I'm gonna try this again...

Looks fantastic Hops, and I love your attention to detail.

The only thing I'd change is that I always thought of the Zoran as pretty much human, but I'm not going to make you change that after putting so much work into it.

Overall, looks great.

I'll be posting directions for their ships later, and the weapons used in space by both sides.
For now, I'll say that the Zoran weapons are pretty much the same concept in space as on land, but the other species use very different weapons in space.

Did you come up with a name, or would you like me to?

You go ahead. I'm burnt out on names - with fifty books under my belt, and all.

Right now I'm just feeling annoyed by the damn web. I can't find the M@#$%F@#$%%^& page where DQ hid their job applications.

Grrr.
-Etsharrin Hopsarrith

Right then, jolly good.

Great! So.... thought of anything yet?
-Etsharrin Hopsarrith

I'll post my ideas later today, I gotta go to school in a few minutes.

So then, for the space ships:

Zoran
The basic Zoran ship design is more along the lines of a traditional Sci-Fi ship. Long, somewhat box-like and rectangular, and brimming with cannons on either side. There are several different ship classes, and I'll list their traits below. Here is a (very rough) example of a Zoran warship:


I made that some time ago on GIMP, but it does serve as a sample of the basic ship design.

Weapons
Zoran ship-board cannons fire in a similar way to their small arms. A cylindrical shell of "cold" (or un-ionized) plasma is loaded into the breach of the cannon automatically from inside the ship.
Unlike the Zoran small arms, it is ignited by a laser firing into the back of the shell, quickly superheating and ionizing it and thus causing it to rapidly expand. The expansion causes it to fire out of the gun and impact its target almost instantly, depending on range.
Zoran primary cannons, those mounted on the front of all ships, are the most powerful on any ship smaller than a Battleship. They use much larger shells, and fire more like large blobs of plasma (similar to the Covenant's plasma torpedoes) that devastate most ships.

FTL Drives
The Zoran use wormhole drives to get around the galaxy. These open wormholes directly in front of the ship, and allow for instantaneous travel across the vast distances of space.
The accuracy of the exit hole diminishes however, over vast distances. It is preferable to make several smaller jumps rather than singular large ones, lest one accidentally guide their ship into the heart of a star.

Ship Classes
Zoran Frigate
The lightest ship of the Zoran Navy. It has a mere ten guns on either side, and a very small main gun. It does however feature a smaller profile, with its hull being angled out towards the starboard and port sides, but being much more broad on the upper and lower decks. The engines are attached in a similar way. It is 1,000 feet long, and 300 feet wide..
Zoran Destroyer
Has 22 batteries along both sides. Primary cannon is twice as large as that on the Frigate. While this weapon on the Destroyer is not the largest or strongest of its kind, even in small numbers they can destroy capital ships. Its shape is slightly broader than the Frigate's, being more hexagonal from the bow. It is 1,500 feet long and 800 feet wide.

Isn't it just non-plasma matter if it isn't ionized?

Kasrkin Seath wrote:Isn't it just non-plasma matter if it isn't ionized?

Yes Seath, but it is heavily condensed matter that is made to be ionized and therefore become plasma. Although technically it is not really "cold" plasma, that is still the term for it.

Uh... those are some damn small ships. A thousand feet? That's like... a Boeng 727 there. What's it got a max crew capacity of, 11? There's no room for anything! The whole ship would be just engines and guns and coolant lines and atmospheric equipment, both containment and distribution and stuff... as well as long-distance food storage and waste management and where's the airlock go?

GAH, make it bigger, make it bigger!! What about armor? Any kind of thickness to the hull at all and the interior of these babies is like an old-style submarine. You got to turn sideways just to fit down the halls!

BIGGER, BIGGER, PLEASE!!
-Etsharrin Hopsarrith

Hm.

Well, I was going more off of some modern battleship lengths for the smaller ships.

Well, how about this,

The Frigate can be 3,500 feet long, and 1,000 feet wide.
The Destroyer can be 5,000 feet long, and 2,000 feet wide.

Is that long okay?

I plan on making more ships, so next time I'll consult you on size beforehand. If you'd like to give me a few suggestions now, I'll gladly listen to them.

still would like to help

and pie get HAWX in free flight you can bomb Tokyo

Well, battleships are all fine well and good, but then, those things don't have to keep out vacuum, nor do they need to be armored against seemingly benign things like unfettered radiation, or ion storms, or things like micrometeorites or whatever all else is up there in space.

A starship is vastly more complex and must have a million more things on it than your average wavecutter. I mean... sharks? Meh. Solar winds? Yikes.

My front pasture is bigger than your average American battleship, and I can get from one end of it to the other (and it's hilly as hell) in less than eight minutes. Aside from it's physical features, having a crew as small as your average American battleship would have would be really, really agonizing for a space-borne vessel.

The ship you measured out hasn't got room for stardrives... but I would happily agree that you could take the thing for a spin down through atmosphere and possibly even land the sucker without breaking it.

Or anything on it.

You must understand, the lack of an ecosystem will really seriously disorient a whole bunch of people. It's why isolation is considered a punishment in the judicial system. I can't really tell you how big is big enough, but just a few thousand feet is easily not enough.

*shrug* Just my take on it, is all.

One must consider all angles before embarking on something of such magnitude!!

So... I must admit I'm better at this with biomass, not engineering... and I hope you can give me better than that GIMP image on your starship's exterior, cos I'm absolutely HORRIBLE at drawing machines. They just... escape me.

-Etsharrin Hopsarrith

Well, I've been working on some designs lately (When I get some good Frigate specs down, I'll scan them and post them here) but I'm still working out an exact design.

I did read this a few days ago, and I've been thinking about it since then.

What I'm going to do is draw up the exterior, engine specs, and maybe weapon specs of a ship, then post them, and we can decide what the exact sizes of everything should be.

Sounds like it'll work to me. I'll try to keep an eye on it.

-Etsharrin Hopsarrith

...

Okay, about the ship designs...

They didn't happen. Yet.

I want to come up with a very distinct style for both the Zoran, and their enemies. The weapons are already very different, but I just can't come up with designs for the Zoran.

Anyway, about the Zoran...

I've always pictured them as being essentially human, in looks. While I do like the designs you came up with (I plan to bring those back as natives to another planet later on, if we ever get this going) I just can't picture the Zoran as anything other than athletic, slightly larger humans, who are adapted to hot environments, and do not store fat.