Ships sizes. When is big too big?

[gigabytelord]

For combat vessels another consideration is what type of weapons your 'verse relies on. For example, ships in Mass Effect tend to be very long, specifically, because that provides more room for the spinal mass accelerator that runs most of the length of the ship. This allows them to fire the slug with greater force. Because of this, dreadnoughts are usually around a klick in length and (according to the codex, anyway; the video artists weren't paying attention to this) act like artillery pieces.

By contrast, a setting that mainly uses omni-directional energy weapons (e.g. Star Trek, with the phasers on a GCS organized into strips that can theoretically emit a beam from any point along their length) have more freedom in design.

The other consideration? Psychology. The Galactic Empire builds huge ships partly because they look scary.

There's a little of both to tell you the truth, and there are many types of weapons used. Some quite simple and very much based in reality (Railguns), and others not so much (Meson weapons).

And as far as big ships to look scary go. War ships in this setting don't have windows and the bridges are usually buried under several decks towards the core of the ship, this has as much to do with the way artificial gravity works as is does with aesthetics.

[gigabytelord]

Quick update. Holy crap the Size Comparison pic as been updated again.

The Dune high-liner has been added.

Linkage

[SMJB]

What are wars fought for in your universe? There obviously isn't a population crunch or anything, nor any scarce resources save perhaps some sort of unobtanium.

[gigabytelord]

What are wars fought for in your universe? There obviously isn't a population crunch or anything, nor any scarce resources save perhaps some sort of unobtanium.

Since when have wars always been fought over logical things like population crunches and resources shortages?

Also I never said that population limitations never happen. Nor did I say that resource conflicts are a thing of the past. These issues do indeed rarely affect the larger powers but smaller "third world" equivalents still have to deal with such situations.

And yes major conflicts don't happen very often. In Fact it's been over six hundred years since the last truly major galactic conflict, and as a result the three big powers are sitting in literal mountains naval hardware and untested tactics.

You could describe it like this. Say the galaxy is city state. This city state has plenty of room for it's current inhabitants. It's got plenty of food, medicine, fuel and a decent water supply. Even though the city state in question has plenty of resource for it's own use. Those resources are hoarded by the big powers causing a clear disparity between the haves and have-nots, as well as a long and very cold relationship between the big three.

Now lets say that there is a second city state and it experiences a disaster of some kind forcing it's inhabitants to seek safety within the bonds of the first. This will cause instability and conflict more likely than not. Add in cultural misunderstanding and you've got an explosion waiting to happen. This graphic novel is about that cultural upheaval and its aftermath.

Hopefully this clears things up abit.

[PainRack]

Yes. Like Asimov who had no sense of scale with Trantor of "forty billion" inhabitants. Assuming short scale, it is a ridiculously low number.

I think we're forgetting that Trantor was written during WW2, when the world biggest cities like London had 4.4 million people. Given that kind of population density, Trantor population of 40 billion in short scale isn't that drastically low especially once you consider WW2 scale of food preservation.

[chornedsnorkack]

Yes. Like Asimov who had no sense of scale with Trantor of "forty billion" inhabitants. Assuming short scale, it is a ridiculously low number.

I think we're forgetting that Trantor was written during WW2, when the world biggest cities like London had 4.4 million people. Given that kind of population density, Trantor population of 40 billion in short scale isn't that drastically low especially once you consider WW2 scale of food preservation.

Yes, but as pointed out, England had 40 million. The biggest single city, London, was still around 7 millions, and much of the rest was in individually smaller cities like Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham scattered in northern England.

[puskas78]

Linkage

Not bad.

When is big too big? I mean take a look at that list and it seems as though everyone is in a race to write the biggest ship into existence. As a wannabe Sci-fi writer myself I sometimes wonder just how far can you plausibly go before things start to get absurd.

Well... These are absurd.

This is too big for a ship. 280 kilometers.

Space stations:

20 astronomical units. What the [REDACTED].
3600000 kilometers.
A few astronomical units.
A few astronomical units again.
Too big, and too heavy. 1464 solar masses. Wtf.

The wank is strong in Orion's Arm

[Borgholio]

The wank is strong in Orion's Arm

No kidding. Every other word is nano-this and nano-that. They say they're all about "hard" sci-fi, but nanotech isn't the wondertech that these guys think it is.

[gigabytelord]

Well... These are absurd.

This is too big for a ship. 280 kilometers.

Space stations:

20 astronomical units. What the [REDACTED].
3600000 kilometers.
A few astronomical units.
A few astronomical units again.
Too big, and too heavy. 1464 solar masses. Wtf.

The wank is strong in Orion's Arm

Holy flying fuck. Here I was thinking that 30 - 60 km wide mobile stations might be a little to large...

[puskas78]

I forgot a few things...

A computer center, 45 solar masses
A galaxy meets a mobile galaxy. And I thought that the Magog World Ship was the biggest wank.
Factories

[katamuro]

For me a ship was always something that can enter into low orbit around the planet without impacting it in a significant way. So limited to a few dozen kilometers at most. Anything over that is a mobile station.

[Batman]

Oh. Wait. Orbit. My bad. I was about to ask how a ship a dozen kilometres across can impact on a planet in an insignificant way.
And the distinction between ship and station seems to be pretty arbitrarily based on size. For example, Wars-SSD=ship, DS=station, despite the fact that the DS was both FTL and STL capable when 'station' is something I would expect to be well, stationary (i.e. in a fixed orbit or parked at a LaGrange point or something, not what amounts to a really big and cumbersome warship). By contrast, the Perryverse Sporenschiffe, despite being big enough to use an SSD for a lifeboat (spherical ships some 1100km in diameter if I recall correctly) were always referred to as 'ships' because they were, well, decidedly mobile.