What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Oni Koneko Damien »

Not sure if it counts as a 'ship', but the Giga-Shadow from Lexx.

A planet-sized, centipede/woodlouse looking thing. All the more terrifying because, despite being alien, people can still relate it to things on their planet. Things that they step on, that scare a lot of them, and that they know would probably eat/step on them if they were a bit bigger, and there's one ungodly huge one looking hungrily at their planet.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Kartr_Kana »

HolyReaperX01 wrote:wraith hive ship one because they are about 5 or 6 times bigger than a isd
According to the Stargate wiki the hive ship is roughly 13 times the length of the 304 which the same wiki puts at 200-225m long. So that means a hive ship is at most 3km long which is not even twice the length of an ISD.
HolyReaperX01 wrote:any egyptian like planet
what the fuck is an egyptian like planet!? Did you mean to say planet that has pyramids?

Personally I'm going with the Ori warships "aah every body look out the space people put the toilet seat down and are about to shit on us!!".
Seriously I'm going to have say a YV world ship. It's "hugemungnormous" it's spiky, tentacly and it's aliveeee
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by NecronLord »

Kartr_Kana wrote:
HolyReaperX01 wrote:wraith hive ship one because they are about 5 or 6 times bigger than a isd
According to the Stargate wiki the hive ship is roughly 13 times the length of the 304 which the same wiki puts at 200-225m long. So that means a hive ship is at most 3km long which is not even twice the length of an ISD.
The Wiki is wrong (big surprise). And he is right. The producers have stated (stargate magazine, others) that the intended size of a hive ship is eleven kilometers from stem to stern.
Spoiler
We get to see this at last in this episode. An enhanced hive ship deadnought engages Atlantis muzzle to muzzle, in space. It utterly dwarves the city ship which is a couple of clicks across. Even though it's said to have grown more than a usual one, that is in the form of a thicker and denser hull. Not necesserily bigger.
They are massive. Anything not depicting them as such is an FX screwup (like Be all My Sins Remember'd which has all sorts of screwy size issues going on).

I assume this HolyReaper has seen the episode I mentioned there, because he indirectly talked about something else (regarding FTL) from that episode in the last thread, too.
Spoiler
The Ancients had almost completed work on something called 'Wormhole Drive' which matched the speed of stargate travel, for entire starships, with no requirement to have external apparatus to make it possible (supergates). HolyReaper's claim that Stargate FTL could manage intergalactic travel in seconds was in fact, correct.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Kartr_Kana »

My bad. I really need to catch up on everything that's been happening in SG recently.

I'd still like to know what an "egyptian type" planet is though
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by NecronLord »

That's actually not happened yet. They've been leaked on the internet. Something I only actually noticed when it cut to VFX placeholders (which were shockingly good; the pre-vis for Atlantis is about as good as the effects in Clone Wars) Those episodes are out officially in a few weeks.

But yeah, scaling off Atlantis displays is a bad idea. The displays had a kilometer long 'spike' on the bottom of the city for a couple of seasons. Which eventually turned out not to physically exist.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Admiral Valdemar »

Neko_Oni wrote:I think things like ID4 destroyers, Star Destroyers and similar sized vessels that can enter the atmosphere are best for terrifying the populace. They strike the right mix of fucking huge yet not so fucking huge that we lose all sense of scale. Plus they can come in nice and low, hovering silently for maximum terror effect.

Things like inhibitor swarms disassembling a planet, death stars/planetoids in orbit, they would cause more of a intellectual terror. Hell in the Redemption Space books the populace of one of the planets is not terrified at all. They just kind of mentally block out the smear in the sky where their local gas giant used to be.
I had also thought of something like the Inhibitor swarms replicating and surrounding the planet, blotting out the sky completely, which would bring about total anarchy. As scary as seeing moons and a jovian disappear and reassemble into a machine of pure death, the impact of losing your sky globally would be every bit as terrifying as having your world overshadowed by a City Destroyer or SSD hovering directly over your neighbourhood.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Captain Seafort »

Along similar lines would be the Nightcloak - although whether the sky mysteriously dissappearing or being blotted out by swarms of ships would be more fightening is questionable.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Admiral Valdemar »

That's what I was thinking of, and also some influence from the episode "Turn Left of DW. Losing your sun/starlight is one thing, but what if you see that ceiling start coming down like dripping ink, devouring airliners, then skyscrapers and then your street?
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Darth Nostril »

A Culture System class GSV, a two hundred kilometre long silvery ellipsoid, slowly descending and using its effectors to fuck with the weather.
So I stare wistfully at the Lightning for a couple of minutes. Two missiles, sharply raked razor-thin wings, a huge, pregnant belly full of fuel, and the two screamingly powerful engines that once rammed it from a cold start to a thousand miles per hour in under a minute. Life would be so much easier if our adverseries could be dealt with by supersonic death on wings - but alas, Human resources aren't so easily defeated.

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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Teleros »

I think the Shadows from B5 have my vote as well. The way I see it, if you saw the DS II getting close, you might at least wonder about it. If you see a Shadow ship or ten, you just know it can't be good.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Rochey »

In terms of simple appearance, I'll go with the Shadow vessels. Those things just seem to clearly state "you're fucked", and I'd say seeing them pull into orbit would freak people out.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Solauren »

Crossroads Inc. wrote:
LordOskuro wrote:No contest: The Beast Planet from Shadow Raiders.
I think it gets an award for the ONLY Evil Ship of DOOM™ NOT to be defeated by the goodguys.
What about the reward for being the only Evil Ship of Doom to "reproduce"?
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Lord of the Abyss »

Solauren wrote:
Crossroads Inc. wrote:
LordOskuro wrote:No contest: The Beast Planet from Shadow Raiders.
I think it gets an award for the ONLY Evil Ship of DOOM™ NOT to be defeated by the goodguys.
What about the reward for being the only Evil Ship of Doom to "reproduce"?
There was the Monolith in 2010, if that counts as a "ship" - it was floating in space. And in the Star Trek novel Objective : Bajor, the planet-consuming Hive ship reproduced, becoming two Hives. And while I've never read any of the fluff, I expect that some of the Tyranid ships have reproduced, since they are alive.
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Re: What Starship would scare the crap outa a populace the most?

Post by Oskuro »

Solauren wrote:
Crossroads Inc. wrote:
LordOskuro wrote:No contest: The Beast Planet from Shadow Raiders.
I think it gets an award for the ONLY Evil Ship of DOOM™ NOT to be defeated by the goodguys.
What about the reward for being the only Evil Ship of Doom to "reproduce"?
When did it reproduce? The armada sent to prepare the arrival of the Beast did convert a planetoid into a battlestation, but that hardly counts as reproduction, and if you're referring to the null-energy clone of Planet Fire (the one that was too unstable to survive for long), I'd say no.

Also, even Hive Ships from SGA "reproduce" in a way.
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