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I really do love the sci-fi concept of a starship city, but jeebus, a hypothetical million people on a starship Enterprise is a recipe for goddamn disaster! Those named ships do tend to run into some rather unusually dangerous circumstances from time to time. Like, City Hall doesn't get constructed til Tuesday or some bullshit.
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Oct 15, 2023 17:00
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Yeah, really what you'd want is something more akin to a carrier group with a giant city-ship that cruises along sedately and a smaller Enterprise that goes on ahead and pokes things and comes back and a couple of other ships too.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 18:28 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 18:26
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Even the Culture learned that - the really big GSVs often have smaller ones hanging out inside their fields, not to mention any OUs along for the ride.
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Oct 15, 2023 18:51
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True about the OUs and Contact Units but I always got the impression that smaller Systems Vehicles hanging out with the big ones was more about socialising or catching a faster ride. On a similar note I think they mentioned in Look to Windward that by the time they were approaching the actual GSV they'd probably passed layers of a very spread out escort group in a halo around it. Re: Trek, in theory TNG was kinda meant to have the 'attack ship that leaves the civilians behind' back when saucer sep was going to be regular, but of course that failed to work out in practice when making the actual show. MikeJF fucked around with this message at 19:21 on Oct 15, 2023 |
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Oct 15, 2023 19:11
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The idea of leaving your civilians behind, close and unescorted, when you go into battle, also seemed a little tactically unwise.
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Oct 15, 2023 19:44
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MikeJF posted:Yeah, really what you'd want is something more akin to a carrier group with a giant city-ship that cruises along sedately and a smaller Enterprise that goes on ahead and pokes things and comes back and a couple of other ships too. They did that in Macross Frontier. There was a giant city-ship, a dozen or so smaller "islands" used for agriculture, and an attendant battle fleet.  Good show too. Music, giant alien battles, creepy cyborg conspiracies, classic Macross.
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Oct 15, 2023 22:01
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MikeJF posted:Yeah, really what you'd want is something more akin to a carrier group with a giant city-ship that cruises along sedately and a smaller Enterprise that goes on ahead and pokes things and comes back and a couple of other ships too. It's a direct plot point in Hydrogen Sonata when the Culture realise that the best asset to prevent one of their Minds getting killed is a GSV, and even if it's a 99% chance of victory they can't justify risking a continent's worth of people on it.
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Oct 15, 2023 22:05
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Even the Culture learned that - the really big GSVs often have smaller ones hanging out inside their fields, not to mention any OUs along for the ride. OUs? please, the Culture is a peaceful civilization. those are just picket ships. entirely demilitarized and harmless
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Oct 16, 2023 06:09
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redleader posted:OUs? please, the Culture is a peaceful civilization. those are just picket ships. entirely demilitarized and harmless The effectors? Oh, those are a utilitarian device, like a tractor beam. Plenty of civilian applications for something that can manipulate the electroweak force at a rage of 2 or 3 light years.
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Oct 16, 2023 06:17
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What is an OU?
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Oct 16, 2023 08:51
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Offensive Unit. Warship.
MikeJF fucked around with this message at 09:02 on Oct 16, 2023 |
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Oct 16, 2023 08:57
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Iain M. Banks: Surface Detail posted:"The Abominator class of General Offensive Unit, to which our friend belongs, is not known for its mildness or sociability. Probably specced when the Culture was going through one of its periods of feeling that nobody was taking it seriously because it was somehow too nice. Even amongst those, though, that particular ship is known as something of an outlier. Most SC ships conceal their claws and keep the psychopathy switched to Full Off except when it’s judged to be absolutely necessary." Iain M. Banks: Excession posted:"It looks," she snorted, "like a dildo!" Iain M. Banks: Use of Weapns posted:"Xeny; you are a million-tonne starship; a Torturer-class Rapid Offensive Unit. Even—"
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Oct 16, 2023 09:05
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Even the Culture learned that - the really big GSVs often have smaller ones hanging out inside their fields, not to mention any OUs along for the ride. Lout Class ROU Oi 'Oo The gently caress U Lookin' At M8
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Oct 16, 2023 09:53
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One of the things I always found interesting about Culture warships is the class names. The Culture thinks it worthwhile not to glorify war and war machines so it deliberately names the classes for horrible, undesirable things. Kind of a "don't kid yourself about what you are, and hope you are never called to the fullness of your capabilities" thing. OU class names we know about include Killer, Gangster, Torturer, Murderer, Psychopath, Thug, Delinquent, and Abominator. And it's a lesson worth remembering, because one example in Excession we get to see of an OU fixing its attention on an enemy that's well and truly pissed it off is... Well, it's nasty.
