Post your favorite Space Ships : Any Media, any Franchise

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wi-Fi > Post your favorite Space Ships : Any Media, any Franchise

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MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

jeeves posted:

Unique in that someone read Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and decided to call it an early day on designing that prop for that notoriously frugal franchise.

It actually ended up being a huge pain because of the uneven reflective dark surface that liked to catch reflections off the bluescreen and didn't do well showing light properly, and they had to change the surface coating in the end. And to get the proper depths implying size they had to build three scale models.

MikeJF fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jun 25, 2023

# ? Jun 25, 2023 19:24

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 09:31

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

Fivemarks posted:

i'm not a fan of hard sci-fi on the basis that hard sci-fi fans tends to be really insufferable and judgemental on what is "REAL" Sci-fi and what isn't. I especially don't like how things will go "We don't need a good story or characters, just Hard Sci-fi", and will also make the ships ugly as sin, too.

http://efni.org/Images/Nike_N.gif

I do like Earthforce ships from Babylon 5, though.

Yea, that's exactly my issue with it. SOmetimes they read like engineering manuals over stories.

Also the whole "real sci fi battles would be fought over millions of miles whipping asteroids at each other" sounds easy, but you need to go out and find asteroids and then get them up to speed and also somehow defeat any point defense they might have, when you could just shoot some kind of beam or railgun or nukes at people. Also i do find the whole "Well physics says we can't do this" but that seems to assume that our understanding of the universe has been fully explored and I think thats pretty arrogant.

I feel like in part the Expanse ships are designed to kind of mock the boring, functional designs that hard sci fi tends to come up with. Holden says that the Donnager looks like an office building with guns strapped to it and laments that humanity has lost any sense of style, just making things optimally functional. The show does this a little better by giving the MCRN, UN and Belter ships unique designs but keeping some functionality.

I really wish i was some level of artist, because In my head i have many great ship designs but my limited skills in artistry can't communicate it very well. Though ships in my setting deal with heat in different ways, depending on their level of tech. LIke the Fallen Empire style aliens, their tech is so advanced that their ships produce very little heat for the amount of energy output they have (their ships are powered by what is essentially a star the size of a baseball) and what heat they do produce is recycled back into the ships systems. But these guys have tens of thousands of years of technological development. The humans that live in the space colonies, their ships store waste heat, and then when they enter hyperspace, which in my setting is this dead, empty realm under reality that has extremely weird properties, they'll dump it there. If they produce too much heat that they can't simply store it, it will be just shunted into space. But this would only happen during a battle where suddenly being way hotter isn't going to change much. The Humans who are centered around earth, their ships have giant wings on them that serve as radiators as well as weapon mounts. They, are not nice people and don't think much of their crews.

SlothfulCobra posted:

but they are internally consistent,

This is probably the most important thing. You can have all the made up sci fi bullshit but as long as it works the same way, and any time its used out of that discribed way, there's a good reason for it and you have a good story reason for it.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 06:04

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

twistedmentat posted:

Also the whole "real sci fi battles would be fought over millions of miles whipping asteroids at each other" sounds easy, but you need to go out and find asteroids and then get them up to speed and also somehow defeat any point defense they might have, when you could just shoot some kind of beam or railgun or nukes at people.

I was always a fan of combat wasps, where you shoot swarms of drones from a distance, most of which weave and evade as they move in to slam into the target. Some contain submunitions or MIRV style weapons but most are just smart kinetic kill weapons.

Expensive but effective.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 06:47

mllaneza: Apr 28, 2007; Veteran, Bermuda Triangle Expeditionary Force, 1993-1952

MikeJF posted:

I was always a fan of combat wasps, where you shoot swarms of drones from a distance, most of which weave and evade as they move in to slam into the target. Some contain submunitions or MIRV style weapons but most are just smart kinetic kill weapons.

Hamilton has some real issues, but "combat wasps" is a wickedly cool term.

