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Vernii posted:It would make sense if atmospheric limitations for ST ships were due to subspace/warp field interactions with planetary atmospheres and surfaces rather than a limitation in the ship's capabilities. I can't imagine something that distorts spacetime to go fast would do anything nice to a planet. I'm pretty sure "don't go to warp near a planet" is a ST rule (that's probably been broken a few times)
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Mar 1, 2022 21:07
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I think I liked it better when flying into an atmosphere was a big deal that you don't do with a starship unless especially designed for it like Voyager was, although that kind of thing is largely a consequence of visual effects technology limitations prior to the advent of cheap and passable computer animation
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Mar 1, 2022 21:38
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Leperflesh posted:they can handle the comparatively minor superheating of atmospheric re-entry Superheating is for people with dela-v limits. Trek (and almost every sci-fi) ships can trivially just decelerate to match the atmosphere's general velocity before entry and go in without having to slam into it.
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Mar 1, 2022 21:44
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MikeJF posted:Superheating is for people with dela-v limits. Trek (and almost every sci-fi) ships can trivially just decelerate to match the atmosphere's general velocity before entry and go in without having to slam into it. Yup. This is also sort of muddled by the tendency in Trek for the captain to order the helm to "assume standard orbit" and then, depending on the story, that is either a geosynchronous orbit, or not: and either an actual orbit, or not; and entering the atmosphere is almost always accompanied by superheating, even though that's not really required, just because the writers know that the audience will think "entering atmo from space always involves superheating" and either don't know that it doesn't need to, or don't want to confuse the audience by not having it. Hence: star trek ships look sleek, and can fly in atmosphere, and will always have a scene where they enter and there's a superheated glow around the prow as it does so, because that's cool and spacey and makes the audience nod and go "yup that's what happens!"
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Mar 1, 2022 21:51
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To be fair, all the times I can think of in Trek where there's reenty flames or glow they're crashing into the atmosphere instead of entering in a controlled way, which makes some sense, as they'd still be at orbital velocity then. Voyager would generally enter to land without any flames.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 22:06 on Mar 1, 2022 |
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Mar 1, 2022 22:01
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MikeJF posted:Some are, some aren't. Voyager and other smaller ships can land, and the Enterprise can water-land in the reboots. (And for big ships saucers are designed to be able to detach and emergency land too.) Almost all of them can do some level of atmospheric operation though. I feel like it ought to be possible to use the tractor beam as an ad-hoc repulsorlift by just aiming it down at the surface.
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Mar 1, 2022 22:32
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MikeJF posted:To be fair, all the times I can think of in Trek where there's reenty flames or glow they're crashing into the atmosphere instead of entering in a controlled way, which makes some sense, as they'd still be at orbital velocity then. Voyager would generally enter to land without any flames. There's one I can think of where it was controlled, The Arsenal of Freedom; but in that case they specifically wanted atmospheric turbulence and heating in order to reveal the cloaked drone.
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Mar 1, 2022 22:33
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:I'm pretty sure "don't go to warp near a planet" is a ST rule (that's probably been broken a few times) I'm not sure it was ever a rule in Star Trek actually, but it definitely is in Star Wars. There's a whole bunch of stuff about not being able to go to hyperspace inside a gravity well, to the point of the Empire weaponising gravity with their Interdictor cruisers that project a gravity well preventing nearby ships from escaping into hyperspace. That said, I don't think it comes up much in the movies, only in books/comics/TV series.
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Mar 1, 2022 23:51
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:I'm not sure it was ever a rule in Star Trek actually, but it definitely is in Star Wars. There's a whole bunch of stuff about not being able to go to hyperspace inside a gravity well, to the point of the Empire weaponising gravity with their Interdictor cruisers that project a gravity well preventing nearby ships from escaping into hyperspace. That said, I don't think it comes up much in the movies, only in books/comics/TV series. Right, because in the movies if they need a fleet to not go into hyperspace they just say "we can't go into hyperspace"
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Mar 1, 2022 23:55
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Speaking of Star Wars and gravity wells, have they tried fighting further away from a planet so their ships don't immediately start plummeting out of orbit the moment they're disabled?
