STARSHIPS
This is an admittedly niche guide to nationstates roleplay starships and from a singular point of view. There are multiple on forum guide compilations including Kyrusia’s compilation at the beginning of the nation states FT advice thread that deal with the wider subjects of roleplay etiquette (though I will touch on that) and can assist you with your writing.
Our subject today is starships, there use, abuse and design. If you want a deep immersive guide into the subject of realistic starship design I can only point to the excellent Project HRO. In this document we may touch on that level of realism on occasion but it is not by any means more than one of our touchstones.
The Rambling Introduction
Hi, everybody. So do you like Star Wars? Star Trek? Babylon 5? The Expanse? Firefly? Battlestar Galactica (new or old but hopefully not 1980?), Blakes 7? Space Above and Beyond? do you read science fiction? Niven? Asimov? Clarke? Banks? E. E. Doc Smith? Herbert? Have you played Halo? EVE? Stellaris? FTL?
Well, you don’t have to have read or watched, played or even heard of them. However it will make many of my explanations far easier.
What all of these backdrops and authors all have in common however is (apart from the odd plot hole) the coherency of the design concept and aesthetic of not only the world and its characters but also of the starships involved and the rules that govern them.
The rules they have created that control these designs may be arbitrary but they also create that most vital of things. The suspension of disbelief. To our goals as roleplayers this can also create the ease of interaction. As soon as that suspension is broken the roleplay will also begin to break down just as it would from a failure of etiquette such as that most dire of sins outside of very specific threads in the form of called damage.
In corollary as soon as the ease of interaction breaks down the same has, will and does apply and as we are in a cooperative environment ease of interaction is just as vital as if you are those authors or a dungeon master in Dungeons and Dragons.
Now, while you may, and I certainly have wiled away hours creating starships most of your vast flying engines of interstellar power will not be used in character based roleplay outside of war, and if we take The Longest Day by Cornelius Ryan (which I highly recommend anyone who really wishes to write war read as a baseline before moving on) they will at most be used as backdrops for moments of points of view.
It is this trope that Star Wars’ overall point of view hopping uses to give the grand scale of warfare. Investing too heavily in either a write up or an actual image that on this scale. Your intricately written four page treatise on hypermatter reactors may be a marvel to behold but it may never be read. While such things may only be written for your own amusement amongst the glittering dance of armadas as it sits in a factbook unseen as the entire point is amusement well there is no harm in it.
There is the alternative route to this and that is military sci fi. Specifically that of a space navy where the starship really is one of the stars. This lets you really dive into the design and coherence of a ship. Star trek is the prime well known archetype of this in genre (for all that its core values are laudable humanism rather than latent militancy).
While Roddenberry did not quite do the full Horatio Hornblower and while CS Forester would probably be appalled at being reduced to a trope..well by professional military science fiction authors he most certainly has been so you can too. The vast majority are effectively iterations of the Royal Navy in the age of sail in space. Hornblower is a good place to start it also means means adventure! Interaction! Pirates! Space Opera! And all the other things that serve drama and overall roleplay by creating points of interaction.
The most infamous or famous example of an author switching rapidly between both of the tropes would be David Webber but Mister Webber and his Tom Clanceyesuqe numbers come with inherent problems as they are both a temptation to the would be reader of Jane's all the Galaxies and a dire burden as they lock you inevitably within their grasp limiting interaction behind a wall of Missile Circus , jingoism and a need to actually be playing a 4x game rather than roleplay.
Now while self created jingoism is fun it comes with a price in interaction. If one invests too much RP weight, energy or jitsu in a given ship one may simply make it a Mary Sue, a level 20 wizard in a party of level one halfling commoners. While Gandalf the white is a marvelous thing to behold he is not so fun to roleplay with if there is no angle of interaction but submission or death from those controlling the goblins.
So let us get down to brass. Perhaps you do want your own Jane’s (I do always highly recommend if you are to do one you look at the real Jane’s) all the world's starships. Or you just want to have a nice write up of your hero ship of the day or thread. In nationstates as you are probably familiar with factbooks often contain naval write ups or entire navies. A great example of this in a useful condensed fashion is Sunset's . Well to do that we have to define and address the basics.
Faster Than Light
“What the hell was that!?” “It’s Spaceball one, they've gone to plaid!” A starship does one primary thing. Move between stars. Every other purpose is secondary to that and to do that we have to brake the light barrier. If we look at harder science fiction or fact this has major implications. So we try not to.
But ..faster than light? So how are you to do that?
Common tropes are gates (Stargate), jumps (Battlestar) and drives (starwars and star trek), uncommon ones would be something like the warhammer 40k warp and its immaterium which I shall simply call exotic.
