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Post by Insano-Man on Feb 21, 2019 14:03:35 GMT -5
IT REALLY FLOATS!Looking down, Set's oceans look tiny. Looking up, Set's orbit looks empty. That doesn't change the fact that, down in the water or up in the void, there are at least a few hundred thousand ships drifting around at any given moment. They're fundamental to life and commerce for space stations, port towns, and even a few breeds of deep-sea monsters. They fly every flag imaginable, from Cult cutters chasing after Looney assault ships, to harvester junkers swarming over Space Looney dreadnoughts. They're lashed tight with wood, riveted together with scrap, or just a big rock with an engine stuck to one side. Sea or sky, caves or ghost tides, every ship's got a story to tell - even if some are a little darker than others. This topic encompasses notable ship designs, both seaborne and spaceborne. Included are lists of ship weight classes and common stylistic leanings for major slices of the population. Living ships, such as domesticated space monsters, belong better in the Creatures: Monsters topic than in here. Do note that this topic is primarily intended for ship designs, not individual ships themselves. If you've got a ship you'd like to detail, give its own article! If you've got the ambition, feel free to add in its design as a post in this topic! This is an open topic.
If you fancy yourself a shipwright, feel free to post here! There's always plenty of room in the sea - or in space. Go wild!
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Post by Insano-Man on Feb 21, 2019 14:07:39 GMT -5
SHIP SIZE CLASSIFICATIONSWhen it comes to ships, size matters. It tells you how much fuel you're pumping, how much firepower you're lugging around, and how many mouths you've got to feed. It tells a mariner how afraid they've got to be about saw-traps. It tells a spacer how nervous they've got to be about harvesters swooping in on a salvage run. It tells pirates, bandits, and boarders about how much the hold might be packed with - and how many marines might be waiting around every corner. With all that in mind, it has to be emphasized that Set's not a fan of standards. One man's frigate is another man's dreadnought. The name a ship's wearing should be taken with a grain of salt. The following is a list of common ship sizes from FRESCO Fabrication, the top shipyard on Lebedrovez Harbor, but even this is only half the story. Its names, sizes, and weight ranges are all adjusted for orbit - where none of the ships have to worry about buoyancy. Set's crazy about ruining rulebooks. Ships are all the same. - Boats, shuttles, and strike craft are any seaborne, airborne, or spaceborne craft too small or underpowered to be considered genuine ships. Whether they're rowboats, dropships, or drone bombers, they all share a short operating range and limited tonnage. Some don't even manage a single ton. Spacers, mariners, and air crews use them as part of their daily routine at every level of Set's daily affairs.
For examples of this class of craft, check the Equipment: Vehicles topic. - Cutters are the smallest craft recognized as ships, with a maximum weight of 300 tons and a crew complement of at most 15. They're only just bigger than a boat and only just independent enough to make it from one port to another. They're cheap, easy to maintain, and so low-profile that they're usually ignored as driftwood or space junk. Most cutters are light combat ships, especially motorized cutters in Set's waters, but plenty more are just oversized cargo shuttles.
- Corvettes are the smallest craft people want to recognize as ships. They come in at anywhere between 300 tons to 3,000 tons, with a crew of at least 5 and at most 20. Corvettes are some of the most common ships in orbit, with about two fifths of all craft falling in their weight class. Down in the water, they're only a little less common, at around a third of all seaborne tonnage. The price point and versatility means corvettes can be found doing just about everything; fishing, fighting, freight hauling, and more.
- Frigates are craft in the weight range of 2,000 tons to 5,000 tons, with a crew of anywhere between 10 and 80. They're some of the largest spaceborne ships that are able to safely land on Set's surface. They're some of the largest combat ships most terrestrial navies are able to maintain. Frigates occupy a heavy percentage of spacecraft, at around one third of all ships. On Set's surface, the proportion is much smaller, at about one fifth on a good day.
