Big Gun Turrets on Sci-Fi Warships
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 24 ก.ย. 2024
- Spacedock delves into gun turret emplacements on sci-fi warships.
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Remember kids, if your big gun turret is big enough, eventually it's the warship that's on the turret and not the turret that's on the warship.
Soooo...basically the Civil War Monitor?
Every sci-fi fleet should have at least one “gun with ship-like parts attached”
As someone that still plays children of dead Earth I can state with certainty you don't even need ships with your turrets😅
@@scepta101unsc be like all my gun will be ship like
I always like to imagine that is the endgame for large scale space wars. No more vessels with fancy turrets and special manoeuvring of individuals, just massive walls of guns trying to wipe out the enemy guns like some kind of 18th century infantry square.
But the infantry are particle cannon armed battleships.
SPACE BATTLESHIP YAMATO MENTIONED MORE! YIPPPPEEE
UNSC ships- we are the gun
Starfleet ships- check out our phaser strips
I was going to be very angry if there wasn't at least 1 Yamato clip in this!
Mean while Super Dimension Fortress Macross: Cries in copyrighted corner
btw, when you straight up turn your space battleship into a mech and "hold" the main gun, there's no need for a turret XD
@@Tallacusuncf ships are also the guns since the Wave Motion Gun also runs through the ship and is way stronger than any MAC Cannon will ever be
What great about it having a watershape hull can be useful on planet with water
I'm a simple man. I see a video about big guns on spaceships, I watch. Simple as.
"Hard alarbord, Helm. Guns, train them to port and fire as she bears.
*MORE DAKKA*
Waaaagh
*THERE IZ NO SUTCH THIN' AZ ENOUGH DAKKA*
MOAR!
No matter the universe, having powerful armament on an armored traverse mechanism will never be uncool.
*“TEMPER TEMPER”*
That was in response to a US battleship retuning fire on a land combatant that couldn't even hurt them, right?
@@igncom1very much so. And let’s just say the hillside bunker that shot at them was no longer a bunker nor a hillside.
"No matter the universe" very much includes our universe XD
I wish we got to see the insides of the turrets on the Battlestar Galactica and see the crew. They’re like the one group of people we never got to know about.
In a Tech Book was written that there are fully automated Revolver Cannons with 2 feading lines for each turret, one for Frag and one for a Programmable HEAP
On a big ship like a WW2 battleship the stuff surrounding all the rotating mechanism and ammo hoists is called a barbette. Most modern warships don't have this setup any more as their guns barely penetrate the deck in most cases with them having an ammo hoist, power and water feeds and that's about it going into the hull. Barbettes were much much larger and would have had multiple crew in them as well as hoists, flash proof barriers etc etc.
Ah, so that's what they meant when they said the Imperial-2 Star Destroyers had Octuple Barbette Turbolasters
@@nobleghost1177 Aye could be :) Back in the late 1800's to early 1900's there was actually a huge difference between a turret and a barbette. A turret in those times looked like those on the US Monitor, a big upside down biscuit tin that covered the guns and crew in armour. Whereas a Barbette was an armoured mounting that didn't have a roof and the gun and crew were largely exposed to the weather and were only protected from things like shrapnel etc coming in at flat angles.
The advantage they had was weight, they were a LOT lighter than the old turret types and thats why they fell out of favour as they started putting 'armoured hoods' IE an armoured roof over the guns and crew and these evolved into the more modern turret types you see on WW1 battleships. As an example of a turret and barbette, have a look on wiki at the Royal Sovereign class of battleship and you'll see they all had open barbettes apart from one the HMS Hood, which had the old style turrets. :) You'll also see that the Hood is a full deck lower than the others of the class due to the weight of the turrets, and this made her a poor sea boat and prone to getting roughed up by weather. whereas the ships with barbettes were better sea boats.
But looking at the ISD II's main guns they're really in turrets but barbette sounds better :) So yeah we'd call them turret mounted guns but the Imps called the barbettes :)
On ships you can call them barbette it fit in most cases.
It doesn’t always make sense, but you do like to see those big guns swinging into battery. Few things in sci-fi so clearly communicate to an audience that significant things are about to happen, it’s the deep space equivalent of racking the slide on a shotgun.
