UCS Elephant

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 6:55 pm

One of the less glamarous members of the Coalition navy, the Elephant is a normal/midspace heavy short range tug. These little ships
are essentially just a power system with a set of engines attached. Nine propulsors are mounted at the rear of the ship, with no
less than twelve midspace shunts in prominent housings to port and starboard. The Elephant can extend its drivefield up to
7 miles in diameter, allowing it to tow any current Coalition military vessel.

Accommodation for the 105 crew consists of a two story structure at the bow. Crew comforts are somewhat sparse, even by military
standards; the Elephant is not designed for long duration missions, and would rarely be found more than a week or so out of port.
Their normal task is moving large ships in and out of large dock structures, or in-port operations on ships during refit.

The Elephant has no weapons, shields, or armour.

Post by **Mikey** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 9:06 pm

Nice to see that you didn't forget the support craft. Does this use propulsion of the same type as the battleships? It seems that they all had a separated reactor/drive assembly, while this has the more integrated "nacelles." Is this a matter of scale, of creating a field for another vessel, or of a different system?

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 10:27 pm

Yes, same propulsion.

One all ships the power system is that curved hull part hanging under the ship. In the battleships the midspace drive shunts are above that and are wholly inside the ship. On this ship they midspace drives are housed in nacelles that stick out. The reason for that is that tug is very much a "bare bones" ship. There's virtually nothing in it that's not power system, engine, or fuel tank. The hull is as small as it can be, basically, so it consists of a central "slab" with other hull modules pretty much just bolted onto it.

Post by **Captain Seafort** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 10:36 pm

To echo Mikey, it's good to see one of the workhorses of a fleet. Most sci-fi, both the stories and tech manuals, tend to ignore the massive logistical and technical support a fleet would require. Are you going to add any more support vessels to the collection?

Post by **Tsukiyumi** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 10:36 pm

Awesome. Support craft should always be as simplistic as possible, to improve reliability. Of course, such details are expected from the fellow who created DITL, at least from where I'm sitting.

Sionnach Glic · Post by **Sionnach Glic** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 10:47 pm

I like it. Nice and simple, and one of the ships that is all to often ignored.

Post by **Graham Kennedy** » Sat Nov 24, 2007 11:56 pm

Tsukiyumi wrote:Awesome. Support craft should always be as simplistic as possible, to improve reliability. Of course, such details are expected from the fellow who created DITL, at least from where I'm sitting.

Why thank you kindly!

I do have a range of support ships. I have a modular basic ship that can be adapted for various tasks; cargo, munitions, fuel, etc. I also have a midspace survey ship which is up next...

Post by **Tsukiyumi** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 2:48 am

Sweet. I personally always like non-combat ships in sci-fi (of course I love the battleships and the like as well). And Graham, the level of detail is what drew me to DITL in the first place, and why I decided to join the forum a year later. Some damn nice work.

Monroe · Post by **Monroe** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 8:35 am

Nice! Let's see more of them

(And some ground vehicles too

)

Eosphoros · Post by **Eosphoros** » Sun Nov 25, 2007 11:49 pm

I second that. It's great to finally see a workable fleet. I was always a fan of big and mighty space battleships, but fleets with gazillions of Ãœber-class planet-destroying superdreadnoughts you find all over the Internet, besides being incredibly unrealistic and childish, are unworkable due to lack of any kind of support infrastructure. Keep up the good work.