Lore Question: How is the Manticore 600m long?

[Flip]

According to the lore the Manticore class corvette is 600m long and has a crew of 700 - 800 hundred.

To put that into perspective the largest naval vessel today is Aircraft Carrier USS Enterprise at 342m in length.

Is it just me or does the Manticore seem far to large for what it does? I mean it has a chin mounted cannon and a pair of rear facing light cannons and that's it, seems excessivly large for what it does? I mean it's almost twice the size of our largest military vessel afloat and it has the BGS version of a pea shooter.

Note: I get the sizes of the other ships, they make sense like the approx 1,400 meter Jupiter Class, it's basically a self sufficient carrier / battleship

[orcbuster]

Large engine housing compared to mass of rest of vessel to emphasize tactical speed while still fitting a VLS set and armament would be my guess.

[Xautos]

Due to these cookie requests, my efforts are limited to non-existent to learning about ship sizes.

However if you go by the idea that such spaceships are that large because of a reactor power plant and engines hogging up a lot of the space, not to mention storage space for ammo, crew to man the ships, life support, medical bay and so forth, cargo bays with food supplies, mess halls and officers quarters and then the rest is dedicated to thick hull plating, it begins to make some sort of sense.

now if you look at the jupiter, it has some big engines stuffs up the tail end of the ship with a reactor in the middle of those engines, the FTL systems, and then you got the many systems between that, crew quarters, the middle of the ship would be fairly sparsely populated as the supports for the hangar pods retract within the empty space before FTL. So in reality, even though the ship is a lot bigger, only the front and rear of the ship is heavily used and if you remove the hangar and mid section from the equasion, you got about a 900 meter ship to work in.

ships aren't self-sufficient, they require supplies, food, medical, ammo, water and so on, while efforts are made to limit how much supplies are taken, even the biggest battlestar needs to put in for a supply run every once in a while.

[Flip]

The engines and reactor make sense here. The Jupiter's size does make sense to me, you do see the scale in the series as well and there is a lot of space dedicated to hangars, workshops, nuke withstanding armor etc.

But the manticore doesn't really have anything to justify (to me) really the massive size, except perhaps as Orcbuster mentioned, oversized engine / reactor to propel it. But then I wonder why need such a massive crew? 800 seems excessive for what is essentially a giant engine, virtually no weapons or any kind of fighters.

But maybe there is a minimum size / thrust ratio that needs to be incorporated and military space craft are simply larger in the BGS universe.

[orcbuster]

Not really considering that colonials use significantly less automation on their vessels than the naval vessels you mention (Colonial tech during first cylon war is basically described as no computers more sophisticated in functionality than an Apple II with a modern processor and no central control, so every subsystem needs to be extensively manned in some way shape or form, hell comms between different sections of the ship requires a lot of labour) and modern naval vessels a fraction the size, with less sensors, complexity, protection and firepower than the manticore still run crews around 3-400. Nimitz which as you mention is half the size of the manticore has a crew of 6000 with less than half of that dedicated to the air wing.

[Commodus]

What a terrible design if its that big to have 1 forward turret:o

I would replace the back turrets with a large 360d turret.

[Flip]

Originally posted by orcbuster:

Not really considering that colonials use significantly less automation on their vessels than the naval vessels you mention (Colonial tech during first cylon war is basically described as no computers more sophisticated in functionality than an Apple II with a modern processor and no central control, so every subsystem needs to be extensively manned in some way shape or form, hell comms between different sections of the ship requires a lot of labour) and modern naval vessels a fraction the size, with less sensors, complexity, protection and firepower than the manticore still run crews around 3-400. Nimitz which as you mention is half the size of the manticore has a crew of 6000 with less than half of that dedicated to the air wing.

I guess perhaps it does come down to a lack of automation then = lot of manual labour. Still doesn't explain the size unless computers, engines, reactor, stores, etc take up a lot of space.

Considering they seem to have their ships surrounded in armored shells this makes sense, the "actual" ship is probably a lot smaller within the armored shell.

Guess the missiles take up a lot of space if they are to scale in the game they are pretty damn massive.

[orcbuster]

Again, propulsion, fuel and powerplant are the main space hogs, easily dwarfing most modern naval vessels alone, armor certainly takes up space but isn't really the main space hog here, you have to consider that you need space for food, fuel and water for 800 people for several years. not to mention the massive amount life support needed considering the human body consumes around 550 litres of oxygen per day, with 800 people that is going to require a substantial system.

Most colonial ships seem designed for deep space exploration/patrol missions, galacticas water supply is for example shown to be massive in the show. contrast modern naval ships which are designed for 60 days with no resupply at most.

The manticore is clearly designed to be a fast raider and recon vessel. Essentially meant to emphasize a high thrust to mass ratio, a larger armament and thus mass on it would be counterproductive. They already have ships with every surface covered in guns and armor in the same size class that cannot do what the manticore does. It is clearly designed to point its main armamanent along its forward vector to close with light and poorly defended enemies, delivering
hit and run missile barrages or use its rear guns to defend itself during retreats to give pursuers (which will have to be similarly light to give chase) pause.

