Most Intimidating Spaceship.

[Nerd-o-rama]

The reason the Starship Troopers movie was nothing like the book is because the director hated the novel and thought Heinlein was a lunatic fascist. So, he just made an over-the-top parody that had little if anything to do with the book.

It wasn't a question of technology, which was still quite impressive at that time for large-scale all-CGI shots.

[Hasivel]

The reason the Starship Troopers movie was nothing like the book is because the director hated the novel and thought Heinlein was a lunatic fascist. So, he just made an over-the-top parody that had little if anything to do with the book.

It wasn't a question of technology, which was still quite impressive at that time for large-scale all-CGI shots.

Hmm, that explains a lot, thanks. I never could figure out how the drill sergeant's impassioned speech about how a soldier's job was not to kill enemies or destroy property, but to enforce his nation's political will, and therefore a soldier had to be able to answer with minimal force if it was required, turned into him stabbing a recruit with a knife to answer the trainee's question.*

* The question being "Why not just use nukes to kill everything."

[warty goblin]

Thanks for the compliments on the script- I'll see if I can't work up a sequel soon. Any parts you particularly liked or disliked? Things I should work in for the sequel?

On topic, I personally dig the Covenent (from Halo) ship designs, they just scream massive, alien power to me...

[Nerd-o-rama]

Okay, I've discovered a new winner for "most ridiculously freakin' huge starship in the history of fiction", in the form of Tengen Toppa Gurren-Lagann (that is, the mech that the TV show is named after.) It just...gah! I would not want to see that coming at me, that's for damn sure.

Although if you count the Anti-Spiral Avatar's whatever-it-was as a starship as well, it edges out TTGL in terms of intimidating looks.

[Badgerish]

not a single ship, but the Beast-converted ships in Homeworld: Cataclysm.

they are standard ships that have been infected and subverted by the beast, through either the carrier-beam weapons or kamikaze-rocket-ships that bear too much resemblance to cruise missiles.

a) they are covered with rust-coloured blotches that actually grow over the ship as it is infected. This effect is well done, looking both stylish and organic
b) normal ships have radio crackle with you click on them. Beast ships growl
c) the plot is quite involving, so you should be feeling some fear about how truly dangerous the Beast is. it's not some faction of people who are fighting you, it's a hive mind that's come to destroy everything.
d) often, they are your own ships that have been stolen off you, the <bleep>ers!


another vote for Star-Destroyers/Super-Star-Destroyers, although a lot of the threat is diffused when you realise that the (comparatively) fragile looking 'conning-tower' is actually the bridge

and another vote for the shadowships in Bab5. Spikes make everything better.

[Saithis Bladewing]

I have a soft spot for this beauty:

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[Lord Zentei]

The reason the Starship Troopers movie was nothing like the book is because the director hated the novel and thought Heinlein was a lunatic fascist. So, he just made an over-the-top parody that had little if anything to do with the book.

Which just shows how little Paul Verhoeven knows about Heinlein's work -- i.e. nothing (if I remember correctly, he even admitted to not bothering to finish reading the damn book, let alone trying to understand it).

The fact is that Heinlein merely wrote about a fascist society in Starship Troopers. There are even passages in the book that disparage the inflexible mindset of the millitaristic regime in question, though admittedly he doesn't go out of his way to do that as Orwell does in 1984.

It's just that in his work, he takes an "immersive" approach, seeing the society from "within": in the particular case of ST the general society is forged in that fascist perspective. This is in contrast to most writers who go for "easy" entertainment where the society in the story is really just our own society with some add-ons either for "theme" or for soap-box lecturing purposes.

It really doesn't come as a surprise that a Hollywood director is this shallow, but it is still highly aggravating. Incidentally, had Verhoeven picked up Stranger in a Strange Land instead, he would presumably have thought Heinlein to be a counter-culture free-sex advocating hippie.

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That might in fact be closer to the truth, since he was active in a socialist organization known as "End Poverty in California movement", and disparaging McCarthy during his political life, just to name a couple of pertinent facts.

[Artemician]

The fact is that Heinlein merely wrote about a fascist society in Starship Troopers. There are even passages in the book that disparage the inflexible mindset of the millitaristic regime in question, though admittedly he doesn't go out of his way to do that as Orwell does in 1984.

That's one interpretation of the book. Ie, yours. Other people may interpret it differently, and without the author's personal word on what his work means, we can't say that they're right or wrong, as long as they have well-reasoned evidence.

