Poll: What's Your favorite ship type?

[Corvus 501]

Personally, I prefer either flying bricks, (Halo or Bybalon 5 style) or hammerhead shaped ships. (Honor Harrington or S.M. Stirling's Flight Engineer)

[Zaune]

I'm not sure precisely what I expected when I clicked on this topic, but this wasn't it.

[Corvus 501]

What's your favorite basic ship type? That's what I'm asking. I'm just curious as to what ship designs people prefer.

[SilverDragonRed]

Can we get some pictures of the different types? I'm mostly asking 'cause I don't what an good example for the Delta or Hammerhead types is, or what they even look like.

[Elheru Aran]

Ships are more than simple geometric shapes. Like, this doesn't even cover, say... the Excelsior from Star Trek. Or Andromeda. Or Moya.

[Corvus 501]

Ships are more than simple geometric shapes. Like, this doesn't even cover, say... the Excelsior from Star Trek. Or Andromeda. Or Moya.

I agree, but there is limited space in a poll, so I simplified the question a bit.

[Batman]

Can we get some pictures of the different types? I'm mostly asking 'cause I don't what an good example for the Delta or Hammerhead types is, or what they even look like.

Delta: Star Destroyers. Hammerhead: The mentioned Honorverse ships and if you don't know those, the Corellian Corvette.

And for more complex shapes there is an 'other' option in the poll.

Personally, I'm rather fond of the classic Starfleet layout-saucer, neck, engineering hull, Warp nacelles on struts. Gives the ships personality.

[The Romulan Republic]

Cylinder or other, I think, though hammerhead, sphere, and delta have some appeal.

Edit: Actually, in a very strange way, I'd say the TARDIS is one of the prettiest ships in science fiction.

[biostem]

I like delta or wedge configurations, but only when its got cutouts or other details to it - I dislike overly smooth designs.

[Purple]

Personally I love octagons. Give me a flying brick but with an octagonal cross section from all angles and I'll be happy. Especially if it's tessellated with octagons all over. And yes, I know octagons don't tessellate. But so what?

[SilverDragonRed]

Delta: Star Destroyers. Hammerhead: The mentioned Honorverse ships and if you don't know those, the Corellian Corvette.

Thanks for the info, Dark Knight.

Knowing that now, I voted Delta; though I like the design of Nostromo or the Sulaco.

[Corvus 501]

Another good type of hammerhead ship is the Terran ships from Starcraft.

[Starglider]

I have a fondness for the classic atomic rocket finned cigar. You don't see that much these days.

[Sinewmire]

Flying Cathedral meets Oil tanker?

[Eternal_Freedom]

Yeah for sheer insanity I'm going with some of the big Imperium ships from 40K, although the random curvy coolness of Commonwealth ships from Andromeda are pretty awesome.

[AniThyng]

I now have a soft spot for the UNCF Battleships from Space Battleship Yamato 2199 - it's like a mixture of the cigar and wet navy turreted battleships

But in general I like blocky ships with lots of greeblies.

[The Romulan Republic]

I, however, prefer sleek ships on the whole (an exception is made, as previously noted, for the TARDIS).

Edit: And their are some pretty nice Star Wars ships that are more clunky/angular.

[Thanas]

For functionality?

Spheres, as in the Perry Rhodan version of them.

For beauty and/or soul?
Mark Brandis ships (especially Delta VII) and Andromeda ships.

[Darth Nostril]

Ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

[Corvus 501]

For functionality?

Spheres, as in the Perry Rhodan version of them.

For beauty and/or soul?
Mark Brandis ships (especially Delta VII) and Andromeda ships.

Spherical ships aren't all that efficient in their use of space. Angular ships tend to be more efficient in that regard.

[Thanas]

A sphere allows for the greatest amount of space to be used.

[Batman]

No, and no. I have no fucking clue what an 'angular' ship is supposed to be and no, a sphere does 'not' allow for the greatest amount of space to be used, that would be a 'cube'. What the sphere gives you is the least surface area per volume ratio.

[Thanas]

Yeah, that's what I meant.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Spheres are a dangerously poor shape for a spaceship all the way up through plausible mid- into far future; it's only in the far far far future you get to do things like find alternative solutions to the second law of thermodynamics. The basic reason for this is that a sphere will have lots of stuff that can make heat in the middle, limited outside for it to escape through, and the crew and their electronics are probably going to cook to death.

The more powerful your technology is, the bigger a problem this is; doing ship designs for Traveller, I always avoided spheres as if they were toxic, which they were- you run out of outside a lot faster than you run out of inside. Flying bricks look practical but really aren't. To make a big ship you needed to maximise surface area, which meant a big floppy, flappy shape.

Unless you're talking about space opera technology that can just do stuff without worrying about the practical details and may be portrayed as hyperadvanced anyway, what, Perry Rhodan? Oh...carry on then...

Spheres are good as pressure vessels, which means there are a lot of spherical bits of spaceships (fuel and turbopump propellant tanks, etc), but not many sphere shaped entire ships; Venera series and the reentry module for Soyuz is about it.

Spherical is a good shape for future cars; the entire thing as one big rolling ball. Parallel parking would become a thing of the past, accidents would be much less deadly because they could just rebound away. Yay to spherical cars. But not spaceships, which do need to have wings.


Oh, two of the most interesting possible choices for those 'wings' (radiators) are the droplet radiator, which pumps hot liquids out of the ship, lets them fall, catches them again and returns them to the cycle; not practical under varying thrust, but it does mean that an accelerating ship would be surrounded by constant glittering rain of it's own making;
and for a slightly more rigid and possibly combat- viable choice, you'd have capillaries running through sheets of silicon carbide. Which mean that your ship would be gliding on wings of shimmering crystal. Who said human ships are going to be ugly?


At the moment I would have to say my favourite configuration is Orion- shaped. And all right, I'll give you the ugly point on that one. nevertheless, it moves...

[Adam Reynolds]

I have a fondness for the classic atomic rocket finned cigar. You don't see that much these days.

It is probably because it oddly seems less advanced to most viewers. As a result of the space shuttle, it appears to people that designs that looks somewhat like aircraft are more advanced. The fact that disposable rockets are far more reliable is lost on most people.