Ship design musings

[Elowan]

Originally posted by Taera:
... sometimes it is rather difficult to create a whole set of unique ships, especialy if talking about neo-standard.

Pardon me -- but what in blazes is 'neo-standard'?

[Fyron]

http://www.sandman43.fsnet.co.uk/neostand.htm

[oleg]

All is well, but we should not extrapolate earth-bound vehicle standarts to space. Of course there is a huge difference between submarine and jet fighter - they all operate in different enviroments ! The proper comparisons should be between, for example, navy frigate and cruiser or Boing-757 and F-16. Personally, I fail to see how raising the spaceship tonnage from 300k to 400k should turn blueprints upside down !

All being said, I totally agree that simple resize of ship pictures makes very boring shipsets. I usually try to make shipsets as diverse as possible but still maitaining some sort of race theme. It is not easy and if you pull it out - we all will appreciate your efforts !

[Elowan]

Before I comment further, I want to say that many of the ship-sets contain beautiful work and are inspiring to say the least.

Believe me when I say that I have no wish to offend or decry anyone's work.

I intentionally drew some rather strange comparisons for the sake of getting folks attention. But the idea is that form follows function.

I'm not sure that I agree that a 100 ton difference in carrying capacity necessitates or warrants turning a blueprint upside down. But a 200 kt transport may be able to dock directly with a space station and therefore it's design would take docking into consideration.

On the other hand - a 300 kt transport may be too unwieldy to dock directly at the same station. Therefore some design changes could/would be made to facilitate off-loading via shuttle and certain protuberances, etc. allowed which were not on the former vessel.

BTW - this is only my opinion and leanings. If you like identical twins or strong family resemblance - keep to it.

Family resemblance, however, may be arrived at by using standard components such as engine pods, cargo pods, gun turrets, etc on radically different chassis designs.

[Captain Kwok]

Future cargo ships would almost certainly be modular in design utilizing some form of cargo container - therefore ship sizes would not really affect the transfer of cargo...

[ July 22, 2002, 03:07: Message edited by: Captain Kwok ]

[Taera]

Well yeah, i do it in my own sets - same style yet different design. if you're very curious check out my TechnoLogic race @ USy ( http://universalshipyards.tripod.com ).

[Hank]

Has anyone ever done a templar shipset as in the tree vessels from the novel, "Hyperion"?