ridiculously tedious to create an entire hull, no matter the size, out of them. Maybe its just me looking at it wrong or being lazy (oops) but still.
And then you get the weapons systems and radar (which isnt too bad, considering its a snip from the parts sheet)

So am I missing something or it is boom that simple

It can be labor-intensive to ridiculous level to achieve proper quality and correct representation. Because of that it is time consuming hobby and people value their time and prefer to work on something they want to. Not on call of new guy who appear from nowhere, create topic and not even try to show his own work because... reasons, just give me your time and skills and do something for me.

And because of that this "challenge" will have zero interest.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!

What is the main intended role for this ship?

I ask because for me, slow river crafts, just like armoured trains, have very limited combat survivability on modern battlefield. They have some uses still, but in general, they are not worth investment, unless some very specific conditions make alternatives a bad decision.

In this case, for the same cost you could field a marine unit with amphibious APCs and amphibious tanks that will have better survivability and more firepower.

But, as I mentionned, if there are tasks that can only be served by rivercraft, then those would be built.

Would it directly engage targets along riverbanks or would it stay back and provide artillery support?
And who would be the opponents - regular army or some asymmetric threat of one king or another?

I the first case, you need to take into account it will come under fire of AT missiles, RPGs, artillery, mortars, tank guns etc. plus the usual ~8 and ~13mm MGs and infantry weapons. I am not sure a slow monitor would be able to survive all this. You would need MBT grade armour over much of hull and superstructure.

Armour or not, ordinary tank turret would be better option than naval gun with it's large below deck magazine.

In the second, it will be less in danger, or almost not in danger in case of asymmetric warfare. The best main gun in this case would be adapted turret from self propelled artillery, probably standard 155mm one.

Also helipad is IMHO bad idea. Whatever the tasks for monitor are, carrying highly flammable fuel is a bad idea. Helos could easily operate from coastal bases (1 hour of helo flight time is some 10 hours sail time for your monitor at 12kts). If there are reasons they could only operate from water, it is much safer to use helicopter on floats and a barge to transport fuel.

Monitor without helipad could also be much smaller (I'd say up to 50%).