Your attention to aesthetics is commendable and quite interesting to read about. You wrote something both entertaining and educational *hat-tip*.
I've some experience with military and engineering, and the intersection of the two. The ship design you came up with certainly meets your criteria, but I don't think it met your design objectives. That is, it is a wonderful bit of art, but it does not connote the original concept - to me. Art being subjective, yadda, but still...
I'll state some design goals as I see them:
0. large ship
1. relic of Dominion warfleet
2. previously decommissioned
3. recommissioned
4. carrier
5. bruiser
Some 2nd order guidelines:
0. large ship -> clunky, chunky, or dangerous .. uparmored, slow, sluggish(?)
1. 1. relic of Dominion warfleet -> Hegemonistic style, but license to be different
2. previously decommissioned -> license to be different, elements of non-Hegemonistic style
3. recommissioned -> hastliy perhaps .. odd clusterings and layouts of design elements
4. carrier -> hangers ... natch ... large bays, focus on point defense, limited direct-fire options
5. bruiser -> uparmored, sluggish but bristling, some direct-fire options
Guiding principles:
0. needs to communicate 'carrier' at a glace:
- bays
- work areas
1. needs to communicate odd history:
- discordant design as things were sliced off/added:
- chunks from other races
- unexpected angles or curve/block juxtaposition
- different color design on components bolted on from other places
- yellow/black caution stripes, hazard orange...
- engine pods of different design
2. needs to communicate uparmored:
- good tie-in with 1 above
- bolted-on plates and discordant chunks of beveled metal (rivets+shading makes a cover an armor plate)
- sluggish movement (lots of turret points + fighters)
The current design, to me, looks like a battleship that was in assembly, someone came down and said:
manager: 'we need a carrier yesterday',
foreman: 'well, as you can see we have a battleship on the line -'
manager: 'blast that. Is the superstructure solid?'
foreman: '(worried) well, yes, as much as of it as we have...'
manager: 'is the drive section done?'
foreman; '(can sense where this is going) that's about all that's done.'
manager: 'right. Strap two cruiser engines on that pig, bolt on covers and catchplates and shove as many flightdecks as you can in it.'
foreman: *angrily muttered curse as he sweeps everything off his table on to the floor*
manager: '(over shoulder, walking away) it goes as soon as the last weld cools.'
It looks like the last third of a battleship was chopped off and made into an ersatz carrier - not an old warship that was decommissioned and then recommissioned.
As far as the military aspect .. what I would do it first rough out the old Dominion warship it was based on. The new version should retain some of the character and lines of the old vessel.
Going from military to civilian it would likely lose large weapons first, they are expensive to maintain and operate and often require specialized knowledge to keep and operate. Military parts are expensive and military technical knowledge is often not .. advertised. The next things to be lost would likely be the engines and power plant for similar reasons. Military combat vehicle engines are often fairly unique and not very efficient. How many tanks are there versus civilian cargo vans? Military engines are meant to get the !#@#! vehicle in the #@!! fight yesterday and operate for a handful of engagements with the support of a nation's (world's) war machine behind them while being shot at - not to run efficiently with minimal impact maintenance for years provided by a single person occaisionally hiring a mechanic. Military vehicles are built to distinct and different standards. Fighter aircraft are often built to be aerodynamically unstable so that they can pull off dogfighting maneouvers easily. Ground support aircraft are overdesigned so that half their engines or control surfaces can be blown off and the craft can still function. That type of overengineering or built-in instability is not something you want in a trading cargo vessel or a mobile factory. Military focus is the bottom line in terms of construction cost, civilian focus is the bottom line in terms of operating costs.
To communicate that, I'd take the roughed-out Dominion ship and cut holes for hanger bays where habitat or large weapon emplacements were. Pull out an engine pod, but leave the engine pylon. Better yet, mount different engines in different places. Perhaps one engine mount could be repurposed as a launch bay. Armor is nearly useless dead weight for civilian concerns, but a cheap force modifier for military concerns. There should be obvious, hastily-reinstalled armor plates. Civilian owners might have plated over or repurposed turret mounts for living areas, sensors or airlocks. Pressing the ship back in to service would mean that the old symmetry would be obvious to the eye, but where a turret should be there may be something else, and the turret may be mounted on some awkward outrigging welded to the side to get as close as possible to its original position. It may be impossible to rebuild all hardpoints back to their prewar condition. Add in some large or medium mounts, but have them only except turrets of one size lower, and have a simple-looking welded cover over the extra turret space. You may want to slice some random components from other vessels and see if you could assemble them on to the frame. Civilian owners would replace parts with whatever was available on the market. If they are already buying military surplus (the old battlecruiser itself), rather than contracting something to be constructed or buying civilian standard, they aren't likely to be too choosy when replacing parts or structural elements. They'd want what would be cheapest to operate, or just to get attached (engine 3 broke down in faction 2's space, so it was cheaper to slap in faction 2's engine than tow the beast all the way back home for repair). I am not advocating a full-on Frakenship, but that the old design should be apparent, but the compromises made in its civilian life and re-militarisation should be apparent as well. I'd expect it to be under-engined and fairly sluggish - the engines, center of gravity and superstructure all have changed, plus it has a lot more armor plating than its engines were expecting to push. Given technical advancements over the years (like shielding), I'd also expect it may have a generous power budget. Power technology tends to get smaller and better, so I'd expect ripping out the crap old powerplant and dropping in one or three new, smaller ones would likely give it a good energy budget (wow, look at this relic! What do you think this thing would do with a reactor built in the past hundred years?). I'd design it also to have a high PP cap, but very low initial vents. Venting and modern power technology is new, so the ship's superstructure and power conduits aren't built to accomodate it. It should easily overload with its base vents trying to support the power demands of modern offensive and defensive weapons. It IS repurposed however, so there are likely a lot of areas (sorry about the cafeteria folks, but either you can have the shield keep the ship from being sliced in half or have a nice place to sit down to lunch) that could be converted into massive vent banks, you just need to spend the PP budget on it.
I would echo some of the concerns above and ask you tone down the runways a bit. I know they do scream 'carrier', but they are not useful in space (*owch* my eyes are fighting my uh-mershun!). Sure, some runway-like launch area should definitely be visible through the hanger bay doors, but I'd recommend looking at some airport pictures, especially in dim and low light, for alternate design cues. I'd play up the navigational and guidance lighting and sensing/communications structures. You can also use the relative size and location of buildings to inform the placement of ship modules to transfer over the 'airport' aesthetic. Also take a look at some pictures of the sides of aircraft carriers; hit up Google images for 'aircraft carrier side hanger bay'. If you don't have atmosphere, you don't need the flattop for acceleration or deceleration. Your fighters could align themselves with the hanger bay and slow their relative forward velocity to anything using their own engines, and with nothing to pull them down they could just as easily float out of the hanger bay at any speed they want. Gravity and atmospheric friction require distance to speed up and slow down to flight speed.
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Topic: Developing the Mora-class Carrier (Read 41308 times)