- Destroyers occupy an odd niche in between frigates and cruisers. Their lowermost bound is at 3,000 tons and 12 crew, up to 8,000 tons and 160 crew. Destroyers are universally fighting ships with a weight bias towards the upper side of the range. They're most popular with Space Loonies and mercenary fleets, where their smooth blend of firepower and speed makes for ships with tight response times. Even still, they usually struggle to catch up to cruisers and frigates when it comes to total numbers.
- Monitors are a subset of destroyers that trade speed and heft for more firepower. They're slower, smaller, and pack oversized guns to double down on the defensive mindset. Their overall weight skews off towards the lower end of the spectrum. Monitors are most common with defensive formations around rivers, ports, and space stations, where running off isn't on the priority list.
- Schooners are destroyers without the destruction. They're ships in the same class made for more pedestrian purposes, like freight, habitation, or pleasure cruises. Some satisfy unarmed military roles, like marine transports and light carriers, but most fall under civilian ownership.
- Cruisers are the heavy hitters in most fleets. 7,000 to 20,000 tons, 40 crew at absolute minimum, and one serious cost involved. In civilian hands, cruisers are the major material movers, both in the sky and in the water. In the hands of mercs, harvesters, and Space Loonies, they're the top muscle of any brawl. Behind frigates, cruisers are some of the most common ships in orbit, and at least half of orbit's transient population makes their home on one. Down on the planet below, they make up the bulk of coast-to-coast shipping that isn't slithering beneath the waves.
- Battlecruisers are just what their name suggests; cruisers made to smash. They come in just a little heftier at 8,000 to 25,000 tons, with around the same crew requirements. The prime difference between battlecruisers and regular cruisers are the guns they're packing. Most are fitted out with ordnance that's usually a weight class above cruisers. Some are even just giant guns with an engine somewhere out of the way. Most battlecruisers are purely fighting ships, but a handful are geared up with mining equipment - or just using their guns on less feisty targets.
- Battleships are the kings of the waves and the queens of the sky. No less than 30,000 tons of terror, no fewer than 100 crew, and one of the most painful price tags anyone'll ever see on a ship. It's much to most people's good fortune that not many will ever see a battleship. Only a handful exist, on or off the planet - and most of them are in Space Looney hands.
- Dreadnoughts are the emperors of orbit. They're to battleships what battlecruisers are to regular cruisers. 35,000 tons at minimum, armor dense enough to make a black hole think twice, and guns so heavy it's a wonder the planet has cracked in half. There's no good reason why anyone should have one of these things. That didn't stop the Space Loonies from trying.
- Motherships are the friendly side of battleships. Just like schooners for destroyers, they're an unarmed take on the same weight class. There are only a scarce few motherships in existence, but they all serve a role not too much different from a mobile space station. They're population centers, industrial facilities, and mining engines. They're carriers, command centers, and repair platforms. If there's a job that needs a calm hand, a mothership can handle it - and a few hundred others, to boot.
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Post by Insano-Man on Feb 21, 2019 14:07:58 GMT -5
TERRESTRIAL DESIGN PATTERNSShips on the sea are stitched together out of random trees. They're made to navigate waters full of monsters, terror, and occasional acid. That doesn't change that everyone's got their own style when it comes to construction. Smooth curves, hard lines, or just raw rigging and masts - there's something for everyone. The following is a list of common construction patterns for different factions and slices of Set's population. Bear in mind that, as with most other subjects, these are not hard rules. Exceptions are always everywhere. - The common folk, pirates, and privateers on Set's surface make due with what they can get. Ships are fashioned out of scrap, wood, and whatever else they can get ahold of. At the end of the day, they're built to look and work like seaworthy vessels. If it's practical, that's what they're after. No one's going to care how a trawler looks if it's covered up in golden floaters. Most craft are sailing ships, with steamships coming in at a close second. Ships with better technology, like gas turbines or nuclear power, are the stuff of myth to most mariners.