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Mar 1, 2022 23:57
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E: meh, this wasn't even funny.
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Mar 2, 2022 02:57
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MikeJF posted:You don't need to be aerodynamic if you've got enough thrust and don't need to go fast enough that drag is a problem, though. If you can put out 1G of acceleration upwards and have fine enough attitude control you can just hover downwards like a very graceful brick. From memory of reading the TNG technical manual as a kid, the shields can be reconfigured to make an aerodynamic shaped force field so the ship can operate in an atmosphere without putting too much stress on the hull.
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Mar 2, 2022 04:54
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Grand Fromage posted:From memory of reading the TNG technical manual as a kid, the shields can be reconfigured to make an aerodynamic shaped force field so the ship can operate in an atmosphere without putting too much stress on the hull. Yes, in fact that's how the saucer section is supposed to do an emergency landing on a planet. They use variable geometry shields to control it's descent.
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Mar 2, 2022 05:08
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MikeJF posted:(Picard. Was a (mostly) dead cube and didn't creep though, the space orchids lowered it to the surface before it crashed) loving space orchids  Ships with the firepower to glass a planet taken out by some flying bouquets. EDIT: Specifically the Romulan fleet which arrived ready for a fight rather than the old cube and Picard's ship which weren't. Megillah Gorilla fucked around with this message at 05:33 on Mar 2, 2022 |
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Mar 2, 2022 05:29
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Then of course there's the old UK comics. They didn't ever have a chance to actually watch the show before they drew it.
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Mar 2, 2022 06:29
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Kurt, Sprok and Bongs
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Mar 2, 2022 13:08
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1000 Brown M and Ms posted:I'm not sure it was ever a rule in Star Trek actually, but it definitely is in Star Wars. There's a whole bunch of stuff about not being able to go to hyperspace inside a gravity well, to the point of the Empire weaponising gravity with their Interdictor cruisers that project a gravity well preventing nearby ships from escaping into hyperspace. That said, I don't think it comes up much in the movies, only in books/comics/TV series. In the episode of DS9 where Bashir had been replaced by a changeling and was going to blow up Bajor’s sun it’s mentioned that you can’t go to warp in a solar system (or rather it’s a bad idea) - needless to say Kira did it anyway.
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Mar 2, 2022 21:03
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Spacedock got a real bug up their collective butts that space ships in sci-fi don't have big radiators to get rid of heat. And all i can think of "if you can travel faster than light you can develop tech that reclaims or shunts waste heat so you don't need big gently caress off radiators sticking out of your ship". I know its a channel for pendants but its one of those things that yuo can say "hey its cool they did this on this ship" but then complaining about it when you talk about Star Trek ships is a bit silly.
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Mar 3, 2022 20:43
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They put all the heat into the impulse exhaust, air con style, and blow it out the back. Okay problem solved.
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Mar 3, 2022 20:49
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Can't they just use the transporter on the heat and put it somewhere else?
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Mar 3, 2022 21:04
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"Chief, what the gently caress are we doing?" "We're moving heat from the antimatter space warping device using the teleportation device so the ship doesn't get too hot, what's there to not get?"
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Mar 3, 2022 21:09
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Radiators on ships are cool.
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Mar 3, 2022 21:13
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The old Interplay game Klingon Academy had some pretty neat movie-era designs meant to flesh out a whole WWII-style range of ship classes around the refit Constitution as the midline cruiser, Miranda light cruiser and Excelsior heavy cruiser; the models were also ported to Starfleet Command 1 and 2. Okinawa-class frigate   Akula-class destroyer   Lexington-class command cruiser   Ulysses-class dreadnought   Missouri- and Yamato-class battleships     I'll post some alien ships later, but I especially loved their take on movie-era Romulans and the extrapolations from the D7/K't'iinga, one of the best designs in the whole of scifi.