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Oct 17, 2023 04:19
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The particularly gruesome murders at the end of Look to Windward were canonically designed by a Mind, ostensibly to reinforce the don't gently caress with the culture whispers, but you know they got a kick out of it. Edit: I'd bet good money that Mind was in a ship. You don't get that kind of behaviour from orbitals 
Bug Squash fucked around with this message at 08:26 on Oct 17, 2023 |
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Oct 17, 2023 07:24
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The worst example of Culture retribution happens in Look To Windward, but doesn't involve a spaceship so isn't relevant to this thread. EFB 
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Oct 17, 2023 07:27
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Double posting because  Bug Squash posted:Edit: I'd bet good money that Mind was in a ship. You don't get that kind of behaviour from orbitals the E-Dust assassin wasn't given explicit orders at all, that was the point. Iain M. Banks: Look To Windward posted:She checked her orders, just to be sure. It was true. She had complete discretion in the manner. A lack of instruction could be interpreted as a quite specific instruction. She could do anything; she was off the leash.
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Oct 17, 2023 09:40
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I stand corrected! But I will defend my point that dropping a literal terror weapon down on the planet who was manufactured with certain implicit understandings was basically the same as coming up with the deaths itself.
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Oct 17, 2023 11:05
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Gravitas Shortfall posted:Culture orbitals are rotating rings with the circumference of a planet, orbiting a star edge-on, and with a slight tilt. Night is when your part of the ring is facing away from the star. This also means that there's always a bright line bisecting the night sky - the far side of the orbital in daylight I just stumbled across this: someone did a render of one day on a standard culture-sized orbital. It's a bit of a fisheye lens but gives an idea. Also there's a GSV hanging out a few dozen kilometres away. No atmospheric effects, though, the sky would be blue, probably enough that you might have trouble making out the distant ring during the day. And the night vision is very shimmery. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RE38q1nD1Ro
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Oct 28, 2023 12:54
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I love that you can tell how long it'll be till dawn by how low the blue glow is to the horizon.
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Oct 29, 2023 16:44
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The kickstarted remake of Escape Velocity Override has been posting art of their ship redesigns (EVO was completely hideous imo) and I like these ones:  
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Nov 4, 2023 23:30
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Are those wooden spaceships? I swear I remember someone talking about something like that in this thread before, not sure if it was the same setting. The engines look like whiskey or wine barrels. Seems sort of impractical, but it's a fun idea if that's what is going on.
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Nov 6, 2023 22:37
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Probably more effective than Roxolani tubs. I didn't realize those were wood textures until you mentioned it.
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Nov 7, 2023 06:33
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Twenty Four posted:Are those wooden spaceships? 
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Nov 8, 2023 00:58
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Twenty Four posted:Are those wooden spaceships? I swear I remember someone talking about something like that in this thread before, not sure if it was the same setting. The engines look like whiskey or wine barrels. Seems sort of impractical, but it's a fun idea if that's what is going on. Dan Simmons' Hyperion novels had an engineered redwood species that were also starships. Larry Niven had stage trees. In real life, white trufles and porcinis offgas hydrazine (one of the more powerful and dangerous rocket fuels) when warmed. Do with this knowledge what you will.
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Nov 8, 2023 01:21
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There’s that short story about aliens that use black powder muskets invading modern day earth in wooden spaceships with glass portholes and get their asses whooped. Because it turns out FTL is actually an insultingly simple to discover technology and as soon as a species discovers it all their great minds and research efforts focus on FTL and it’s applications and improvement over things like metallurgy, electronics, or better guns. And humans only developed all that stuff because we missed the obvious and spent all our time on “less important” fields.
