Ugliest Starship
- Thread starter mancerbear
- Start date
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
One thing about Traveller design is it really doesn't allow for artistic lines. It is spartan and functional. TV and movie ships are whatever size and ship the writer desires so there are cavernous rooms, wide hallways to nowhere, luxurious bridge decks and awe inspiring engines. Traveller ships are constrained by the size of a hull's volume with components packed in as efficiently as possible. The only license an architect has is the use of fuel to define the form and even that is limited.
I've seen some artwork with good looking ships but I suspect there were liberties taken with shape. Thankfully no one is kitbashing their looks or adding anime antenna towers.
I've seen some artwork with good looking ships but I suspect there were liberties taken with shape. Thankfully no one is kitbashing their looks or adding anime antenna towers.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
As they usually state, the configuration allows control of a ship in atmospheric conditions. A distributed configuration was never built to fly or land on a world. Gravitics doesn't save a ship as it's spread-out bits collapse or tear away. Putting gravitics on the Liberty Station won't let it land.
Jame Rowe said:
So then shouldn't that be the issue? If a ship has gravitics then it shouldn't matter if it's streamlined or unstreamlined - the shape of the hull (i.e. whether it's a distributed frame or not) should be what matters. It just means that being unstreamlined isn't a barrier to entering an atmosphere.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
Mongoose doesn't go heavily into the details of their version of gravitic just an agent of thrust. Other editions have lifters that are what grav vehicles and ships use to move about in a deep gravity well while the maneuver drive is the raw power for lateral thrust. At best, it seems Mongoose could have lifters integral to the maneuver system or the drive acts as a non-reaction rocket which means the ship's configuration does matter more. We may never know and forever guess.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Somehow the argument got changed to something else when "distributed" got a shout out.Jame Rowe said:
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Jame Rowe said:
I'm just going by the old B&W drawings from the Traveller mags I looked through back in the day. i didn't know what maneuver drives even were back then. Gravatics was not in my vocabulary yet. Most rocketships I was familiar with were they kinds used in Gerry Anderson TV shows.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
I have no idea if these ships can "fly" this way or not. Players don't seem to mind during the games.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
ShawnDriscoll said:
I'm sure they could. The Mercenary Cruiser is rated to maneuver at 3Gs, which in Traveller means it can compensate for 3Gs of maneuver.
G-compensation is crazy technology if you think about it.
These people in these ships don't have to strapped down they can walk around, going about their business even if the ship is doing 3Gs of acceleration. Ships whose decks are not oriented in the direction of acceleration are regularly rated to 6Gs in Traveller; this isn't some emergency maneuver stuff, a 6G ship may not always be moving at 6Gs of acceleration perhaps 3-4Gs but that's still an insane amount of inertia and similar forces that are being cancelled out.
I'm sure flying sideways through the air in a gravity well can be easily handled by the Mercenary Cruiser, especially if it wants to go fast in that direction.
mancerbear
Mongoose
ShawnDriscoll said:
It's an interesting question, isn't it. I would argue that they can't, purely because (if I'm right), they aren't streamlined. We could argue that lifters would help, and I'm assuming that the MC would have lifters as well as thrusters, in which case it could fly like this, though the passengers and crew inside are in for a hairy ride if they look out any portholes
I guess the answer here would be a definite "maybe".
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
Sometimes, I'll have the MC spinning as it moves. Just because. But I'm sure the passengers would go nuts if they looked out the window if it was spinning. This test video just has regular ship travel, no spin. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KP9Zbz5VjgA
FallingPhoenix
Mongoose
The artwork looks good, Shawn, well done.
Kind of ironic that it's all in a thread titled "Ugliest Starship".
Kind of ironic that it's all in a thread titled "Ugliest Starship".
Tenacious-Techhunter
Mongoose
mancerbear said:ShawnDriscoll said:
It's an interesting question, isn't it. I would argue that they can't, purely because (if I'm right), they aren't streamlined. We could argue that lifters would help, and I'm assuming that the MC would have lifters as well as thrusters, in which case it could fly like this, though the passengers and crew inside are in for a hairy ride if they look out any portholes
I guess the answer here would be a definite "maybe".
“Streamlined” just means “higher maximum velocity in atmosphere than standard”. The question is not “Can it fly in this orientation?”; that answer is a definitive “yes”. The question is, “At what maximum velocity can it fly in this orientation?”; the answer to which is, “To the extent that 3G of thrust can overcome the Forces of that planet’s Gravity and of Standard Configuration Drag.”. At which point, it may be gleaned that, sure, it could fly in that orientation all it wanted... but would it make an appreciable difference to put the drag on the nose instead of the side? Probably not.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
I'm so relieved you have answers for everything. By the way, the ship travels at the speed of plot.Tenacious-Techhunter said:
