Castle Design Notes

(Copied straight from .XML 'backup' file, needs formatting and corrections. ZM User (talk) 17:14, 22 April 2024 (PDT))

Castle class Design and Arrangements Notes

(This page is not 'canon', it is a collection of notes I came up with while writing TFC, PC, and IC.  I needed to know how things were arranged on this prehistoric class of small armed ships.  Since they were used as references, my stories reflect these notes, but other stories written about Castles may not say the same things. -ZM)

Appearance:

The First Command has:
   "If you've ever seen concept drawings for NASA's original design for the space shuttle -the one that was a lifting body with no wings- before Congress told them to scale it back to something cheaper, you've got a good idea of what the ship looked like.  It had a gun turret on each side and several other protrusions that made it clear that this was not intended for atmospheric flight, but other than that it looked like a lifting body."
   "Maybe this design was derived from an atmospheric craft?  The location of assorted machinery and cargo spaces supports that assumption."

   The Castle is ~80 meters long.  It has been described as a flattened cylinder but flattened funnel might be better.  ~20 meters high in front, ~25 meters high in back, and ~25 meters wide in front but ~30 meters wide in back.  Aside from the rounded front, it should have a flattened circle cross-section all the way, just slowly getting larger from front to back.
   The original design's only hatch is a 5-meter circle on the starboard side which would be on the middle of three decks, just aft of the Plasma Torpedo machinery space which is the largest compartment forward.  As revised for Human use, two more hatches were added, on the port side just aft of the PB turret and on top on the centerline forward.  The top hatch is a complete Confederacy docking station and is normally used to hold the emergency lifeboat.
   The port hatch is just that, an openable door to space.  It will only be used to escape from a dying ship when the other two hatches are not accessible.  In fact, since it is a hinged door opening inwards, it CANNOT be opened until the interior air has been vented.  If the hull has been breached, that's already been taken care of; the hatch can be opened immediately.  If the hull is still intact but we need that hatch open, there are several ways to vent the ship.  Some are under AI control while others are completely manual and can be used by crew even when the AI is off-line.
   The Bridge would be above the PT launcher hole, with the two big windows just on either side of the centerline.  I have no idea yet what is in the space under the PT launcher.  Probably sensor stuff and stores, converted to bunks for our use.  Certainly, the large centerline space could have once been used to house a nose landing gear and associated machinery.

Upper Deck

   On the upper level, just aft of the Bridge is a set of three small staterooms, then an athwartships passageway giving access to the staterooms, the Bridge, and other small cubbies.  Aft of that is a stairway leading down to the center deck and a ladder leading up to the lifeboat.  Next is the closest thing to an armored bulkhead the Castle has, with CIC behind that.  All of this was rebuilt from the original design, and on the original 60 ships the top of the hull had to be cut off to gain access to do the work.
   Aft of the CIC is the auxiliary machinery space, which deals with gravity, atmosphere controls, etc.  The AMS has two hatches leading to the back of the CIC and the upper level of the "Main Space", so it can be used as an airlock for access to the Main Space if needed.  Aft of the AMS is the main engineering space, which has a 'main engine' on either side and an auxiliary power plant in the middle.