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Mar 3, 2022 23:07
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Yeah, I really liked the KA designs. Honestly I think the Akula's better than the old destroyer/scout design from the TOS tech manual. I remember there was a fan mod to put in a Federation-class dreadnought. lol at the Missouri-class looking like a supersized buffed-up Oberth though
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Mar 4, 2022 01:32
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Missouri looks like a dinky little boat
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Mar 4, 2022 01:43
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The late-90s texturing does it no favors, but if I remember right the Missouri's supposed to be like 550-600 meters long. I think the Yamato-class is bigger than a Galaxy.
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Mar 4, 2022 02:30
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:The late-90s texturing does it no favors, but if I remember right the Missouri's supposed to be like 550-600 meters long. I think the Yamato-class is bigger than a Galaxy. That's correct, with the Ulysses being approximately Ambassador-sized. The game justifies these things in the movie era as enormous Cold War-analogous expenditures that get rarer and more expensive to operate as they exceed the cruiser standard, only called into service in the event of an all-out war to assault likewise-dedicated enemy fleets and hardened defenses deep in hostile territory. The Klingon Academy manual is a really good read, it's as thick as a Jane's flight sim manual and counts as one of the better EU technical references of the era. E: KA being built on the spaghetti-rear end Starfleet Academy engine and its multitudinous jank issues did it even less favors in the ship scale department  If ever a game deserved a Homeworld-style HD remake...
McSpanky fucked around with this message at 04:11 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 04:02
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I used to play the KA Earth Attack skirmish all the time. The best part was they took that cool shot of the photon blasting through the saucer as something you could do in game. You could also blow nacells off.
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Mar 4, 2022 05:23
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Having seen 0 episodes of Discovery, and having maybe a 10% understanding of all seasons so far... I like the Nimitz-Class  It's got that weird Reliant ancestry line. Like a kid hopping on a parent's lap and looking at a photo album and getting told "See lil' R? That's what grandpa Nimitz looked like before he went to the war!" And the little kid's like "AW WOW WAS HE A HERO DADDY!?" And Dad's like "No kid, grandpa was one of the first to die in the war. They dropped a piano on his head."
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Mar 4, 2022 07:42
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What did they do to that poor saucer though Just let it be a saucer!! Stop cutting it up and poking holes in it
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Mar 4, 2022 14:13
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Brawnfire posted:What did they do to that poor saucer though Modern Trek design problems in a nutshell. Now then, Klingon Academy effortpost II: Klingons and Romulans! The theme of "the bigger the ship, the bigger/more nacelles" ramps up with the aliens, an implied moderate inferiority of the other powers' warp technology compared to Federation largely symmetrical twin-nacelle designs. Also: lots of angry birds. Klingon B'Rel Bird-of-Prey, Romulan Preax scouts     Suspicious (combat/EW variants), Gladius frigates     Insurrection heavy Bird-of-Prey, Warbird refit destroyers     The Insurrection's dorsal view makes its origins in the B'Rel quite obvious; the backstory IIRC was that a minor house needed to win a shipbuilding contract to stay alive and didn't have the resources to build what was actually asked for, so instead they hit the scrapyard and hosted an episode of Pimp My Starship with a Bird of Prey, turning out a Klingon Defiant and literally blowing the competition away at the final trial. The TOS Warbird underwent a refit quite similar to the TOS Constitution... suspiciously similar, with the hull aztecing, self-illumination patterns and art deco nacelle proportions being virtually identical. The manual proposes that this is due to industrial espionage by those sneaky Romulans. God, I love those little details. Relentless, Legion light cruisers     K't'inga, Romulan K't'inga and Centurion cruisers      Warrior's Anger, Senator command cruisers     The Warrior's Anger is another one with a backstory -- in a feud between houses one leader's son was dishonorably murdered by another, and the murderer's family fled justice rather than face restitution for the crime. The father, an engineer by trade, focused his anger into transforming his personal K't'inga flagship into an instrument of vengeance and used it to tear through the coward's house like a hot d'k'tahg through targ butter until he finally slayed all the villains and claimed his right of revenge. The High Council was so impressed by not only his act of righteous rage but his technical accomplishments that they made formal order of his modified cruiser, and the Warrior's Anger class was born. Between this and the Insurrection, the lesson is: Klingon warriors may fight for honor and glory, but don't gently caress with Klingon engineers. The Romulan Senator class doesn't have a cool story, it's just my favorite original Romulan design in the entire beta canon, like a big, bizarrely graceful four-winged space goose. Somehow it all works out to make something truly unique in the field of "giant angry space birds". Emperor, Imperium heavy cruisers     Accuser, War Eagle dreadnoughts     Sword of Kahless, Imperial Hawk battleships    
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Mar 5, 2022 00:07
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No Romulan design will ever unseat the D'Deridex in my opinion
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Mar 5, 2022 00:55
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I never played Klingon Academy but most of these designs look very familiar to me, we’re they used in any other games?
