What's new
Star Army

Star ArmyⓇ is a landmark of forum roleplaying. Opened in 2002, Star Army is like an internet clubhouse for people who love roleplaying, art, and worldbuilding. Anyone 18 or older may join for free. New members are welcome! Use the "Register" button below.

Note: This is a play-by-post RPG site. If you're looking for the tabletop miniatures wargame "5150: Star Army" instead, see Two Hour Wargames.

  • If you were supposed to get an email from the forum but didn't (e.g. to verify your account for registration), email Wes at [email protected] or talk to me on Discord for help. Sometimes the server hits our limit of emails we can send per hour.
  • Get in our Discord chat! Discord.gg/stararmy
  • 📅 July 2024 is YE 46.5 in the RP.

Azorean Hammerhead

Yoshi

Yoshi

Inactive Member
Submission Type:
Submission URL: Azorean Hammerhead

Faction:Azorean
FM Approved Yet? unknown

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? No
Previously Submitted? No

Notes: The reason the FM Approved part is "Unknown" is that I'm not sure if I was given the FM slot for the faction.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
"Designed to look like a predator of the seas, the Hammerhead is slick and streamlined, with fins. "

Have you read the whole thing yet or still going off of the first image?
 
The ship is 274 meters long, and yet only has space for 125 people in cramped settings. This doesn't seem very realistic. For comparison, a modern Arleigh Burke class destroyer is about 155 meters long and has a standard complement of 23 officers and 300 enlisted. While I won't say you need more crew because of the wonders of technology and automation, it's really unbelievable that such a large vessel would be jam-packed with so much stuff that it can't fit more people — which also reflects its capacity for cargo and ammunition.

Why does it have landing gear?

Other than those things it seems fairly balanced for its mission.

Though I don't know about calling it a "Hammerhead." That's, like, an Earth fish. The Azoreans aren't Earth. Sure, they might have a similar organism, but "hammerhead" it would surely not be called.
 
You only said that it does look like a shark.

That's not what I asked.

I asked why it looks like a shark.



What advantage does this adaptation that surpasses any possible disadvantages this design element decision would introduce ?

Could the advantages which this design choice offers be achieved more efficiently by compromising the semantic aesthetics?

Does looking like a shark actually compromise the benefit the shark design is apparently meant to provide?

Following this line of thought, the visual choice has no real functional purpose.

If it has no purpose, it is a novelty.

Does this novelty serve its own practical purpose (for example, styling to sell a product or intimidate an opponent?) No. It is tacky, kitch and infantile. It would be at home in satire or parody.

The SARP is not those things.
 
Wow, Osaka. That's actually rather harsh even for you.

This design has nothing which outstandingly deserves such a draconian critique - in SARP, it fits rather well with the guidelines set down on the wiki.

You're free to promote your views via constructive advice, but here you're just blasting Tanaka because his creation is not up to your elitist standards. Kindly refrain from continuing.

Design matures when the people behind them use them and try to refine them. It's been the very same for a lot of stuff we see from other space militaries like Yamatai's and Nepleslia's. Given time and opportunity, I'm sure the Azoreans will develop their own visual style.

As for 'Hammerhead', it could very well be that the Azorean name for it isn't pronounciable, and that the 'humans' would give it a name of their own in their own databases/IFF identifications.
 
raz said:
The ship is 274 meters long, and yet only has space for 125 people in cramped settings. This doesn't seem very realistic.
Click to expand...

I was just thinking that one reason why its maximum crew capacity could be limited would be due to them being filled with liquid - us humanoids have it easy with our low-density gas-atmosphere requirements... while liquid takes up a whole lot more volume.

With water volume and displacement concerns, this could limit occupancy (just like stepping into a bath will raise the water level). In a closed environment,you'd need to be able to compensate with extra volume by retracting water into storage tanks. But how many storage tanks can you afford to have, and will your water filtering/oxygenating equipment be able to keep up? This ship, after all, looks pretty lean.
 
I can't really speak for Tanka, but if you notice there are two guns in the front hammer-like part. So that is purpose, beacause wide from gives you enough place to put the equipment and what not for the gun. Also you can armour it more there and then it covers sides of the ship in frontal combat, and it seems that in battle this ship was built to face enemy. As for the fins? Why not? Those can be sensory array for example. Azoreans live in sea, there is no reason for them not to model their ships with fish-like design.

I also wonder if you ever heard of styling ms. Realism.
 
It probably wouldn't the volume of the water that is the reason for the limited crew. Probably more likely the mass. Water is very heavy compared to Air.

1 cubic meter contains 1000 liters of fluid. Dividing that into gallons we get approximately 264 gallons, and a gallon of seawater weighs 8.5 lbs, so 1 cubic meter of water weighs 2,244 lbs or 1,020 kg.

That is a lot of mass to be carried around inside of a ship not including the ship's own mass. So yeah it is reasonable that they would limit the size of the habitable area.
 
Would Azoreans fill their ships with water rather than having uniform-suits that enclose them in their acceptable atmosphere? Even an undersea race, I think, would put engineering limitations and mass/weight factors above comfort on their warships.
 
That would be an Azorean FM question. Would you want to be stuck in a suit 24 x 7 on a ship for possibly months at a time
 
Well the Azorean home world is all watery, so I'd say an organic pattern would be suitable considering the ship is clearly intended to enter the Azorean Hydrosphere.
 
Nashoba said:
That would be an Azorean FM question. Would you want to be stuck in a suit 24 x 7 on a ship for possibly months at a time
Click to expand...

Look at it from an entirely practical, military standpoint. Why would you have a ship full of water instead of a suit?

  • Fact: You know there are other races out there in the great beyond. They'll want to visit your ship and you'll want to visit theirs.
  • Fact: If there's a hull breach lol oh no there goes the water out of all of our decks.
  • Fact: Increased mass from filling chambers with water (and having extra stores) makes the ship itself way, way harder to maneuver in space.

There are more trufax. I wish the Azorea FM was around to sort it out, though :[
 
Well, if I was the FM portraying an aquatic race, I would vote for making the insides of my ships watery environment simply because it would make a more dramatic and evocative statement of the alienness of my race and a stronger sci-fi statement.

The concerns are valid, sure, but under the 'rule of cool' I'd just handwave it away under the 'advanced technology' clause.

If I had my plot come into contact with an Azorean ship and that we happened to visit, I'd feel it unfortunate to not have something of a transition-outside-of-safe-zone happen, since the point of me being a GM is letting people experience unique and memorable events - I'd be missing out on cool stuff to expose my players to.

I may be biased by finding that the representation of alieness in SARP is woefully understated for convenience, starting from NMX warships labelled with the alphabet "NMX" letters to... waterless fishpeople ships.
 
Doshii Jun said:
Just for the record: Who IS the Azorean FM? Fay's more or less absent.
Click to expand...

He's still the Azorean FM as far as I know, I don't think anyone's been chosen thus far to take over. And sadly, I don't think Fay left any information related to the direction the Azoreans were to go or their technological progress thereof.
 
I love that somebody is making tech for one of the minor races, but that whole FM thing is awkward. When I was the Freespacer FM during Jess' absence there was still this problem: nothing new really happened. It is incredibly hard to reconcile abandoned factions in the absence of their creators, especially ones created before we had these super high standards that prevent any approved race from being fully fleshed out.
 
I have allowed Tanka to assume an FM role for the Azoreans, since he's got an interest in them and no one else is doing anything with them.
 
RPG-D RPGfix
Back
Top