Gates (which can also include jump points) tend to preclude exploration and piracy and while great points of conflict (which shall be touched on under Space) they are wrath with a history of misuse in nationstates so beware that fact before falling sway to them.
Jump drives are instantaneous, press the button and there you are. To give some balance I would highly recommend either copying battlestars need for calculations or battle techs need for charge time given otherwise they make a mockery of interaction much less maneuver and make roleplay harder rather than easier.
Drives. Warp or hyperspace it’s all the same. In some unknowable fashion you have wrought space to your will and your vessel has exceeded light speed while within reality which introduces the dread concepts of travel time and the remote possibility of FTL warfare (see Ian M Banks and the Culture or E.E. Doc Smith and the Galactic Patrol for how silly that can get rather than Star Trek into Darkness).
Now for various very good reasons we tend to avoid “true” FTL warfare not least as one can at least in theory shoot something before it has occurred. So we tend to maintain the fiction if not the fact of sidereal relationships between the combatants. What does that mean? We pretend that the conditions between them are a shared ocean condition of sorts rather than a sleeting wall of the laws of physics being distorted to Einstein's ire. It does rather make a mockery of the dread laws of cold space but it is an unfortunate necessity to give proper points of interaction and thus much of our interaction is in real space.
Does your starship use fuel? Does it take time to jump or warm up its drives or need it’s brain de waxed and fed a fresh moon? Do you need bunkerage like a steam ship? Is your vessel carrying enough antimatter to make it unsafe within a lunar orbit? All of these should be if not pre decided at least considered as they may have implications on how you write your greater fleet interacting with others and itself and will help you avoid the dread intrusion of a mallet space moment which not only may spoil the suspension of belief but may spoil the roleplay entirely.
What is it Captain?
Well we know that somehow your starship is now a starship but what is it? Classic naval terminology is very useful in this and just like the old advice to avoid too many made up words lest we be left yrnogrling in the Xoriksnal. I highly advise you apply it as it makes things far easier to understand for others without having to look up what a “fourth class attack long range vector” is in your factbook entry.
Terms like cruiser and frigate can apply to a wide variety of midband vessel and can carry additions such as attack, scout, fast etc they are instantly recognizable and parseable. If you wish to roleplay the truly alien or the swarm you can of course avoid this somewhat banal but highly useful classification using it means you can also look up just what those classes did for real world navies and apply that to your design write up.
You can mix and match rolls somewhat and add addendums such as mentioned but the basic ideas behind naval classifications of any era are very useful in creating the rest of the ship. As a note if you do decide to call something a class it is best that it reflect the thing that it is called to retain meaning. (Straczynski in his Babylon 5 notably plays on classifications with the Earth Alliance fleet getting its new battleship program through by calling them Omega class “destroyers”)
So as an example
What defines a destroyer? “In naval terminology, a destroyer is a fast, maneuverable long-endurance warship intended to escort larger vessels in a fleet, convoy or battle group and defend them against smaller powerful short-range attackers.”
So with this in mind the ship needs long range stores, weapons designed to engage vessels smaller than it and drives to support it all.
All of this allows you to speed up your design process and really think of what you actually need to make the design cogent and believable, and the more it can maintain suspension of disbelief (even if the “starship” is a mile long crackling ball of psi power death hurling purple crystal or perhaps specifically then) the better the overall result. This is not to say you can't or should not have your flights of fantasy as that is the entire point, but this in many ways facilitates just that.
Hulls
Hulls are well a relatively boring subject, if your ship is made up of meat, ferrous metal or advanced synthetics the hull is an inert wrap. It does however drive the feel of the ship and that can allow you to let it design itself as you write.
Like any simple thematic trope they allow you to feed on past experience and build on it with relative ease and just like the classes above. But by thinking about hulls you can get a feel for the interior, is it cramped? Is the air tangy with ozone and the ring of metal on metal? All of that allows you to feed that experience into your writing and should be considered.
Deep dives into armor schemes and steel rolled homogeneous armor equivalent values aside you may also want to consider just what a starship's hull goes through. Space and all its hazards are not a low threat environment. Starship hulls especially if there warships are going to be tough.
(You may also want to consider that dodging is much better than taking it on the chin, shields or forty foot thick prow)
Weapons
As with all weapons in NS there efficacy is not on how much you know, or how dangerous you have written them to be (Webber or Clancy’s use of numbers weighs heavily on this as something to be discussed) but on how well you write their execution as that defines how much the other person will graciously write in response. For ease they can be broken down into some basic self explanatory classes:
Kinetics (Newton’s best friend)
Direct Energy Weapons (It’s so bright!)
Missiles (Fire tubes one through seventy and commence battle roll!)
Exotic (and now you see the full power…)
These like other readily accepted terms fall within terminology that is easily understood and while again you may always personalize by using the common terms you facilitate the ease of roleplay and development.
