So Humans Use The Humanoid Ships And Cities Now?

[FateWeaver]

I thought the mammalian ships fit them well, so I don't really get the change. Being more functional, rather than aesthetically beautiful to look at, which I thought fit a young interstellar empire, and which I thought also fit with how we build things today.
Where as the new humanoid ships look more elegant and like something a much more advanced civilisation would build.

The Same goes for the cities, the mammalian ones looked much closer to our modern building style. While the humanoid ones look almost ornate.

Anyone else agree that the older ships and cities fit better, canonically speaking?

Sorry if this has already been discussed to death, been a while since I played Stellaris, so a lot has changed for me.

[wolkenwand]

In mass effect the human ship are cool looking instead of functional, and they also just entering space age setting wise. Star trek human ships also looking sleek. It just a matter of taste i think, in other sci fi human ship might looks more functional.

[Spirit]

like in halo ?
these ships look good and functual at the same time

[Astasia]

Originally posted by FateWeaver:

Anyone else agree that the older ships and cities fit better, canonically speaking?

Yes. My basic human empire designs all still use the mammalian ships, they fit much better IMO. I use the "humanoid" ships for my machine empires.

[Gurning Chimp]

Eh, for my militaristic human empires I use Mammalian. For my megacorporation playthrough I'm using humanoid.

[corisai]

Funny that someone is find mammalian ships "functional" while they're very far from it.

Space ships should be spherical (except hyperspace "engines" or something similiar). Sphere have best surface-to-volume ratio, so with same mass of armor we will get most possible protection = win.

[MadMek]

Yea but spherical space ships always get their main reactor blown up.

Besides, they're terrible for weapon placement.

[Von Faustien]

Originally posted by MadMek:

Yea but spherical space ships always get their main reactor blown up.

Besides, they're terrible for weapon placement.

how 360 degree weapon mounts no blind spots and you can spin to spreed damage

[Chronicle]

360 degree ships might have issues with spine mounted weapons that run the entire length of the ship, lots of sci fi like spinal mounted weapons

[MadMek]

Originally posted by Von Faustien:

Originally posted by MadMek:

Yea but spherical space ships always get their main reactor blown up.

Besides, they're terrible for weapon placement.

how 360 degree weapon mounts no blind spots and you can spin to spreed damage

How would you mount a weapon emplacement so that it can fire from all sides of a sphere? It just doesn't work. If you have a sphere, it will always either have massive blind spots or have a large number of weapons that can't be brought to bear against any single target. What you want is either a long thin ship, so you can have something like a traditional battleship weapon layout, or a triangle, so you can focus all your weapons towards the front, while still being able to effectively engage things from the sides. It really depends on if you want to engage frontally or broadside-on. Personally I prefer broadsides because they make it easier to dodge since your main engines are facing perpendicular to where enemy fire will be coming from.

[corisai]

Originally posted by MadMek:

How would you mount a weapon emplacement so that it can fire from all sides of a sphere?

Missiles. You know - civilized countries able to use vertical launch missiles.

Originally posted by MadMek:

Personally I prefer broadsides because they make it easier to dodge since your main engines are facing perpendicular to where enemy fire will be coming from.

You cannot really dodge in space, because of orbital mechanic.

And sphere will offer most firepower - whole frontal projection with direct hit weapons, whole "back" projection with missile launchers.

Spinal weapons is stupidity of sci-fi writters (mostly non-engineers), because ships with them will be too unreliable and insanely fragile.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by corisai:

Spinal weapons is stupidity of sci-fi writters (mostly non-engineers), because ships with them will be too unreliable and insanely fragile.

Depends on the weapon, really: provided it has actual firing arc, it'll work at such ranges.

[corisai]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

Originally posted by corisai:

Spinal weapons is stupidity of sci-fi writters (mostly non-engineers), because ships with them will be too unreliable and insanely fragile.

Depends on the weapon, really: provided it has actual firing arc, it'll work at such ranges.

Ahem...
1) They will be hard limited by "projectile" speed. With laser-like (c-speed max) weapon we will have very limited range (without FTL-radars even tiny range for space combat - several light seconds), while missiles will have no problem with range like whole solar system, so...

And I don't mention beam dissipation issues that don't seem even theoretic solution (without magic) now.

2) They take too much space and it's a single system. So you will either forced to build mulitple redundant sub-systems (making them taking much more mass&volume and reducing their overall efficiency), or deal with it, but every penetrating hit that will come in this area will leave you defendless.

They will be literaly "glass cannons" and as we know from real life wars - such weapons rarely perform well. Only when they able to get insanely advantages (like carriers vs battleships in WW2) such "glass cannons" had won.

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by corisai:

They will be hard limited by "projectile" speed. With laser-like (c-speed max) weapon we will have very limited range (without FTL-radars even tiny range for space combat - several light seconds)

True. But even modern military aircraft and ships still carry guns.

Originally posted by corisai:

while missiles will have no problem with range like whole solar system, so...

You are overestimating misiles: sure, you can fire them across the solar system, but they still need to be in close proximity to do any damage. Irradiance (power per square meter) decreases proportionally to R^2, meaning that detonating a 10^18 GJ (0.25 gigaton TNT) nuke in perfect spherical explosion (not like there's currently any other kind) 0.1 light second away from the target results in only 1kJ (0.25 gram of TNT) being applied to every square meter of the target.

[corisai]

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

True. But even modern military aircraft and ships still carry guns.

Only one "modern" plane carry gun as "spinal weapon", and it was a big mistake (A-10 gun is too heavy and as USA AF discovered later - were unable to score penetrating hits against moving soviet tank - even burnt one* (!), so was mostly useless).
*burnt tanks&armored vehicles are never repaired because after large fire inside vehicle it's armor became too weak and unreliable.

Even one-trick-pony like submarines with ICBM aren't spinal one.

Originally posted by HugsAndSnuggles:

You are overestimating misiles: sure, you can fire them across the solar system, but they still need to be in close proximity to do any damage.

Nuclear blast-powered X-ray laser warhead is saying "hello", my friend :) And making enemy PD cry :)

Plus you're ignoring big problem of impact shock - space ship is very small object (compared to planets) so even with theoretically enough armor tp withstand hit it can't do it without internal damages (caused by armor itself, when it's trying to spread excess energy).

There also X-ray and neutron problem - on Earth they're eaten by athosphere and generate shockwave, while in space nothing will stop then. Surely, in space nuclear blast will have less effective range, but in same time it will be MUCH more deadlier inside it.

I don't trying to say that missiles are ideal weapons. But as we see in modern navy - without MAGIC that allow guns have similiar range missiles are out of competition.

And with MAGIC guns are out of competition - exactly what we are seeing in fantasy Stellaris now

[HugsAndSnuggles]

Originally posted by corisai:

aren't spinal one.

It really doesn't matter at such ranges whether you have to turn your ship before engagement (since general consensus that there's no stealth in space) or have an actual turret.

Originally posted by corisai:

Nuclear blast-powered X-ray laser warhead is saying "hello", my friend :) And making enemy PD cry :)

You realize that drone will do the same job and has a chance of actually returning intact?