Speaking of scratch-building ships, I've been thinking about the "looks"
of
ship design, ie -- why a ship looks the way it does. I build "prototype"
ships from clay and so forth, make a mold out of RTV rubber, and then cast my
minis out of lead; as such, I'm not really constrained by parts availablity,
and can make ships look pretty much however I want. The question is, what
_should_ a spaceship look like? How much of it's looks are due to
function and how much to aesthetics? Since there are obviously no right or
wrong answers here, I thought it might make an interesting topic for
discussion.
Of course, a lot depends on what flavor of "techno-babble" you're using.
If your ships don't have artificial gravity, then there will probably be some
sort of rotating section, like the EA ships on B5; if whatever you're using
for power generation produces deadly radiation, then you'll want to seperate
your engines from your maned areas, and so forth.
In most sci-fi, there seems to be two general "schools" of design. One
is the "saucer & boom" approach; examples include most Star Trek ships, as
well as many of CMD's New Anglian ships. This style looks cool, but I'm not
sure it makes sense in a warship; I always thought that those long booms made
very vulnerable targets. Some backgrounds say the reason for this is so the
crew compartments can survive if the engines are destroyed, although given the
amount of energy that would be released, this explanation seems rather thin to
me.
The other is the "box" style; the extreme example of this is of course the
Borg cube ship from Star Trek. Less-extreme examples are the Nostromo
from Aliens, and CMD's New Swabian ships (the ones I've seen, at any rate).
This style assumes that since no streamlining is required (assuming
atmospheric capability is not desired), then the more compact the better. This
would seem
to give greater structural integrity, as well as making high-G turns
more bearable for the crew by keeping your mass closer to the center.
Most ship designs seem to be some mix and variety of these two philosophies.
Like I said, I don't think there are any right or wrong answers; I'm just
curious to hear what you all think. Any thoughts?
> FieldScott@aol.com wrote:
Hmmm. There could also be the question of trying to minimize profile from
certain angles; or providing the required length for weapons like a Spinal
Mount or large particle accelerator at an economical cost.
And, depending on the engines, mounting them on booms might improve crew
survival. If you're in a universe where people toss nuclear weapons around
regularly in space, having your fusion reactor go BOOM 100m away might be
survivable because you have to survive a nuclear bomb going BOOM 10m away.
In one of my personal universes, jump engines have to be mounted in a certain
geometrical pattern in order to form the proper balanced field; this helps
give a further justification to "wings" and "booms".
Just some thoughts. Personally, as long as you can justify the design, then I
don't care if it looks like a cube or if it's something like the Concorde.
(Though, I've always been annoyed that the Borg chose a cube for their
"efficient" ship design, when a sphere is more economical regarding
surface area vs volume.) (8-)
J.
> Hmmm. There could also be the question of trying to minimize profile
This makes sense with military crafts. Giving the enemy as small a target as
possible is always a good idea.
> And, depending on the engines, mounting them on booms might improve
Of course, if you can SURVIVE a BOOM 10 meters away, why couldn't you protect
your reactor from going BOOM...
> In one of my personal universes, jump engines have to be mounted in a
And the further from the hull you place a weapon pod, the smaller the dead arc
formed by the hull of the ship. Of course, the more vulnerable
the weapon pod... Has abyone thought of using WWI and II-style
"Mine-clearing devices" or whatever they might be called, ie., a net
hung outside the hull of the ship. This would detonate clusters and missiles
prematurely, hopefully lessening the damage, as well as eating away some
of the power of beams and kinetic penetrators (and the melting/gassing
net would diffuse beams even further). This wouldn't propably have to be a
rule in the game (they never worked too well, anyway. One of the two Finnish
coastal battleships of WWII was sunk when a mine got
stuck in it's mine-clearer and pushed it against the hull of the ship
before detonating...), but it might look nice on a model. Never tried it, just
popped in my mind.
> Just some thoughts. Personally, as long as you can justify the
Ha! YOU don't have to justify the design, the engineers have to! But since
they won't be born during our lifetime, YOU CAN GET AWAY WITH ANYTHING!
Besides, if I was ever in the position to design a spaceship, I'd just have a
look at some late 20th century science fiction movies, and copy a
few neat designs! ("Sir, the Lucasarts Star Destroyer is not answering to our
hails! They're powering up weapons systems!" "Very well. Ensign Fuse, you'll
be my witness. As captain of USS Enterprise, I'm giving the order
to open fire. We'll show them to infringe upon Paramount Pictures movie
set!" ...Say, that would make an interesting mini-campaign. Movie
Mega-corporations in battle for the dominance of the entertainment
market...)
> J.
/GNiko
still hoping my sig would work...
Date sent: 25-JUL-1996 08:42:19
> Speaking of scratch-building ships, I've been thinking about the
> I thought it might make an interesting topic for discussion.
> Of course, a lot depends on what flavor of "techno-babble" you're
I've never seen the sense in this. Why not simply rotate the whole damn ship?
No pivots to worry about then.
