Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Discussion regarding the Outsider webcomic, science, technology and science fiction.

Moderator: Outsider Moderators

Post Reply
Voitan
Posts: 214
Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:04 am

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Voitan »

Also seems unlikely to me considering the information i the Insider. The jump distance is only really safe up to 10 light years.
Safety isn't an issue if you ask me if you're delivering death from the adjacent star system. As a matter of fact, it may take a dangerous mindset to weaponize the FTL in Outsider.

Sure it's a quick delivery system for anything that could cause disruptions in a star.

I still think you could hit planets with this thing though, with limited time windows to hit the planets, given the narrow exit field. Any planet in the exit system that is at the time, between you and its own star is liable to be hit while in that exit zone.
So in order to use FTL bombardment you would still need to find the adjacent systems, which are very well guarded. Additionally there is no pinpoint accuracy with FTL so targeting a ship at a planet would be tricky at best. What I am thinking of involved this:
This could actually have happened in the Outsiderverse. It could be part of that huge desert of lifeless systems between the Loroi and Umiak, where what was "adjacent" systems are now a huge buffer zone of destroyed worlds that must be navigated if they are to reach any occupied worlds.

User avatar
bunnyboy
Posts: 543
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 9:21 pm
Location: Finland

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by bunnyboy »

dfacto wrote:
send up one ton blocks of manure.
Drop a 1 gigaton nuke directly behind it and detonate.

Have 100 of them... and you have yourself a expanding wall of deadly POOP.
Unfortunately nukes aren't that useful in space because there's no overpressure shockwave to blow things around. Your plan would accelerate the shit, but it is doubtful that the acceleration would be enough to threaten any Loroi/Umiak ship in the slightest. Most likely the entire fleet formation would become slightly browner as they fly through a fine mist of flying turds.
Which would be effective way to smudge their visual & conductive field sensors. Unless...
Arioch wrote:
Red wrote:Deflector Shield Array for Space dust not to penetrate the Hull for micro fractures and loosing hull atmo pressure.
The defensive screens in use by the Loroi and Umiak are also somewhat effective against dust and debris, and would be kept on pretty much all the time.
If I remember right, there has been real life test for use electricity to repulse small particles. With conducting wire, you can also give small lift to satellite.

Edit:
With particles I mean, atoms & molecules. In extreme low atmospheric pressure, like couple of molecules in liter.
Last edited by bunnyboy on Tue Apr 12, 2011 11:54 am, edited 1 time in total.
Supporter of forum RPG

User avatar
TheUnforsaken
Posts: 178
Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 6:42 am

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by TheUnforsaken »

bunnyboy wrote:If I remember right, there has been real life test for use electricity to repulse small particles.
A powerful electromagnetic field could repel charged particles from the sun and other stars etc, just like the Earth's field does. I don't know if this would be very effective in repelling other stuff.

I don't know just how artificial gravity works in Outsider but they could theoretically project a negative gravity field ahead of their ships (if you can pull an object towards the deck of a ship, I see no reason why you couldn't push something away, too). That way smaller particles would 'fall' away from the bow.

That's my 2 cents, anyway.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light. - Dylan Thomas

[A] book need never die and should not be killed; books [are] the immortal part of man. - Robert A. Heinlein

Oops. - Shannon Foraker

Incursion RPG
IC Thread
OOC Thread
Character List

Number 6
Posts: 2
Joined: Fri Mar 25, 2011 12:37 am

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Number 6 »

Maybe the Human ships would have ten lasers point at one point and keep it on that target while another set reloads/cools? Kind of like the old broadside ship battles or something? O.o

Aygar
Posts: 44
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 3:27 pm
Location: Nashville Tennessee

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Aygar »

Karst45 wrote:
Aygar wrote:After they allied with the Loroi; they only offered a primitive version of their plasma array when the Loroi empire was on the verge of total defeat. The Historians prefer to be information black holes. Information goes in, Nothing comes out.
they didn't offer primitive version of the plasma because they didn't trust them. They offered the best version of the plasma that the loroi could manufacture/use with their current tech level

The important bit here is not that the Loroi where offered a primitive version of the plasma array, but that the Historians could have offered the primitive version at any time after allying Loroi and did not do so. But rather waited until Loroi empire was on the verge of total defeat.

