"VSF sky ships are upside down" Topic

I started a thread about this months ago, but it was deleted because of "the bug". It was a fun discussion, so I'm starting it again.

There are lots of miniatures (and neat scratch-builds) of VSF/Steampunk "sky ships" that are really fun to look at. However, one thing nearly always bothered me about them: I think they're upside down.

Many "sky ship" miniatures are closely modeled on period ships, like pre-dreadnoughts or ironclads lifted out of the water, perhaps with some stubby wings or tail vanes grafted on. I would like just a little more thoughtful treatment of the topic. I think much of the stuff sticking out of the hull on a sky ship should be on the bottom or sides.

Victorian engineers were smart, creative, and came up with a lot of really innovative solutions to tough design problems, which is how we got odd-looking ships like USS Monitor, Novgorod (the round Russian ironclad), the "pair of slippers" (HMS Nile and Victoria), and a whole slew of French pre-dreadnoughts, to name just a few. Early submarines could be even weirder, and even the rather prescient Nautilus had a few odd features. All of those weird designs make sense once you understand the design goals and technology limitations. So, let's think more like a Victorian genius inventor.

A big ship with big guns lifting into the sky is going to have to shoot downward. A ship is a mobile artillery platform, and a sky ship is a mobile artillery platform that can move over land, an awesome way to disrupt army movements and supply routes, or destroy enemy installations like bases, ports, airfields, factories, etc. Many (or even most) of the gun turrets should be slung underneath or studding the side edges of the vessel, with gun ports that allow a full downward vertical depression of the barrel.

In 3D battles a ship will also have to shoot upward sometimes, at other sky ships. It would make sense to have a few guns on the topside, or maybe in turrets along the side edges that can also elevate to vertical (or nearly vertical).

The crew compartments of zeppelins and blimps are on the bottom because the view of the ground below is far more important than the view of the sky above. Sky ships would have the added complication of a sky occasionally full of other sky ships, so really the most likely place for a bridge is on the nose of the sky ship, with a good view up, down and most of the way around. Secondary viewing bridges elsewhere and connected by voicepipe would be a great idea too.

The topside would be the best place to land or "dock" small flyers (the "ships' boats" of the skyship genre).

A luxury cruise skyship ("Skytanic"?) would almost certainly have a swimming pool up there. :-)

The amount of lifting force available and it's method of application would factor heavily in ship designs, so should really be defined, even if the explanation involves serious quantities of handwavium. For instance:

• If the force is applied better by large flat planes of material "pushing" down on the ground or disrupting gravity above it or something, then the bottom would have to be big and flat. Weapons, viewports and access holes would move to the top and sides.
  
• If the force is applied from inside (like helium, only stronger), the ship can be studded with stuff all over the shell, like most sci-fi spaceships.
  
• If the force is through some kind of projector like an invisible "force beam" leg, there should be one or more big projector-looking-thingies facing downward.
  

And so on.

Armor on sky ships presents a very interesting set of design problems. More about that later.

- Ix

Weren't most turrets really, really heavy, and essentially just sitting in their sockets (barbettes?), held in by gravity? I'd think you might keep the really big turrets topside, so you don't have to anchor them.

For hitting targets beneath you, well – bombs! But yes, you would want some turrets to keep pesky light vehicles away.

I do like your line of reasoning – even with handwavium, show me how it works.

(Really, I'd like to see all three of those methods represented. Maybe with combo hybrids, and the like.)

A big ship with big guns lifting into the sky is going to have to shoot downward

Not a foregone conclusion. The primary intended purpose would be to engage other sky ships, not to engage ground targets. That mission is better performed with gravity weapons (bombs), which can contain more explosive per weight of projectile since they do not have to withstand the stresses of being propelled down a gun barrel, and can thus have thinner casings. For comparison , an aerial bomb would have about 50% of its weight as explosive filler, while a naval common shell would have about 5%.

Ventral gun mounts could be like the old JU-86 retractable 'bucket' types for howitzers or light/medium quick-fires.

Deadfall ordnance and rockets are cheaper.
'X'-mast masts and sails, beam yardarms and ventral/dorsal mast arrangements will interfere with pivot and broadside gun mounts making foreward a nd rear chasers common.
Gatlings could gaff aeriel torpedos an sky mines.

