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Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 7:47 pm
by Codius_Dak
I am horrible at drawing but i have ideas of designs. But what are the designs that the rest of you are thinking of. Lets see you designs of future TCA Warships and Support Ships and fighters. :ugeek:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Thu Mar 17, 2011 9:50 pm
by Count Casimir
Ooooh, ooh, I'm in. Hopping to it.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 12:04 am
by Karst45
well if i can finish my render, ill post it here. though it more of an hybrid than anything

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 1:33 am
by 088
http://i1129.photobucket.com/albums/m51 ... p1_001.png
Btw this is also my into post so wazap outsider ppls.
Also this is not the best model still working on the color scheme.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 2:08 am
by Tamren
Terran ship design is going to change rapidly. For one the aliens we rescued are going to influence ship design in terms of internal tech. But the Loroi will also have a big impact on outer aesthetics.

Be interesting to see what kind of hybrid designs we end up with.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 6:53 am
by 088
Yes your right they will have a significant influence on the design of Terran ships.
however this will most likely be waaaaay down the road unless that is Terran ships are not effective at all against there obviously more advanced alien counterparts.
btw what kind of weapons to Terrans use?
are they energy based or mass drivers / rail guns?
or a mix of the two?

if they use energy weapons the integration of alien tech would probably be much faster as the terrans boost there weapons which are more compatible
where as if they use solid ammunition it would be much slower as ships would have to be totally redesigned to mount the radically different weapon systems

also an a side note remember no matter how advanced your tech is when someone chucks a rock (rail gun round / mass driver) at you its still gonna hurt.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:18 am
by Tamren
We don't really have the industrial capacity to start churning out ships. Especially ships with powerful technology we don't fully understand yet. At least until we get up to speed anyway.

IIRC we currently use lasers, missiles and mass drivers. Compared to the ships fighting in the comic, these are peashooters. Thought I don't see any reason why a Terran ship with a refitted power source couldn't mount newer weaponry.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 5:35 pm
by yasotay
Given the Loroi have been at war for a long time and have a fully developed war industry churning out warships that are (thankfully) exceedingly ergonomically correct for humans. If the Human ships are inadequate to modern space warfare I suspect the humans would (like the UK in WWI&II) get a lot of lend lease ships from their new allies (assuming we join the fight).

Strap down some radio rackets, stick human language stickies over the Loroi symbology on the controls and presto! Instant allied space fleet.

Once the humans got the idea I suspect human designed ships would start to appear.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 6:07 pm
by Karst45
yasotay wrote:Given the Loroi have been at war for a long time and have a fully developed war industry churning out warships that are (thankfully) exceedingly ergonomically correct for humans. If the Human ships are inadequate to modern space warfare I suspect the humans would (like the UK in WWI&II) get a lot of lend lease ships from their new allies (assuming we join the fight).

Strap down some radio rackets, stick human language stickies over the Loroi symbology on the controls and presto! Instant allied space fleet.

Once the humans got the idea I suspect human designed ships would start to appear.
You miss out a point, Loroi are kind of paranoid as a species and would not loan a ship to a species that could use them against them. The only way we would have loroi ship is if we fill secondary role as crew member for exemple, cook, radio operator, surface technician, damage control, etc

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 6:46 pm
by 088
IIRC we currently use lasers, missiles and mass drivers. Compared to the ships fighting in the comic, these are peashooters. Thought I don't see any reason why a Terran ship with a refitted power source couldn't mount newer weaponry.
well i don't think the human weapons are quite so inferior after all both sides seam to use missiles a lot and you can achieve some truly massive damage with a mass driver if you use it properly. If the shots are moving fast enough they can have effects similar to a detonating nuclear device tho those speeds are very difficult to reach.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 6:54 pm
by Trantor
Spaceship design depends on the propulsion system. If the "main engine" is kinda ring-shaped we´ll maybe see something like old fashioned flying saucers.

But if we stay to rocket-like engines i could imagine a tetrahedron-shaped ship would do fine at maneuverability.

If the terrans limit themselves to support and logistics the ships would probably look like container vessels, minus the propeller.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:02 pm
by icekatze
hi hi

Mass drivers can certainly get projectiles moving fast enough to cause massive damage should they hit, but it is still nowhere near the speed of light. Beam weapons will typically cut a ship to ribbons before it gets close enough to score a hit with a mass driver. The Loroi use missiles mostly defensively, though I suppose they could sell humanity a few. However, the Loroi don't have enough of a supply to use them offensively themselves, let alone giving them to an ally.

That being said, I think the Loroi could probably part with some kind of blaster technology and not feel too threatened.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:34 pm
by Arioch
Trantor wrote:Spaceship design depends on the propulsion system. If the "main engine" is kinda ring-shaped we´ll maybe see something like old fashioned flying saucers.
C-57D, baby!

Image

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 7:55 pm
by Trantor
Arioch wrote:
Trantor wrote:Spaceship design depends on the propulsion system. If the "main engine" is kinda ring-shaped we´ll maybe see something like old fashioned flying saucers.
C-57D, baby!

