The Major Roads have made interstellar travel through the use of very small craft so common in the Highlands that it is easy to forget the vast difference in capabilities necessary between a major combatant and a hyper utility vehicle (HUV) or brake.
Highland combat spacecraft tend to be built rather lightly armored. Force field technology provides the greatest amount of protection to a modern warship. It is also a standard building technique to include planar force fields within bulkheads and at the center of struts. Such fields allow for greater structural integrity, that is the structural integrity field allows a bulkhead to resist stress and compression damage as if it were made of a much stronger, heavier material. Structural integrity fields also prevent simple penetration from depressurizing compartments, as the field can retain the atmosphere.
Of course relying on such technology to increase the durability of such large structures as a battleship or dreadnought means that without structural integrity force fields intact and operational such a vessel is vulnerable to structural failure. Of course since failure of inertial compensators and the life support system would result in the death of everyone aboard anyway, such vessels have many layers of backup systems to ensure such systems do no fail.
It is also standard for passageways and large compartments to include a system of planar force fields to allow sections to be segmented both for security and emergency damage control. Such ubiquitous application of force technology make modern warships quite unlike vessels built at lower technology. Much of the Midlands, and almost all of the Wilds construct most of their vessels at TLC and below, and lack even the most basic force field technology. In the Highlands even the plebeian HUV contains internal force field segmentation and an external, though light power force field.
No comments:
Post a Comment