I read your thoughts with interest. My own "handwavium" has ships looking like ironclads. The main reason is that lift in my world is very (very) limited. In fact, sails come back in vogue to save on fuel… (Background below). So the ships are relatively very small. Well, the cool ones. "Bombers" are in essence zeppelins carrying gravity weapons. The skyship is designed to control the sky and let the zeppelin through. The hull has to be smooth and as much as possible unperforated so no viewports or turrets underneath.

Skyships! Background
In my world a "lift" is achieved by running current through a metal hull. The metal is quite rare (so capture, not destruction is the goal) and there is a decided curve of diminishing returns on hull size. So a 300' ship is about as big as they can practically get. Armor is still relatively light, and boarding parties are a major component of ship to ship combat. Weight is so critical that the ammo rules are quite restrictive. My ship models are 1:300 scale and will feature boarding parties in 6mm.

The villain has an as yet undisclosed vein of the rare metal and is out to destroy opposing fleets with fire. He makes "flame ships" that are small and carry short range flame throwers. He has lots of enemies, a few allies and is not a proper sort of warrior, burning men alive on purpose.

Good points nvdoyle and rmaker about the weight of explosive in bombs vs. shells, and I'll even add another: in the era before computers (even mechanical ones), naval shooting ranges were terribly short (a mile with iron sights, 2-4 miles with optics), so even relatively inaccurate gravity-propelled bombs might achieve more hits on a big stationary ground target than a gun.

I'll counter with a few extra considerations:

• Guns should still be able to aim up or down because enemy skyships will maneuver for altitude advantage like any aircraft. If you build in a blind spot, you can bet the enemy is going to try to hit you there…
  
• Dropped bombs are terrible at hitting moving craft, as proven in WW2 with much more advanced airplanes, bombs and bombsights. I imagine a sky ship would rather shoot at other ships than drop bombs on them.
  

- Ix

Weren't most turrets really, really heavy, and essentially just sitting in their sockets (barbettes?), held in by gravity

Yes, because they were armored and not expected to rotate in any plane except the horizontal. Sky ships change the calculus, and period engineers were just as smart as today's, so would probably dream up something more applicable.

Ventral gun mounts could be like the old JU-86 retractable 'bucket' types for howitzers or light/medium quick-fires.

Exactly, and that's a sophisticated solution.

Even a big slot in the angled underside that lets a gun inside the hull de-elevate through about 90° of elevation might be enough for broadside guns. The casemate batteries on late 19th C. armored ships were often just an armored side with pivot guns wearing their own gun shields aimed through big holes.

sky mines

Holy crap! Those two words open a whole can of worms. I hadn't even thought about that idea…

- Ix

Armor poses a significant weight problem, so most armoring schemes in history have included thicker armor over favored critical areas (magazines, weapons, engines, bridge) and light armor or no armor over some pretty significant expanses of the vehicle.

Different kinds of vehicles get armored differently, depending on the design goals:

• Ships operate in a 2D environment and are mostly subject to flat trajectory fire, so get heavily armored vulnerable spaces (magazines, engines, bridge), moderately armored sides, and lightly armored decks.
  
• Airplanes have to be light, so get armored only in strategically located areas – the pilot's seat, a bulkhead or two, some areas over explosive items like fuel tanks and ammo cans, etc.
  
• AFVs with metal armor ahd thicker armor in front, lighter armor on the sides, and lightest armor on top (basically a simple order of precedence favoring the surfaces most likely to be hit in action).
  

Sky ships have some different considerations:

• A sky ship might be subject to fire from any angle, so the facing with the thickest armor might depend on the vessel's role: ground attack ships armored on the bottom, aerial battleships armored on the front and/or sides, anti-aircraft ships armored on the top and sides, etc.
  
• Presumably the lofting device would be considered top priority and protected with the thickest armor.
  
• Like many aircraft, a lot of the strength of a sky ship might be in its internal structure rather than armor. WW2 bombers and some early armored ships (e.g. Lepanto & Italia, HMS Inflexible) provide some novel examples of different approaches to this idea. You don't necessarily have to stop the shell from penetrating if you can survive the damage it causes inside.
  

- Ix

Sky mines: like naval mines, but lighter, and on parachutes.