Image
Forbidden Planet ("Alarm im Weltall" in german) - one of the first scifi-movies i saw!
:D

Another example "of those times" is the Orion-7 ("Raumpatrouille" or french "Comando Spatial - La fantastique aventure de vaisseau ORION"" was a big hit in europe back in the 60ies):
Image

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sat Apr 02, 2011 8:42 pm
by captainsmirk
088 wrote:
IIRC we currently use lasers, missiles and mass drivers. Compared to the ships fighting in the comic, these are peashooters. Thought I don't see any reason why a Terran ship with a refitted power source couldn't mount newer weaponry.
well i don't think the human weapons are quite so inferior after all both sides seam to use missiles a lot and you can achieve some truly massive damage with a mass driver if you use it properly. If the shots are moving fast enough they can have effects similar to a detonating nuclear device tho those speeds are very difficult to reach.
Human missiles are however much inferior to those of either side being I believe capable of about 10G acceleration meaning that any Loroi or Umiak warship (generally accel ratings of 20G or above) will be able to outrun them easily. And note the sheer number of missiles the Umiak fired and yet none of them penetrated the Loroi point defence, they are primarily used as a distraction to let the Umiak close to their main energy weapon range. Only the Umiak possess the industrial strength to produce missiles in large enough numbers to matter.

Mass Drivers whilst devastating if they hit are by Loroi/Umiak standards pathetically short ranged (whilst they don't loose damage potential with range as the target gets further away the likelihood of it being where the shot is fired drops rapidly). Against the Loroi and probably also the Umiak a current human warship would be destroyed long before it got within effective range of its mass drivers especially given their lack of defensive screens and very slow propulsion systems.

Nick

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 12:44 am
by Karst45
captainsmirk wrote:Against the Loroi and probably also the Umiak a current human warship would be destroyed long before it got within effective range of its mass drivers especially given their lack of defensive screens and very slow propulsion systems.
Would they actually care? i mean other than if the ship is entering your system, both umiak and loroi ship could just move ignoring the human and correcting course as the human waste his ammo.

the only way a mass driver could be useful is if you get a ship in the enemy system. calculate a fire solution to the planet and shoot until it go click. That would force the enemy to intercept the projectile before it hit their planet, during that time you ether close on them and shoot them down while they are busy and/or skip to the next system.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 1:50 am
by icekatze
hi hi

I just came up with an incredibly convoluted way for humans to employ a mass driver against the Umiak. The Loroi have data on the Umiak border systems from some of their previous offensives. All the humans have to do is wait until the jump corridor is eclipsed by a gas giant, then they jump into its shadow and launch a probe. The probe orbits around and gets intel on where all of the Umiak shipyards are located. Then the Terrans fire their railguns at all of the marked targets using math to calculate the trajectory. Then the Terrans crash themselves into the gas giant so they don't give themselves away, cause they'd have to move out from the shadow eventually.

What could possibly go wrong? :roll:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 3:46 am
by Arioch
To start with, the odds that the plane of the planetary orbits happens to concide with the jump vector from the other star are pretty small.

Ignoring that, a gas giant would only shield a tiny sliver of a system from the inbound jump event; you might, say, prevent receivers on Earth from detecting a jump into Sol system if you came in behind Jupiter, but that would assume there are no other detectors in the system. An Umiak border system will, of course, have bases and fleets deployed in many locations.

And, if the gas giant is blocking your line of sight to the target, bending a mass driver projectile around the gas giant without hitting it may present a challenge, especially if it's a very high velocity projectile.

I don't think mass driver rounds designed for ship to ship combat would do any significant damage to a planet with atmosphere... they would probably burn up before reaching the ground.

And I don't see the point of suicide to avoid detection; if you can somehow jump in and launch without being detected, you should be able to turn around and jump out the same way.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 4:16 am
by 088
all good points but a weapon like a mass driver would be most useful against large ships that are in 1. a stable orbit around a stellar object 2. on a strait coarse like a patrol or something or 3. flying right at you

it would be the most use against enemy supply areas or ship yards. as there are a lot of large lumbering supply ships in those areas.
you would need to send a scout into the system ahead of you something small and difficult to detect that could map the best targets in the system.
i dont know if the terrans have any sensors that are faster at this then doing it optically.
then the scout would jump out return to the fleet the various images analyzed for trajectory orbit ect.
then the fleet would jump into system fire at there targets and if they happen to be ships at the points in space they would most likely be at.
inaccurate against anything that is moving actively but deadly against anything on an orbit or stationary.

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Posted: Sun Apr 03, 2011 4:26 am
by sunphoenix
What I don't understand is how could a barrage of say a spray of 100kg kinetic-kill mass-driver rounds with explosive-tipped warheads how they could be detected at all really? I mean they are not as big as ...say a 'Volkswagen' or a space fighter. They have no signature... like a drive engine trail {no heat trail}. Whats to determine as any difference from any other flying piece of space rubble or micro meteorite? How would you know they were even on their way? I mean Radar could pick them up... but they are so small... what if you coated each with radar absorbent material or shaped them to be radar scattering? Plus in the volume of space even a dense cloud of gas or dust might be more significant a detectible object other than a barrage of coke-bottle sized explosive projectiles?

I'm no radar technician... but I really don't see how you could possibly even know your being shot at by a mass-driver railgun weapon in space.

Can someone explain?