And if you heard that from someone else, I need to know.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 07:42

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

https://forum.rpg.net/index.php?threads/sci-fi-setting-riff-counting-to-infinity.294175/

This is a fantastic starship.

quote:

Counting to Infinity is huge, old, and damaged. It is a cracked diamond. it is the Mona Lisa with a mustache drawn on. Everything about it hints at the grandeur of its maiden voyage- and also, shockingly, almost sickeningly, at how it has been despoiled by time, carelessness, misadventure. Counting to Infinity slumps through space, burdened with the troubles of its crew, carrying trade, information, tangle, something like novelty to the scattered human- and sometimes, inhuman- settlements. The galaxy is huge. The local cluster, even huger. It is almost impossible to imagine, but for the crew there is only two extremes- the aching silence of the void, or the snarling chaos of an inhabited system. When they close their eyes in the coldsleep capsule, they open them somewhere else. Their light cone expanded to encompass new worlds, new space, new people... yet, on some level, that hope of fresh meeting, or new faces, is always smothered by the knowledge that it is fleeting. The Counting to Infinity will sail again, leaving these people behind. Perhaps to return one day... a century... a dozen centuries down the line. But then, things would have changed so much, the old world would be new again- as new as visiting some place you'd never been. You count the gas giants and the moons on the way into systems now. You want to make sure the ship doesn't just take a long elliptical around the star, and loop back to the same world over and over, flying dutchman through time, never going anywhere.

Sometimes, the Counting to Infinity gets into trouble.

It is sort of inevitable.

Human perversity knowns no bounds- and the perversity of humans with power over their fellows is especially impressive. Every permutation on the state has been tried out there some where. Always seeming like the grand new thing. Always failing in the end.

You've seen teledemocracies where every citizen's interface implant registered their thoughts and feelings moment to moment, and transmitted it to central offices which guided policy to suit the mob's will instantly. You watched kill-drones descend from the skies and commit high-energy lynchings on whoever the Out group was when a crowd's opinion turned against them. You watched as Orators and Admen ruled by controlling the thoughts of the Mob. You did a brisk trade there in IP for high-end sense implants. They used them to make everyone feel the same as everyone else. You fled, when a crowd turned as one to look at you, and smiled the same smile.

You've seen nanarchies, where cornucopia machines nanofactured anything and everything anyone wanted. You traded new manufacturing patterns, and had some fun in their orgies. You escaped system just ahead of a bonded security company's "compensation operatives" looking to kill you when one of the patterns you sold turned out to have been a carrier for post-singularity hegemonizing smartmatter war machines. As the machines spread, consuming all the lovely carbon contained in biological life, everyone's vendetta contracts went live, and suddenly every gun on the planet was pointed at you.

Moments of panic, terror, wonder, awe, joy, excitement... decades of crushing slowtime slugging between potential disasters, and other people who want to do you harm.

Good thing Counting to Infinity is armed.

Five weapon systems, all installed at different times, all based on different technologies, different philosophies of war, different definitions of atrocity.

Lazfield- almost prosaic compared to the other weapons. The Lazfield is a system of hundreds of networked variable frequency laser elements. It might have started as a point-defense system, able to intercept incoming projectiles. When slaved to the gravity wave sensors, it is very very good at this, almost like an autonomic function. The effective range isn't fantastic, but the lazfield is more than capable of carving lesser ships to bits. Use with caution- once triggered, the Lazfield operates until deactivated. It doesn't discriminate. It simply kills anything within a few hundred klicks of the Counting to Infinity. Any ident coms channels allowing targets to be tagged as 'friendly' just beg for information attack. Be safe. Kill first. Ask questions... never, is possible.

Singer Ram- not really a weapon by design, but the ram fields for the Singer engines can be used to play merry hell with ship systems, planetary magnetic fields, communications, and the nerve impulses of biological life. The fields are big, and generally don't allow anything approaching precision. Their effects are also very unpredictable. Other light luggers are hardened against such things. System craft might be so. Applied with abandon, they can induce all kinds of horribleness to a world's atmosphere and weather.

Swarmies- once upon a time, combat drone swarms and semi-autonomous weapons were all the rage. Info-hygiene sort of limits their effectiveness nowadays, but the Counting to Infinity still carries a few hundred of these deadly little monsters. Space spiders. Vacuum ticks. Void wasps. Lots gnarly sounding names. Lots of weird designs. Swarmies do what you'd imagine- they swarm, they devour, they destroy. They coordinate with a (semi) secure network. At one point, they would have used tangle-box coms to coordinate, each one carrying a fortune in tangle for a single engagement- but they have long since been stripped of their tangle boxes. Now, they use the best secure protocols available, but they are still dangerous. While they are the only precision weapon on the ship, they are also among the most risky- you can never tell when an enemy might be able to compromise some or all of your own Swarmies.