You're absolutely correct about turrets being held in by gravity, by the way. If a ship like, say, the USS Texas had capsized, her turrets would have slipped right out and gone to the sea floor.

Or maybe Gallifreyan like sky trenches, generated from wood burning generators (of course).

Wouldn't the sky mines be on balloons?

A big ship with big guns lifting into the sky is going to have to shoot downward.

Predreadnought, you'd have to be pretty close to the ground/target. No Norden bombsight, much less gun targeting.

Also, it's about 'getting there.'

And, if you assume, given the relatively short effective ranges, altitudes would have to be fairly close for interception combat to be effective, you don't wait til you're on top of the enemy. Even if you are a bit elevated, you can shoot up to shoot down (gravity's rainbow).

Lastly, if it's liftwood, there can't be anything underneath, or it'll disrupt the lift. ;->=

Doug

For one who has played with Skyships or as I call them Flying Pre-Dreadnoughts and using the AERONEF rules I sorta understand what you're saying.

I've been playing with AERONEF for several years now and I really enjoy it but I always thought that these rules were not complete.

Now we have Imperial Skies which I just got my rulebook recently.

And these rules have things which Aeronef never got around to doing.

For example they cover Aerial Mines which a ship that has them could deploy them as they sail onward and a ship that sails within 4in of the mine suffers a d6 worth of damage.

And Imperial Skies does allow one Skyship/Airship can fire upward at an enemy ship but at a minus to the dice since the underside of an Airship in indeed armoured.

Also you cannot drop bombs on another Airship only on ground targets.

Just my two cents.

There is the issue of gun size. Aeronef assumed, IIRC, lighter and quick firing guns due to recoil issues.

I guess you could come up with some form of compensation for larger guns?

Warships mount the smallest guns they can to achieve their design goals. There have existed bigger guns than a ship could utilize in most eras of gunpowder warfare. Through the ironclad era, guns got bigger and bigger to defeat armor, peaking with the monstrous Armstrong 17.7" MLR. In the 1890-1910 period, maximum bore size sort of shrank back to around 12" again and stabilized there because breechloading 12" guns using improved cordite charges were powerful enough to defeat any armor afloat, and the lighter guns were much easier to design into ships. After 1910, guns started to get bigger again because the ships themselves got bigger and tougher enough to require bigger shells to inflict fatal damage.

If the sky ships can be brought down by a storm of smaller caliber hits, common "anti-skyship" guns would be smaller. If they're tough to bring down and get tougher with each generation like oceanic battleships, the guns will go through cycles similar to Real Life™. The details of the handwavium matter.

As already discussed, destroying surface targets would probably be most easily accomplished with dropped bombs, so bigger guns won't (usually) be necessary for that. If the guns aboard are already huge for other purposes, however, you can bet they'll be used on anything the owner thinks they can destroy. Holding a hammer makes everything look like a nail…

- Ix

Don't overlook light weapons with possibilities.

A machine gun / anti-tank rifle with incendiary bullets (phosphorous tipped?).

Carronades firing flechettes to target crew and infrastructure (wiring, voice tubes, pipes, cables).

Wow! What a cool discussion especially since recently I have been thinking of revisiting my VSF Colonies of Venus project. The natives, i.e. lizardmen have some members who ride pteranodons and other pterodactyls into battle. Mainly as scouting units than some type of shock air cavalry. I thought it would be cool to have some of the Pterodactyl riding natives attack an air ship at some point. So Yellow Admirals thesis is worth consideration. However as others have pointed out bombs of some type actually make more sense for attacking ground targets.

Well off to sketch up some ideas as to what my sky ship should look like with these new considerations.

One other thing I like in Imperial Skies is that you can have a Boarding action and it's not that hard to understand.

What goes up will eventually have have to go down. If guns are mounted on the lower part of the ship then how will such a ship be able to fit into a dockyard for servicing?

I suspect that a ship that will be firing at the ground will tilt slightly to the port or starboard to fire. Also, lighter guns may be swung out and then be able to fire at the ground.

"You're absolutely correct about turrets being held in by gravity, by the way. If a ship like, say, the USS Texas had capsized, her turrets would have slipped right out and gone to the sea floor."

This is not an absolute, although some nations did this on some designs it was not universal and in aerial vessels would be easily corrected by simple engineering and design changes.