Turrets on spaceship = Nova dreadnought from Babilon 5 in my mind😅😂
One thing that wasn't mentioned was that a sufficiently large turret rotating will also induce rotation on the attendant vessel, if it is in space. Recoil is not the only effect a gun can have on a spaceship that doesn't need to be considered (as much) on the ground.
Easily fixable by a counter-rotating ring within the construction. Either have it purely counterweight, or additional armor or a hold for more ammo.
We kinda solved the counterrotation force issues about the time we invented modern single-prop helicopters. Just gotta upsize it. By a LOT.
@@aleksatanaskovic9172 also used in space power tools
it would be neat to see such systems employed as backups to the normal attitude and maneuver systems in an emergency
the same way a gun is also a bad but functional rocket, a turret could be a crappy but functional emergency gyro
In space warfare turreted guns tend to be the secondary armaments that support the truly absorb spinal mounted F.U. dispenser.
Also a rather common misconception is that a ships armaments aren't guns in the same way we think of WW2 Battleships.
But merely a way to transfer the Ship's Power Output into damage, be it kinetic, termal or otherwise.
So adding more Gun Turrets to a ship than you can fire at once, is a perfectly valid tactic to solve blind spots.
Indeed. The game Eve Online is nice example of this. Each turret comes with two actual fitted turrets. One mounted on each side of the ship. And they work in tandem to cover each others blind spots. Very nice to see up close when you are shooting
and fixed forward facing spinal mount weapons are a bad idea in 99% of cases.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 Given the distances involved in space battles that statement is false.
@@ryuukeisscifiproductions1818 Nah. If your ship is manoeuvrable enough, or the target is slow enough then it gives you amazing weapon stability for firing BIG rounds at an enemy.
@@vi6ddarkking no its not, distance is the massive enemy of a fixed forward facing weapon. there is a reason they even went away on tanks, and the only reason aircraft retain them is turrets are real bad for aerodynamics.
It is incredibly difficult to engineer an RCS system that is both powerful enough to maneuver an entire ship at a reasonable amount while also being precise enough for fine aiming. It is also far more energy inefficient than turreted weapon, as you would have to expend considerable amounts of fuel and energy just to aim the one big gun. And you better hope the enemy isn't shooting at you and landing hits because hits from even light projectiles will still impart momentum on your ship and throw its aim off.
And this is on top of the fact that the one big gun can only fire in one direction at a time at a single target. which means if you get attacked form multiple directions, your one big gun is pretty helpless, and building a ship around one big gun makes it pretty helpless against swarm attacks from smaller cheaper ships.
where as ships armed with multiple turreted gun batteries can much more easily deal with swarm attacks from multiple directions, especially if equipped with cluster munitions designed to deal with such threats.
And this is on top of the fact that one big gun is also a single point of failure where one malfunction now makes your ship helpless.
A single massive gun ship is only ever going to be any good at fighting other big gun capital ships at close range, where as a turreted capital ship can much more easily fight off both other big capital ships as well as kill smaller warships and depending on ammunition load, even deal with fighters very well, as well as being much more tolerant of weapon malfunctions since one malfunction is unlikely to deprive you of your main battery.
and dont start with that but turrets are heavy and complex nonsense, turrets are an over 100 year old technology that is pretty well mastered now, and compared to the other technology a spaceship would have a turret would be positively caveman technology by comparison. And building one massive oversized gun is going to be far more expensive than investing in numerous smaller caliber guns.
Need moor Dakka. Can never have enuff.
Just do like Legend of the Galactic Heroes and turn the Ships into Turrets!!
We need a proper finale for The Expanse!
^^this, even if it ends up being animated!
We are waiting for the actors to get older. There is a significant time gap to the last book
1:17 Gotta love the DS9 references especially to that particular scene 😂
I think the 'turret basket' on battleships are called 'Barbets'.
they are indeed called that
Guns on warships (and how you use them) can be a very fun concept in any story. Even in my writings, I have a case where a civilian billionaire, rejected from military service, took the turrets from USS Iowa and Missouri and slapped them onto an older 22nd-century spaceship that he called The Rampage. There were a variety of reasons why this was done (Earth has been mostly abandoned), and the warship's entire frame was rebuilt, including utilizing engines to help counter recoil generation. The ship can essentially fly sideways and fire its guns onto a target. However, it's important to note that this is an ad-hoc design as shells are very slow, and space is absolutely huge. The ship is essentially a raider that does saturation bombardment at stationary targets.