So while the DeathBlaster 5000X “planet shredding guaranteed” may be a fine name for it what will assist is knowing it is a rapid fire kinetic mass driver. With that known you can then dive into just what are mass drivers and define the write up and if you want the art to support it.
No you don’t have to be hard sci fi realistic, or even near it, but by using the term you facilitate not only your design but others understanding of it. Again though however destructive your initial foray into writing their design please always keep in mind it is not up to you in most cases to tell someone just what your HyperDEW did to their shins. I don’t like to reiterate that but it is vital to supporting good roleplay.
Just as with starships copying naval classification also allows you to copy the classification and details methods in your write up of real weapons systems. This is a fantastic font of terminology and material to crib on however personally distasteful you may find the subject matter.
While some settings (such as Star Wars) have a large pre defined set of rules and terms all of their own by their very pre definition it means you are not really designing the ship but modifying it and while that is a fine place to start it should be a laudable goal for it be far from where you intend to finish.
Systems
Life support is green! Shields up! Reactors online! Sensors unmask! Point defences charged! Ready the cloak! Inertial compensators to full! Gravitics at one G! Bring online ..the deflector dish.
Well what about the things that are sensors and systems and shields? What about inertia and gravity? There effect really is up to you to define and how deep you dive into that definition may both limit or liberate you in future if you include numbers.
While any dive into sci fi will give you an understanding of what these things do but they are known simple facets of the ship that while they should be defined and can be delved into great detail are relatively speaking a known. You do not “need” to dive into them even as fun as that may be anymore than you need to dive into just how a refrigerator works. It may however be fun to do so.
Far harder to define is the “deflector dish” the dire deus ex machina of star trek infamy. A sonic screwdriver bolted to a starship, a whirling dervish of uses for what is at least in theory just a snow plough. I strongly advise that if you are to equip such systems no matter what you call it make it one or two that do one or two things that are predefined to avoid the dread malletspace, Banksian effectors aside win the encounter buttons are an anathema to good interaction.
Simple examples of a good application of such a system would be giving your ship an emergency booster or a large decoy system to advanced ones like a velocity mirror that would let your ship dodge around like a UFO.
Aesthetic
Just like classifications aesthetic lets you pre define just how things will play out based on extant tropes, while this may not feel creative to come up with something truly unique after a century of brilliant minds takes a moment of inspiration that is rare. Aesthetic can also be defined by function and just like hull can define the feel of the ship. Several categories however allow ease of design.
The Monster
Why is it a squid in space? Because why not. Biological ships have issues when taken into anything remotely near hard sci fi but they are a lot of fun to design but far less fun to draw. You can more than easily pull on everything in the animal world for this and wikis deep facets allow you all kinds of gigeresque thoughts to come to form. Bear in mind though you must still find a way to interact with others even if its as the big bad.
The Gun Brick
Take a brick of armour and cover it with guns. Battlestar galactica is a fine example of the gun brick. Slow, vast ponderous and deadly this chosen aesthetic has less to do with achingly pretty turns and more to do with the words “broad side”. Warhammer 40k’s vessels as mad as there designs may initially seem are the very definition of gun brick.
The Space Rocket
While space opera is epitomised in Flash Gordon (and oh boy I do love me some war rocket Ajax) this is sadly rarely seen in NS. It can be used to great effect to replicate the feel of the age of sail and David Drakes with the Lightnings is a fine example of this trope coupled to Hornblower in Space in action as are many steam-punk in space roleplays. From mad science to the swooping realization that your ship is not a plodding vessel in water but a rocket in truth this can be allot of fun to write and very liberating with a huge amount of interaction possible and let you really play with design.
The KitBash
Drawn from bashing together model kits, Star wars to a T, its ships are defined by the complexity of their surface, the undefined lack of congruity with external terminology given the depth of their own in universe setting and a thousand layered devices to give the feel similar to the gun brick but without such basic savagery. Great to write but a slow nightmare to draw. You could also use this to say think about the Nostromo from Alien as a fine example of this 1970’s staple.
The UFO
Star trek has many a fine example of a mix of kit bash but we saw many spinning balls, tubes and basic geometric forms throughout the varied series. The UFO is easy to draw, can allow you to pack anything inside and lets you play on the alien or the odd rather handily and can give striking impact.
The Navy
David Webber's infamous double hammerheads spewing out endless missiles have an aesthetic that can only be called “modern navy” in space. It works and is relatively easy to draw upon but it is utilitarian. Relatively easy to draw and handy in a pinch to give you ease of design write up with the example of real modern navies to draw from (especially the submarine services). We have not seen much of this on film but it exists in vast quantities in books.
The Realistic
Avatars “Venture Star” is a fine example of a “realistic” starship. Spindly it mimics current orbital construction and can be a good place to start, you should also consider 2001’s Discovery as a good source for this design type too. It also shares a great deal of commonality with the Navy theme and tropes.
