Decks, Belts and Boxes – Oh My !

[Kaiser Kirk]

Addressing Rocky's question

Deck
Armored and Protective Decks 'weigh' the same in SS.

The Area of the Deck sections is governed by length (% l of wl) on the Freeboard Tab.
The default settings are 20/65/15  Fore / Citadel / Aft

Example :
My Artesmia II frigate, the citadel default is  90.35, the 'minimum belt length' is 129.61, the ship is 139m
Hull Space is 143%, which per the Protective deck guidelines means a protective deck can't be fitted.

So , using the default 90.35m, a 25mm citadel deck would be 94 tons
Adjusting % l of wl to 4/92/4 , a 25mm citadel deck would be 223 tons.

Box
Boxes appear to include a section of deck and vertical walls around it.
For the Artesmia class, a 35mm Box around magazines is 31 tons.
For the Artesmia class, a 35mm Box around magazines & machinery is 588 tons.
...well more than a simple deck.

This would be equal to 35mm armor for a 329ton armor deck,
leaving 259tons – that would "buy" a 35mm main belt 3.48m high.
That nearly takes it to the default TDS height, but not quite.
Adding draft does not alter the height of the box.
Not sure how that height is figured out, or what it's using for width.

But definitely a big box with a roof and walls ~3.5m high.
Which may just be what they think Engineering spaces should default to,
after all, I tend to use 3.5m for engineering when designing my ships.

I seem to have problems with getting the weight to update automatically
when reducing speed, but adjusting the l % wl numbers seems to make it work.

Belts : Prior experiments I have done seem to indicate that Main and Upper Belts include a same-thickness end bulkhead.

This is quite different than historical – where end bulkheads were often much thinner, or in the case of upper belts- absent. It makes end-one "crossing the T" far less effective.

Example :
This can be tested in several ways, the easiest is to compare the weights of a 1m long , 5m high Main belt to a 1m long 5m high End belt .

On my Artesmia II frigate, a 100mm 1m Main belt weighs 113 tons, the 1m End belt 8 tons. One should be able to figure out the cubic density of iron and deduce the end belt lacks a transverse bulkhead.