Re: What do your ships look like? (was: Minatures)

> 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.  

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
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.
> 
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
certain
> geometrical pattern in order to form the proper balanced field; this
helps
> give a further justification to "wings" and "booms".

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
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-)

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.
> 
>      Jerry Han - Network Engineering - UUNET Canada, Toronto, ON,
Canada

/GNiko
	still hoping my sig would work...