There is a whole lot to deal with in aerial targets. We've discussed this at great length on the Hive, Queen and Country Yahoo! group link

There will be issues with range finding and position finding in a 3D environment. Spotting "fall of shot" will be very difficult. Even a very small amount of armor offers good protection against most fragments, so direct hits become much more important. Gravity weapons can become pretty accurate as the platforms can carry what amounts to a good sized observatory, are very stable and fairly slow moving and should be able to haul simply silly amounts of ordnance, and ordnance of huge size. Grand Slams will fit easily into many aeronef, Space 1889 and Hive, Queen and Country flying machines

Also I don't recall anything in Space 1889 canon that said explicitly you couldn't have weapons below the liftwood. The French la Glorie class, one of the standard vessels from the basic game, has a ventral turret with a 4 inch gun.

I would assume that ships will have some sort of landing gear, or that belly turrets would be retractable. After all many WW2 and earlier bombers had ventral turrets that either retracted or were designed so that the landing gear ensured they wouldn't scrape the runway during landing or takeoff

There will be issues with range finding and position finding in a 3D environment. Spotting "fall of shot" will be very difficult.

LOL! Impossible, actually.

That's a really good point. Without a surrounding surface to catch the misses, there will be no way to observe the margin of error of each shot.

The obvious solution is exceedingly short ranges, not much beyond point blank range where the shell trajectory is still fairly flat and hits more-or-less where the barrel is pointed.

Another solution would be tracers. Tracers weren't invented until WWI, but I think they were invented largely to solve this same problem (shooting at aircraft), and the chemistry required could easily have been tackled earlier, so I think it's reasonable to assume these could have been invented anytime after the advent of industrially produced aerodynamic shells for rifled barrels.

Another solution is rockets. Rockets have some disadvantages (accuracy, size), but they do leave a nice trail to mark their path.

If the oeuvre includes ray guns, those would be an even better solution, especially if they produce a visible beam.

- Ix

For an interesting take on this, watch the anime "Last Exile". No, not the new one, the one from 2003.

One nation's skyships have almost all their gun turrets below the hull because they're dropping in from altitude, the other nation's designs have most of their guns on the upper surface (but still have some below).

And musketeers volleying in line from lowered ramps… LOL!

- Ix

I think the "fall of shot" problem would soon be resolved by stereoscopic spotting systems, sort of like the Germans invented to use with their antitank guns.

Thought the stereoscopic rangefinders were for AA guns, but point taken. Stereoscopic rangefinding is a *very* simple exercise in trigonometry.

Think of bombs as unguided aerial torpedoes and you are back in aero-naval mindset.

In Imperial Skies Bombs and Aerial Torpedos are 2 separate weapons.

Can someone explain how an aerial torpedo works?

I would expect rockets to fill the torpedo's role – sort of. Rockets have to be much faster than torpedoes to remain airborne, but even at top speeds they're slower than shells, making them effectively shorter-ranged than guns in air-to-air combat. The Germans tried using rocket barrages against bombers in WW2 with mixed results.

- Ix

Here's what it says in the Imperial Skies rulebook regarding Torpedoes:

Torpedoes come in two classes.
The first class is a traditional winged programmed just before launch
by a complex clockwork mechanism and heavy torpedoes which are of a
similar construction but longer,similar to the japanese long lance
variety of torpedoes.
All torpedoes are stowed with wings folded back along their sleek shells
and a mechanism causes the wings to deploy as they are propelled from
their launch tubes.
Small ultra-fast propellers push the torpedoes in combination with a
mechanical pre-programmed guided glide with small rudders.

Javelin
Spotting is different from position finding. Stereo and coincidence single instrument position finding will certainly show up earlier than in Out Time Line.

Spotting on the other hand was a tough problem. The path of the projectile will be very hard to determine, even if it has a tracer or smoke trail. In WW2 the US Navy didn't try and plot the explosion of its anti aircraft shells and the RN did.

These might be good for aerial torpedoes. Replace the jet engines with rockets

link

And if you want a guided period weapon here is one that works!

link

Here are a couple of books that really are very useful for this discussion

link

link

The Friedman book is much more detailed and better referenced. His discussion of all aspects of this issue is well worth reading

This is also useful link

Can someone explain how an aerial torpedo works?

