04-07-2017, 12:13 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin, TX
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Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
I've been having fun making spaceships with GURPS Spaceships. I set up a spreadsheet and went to town.
I've made all the usual things: full range of warships and their smallcraft, liners, freighters, freighter-liners, orbital forts, orbital commercial platforms, tugs, mining ships, scout ships, survey ships, etc. - even a small infiltration ship. Anyone have ideas for unusual purposes for a ship? I have the itch to make more ships, but I don't want to make more of the same. Thanks.
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04-07-2017, 12:28 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: Southern New Hampshire
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
Spy ships (stuff with great stealth tech)?
Drop ships (stuff designed specifically for re-entry)? Garbage haulers (maybe stuff that dumps garbage into suns)? Colony ships (huge ships meant to bring people and supplies to new systems)? Terraformer ships (ships sent ahead to begin the process of making a planet livable)? Luxury Yacht ships (stuff rich people would buy. Like a liner but smaller)? Automated... - exploration (drone to get info about new systems)? - communication (intelligent comm relays that place themselves at certain intervals)? - "roadside assist" (vehicles that listen for distress signals)? Emergency/Medical ships (anything from ambulance sized to liner sized moving medical facility)? |
04-07-2017, 12:31 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
It's only moderately exotic, but I put together a stealth-based warship that doesn't use superscience stealth...
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04-07-2017, 12:32 PM | #4 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: traveller
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
Q ships can be fun. They also (ironically) make good pirates in their own right.
Colony ships might be interesting, especially if they were designed to be dismantled at the destination and converted to infrastructure. Bioships (using the rules in Spaceships 7) that don't have any purpose beyond "survival of the fittest" are another possibility. Extra points for Cthulhu references. |
04-07-2017, 12:39 PM | #5 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: On the road again...
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
Some of the things I made with Spaceships aren't technically spaceships, as I left off engines. Some interesting cargo containers, asteroid mines, O'Neill Cylinders, and stuff like that.
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"Life ... is an Oreo cookie." - J'onn J'onzz, 1991 "But mom, I don't wanna go back in the dungeon!" The GURPS Marvel Universe Reboot Project A-G, H-R, and S-Z, and its not-a-wiki-really web adaptation. Ranoc, a Muskets-and-Magery Renaissance Fantasy Setting |
04-07-2017, 12:46 PM | #6 | ||
Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Austin, TX
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
Quote:
Quote:
No offense to anyone I didn't quote. It's just that I've done those ideas or they're not appropriate to the setting. It's TL 12^ - a slow ship goes Warp 2. It also features highly advanced AI (the Empress has declared that AIs are people and have all the rights of anyone else), so automated ships are a good fit. Thanks to everyone. :)
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Play Ogre? Want an interactive record sheet? Want a random dungeon? How about some tables for that? How about a random encounter? |
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04-07-2017, 01:42 PM | #7 |
Untagged
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
Von Newman style ship? An all in one "self fabricating" vehicle.
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04-07-2017, 01:44 PM | #8 |
Join Date: Aug 2007
Location: Boston, Hub of the Universe!
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
Way back when, I made my own take on the globular planetary-assault ship from H Beam Piper's Space Viking - held enough supplies to last 100,000 soldiers for a year, plus store all the vehicles they would use. And then I made a companion ship designed to build a city with factories and all the infrastructure those invaders would need. The companion had the same frame and most of the same systems, but swapped many of the weapons for factories, smelters, etc.
I also made a hybrid uclear-pulse rocket / magsail for sending a colony ship to another star. It used the magsail to brake, and move around at the destination and so left all that extra reaction mass behind. The write-up also had all the colony landers and fabber vehicles and asteroid miners. I also tried a couple of Ogre-like tanks using the various add-ons. And plenty of other odd vehicles.
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Demi Benson |
04-07-2017, 01:53 PM | #9 |
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Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Forest Grove, Beaverton, Oregon
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
I made a massive ship that was one of the very few capable of FTL that carried "drop space stations" and "drop planet colony stations". It would warp in, pop them out with crew, then zip away on a circuit around known space.
Thus leaving a few thousand people alone in a new system for a couple of years before the next visit.
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Beware, poor communication skills. No offense intended. If offended, it just means that I failed my writing skill check. |
04-07-2017, 01:54 PM | #10 |
Join Date: Jul 2014
Location: New Zealand.
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Re: Unusual Spaceship Ideas?
Red Dwarf?
Ships made from a multitude of different parts, a TL12 Hull refurbished by a TL 9 culture (or lower). Similarly a ship that started life as a miner then got refurbished as a warship then got turned into a freighter. Ships than are made of more ships. Either all of the same type or a ship that breaks into several smaller specialist vessels.
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