I have not read the book myself, but I think that a case could be made that Heinlein was glorifying martialism and militarism. Veerhoven is certainly qualified to interpret it that way.

But that's derailing the thread.

On the subject of Intimidating Spaceships, nothing really made me crap in my pants as much as In Amber Clad crashing down onto earth, leaking flood spores and disintegrating into a gigantic flood factory. That thing still gives me nightmares at night, man.

[Lord Zentei]

That's one interpretation of the book. Ie, yours. Other people may interpret it differently, and without the author's personal word on what his work means, we can't say that they're right or wrong, as long as they have well-reasoned evidence.

I have not read the book myself, but I think that a case could be made that Heinlein was glorifying martialism and militarism. Veerhoven is certainly qualified to interpret it that way.

Did you miss the part where I mentioned that Heinlein has written other books? And my mention of his background? And how do you think that one can make any case if you haven't read any of it?

But that's derailing the thread.

Then you should not have posted this in the first place. Posting in response to a point, and then saying it should not be discussed further to prevent an answer to your own point is dishonorable.

On the subject of Intimidating Spaceships, nothing really made me crap in my pants as much as In Amber Clad crashing down onto earth, leaking flood spores and disintegrating into a gigantic flood factory. That thing still gives me nightmares at night, man.

What show is this?


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I have a soft spot for this beauty:

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Personally, I find it more pretty than intimidating.

On a side note, the Goa'uld Ha'Tak and Romulan D'deridex deserve honorable mentions, though IMHO they don't match the intimidation factor of the Shadows.

[factotum]

What show is this?

Not show, video game--I believe the ship in question appears in the Halo series. The ship picture posted by Saithis Bladewing comes from there, too.

[Cyrano]

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Simple shapes, arranged simply. No overt spikes. Not a particularly imposing colour scheme. But by the time you've seen the Raiders fly off this baby you will be SERIOUSLY imposed.

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Simple starfish shape, articulated joints, but to me it just radiates menace. Maybe that's after seeing it destroy a planet's atmosphere, or maybe it's something about how it shifts into shape, or maybe it's just scary.

Probably every Vorlon ship except the planet killer (which, while big and powerful, was also A BIG ELLIPSE. I like simplicity, just not that MUCH.) The Shadows? The scout was the scariest, really. So tiny and yet, so very, very spiky.

[warty goblin]

Hmm, can't say as I ever found the Cylon ships to be that scary, mostly because of:
1) How on earth are they supposed to maneuvre?
2) The basic design philosophy seems to have been "Let's design a ship that can be shot in half with a bare minimum of firepower while not managing to make room for heavy weapons"
The shadows might have been spiky, but they were at least sensibly designed in that their core systems were behind some of the toughest armor in the galaxy and they still mounted so much firepower...

And again, I have to agree on the Halo Covenent ships, they definately pull off that alien look of impending death quite nicely IMHO, while still looking like a functional ship.

[Cyrano]

Hmm, can't say as I ever found the Cylon ships to be that scary, mostly because of:
1) How on earth are they supposed to maneuvre?
2) The basic design philosophy seems to have been "Let's design a ship that can be shot in half with a bare minimum of firepower while not managing to make room for heavy weapons"

Have you ever SEEN BSG? whateverStars are not maneuverable ships! They are not MEANT to move. Same with heavy weapons: they are not battleships. They're motherships. They hold fighters. Not guns.
As for "the bare minimum of firepower" thing, well, A, I have no idea where you got that, and B, it was probably a mixture of Drama and wizards.

[warty goblin]

Yes I have seen BSG, and the capital ships were actually one of the major reasons why I stopped watching the show- They just don't make sense. Carriers, as far as I can tell, just don't work in space. Whatever a few wings of fighters can do, a cruiser or battleship can do better. Lauch missiles? A fighter needs to carry the missile out of the carrier, fire it and then return. A cap ship fires the missile. It takes less fuel and has less chance for stupid mistakes or getting anybody killed. Take out large ships? Whatever size of gun can be put on a fighter a cruiser can pack more, bigger guns with more durability and greater ammo reserves. Take out enemy light ships? Again, more, bigger guns. Every time a fighter is killed, all of its unused resources (fuel, weapons etc) are wasted. The cap ship can keep all of this stuff behind really heavy armor, minimizing risk. Dedicated cap ships also cut down on the supply lines, since they only need some world somewhere capable of survicing them, whereas fighters are dependant on carriers for support- destroy that one underarmed and armored ship and the entire fighter compliment just got killed unless there's room somewhere else very close by to take them on.

