Capital Ship Design

JesusRocks1988

JesusRocks1988
First of all, if this is in the wrong place, I apologise... I have no idea where to post it because it relates to a few different games.

Straight off the bat, I don't want this to descend into a game war about Elite Dangerous, Star Citizen and other Sci-Fi games. I just have got this nagging question going around my head, and I figure you, the Elite Dangerous community could help me with the answer:

What is it with Capital Ship designs lately? I've just really noticed striking similarities between designs across a few games in the last year. This design I'm referring to is the long, slight spearhead shape with a two-pronged split hull at the front. The examples I've noted are:

- The Federation Farragut from Elite Dangerous
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- The Retribution from Star Citizen
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- The Olympus Mons from Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare
fXmNq7z.jpg

And I'm sure there are other examples.

The burning question is why? Why is that style making an appearance across a number of games at the moment? Where did it come from? Why specifically reserved for the biggest, most intimidating Capital-class ships? (Okay, the Farragut and Interdictor are similar in size, but the Retribution seems to be the biggest, baddest ship in Star Citizen, and the Olympus Mons is the biggest, baddest ship in Infinite Warfare).

Does anyone know whether there's a more technical term for this kind of design? Who did it first? (Don't say, "Oh Elite Dangerous did it first, everyone else is copying Frontier, blah blah blah" - I'm sure our beloved game is not the first to design a Capital Ship this way) Has anyone else noticed this trend? Is it even a trend? Why am I here? Who are you? What do you want from me?

So many questions!
 

Schlack

S
Wait until you see the Alliance BattleHauler. 10,000 Haulers glued together. Its downright terrifying. You can blow up 5000 of them and it will still keep coming for you.


Haulers are STONGER TOGETHER!
 

Thetele

T
Well there is not that many ways to make big object that need to look like space ship and look sexy and fast same time. Like cars look very similar to each other, the difference between early 20-century cars and 21-century cars isn't that big. If you put two next to each other they will look very similar. Same with space ships.
 

PavelKCZ

PavelKCZ
Capital ships from Wing Commander was also similar. It has something to do with the idea of fighters who are launching and docking like aircrafts. Only Babylon 5 had completely different desing with his Starfury fighters.
 

Poy

Poy
Spacecrafts launching from a center empty corridor with hangars on each side you say ?

Republic_fleet_TCW.png
 
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PavelKCZ

PavelKCZ
Shadowdancer said:
Did they ever show one dock?
Click to expand...

IIRC, there was no animation of docking sequence in the whole serie and movies. Only several shots of pilots leaving those fighters. But there was a lot of quite impressive (in those times of Amiga and Video Toaster) launching sequences :)
 

Shadowdancer

Shadowdancer
PavelKCZ said:
IIRC, there was no animation of docking sequence in the whole serie and movies. Only several shots of pilots leaving those fighters. But there was a lot of quite impressive (in those times of Amiga and Video Toaster) launching sequences :)
Click to expand...
Yeah, the launch is all nice and dynamic and even makes some kind of sense.

I'd imagine that in any remotely "stressful" situation, like, say, combat, they'd just set the things down in the "normal" 2001 docking port and then ferry them around later. Docking in those cramped fighter dispensers must be dreadful. Or maybe the clamps in there have grapples and winches like the Starfury itself.

And by the way, think "stylised sword" and you have your capital ship design ;)
 

DoctorDanny

DoctorDanny
That battleship/carrier chimera on page one. Seriously, what is it?

Something made up or has this been a real world design at some point?

I knew there were plans to turn Iowa class ships into something like this (much smaller though).
I believe the Japanese also had something like this during WW2 (Ise class ).
 
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AJW

AJW
DoctorDanny said:
That battleship/carrier chimera on page one. Seriously, what is it?

Something made up or has this been a real world design at some point?

I knew there were plans to turn Iowa class ships into something like this (much smaller though).
I believe the Japanese also had something like this during WW2 (Ise class ).
Click to expand...

Something made up.

There is no rational reason whatsoever to create an aircraft carrier/battleship hybrid. Battleships are designed to engage the enemy with their main guns - which means that they have a reasonable expectation of the enemy firing back with similar weaponry. Weaponry which would destroy their flight deck, if the blast from the ships' own guns hadn't already done so. Aircraft carriers are supposed to stay out of range of gunfire from enemy surface vessels, and use their aircraft to attack. The Japanese Ise-class battleships had catapult-launched floatplanes, not requiring a flight deck for landing. Which never saw combat. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ise-class_battleship
 
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