Ship Quirk Thread 2: Space Borrowers edition

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>>51165526
>Sometimes your underwear doesn't go with it

>>51165526
the ships pinnace/shuttle is actually a pirate attack craft that the previous owner won in a high stakes card-game.

it was decorated in black and purple spikes and named the Death Reaper by the pirate's 8 year old daughter

>>51165526
> The floor is magnetic, in case the gravity goes out
> Anything ferrous you drop is really hard to pick up again

> Some bright spark fitted an overpowered engine
> If you accelerate too fast, everything flies to the back of the ship if it's not stuck down
> Faster still, and bits fall off the ship
> Plus side, the drive is an effective weapon

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>>51165526
>The new experimental hyperdrive has finally been installed after an unusual number of hang ups and compatibility issues.
>We have been warned never to directly touch the internal components or stare directly into the mechanism.
>We caught Engineer Parsons staring into the hyperdrive today, he seemed completely transfixed.
>Engineer Parsons has recovered from the hyperdrive incident but he seems...wrong, nobody can quite put their finger on it but it's almost as if there's someone else behind his eyes.

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>>51165526
>the AI used to be a battleship
>before that, it used to be a destroyer
>and several cruisers
>and a dropship
>and a networked fighter swarm
>and even a submarine once

>>51169462

"...And now we're hauling oats... Back in my day..."

"Yes, he's always like this. With any luck he'll pick up some unlogged space junk and "run silent" for the rest of the trip."

after all of the issues and repairs the ship has had over it's lifetime it now "sings".

the sound is really just the cumulative strain-noises of course-corrections, the gentle rattle of hardware, the base thrumming of slightly out-of-sync electrical systems interfering with each other, the flexion of some decks, odd restrictions in flow through the vents occasionally causes a gentle whistle.

somehow it comes together in a soothing background, like whale-song.

despite his denial, the party is relatively certain the Ships engineer has made these changes intentionally.

>>51165526
>the smaller ships aren't shy about catching a ride if you're heading in the same direction
>at least if they trust you
>it's become a rite of passage among the human crew. You're not part of the family until a Borrower lands on you

>>51165526
This is from an actual game we played awhile back

>Due to space issues, the hyperdrive was mounted sideways. Because of this, the ship will enter, travel through and exit hyperspace at 90 degrees to Port, often knocking everything off the shelves that isn't tied down
>As a power saving feature, the inertial dampeners automatically shut down at speeds under mach 2 without warning
>All external hull lights use old 20th century style incandescent bulbs that require frequent replacement
>Using the oven in the mess hall has a 50% chance of blowing out the lights in the bathroom
>The faucets produce only Hot and Warn water
>The Computer Core requires a key fob as a security feature else it locks down.
>The Fob has a range of 1 meter and eats through batteries at a rate of one per two weeks.
>All the software on the computer is century old shareware, nagware, buggy cracked software and release candidate betas
>The cargo loading crane has a 2 second delay on manual controls due to software.
>The "Space Saver!" powerplant is a first generation and suffers predictable power outages that require the focusing lenses to be manually reset due to "subspace vibrations". Whatever that is.
>Working on the ship requires special proprietary tools sold only by the manufacture, who has been out of business (because of this ship class) for 207 years.
>As far as anyone can tell, the tools were never actually made and must be specially built as needed by the ship engineer
>The Quarantine room's "Emergency Ejection" switch is a standard flip switch on the same panel as the light switch.

>>51172773
>The cargo loading crane has a 2 second delay on manual controls due to software.
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

having worked on high power "high precision" equipment with this problem before I will say FUCK YOUR GM FOR THAT.

JESUS YOU GAVE ME TERRIBLE STEEL CABLE WHIPLASH FLASHBACKS

>all doors are double hinged, aside for the ones that aren't.
Heh. How about the ones that aren't are pull only. From either direction.

>the landing gear is manually lowered with a hand pump to pressurise the hydraulics.
>the only functioning connection point for said hand pump is in the main landing gear bay itself.
>all atmospheric flying controls are manually operated with wires and pulleys. Have fun when the hydraulic power-assist stops working at 4.3 Mach!
>all fuel transfer between tanks must be controlled manually from a console resembling the love-child of a pipe organ and a steam-engine cab.
>the only resemblance the flight deck bears to a 'glass cockpit' is the presence of glass. It's what covers the uncountable array of analog, electro-mechanical dials that display all sorts of vital info.
>the weather radar picks up foreign language TV, like 24-hour news in Armenian, or pornos dubbed into Bantu.

>>51171445
"I ever tell you about the time my buddy Keith messed up a hyperspace jump and came out two miles underwater? Man it took 'em like a year just to scrape him off the sea floor. He was fine afterwards, mind. Crew didn't make it but he said he just wanted an oil change."

>>51165526
The ship is an entirely normal, bog standard equivalent of space Toyota Corolla but due to reasons, the crew psychosomatically believes that it has quirks.

Here are some I saved from the old spaceship quirk threads
>Due to size constraints, the hyperdrive is mounted sideways. When engaged, the ship leaps sideways into the hyperspace tunnel, port side first and continues like that until exiting.
>Due to the hyperdrive mounting, anything on a shelf will often fly off when it is engaged.
>The main reactor was an early model not meant for consumer use. It had a tendency to fail at nearly predictable intervals and had to be restarted by a modified lawnmower pull starter added on by a previous owner.
>The ships atmospheric cruising speed was mach 1 due to horrible aerodynamics
>Even though the reactor was powerful enough to run the ship, a powersaving feature was added so the ship could be called energy efficient: The inertial dampeners shut off at speeds under mach1 and took about a minute to restart. There was no manual work around.
>All external lights appear to have been added on as an afterthought and used house quality incandescent lightbulbs.
>The ship requires a keyfob to pilot. The fob has a very short range of 5ft and burns through batteries at a rate of 1 per week due to bad wiring. The controls lock up and engine shuts down if the keyfob is not in range of the bridge
>The oven shorts out the lights in the bathroom and vice versa.
>The sink produces only "hot" and "hotter" water while the shower only comes in "cold" and "deep space" temperatures
>To save cost, radiation shielding in the fridge consists of a lead lining
>All the computer software is either shareware with nag screens, out of date or incompatible with the actual hardware that it came with.
>The medical bay's quarantine chamber has an ejection feature that can only be triggered from inside the quarantine chamber and consists of an unmarked, harmless looking switch on the wall near the light switches.

>>51179263

>The cockpit windows slot in from the outside. This didn't become a problem until the crew was forced to replace the 3/4" anchor nuts holding it in for 21mm ones due to a logistics cock up.
>The ship is an old NeoComBloc design intended to be operated by conscripts and repaired with a hammer. Unfortunately, it was built shortly after the Second Collapse of the USSR by the Serbian collective with inferior materials and standards.
>The ship's nav-scan array is a very old model, which happens to operate on the standardised weapons targeting frequencies. This has proven problematic.
>Most of the flight computer is programmed in hexadecimal machine code, rather than an accepted language.

>All screws, nuts and bolts use nonstandard measurements and cuts and require proprietary tools designed by a company that went under over a century ago.

>The ship was fitted with an aftermarket boost kit for the main reaction drives by a prior crew. This essentially adds another injector set in the combustion chamber for an additive of choice, which in this case turned out to be a fifty-fifty mix of chlorine trifluoride and dioxygen difluoride (Stored in separate tanks, obviously. The guys who came up with this monstrosity weren't THAT stupid.).

>The ship's AI is aggressively user-friendly, and has a strange fixation on tea and sandwiches.
>every so often a watch will swear they hear knocking coming from outside the hull. when investigated it turned out to be an antenna that was hanging by the wire.
>due to power constraints when trying to fire a full broadside of lasers they only manage to produce a gentle warming effect to anything outside of point blank.
>it's shape is such that unless it is coming in a greater than 80 degrees it will skip off the atmosphere.

>>51179306
the bridge lights are a little iffy so that when travelling through hyperspace they blink like a strobe and give off a buzzing sound.
>one of the power panels has it's conductors completely exposed, so don't lean on it, or even brush against it for that matter.

