Cool Ship discussion thread

[Kostemetsia]

... um, Leela and Fry I suppose. Or if you want to go original, Ri and Martin.

Oh wait, no. That wasn't what I was talking about at all. Ahem.

Good news, everyone! I've created this thread for the purposes of discussing cool ships particular to your nation. Anything you think is cool will do.

My submission is the CCV Sealhound, de jure orbital fire support for the officially nonexistent secret agency known only as Deepblack and taking orders only from the President of Kostemetsia. De facto, the Sealhound is the command, personal transport and on-the-go headquarters for C-NavMar lieutenant commander Ryana Taylor, deputy director of Deepblack operations. It is also fitted with a great deal of experimental technology for the purposes of putting every other deadly superweapon ship to shame.

The Sealhound has the following prototypes attached at last count:

• Carbon nanotube framework - the Sealhound is capable of travelling in-atmosphere and landing planetside, something most Kostemetsian ships cannot do, full stop.
• On subject of framework, design is slightly unconventional, and certain parts near Sealhound's core are capable of shifting in order to provide bracket and systems interface for one particular kofleiku (hovercar equivalent), registry CW-9d02c837, thanks to design feature incorporated by DDO Taylor. Sealhound does not have conventional bridge; when pod is absent Sealhound will flash over to a low-level strategy and tactics shardgram; quiescent state is effectively defensive station-keeping.
• Continuing on 'framework' topic, Sealhound is also capable of accommodating three kofleikus on outer hull and establishing systems and physical links.
• Dual reactors - retooled conventional cold-fusion reactor with primary oxygen and secondary neon cooling system for in-atmosphere movement on reworked Hall effect thrusters / miniaturised antimatter reactor for no-atmosphere movement on direct antimatter annihilation rockets.
• Enhanced gravity thrusters, stacked at both extremes of the hull to create a maneuvering system that is equally efficient and responsive at both ends. For comparison, kofleikus come in one- or two-thruster arrangements, with the two-thruster variant typically being more insanely expensive and overpowered, and there is no podship with two opposing gravity thrusters.
• Anti-personnel / light anti-materiel nitrogun. Fires darts sheared from blocks of frozen nitromethane at a good fraction of c in any medium. Tends to be reasonably effective against pretty much anything on the ground, even if it -is- a rather showy, look-what-I-can-do sort of weapon totally out of keeping with the tone required of agencies like Deepblack.
• Power redistribution for sustained closed-wormhole running - the Sealhound can hide in hyperspace for months at a time.
• Autofactory - the Sealhound can forge firearms, something most ships below capital class cannot even hope to attempt.

POATS.

[Solar Communes]

I submit the still under development PAS Von Neumann, the best spacecraft for sub-light, or system-hooping conquest. Its "stock" technical details are irrelevant because they aren't really unchangeable like in traditional projects. Instead, what matters is that its power grows geometrically to the distance it moved through and the time it spent moving, as does the number of duplicates following it. Suited with advanced R&D facilities and bleeding-egde pseudo-sentient systems, not only it'll be able self-replicate, but also to self-update and self-upgrade, adapting itself to different situations... and different physical laws like for example, the applicability of N-Space Compression, and avoiding the old "obsolescence" issue that would make STL travel no longer a viable strategic alternative to FTL approaches, as it won't matter anymore that it'll take hundreds of years to reach its destination, for once it, or more exactly, they do, the PAS Von Neumanns will outnumber and maybe even outtech their enemies.

Of course, that entire asteroid belts and stars may be drained during the construction and upgrades of Von Neumann Prime Assault Spacecrafts, is an acceptable collateral damage.

[Central Facehuggeria]

I submit the still under development PAS Von Neumann, the best spacecraft for sub-light, or system-hooping conquest. Its "stock" technical details are irrelevant because they aren't really unchangeable like in traditional projects. Instead, what matters is that its power grows geometrically to the distance it moved through and the time it spent moving, as does the number of duplicates following it. Suited with advanced R&D facilities and bleeding-egde pseudo-sentient systems, not only it'll be able self-replicate, but also to self-update and self-upgrade, adapting itself to different situations... and different physical laws like for example, the applicability of N-Space Compression, and avoiding the old "obsolescence" issue that would make STL travel no longer a viable strategic alternative to FTL approaches, as it won't matter anymore that it'll take hundreds of years to reach its destination, for once it, or more exactly, they do, the PAS Von Neumanns will outnumber and maybe even outtech their enemies.

Of course, that entire asteroid belts and stars may be drained during the construction and upgrades of Von Neumann Prime Assault Spacecrafts, is an acceptable collateral damage.

Nah, it'll almost always be highly obsolete simply because everyone else has X years/centuries/millenia/centa-millenia/millions of years/etc of head start on your Von Neumann swarm in terms of tech. They'll be able to keep this lead because the utter slowness of the VN swarm compared to everything else out there.

Also, FTL v non-FTL is still a crippling strategic disadvantage. Let's say your Von Neumann swarm has eaten a solar system and started moving onto the next nearest one, which is a hundred lightyears away. It's got a solar mass in its bellies, and is using that as fuel and to create new Von Neumann ships.

I now have a minimum of a hundred years to eliminate the whole thing, while the swarm is doing absolutely nothing but losing resources performing research and accelerating towards its next meal. In essence, I can harass the swarm for a full century and take little to no major damage before it can even get into the next system, much less get anywhere near one of *my* systems.

A full century of blowing up fragile (compared to the planets/stars they ate) VN ships.

And then even when it reaches the system, I can mass a fleet there quickly too. I've got a full century to mass an incredibly powerful rape-fleet there, while the Von Neumanns would be at their weakest, having burnt a sizable portion of their fuel even getting to the target system.