Assuming a non-aerodynamic lift source, your aerial torpedo works about like your waterborne version.

Things only get more complex when you use aerodynamic lift.

Except for the part about having to set altitude.

Naval torpedoes effectively operate in a fixed plane, but an aerial torpedo can miss in 2 dimensions. It gets worse if torpedoes can climb or dive, which vastly complicates the targeting solution with interrelated calculations for angle of elevation, run speed (which will be lower climbing and higher diving), and runtime to target.

- Ix

Does it really matter how the Aerial Torpedoes work?

Let's do a quick poll how many of you will give Imperial Skies a try?

I know besides myself that Doug has the rules so I'm curious how many of you would buy the rules.

Or here's another thing if I were running an Imperial Skies game who here would partake in the game?

In the past few years I've run a few AERONEF games and now that Imperial Skies has come out I'm planning on running some Imperial Skies games at some of the local Conventions next year.

Does it really matter how the Aerial Torpedoes work?

In this thread it does. "How things work" is kinda the whole point.

For all my fascination with the topic, I might never play an aerial battleship game. Too much fantasy, not enough science. I seem to have too little time for actual historical games.

- Ix

Since 1979 I've played in games for the following periods:

American Civil War(land and Naval)
Napoleonic's(Land and Naval)
Samurai
English Civil War
Ancients(Land and Naval)
World War Two(Land and Naval)
World War One Naval
Russo-Japanese War(Land and Naval)
Pre-Dreadnought Naval

Then in the late 80's early 90's and up to the present day things started to change including getting a computer for the first time.

But I started to get into Fantasy Sci-Fi with the following games:

StarBlazers(Spaceship Combat)
Star Trek(Star Fleet Battles and FASA)
Star Wars(Ground Battles and Space Battles)
Space 1889(Victorian Sci-Fi)
AERONEF(similar to Space 1889 but much bigger ships)
OGRE(Futuristic Ground Combat)

I've also gone thru a ton of rules be they complex or simplistic(easy to learn and understand)and I came to a conclusion which is I like rules that I can auctually understand.

Rules like Empire for Napoleonics and Naval Rules like Seekrieg were just too dammed complex.

I don't want to play rules that you need a calculator or such to do the game I want rules that are somewhat more simple and understandable.

There's a lot of people who get turned off by the more complex rules or less fantasy and too much science.

See when I play in a game I want to have a good time and enjoy the rules but if I can't do that then I don't want to play in that type of game and go on to something else.

You have to set depth in a naval torpedo, works about the same as setting altitude in an aerial torpedo.

I'd assume that the aerial torps would climb or dive quickly to their set altitude and then cruise out. But to tell you the truth, I'd expect to see someone try to build a wire-guided aerial torpedo along the lines of early ATGMs and SAMs, where you fly the torpedo into the target.

The wire guided weapon actually existed in the Victorian It is the Brennan Torpedo. I already posted a link to it, but I'll describe it. It is a "fish" torpedo and was powered by the interesting physics of using a powerful steam engine to reel in thin wire inside the torpedo. The weapon was capable of being turned over 180 degrees under operator control and had a useful range and speed for the period.

Although never launched in anger these were a service weapon as part of the British coastal defenses for over a decade and were emplaced from the Home Islands to Hong Kong. The sole remaining weapon can be seen at the Royal Engineers museum in Chatham and a replica is at the Hong Kong Coastal Defence Museum.

This is a real period weapon, no magic needed. It would be an obvious choice as a model for an aerial weapon.

Naval torpedoes use a hydro-static device to keep proper depth. This is pretty easy to do in a dense medium like water but one based on air pressure to keep altitude is likely to be a real chore to make run right.

The problems with unguided aerial torpedoes will be the same as those with unguided aerial rockets, and will probably force the same solutions, either salvo firing a bunch of fairly small rockets or going to guided weapons. The issue is that big targets require lots of energy to hurt. Things like Stingers, Sidewinders and even Sparrows will be pretty much a lost cause if fired in small numbers.

Sparrows actually have a pretty big warhead, 40kg of boom.

But yeah, hurting a large target that actually has some armor (and not just 1/8" of aircraft grade aluminum) takes a pretty big weapon.

I'm not sure how you'd set up an aerial version of the Brennan Torpedo, controlling the 3rd dimension is complex. But that's about the only way I can see Victorian technology handling a guided weapon. No way to do self-guiding, IMO, without resorting to literal magic.