>The armor is ablative in nature and made of a complex silica composite. The end result is a very cheap and very effective armor system. The only downside is a flaw in production that leaves 1 out of every 1000 or so plates with the protective properties of glass. These plates are indistinguishable from normal ones
>The ship was previously owned. The cargo hold is an absolute mess with gouges and ruptures all over. There are gashes and tears on the walls of the ships interior. The crew quarters contain multiple mysterious stains. These stains are not blood.
>The chairs in the cockpit are removable to allow re-placement. The release lever on them is a bit wobbly and occasionally detaches when the seat is jostled
>The docking seal on the ship is heavily warped. While functional it makes forming a seal with most standard ports impossible and requires the use of breech sealant or a similar process to avoid venting. The seal is warped in such a way that replacement would be very difficult without removing a significant portion of the frame.
>The ships audio matrix is particularly advanced and has functionally unlimited memory. Unfortunately it is impossible to remove songs from it due to the data storage method. With a dozen previous owners some of these recordings are a bit bizarre to say the least. Some are much more unnerving. What makes that kind of scream for 72 minutes?!?

>It's a retrofitted mother-ship-killer class torpedo. The warhead was removed to make way for the living sections and the main engine has limited fuel capacity, but goes damn fast. Biggest downside is that it wasn't ever supposed to stop, and retrofitted maneuverings thrusters to turn it around occasionally bjork themselves.

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>>51165526
>> Tiny civilisation living in the airvents
Why not in one of the lockers?

>>51168165
Also, the engine room is full of spikes. Like, literally, full of spikes. All the walls, the ceiling, even some of the floor. Who the fuck built this thing? You could put your eyes out on those if you weren't careful.

>>51180012
interestingly enough, according to my thermo-2 professor, spike and thorn shapes are the best for radiating heat(the vanes in a radiator are better for conducting heat into air)

>>51179418
Smaller than that
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smwd8b0ycBg

>The ships kitchen has a separate A I from the rest of the ship, and this AI constantly berates the ships cook.
>And anyone who spills on his spotless counters.
>And anyone who enters the kitchen.
>Even the ships main AI.

>the ships main console has a button labeled "oh shit". It is not on the ship schematic, and was apparently installed by the ships previous owner. The previous owner is, unfortunately, unavailable for questions, as he passed away in an unfortunate tinkering accident.

>>51165526
>notice several dozen lifters carrying a wooden pallet out of the cargo bay
>follow them to an old storage cupboard
>ships eventually lay it against the wall
>tiny robots climb up and start drilling holes
>mention it to the engineer
>he says he bought them some fancy Earth mushrooms since they've been helping so much with the maintenance
>figures they're trying to grow more

>The ship's computer has a voice recognition interface, which ostensibly recognizes English, but only when spoken with a thick Russian accent.
>Some words and phrases are poorly translated in said interface, with unpredictable results.
>The average height of space-faring humans has increased by several centimeters since the ship's construction, an eventuality that some of the cramped interior hallways were not built to anticipate.
>The warp drive and navigation software are incompatible, meaning the drive has to be fired manually with precise timing. A second off and the navigation will desynch with the ship's actual position. The fastest was to fix this is by resetting it to factory default, but that wipes all of the navigator's preferences.
>The ship's internal sensors sometimes report repetitive motion as a loose component. Most of the crew have simply come to accept their private moments are shared with the whole bridge.
>After years of being replaced with whichever model is on hand, a number of the maneuvering thrusters have minor variances in how much thrust they produce, a fact not accounted for by the inertial compensation software. As a result, a dead stop is almost impossible, the ship is always very slowly drifting, rolling, or turning unless docked or landed.

>>51172673
>its become an unspoken rule among the crew and the Borrowers that they hide from new recruits until they decide to reveal themselves.
> once the new recruit "discovers" thier existence, the crew makes a point of not acknowleging it, the true test has begun
> if he keeps the secret of the borrowers, he gets to stay.

> if he keeps trying to show evidence of them or, moons forbid, capture one to show, he will be dropped off at the next port without explanation. Cause who is going to believe some guy who got booted off a ship if hes talking about a tiny race with ship living in the ductwork?

>>51172419
This is wonderful, anon. You could even play whale song while in session, and maybe even give an auditory hint that this are going wrong by making it sound different.

>>51179338
>What makes that kind of scream for 72 minutes?!
I don't want to know.

After a very rough warp, one crew member discovered that exiting from the second port airlock somehow spits you out at the first starboard airlock. No one has tried to enter the ship from that airlock since, but it was a handy shortcut to circumvent the fire a couple months ago.

The crew has been listening to a pirate radio station lately. Not one run by pirates, which would be very concerning, but just an unlicensed and particularly strange station. Turns out the ship AI has some odd hobbies.

Some modifications have been made to the ship's voice recognition programming. It seems that certain phrases will cue soundtracks, and there's no list written down. Sometimes it just shouts phrases at the crew as a response to something the mic picks up. Absolutely no one on the ship wants to get rid of the so-called "montage mode", despite the confusion that it sometimes causes.

>Ship life support fails one day.
>Chief engineer says, "Well boys, we got work to do."
>Classic rock begins blasting from the speakers all over the ship
>Repairs take half as long as predicted, and many of the crew is hoarse the next day from singing.

>Tense situation where the ship is trying to hide in-system from another ship.
>Almost everything is off except for life support to reduce EM noise from the ship.
>Everyone is whispering for some stupid reason, probably stress.
>"Just behind the moon there. Bogey sighted." Somebody says.
>"JUST SHOOT THE BASTARD" screams the ship, in a thick Scottish accent.
>Everyone jumps, and somebody accidentally fires the laser array.
>Ship in distance begins blasting engines full throttle
>Cue panicked attempt to escape

>>51180888
I would hit that button like an asteroid impacting the moon

>>51165526
> Reality seems warped in the showers. You're seemingly in there for hours, but mere minutes have passed when you leave
> The hyperdrive got fixed, but now it jumps to the right, by four feet. You're afraid to get it fixed again.

>>51185415
>The hyperdrive got fixed, but now it jumps to the right, by four feet. You're afraid to get it fixed again.
The hyperdrive works fine, but the drive itself moves an inch to the left every time you jump. Every so often you have to dismount it and reinstall it on the right-hand side of the engine room, because no-one wants to find out what happens once it hits the wall.

>>51186118
Don't tell me you bought a ship from Honest J'onn's Military Surplus as well. I thought the review I left would warn people off!

>>51187043
But it's a genuine lockhead martini ship!

>>51187150
Should have got a Soyuz

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Someone, before this thread dies, archive it with the rest of them!

Archive to be found here!
http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=Spaceship+Quirks

Did whoever was posting The Borrowers fiction put up thier own thread?

>sitting at the navigation computer
>don't have do anything for a while, hyperdrive flies itself unless something goes wrong
>you hear a strange whistling noise behind you
>turn around to see a small object flying at your face
>reflexively you throw up your hand to catch it
>realize it was a borrower ship
>a small, brightly colored ship with oversized engines
>and apparently quite rugged
>after lying motionless for a second, the engines flare and it takes off, seemingly no worse for wear
>it flies over to the far wall, which you now notice has two post-it notes attached
>the ship carefully burns a mark into one of them, then flies at you again
>more cautiously this time, you hold up your hand to see what it does
>this time it rolls at the last second to slip between your fingers
>wiggles its wings as it flies past your face
>then burns a mark into the other note and flies at you again

>>51190062
> Pull up to a station
> Navy carrier is docked at the same time
> Thing's vast, dwarfs every other ship in port
> As you start stacking the cases of holo-porn onto pallets, a ship the size of a basketball wallows out of an airvent and makes it's way towards a crate
> Examine it as it flies slowly past you
> It's covered in murals of beings embarking on long and perilous journeys, finding new lands, and beating monsters
> Quickly set up a box and wave them into a landing inside it
> Label it up as a toy before taping it shut, and add a discount price tag
> Feel a pang of sorrow as you haul the pallet out the cargo airlock, until you're orbited a few times by a flotilla of ships that then head back into the vents
> They're not moving out, just sending a colony.
> Sell their box to the first space navy trooper you find, thrown in as an extra with two cases of green-skinned amputee dwarf hyperporn.

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>>51165526
>All the probes have racy nose art on them, and you can't bear to remove something anyone put so much effort into.

Beautiful

>>51190428
> The borrowers have taken to trying to fix the kitchen
> You found a ship harvesting mould from a lump of cheese in the fridge
> It seemed rather grateful to be let out of there; presumably someone had shut it in there accidentally
> One covered in ceramic tiles was found scraping the char off the inside of the oven
> One surrounded by a forcefield was clearing the layers of scum from the inside of the microwaves
> You're starting to feel slightly self-conscious about the messes.

