Shimakaze

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Shimakaze Torpedo Destroyer

The Shimakaze Class of destroyers are torpedo-focused platforms designed to send volleys of long-range, powerful tactical nuclear warheads into the internals of an enemy vessel.  The design borrows from the design philosophy of a famous Japanese World War Two design by the same name.  The Shimakaze Class initially appears in The Troubled Celestial River by SGTStoner.

Description

From the story:

Somewhat large for a destroyer at 153 meters in length, and more than twice the size of the corvette that Project Prometheus intended, it would carry a crew of eight officers and 51 crew. A pair of forward triple mount turrets contained medium particle beams, but that wasn't the primary armament of the ship.

Each side boasted twelve torpedo launchers designed to accommodate either standard Confederacy torpedoes or the compatible Mitsubishi Type 93. Each tube had magazine space for three reloads, which would be automated. To top this off, five automated 20mm Mitsubishi CIWS mounts would provide close-in protection from incoming missiles, small craft, or even to some degree larger enemy vessels, and their magazine capacity was extensive.

The engines were powerful and boasted a remarkable thrust-to-weight rating, making it a fast, albeit not highly maneuverable ship. Mitsubishi enhancements to the Confederacy engine design reduced the observability of the ship when under power about 40% of what it might otherwise be. It boasted a well-sized Confederacy FTL drive, abundant reactor capacity, again with the assistance of Mistubishi, and had solid systems redundancy in case of failures or battle damage.

A relatively standard sensor package was augmented by remote probes, which could perform forward scouting. They didn't have enough fuel for extensive loitering and maneuvering, but during a battle they could be deployed to provide early detection of enemy screens, or provide more precise targeting data for primary targets.

No design is without drawbacks however, and this design made careful tradeoffs to retain the ship's core design principles. The large size made it somewhat easier to detect than other Confederacy destroyer classes. It had little in the way of armor or other protective shielding, so it was pretty much just as fragile as any other destroyer. The torpedo tubes took several minutes to reload, which meant choosing when to fire some or all of the tubes had to be carefully considered. If the ship were actively under fire, no weapons were available beyond the limited bow armament to return immediate fire until torpedoes arrived on target, which might result in a rather uncomfortable wait.

The design intent was that a Shimakaze, like it's historic predecessor, was intended to fire a wave of torpedoes at high-value targets and hopefully remain undetected. Scouting support to assist in targeting wasn't entirely necessary, but would be helpful, particularly with smaller Sa'arm ships such as corvettes and patrol craft that might be less detectable than the Shimakaze. Those ships and the larger Sa'arm cruisers would be the biggest threat to a Shimakaze, while Shimakaze might be the biggest Confederacy threat to Hive Spheres and other major Sa'arm combatants.

The departures from standard Confederacy design were numerous. Usually, an AI automated most of the operations of a ship, making the crew almost unnecessary other than to actually operate weapons. This ship only leveraged AI capabilities for sensors, navigation and communications, and to operate the FTL drive. The Mitsubishi power reactor, the reactor system's interconnection with the main engines, and many other systems were entirely in human hands, although the AI could obtain operational data from them.

This changed the role of much of the crew from merely being supervisors of the AI to actually being systems operators. The technical responsibilities for crewmen would be significantly more demanding, and that made the practice of using low-CAP concubines in the crew rather problematic. Since concubines were not likely to be useful for crew, no accommodations were made for them.

The standard torpedoes would at first glance seem an odd weapons choice for this platform, and if they were actually used, such questions would be quite valid. Those didn't have adequate range, and were too easily detected and countered. If instead of those familiar systems, something else that just happened to fit into the same launcher and might be, perhaps, a little better, the reasons behind the design choices made would be much more obvious.

Special capabilities

The ship depends on the availability of the Type 93 "long lance" torpedo in order to be effective. Using standard Confederacy plasma torpedoes would require the ship to expose itself to dangerous enemy fire before being close enough to engage the target.

(Someday this will be a navigation template.  It will provide a bar across the bottom of each article with useful navigation links.  Until then, this is just a placeholder to get rid of all the red "broken link" indicators. -ZM User (talk) 10:00, 3 May 2024 (PDT))