A carrier needs time to deploy its fighters to be at all effective, and needs to bring them in to refuel and rearm. A dedicated cap ship can keep fighting as long as it survives, and can begin fighting far faster. In pretty much every Sci Fi I know besides Star Wars fighters are not ftl capable, meaning that they need to deploy after arriving at the scene of action (certainly true for BSG). A dedicated cap ship can ready itself for combat, then show up. Thus a dedicated cap ship ftl travel in, then blow the crap out of a carrier before the carrier can even mount an effective response. The carrier needs to show up, then deploy fighters before it can amount to anything, giving their enemy time to prepare and start firing. I'm not saying that fighters don't have a place for recon and similar, but in terms of actual combat ability they just don't work.

[Talkkno]

A carrier needs time to deploy its fighters to be at all effective, and needs to bring them in to refuel and rearm. A dedicated cap ship can keep fighting as long as it survives, and can begin fighting far faster. In pretty much every Sci Fi I know besides Star Wars fighters are not ftl capable, meaning that they need to deploy after arriving at the scene of action (certainly true for BSG). A dedicated cap ship can ready itself for combat, then show up. Thus a dedicated cap ship ftl travel in, then blow the crap out of a carrier before the carrier can even mount an effective response. The carrier needs to show up, then deploy fighters before it can amount to anything, giving their enemy time to prepare and start firing. I'm not saying that fighters don't have a place for recon and similar, but in terms of actual combat ability they just don't work.

I agree with most of your sediment, but they are still useful in combat to exploit the small holes in shielding created cap ship weaponry, like how the A-wing in ROTJ took out the Executer. Or to create a distriction like what Thrawn did in Outbound Flight, where he took out 3 trade federation battle ships with a small frigate and 3 fighters, which said battleships possed enough firepower to take out Outbound Flight which was composed of 5 dreadnaught cruisers that were consiered the most powerful cap ship at the time, while it having several Jedi masters and Knights.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Starships in most science fiction are carriers so the directors can choreograph World War II-style dogfights, pretty much. Also, the exploiting-gaps-in-their-defenses bit, but that's a handwave, probably started by George Lucas.

[Talkkno]

Also, the exploiting-gaps-in-their-defenses bit, but that's a handwave, probably started by George Lucas.

But that is plausible considering shields are most likely a circle of exotic matter contained with some weak electromagtic field, so that they litterly blow away said matter accounts for weakness and gaps.

[Quirinus_Obsidian]

I present; Klingon Vort'cha and Negh'Var class starships (DS9 era Star Trek):

Vort'Cha



Neg'Var

[warty goblin]

I agree with most of your sediment, but they are still useful in combat to exploit the small holes in shielding created cap ship weaponry, like how the A-wing in ROTJ took out the Executer. Or to create a distriction like what Thrawn did in Outbound Flight, where he took out 3 trade federation battle ships with a small frigate and 3 fighters, which said battleships possed enough firepower to take out Outbound Flight which was composed of 5 dreadnaught cruisers that were consiered the most powerful cap ship at the time, while it having several Jedi masters and Knights.

Any time a five mile long ship can be destroyed by one single fighter crashing into it, I maintain its time to go shoot the entire engineering department responsible. Makes the others more motivated. Could have been done with a missile anyway.

I also agree that space fighters are done for "dramatic effect", although I personally like the really big ships beating on each other more, just feels more epic somehow.

[SmartAlec]

Carriers, as far as I can tell, just don't work in space.

You're forgetting that the kind of space/naval warfare portrayed in BSG isn't just about two sides picking a spot and jumping in and blowing each other up. Battleships are great in a front-line fight because that's what they're designed for, but there's a lot of things a Carrier can do better than a Battleship, things that are actually vital to a theatre of operations, such as:

- Pirate/Wolf pack hunting. When the other side just doesn't want to come out and fight, and insists on running away, you're going to have to rely on your fighters; firstly to find them, then to flush them out, and lastly to get behind them and disable their engines so they can't run off before you get to them.

- Convoy escort. An extremely important part of war, and a Carrier with fighters can protect many, many more ships at once than a Battleship simply because its' fighters can cover a lot more area and intercept missiles etc, spot ambushes, sneak attacks and the like.

I'm sure someone from the Navy could give you a bunch of other examples.