[Herodotus]

Large reactors and propulsion are a feature in the lore of Warhammer 40K as well. Small frigate class ships can be a kilometre long just as a result of their reactors, and their crew sizes can appear excessive, but you have to remember that weapons and propulsion require large numbers of men and women.
Having said that, a fellow posted in a review of the Modern Ships Pack that the size and placement of guns on both the large Colonial ships is all wrong and out of proportion so I'd take it all with a grain of salt.
The Manticore for me is the work horse of the fleet and I have a number of veteran vessels that have many ship kills to their name. So that front cannon can be a real killer, combined with guided missiles and the rear cannons, while relatively small do quite a bit of damage. These weapons require large numbers of crew to function, so once again the crew complement is acceptable.

[Flip]

Aye all makes sense, especially if they are expected to self sufficient for a long period. I guess when you think of a quick, agile hit & run corvette you don't think of a massive 600m long ship (at least I don't). Love the Manticore though, highly useful

[MaxRavenclaw]

The large numbers required to function argument kind of falls flat. At those sizes, you'd need waaaay MORE people.

To quote what I've found a while ago in a YouTube comment:

"I've taken a closer look on the ship in game, and all I can say is that the length of the model and the official differentiate widely. I took the wingspan of a Viper (~ 5m) and looked on their launching tubes on the side of an adamant. Some unprecise measurements later I found out that the Adamant is only 400 m instead of the official (I think) 800 m. Taking the measurement over to a nearby Manticore I got a number around 200 - 300m, which seems far more realistic for me, considering it's small armament and crew Complement for otherwise 600 m. (Note however that my measurements are likely very inaccurate.) Yamato, for example was 263 m long and had a crew of more than 3000. Even if the Manticore was heavily automated 700 crew members still seem very few. Doesn't really make much sense that a ship 3 times the size of the other has only a 4. of it's crew compliment. So having her at roughly the same size makes more sense. Same goes in regard for armory. For example, the IJN Battleship Fuso, which had a Length of 209 m, had a total of roughly 190 barrels in total. A 600 meter space ship should at least have number that would come close. At around 250 m however, it makes much more sense. (Note however that my measurements are likely very inaccurate.) Taking away the engine compartment you have roughly Length of modern day destroyer (~ 120 m). Suddenly, a armament of 3 Autocannons and one missile silo for capital grade munitions seem very adequate. However the fact, that the Ships in the game seem far smaller as they seem, might also mean that more well known ships like the Galaktika might also be smaller. So, what do you think? Is it just an scale error by the model creators or does my measurements make enough sense to change the official size of BSG (D) Ships."

[Flip]

Originally posted by MaxRavenclaw:

The large numbers required to function argument kind of falls flat. At those sizes, you'd need waaaay MORE people.

To quote what I've found a while ago in a YouTube comment:

"I've taken a closer look on the ship in game, and all I can say is that the length of the model and the official differentiate widely. I took the wingspan of a Viper (~ 5m) and looked on their launching tubes on the side of an adamant. Some unprecise measurements later I found out that the Adamant is only 400 m instead of the official (I think) 800 m. Taking the measurement over to a nearby Manticore I got a number around 200 - 300m, which seems far more realistic for me, considering it's small armament and crew Complement for otherwise 600 m. (Note however that my measurements are likely very inaccurate.) Yamato, for example was 263 m long and had a crew of more than 3000. Even if the Manticore was heavily automated 700 crew members still seem very few. Doesn't really make much sense that a ship 3 times the size of the other has only a 4. of it's crew compliment. So having her at roughly the same size makes more sense. Same goes in regard for armory. For example, the IJN Battleship Fuso, which had a Length of 209 m, had a total of roughly 190 barrels in total. A 600 meter space ship should at least have number that would come close. At around 250 m however, it makes much more sense. (Note however that my measurements are likely very inaccurate.) Taking away the engine compartment you have roughly Length of modern day destroyer (~ 120 m). Suddenly, a armament of 3 Autocannons and one missile silo for capital grade munitions seem very adequate. However the fact, that the Ships in the game seem far smaller as they seem, might also mean that more well known ships like the Galaktika might also be smaller. So, what do you think? Is it just an scale error by the model creators or does my measurements make enough sense to change the official size of BSG (D) Ships."

I think in terms of in game representation the models are smaller than they should be, which to be fair is common in games. Take the Star Destroyers in the older X-wing games, tiny compared to the size they should be. I do agree though the size seems off but that's probably because when I think of a corvette I think of an actuall small ship. Before I read the official size, I actually thought the corvettes where around 100m or so and maybe a crew of 60 - 100...which is why I was so surprised.

The only ship we really get a sense of size from is the Galactica (Jupiter Class) from the series and that does seem to be around the 1400m