Ugliest Starship
- Thread starter mancerbear
- Start date
mancerbear
Mongoose
Personally I love the outside look of the Lightning Class, what I don't like is the deck layout, that being laid out like a building as opposed to ship. I have the same issue with the Broadsword. Still, they're minor issues. In space, these things don't really matter, and in fact, if anything happens to the internal gravity, they can at least maintain it with 1g acceleration. The ships in the Dominion of Man (Mote in God's Eye et al) were laid out this way, and outwards, so that during acceleration there was gravity direction of thrust is "down", and while stationary they could spin the ship to make "out" be "down". It was necessary as they didn't have artificial gravity in that universe.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Broadswords seem to stand out as unergonomic in interior design.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
That's the best part. And you get to die a cool way, if you don't get to the elevator in time.fusor said:
fusor said:
I understand that Traveller is supposed to be Space Opera, so yes, you're concern is valid.
But I think given the ranges of Traveller space warfare, the actually the issue would be moot. Star Wars Star Destroyers are vulnerable because of their easily identified bridge structures - combat in SW takes place in visual range and apparently you can reasonably easily aim at the bridge.
On the other hand, real-life ships such as even World War 1 dreadnoughts or modern-day aircraft carriers - the bridge or command structure is visible, but it isn't particularly vulnerable because of accuracy - WW1 gunfire at "naval" ranges just wasn't accurate enough to aim for the bridge. Similarly, modern-day anti-ship missiles don't really aim for the bridge, either (they may happen to hit it, but they don't aim at it - there's better stuff to aim at).
Although various writers have stated canonically the vulnerability of the glass dome bridge, I don't think this would "actually" be true; Traveller space combat doesn't (or didn't in previous editions) let you "snipe" for various parts of a ship at the long-ish starship combat ranges (nor should it at 5,000km+ ranges). It highly feels like one of those things that sound intuitive but actually aren't. For instance, during WW2, everyone thought that sending a large number of smaller convoys would reduce losses to U-Boats, but an analysis of statistics showed, no you're better off just sending a few larger convoys - similarly during the same era, putting a huge number of machinegun positions on bombers didn't actually save bombers and lives, instead many of the positions didn't significantly contribute to the defense so those extra men were dying for no reason.
This sounds like it'd be one of those situations.
When your hits are randomly hitting various parts of the ship with areas close to the center of mass getting more hits than the rest of the ship, we'd find that the risk of being on the bridge would actually not be significantly greater than being anywhere else in the ship, and perhaps actually be less than some parts of the ship. Or some statistician showed that most cruisers are actually taken out in a single catastrophic spinal mount hit, so the danger of the "exposed" bridge is actually negligible. As an IMTU thing, I'd say that the bridge was moved because of a perception by the crew of danger (which would lower morale) as opposed to a true danger.
EDIT: I should add that, yes, it's a pretty ugly spacecraft. For me, it lacks the "so ugly it's kinda cool" aspect of the Far Trader. It's just ugly. It looks like a cheap set for a low-budget 1970s or 1980s sci-fi show made from a take-out (take-away for those in the UK) plastic bin for a side salad or capped plastic tray for strawberries, glue a woman's deodorant tube to the bottom, add gubbins, then spraypaint the entire thing white. (Given that Traveller seems to occasionally want to cultivate that vibe, I guess it succeeds.)
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
And highly vulnerable exhaust port leading literally straight to the biggest bomb in the galaxy.Yeah, suddenly Traveller ships don't look so bad. Shows even a galaxy size empire will do anything to cut costs.
Here's a thought considering ship design in Star Wars. In the age of the Empire, comparably ugly ships all bulky, klunky, kit-bashed from the Death Star to the Millennium Falcon whereas the Republic era gave ships of all types class and sleek styling. In a way, it reminds me again of the vargr/aslan dichotomy of design. Imperium seem a bit like the Empire being pragmatic and designing ship for utilitarian and cost effective reasons rather than for style. Function over form. It does it's job, it doesn't have to be pretty.
Here's a thought considering ship design in Star Wars. In the age of the Empire, comparably ugly ships all bulky, klunky, kit-bashed from the Death Star to the Millennium Falcon whereas the Republic era gave ships of all types class and sleek styling. In a way, it reminds me again of the vargr/aslan dichotomy of design. Imperium seem a bit like the Empire being pragmatic and designing ship for utilitarian and cost effective reasons rather than for style. Function over form. It does it's job, it doesn't have to be pretty.
fusor said:
Umm actually they died because the command and navigation crew were killed when a starfighter moving at combat speed rammed the control tower...then the ship went out of control due to the fact the entire command and control team were dead....THEN they died when the ship ran into a much larger object.... a MUCH larger object.
wbnc said:
Well if you want to get picky, there's no reason why the SSD should suddenly veer towards the Death Star and crash - it's not a WWII plane whose propellors just cut out or anything. But my point was (a) the bridge was vulnerable (because for some bizarre reason you can still shoot the shield generators), and (b) it seemed to be the only "nerve-centre" on a ship the size of a small island so they had absolutely no redundancy for anything whatsoever. It was just stupid (then again apparently the Empire insist on building things with fatal design flaws, so it's just par for the course). But anyway, this is all rather OT.
Reynard
Emperor Mongoose
Stupid, yes but there was a whooping big scoop of arrogance and overconfidence by every officer in the Empire plus the Emperor himself in the superiority of their technology. They just could NOT believe they were vulnerable and unstoppable and that's what made it so sweet when we see Death Stars die.
Back to ugly Traveller ships.
Back to ugly Traveller ships.
Condottiere
Emperor Mongoose
Gravitational capture and orbital decay.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
So, Fusor.
What do you think is the best-looking Traveller starship? If you say there's none, which starship from any sci-fi is the best-looking then?
What do you think is the best-looking Traveller starship? If you say there's none, which starship from any sci-fi is the best-looking then?
ShawnDriscoll said:
The smaller ones look fine - not sure I can really say that any of them look particularly interesting since their designs are pretty basic (I guess I'd say my favourites out of those are the Scout/Courier, System Defence Boat, and Safari Ship). The Solomani Courier from DGP's Solomani & Aslan looks pretty good:
The Vargr Frigate from Vilani & Vargr (as rendered by Ian Stead) is good too:
Outside of canon, I like a lot of the designs that Ian Stead's coming up with for the Ships of the Clement Sector.
fusor said:
Now as far as looks go the Executor and Star Destroyers were nice...a bit heavy exposed machinery and gear side but they looked solid, powerful and rugged. Ten the Nebulon B, it was an awkward looking shape, but it had some appeal.
Not to harp on the poor old AHL or plankwell they didnt have the sem rugged, industrial look ..they were good ideas, and at the time they were about on par for ships in game sources.
ShawnDriscoll
Cosmic Mongoose
The Safari Ship is pretty cool looking.fusor said:
middenface
Cosmic Mongoose
fusor said:
Thanks Fusor.