Spindle Caster- the ugly brute. The Spindle Caster is almost embarrassingly low-tech. It is a four klick magnetic accelerator installed along the ship's axis of thrust, and firing out of a concealed port in Counting to infinity's nose. The Spindle Caster can propel a few hundred kilograms of mass to near C, and can fire every few minutes. It was designed to deliver variable munitions pods- sandbags, microswarms, shaped plasma penetrators- but now all it has is rocks. Rocks shaped like dildos. Rocks you can use to gently caress a city open with. It isn't an elegant weapon.

Forgetmenow- if the Spindle Caster is ugly, the Forgetmenow is just plain goddamn wrong. It's posthuman godtech. Nobody knows who installed it. Nobody knows where it was found. If asked, the Counting to Infinity just mumbles something in a weird reedy singsong about the "Shores of Marches Wylde" like it were a nursery rhyme. The Forgetmenow doesn't maul matter- it annihilates information. Best guess, it changes the information density of a given volume of space for a fraction of a second. It utterly and irrevocably destroys information, randomizing it on a quantum level. It would perhaps disrupt the gross information of matter and shape and structure if played on a target for longer than a brief blink, but it won't do this. The field of effect for the Forgetmenow is huge and shaped strangely. It is easy to target from a simple touchscreen interface. Point and click. What it leaves is terrifying. Computers with randomized memory and storage. Healthy, neurologically sound people with nothing in their minds. It utterly destroys identity. It eats souls. And it has been used and used and used to cover the Counting to Infinity's sordid deals and its crews sins and crimes.

Each weapon system demands a choice. Each delivers the Damage. Each has consequences

# ? Jun 26, 2023 09:56

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

Although as they mention, it's very much Nostalgia for Infinity with the numbers filed off. (I particularly like the change from 'lighthugger' to 'light lugger'). If you like the ship description and haven't read Revelation Space, do so.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 10:03

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

I haven't! It's a fun thread, some nice writing.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 10:10

twistedmentat: Nov 21, 2003; Its my party
and I'll die if
I want to

MikeJF posted:

I was always a fan of combat wasps, where you shoot swarms of drones from a distance, most of which weave and evade as they move in to slam into the target. Some contain submunitions or MIRV style weapons but most are just smart kinetic kill weapons.

Expensive but effective.

Itano Circuses are the way of the future.

Just swarms of missiles fired, needing only 1 to cause enough damage to get the kill in.

I made up that ships have to get in close as technology had advanced that firing long ranges was basically useless. Even getting something up to near the speed of light isn't going to help because ecm, point defense and shields are going to let the target avoid or destroy what you threw at them. The only way for big ships to fight is to overwhelm defenses , which leads to fairly close in brawls.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 21:48

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

I assumed 'lightlugger' was a typo because it's so obviously Revelation Space. The actual cache weapons on the Nostalgia for Infinity are in some ways more interesting

# ? Jun 26, 2023 21:51

sebmojo: Oct 23, 2010; Legit Cyberpunk

Kesper North posted:

I assumed 'lightlugger' was a typo because it's so obviously Revelation Space. The actual cache weapons on the Nostalgia for Infinity are in some ways more interesting

lugger = 'Light hUGGER', i think.

what are the cache weapons?

# ? Jun 26, 2023 21:59

McSpanky: Jan 16, 2005

This discussion reminds me of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, where the primary weapons were missiles fired at long-range (several light-seconds) at 0.9c. The warhead was a few kg of iron, at that velocity you don't need explosives.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 22:09

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
https://linktr.ee/Cylindricule

Any dense, inert material should work.

Such as Kevin Sorbo's brain!

# ? Jun 26, 2023 22:19

Icedude: Mar 30, 2004

The idea of a ship that's been repaired, replaced, upgraded, jury rigged, and generally ship-of-Theseused so much it outlives its creators civilization and doesn't resemble its original form at all is pretty cool.

# ? Jun 26, 2023 22:36

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Brawnfire posted:

Any dense, inert material should work.