My take away is that the Historians don't trust the Loroi with any of their technology. It was only the threat of the complete loss of their primary ally against the Umiak spurred the limited tech release

--Aygar
--Aygar

Voitan
Posts: 214
Joined: Wed Apr 06, 2011 3:04 am

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Voitan »

This sounds like a crazy ass doomsday weapon or an interesting power source for a ship.

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _hole_bomb

Any way to then carry the destructive potential using Outsider's FTL abilities?

User avatar
Arioch
Site Admin
Posts: 4486
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:19 am
Location: San Jose, CA
Contact:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Arioch »

Sounds more like theoretical physicists daydreaming.

User avatar
sunphoenix
Posts: 1164
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 6:46 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by sunphoenix »

GUNBUSTER!!!
PbP:
[IC] Deep Strike 'Lt' Kamielle Lynn
[IC] Cydonia Rising/Tempest Sonnidezi Stormrage
[IC] Incursion Maiannon Golden Hair
[IC] TdSmR Athen Rourke

"...you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is Kill him."

Majincarne
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:06 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Majincarne »

sunphoenix wrote:GUNBUSTER!!!
Now thats just cheating.

Karst45
Posts: 785
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:03 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada
Contact:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Karst45 »

well if you use godlike machine that can adapt to any situation, indeed.

btw do they need to yell the weapon they will use? it not like the enemy care about that, even less if there is no way to defend against that.

User avatar
sunphoenix
Posts: 1164
Joined: Mon Mar 21, 2011 6:46 pm
Location: Indianapolis, IN

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by sunphoenix »

In the words of Lina Inverse to Naga the White Serpent...

Lina - "You Idiot! If you could do that in the first place... why did you wait until now!!!"

Naga - "FOR THE DRAMA!!!"

...so battle robot Weapon attack cries, 'nuff said.
PbP:
[IC] Deep Strike 'Lt' Kamielle Lynn
[IC] Cydonia Rising/Tempest Sonnidezi Stormrage
[IC] Incursion Maiannon Golden Hair
[IC] TdSmR Athen Rourke

"...you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is Kill him."

User avatar
Trantor
Posts: 780
Joined: Sun Mar 06, 2011 1:52 pm
Location: Hamburg, Germany

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Trantor »

Hope this isn´t considered necroposting, but i just found some nice fanart rendering of Orion-7:

Image

Image
sapere aude.

User avatar
uthilian
Posts: 38
Joined: Sat Apr 09, 2011 10:10 am

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by uthilian »

Always liked the Warlock Class Destroyer from B5
Image

Majincarne
Posts: 26
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 12:06 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Majincarne »

All of B5's Terran warships were simply lovely. I still especially like the Hyperion class; even if they do end up being the whipping boy in most fights latter.

the Warlocks design is very close to a relatively optimal torch ship design minus a few turret field of fire issues. Small application of turret islands to elevate one or two of em and add in a bit more of an ability to depress the barrels to increase the interlocking fire and your golden basically.

dfacto
Posts: 118
Joined: Thu Mar 31, 2011 10:50 am

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by dfacto »

Had some ideas for how Terran Ship design would evolve, so I thought I'd share a quick outline.

0-5 years post contact: Terrans realize they're completely outclassed and can't catch up. Loroi mistrust Humans and don't see any reason to give them technical support when they have no industry to make use of it. Terrans respond by salvaging anything they can from battlefields past and present. The large amount of Umiak salvage (they get shot up a lot more than the Loroi, so there are more things to pick up) leads the Terran government to make retrofits of Umiak tech the official armament policy. Terran science gears itself towards understanding the tech and finding ways to repair recovered items.

5-10 years: Terrans create their first line of ships using scavenged Umiak technology. Gunboat cannons are fitted to repaired Umiak drives. The result is essentially a flying engine with a gun on it. The Loroi agree to provide support in the form of fuel. While there are huge amounts of Umiak derelicts from multiple battles, the destructive nature of Loroi weaponry and anti-matter annihilation of breached vessels means the total salvageable engine/cannon count allows for only 30 vessels.