Or a chair bolted on the nose….

- Ix

Dobt forget to tie in you Babbage engine with the spotter scopes to feed azimuth, elevation, and fuse length to the gunners for targeting other sky ships.

@Aldroud: definitely. The mechanical computers used in WW2 for naval gunnery aren't particularly out of bounds, technology-wise, and they were frighteningly capable. The Iowa-class could drop their shells within 15m of point of aim at 15,000m or greater, which makes them about as accurate as a sniper rifle. link

The USN's Torpedo Data Computer is also scarily capable, as it continuously tracked a target rather than give firing solutions for a single moment. link

In both the Rangekeeper and the TDC, they used a mix of electrical and mechanical power. It wouldn't be difficult to build a regulated steam engine to provide the constant speed needed for the computers to work correctly. In fact, it's pretty simple and was figured out back in the 1860s.

Having some electrical components would allow for fully automatic interactions between the computers and guns, otherwise you need some scary-complex mechanical or hydraulic coupling for automatic gun pointing.

If you can't do automatic gun pointing, you get to play the old game of match the pointers, which starts to run into trouble as gunners get tired in long battles.

Volley-firing rockets (or rapid-fire guns) requires a LOT more rounds fired at aircraft than at ground targets. Ground targets are basically in a 2-d plane, while air targets are in a 3-d volume. You'd need either timed or proximity fuses to get the number of rounds fired down to a reasonable number.

The real trick would be VT fuses. I suppose you could use rotation-counting mechanical fuses rather than pyrotechnic fuses, but I can't find any images or info other than actual radar proximity fuses. Pretty sure Radio tech (and most electronic tech for that matter) is outside the usual VSF tech restrictions.

There were efforts to use the target's shadow for prox detonation. This might work. However prox fuzing is not going to be of much use against a target with even an inch or two of armor. Yes Sparrow has a 40 kg warhead but it is either a continuous rod one or a blast-fragmentation one. These warheads will have very little effect against an armored target.

Mechanical time fuzes should evolve earlier and replace powder train time fuzes sooner in a VSF setting than in OTL. If folks are making Babbage engines they can make tiny ones for shell fuzing, but again that doesn't solve the problem of directly hitting a 3D moving target with enough energy to penetrate the armor AND do significant interior damage to critical systems.

What you need besides the 3D Brennan aerial torpedoes is something like this link or
link or this link

I've got a question for you.

Is there anyone here who could/would do a set of VSF rules?

And if you could how complex would you make it?

Please look at The Hive and the Flame link

link

Sorry I've not heard of The Hive and the Flame the only VSF rules I know are Space 1889,Aeronef(which includes Land Ironclads),All Quiet on the Martian Front and lastly Imperial Skies.

Hive and the Flame is tsofian's VSF rules/setting. Pretty cool stuff. Bugs from Venus (IIRC) that got loose on Earth and causing problems, fought with skyships.

As far as rapid-firing guns go, I'd expect the typical mount to be something like the USN's 3"/50cal Mk33 (basically a 75mm version of the Bofors 40mm gun), the 6"/47cal DP, or heaven forbid the monster 8"/55cal Mk16. The 6" and 8" are both brass-cased automatic guns, pushing 10-12 rounds per minute per gun. They could be modified to shoot faster still, as they are semi-fixed ammunition designs, with the projectile loaded separately from the brass-cased powder. Could probably double the ROF if you went to single-piece ammo.

Though you wouldn't need more than the 6" guns throwing their 130lb shells to punch over 4 inches of armor, and the 3" guns could handle 2" of armor with HE shells (based on WW2 tank armor/damage)

The 3"/50cal guns are scary. 50 rounds per minute per gun, though in an open gun pit like the Bofors 40mm. They have the rate of fire and range to really hammer anything out there, harder and faster than a Bofors quad mount.

A cousin to the 3"/50cal was the M51 Skysweeper 75mm AA gun. This was a ground mount, but it was completely automatic. Radar, fire control computer, and even the fuse-setting were all built into the "turret", and 20 rounds onboard. For a naval gun, you'd want a bigger magazine, especially one in a setting where you have flying bugs swarming the ships.

Thanks Lion!