Our choice of factions and model

As somebody pointed out, navy ships look all the same...

The look of FT starships is (rightly) quite varied, instead... Jon pointed to
the commercial aspect, we could even add that space should be a less
constricting medium than water (unless you want to land and need an
aerodinamic profile) so could permit some aesthetic fredom (but really I am
not good enough to elaborate on that).

I simply say that I choose the ships exclusively for their look, and that's it
:)

If we talk
about weapon systems and/or propulsion, any difference could only come
from doctrine, as written before, as the canonic powers have been living in
the same context for so many years that any breakthrough (diffused enough to
equip a large part of a fleet) would probalby have spilled over, earlier or
later (the only chance would be something so revolutionary that some powers
would be unable to understand it and replicate it, even at a lower efficiency
level), so, ok, in games ships could be very similar, after all.

A different thing is the
introduction of alien (or anyway extra-Solar) civilization: they could
have persecuted different thought trains and developed very different systems
(in fact, the KraVak brought their own weapons to the party, and I appreciate
this choice). That's where I see the better place for differences.

As they say, my 2

Best wishes

Enzo

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> On 04/02/2012, at 05:05 , enzodeianni@tiscali.it wrote:

> As somebody pointed out, navy ships look all the same... The look of

Naval vessels look very similar because their design is constrained by the
same physical laws and engineering principles. In SF gaming universes,
especially those based on films and TV series, we don't know
what those principles might be, and we're working from source-material
that ignores or misrepresents physics and engineering for the sake of the
plot, cool visuals, easier production, audience familiarity etc.
Basically the source-material runs on "rule of cool" so it's hardly
surprising that commercially produced minis do too.

The ships imagined, for Attack Vector: Tactical probably approach more closely
than any other my idea of what "real" space warships might look like. There is
*much* less variation between factions' designs than there usually is, because
some attempt is made to design them on the basis of known physics. Broadly you
get
"sphere-on-a-stick-with-a-fusion-rocket-at-the-back-end" or
"cylinder-on-a-stick-with-a-fusion-rocket-at-the-back-end". In this
picture for example, the ships of two factions are depicted and they are very
similar:
http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/Lafayette_Surrenders.jpg

An under-appreciated virtue of "hard SF style" ships, is that they are
cheap and easy to scratch-build from wooden beads, dowels, small plastic
bottles etc.:)