>>51192219
not me.

I have my own Scrubbing Bubbles team. and I pay them in BBQ sauce...

>>51165526
>the ship's AI insists on holding barbeques down in the engine room whenever you're in port
>can't eat any of it, but says it just loves the smell

>>51193756
> It tastes delicious.
> You're not sure whether using the reactor as a heat source is a good idea, though.
> Or entirely safe.

What would the Borrowers do about a dog? A good dog

>>51197483
Dogs are colonist animals, they ain't built for the spacer life.
That said, I'm sure they'd prefer 'em to cats' if only cause most breeds can't fit into the ducts

>>51197483
Try not to be devoured by it. They know what happened to the last fleet.

>All those little quirks the ship has?
>Some of them are because it's alive.
>Turns out between all the replacements, improvised fixes, patchwork networking, and flagrant use of self modifying heuristics software, the ship has developed a sapient conscious.
>It's kinda, sorta smart? But also really alien. What it thinks doesn't translate well into human concepts.

>It's managed to make clear that it'd prefer we don't do any more repairs or modification to the ship without running it by it first.
>Partially by heroic efforts by our computer guy to cobble together a common dictionary. Mostly through increasingly severe electrocution of the offending party.

>Captain and crew is seriously considering selling it to a lab and getting a new ship.

Adding onto the tale of the Space Borrowers because the writefag in me refuses to let this idea die.

> Captain: "Comms, kindly let Lt. Denshaw and Barett know that I requested them thirty minutes ago."

> Comms: "Aye, Captain."

> Meanwhile; Officers Quarters

> Denshaw: "But, Damien, they're so cute, just look look at them!"

> Barett: "Suli, I swear if you don't untie me right now I'm not helping you buy sweets the next time we dock."

> A literal mini Task Force of 4 destroyers and a single cruiser float awkwardly between the two lieutenants.

> On the ground is a large collection of scrap, foodstuffs, and other assorted items being harvested by several dozen mini-miners and mini-haulers.

> Denshaw: "You wouldn't actually do that to me. . . would you?"

> . . . .

> Barett: "Just let me go talk to the Captain at the very least. His patience, even with you, has its limits."

> Denshaw: "Fine, but you better bring back more honey. The little guys really like the stuff!"

> Barett: "I promise." turns to the small flotilla of alien naval vessels. "Now can you guys cut the ropes for me? Suli made the knots too tight, again."

> Later; Main Bridge

> Barett: ". . . and that's what Lt. Denshaw's being up to the past week, sir."

> Captain: "Well, that's better than the last few times she's tied you up."

> Barett: "Also, in regards to the Micro's on-going operations aboard the Prodigal, they finally managed to track down the nest of bugs that we picked up on Fendema Minor."

> Captain: "Anything we should be concerned about?"

> Barett: "Well, Chief Engineer Laymar was right about them being corrosive and damaging the ships wiring. Thankfully, the Micro have so far managed to quarantine the infestation before it could spread into critical systems."

> Captain: "Explains what they stopped sending Battleships to meet with Denshaw. Speaking of, how is she fairing?"

> Barett: "Like usual, she's requested I bring her more honey again too. "

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>>51199946

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>>51199946
Another image, because there's something morbidly amusing about very very tiny soldier fighting off common, albeit alien, insects.

>>51199946
I like that name, the Micros.

>>51190428
>dock at a station
>a notification pops up, saying someone left a package for you
>turns out it was just a postcard
>you still haven't figured out the writing on the back, but the front is definitely a picture of the Jupiter dockyards

>>51200865
>slide it carefully into a vent

>A derelict cargo vessel was recovered from unmapped empty space, after being apparently abandoned for quite some time.

>The make is familiar, if outdated, and just about as factory standard as it gets.

>After piloting the ship back to s nearby port to be repurposed or scrapped, the reclamation team was shocked to find the fuel tanks completely empty, and every one of its generators and engines to be completely hollow casings, as if to give the appearance of functionality while not actually working.

>after going over the ship with a fine tooth comb, a loose grate was discovered in the floor of the cargo bay. Inside was a large, fleshy, thin sheet of organic tissue. With what appeared to be several IV tubes extending out deeper into the ship.

>when removed for study, not only did the tissue die, but the ship suddenly stopped running altogether. Even the wireless devices that were never hard wired into the system in the first place.

>>51201355
> TFW you killed it trying to find out what it was

>>51199946
>>51200012
>>51200031
> they're fighting a bloody bug war in the vents against mildly dangerous insects
> Just to protect the ship's wiring
They need a whole damn bottle of sauce for that.

I can sort of see the borrowers becoming symbiotic with human spacers. Spacers provide them with resources, they provide the spacers with protection from small but dangerous threats, and clean vents.

>Just another day as a micro, cleaning the vents and fighting off space ants, playing around with the friendly giants that run the world-ship
>Something goes wrong, the sky as turned red, the world-ship is taking damage, it's fighting something out in the infinite black, the giants are panicked.
>Suddenly it's all over with a white flash and an explosion
>The world-ship has been defeated, the city is gone when the vents breached and all the air was sucked out into the black
>Only a handful of ships have survived
>All the giants are dead
>Sensors pick up a fleeting glimpse of the enemy that did this, another world-ship, an enemy world-ship painted red with teeth along the front like a beast. It quickly leaves in FTL after gloating over the broken body of your once home.
>Begin salvaging the remains of the world-ship
>There is only one mission left for you and the handful of surviving Micro ships
>Revenge

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>The ship's operating system is programmed and communicates entirely in pic related

>>51203524
>"FOR THE ZA-LORD"
yes, I like this.

>>51204091
and the generations upon generations of children you will have eventually too...

>>51204091
>1 year later, a galactic patrol cruiser stumbles onto the remains of the "Blood Shark", a notorious pirate vessel.
>All the crew are dead, from a combined failure of life support and reactor shielding, they were literally suffocated and cooked at the same time
>The chief medical examiner believes it was a quite horrific way to go
>The chief engineer says that the simultaneous failures were a one in a million chance accident
>Aside from a few oddly damaged systems, the ship is in fine order and the vents are even unusually clean of mold and vermin
>Already the local government is having the "Blood Shark" stripped of its weapons and refit to be resold as a merchant cruiser

>>51203524
> A conflict arises with the Borrowers
> Someone's family recipe of brown sauce has gone missing.
> Their entire stash of it, gone
> The borrowers, with their love of bbq sauce, are blamed
> The alleged victim crawls into the vents to confront them
> Exits with a bottle, and what is presumably an apology note
> Over the next few days, the stash is returned, one bottle half-empty
> It seems they didn't like it anyway.

>>51165526
>The AI core contains a tank filled with disembodied human brains
>The AI is aware of this and insists they were all lab-grown
>It didn't tell you about them because you didn't ask

>>51199946
Me again, this time with another scenario.

> Ventilation Shaft M-R-9 & M-R-10

> [Warning: Critical Reactor Systems Compromised]

> Thousands of bugs cover the inner ventilation like a single organism writhing in fury. A never ending wave that flows from the eroded remains of the upper panel on Ventilation Shaft M-R-9 into M-R-10.

> Some fly through the breach only to be met by a counter-strike of Micro Fighters and AA Destroyers.

> Armored Centipedes & Beetles crawl from the breach like malevolent avatars of destruction. Held at bay only with the righteous fury of the Micro's combined arms.

> Then, the swarm. Juveniles far smaller than their Armored counter-parts, but far more numerous.

> Hundreds of insects are wiped out by a never ending salvo from Micro battleships, cruisers, and destroyers.

> The Micro's Infantry and Mechanized Armor, hard pressed just maintaining the quarantine, now they were just desperately holding out into the Giants could destroy the insects nest.

> Meanwhile; Hallway beneath Ventilation Shaft C-15

> Denshaw: "So why am I here with you again Damien?"

> Barett: "We have a bug problem in the vents that have been eating your mini friends food."

> Barett is slowly unscrewing the panel to the ventilation shaft. At his feet are two dozen small spherical objects.

> Denshaw: "Oh, well why didn't you just say so? I mean, how hard could it be?"