Such as Kevin Sorbo's brain!

And it�s got a smoothness that would actually matter at relativistic speed

# ? Jun 26, 2023 22:37

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

sebmojo posted:

lugger = 'Light hUGGER', i think.

what are the cache weapons?

Yes, that is the reference.

https://revelationspace.fandom.com/wiki/Cache_Weapons

# ? Jun 26, 2023 23:33

tadashi: Feb 20, 2006

McSpanky posted:

This discussion reminds me of Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, where the primary weapons were missiles fired at long-range (several light-seconds) at 0.9c. The warhead was a few kg of iron, at that velocity you don't need explosives.

That's the concept behind rail guns IRL.

Icedude posted:

The idea of a ship that's been repaired, replaced, upgraded, jury rigged, and generally ship-of-Theseused so much it outlives its creators civilization and doesn't resemble its original form at all is pretty cool.

I get a hard-on when stories use ships like this. I probably would have quit watching The Foundation before the season ended if they hadn't discovered the Invictus.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 13:31

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

But yeah here's the author's sketch out of a lighthugger

Now they were approaching Volyova's ship.

The thing, like all the other lighthuggers, was improbably streamlined. Space only approximated a vacuum at slow speeds. Up near lightspeed -- which was where these ships spent most of their time -- it was like cutting through a howling gale of atmosphere. That was why they looked like daggers: conic hull tapering to a needle-sharp prow to punch the interstellar medium, with two Conjoiner engines braced at the back on spars like an ornate hilt. The ship was sheathed in ice, so glisteningly pure that it looked like diamond. The shuttle swooped in low over Volyova's ship, and for a moment Khouri apprehended the ship's vastness. It was like flying over a city, not another vessel. Then a door irised open in the hull, revealing a glowing docking bay. Volyova guided the shuttle home with expert taps on her thruster controls, latching onto a berthing cradle. Khouri heard thumps as umbilicals and docking connectors thudded home.

They're generally arranged like skyscrapers, like Expanse ships, spending most of their lives accelerating at 1G. They do spend enough time in-system that parts of their interiors are set up to rotate as they come to a halt, with decks on the rotating ring that swivel so that 'down' is outwards when the the ship's at rest and they're rotating, and towards the back of the ship when they're accelerating.

(Although no two lighthuggers are alike and there's likely plenty out there that don't use that arrangement)

Nostalgia for Infinity looked a lot more messed up and less smooth than that for most of the series thanks to the Melding Plague having corrupted the ship's self-repair systems. Its outside was covered in cancerous fractal growth and reconstruction.

Personally when reading I always imagined them a little more knife-shaped, flatter in one dimension than the other, but that might just be because it's cooler looking.

MikeJF fucked around with this message at 15:58 on Jun 27, 2023

# ? Jun 27, 2023 15:37

Gravitas Shortfall: Jul 17, 2007; Utility is seven-eighths Proximity.

Also a lot of lighthuggers are coated in ice as additional shielding against radiation and micro-impacts.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 16:25

Animal-Mother: Feb 14, 2012; RABBIT RABBIT
RABBIT RABBIT

Brawnfire posted:

Any dense, inert material should work.

Such as Kevin Sorbo's brain!

"Exploring space is pretty cool. But what about exploring our personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?"

# ? Jun 27, 2023 18:15

Zorak of Michigan: Jun 10, 2006

Animal-Mother posted:

"Exploring space is pretty cool. But what about exploring our personal relationship with our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, who I will be playing?"

FTFY.

# ? Jun 27, 2023 18:45

Cythereal: Nov 8, 2009; I love the potoo,
and the potoo loves you.

I picked up a couple of new space boats in Star Trek Online, and one of them has a unique feature: the Faeht class warbird's wings can be mounted in three different configurations. You can keep them level with the ship's fuselage, upswept like the classic TOS warbird, or downswept like an oversized Klingon bird of prey.

# ? Jun 29, 2023 23:46

Animal-Mother: Feb 14, 2012; RABBIT RABBIT
RABBIT RABBIT

Zorak of Michigan posted:

FTFY.

Jesus: The Legendary Journeys

Not sure what the Xena spinoff would be. Peter The Warrior Princess?

# ? Jun 30, 2023 00:58

thedangergroove: Nov 14, 2004; Long for karate day.