10-30 years: Terrans continue to search for more salvageable parts, and to reverse engineer Umiak tech. The theory is clear, but the production techniques are still years out of reach. The converted Terran fleet reaches 53 vessels, including an experiment at creating a cruiser from Umiak parts.

30-40 years: The Terran fleet is wiped out by a small Umiak incursion. Only 3 vessels survive. Despite this, enough damage is incurred on the Umiak for the Loroi to easily mop up the remaining ships. The Loroi agree to provide the Terrans with expanded technical support and production technology. This fills the gap in the advancing Terran capabilities and allows for crude replication of Umiak cannons and drive systems.

40-50 years: The relative success of the converted Umiak fleet proved the effectiveness of using smaller vessels. The Terran cruiser had been targeted and destroyed easily at the very beginning of battle, but the small, quick strike craft were able to close within weapons distance and focus down several heavies before being destroyed. Due to the still inferior nature of human drives and weapons, it is decided that replacing the fleet with similar craft is the best move. Production of Mk II strike craft begins.

LegioCI
Posts: 58
Joined: Fri May 06, 2011 3:15 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by LegioCI »

Going to making some (hopefully!) informed assumptions here, but I'm not going to be jumping too far off the trail. (Going to try to paint with broad design strokes and try to stay away from the specifics and what not; physics, internet, catgirls, etc.)

Three assumptions first:
1: We will ally with the Loroi over the Umiak. (Blue Amazon Elves > Communist space bugs.)
2: The main advantage of Loroi/Umiak weapons over human weapons is chiefly the effective range of their missiles and the power of their DEWs.
3: The Loroi will be too paranoid to hand over any significant weapons technology to a potential future rival.

What this means is that, from a military development standpoint, humanity is on its own for a while. We're going to be stuck with underpowered, short-range weapons for our first generations of warships. Obviously, though, being that we're human, we're not going to let that stop us. If the Umiak and Loroi are going to have huge advantages against us, then we need to figure out ways of negating their advantages and creating our own.

The first thing humanity is going to want to do is forget about asking for weapons technology from the Loroi. What we need is engine technology. Weapons don't mean anything if you can't get to a place where you can use them, and, ton for ton, our capital ships are about 1/6 to 1/8 the speed of comparable Umiak ships. If we can't get ship drives from the Loroi, then we'll need to scavenge them from Umiak wreckage. The first few will go to the eggheads back on Earth for research and reverse engineering, the rest will be refurbished and adapted for our use.

Now that we've got some decent powerplants, we can start working around how we're going to negate enemy advantages in range and firepower, and what advantages we can bring to the table to help our Loroi allies. The best way to negate range is by getting close- range is only an advantage until we can shoot back. Negating the superior DEWs is a bit trickier: There's no good way to turn inferior weapons to your advantage, all you can do is design to weather it the best you can.

Taking these two assumptions to mind, I think the best way for humanity to design it's ships is to go big. 1200m or more in length. This really wouldn't be as hard as you'd think, either, especially since we can assume that we've already got a ton of huge ships laying around already. Cargo ships, Mining Ships, Colony Ships. These are all giants that we can easily retrofit into our first generation warships. (We're probably not even using the colony ships either, so there's probably dozens in orbit around every one of our planets, slowly being cannibalized for scrap by the colonists.

So we'll take a colony ship, rip out the engines and put in the hotrod Loroi engines. We move the command bridge and crew habitation areas far aft and deep inside the ship's structure. On the hull, we'll mount our mass-drivers and laser batteries, then, down the centerline we'll mount our centerpiece: One big honkin' railcannon that runs nearly the entire length of the ship, with all but the front third of the barrel coiled to drastically increase it's effective length. (If we really twisted the coil tight we could probably get an effective 4-6km barrel into a 1.5km ship.) Once we have the weapons installed, then we get creative. Using scrap iron, we honeycomb the inside of the ship, then fill it with concrete, rock, sand or whatever else we can find. The effect is that we've got nearly a a third of a kilometer and millions of kt of material; which is how we negate the advantage of better DEWs. Energy weapons work by (inefficiently) converting enough EM energy into heat that it melts through whatever you're shooting, if you have enough material though, the energy dissipates into the surrounding material before it can melt all the way through.