- The Loonies are occasionally set on the sea in little fleets of merchant warships, living however circumstances provide. Their ships are everything the average surface ship isn't; hard edges, mean guns, and low profiles. Clean halls and high tech are hallmarks of a well-heeled Looney ship. Likewise, the tiny population of sea-going battleships is mostly in Looney hands - and they most definitely look the part.
- The Cult of Meat operates its own little tumor navies around the ports it controls. Smaller Cult flotillas are nothing special. They look just the same as any townie patrol or pirate band. Larger, better-equipped Cult fleets are the stuff of nightmares. Ships covered in meat, ships flooded with meat, ships made of meat - when the Cult goes to war, half the screaming is coming from the ships themselves. Cult technophobia helps keep it all in check with nothing but curdling wood and blood-rusted iron - which is only a small mercy when the ship knows how to swim.
- Sorassan have a tricky time getting into space, but that doesn't stop them from building boats. For the most part, the squids try to keep their exposure to water to a minimum. Ships are built like coffins to keep the sea air out. They're kept short, wide, and heavy, with a surprising resemblance to spacecraft. Sorassan muscles and altophobia lend to a design bias in favor of galleys, with steamships as prized possessions.
- What's frankly terrifying to know is that pseudocrustaceans do actually build ships sometimes. Every once in a while, a tribe advances enough to go on a crab crusade across the waves. Keeping more than just one lobster afloat takes a special knack for balancing and buoyancy. For most tribes, that means flat, fat, and as chunky as their exoskeleton. Oars are popular - which is to say they're about all the crabs ever manage to figure out.
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Post by Insano-Man on Feb 21, 2019 14:09:34 GMT -5
ORBITAL DESIGN PATTERNSShips up in orbit are slapped together out of random trash. They're made to roam around debris fields full of pirates, radiation, and occasional self-replicating machine plagues. That doesn't change that every spacer's got their own spin on spaceships. Big turrets, sophisticated curves, or just exposed pipework and exhausts - there's something for everybody. The following is a list of common construction patterns for different factions and slices of Set's population. Remember that all of these are just guidelines. Nothing on Set is set in stone. - The Pioneer Network had a massive space navy for its time. In days gone by, they weren't much different from the Loonies on the sea; hard edges, blocky designs, and a no-nonsense attitude in every bulkhead. Design patterns in orbit usually chase after Pioneer designs in a quest to call back the greatness of the old times. Most wrecks drifting around orbit used to fly the same, unknown flag of the Loonies of yesteryear. Some are even still flying around - as rusted-over junkers with a few centuries' worth of shoddy repairs and hull fatigue.
- The average spacer has to make due with ships only just better than derelicts. They're passed on hard-edged hand-me-downs, stuck with clunky junkers, and forced to piece together working ships out of half-functional parts. With a slippery grasp on gravity, most spacers have to make due with centrifugal force or scavenged SNM modules. That means big wheels, globes, or gravity spindles along the ship's drive axis. Bulging cargo modules and tubby rust-bellies are common features.
- Space pirates have it rough. They're a cut below average spacers when it comes to hardware by sheer virtue of being unwelcome in civilized space. They're forced to fight with junkers and other pirates to find spare parts. Most of them are living on flying dumpsters that are just one piece away from turning self-aware and running off to the nearest harvester fleet. Occasionally, all they can do is strap an engine to a hollowed-out asteroid. The marauders that win it big usually end up looking like mercenaries or regular spacers.
- Space mercs have it rich. When a fleet gets its act together and breaks out of the small-time, their ships follow suit. Military angles, turrets loaded down with big guns, and showy bridges are all hallmarks of an outfit that's done well for itself. When gravity modules start going in, ships start going back to their roots with a seafaring look - with even more guns on the bottom.
- The Space Loonies are all about the cutting edge. They're not immune to the infection of trash and scrap, but their ships reflect their status as one of the best-equipped factions in space. Smooth lines on armor plates, edges where they count, and forward guns tucked tidily inside the hull. Being the original designers of artificial gravity, most Space Loonies can afford to get aeronautical with their ship designs. Others play around with old Pioneer styling.