> Meanwhile; Ventilation Shaft M-R-10

>>51200012

The FTL drive was originally designed for a much larger ship. When the ship jumps, it takes everything within a 1500 meter radius with it.

>>51210340
Still the fastest ship in the quadrant. Even if it takes hours between jumps for the lights to turn back on, let alone recharge the capacitors.

>>51210340
that might actually be practical

or horrifying
>pirate ship slowly closing in
>capacitors only recharged enough for a couple of feet of FTL travel
>do it anyway
>pirate ship ripped in half when the front bit jumps alongside with you while the rear does not

>

>>51167295
>Not using a constant acceleration drive and orienting the decks of the ship so that down is towards the engines

>>51210540
> Using a drive you can't turn off
> Using a drive with such low thrust it needs to be on all the time
What is this, the 21st century? Get with the times, grandpa. Fusion torches are the way of the future, not your piddling little solid-core NTRs.

>>51210570
1g constant with a deceleration phase halfway through can get you to Mars in 1.7 to 4.7 days.

It's really a much more luxurious way of travelling, no jarring high G maneuvers and you don't have to worry about any discomfort or inconvenience from the Coriolis effect you get with spingrav.

>>51210843
> Muh luxury
5G burn at the start, insertion burn to hit Mars orbit, then a suicide burn for the landing.
Inertial dampeners and grav-plates compensate for the acceleration the whole way, and the drive runs as a power plant while coasting for the few hours the trip takes.
You could even just point and shoot from planet to planet, with your takeoff burn being the escape burn, and a suicide burn to a planetary landing without a proper orbital insertion. But that's banned by interplanetary law, and the drive's not even legal on Earth.
That, and there's Lunatic Crater on Europa where someone tried doing that from Mars to Titan, forgot there was a planetary system in the way, and slapped into the moon in question hard enough to punch through the ice crust.

>>51210980
>Inertial dampeners
>Grav-plates

Space Fantasy, not science fiction

>>51211087
And I bet your groundcar even runs on fossil fuels. What's next, a slide rule instead of a navputer? Solid-fuel boosters? Aerobraking? Launch towers and runways?
You traditionalists are just behind the times. And WASTING time with your long burns. In the time it takes you to leave orbit, I could be on Ceres getting my back rubbed by a four-armed green-skinned Ioan prostitute.

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>>51182910
>the Borrowers can be just as protective when they get to know someone
>the crew often find 'toy' battleships among their belongings when they leave the ship
>which is often quite a surprise the first time it happens

>>51211837
> Go out into city to complete a deal with Space Mafia

> Get back-stabbed by Space Mafia

> Realize Space Borrower Intelligence saw the betrayal coming

> Sent an entire armada to shadow you

> No survivors

> You and the ship's crew are now synonymous with Death incarnate

> That moment when you realize just how happy you are that the Space Borrowers are your friends.

The borrowers are one of the best inventions I've seen on /tg/

>>51210980
If you don't follow this guy's example, it's not a suicide burn.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3L5zyR4KVLA

>>51207583
>Most of them have plugs coming out of them, but don't serve any actual purpose other than 'decoration'
>He has a little place in the air vents that he has been growing them as a hobby for the last couple decades
>The biomass he used was from the borrowers using that vent as a garbage disposal dump
>That explains why the AI core room always smells

>>51217923
>beyond surprised that this isn't some of Danny's work

Brings out the Kerbal in everyone.

>>51217923
I can't afford to knock bits off my ship. Staging is SO 20th century.

>>51165526
That thing looks like a light-saber.

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>early model bioship
>the AI knows that most people prefer mechanical ships and is terribly embarrassed of her operational differences

>>51223831
>ship gets achne
>spend months cleaning up pimple puss from the corridors
I'll stick with metal ships, thanks.

The electrical system has 36 separate phases.
The good news is the ship can lose 90 percent of the system and still function. The bad news is it can take several hours to fix even a simple fault.

>>51225787
I know a couple girls that would not mind the maintenance processes

>>51225787
>>51223831
funnier when you consider stress like that CAUSES zits

>>51229296
You have to hire a psychologist with a specialization in AI as part of ships crew.

"I can't activate my boosters right now, I'm in my therapy session."

>>51229337
the most functional ships don't have therapists, they have steady emotional relationships with parts of their crews.

no need for a therapist if your bioship is content banging, or being banged by, the cook and/or/concurrently-by-the Engineer...

and all the jokes about sweet-talking more power out of the engines become WAY more literal...

>>51229446
Downside, ships a masochist that constantly pings fireing solutions in order to get shot "just a little bit"

>>51229488
I would have thought about badly plotted reentries and courses through asteroid belts for masochistic ships.

>>51229488
>>51229337
>>51227358
>>51225787
>>51223831
by the by, if you guys like Bio-Ships you might read
"Fluke; I Know Why the Winged Whale Sings"
by Christopher Moore...featured there-in are some nautical Bio-ships (like all books by Mr. Moore the 1st and 2nd act twists will trip your balls a little, it's all good.)

>>51188752
No because that's me and I'm a faggot.

I could however continue posting fiction if you like?

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>>51229566
forgot my pic, cause I will push this guy and his work wherever I can.

>>51229572
this is /tg/ we love our storytime

>>51168165
Engineer Parsons was killed when he was beaten to death by the Wise Council during the Mutiny aboard the Southern Sun.

http://mst3k.wikia.com/wiki/Space_Mutiny

>>51229572
http://pastebin.com/tAKQ4bKi
Linking all of my writing from last thread.

>>51229661
I didn’t see the Creel for a few days after this. I didn’t think too much of it, and sometime on the second day I noted that Tom the cat was missing a good half inch of his tail as a result of what looked like a laser burn. On checking on him, I noticed poor old Tom was in the vernacular, “high as balls.” It seemed that someone (or a lot of small someones) had found what little catnip we had aboard and had decided to try hearts and minds.

I thought perhaps the Creel might be lying low after the Captain’s pronouncement about needing them dead. I had been lying on my bunk, musing on this when I heard a slightly unusual noise. In space unusual noises are something that by habit, you investigate. Unusual noises that are followed by a small pillar of smoke are generally very high on the priorities list.
The Warspite sheepishly nosed around the corner of my desk. Trailed by tugs and a newer, larger looking warship that I hadn’t seen before. Trailing her were an orderly porcession of space weevils.

If you’ve not come across one of these before, or worse found half of one in the burrito you just bit into, their about three inches long, look nothing like a weevil and are voraciously fond of all biological matter, an infestation of space weevils can eat out a ships stores in days, and if you’re weeks from Port, they’ve been known to turn on the crew.

The Warspite wiggled her wings and circled back around toward me, while the new ship (The Bismarck) lead the cattle drive up into the vent.

>The ship's computer is made out of the brains of the former crew.
>It occasionally has flashbacks when you talk about certain subjects and the remnant minds surface in unpredictable ways.

>>51229908
The Warspite most definitely wanted my attention. I noted that the explosion I’d heard had been (judging by the remains) the weevil queen, who at about the size of a shoe, I did not really want decomposing in my quarters. How they’d lead her here or indeed why was a mystery but I gingerly dumped the smoking corpses into the recycling unit. I felt the Creel were rather taking liberties here but I had become rather fond of always finding my shoes shined, my razor self sharpening, and a hundred other little things. I wagged a finger at the Warspite. “don’t do it again.”

She wiggled her wings and then did something I’d never seem her do before. She landed.

She came to rest just beside the ash tray and as I watched, a rover about the size of a bean was disgorged from her hold. The Warspite took off again and made for my book shelf. Her prow pointing very firmly at my copy of The Law of Space, and then once she was sure I’d noted this, she made for my first aid manual.

I decided there was nothing to be lost in sharing the first book, and placing it spine down, the rover took charge, turning the pages as the Warspite surveyed the text as one of our survey vessels might the topography of a new planet.

>>51230108
I braced open the first aid manual and decided to leave them to it. My quarters were not entirely my own any more, which I didn’t entirely mind but sometimes it’s very nice just to be alone.