There can be other ways that gun turrets can be used in stories. This can include Gatling-like turrets where the barrels cycle to help out in heat reduction. Rings can be used to house large gun turrets, where the rings spin to cycle each turret when firing at single targets. It's important to note that space doesn't care what your ship does. You can lightly spin the ship to fire every turret you need to hit a target. Space isn't a 2D field (which writers can fall into when depicting battles). Up, down, left, right, nobody cares.
Big guns good. Me like. 👍🏼
spacedock : "only the gun elevates"
Stridsvagn 103: "am i a joke to you?"
How about Sci-Fi warships which are essentially one big gun?
Would recoil be an issue if most are using lasers/DEWs? Could be, I'm no astrophysicist 😂
I love big turrets and I cannot lie.
Am I biased? Hell yeah, my game is full of turrets and they are large and in charge.
Love this channel
Big turrets for long range engagements, and for orbital bombardment.
Mid range anti fighter weapons,
And fighters, with drop ships for boarding.
The turret baskets on ships are called Barbettes
Turrets sit within barbettes, but barbettes are not one with the turret itself
I offer barbaskets
That is ... wrong! A barbette is armoured housing for a gun with a limited firing arc but easier to create/build because its not a turret.
Show me your Barbettes 😎
Actually, no. The EXTERNAL MOUNT where you put the turret (and the "basket") in, is the barbette.
You dont need cables to unwind in a turret. Afaik you usually have power rails and carbon pickup brushes to transmit the power.
We called them "Brush blocks" in aviation. They're how you get power into a prop for de-icing/anti-icing. Great system until the day they wear out or get dirty. Then you learn to hate them.
Neat that you showed the Gatlantis dome turrets from SBY! That particular design is pretty neat. A relatively weak turret that has a full hemisphere of coverage and can fire in any direction with minimal movement, plus the rate of fire is very high.
Space under the turret on ships sometimes called a Barbette
As hard sci-fi nerd turrets are very important, i think they will be more numerous on sci-fi ships than those on water naval for multiple reasons they can be for anti missile defenses to CQB and more also because having more volume of fire gives advantages but doesnt mean missiles and lasers will be apart of the game
I believe on naval ships they are called Barbettes.
0:38 On a ship the turret basket is referred to as the barbette.
The Yamato is smiling.
5 minutes ago? Nice
If a warship isnt basically a flying gun its not a warship, IE the UNSC ships literally being a rail gun with FTL capabilities
give this man venture cap funding
*Squints eyes with hateful intent* It is a Coil gun it does not have rails
@@alecdeter1999okay coil guns
Personnally, the question is going to be... how *big* can the guns get in space? If we're talking about spinal mounted guns, like the HALO UNSC MAC, or the Traveller universe "Spinal mount" meson and other super large guns, those are basically the basis of the ship which is built around it, thus, no turret... You rotate the whole ship like an assault gun. The Terran wet navy battleships have turrets because the ships have grown bigger than guns, rather than the other way around. So you need multiple guns, and to concentrate firepower you need to rotate them to aim them, which is inherited from the age of sail days when the way to increase firepower is to carry MORE guns, since there's an upper limit on how heavy the guns can get due to metallurgy limits.
No naval ships have mulitple guns because your accuracy when firing at a moving target at 20km+ away isn't great. Throw enough shit at the wall and you'll hit something.
When the Bismarck was sunk the 2 RN battleships had a hit ratio of about 10% for around 80 big shell hits.
1 gun would make aiming very, very hard but with a double or triple turret you can fire one gun at a time to range the target for each turret before firing full broadsides.
Ships grew insize because it was a balance of firepower, speed and armour.
To make a ship fast it needed to be long. The Iowa class was 67m longer than a South Dakota for 5.5 knots (6.3 mph) more speed that length added weight in armour but mostly in adding 82,000 shp in steam turbines.