> If whatever you're using
> In most sci-fi, there seems to be two general "schools" of design. One
See your own comment about deadly radiation. Also note how the NAC ships have
radiation shielding extending on the shipward side of the engine. I think it
has a nice 'feel' to it.
Simmilarly in ST, the warp nacels are supposed to be detrimental to your
health, though several designs and some episodes disagree with this.
> The other is the "box" style; the extreme example of this is of course
This
> style assumes that since no streamlining is required (assuming
Or Spheres so that the surface is at an even pressure.
The Lensman ships are teardrop shaped for maximum streamlining during
inertialess travel.
And then there are saucers, cigars and cylinders etc.
> Most ship designs seem to be some mix and variety of these two
> On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Adam Delafield wrote:
> Date sent: 25-JUL-1996 08:42:19
Ever tried shooting out to the side form a rotating ship? Gunners might start
getting a bit giddy after a few minutes... Also, the further away from the
hull you can take the rotating part, the
slower it will have to rotate. Using this sort of artificial gravity during a
battle, however, is stupid. A malfunction will put the whole
bridge into disarray. If a ship enters combat already at zero-G, this is
one less thing to worry about during a battle. A rotating section would
probably have the accommodation for the crew, so they'd get normal (or at
least partial) G during sleep, and would thus be empty during battle.
> +-------------------------------------+--------------------+
In message <Pine.BSD.3.91.960725161456.26333A-100000@ugly.cute.fi> Niko
> Mikkanen writes:
My physics being awfully rusty... wouldn't a rotating (fully- or
partially-) ship be this great big gyroscope? Wouldn't that make
it behave in really strange ways?
Somebody with a clue please tell me how right/wrong I am.
> David Brewer wrote:
> > during a battle, however, is stupid.
It shouldn't be a problem. If the ship is rotating, then pitch/yaw
won't be as easy as it would be as if the ship wasn't rotating, but it
shouldn't be a problem.
(If I were at school, I'd have my physics textbook with me. But since I'm
working, I'm not. In any case, I still have to analyze the physical
characteristics of a Starfury. (8-) )
J.
> Niko Mikkanen writes:
FWIW a rotating section could make pin-point targeting difficult for
enemy gunners.
> David Brewer wrote:
A rotating section generates a force about the axis it spins on called a
torque. If this section has sufficient mass, it can act like you said, as a
gyroscope. That is, the torque could affect the ship's facing by requiring a
force larger than the torque to change direction. I would think ship designs
using a rotating section would be built with sufficient thrusters to overcome
the force produced by the rotating section for maneuvering.
> Date: Thu, 25 Jul 1996 14:20:41 -0400 (EDT)
...
> a force larger than the torque to change direction. I would think
The cheaper and easier plan would be second counter-rotating section.
> Niko wrote:
> On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, Adam Delafield wrote:
> bridge into disarray. If a ship enters combat already at zero-G, this
Has anyone else read Stephen R. Donaldson's "Gap" series? (The 1st book is
_The Real Story_; the 5th + last _This Day All Gods Die_ was released a
few months back.) His ships rotate "the whole damn ship" to create G during
normal travel. They normally stop rotation before entering combat, mostly to
simplify scan & targetting but also so there's "one less thing to go wrong"
when the ship gets hit. There are a couple instances in the series of ships
going into combat while rotating, because they have lost sensors on one side
and have to keep rotating in order to see what's going on or similar reasons.
You can imagine what a challenge this is to the crew!
Hey everybody!
About this ship-rotation-for-gravity thing: I'm no physics guru,
but don't you run into problems trying to maneuver something that's spinning?
That's the whole idea behind gyros, right? If I'm remembering this correctly,
you have to do a whole lot of extra work to turn a body that is spinning.
In other words, if your fleets aren't using the (currently)
imaginary physics of artificial gravity, they _will_ probably
have living quarters, at least, that are in a spinning section. I do believe,
however, that they spin would be taken off in preparation for battle in order
to facilate combat maneuvering.
Interesting rules idea: if you wanted to run with this, any time a ship is
"surprised", it would be limited in its maneuvering for a certain number of
turns until it stopped the rotation.
Anyway, there's my $0.02.
Out here.
-Monty
> On Thu, 25 Jul 1996, David Brewer wrote:
> In message <Pine.BSD.3.91.960725161456.26333A-100000@ugly.cute.fi>
Yeah,m of course if you had only one of these rotating pods, the center of
gravity of the ship would go traveling about with the rotation. So you take
two of these, and their weights cancel each other out (at least until one of
them gets blown away. That's why you stop the rotation during battle. Much
easier for the engines to compensate for the loss of
weight, if they don't have to take the rotation in account).
Date sent: 26-JUL-1996 08:42:05
> My physics being awfully rusty... wouldn't a rotating (fully- or
> Somebody with a clue please tell me how right/wrong I am.
So long as you don't want to turn round, you should be OK. 8-)
> john_medway@zycor.lgc.com wrote:
IMHO I think this would be the opposite. A second rotating section would
increase the overall mass and complexity of the ship, as well as cost. As
someone already pointed out, it would be optimum to lock the rotating section
when in combat, to eliminate maneuvering errors due to sustained damage of a
rotating section.