The officers mess was quiet, we would be making planetfall in 48 hours and there were always plenty of things to be done. The captain at least had decided that removing anything aboard which had been improved by the Creel was unwise, especially when Mclintock in one of his more lucid moments suggested we might patent a couple of the innovations. I held out my empty glass, waiting for a tug to synthesize Ice from the moisture in the air. It took a moment or two before I remembered I wasn’t in my quarters any more and I had to do it myself.
It was about then that she walked in. The chief logistics officer and I had had our disagreements. They tended to be loud, involve throwing crockery, and followed by making up passionately for about three days, before the next disagreement. There tended to be days if not weeks in which we avoided each other. Murchison was from a sleepy little place that orbited Neptune and either subtlety hadn’t made it there or she had been so blunt to it as to have beaten it to death before it got a chance.
“Make me a drink” from her this was akin to a diplomatic mission, “then tell me where you’ve been hiding"

[Sleep soon. I'll try to keep adding to this but last time I did something for /tg/ it turned into a War and Peace sized work]

This ship have a exceptional stealth system, making you almost invisible. When it's active, you hear a chorus of ancient Soviet Soldiers singing their weird songs.

>>51233513
The ship has an exceptional active stealth system. When active, it burns out every sensor of every kind within an AU.

>>51229488
>ship is slightly ticklish
>handheld tools are fine but anything vehicle-mounted needs to be parked on sound mats

>>51173842
"Ellis... can we talk about this later?"

>>51190062
>after a while you decide to try a different game
>and not just because you're losing at 'catch the stunt plane'
>gesturing for them to follow, you fetch a dartboard from the common room
>set it up at one end of the navigation room
>clear a runway on the desk and mark a line a few meters past the end
>you take a dart, step up to the line and throw
>write down your score, then gesture for them to land
>after a few attempts, you manage to balance a dart on top of the ship
>leaning in, you point towards the bullseye
>the engines seem to struggle with the extra weight, but eventually it gets up to speed
>the ship goes into a sharp dive just before the line, lobbing the dart at the board
>the aim could be better, but it's quite good for someone who's never played before

>>51179263
The shoddy external lights smash when going into hyperspace, and need to be taken out before every trip

>>51237983
Why not just leave them in the hold, and only attach them when you need them?

> Go into hyperspace
> Forget to bring lights in
> Jump point marked by a cloud of broken glass and frozen gases

> There's a man on the crew with the job of 'headlight'. He goes out in a spacesuit, holding a light whenever the ship needs one.
> He's the third one the ship's been through since you joined

>>51236351
>Quite good for someone who's never played before
My sides

>>51239170
>There's a homemade saddle and some bungie cord mounted to the underside of the ships prow
>The Head Lightman or Headlight sits there all day and aims his maglight where needed
>Most other ships think it's some kind of weird figurehead

>>51233536
Thus you are banned from highly, moderately, and sparsely populated systems.

This ship have an unconventional size and shape, meaning you can't ever dock properly everywhere else but a big flat space outside of every hangars. Giant pyramid ships not so common after all.

>>51233536
>including organic sensors
>making it one of the most terrible WMDs in the known universe
>to find the inventor, just look for the planet full of deaf and blind people

Not to be a killjoy or anything, but if they're in the air vents, how are these borrowers stopping themselves being filtered out? Isn't that basically the job of an air vent?

Unless like, they're using the dust and microbes for food?

>>51245644
>Isn't that basically the job of an air vent?
no, thats the job of an air filter.

and the filters would be either all in just the environmental control system or in air-handlers(BIGASS FANS) that circulate the air in parts of a ship.

the vent is just there to stop things from bouncing or rolling into the duct-work accidentally.

>>51230326
Writefag checking in. If there's any part of the storytime you'd rather I skipped or something you want me to bring in tell me. Also gentle critique is always welcome.

>>51246329
We just want more.

>>51246343
Incoming.

>>51246369
knew what was about to happen, and several drinks later, it did. I woke up several hours later in her bunk, tired, bruised, scratched and smiling, with the Warspite hovering about six inches from my face, and just over Murchison’s hair.

The little ship was clearly agitated. There was obviously something important at stake, or at least I really hoped so. Murchison rolled over sleepily as the Warspite darted down the side of the bunk. She opened one eye, “You’re still here... in that case...” She rolled on top of me with a smoothness that always surprised me. The Warspite began to butt at my exposed foot as Murchison began to do something else entirely, but with a similar repetition. What the Creel, however many of them were aboard the vessel made of all this I never wanted to know.

I tried my hardest to dissuade her, she ignored me. Then her entire body went rigid and her jaw clamped shut most unsatisfactorily as something small and highly electrified hit her exposed backside.

>>51246466
When she eventually released me, she slapped me and asked “What the hell was that?”

The Warspite made itself known, lights flashing and hovering a few inches above where her bra had landed. Murchison responded about as you’d expect “What the hell is that?”

The little ship made urgent motions at my clothes and I did my best to explain while getting dressed. As I did she started doing the same, somehow faster than me even with maneuvering a bedsheet for modesty at the same time.

“They’re tiny, entirely benevolent beings that live in the vents.” She cast a glance at the ship, which slowly dipped her nose in what could be construed as embarrassment. “If they’re doing this it must be important.”

“wait a minute you mean they saw...”

“Everything. I think this one might be following me about.”

“Even...”

“especially that.”

“We are going to talk about this later.”

I felt about as small as a Creel by the time we followed the ship from her quarters.

The Warspite lead us downwards, into engineering. We smelt smoke not long after. It seemed MClintock had been checking on the progress of his latest batch of hooch and the still which definitely did not exist had blown. All the sensors down here had been disabled in one way or another in the interests of circumventing the meagre alcohol rations aboard. Mclintock was unconscious which was probably for the best given the size of the piece of shrapnel sticking out of his chest. What must’ve been every Creel ship aboard was trying to move him from the flames lapping at his feet, while tiny little rovers tried to stem the blood flow from the jagged wound in his chest. The Creel for all I’d seen of them were incapable of moving 200lbs + change of a fifty of human being. The fleet dispersed as I grabbed him under the shoulders, the rovers streaming off him and into waiting carriers.

>>51246973
Murchison must have called for help while I was dragging him away, as by the time I had him out of the room the fire control party were pounding down the corridor, and there was not a ship to be seen.

An hour later the Captain himself debriefed us. “...an utter tragedy. A terrible loss for everyone aboard. Still we must soldier on, despite our losses.”

A slightly singed Murchison asked “I thought you said Mclintock was fine?”

“hmm? Oh yes. He will be. That wasn’t what I meant. Still it could have been a lot worse, that fire was spreading fast and if you two hadn’t been down there and...say what were you doing down there anyway?”

Murchison and I shared a glance. I opened my mouth but before I could speak she responded in great and extremely pornographic detail that shocked even me. The Captain looked me up and down and then Murchison, then into the corner of the ceiling, and didn’t take his eyes from there as he dismissed us. I’d never have taken him for a prude but the way his cheeks reddened and his cigar dipped, it was clear he would be spending months not thinking about that.

As we left the bridge, Murchison’s soot stained hand found mine, and a tiny little ship waggled her wings from the vents as we passed.

>>51247042
That night Murchison spent the rest of the evening in my quarters, and after a long shower she was full of questions as we watched the Creel fleet at work in my quarters, ships passing from the vent on the port wall to the starboard, others still at work on my bookshelf, freighters moving from my desk to the port vent with sweet cargo, a sea of tiny lights in the darkness. Our own private galaxy, she watched them dance and whicker across the room as I told her the events of the last two weeks. She was distinctly unimpressed that at the inroads I had made in learning about them, their culture, their origins, and made me swear that she could begin to investigate these. We eventually drifted off to sleep as the flotilla continued their unceasing dance.

When I woke she was already awake, and sat cross legged on my floor, a pad of paper open on her knee. The Warspite guiltily coming into view over shoulder to greet me, like a dog wagging his tail in recognition of his master then eagerly returning to the much more interesting work of playing with his new friend.

Murchison’s drawing skills were evidently better than mine. She was halfway into the sketchbook already and had drawn picture of the Cerulean adjacent to one of the Warspite, beneath that was a picture of what was definitely her, and a blank space. The Warspite stared mutely at it while overhead a tug went by carrying a large ceremonial brass button which could only be the Captains.