@Spacedock I was wondering if diesel/steampunk combat dirigibles and SHIELD's Helicarrier even possible?
Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant looks like a promissing game :-)
Yay! Arcadia turrets get a highlight! My favorite of all big space gun examples.
With So Many Sci-Fi Worlds That Have Some Form Of Inertial Dampening/Compensating I've Always Wondered If Such Tech Could Be Used To Explain Away Recoil Or Lack Of It.
If I remember correctly. The “Basket” on ships is called a “Turret Base”
But I could be wrong.
Can you're next episode be on advanced turrets i.e. the turrets used by the spillage from THEO BOUVIER. And side question, when are we getting a dedicated episode on Advanced Particle Beam🤙🏾
One of the things I like about Eve Online is the massive caliber of Minmatar ships. To quote Captain John Rourke (of the good ship Clear Skies), "Stationary ships don't react well to Fourteen Hundreds."
Alright, that's it. In my scifi setting, PDCs are all 76mm and made in Italy, because at this point I'm convinced the Italians will always keep the things upgraded for relevance.
All this fine talk about fancy weapons for spaceships, but where is the conversation about the naval principle of ramming?!
Travers Speed isn't usually a problem for the REALLY big, Massey (Heavy) guns since they're designed to kill other Capitol Ships, NOT the small, fast moving Fighters and Missiles...those are dealt with by the smaller, MUCH lighter and faster moving Point Defense Turrets...
The WW2 Battleships didn't use their 16 inch gun Turrets to kill airplanes, they used them to kill other Battleships (or buildings in the Bombardment role)...the small 5 inch guns would be used for small, fast targets...
In the theme of this, maybe next spinal mounts, with broadsides and other fixed guns tacked on?
4:55 That heavily depends on the setting (if we talk SciFi).
If you try to be rather realistic with your setting, I would guess it's rather likely to happen.
If you basically put fleet combat into space, whatever.
Hah! You have a very quite music/sound going on in the background. I thought my neighbours are having a party. A bit distracting and anoying. Say, are your neighbours having a party while you are recording?
I love the PVKK mention, I haven't played it yet but I love the dev's other game Dome Keeper!
And remember: it is not overcompensating if you end up killing your inertia.
In The Expanse they rotated the ship to allow the PDCs to hit targets better. I'm sure a turret would benefit from this as well. I'm actually surprised more ships don't rotate or spin during combat.
Personally, I'm partial to the 'build a weapon and wrap a ship around it' school of space warship design.
Keep these videos coming if you can; they're helping some of us write some FIRE ass stories! 😎
The thing about turrets in SF combat is there's a certain satisfaction in actually seeing that whole process where the turret pivots, the barrels align, there's a moment of quiet, and then *boom*. It's one of the things I found I preferred during the Kelvin v. Narada battle at the beginning of Star Trek '09, seeing the phasers as physical turrets poking out of the Kelvin's hull just made them feel more real.
Barbette would be the term for ships you are looking for.
The major parts of a turret are:
Spinny bit on top = Gunhouse
Part of the turret that hangs down in the hull = turret stalk (the turret stalk is multiple "baskets" deep - each "basket" is called a "pan" on a ship)
Part of the ship that the gunhouse rests on = barbette
Also, in all nations' navies, a two-gun turret is called a "twin turret," but in the United States Navy (and ONLY the USN), a three-gun turret is either called a "three-gun turret" if each gun can elevate individually or a "triple turret" if all three guns move together.
Also, under almost all circumstances, turrets will not fall out of a ship because they install retaining brackets or "clips" to hold the turret on the roller track.
Definitely appreciate a Spacedock video about the pew pew
I like the detail that in The Expanse the PDCs have an RCS thruster on the back to compensate for recoil.
And also imagine if the Normandy SR2 from Mass Effect 2 and 3 could also turn it's twin Thanix Cannon to also fire on Targets not directly in front of them. (Or imagine them actually using it more often then just the one time against the Collector-Ship at the end of Mass Effect 2.)