The only way such a system would work in space opera (ie NS) is if nobody notices a huge deathswarm, ever.

But given how rediculously hard it is to hide in space, and given that the fusion engines (or whatever you're using to propel these things) are going to be really, really bright when they're pulling such mass, that's just plain not viable.

Also, fixed infrastructure > Mobile infrastructure, simply because you don't have to use the energy to accelerate over nine billion tons of mass (or however much a shipyard complex masses) just to build ships. Plus, with FTL, I can get resources to those shipyards far more quickly than the swarm can counter. So theoretically, with sufficient shipping resources, I can outnumber the swarm as well as outtech and outmaneuver it.

Mind, this is all for a hypothetical generic space opera civilization. Facehuggerland would just rape the whole swarm with FTL conversion-warhead missiles from several lightyears away for the lulz. After all, they've got a century to do so, minimum.

[Solar Communes]

With enough time, it would evolve suficiently to equal, and eventually surpass a Darkship. Not that its creators would even care by then.

Also, Solarian FTL is consists into travelling STL in another universe, or in an universe too chaotic to have consistent time, and then arriving "instantly" at the destination in the desired universe. So, what if such Von Neumann ships are able of inter-dimensional travel, allowing them to build up in a particularly void parallel universe, and then coming through next to the door of their enemies with no warning? It's still under-development because it relies in bleeding edge tech. Of the sort that requires "field testing in another universe", and there are serious ethical opposition with the idea of playing with one of an infinity of STCs, no matter how such STC would not change at all, but instead a new one where everything went wrong would be created.

PS: It's not foul chronomancy. Just a serious technobabble attempt to conciliate solipsism with the illogical multiverse that might shift mass between universes, or lead to the creation of unknown universes from pure imagination which are totally irrelevant to Solar Communes or anyone else.

[Central Facehuggeria]

With enough time, it would evolve suficiently to equal, and eventually surpass a Darkship. Not that its creators would even care by then.

Yeah, but that's assuming the Darkship's creators aren't advancing themselves. It means nothing if the Von Neumann can equal or surpass a Darkship Mark 1 if by then the Mekantans have released the Darkship Mark 9001.

Also, Solarian FTL is consists into travelling STL in another universe, or in an universe too chaotic to have consistent time, and then arriving "instantly" at the destination in the desired universe. So, what if such Von Neumann ships are able of inter-dimensional travel, allowing them to build up in a particularly void parallel universe, and then coming through next to the door of their enemies with no warning? It's still under-development because it relies in bleeding edge tech. Of the sort that requires "field testing in another universe", and there are serious ethical opposition with the idea of playing with one of an infinity of STCs, no matter how there would be spawned an alternate STC in another universe where it never happened, should shit hit the fan.

If you start doing that, someone else with interdimensional FTL travel and a superior starting techbase can do it better, and likely will in order to gain an advantage against the swarm.

Also, FTLi barriers. I know Kanuck's home systems have fields with many hundreds of LY of exclusion, for instance, and such things would prevent the swarm from dropping back into real space within range. See also: Necron Pylons and "the great ward."

[Otagia]

I'm considering escalating to Culture-level techwank. Stay tuned for LOLspecs.

[Solar Communes]

itt why I prefer to RP wars in MT

[Sskiss]

*readies anti-godmod/techwank cannon*

[Jordaxia]

Ok... well, as one of the 3 capital ships in the Jordaxian fleet (and by far the most numerous), we have the Nonsequitor.

It's a small, unassuming destroyer, almost completely unarmoured, with low-yield weaponry, and 3 key simple advantages.

1: We're probably firing at you first. The Nonsequitor uses an almost exclusively missile based arsenal, therefore its range is indefinite. (the missiles self-guide) Firing at several light hours would prove easy to dodge, however, so most Jordaxian vessels tend to limit themselves to a few light minutes engagement range.

2: There are more of us. The nonsequitor is a tiny ship, 300 metres by 300 metres, and 50 tall.Only a fraction of that area is actually taken up with reactor and crew space, with the rest reserved for missiles. It arrives en masse and dispenses missiles en masse too. Up to a quarter of a million per swarm, with standard deployment numbers, and in a defensive engagement and Plutos defensive installations added to the mix, the number rises to the ever more ludicrous, overwhelming the most concentrated point defense in a wave of nuclear fire.

3: We move very fast. The nonsequitor is a mass produced ship with an instantaneous "short" range point-to-point wormhole device. Combined with the incredibly potent reactor tech, Jordaxian ships will leap around a battlefield in a display of chaos co-ordinated by the ISIS battlenet. Most return fire will fall well wide of the mark, only for the aggressor to receive a wormhole full of missiles in return. And in case of superweapon of death star level proportions emerge, the wormhole is not bound to the ship, and a death star could easily find itself firing its superlaser up its own exhaust port. Naturally the wormholes are susceptable to FTLi, which is a weakness.


I like my nonsequitor, you little antithesis of a supership you.

[The Mindset]

The Battleforge MkIV. No crew, two thousand wormhole generators, two thousand nanofactories. Given sufficient mass, it can produce an infinite supply of cheap, dirty missiles, and fire them at you through dynamically generated wormholes from several lightyears away. Out pops a thousand missiles thirty meters from your ship, and it'll be lightyears outside your engagement range. Even if you run FTLi, it doesn't really matter, it can still drop low profile, sensor-dead drones at the edge, in a 360 degree arc so you'll be attacked from all directions simultaneously. All while you can't reach, or possibly even detect, the ship.

And they're also von-neumann replicators, meaning, while not engaging the enemy they can set down on a planet and build a fleet of similar ships.