The Warspite continued to ponder the page but Murchison tapped insistently with the pencil. “No more drawings unless you do.” I thought of the Creel as helpful but extremely secretive people, but to my surprise the ship fired up her forward battery and began to draw. Imagine a dodo, then add tentacles, a beard, an odd sort of starfish looking organ, and then...sort of none of that. Murchison beamed, “Adorable!” as I tried to imagine what it must be like to draw a picture of yourself several miles

>>51247300
tried to imagine what it must be like to draw a picture of yourself several miles long with a piece of artillery, and simultaneously I tried not to imagine meeting one of those things in a dark spot between two dust flakes.
A short while later in the canteen, as I watched her filling her pockets with BBQ sauce she asked me “aren’t you curious what life is like for them in the vents? What their cities and shipyards are like? Their civilization?” I did my agree with her into my scrambled eggs. “Don’t you want to know?” She chided, stealing a rasher of bacon, “the more we learn the better a case we have to explain why the Captain shouldn’t” she leant forward conspirationally and thrust said rasher at me like a sabre, “have them all destroyed like the vermin infestation he will be convinced the are.”
I nodded my assent and evaluated whether it was worth trying to claim back that part of my breakfast, by accident or design, she had managed to get the crispiest bit.
“What about one of those little cameras? The ones they use for vent inspection? Do you think they’d let one of those in? Maybe even carry one for us?”
She was on to something now.

Hours later, after both her watch and mine had ended, with a large pile of sachets of BBQ sauce being slowly loaded into freighters and a chocolate bar being strip mined on my desk, Murchison and I did our best to explain what we wanted to the Warspite. After many sheets of paper, the Warspite slowly made her way to a blank page, and drew a symbol that looked like a stylized crab drop kicking a horse. A few moments later a freighter picked up the camera unit, I was pleased to see it did so gently. This was one of the pieces of wireless technology aboard as even the signal from an unshielded electronic wristwatch could do horrible things to a ships drive when in transit, and something like a handheld computer could blast us massively off course if switched on when we got up to any kind

>>51247660
kind of speed that meant Mars to Saturn wasn’t a voyage measured in months. The Lloyd’s of Luna had simply taken the expedient of banning all non regulation (I.e. offical) electronic devices from space travel entirely on pain of being considered a terrorist. Should you ever come across anyone who says otherwise and that unshielded electronic devices are perfectly safe, I strongly recommend not even bothering to report them to the Space Marshall, but simply having them thrown out of the nearest airlock or you’ll end up like the crew of the Aegis 7, which is to say, inside out, or even worse, like the crew of the event horizon.

In any event, I was pleased to see on the viewing unit a clear picture of first Murchison's chin and cleavage, then the floor, wall, and interior of the vent.

for the love of god, please make sure you keep all this saved in a safe file, and strongly consider publishing it, even as a short story

>>51247726
In any event I was pleased to see on the viewing unit first a nice close up of Murchison’s chest, then the floor, the wall, and inside the vent. We fluttered along like that for only a short amount of time before we began to see mushroom fields and ranches full od space weevils. Tiny streams of silver could only be assumed to be maglev rails. As we reached the intersection of five vent systems, we first saw the lights of their city. The intersection also bordered onto a waterpipe from hydroponics. In short the perfect set up. However we didn’t see any of that the first time, just a seething glowing metropolis of light and colour. Skyscrapers built from pens, shipyards from paperclips, BBQ sauce refineries, and the million other things a thriving civilization needs. We began to ascend upward into the highest of the vents which canted upward at a 45 degree angle, the ceiling covered in a mural which told their history. The first panels were confusing and strange, with Creel doing odd and unfathomable things. Then could be seen the arrival of a ship in the vent intersection, the founding of the city, the first farms, the discovery that humanity was aboard, that the Creel sailed on a world that moved, a series of extremely bloody and unpleasant battles with Tom the cat, first contact with me (a very flattering depiction I might add), the belling of Tom, a half finished mural of first contact with Murchison, which she squeaked at the realisation that it was their first physical contact with her that they had recorded, so she was not at a flattering angle, or wearing much, and then in sketch only, the rescue of Mclintock.

[I'm rather sleepy anon so I'll probably go back and flesh this last post out a lot more].

>>51247726
I've been saving it as a word file while I go anon, I'm actually rather flattered you think that, all I've been doing is channelling my inner H Beam Piper, that and waifuing Murchison which is a bit weird.

>>51248067
OK somehow I managed to quote completely the wrong post there. The second part is meant to be a response to this guy: >>51247920

Oh no you don't. Bump

>>51229337
>the internal lighting is tied to AI's emotional state

>The ship was built during a phase when people still had deep concerns over the psychological effects of deep space travel. On the inside, it's painted with sunny meadows and happy flowers. Any time the AI (which is pretty simple) detects a heightened amount of tension, it asks crew members how they feel, while attempting to defuse the situation. This makes any combat scenario into a high-speed therapy session.

Internal atmospheric systems are all was designed by species evolved in ammoniac atmosphere and never was reconfigured to a oxygen species. Despite it, atmos make perfectly fine oxygen air and as byproduct, shitty but drinkable coffee-like liquid.

>>51256359
> This can be altered with music
> Soft classic rock leads to subdued mood lighting
> Heavy metal leads to flame projected onto the walls
> Dance music means bright moving lights
> Psychedelic rock leads to kaleidoscope patterns on the walls, slowly spinning and merging and dividing.

> The scanners in the medbay have a list of music banned from being played while inside them
> They're there for a reason
Srsly, never listen to Pink Floyd while having an MRI scan. Being stuck in a blank off-white tube with no noise except the music, while being lashed with intense magnetic fields is trippy as fuck.
It may not have been so bad if I were allowed to keep my glasses on, but since I wasn't, everything except the hallucinations was blurry.

>>51257203
>Nirvana
>Entire ship is depressed for weeks

>>51258767
> Play Alestorm
> The ship bedecks itself in skull and crossbones
> And talks like a pirate
> Constantly.
> Arr, mateys, what he be havin' fer yer breakfast this morn? Specials be porridge with grog, yarr.
> Someone be leavin' the fridge door open again, keelhaul the bastard!
> It won't stop until you get someone suited up and haul them around the outside of the ship on a rope.

>>51260029
The ship's AI thinks of itself as a pirate, which can come in handy when being boarded.
Not so handy is even a crewman accidentally pisses it off, and it demands we throw them overboard before carrying it on.
Luckily though, the AI will immediately dump all memory of someone once they're 'overboard', as that person is dead to them. So whenever that happens, we just tie them to a rope, shoot them out the airlock and swing them round to the other side of the ship and welcome them as a new crewman, and the ship is none the wiser.

>>51214405
>leave the spaceport
>prepare to warp
>a large warship charges out of the vent and hovers over the controls
>dips down and tries to nudge your hands away
>your take your hands away from the controls
>a squadron of tiny fighters take off from the ship and land on the control panel
>all but ones flies back to the carrier
>the carrier noses down to point at the ship it left behind

>luckily, someone picked them up and gave them to the spaceport's lost and found
>the little ship frantically starts flashing its lights when it sees you walk in
>as you pick it up, you hear a faint electrical pop, and smoke seeps out of the engine for a few seconds
>holding it up to your eye, you can just about see movement in the bridge windows. The crew at least seem to still be alive
>disaster averted, you slip them into your pocket and head back to the ship

Sometimes, when no one near and you alone on a bridge, AI sings, with beautiful voice, different from its standard voice modulators. Usually it's a very sad songs about lost ones and loved ones. Sometimes it's very silly and nonsensical songs.
AI will deny it can sing if you will tell it to anyone and technical analysis will tell no one tampered with voice modulator. Seems like AI can't remember that he did sing and no songs in his database.

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Think this fits

It is tradition to attach bumper stickers to the hull. Nobody can ever get them off

>>51261425
That reminds me of the journey of the Russian wreck fleet to Japan.

We're not quite sure why, but the last owner had a drill set up on the landing gear.

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>>51265196

No writefaggotry from me tonight but more tomorrow

Your ship AI is collecting fridge magnets for its hull. Any time any person leaves the ship, they need to bring a new fridge magnet or ship defenses will stun them using old equipment from its days as a "prison vessel".

The bad news is you need to bring magnets with you, even for emergency hull repairs. The questionably good news is that anyone you don't tell this to can't board the ship.