Some corrections regarding turrets. First off, the lower section of the turret that goes below decks on a warship, especially battleships, is often called a barbette. Second, when you refer to turrets often having additional ammunition outside of the barbette but being close by, you show the interior of the turrets on the Iowa’s class battleship. In this case that is incorrect, as the areas you highlighted are for storing gunpowder, not the projectiles. With regards to the layout of the guns, especially the main battery, contrary to what video games might make you think, with the exception of shooting at airborne targets, you don’t fire your guns straight forwards or backwards. You risk damaging the ship and it’s not very stable/accurate due to the increased up and down motion of the bow and stern. Instead, you almost always fire off to the sides: no risk of damaging the ship, more stable/accurate towards the center, plus the added benefit of all your main guns onto target, rather than just a handful. It’s why you see “wing” or side mounted main gun turrets quickly fall out of favor with the advent of the dreadnought era and all ships having their main guns on the centerline
Recoil as a problem is always overstated when people talk about space guns. If your ship is more than minimally maneuverable, it can correct for any unintended motion (which won't be much compared to the velocities needed just to get around in space) with thrust. There's no need for a dedicated thruster on the back of the gun when the ship already has loads of thrusters.
Elevation might not be all that valuable either. A spaceship can do something a wet ship can't: roll. If you're in a space battleship and the target is "above" you, you can roll the ship 90 degrees to port and now the target is on the starboard side.
good to see Gundam ships on here along with space battleship Yamato!! Another cool video .
Forgot about the extra sci-fi technology of turrets that remain suspended above the ships hull giving them the greatest freedom of movement of all.
I would imagine that any orojectile based turret weapons would cause some funky spinning on the ship. And then it could flip on an unexpected axis. Not good.
Peacekeeper Command Carrier - my favourite big gun ship! The main guns are on turrets but also on massive tracks around the hull.
0:52 On a ship is called the barbet
0:30 I believe it's called a Battery Column. Battery (a grouping of guns) because each barrel is considered a separately maintained gun despite being physically bound to the same direction. Column because you're right, a massive rotating undercarriage that extends 3 decks deep into the ship can't rightly be called a basket, and that word fits the design choice best.
Edit: They are apparently called barbettes, which also makes sense for a cluster of hostile protrusions. It also just depends on how you want to name your own fictional universe's terminology.
I think for a ship it is a munitions handling deck. In case of a battleship it is made up of powder hoists back blast doors and powered ring decks. Ring decks allow powder and shot to pass into the turret. Magazines on things bigger than tanks are stationary. Also to run all ring decks shell hoists powder doors. It takes like 90 people per gun in an Iowa class battleship.
i mean there is always 2 set of weapon in every sane starship desing. One set for or against relatively speaking "slow" moving targets like big ships and stations, and small weapons for fast moving targets. Like enemy projectiles, missiles fighters, or even small but usually fast and manuverable ships like fregatts corvettes or destroyers. ofc u can sacrefice one for the another, but those ship only useable in a fleet. for an efficent starship what can "hurt" anything but did not exel at any fields are the best if we speak of a hero ship or a small wolfpack of ships. ( Late season Rocinante from the Expanse are an exxelent example for it. )
Power, transfer becomes a major consideration, for railguns / coilguns. Since they can draw huge amounts of power for a very brief moment. Likely making it necessary to locate the firing capacitors in the turret as well.
Another issue are passing through coolant lines to the turret, since in space you have to rely on radiators (or internal heat sinks for short periods of time ) to keep cool.
Kinda surprised that the ship from Spacepirate Harlock didn't get a special mention in the coverage problem segment, considering it has a rather effective mechanism to facilitate exactly that with its turrets on rotating tracks that can circle the turrets around the ships.
Also the floating gun platforms on the Iserlohn Fortress in 'Legend of the Galactic Hereos' which could be shifted within the liquid metal layer to wherever they are needed (albeit that one is a massive space station and not a warship, so I understand how that may not have made the cut for a video on warships specifically).
At 2.09 😊 Planetenverteidigungskanonenkommandant. Hut ab für den dezent sperrigen Namen/ Cudos for that stereotypical Name, gotta check whats the Story behind the Name
On navel battleships it's called the Barbette which has a casemate with an armoured gunhouse on top which came to be called turrets reusing the term that was originally used for original turrets like those used on USS Monitor which aren't related to WW1 or WW2 battleship turrets at all.