- Loonies in space - the kind desperate not to be noticed - occasionally build ships when their asteroids dry up. These monsters take on a look somewhere between the bulging chaos that regular spacers are fond of and the slim-and-stern look seafaring Loonies are fond of. Most are tooled up with heavy mining equipment to spend as little time in one place as possible. Some are converted straight into massive, bulbous landers - and last only as long as it takes to get to Set's surface.
- Cult of Meat spacers most definitely exist. They're the smallest voice in orbit, but they're no less dedicated than the Cult on the ground. Their ships are just as viscous. Most are squished up with a miniature meatscape growing on the inside. The more ambitious of Cult captains build big spikes, panels, and other scaffolds for the meat to grow on outside the ship. Giant sails of still-salivating flesh are the only flags a Cult ship needs. Taken to its extreme, some of the more devout crews let the meat take over the whole ship. The end result is something like a bowl of pasta with a blowtorch jutting out from one side.
- The harvester drones are like a made-to-order parody of regular spacers. Everything is freshly built, cleanly maintained, and still somehow manages to look like an ambulatory landfill. Industrial equipment hangs off every side; crane arms, cutting torches, or even entire shipyards. Sensors and antennae stick off of everything as if the ship was meant to be a sea urchin. Smaller drones scramble over the hull like fleas on a wild dog. Tacked onto the hull are stalled expansions, cargo racks, and whatever else was convenient at the time. Nothing is coordinated. Everything is out of place.
- The garbage haulers are the worst of the worst. Their name is as much their style as it is their job description. They're flying slops of scrap, loosely packed together to resemble a ship. Old Pioneer-era designs run face-first into improv jobs only a harvester could love. Cargo clamps and collection tools hang off the sides like spider legs. Rusting junk rattles along next to packed-in garbage and lodged debris. Old wounds stay uncovered for years. Fires burn whenever there's an atmosphere to breathe. Inside, it's all cargo claws dangling from corroded rails, or stuck halfway into trash piles.
- The Unity Trust and most unionites build ships along the same lines. They're sleek, skeletal things loaded down with gravity manipulator arrays, surrounding a thick, central shaft hooked straight into the engine. Some include half-rings offset from the main hull for data storage and solar panels. Most fly unarmed, but a few feature ball-socket turrets to give raiders a reason to think twice.
- Boglanders don't maintain many of their own ships, but the ones they have are built for them. They're slim, civilian, and as easy on the eyes as they are with their gravity. Interior spaces try to stay dark, humid, and too tight for anyone taller than a child to squeeze through. Sweeping vista views through wide windows are popular choices, especially for ships that can afford to stick close to safe space.
- Zaschian ships are all monuments to what their race once was. They're all huge, outside and inside, and chunky with thick armor. Most are set with high-intensity gravity modules that enforce a look like a flying bridge, with struts and supports everywhere. Flags and banners still hang off most in mute pride. They'd be sad to look at, if it weren't for the gigantic auto-turrets splitting every flat surface on the hull.
- The orscruft, when they were around, had a taste for jagged, pointy ships like flying shards of glass. Reinforced hulls went hand-in-hand with high-gravity interiors. Heavy-set supports swept across tall, narrow compartments flooded with high-pressure gas. Nowadays, the only orscruft ships left are in other species' hands - or drifting as wrecks from the Splinter Wars.
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Post by Insano-Man on Feb 21, 2019 14:11:00 GMT -5
DERELICTS
Role: Debris
Producer: Misfortune
Class: Any
Weight: Variable
Crew: None
Propulsion: Disabled
Power: Inert
Defenses: Inoperative
Weapons: Unmanned
On and over Set, not every ship has a crew. Not every ship is still moving. Not every ship even looks like a ship anymore. In reality, most ships are wasting wrecks that have been completely abandoned. At least half of Set's tonnage is made up of rusting hulks leftover from hard times and the Splinter Wars. They're piled on by pirate activity, collisions, and awkward encounters with garbage haulers. They sink, turn up on beaches, or come drifting down into high orbit from the Scuttler Slice. They're all harsh reminders of what the planet can do to a crew - even if they're miles above it.