>Ships built at the Mark-Melvin Shipyard are considered tough and sturdily built.
>AIs reflect this nature to further enhance market value and psychological impressions.
>AIs put into these ships are also considered superstitious.
>Due to the shipyard's location in the asteroid belt many shipyard workers and techs often sing songs of ill-fated travelers who died or disappeared into the asteroid belt.
>This has rubbed off on the AIs.
>Ship's computer hardware often record spikes in heat and increased CPU cycles every time the crew put in a flight-path near or into an asteroid belt.
>Crew would often have to deal with unexplained computer hesitations and slowdowns of non-essential systems.
>Unexplained power transfers to engines cause many a crew to exit the shower still dripping with soap or clutching a half-materialized food tray.
>More than once the AI has asked "would you like an alternative route plotted?"

>>51260029
>voice operated systems don't recognize anyone unless they talk like a pirate

>>51190428
>>51203524
>it becomes a tradition for old spacers to give model spaceships to the crew of a new ship
>and barbeque sauce, for some reason
>most people think it's just some weird superstition
>I mean, how likely are vent fairies?

>>51271404
>Get a model of your own ship
>It's gone the next day
>No one can find it

>>51261425
When I said I liked Space Westerns, I meant Firefly, Cowboy Bebop, or Outlaw Star not a literal 1887 version of Mad Max on a space craft.

Writefag here. I'll be back tonight for more. Any comments or things we would like to explore?

>>51248067
>I've been saving it as a word file while I go
I would suggest that you save it to a pastebin or a google docs or something.
Because I would totally love to typeset this whole thing with LaTeX in an actual proper book format. And maybe even have it printed (for my personal use only, of course). Naturally I would send you a typesetted (typeset?) .pdf version if you could drop me a line at nastarovije at gmx dot de.

>>51275229
My thanks anon but I might like to publish it up on Amazon or simliar afterwards so I'm not sure if that's a good idea at this stage.

>>51271316
It's not because the ship was a pirate ship, it was just built by a Cornish colony and they speak like that naturally.

>>51275948
Ugh, the last AI I had was scottish highlands. Nobody could understand it, and all it said half the time were insults. Had to employ a translator to talk to it, in the end.

Live thread live!

File: ghost.jpg (32KB, 512x512px) Image search: [Google]

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The AI hosts a semi-successful radio show and sometimes asks the crew to appear in his broadcasts.

>>51275778
that was literally the point. That is what typesetting is for, because while MS Word is "good enough" for everyday office use, even professional office use (like big companies, federel govt, etc) its really not up to book publishing standards. Typesetting software such as LaTeX makes texts look real polished.
Check it out:
>https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/LaTeX
Its what the pros use. Also scientists.
Got any questions about it, feel free to ask.

>>51278677
cans.wav

So ive seen it posted before, but how would using the lawnmower engine "starter" even work with, say, a nuclear fission power plant for a ship? The core needs to be brought up to temperature or charged somehow? Id think a fusion plant would be even more odd

>>51280012
Like, a pull cord?
> Fission plant
The reactor is a rotating pebble-bed design, using centrifugal force to force the fuel through the reactor core. The pull starter gives it an initial spin, enough for fuel to go in the right direction and start the reactor spinning properly with the generated thrust.
Electronics simply don't work in there with all the energy flux.
Better not flood the reactor by dawdling.

> Fusion plant
The pull cord provides the initial burst of energy to kickstart the fusion reaction with tritium, before it moves onto a more economical deuterium-deuterium cycle. The fuel mix has to be balanced, like the choke on an old car.

>>51261425
There are so many opportunities for campaigns on this thing.

>>51279103
oops.

>>51280609


"Don't forget to prime the Fusion core. Big old bulb the size of your head. Give it a solid jab... no, more like this, You're forcing nuclear fuel into criticality her- *BAM-KRAK* There ya go, now pull the choke... more... more... Alright, let her warm up for a half hour and we're in business."

>>51165526
I did a quest with my bros, our ships guns were mas drivers and a mish mash of energy weapons. They would fire off to the beat of musical songs. So you had to plug in your mp3 player and the guns would fire according to the song. There was a lot of anger and rage following this.

>>51165526
>The lightspeed engine takes 5 minutes to warm up
>It also has a 50% chance of failing and needing a full reboot, which takes 30 minutes

>Every time the onboard radio is turned on, the first song it plays without fail is Journey's Seperate Ways

>>51197533
>Borrowers set up checkpoints in the airlock whenever you land somewhere with dangerous wildlife
>won't let you back on the ship until they check your bags and pockets to make sure you didn't bring any of it with you

>>51248067
Publish it. I love you. The world of readers will love you.

>>51271316
>"Be ye disabling of yon shields?"

>>51248067
Murchison had wrapped her arm around me as we sat on my bunk together with the screen on my lap. We were stunned. We were gods. The little ship returned with the Warspite circling her like a proud mother hen. Later while Murchison and I lay in bed together I heard the sound of a Truxian mosquito. They had come aboard in a shipment of fruit months ago and we still hadn’t gotten rid of the things. I tracked it in the darkness with my ears, following the sound with an outstretched hand, waiting for it to stop. As it went over my face, a beam of light lashed out and got it just above my right forehead. Something tiny and every so slightly warm landed on me as a tiny fighter retreated proudly to add another kill tally. I would have to tell Murchison to be careful what she swatted. Meanwhile as I drifted off to sleep again I heard the comforting sound of my shoes being industrially shone and yet more BBQ sauce and honey being vacuumed aboard freighters. I smiled.

>>51285066
The next day was a blur as we made final preparations for planet fall in the evening. Murchison had been gone when I woke (the Creel had taken to giving me a flypast if I slept through an alarm). After getting out of the shower I dropped my facetowel, as I stooped to collect it, I saw the lights beneath my bed. It seems that the Creel had established a FOB and small airstrip since I last looked under there. A team of tugs were working very hard to shift one of my dress boots and I obliged them. As I dressed I looked for other Creel installations and noted a small outpost had appeared on the top of the door frame. The uninitiated might take it for a sensor, but there was no mistaking the crenellated architecture or the extremely large batteries of cannons. I took my overcoat with me as I expected to go from the bridge to shore almost as soon as we landed. While my time spent with the Captain and ensuring planetfall went smoothly, he did remind me twice that I still hadn’t found a reason for our “brownies” as he called them, nor eradicated them.

Hours later I went ashore, Murchison waving as she watched the Stevedores unload our cargo, unions were a very big thing in this port and with humans doing the job at their insistence she was itching to make sure they didn’t steal anything. I suspect she also made them wipe their feet.

Port was not a salubrious place, nor was it warm. I was already glad of my gloves and greatcoat (cinched about the waist by my cartridge belt and revolver) it was snowing heavily outside of the industrial warmth of our landing area.

I’d learnt in a hundred different destinations that you never ever go to the first bar you see as soon as you leave port. I did however only make it as far as the second.

>>51285076
The captain and I had already negotiated for our next shipments and contracts, it seemed we were even taking on some passengers, I didn’t have much to do beyond take in the local colour, there’d be plenty of work in the morning though so I was on the 2 pint rule and not a drop more.

The 2 pint rule doesn’t stipulate pints of what, but I behaved myself. The bar I’d chosen was exactly as you’d expect a spaceport bar to be, rough, stinking and just like home. It was also a very welcome temperature compared to the snow outside. With my greatcoat slung over a chair and seated alone at a table I had all the peace I wanted. There was a card game off to one side I was only just keeping an eye on, what I was most enjoying surreptitiously watching but not watching (and part of the reason the Captain liked me to go ashore before granting shore leave to the crew) was the drug deal at the table across from me.

>>51285286
They were speaking in very bad code “I’ll give you six blocks of material at 800 a gram” and similar brutally obvious euphemisms. If any of our lads got found with something illicit at the next port it’d be an awful lot of trouble for all of us. I kept nursing my pint. Shore leave was canceled I think. I could see some of the customers had been doing more than drinking. I had decided it was time to go when the fight broke out. One of the card players dropped something. Someone else bent to pick it up, someone shouted about cheating. Dealer A pocketed something less than subtly in the confusion. By this time I was already on my feet and making for the door. What I’d missed was the weighty beer stein that’d missed card sharp E or possibly F and I assume was on a trajectory with my unknowing skull. Something shot from the pocket of my greatcoat, I felt it’s passage but before even registering it the something had fired a torpedo at the glass, shattering it impressively in mid air. As discharging a firearm without reason (and in a place as packed as that there would be no witnesses) I decided to leg it before any police complications arose. As I stumbled into the snow from the entirely shocked bar, I was trailed by The Warspite and a sister ship of the Bismarck. The little bastards had obviously decided I wasn’t safe to let out on my own. Extra sweets for them tonight, but in my flight I managed to get myself lost.