I'm just here to see the PDC recoil compensation rockets.
Another alternative you might want to consider is multiple turrets on a rail on your ship hull. Especially in an environment where your foes can appear at any angle, instead of having dozens turret on all side of your ship’s hull to cover all angle, having a few that can be moved from place to place would be sustainable. Less energy requirement. Less mass (more deltaV). And would make sense if your ship is one that has landing capability.
Having mech with multiple armaments patrol on your ship’s hull and let them act as a walking turret would also make sense
I think its pretty telling than in Gundam big gun turrets get less and less common and all ships basically become carriers. Also great using Children of a Dead Earth footage! I built such a massive nuke cannon in that game that I could actually turn it around and use it as an orion drive, the only problem was it destroyed my ship in the process.
I like how star trek phaser arrays just side steps all these problems. Exactly like a future solution should.
Also, would like to see more discussion on recoil. It seems overstated. It's not as if the ship is firing even 1% of it's mass, so it should have very little effect.
I’m Reading what I perceive to be an obscure Sci fi series called odyssey one and through the dozen or so books in the same universe the warships get more powerful and start using what are effectively precise nuclear missile launching cannons with huge barrels for some reason but in the lore it totally works and it makes the battles feel so dynamic and engaging. The visuals are all described but it paint a pretty compelling picture and it’s a series I wish we could see at least more concept art for because the vehicles seem to be very interesting and unique. Anyone else heard of this book?
The circular armor below the turret enclosing its ammunition supply in a warship is called barbette.
I can see turrets being useful for point defense against multiple smaller targets but for the really big gun, if you're operating in the zero-g and vacuum of space, it would seem make more sense to have the gun fixed in line with the ship's keel and just rotate the ship. That way you could use your main thrusters to counterbalance the recoil from the gun or even use a recoilless system to vent the gasses out the rear. Of course, depending on the length and mass of the ship you would have to overcome a lot of inertia so plusses and minuses for the concept.
You didn't mention how arms are much more fragile than turrets. The increased complexity would be more than worth the trade off for being able to aim basically anywhere, but one bad pump and that arm might not even be able to fire, much less turn.
In Traveller turrets are the basic weapon emplacements and can carry up to three weapons. Fifty or a hundred times larger than turrets are Weapon bays, but most major warships in Traveller have a spinal weapon as their main gun.
I always love the way the turrets are designed on the Arcadia from the cgi movie space pirate captain harlock. I thought it was clever how the turret rotates around the bow of the ship to reach all angles.
In my language we call turrets our word for “towers” which fits nicely with the fact that the internal mechanism extending downwards is also a part of it.
Love the music in the backround
Gun depression needs more attention! They work better when they are happy.
One reason you might do this, is to have an easily replaced major component that needs to cover a wide area, but you cant afford to point out like a hedgehog. Alternatively to allow greater isolation of the component for say, radiation reasons
THis is THE VIdio IVE been waiting FOR
Someone remind me again ? which (book) franchise covers itself in guns like a hedgehog and then rolls the ship along the centreline to minimise damage on a single spot and keep loaded and functional weapons in play when firing at a single target as well as popping up and down like musket man would in and out of the cover of their comrade vessels.
I love my battleships in space.
On a ship, the inside part of a turret is called a Barbette.
I like your funny words science man
0:41 the turret sits in its turret well. They're separate systems due to how immensely heavy the turret is. Its much easier to perform maintenance when you could literally lift the turret out if the way.
coax gun as long as the ship, just rotate the ship not the gun on a turret
Im a simple man.
I see Space Battleship Yamato i press like.
Please please please do a video on ExoSquad!!! 💜
Wait. @6:11 is that a clip from Iron Sky? hahahahahaha
2:09 Planetenverteidungskanonenkommandant :D
Terrific explanation 😊
Diaclone Robotbase likes its turrets too !
0:39 On sea ships it's called "THE DRUM". That's why sometimes when order was given to "spin the drums" it means to point turrets on target.