Minor Fleets - Style Suggestions

Minor Fleets - Style Suggestions
During WW II larger Japanese ships were characterised by their 'pagoda'
bridges. This would make an attractive and distinctive design style for the
indigenous designs of the Imperial Japanese Space Navy. What? Let me explain.
If the decks of a starship are at right angles to the thrust axis (i.e. built
like a building so that down is down) it would be built like a pile of
sandwiches or a tower block (see figure 1). Several of the old Traveller ships
were built this way (e.g. Azahanti High Lightning, PF Sloane, and the
Broadsword classes) This contrasts with the conventional SF starship which is
built like a ship or aeroplane with the thrust axis parallel to the deck (see
figure
2).

Our Japanese spaceship would be built in layers about an armoured spine that
housed lifts (and emergency ladders) and all the control lines and pipework.
Fighters (torpedo carrying of course!) would be housed in boxy hangers
protruding from the sides of the ship. Incidentally such a model would be easy
to convert into an Orion (a proper one as in Footfall, not the cute
Frankenstein job in Deep Impact).

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       =====	    Figure 1