Plus there's the ever-present problem of superiority; for all that you claim fighters are irrelevant, if one side has fighters and the other doesn't, then the side with fighters has a distinct tactical advantage, intercepting the other side's larger ordnance and attacking the enemy's turrets, etc. Often, fighters don't seem to work in BSG because both sides' fighters are cancelling each other out, but as an example of what happens when even one fighter gets past, look at what the Blackbird could do to the Cylon Resurrection ship. You let a whole squadron fly around you, you're in for a world of hurt. You can't rely on anti-aircraft guns.

Lastly, the Galactica might not seem all that hot, but the Pegasus seemed to have an awful lot of firepower, and was still a 'carrier'. And Pegasus was representative of what current ship design was like in the 12 Colonies.

[Talkkno]

Any time a five mile long ship can be destroyed by one single fighter crashing into it, I maintain its time to go shoot the entire engineering department responsible. Makes the others more motivated. Could have been done with a missile anyway.

Not with the super heavy jamming that took place during the battle, I mean the Death star 1 had jamming strong enough that it actually distorted spacetime!

[Saithis Bladewing]

What show is this?

EDIT:

Personally, I find it more pretty than intimidating.

Both the In Amber Clad and the ship I had in my spoiler (the Shadow of Intent.)

The reason I find the Covenant Warships intimidating (though I do find them prettier than intimidating) is because a Covenant Warship attacking doesn't just mean the death of your fleets (what with a 3:1 advantage required to make it an even fight), it means the death of your world as it systematically turns the surface to glass and flame until it is nothing more than a lifeless red-hot rock. No prisoners, only flame. Oh, and there's the fact that they outnumber humanity's fleets significantly and can vary anywhere from 1.5km to almost 6km long...

[factotum]

If there's any example of why carriers are useful in space, the start of the third season of BSG shows it:

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The Galactica jumps PAST the Cylon blockade into the atmosphere of New Caprica, releases all its fighters to assist with the effort to free the place from the Cylon yoke, then jumps back into orbit shortly before crashing into the ground. Would be difficult to do that with a simple battleship!

As for the crack about Cylon basestars being easy to blow in half, I think that relates to an episode where the Cylons lay a trap for the Pegasus, and it escapes by concentrating its fire on the neck joining the two halves of a Cylon ship together, causing enough damage in a few seconds that the Cylons had to withdraw.

[SDF]

I've always been a fan of the Steiner Jumpships

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And the SJ Sathanas from Freespace

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Ooh ooh! And the Event Horizon (freakin spaceships from hell...)

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[EntilZha]

I'd have to go with the Vorlon Planet Killer from Babylon 5. As the name implies it can destroy a planet with a single shot. At 45 km. in length, it's more efficient than the Death Star, but not as efficient as the Lexx.

[Quezovercoatl]

Both the In Amber Clad and the ship I had in my spoiler (the Shadow of Intent.)

The reason I find the Covenant Warships intimidating (though I do find them prettier than intimidating) is because a Covenant Warship attacking doesn't just mean the death of your fleets (what with a 3:1 advantage required to make it an even fight), it means the death of your world as it systematically turns the surface to glass and flame until it is nothing more than a lifeless red-hot rock. No prisoners, only flame. Oh, and there's the fact that they outnumber humanity's fleets significantly and can vary anywhere from 1.5km to almost 6km long...

Just a little note, I was only asking for ships that look intimidating not ships that are intimidating because they will do this to you or because they are this powerful.
Basically if you have to explain something about the ship or the universe the ship is from for it to be scary then it is not what I was looking for.

[warty goblin]

If there's any example of why carriers are useful in space, the start of the third season of BSG shows it:

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The Galactica jumps PAST the Cylon blockade into the atmosphere of New Caprica, releases all its fighters to assist with the effort to free the place from the Cylon yoke, then jumps back into orbit shortly before crashing into the ground. Would be difficult to do that with a simple battleship!

As for the crack about Cylon basestars being easy to blow in half, I think that relates to an episode where the Cylons lay a trap for the Pegasus, and it escapes by concentrating its fire on the neck joining the two halves of a Cylon ship together, causing enough damage in a few seconds that the Cylons had to withdraw.

Actually, I never watched BSG past somewhere in the first season, so I never saw that part. I merely looked at the design and observed its massive and glaring structural weaknesses.

Escorting convoys? If there's decent fighter coverage, they're going to have to be spread out, meaning that its real easy to blow them up as they come in, or if they regroup before engaging, waste as much of the convoy as possible before jumping out. And why is the convoy in realspace anyway?

