Elessar2590's Darkstar Campaign
HMS Swedish Knight
Captained by the Honourable Captain Jacob MacDonald
The leader of the group and the largest ship, the HMS Swedish Knight.
The HMS Swedish Knight is a behemoth when compared to it’s subordinates but is equally as able to carry out the maneuvers required in the heat of combat. Angled sideways thrusters enable the ship to quickly roll over and present it’s more formidable armour to the fore while it’s experimental torpedo systems mounted at the front of the ship in hexagonal compartments are designed to be temporarily ejected and held in the cylindrical cut outs in the forward block where they are held until after the current battle.
The Torpedo block descends in line with the ship’s hull when the ship is in combat and when a torpedo station has fired all it’s tubes the entire station can be discarded in the recess and replaced by a fresh station.
This is a costly process to reverse both in time and manpower and so is reserved for only the most desperate circumstances.
HMS Swedish Knight is named after the British Admiral Sir Sidney Smith.
For more on Sir Sidney I can do no better than the mighty Lindybeige.
A British Naval Officer who’s most famous Naval Battle was fighting for the Swedes (which is where he gained his Swedish Knighthood, he would later get a proper British Knighthood) followed by his involvement in the Siege of Acre where he halted Napoleon’s advance, crushed the French armies spirit, negotiated a universally accepted peace treaty that all sides agreed with and that badly hurt Napoleon.
Except the British refused to acknowledge the treaty since he wasn’t an official diplomat and so they fought a battle, got a lot of people killed including Kleber (a very powerful opponent of Napoleon who was loved by the men) and then all sides just adopted his treaty word for word anyway.
Sir, your thread is awesome, @elessar2590 ! I’m so flattered people are starting to make 3D prints of ships for Darkstr! And it super-motivates me to keep driving on these rules (15 pages and counting, now into movement). I love your fleet concept, and the history put into the theme of the ships and their names. If you want, I can start sending a list of establish Royal Navy ship classes, into which you can plug your ships. Or we can get together online one of these weekends (to accommodate the time zone difference) we can design your own starship… Read more »
Thanks @oriskany
Getting together online would be brilliant. I’m also keen to play some “Panzer Leader” some time as well.
I’ll send you a pm after Christmas and we can work something out. Massive thanks for the offer.
No worries at all, @elessar2590 . Just please ping me after Christmas in case I forget. The concept has now been proven to work easy as pie, and has already produced two amazing transoceanic wargames. We can also open the master design workbook and click through the design tables if you want to design your own warships (weapons load outs, aerospace craft, stats, mass, crew, the whole bit) to produce truly your own “tabletop-legal” game designs in the Darkstar universe.
Oh, and I totally take it back, @elessar2590 – HMS Nelson in the Darkstar ‘verse is currently an Iron Duke Class heavy cruiser, not a battleship (C162).
https://www.beastsofwar.com/project-entry/1186741/
these look cool, must more creativity on adding some backstory then my attempted deciphering of the ship stat sheets
@bloodstrike – Are there any Darkstar warship classes in particular you’re interested in the backstory for? They’re all written, but there’s literally like 200 pages of it (at least 1 page per warship class). I honestly didn’t think people were that interested. 😀 Individual SHIPS are not written up. Except for ones that are already taken by other players (e.g., USS Oriskany, Valcour-class fleet destroyer). 😀 New players can pick other ships off the rosters (and then create their own write ups) or, even better, create their ships in existing classes or, better still, build their own classes (we can… Read more »
@oriskany there is nothing specific I am looking for backstory on until I run out of ships in the project thread to model you are very through in introducing ship classes. it would be interesting to see something along the line of a refit Mogami from WW2 that was turned into a half carrier, Half Crusier though. I’ll have to take you up on setting aside some time to either dig through some designs or create some.
Those are indeed interesting, @bloodstrike , if tragically flawed ships. The Arab League has such ships in Darkstar – “hybrid” carriers where the ships carries approximately a half gunload and half aerospace group.
They work well enough mechanically, not enough people have played them extensively enough for us to say if they’re really any good in actual game play.