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Mar 5, 2022 06:12
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Bucnasti posted:I never played Klingon Academy but most of these designs look very familiar to me, we’re they used in any other games? Pretty sure most if not all of them were reused in Starfleet Command 1 and probably 2. I liked that the story behind the Senator and Imperium class ships was they were the first Romulan designed ships since the original warbird. All the others had been built on using the D-7 hull as a starting point, while those two were designed from the ground up by the Romulans.
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Mar 5, 2022 06:27
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I'm pretty sure a number of the ship designs in Starfleet Command were based in part from the ship's designed for the old Starfleet Battles rpg. Or maybe it was FASA. Either way, some of the designs have roots in the old RPGs. The TMP-era Romulan cruiser is pretty neat, kinda has a Miranda-class vibe.
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Mar 5, 2022 07:33
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Brawnfire posted:No Romulan design will ever unseat the D'Deridex in my opinion Big surprise it was the last design Probert did before exiting the franchise. Dude was legit cool for making up such unique icon designs for ships that other hacks have been ripping off for decades now.
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Mar 5, 2022 07:57
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These posts got me to finally muck around with my newest event ship in Star Trek Online, the Jarok class alliance carrier.  Many of the Double D's children in Star Trek Online end up looking awkward at best, and the product of an affair with a Galaxy class more so than most. Turning the empty space inside the Double D into hangar bays isn't a bad idea, but in my opinion for the idea to work it needed to go all the way instead of these weird tiny flight decks that occupy only a small part of the wing cavity.
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Mar 5, 2022 14:57
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How about the J Class, the ship that Travis Mayweather was from on Discovery? Freighters that little communities grow up on traveling between human colonies. Not to be confused with the Class J, which has been in double the amount of episodes. 
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Mar 6, 2022 06:26
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I've been playing more Star Trek Online again in general. Today's subject, the Eisenberg class star cruiser, last year's winter event reward.  The free-floating nacelles give away that this is a canon ship from Discovery S3 because Discovery's artists are hacks. Honestly, if it weren't for that and the ridiculous tail on the ship I'd be fairly okay with the ship. I like the idea of far-future Federation ships turning into smooth, organic-looking mono-hull designs, and I don't mind the verticality on this little monster. As it is, I'm filing the Eisenberg as one of STO's strange, awkward little ships I'm probably never going to fly again after I grind out its mastery trait for the collection. And yes, the prefix code indicates that this particular Eisenberg is in Romulan service.
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Mar 6, 2022 17:17
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I think floating bits can work aesthetically on a spaceship, but it definitely clashes with Star Trek's baseline of realism and how it normally keeps some level of consistency with its fake physics. You'd have to do it in a setting that already established all of its technology totally ignoring physics to be a whole mystical thing.   
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Mar 6, 2022 20:23
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