>>51285299
A terrestrial might at this point ask his personal computer or simply think about needing directions and be told. A spaceman had to do without such conveniences unless it had a good quarter inch of shielding (and no one wants to carry around a wrist computer that weighs fifteen kilos), while the Warspite shot up above me the Tirpitz (she needed a name) nudged her way carefully into my hand. Twisting this way and that to guide me.

It seemed one of the few things the Creel lacked was Street smarts, as they took me a shortcut which included an alley way I really ought not to have considered. Several piles of rubbish revealed themselves to be human. Two blocking off my retreat and three in front. They had knives. I drew my pistol, cautious of using it but what choice did I have? I took aim at one, as I backed myself into a corner. The Warspite fired the second time that night, a bullet taking one man in the throat, another in the eye, and a final one in the groin. Their antomy dtudirs werr already paying off. The other two ran for the hills screaming “War Drone! WAR DRONE”
While no one would have heard the gunshots everyone would hear that. I was in trouble.

If for some reason you don’t know your history (what are they teaching at the academy these days?), around 75 years ago the War Drone was completely banned by the 87th Geneva convention as it was decided that an autonomous Self Replicating AI that had an explicit “kill all humans” setting might not be wise.

Don't publish any of this. It needs a shit ton of editing just to reach readable. It's dense and expositiony as fuck.

Let it sit for a few days, then start reading at some random spot and make a note of how long it takes for you to even figure out what the fuck is going on right there.

The main thrusters are oriented such that the cockpit is actually facing the port side of the ship. You once managed to track down one of the engineers who built your vessel on a remote research station on Titan. He promised you an explanation as soon as he returned from the bathroom, but he escaped out the window into his nearby Expeditionary Class Rover. Then he managed to hide longer than your patience could be stretched, or for that matter, his life support.

>the ship is a rogue planet killer
>she was heavily damaged when she found you, but just functional enough to cripple your old ship and threaten to blow herself up if you didn't fix her
>fortunately the AI turned out to be a lot friendlier when she wasn't dying

>>51281946
So, naturally, you play power metal and wait for results?

>>51286407
Ignore this asshole. Moar.

>>51293109
>>51286407
...he actually has a point.

HEY WRITEFAG. DO SOME EDITING BEFORE YOU PUBLISH
then publish it once it's nice and clean and pretty

Emergency bump.

>>51291118
yep.

>the ship was made before the emergence of ersatz gravity gerators but after the creation of potent rocket motors. The spacecraft has a huge reaction engine that can accelerate it at 1G for several years straight and it uses ship's acceleration for artificial gravity. Thus ship is built like a skyscraper instead of like a naval ship with floors perpendicular and not parallel to the direction of thrust meaning that gravity only works while ship is acceleraging by the main thruster. This also makes it very awkward to dock with more advanced ships that use gravity plates because the floors don't line up by 90 degrees and everything is free floating in the torch ship. Also the engine exhaust spews out several mile long stream of glowing radioactive death behind it while main engine is online. It can be used in battle but it is unvieldy and extremely short ranged compared to literally any sophisticated weapon system on the market.

>>51225787
oh god, what if the ship has a menstrual cycle?

>>51229446
or an orgasm?

>>51296012
>menstrual cycle?
exclusively warships are female...
or else you design and construct them to not have one...

>or an orgasm?
sudden power surge followed by an up-tick in outputs

>the ship has a 15'×30' mural of a wizard flying a flaming motorcycle through a nebula on the port side
>the copilot's chair is a milk crate
>the owner apparently ran out of red velvet halfway through decorating the interior, the rest is painted a similar but clashing color
>half the cargo hold is taken up by ultraviolet lights and crates filled with small baggies
>the engines have been modified to partially run off of recycled fry oil- making all the trips to Chinese food stations dual purpose
>there's a bottle of extra virgin olive oil kept on standby for an extra kick if needed
>there's a lot of exposed wiring- most of it attributed to the sound system

>a large part of the ship's diagnostics system is wrapped up in seeding textbook torrents

>the pneumatic door system was chosen over a hydraulic system due to an unfounded suspicion of fluid fluctuations in different atmospheres causing trouble during emergencies- the pressurized canisters have an embittering agent meant to dissuade huffing, which gets released in a cloud of vapor whenever a door opens. Keep your mouth closed when going through the ship

>the previous owner signed up for a federal ark project, and now there are literal tons of seeds stowed on the ship. It's a felony to dump them and it's a six-month process to get removed from the list and find a replacement, during which the ship and it's crew must remain grounded

Here comes the most important question: how many of these quirks can we stick on one ship without making it several kilometers long?
What if we built a ship entirely out of spare parts taken from a scrapyard?

>>51192219
>while the oven is out of use, the Borrowers have devised a replacement out of several ships and a frying pan
>if they hover over it with their engines on full, you can use their exhaust as a grill

>>51286407
>>51293262
That anon does have a point. I'm usually live posting it and writing chunks in while on my way to sleep. Hence the spelling errors and so on.

I may respectfully disagree on the excessive exposition argument though, I rather like the tone personally.

Anyway writefag off to sleep now.

I was trying to think of things I'd do if I had a squadron of borrower ships living in my house, I rather like the idea of having them just *around* and hiding in the fishtank or something when there's company.

>>51301435
>All your family and friends think you have a whole wall unit of weird toy ships that you won't allow anyone to touch
>It's really the Borrower shipyard

>the driver software for the turret servos contains a cryptocurrency miner

>>51303463
>cryptocurrency miner
I tried googling...no good.

what is this?

>>51303650
bitcoin mining

>>51303463
The turret is actually military grade, but according to any info gleaned from scans and the ships computer it is a "dedicated mining platform" and a "mining laser" thus skirting interstellar arms law

>>51245737
>micromen factions fight wars in the vents
>fans are holy sites, offering protection from the enemy
>little incentive to destroy fans, smart enough to know that they need them to breathe
>sometimes fans mysteriously shut down
>hostilities usually follow, this race is particularly aggressive
>it's all a game played by the PCs

>>51301903
Shepherds model spaceships suddenly make way more sense

>>51303650
A program that generates cryptocurrency codes based on mathematical functions. Basically it is a bitcoin factory. The larger the amount of cryptocurrency on the market is the less simple numbers can be used and thus 'mining'(coin generation) takes up more and more computing power. Sort of like a natural illegal money printing limiter.

There's a button by the life support controls that is completely unlabeled. Commanding Officer Pierson fell on it a month ago, coincidentally the same day and hour as the terrorist attacks on Mars killed 16,000 people.

A couple days later, on a drunken dare, Navigator Springer hit the button. Next day, the news networks of the entire Sol system were broadcasting reports of the Cruise Vessel Aquamarine being holed by an asteroid. Almost to the minute Springer had pressed it, 4,000 people were lost to the void en route from Saturn to Earth.

Engineer Mikkel was next. A camera recorded her unordered attempt to pry the button off of the panel. We don't know why. She walked out of the airlock six minutes after pressing the button by mistake. She's just another object in solar orbit now.

The same second the button was flush with the panel, communications with the lunar city Heinlein went dark as orbiting satellites recorded the city lights doing the same.

Seven minutes later, their lights flickered back on. Seems that an antimatter reactor had almost lost magnetic containment, but some quick thinking by the technicians on shift kept the city safe.

We were all ready to chalk these events up as coincidences at a meeting the next day. Then someone mentioned that the longest anyone could live in a vacuum was one minute.

Sorry, I've just been rambling off and on lately! Anyway, think you're interested in buying the ship? She flies well, the cost isn't too bad, and she's the only ship for sale around here right now.

What do you say?

>>51304765
"Armed? Nah mate, she's just got a Rapid Salvage Array."

File: Ren-and-Stimpy-red-button-anim2.gif (546KB, 640x362px) Image search: [Google]

546KB, 640x362px

>>51307715

>>51296012
>ship either doesn't know or doesn't want to say why she lost thruster control
>engineer says he's not sure but he's trying to reproduce the error

>The heat dump is located along the center of the ship. It's noticeably colder at the far ends, and much hotter at the center.

>>51301903
>Borrowers leave a cruise ship, a radio controller and a map on the table
>they just want you to take them to the park and follow them around for a while