Delivering ordnance from closer? Let's think this one through. A missile is a notably small projectile that does not have a human in it and can thus accelerate faster than a fighter can. A fighter is a much larger projectile carrying a human, which limits its acceleration, and also makes it a bigger and easier target. Again, if that fighter gets scragged before it launches its missile, all of those missiles were wasted. In addition, a missile only needs to carry enough fuel to get it to the target, a fighter carrying a missile needs enough fuel to get out, launch the missile and then get back. It requires more fuel, risk and resources to do the same thing. So technically yes, it a fighter could launch missiles from closer, but getting the missiles closer is probably more dangerous and inefficient than just launching from a long distance.

Getting ahead of, and cutting off a pirate? That's what ftl is for. Just jump next to the sucker, then start shooting stuff of the enemy ship until the crew decides that they would like to keep their life support intact, thank's very much. Fighters have to make a long approach through realspace, getting shot at the entire way.

Breaking a blockade? How about standing off from the base starts, and shooting stuff at them until they were forced to launch fighters to deal with you, then as soon as they close, jump to the other side of the star, away from the fighters and continue the bombardment while the fighters reverse and move towards you again. Works just fine and is way less risky.

The other problem is, that as I pointed out, fighters need time to deploy, making the carrier hidieously vulnerable to being ambushed. Roughly like a modern carrier and a submarine- only this is submarine with battleship armor and guns. Fighters without ftl capability only make this worse. Finally, there's the problem of armor. Most settings I've seen have the general warships being ~ 1 kilometer long. You can pack a darn lot of armor onto a kilometer of warship and still have room for guns on the outside. Enough armor to completely ignore the sort of guns that can be put on a fighter. Since the fighter is not bringing anything useful to the table beyond its dubious ability to launch missiles, they can simply be written off as threats and mopped up with point defense at leasure. A carrier type ship meanwhile has to store all of its fighters (read weapon systems) internally when not in use. This takes space from being used for things like, say armor and heavy guns, making it a very vulnerable ship.

[Talkkno]

Delivering ordnance from closer? Let's think this one through. A missile is a notably small projectile that does not have a human in it and can thus accelerate faster than a fighter can. A fighter is a much larger projectile carrying a human, which limits its acceleration, and also makes it a bigger and easier target. Again, if that fighter gets scragged before it launches its missile, all of those missiles were wasted. In addition, a missile only needs to carry enough fuel to get it to the target, a fighter carrying a missile needs enough fuel to get out, launch the missile and then get back. It requires more fuel, risk and resources to do the same thing. So technically yes, it a fighter could launch missiles from closer, but getting the missiles closer is probably more dangerous and inefficient than just launching from a long distance.

Note, this doesn't really applies if your sci fi race uses plasma weapons like Protoss carriers, they problary use those interspecters because they can most likely deliver plasma charges much farther then if they just added bigger photon cannons or warprays bolted to there hulls, and they would do more damage clsoe range as there as not much energy needed to keep the charge continaned befoer doing damage to keep it from dispering into disperate chunks.

[Saithis Bladewing]

In terms of most intimidating appearance, I think I'm going to have to go with the Dominion Super Battleship then. <.<;;;

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Something about how tiny the Battleship flying over it looks just gives me the ominous feeling of 'I'm going to kick your teeth in.'

[Vonriel]

Gahh.. evil screen stretchiness...

The thing about BSG-style ftl is that it isn't like Star Trek's, where they can say "Warp 9 for two seconds!" and pop out at exactly the right spot. A miscalculated jump can lead to a ship landing hundreds of lightyears away from the rest of the ships, as was seen in a few episodes in Season 2 I think it was. I'm not entirely sure if they could do it in the time it takes the Cylon fighters to close in and start peppering their hull. Also, while I'm not sure about Cylon fighters, Human Raptors possess their own jumpdrives (or whatever it's called) which they've used periodically throughout the series. Finally, the battlestars themselves fulfill both the role of carrier and battleship, probably done in a time when they thought that having your own compliment of close-range fighters and being able to blow the enemy away with your huge ship was a good thing.

There's another problem with your assumptions: missiles move at speeds where they can easily be intercepted, and the Battlestars would run out of missiles before the Cylons ran out of ships to blow up. And they're being fired at, when you get rid down to it, computers. I wouldn't trust my missiles to keep aiming at the ship after I fired them, and I'd definitely not trust them to get there without being blown up first. I would, however, trust my railguns (I am right in remembering that one of the ships had railguns?) to blow the sucker up.

If I had to pick an intimidating ship, I'd probably choose that flying castle that the dominion/empire/republic/whatever it was in Firefly had in the episode where they first showed the reavers. It may not look sleek or aerodynamic, but it does look intimidating.