UCS Apollo

[Graham Kennedy]

I took two decks out up the upper section, added five to the forward part of the lower section, shifted the power section back to reduce the size of the STL engine compartment. I also made the lower bow a flatter slope to make it look a little more "rakish".

I use Photoshop CS3 for everything I've posted on here, by the way.

[Tsukiyumi]

This is great, Graham. I also love Photoshop, though I only have 7.0.

[Graham Kennedy]

Added a front view and the bottom view is in progress.

An interesting issue has arisen. In making the bottom hull underhang as it does, I have now got a situation where the top hull is wider, but the bottom one is longer. I think this might end up looking a bit strange... don't know if it will be strange in a good way, or a bad way.

[Mikey]

Run with it and see how it comes out - part of the appeal of the logic behind your designs, as well as of going through this process with you, is seeing how organic these things are. If that's the way it grows, then so be it; it's your baby after all, and if it weirds you out when all is said and done, you're under no obligation to keep it around.

[Reliant121]

bugger photoshop >.<

[Graham Kennedy]

Basics of the bottom view are done. Top view next...

[Graham Kennedy]

Top view added. That's the basic hull shape done. Now we start figuring where things go inside.

[Graham Kennedy]

Basic locations and sizes of things are added

Purple : Midspace shunt drive. I figure that as a civilian ship it can do with one shunt.
Cyan : Matter conversion cores
Green : zero point energy multiplier.
Red : Power conversion tower
Yellow : Fuel tanks

Not quite sure where to put the hangar deck. Usually I'd have a boat deck at the upper stern... will have to thin the shunt down a bit to get that in there.

Also the power system housing is longer than it needs to be to fit the cores and ZPEX in; will shorten that a bit.

[Graham Kennedy]

A cheaty shortcut here. My idea for the tech of this universe is that a lot of it is done via forcefield technology. The average piece of hardware consists of a set of forcefield generators, with the actual work being done by the complex and constantly changing fields inside it. In fact the Coalition is a few steps down a long, long transition away from matter-based technology at all and into pure field technology. Computer processors are already made of interlocking forcefields; one day, millennia from now, they will learn to make such things self sustaining, and then to encode their own minds into them, and at that point they will become non-corporeal beings...

Anyway, so the point is that the conversion cores are spherical frameworks that hold a bunch of field generators up. So I usually google "geodesic sphere", which gives you plenty of nice examples to pick from. Sized down and dropped onto the picture they look great in place.

The power tower is drawn by hand. I draw one segment and shade it, as shown above; then just clone that segment over and over and stack them, like below...



Then add the bit where the power comes in, and then the caps top and bottom.

[Reliant121]

bah... his process is alot more Complex than mine

[Graham Kennedy]

Bored now, knocking off this for the day. Tomorrow, we repaint it white!

[Reliant121]

thats the spirit mate!

[Captain Seafort]

My idea for the tech of this universe is that a lot of it is done via forcefield technology. The average piece of hardware consists of a set of forcefield generators, with the actual work being done by the complex and constantly changing fields inside it. In fact the Coalition is a few steps down a long, long transition away from matter-based technology at all and into pure field technology. Computer processors are already made of interlocking forcefields; one day, millennia from now, they will learn to make such things self sustaining, and then to encode their own minds into them, and at that point they will become non-corporeal beings...

Sounds vaguely like Culture tech, where ships are a bunch of solid structures held together by forcefields that act as hull, shields and propulsion. Likewise, the nature of computers as interlocking forcefields somewhat resembles the Minds.

Very cool.

[Graham Kennedy]

My idea for the tech of this universe is that a lot of it is done via forcefield technology. The average piece of hardware consists of a set of forcefield generators, with the actual work being done by the complex and constantly changing fields inside it. In fact the Coalition is a few steps down a long, long transition away from matter-based technology at all and into pure field technology. Computer processors are already made of interlocking forcefields; one day, millennia from now, they will learn to make such things self sustaining, and then to encode their own minds into them, and at that point they will become non-corporeal beings...

Sounds vaguely like Culture tech, where ships are a bunch of solid structures held together by forcefields that act as hull, shields and propulsion. Likewise, the nature of computers as interlocking forcefields somewhat resembles the Minds.

Similar, though not as advanced as the culture. Most Culture ships don't even have an airtight hull; the fields are the real hull, so the physical walls of the ship can have open windows, balconies, and such. Some culture ships are a bunch of separate units floating within an ellipsoid field; no hull at all as such, and no continuous physical structure.

The Coalition could conceivably build ships like that, but the complexity and expense would be hideous, especially if built to the scale of something like a GSV. Maybe in another few hundred years.

[Mikey]

But it would be pretty cool to have an "open" deck, like on the GSV Sleeper Service.