So now that we've got this big, ugly, super-heavy dreadnaught, how do we use it? I can see us using these monsters as the starship equivalents of football linemen, driving forward into Umiak formations and absorbing fire for the faster, lighter Loroi ships. Once we're close enough, we can start to rake Umiak ships at point-blank range with powerful railguns that would be easily sidestepped further out. The coup-de-grace would be fixed railcannon, firing into the heaviest enemy ships at close range, turning them inside out with rounds the size of Volkswagen Beetles accelerated to .25c twice a second. Defensively, lasers would have diminished effect due to the sheer mass of the ships, and missiles would be cut apart by PDLs before they had a chance to accelerate after leaving their tubes. If all else fails, 800m+ of reinforced concrete makes one hell of a battering ram.

Later generations could use the same design philosophy of giant, heavily armored dreadnaughts, but with improved armor(I can imagine threading the entire bulk with super-conductive veins, allowing energy to be even more rapidly dissipated.), weapons and engines they would be able to last longer, hit harder and close with the enemy faster.
"But notice how the Human thinks. 'Interesting... how can I use this as a weapon?'" - Arioch

User avatar
manticore7
Posts: 80
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:09 am
Location: Milpitas CA

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by manticore7 »

Are the Loroi the only option for tech transfers? Maybe some of the other races in the Loroi Union like the Historians might be more willing to trade with technology with us. They could see us as a potential counter balance to the Loroi and share some of their secrets.
"Worlds governed by artificial intelligence often learned a hard lesson, Logic doesn't care"
Andromeda season 2 episode 6 All too Human

User avatar
Siber
Posts: 362
Joined: Sun Mar 06, 2011 5:10 pm

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Siber »

Assuming humanity allies with one of the powers, I don't think tech transfer is all or nothing. They're clearly unlikely to give us a brand new battle cruiser design, but some fifty year old designs from before the war would still kick us solidly in the butt when it comes to advancement, and the same is true for any civilian interstellar freighters or whatever they've got laying around. Sure it might take a significant chunk out of our gross species product to buy a good sized interstellar hauler or junked old warship from a private collector somewhere, but such opportunities are likely to exist and be worth the effort.
Atomic Space Race, a hard sci-fi orbital mechanics puzzle game.
Homeworld Fulcrum, a Homeworld Remastered Mod

Karst45
Posts: 785
Joined: Sat Mar 05, 2011 4:03 pm
Location: Quebec, Canada
Contact:

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by Karst45 »

manticore7 wrote:Are the Loroi the only option for tech transfers? Maybe some of the other races in the Loroi Union like the Historians might be more willing to trade with technology with us. They could see us as a potential counter balance to the Loroi and share some of their secrets.
Actually i could see some rebel getting in contact with earth. Who would think that a backwater system like sol could be the staggering base of a rebel operation.


At this point any argument who prove it would not work is a argument that prove no one would think of looking there for rebel (yay to paradox)

User avatar
manticore7
Posts: 80
Joined: Tue Apr 05, 2011 3:09 am
Location: Milpitas CA

Re: Concept Fanart of Future Terran Ship Designs

Post by manticore7 »

Siber wrote:Assuming humanity allies with one of the powers, I don't think tech transfer is all or nothing. They're clearly unlikely to give us a brand new battle cruiser design, but some fifty year old designs from before the war would still kick us solidly in the butt when it comes to advancement, and the same is true for any civilian interstellar freighters or whatever they've got laying around. Sure it might take a significant chunk out of our gross species product to buy a good sized interstellar hauler or junked old warship from a private collector somewhere, but such opportunities are likely to exist and be worth the effort.
maybe after the war if any are left, with the way the conflict is going I wouldn't be surprised if fifty year old ships are still seeing frontline service.
"Worlds governed by artificial intelligence often learned a hard lesson, Logic doesn't care"
Andromeda season 2 episode 6 All too Human

Post Reply