Artist on twitter Zanzadyne designed this lil ship, the Porgy. It's great and I love it in all its lil configurations

# ? Jul 1, 2023 19:05

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

i assume it's intended to be used for porg orgies

# ? Jul 1, 2023 21:30

The_Doctor: Mar 29, 2007; "The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

Porgies.

# ? Jul 1, 2023 21:53

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

the stuff you have to sluice out of the ship after a porgy is called porridge. i didn't make this up that's just the rules

# ? Jul 1, 2023 22:24

Squizzle: Apr 24, 2008

Brawnfire posted:

No Romulan design will ever unseat the D'Deridex in my opinion

i want there to be designs beautiful enough to unseat it, or at least match it. like how the magnificent swoops of the enterprise-D have their elegant match or better in the protostar

which looks good

from every

single

angle

imaginable

# ? Jul 6, 2023 03:17

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

woosh, zwoosh, bzoo

# ? Jul 6, 2023 04:33

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Squizzle posted:

i want there to be designs beautiful enough to unseat it, or at least match it. like how the magnificent swoops of the enterprise-D have their elegant match or better in the protostar

which looks good

from every

single

angle

imaginable

Whats the source for these?

# ? Jul 6, 2023 09:17

The_Doctor: Mar 29, 2007; "The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

That Works posted:

Whats the source for these?

Star Trek: Prodigy, that's the USS Protostar

# ? Jul 6, 2023 12:19

CaptainCrunch: Mar 19, 2006; droppin Hamiltons!

Watch it quick. Paramount is giving the show the ol spicy Zaslav.

# ? Jul 6, 2023 12:45

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

Thanks!

# ? Jul 6, 2023 13:38

The_Doctor: Mar 29, 2007; "The entire history of this incarnation is one of temporal orbits, retcons, paradoxes, parallel time lines, reiterations, and divergences. How anyone can make head or tail of all this chaos, I don't know."

CaptainCrunch posted:

Watch it quick. Paramount is giving the show the ol spicy Zaslav.

It's already gone from Paramount Plus, and only some is available to buy off Amazon, so you may have to :filez:

# ? Jul 6, 2023 13:44

That Works: Jul 22, 2006; Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy

The_Doctor posted:

It's already gone from Paramount Plus, and only some is available to buy off Amazon, so you may have to

# ? Jul 6, 2023 13:50

MikeJF: Dec 20, 2003

That Works posted:

Whats the source for these?

Nothing. No show like that ever existed, understood? :commissar:

# ? Jul 6, 2023 15:06

Squizzle: Apr 24, 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hlo0pfihPIc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYIDhvUz8uY

the show is gorgeous and the ship is well-designed and also, the show itself is v enjoyable

# ? Jul 6, 2023 15:49

ConanTheLibrarian: Aug 13, 2004; dis buch is late; Fallen Rib

That's a nice design, certainly better than virtually all the other 50 saucer-and-two-nacelles variations that have been churned out to pad the federation roster. There are plenty of other franchises with something fresh to offer.

Stellaris has butt-load of distinctive ship aesthetics. Here's one model chosen more or less at random:

Then there are the newer NPC antagonist races in Eve. The Triglavians:

Drifters:

Sins of a Solar Empire has less variety but still some nice designs like the Eradica titan:

And an old Freespace 2 fighter given a new lick of paint (textures), the Ares:

I mostly like it because it's a missile spammer.

# ? Jul 8, 2023 12:25

Kesper North: Nov 3, 2011; EMERGENCY POWER TO PARTY

i'm still mad that players can't get drifter battleships in eve, they're npc only

the triglavian poo poo is nice but those drifter battleships really are just chef kiss

# ? Jul 10, 2023 01:18

Brawnfire: Jul 13, 2004; 🎧Listen to Cylindricule!🎵
https://linktr.ee/Cylindricule

They're called Triglavian because their ships are three glaives

# ? Jul 10, 2023 01:27

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# ? Jun 12, 2024 09:31

Squizzle: Apr 24, 2008

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KPbfcLwVOPs

# ? Jul 12, 2023 17:38

The Something Awful Forums > The Finer Arts > The Sci-Fi Wi-Fi > Post your favorite Space Ships : Any Media, any Franchise

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