Middle Deck

   On the middle deck, there is another athwartships passage with the main access hatch at the starboard end.  On the forward side, the airtight hatch going to the PT machinery space is offset to starboard, with two more storerooms/bunkrooms outboard of the PT space.
   On the aft side of that passage, there is a spinal passage headed aft.  After a pair of small compartments to either side, it opens up on the port side for the crew's mess.  That is a multifunction room which is the only place large enough to fit the whole crew.  Not that they could all sit down at once, but they could all cram into it for a rousing pre-battle speech, right?
   The starboard side has a series of small spaces for berthing, stores, machinery, etc.  One of those spaces holds the Hyperspace Bubble Generator, and right beside it is (originally) an ion shield generator or (in human use) a Nav Shield generator.  Just forward of the HBG space is a stacked pair of stairways leading up to the upper deck and down to the lower deck.
   Note that these are actual stairs, not ladders.  This is forced by the ship's inertial compensator system.  Under way, the effective 'gravity' depends upon main engine power level and can vary in both strength and direction.  Simply walking around is dangerous enough, under 3 gravities.  The crew would not be able to use ladders when under 3 gravities of effective pull.
   Outboard of these spaces are all the machinery for the two Particle Beam Turrets.  These spaces are also reinforced, but that isn't to protect the ship from battle damage so much as to protect the ship from problems with the turret.  Which, granted, could be caused by battle damage.
   Note that the "Castles" are not all identical.  The first 60 were turned over to us from the Confederacy after having been mothballed for, as near as we can tell, half a million years.  They all got modified a lot before being placed into service by the Humans.  The next 200 or so were the first starships built by us, as near-duplicates of the originals-with-mods.  After that, roughly 2000 got built to a revised design of half-sisters over the course of the war.  These are called the "Ainsworth" class by purists, but they are all effectively the same class and only an expert can tell them apart.  Most just call them all 'Castles'.
   Most of the Ainsworths were built with a transporter pad built into the main passageway, at the forward end of the mess.  The ship doesn't have the power budget to run it, though, so it can only be used when the ship is in range of something else that can treat it as a remote pad.  Any station can do it, as well as all of the human-designed larger warships from the Europa class on.  Only the Castles themselves, the Patricians, the Archerfish, and other small ships are unable to run their own pads.
   The big change visible from outside the hull is that, on the Ainsworths, the two BP turrets got put on elevators.  In action, they can slide out about 5 meters, giving them a much better field of fire.  When fully extended, the turrets can fire on a target directly behind the ship as long as it's at least 40 meters away.  When not in use, the turrets can be slid back in against the hull but not quite as close as the originals due to the elevator machinery.
   Aft of the "mess decks" are more small spaces for berthing, equipment, etc.  Aft of that is the big Main Space holding the main engines.  This is normally accessed through the Engineering Control Room or ECR.  The ECR and the AMS right above it are the only compartments in the whole ship with reinforcement (can't really call it armor) on all sides.  This is because damage control and repairs are managed from the ECR and AMS.  If the people in them survive whatever the problem was, they will be able to immediately start repairing things and rescuing other survivors.
   The reason that this small ship has three completely separate plants is because of the ship's armament.  The Particle Beam Turret uses an unnatural item that is produced as needed by a specially-designed nuclear reactor.  There is one generator built into each of the two main engines, and a heavily-shielded conduit runs from each main engine to that side's PBT.  There is no cross-connect for this; if either main engine is shut down, that side's PBT cannot be used until the main engine is back online again.
   Like most ships, the design also has an Auxiliary Power Plant or APP that provides power to run hotel services when the main engines are not online.  The APP is larger than expected for the ship's size because the main armament, the Plasma Torpedo Launcher, needs more power than a smaller APP could provide if the APP was also running the rest of the ship.  This capability to use primary armaments even if the main engines are down became a standard design feature of most of our later warships.
   During critical evolutions like combat or docking, the Captain will be in CIC, the XO will be on the Bridge, and the Chief Engineer ("ChEng") will be in the ECR.  No matter what happens, if there are any survivors at all it it likely that one of them will live to start recovery operations.  If the Bridge, CIC, and ECR are all taken out, it is unlikely that there will be survivors anywhere else.
   It has happened, though.  Several times a Castle has been completely destroyed with nothing but debris remaining, but a gunner and maybe his conk are still alive in one of the turrets.  If the Confederacy forces are victorious in that action, those personnel will be rescued.  Policy is that such survivors will be given a less-hazardous post until they have recovered mentally, but wartime needs often prevented that.

Lower Deck

   The lower level is mostly storage/berthing compartments, with a lot of machinery.  The arrangement of compartments might lead someone familiar with atmospheric craft to believe that the Castle was derived from an air-capable design, as three of the largest storage spaces are in the exact correct locations for the three sets of landing gear in a 'tricycle' arrangement.  Again, the aft third of the lower deck is part of the 'Main Space", the large compartment filling all three decks in the back of the ship.
   There is a single hatch connecting the lower deck to the Main Space.  If the Main Space is vented to space for any reason, this hatch cannot be used without venting the whole ship.  In such conditions, the Main Space must be accessed through the ECR on the middle deck or the AMS on the upper deck.

(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))