At the same time, death is life in orbit. Derelicts are cannibalism at its finest; the best source of parts for a spaceship are parts from another spaceship. They're the livelihood of shipbreakers down in the seas and up in the black. They're the best source of food for a growing harvester fleet and a prime breeding grounds for space monsters. For spacers, salvaging is almost synonymous with daily life. For seafarers, it's the golden variety of adventure. As much as every wreck has its moment of silence, not many people have ever asked for the tap to shut off.
The mysterious fact about Set's derelicts is that there are just too many. Shipwrecks pop up into the sea from the Chambers of Myth. Hulks fall into the Scuttler Slice from the Lost Reach, as if Set had drawn them in across the galaxy like a giant magnet. Fully-formed spaceships erupt from underground with their logs torched and their hulls so mangled they were practically made to be cut apart. Some shoot out of Zorah's Eye, ricochet off the Scuttler Slice, and wait around for someone to scrap them. Some ships have appeared a second, third, or even more times after they were salvaged the first. The mystery never ends with Set's wrecks - and the wrecks never end.
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Post by Insano-Man on Feb 22, 2019 11:14:02 GMT -5
DRONESHIPS
Role: Variable
Producer: Variable
Class: Any
Weight: Variable
Crew: None
Propulsion: Variable
Power: Variable
Defenses: Variable
Weapons: Variable
Drifting unattended across most of orbit are the kind of robot most spacers could do without; droneships. Droneships are any ship, regardless of size, owner, or pathfinding quality, that are entirely unmanned apart from an artificial intelligence core - and even that much is optional. They're best known for being the bulk of the garbage haulers and the muscle of the harvester drones. They're best known for causing a whole lot of trouble and doing things arbitrarily. They have a centuries-old reputation for being nuisances and nightmares on and off the planet - and the sad fact is that it's only half the story.
The truth of droneships is that spacers up in orbit are dependent on them. For every garbage hauler trying to drag off a habitation platform, there's an automated supply ship that another station's life depends on. For every harvester fleet picking off lone ships, there's a swarm of service shuttles ferrying people around station clusters. For every rough time a spacer has with a hauler or a harvester, there's a good time they've had picking over their leftovers and wrecks.
By nature of being giant robots, droneships have a score of different design choices compared to a crewed craft. The first and foremost is that the lack of a crew means no quarters, no attempt at gravity, and no need to worry about inertia splattering anyone. The crewless design means droneships have more liberties with their profile, engines, and emissions. The second is that there's no bridge, command center, or any of that. At best, the ship might have its operating systems housed in their own part of the ship. The third is a surprising lack of damage control and armor plating. Hull breaches aren't nearly as big a deal when no one's worried about being vented into space.
Part of the reasoning behind the shortage of armor is how difficult it is to destroy a droneship. Without a crew needed to service the ship, the only thing that matters is the ship's computer core - and even that much can be diffused across the whole craft. With a decently-designed droneship, disabling the vessel is about the same thing as destroying it. The one caveat is that dead droneships tell no tales. When a ship's put out of the fight, there's no command crew left to escape. Any experience or skill a resident AI might've had all goes right down the toilet. As most spacers will attest, it's not much of a consolation.
The vast majority of droneships exist as spacecraft, but a handful ply the waves down in Set's seas. A few are operated by tech-savvy towns, but most are either owned by salty harvesters or rule-bending Loonies. A tiny sliver are actually garbage haulers that have somehow achieved buoyancy after crashing into the ocean. It's much to most mariners' good fortune that seaborne droneships are rare sights. It's much to most mariners' misfortune that airborne droneships are much more common. Seamen all over Set have heard tales of garbage haulers abducting fishing boats. Some of them even lived to spread the story.
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