Re: Our choice of factions and model

On 04/02/2012, at 05:05 , enzodeianni@tiscali.it wrote:

> As somebody pointed out, navy ships look all the same... The look of
FT starships is (rightly) quite varied, instead... Jon pointed to the
commercial aspect, we could even add that space should be a less
constricting medium than water (unless you want to land and need an
aerodinamic profile) so could permit some aesthetic fredom (but really I
am not good enough to elaborate on that).

Naval vessels look very similar because their design is constrained by
the same physical laws and engineering principles. In SF gaming
universes, especially those based on films and TV series, we don't know
what those principles might be, and we're working from source-material
that ignores or misrepresents physics and engineering for the sake of
the plot, cool visuals, easier production, audience familiarity etc.
Basically the source-material runs on "rule of cool" so it's hardly
surprising that commercially produced minis do too.

The ships imagined, for Attack Vector: Tactical probably approach more
closely than any other my idea of what "real" space warships might look
like. There is *much* less variation between factions' designs than
there usually is, because some attempt is made to design them on the
basis of known physics. Broadly you get
"sphere-on-a-stick-with-a-fusion-rocket-at-the-back-end" or
"cylinder-on-a-stick-with-a-fusion-rocket-at-the-back-end". In this
picture for example, the ships of two factions are depicted and they are
very similar:
http://www.adastragames.com/downloads/Lafayette_Surrenders.jpg

An under-appreciated virtue of "hard SF style" ships, is that they are
cheap and easy to scratch-build from wooden beads, dowels, small plastic
bottles etc. :)