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Nov 8, 2023 02:15
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galagazombie posted:There’s that short story about aliens that use black powder muskets invading modern day earth in wooden spaceships with glass portholes and get their asses whooped. Because it turns out FTL is actually an insultingly simple to discover technology and as soon as a species discovers it all their great minds and research efforts focus on FTL and it’s applications and improvement over things like metallurgy, electronics, or better guns. And humans only developed all that stuff because we missed the obvious and spent all our time on “less important” fields. Yeah that was Harry Turtledove. The aliens also were cute like little teddybears. They got wrecked.
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Nov 8, 2023 02:22
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Kesper North posted:Dan Simmons' Hyperion novels had an engineered redwood species that were also starships.
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Nov 8, 2023 10:41
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Twenty Four posted:Are those wooden spaceships? I swear I remember someone talking about something like that in this thread before, not sure if it was the same setting. The engines look like whiskey or wine barrels. Seems sort of impractical, but it's a fun idea if that's what is going on. A Japanese company is working on wooden satellites. https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/07/asia/japan-wooden-satellite-scn-spc/index.html
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Nov 9, 2023 02:52
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The original treatment for Alien 3 involved a wooden space monastery. Production was underway but the studio pulled in the release date and they had to go for something far more conventional in the end.
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Nov 11, 2023 16:56
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the final arc in the original marvel star wars comics featured the nagai, a species of lithe animes in catsuits; and their ancient foemen, the toffs, who were portly age of sail pirates who cruised around space in wooden tallships  
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Nov 11, 2023 17:30
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What's Dream of the Endless doing there in the second panel?
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Nov 11, 2023 20:57
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that is den siva, the first star wars character to ever make me go “oh poo poo i would totally like being that guy”. yes he is a tortured survivor of pirate slavery or something like that, but also, he has amazing hair and dresses super awesomely, so who can say what is good or bad
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Nov 11, 2023 21:11
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Remalle posted:What's Dream of the Endless doing there in the second panel? Crossover event.
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Nov 13, 2023 21:48
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Twenty Four posted:Are those wooden spaceships? I swear I remember someone talking about something like that in this thread before, not sure if it was the same setting. The engines look like whiskey or wine barrels. Seems sort of impractical, but it's a fun idea if that's what is going on. Yes. Those are the Emalgha, a pre-spacefaring race who got invaded by the local enslaving maniacs that humanity is locked into a simmering war with, the Voinians. The Emalgha managed to throw the Voinians off their world but the Voinians had managed to deplete almost all of the metal in the Emalghan home system, so they made do with what they could.
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Nov 16, 2023 15:39
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Was watching some old cartoon stuff, and was struck by this spaceship. https://twitter.com/TheSpaceshipper/status/1163762134460841984 Another spacecraft done up to look like a ship, but this one's kind of a realistic take, all those sails are big solar panels.  The actual show itself has a heck of a jam for its opening. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y9K0SzFIf4A It deploys the titular wheeled warriors of Jayce's, which are the main focus of the show and toyline I guess.  
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Nov 26, 2023 05:16
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^^^ That reminds me of Exosquad which had some really nice spaceship designs along with their mechs. Funny enough, they also had a pirate themed faction and ships.  
GlassEye-Boy fucked around with this message at 21:46 on Nov 27, 2023 |
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Nov 27, 2023 21:41
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Exosquad was one of those "Why is this kids' cartoon so serious about politics?" shows that you occasionally get.
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Dec 6, 2023 01:59
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Animal-Mother posted:Exosquad was one of those "Why is this kids' cartoon so serious about politics?" shows that you occasionally get. God yes. My friend and I watched the first ep a while back and we were just ‘what is this?!’ the whole time. It goes harder than Babylon 5.
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Dec 6, 2023 03:19
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The_Doctor posted:God yes. My friend and I watched the first ep a while back and we were just ‘what is this?!’ the whole time. It goes harder than Babylon 5. My distant memory of it was they were launching ships full of people into the sun or something
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Dec 6, 2023 11:12
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