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wraith11 In reply to Jarheadcharon [2017-06-26 11:52:16 +0000 UTC]

She's tougher than she looks... though I suspect it possibly took joining Arcadia for her to figure it out. Being not-in-the-navy has probably done her a lot of good.

That said, I sometimes wonder how she's going to go on her first bit of leave when she gets to go back home for a period. A little bit of "last week I was rafted up alongside a fleet sub picking up some SBS, and now I'm sitting in a pub in Blackpool trying to care about who from school knocked up whom". I like to think she possibly a little too bright to be fully in to that anyway, and things are just going to be worse now she's seen a little bit of the world.

Also, I'm thinking I may have to semi-officially adopt the predecessing "Indomitable" on her name.

I have considered doing one or two things with the gunboat crew for these. However, I'm actually working on a different project, for a mate of a mate, which is satiating my scifi bug right now, so it's kind of low on the list. That said, I (slightly drunkenly, after we'd been through a few bars and wound up in a pre-1989 Berlin themed one) recently described  the M Division Girls setting as "slightly cyberpunk, late-70's/early-80's West Berlin"... so maybe that counts a little?

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wraith11 In reply to Thescarredman [2017-06-23 10:38:18 +0000 UTC]

I'm not certain the issue would be so much getting other people to buy is as it would be for me to suspend my own disbelief long enough to try selling it...

And no, Higgins did not know what she was getting in to, which is probably why she's looking more than a little perturbed at joining ship in the North of Scotland , in winter, rather than somewhere sunny and warm like, say, St. Tropez. Most of Arcadia's crew are "former" RN or Marines, but they also recruit direct from the civilian population for some of the less technical roles (eg. steward), mostly to make the books slightly more believable. That said, I suspect they vet the candidates pretty hard to ensure they've got the best chance possible of finding people who will fit in and adapt to the surprise. They also don't take anyone with previous cruising industry experience, basically so they can be trained the Arcadia (read Navy) way.

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wraith11 In reply to Somvold [2017-06-19 11:23:58 +0000 UTC]

She's going to be in a very low weight class, yes.

Cheers mate, and yes, it was intended to look like a poster. Somehow it just didn't quite work without the text.

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Somvold In reply to wraith11 [2017-06-19 12:29:40 +0000 UTC]

Fair enough and cheers to you too.

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wraith11 In reply to Experiment-626 [2017-06-19 09:43:48 +0000 UTC]

I dunno mate: most of her shipmates are a) more experienced military types and b) significantly larger than she is.

Cheers.

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Experiment-626 In reply to wraith11 [2017-06-19 16:43:30 +0000 UTC]

She may be small, but she strikes me as scrappy. She also doesn't necessarily need to use brawn - does she do any work in the galley for food prep?

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wraith11 In reply to Experiment-626 [2017-06-19 21:41:39 +0000 UTC]

I think she's tougher than she looks, she'd need to be too.

Now that you mention it, she does do prep and cold larder...

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wraith11 In reply to nomyai [2017-06-19 11:23:11 +0000 UTC]

Yeah, I suspect she'll do fine (assuming she hasn't just been thrown in for show).

I'm glad you like the Arcadia stuff. I've got to admit I find it a lot of fun to draw, and no, that's not a redundant question at all. I've never really said much about Arcadia's specifics. That's mostly because, while I've got a fair few ideas about her size/armament/etc which I'm relatively certain would work, I've never actually sat down to go through and put it all together properly to make sure. That said, the short version is I picture her as being somewhere between 80-100m (260-340') long, with a compliment of around 80 officers and crew. If you think of her as a large, capable, oceangoing corvette, or a small frigate, you'd not be far off the mark. She also has berthing for up to 8 guests (be they of the champagne swilling, or sandy beret wearing, variety), three more of you count the owner's cabin and sea-berth.

The longer version is, well, longer. It's also worth nothing that some of these explanations are pretty thin but, since the whole idea of a superyacht-peacetime-Q-ship is a logistical nightmare and pretty silly to begin with... well, here goes.

First, a bit of context: in my head, in terms of flavour, Arcadia sits somewhere between a super yacht and a WWII destroyer-or-smaller. Some of that the idea for her came after reading, and thus owes a lot to, the story of HMAS Yarra ... not so much the getting sunk part, but certainly her time in the Med and Middle East, which reads like a boy's own adventure. There was also some talk a few years back of reviving the Black Swan nameplate for a new sloop-of-war and, in-universe, that's where Arcadia came from. The idea being that she's part government, part private, funded, and is a proof-of-concept and testbed for a light, fast, long-range/endurance generalist warship, somewhere below Frigate class, that can give the RN enough hulls to cover its responsibilities in an era when ships are becoming more and more expensive.

Of course, the bonus is that the Navy also gets a unit which can slink around, using its ostensible private ownership to do all sort of intelligency, special-forces-y skulduggery, helped by the fact she has a large boat bay in the stern, with space for two RHIBs, and something more suitable for a superyacht at a squeeze. That said, I suspect the two RHIBs are more often than not moved forward to the weather deck cutouts (where, in the pictures above, Higgins is helping bring supplies aboard, and also hanging over the side singing Gilbert & Sullivan) for easier launching in worse weather.

As part of that though, she then needed good sea keeping, as well as a large enough crew and sufficient armament to be able to take her licks (looking at you Littoral Combat Ship... I've always wondered what hearing "we never intended your ship to be survivable in a fight" must do to crew morale), in a hull large enough to support those for an extended period. Of course, Arcadia herself has a primarily defensive armament, brought on mostly be space constraints. However, tear out all the superyacht gubbins and rearrange her superstructure a bit (and get rid of the need for everything to be able to retract and hide), and you should be able to expand and extend the VLS to strike length, ditch the forward millennium gun for a proper naval gun, and probably put some harpoon canisters somewhere (and fit the accommodations for the extra personnel to service them). With the remaining systems still intact, while that theoretical ship probably still shouldn't be trying to hunt down destroyers, it it should probably be able to hold its own long enough to beat a retreat.

Anyway, that's the broad explanation, though, to be perfectly honest, it's pretty much all an excuse to let me cover off a bunch of bases for "fun stuff I want to draw". That said, any thoughts welcome.

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