The Flying Corporate Office
Star trek the next generation did many things well. It was a fine set of humanist morality plays for instance. It also brought the aesthetic of a period corporate board room into space. All swooping curves and moulded features with wood inlay its overall feel was more that of a luxury car dashboard than an exploratory starship. This aesthetic does work but again think car dashboard if you want to pull design queues from it.
Numbers
Numbers are vital to space travel, they are found on only...
Numbers can also be a lodestone around your roleplay and can be terribly abused. “The ship fired its sixty four falcons claw missiles, each spewing out four hundred seeking warheads, it was one of four thousand above..” or “The dread Hypernaughts mass, six times the size of the worlds moon shrugged aside the blow and began evaporating the star”.
Like calling damage massive abuse of numbers is to be avoided and while they can make military science fiction in novel form sing for roleplay they do tend to the opposite. While you may love Clancey or Webber please bear that in mind.
However to say that one should not use numbers is like saying one should not use language, while designing a ship's write up the basic dimensions can and should be in clearly defined terms as for everything else they help define performance too but ..every definite real number you put on something limits you. The drives put out 450 “gigahorses” versus the drives can accelerate us to 450 gravities.
While I deeply enjoy giving my ships numbers they pre define the roleplay”energy” you have invested in them and sharply limit the classes and thus points of interaction available to interact with and thus limit your own roleplay. Keeping relative parity (most ships in nationstates are sub kilometer or at most sub ten kilometer for instance) before delving in with hard definitions. And because those definitions are in many cases real and known do try to look up what they mean.
Space
Space is big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space.
Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
The star destroyer slides across the screen chasing the blockade runner. The USS Enterprise's view screen fills with the Reliant. What do these have in common?
Well they as mister Adams can be paraphrased into simply don’t believe how vast space is.
As we are not watching ships on screen but writing them there is no need to artificially shrink the cosmos so it fits the human eye. The Expanse has many fine examples of solid on screen interaction at realistic ranges and maneuvers and those vessels are far from Starships as a children’s rowboat is to a Nimitz class.
Again space is big. Every single star system is a truly vast thing, ours alone, a relative light weight, is thirty times wider than the Earth’s orbit or to put this in perspective our solar system is 590,551 times wider than the Earth itself or over one and a half million United States of America. It would take you driving non stop at fifty miles per hour over seventeen thousand years to reach its edge and that is just the tiny island of our system alone much less the vast gulf between stars, the scale of stellar clusters, galactic arms or the galaxy itself which at current estimates are well over one hundred thousand million stars.
Why is this relevant? Because it shows just how out of scale the human eye or mental point of view is to the endeavour. We are not built to consider it and the numbers involved are entirely as inhuman as any bug eyed monster.
Your starships in any remote realism (even space opera) while swimming in this infinity of the odd speck of hydrogen and the rarer spec of something else will rarely be more than points of light to each other or the enemy. In Star Wars the movies, space may be restricted to suit the camera. The books are not.
Engagement ranges vary but what they should have in common is this. Space is big and you don’t have to fit everything onto the view screen or be visible out a porthole to the mark one eyeball, visual receptor or hideous dimensional faceted optically absorbing fog. Let your starships be Starships not models on a green screen. Let them dance among the light seconds minutes and hours rather than the point blank. You can choose to do otherwise and maintain the fiction of organic visual range combat but it for some this directly attacks suspension of disbelief.
Space is also apart from being empty and very large dangerous. Worse than any storm wracked artic winter ocean. From radiation, cold, heat, and vacuum space is always going to try and intrude its raw lethality into your setting. You do not have to consider it in that “hard” a fashion of course but space is like the Ocean.
What do I mean space is like the Ocean? While one can bend the conditions of it to suit the story it is at heart a basic constant and should in best practice be treated like the sea or the ground or the air. A constant that one can alter with reefs and fog banks but unless one wishes to consider the views of Douglas Reynholm it has a base nature that should be somewhat respected. It also as a constant provides the same sort of vital level playing field as any stage for interaction such as the ground or the air.
This does not mean you have to start orbital calculations it just means you should consider every time J.J. Abrams shows a planet in another star system or half-way across the galaxy from another planet's surface he is giving space the middle digit and thus for anyone at all vaguely knowledgeable about space.
While this could be laughed off as a mere pet peeve of mine own it is more a driver of removing the suspension of disbelief and just as damaging to the cinema experience as someone calling damage in roleplay. In a similar way to someone describing the ocean as made of ham toasties or saying they can see Galway bay from the viewing deck of the Empire State building it is simply a lie too far for the fiction to support. Space among other things is Space and like any core commonality of a shared experience alteration should be considered carefully.