[ThesaurusRex]

Lately I've been examining the details of the SD Lucifer and one particular idea has come to me. This idea involves the possible creation of a new ship design. Before I begin, I would like to make clear that this theoretical ship relies on several assumptions. The first assumption is that shivans can survive in space. This assumption stems from a video clip from one of the the FS1 CD's that shows a shivan latching onto a GVF Thoth and causing it to crash into a nearby PVD Typhon. A second assumption is that shivan can survive entry into subspace while outside of a ship. There is no evidence to support this assumption but it may not be of major importance. The final assumption concerns Lucifer shield technology. The technology that gave the Lucifer impenetrable shields must be reusable on other ships. The general idea is a shivan ship with no hull. The Lucifer's shield system should make the hull superfluous. It may seem like an odd idea but it makes sense if all the previous assumptions are considered. With a shield system as strong as the Lucifer's we can guess that any weapon strong enough to penetrate the shields should be able to render any hull useless. Of course, I'm basing this claim on capital ship weaponry since no such purely shield breaking weapon exists for them. The purpose of the hull for maintaining an inside environment could be ruled out if shivans can survive in open space and during entry into subspace. I hope that this post has allowed you to get a close estimation of my idea. In closing, I believe that this new ship class must be crewed by extremely skilled and brutal shivans since it must destroy all enemies around it before entering subspace. It may also serve as a point of interest that the appearance of such a ship in battle may wreak havoc on any enemy that sees it since it would be similar to seeing a person without any skin.

[Dilmah G]

Yeah, it'd be interesting, but for this to work we have to treat the shield like we would a hull, and attach engines to it, attach some weapons, and it would just look plain weird, if you can get us some concept art or something that'd be great.

[FreeSpaceFreak]

With a shield system as strong as the Lucifer's we can guess that any weapon strong enough to penetrate the shields should be able to render any hull useless.

You're forgetting one minor thing there

Gunnery control, power up photon beam cannons. Commence plasma core insertion.



In addition, like Dilmah G said, you'd need a place to put weapons, engines, and of course the shield generators.

[ThesaurusRex]

With a shield system as strong as the Lucifer's we can guess that any weapon strong enough to penetrate the shields should be able to render any hull useless.

You're forgetting one minor thing there

Gunnery control, power up photon beam cannons. Commence plasma core insertion.



In addition, like Dilmah G said, you'd need a place to put weapons, engines, and of course the shield generators.

Hmm, good point. However, it seems that if the beam were strong enough to break through the shield of the Lucy then it would be strong enough to break through any hull underneath. The beam may just go directly past the shields and slice the insides of the ship, similar to some of the anti-fighter beams. However, keep in mind that the shield on the Lucy was extremely special. Perhaps, it may have also been impenetrable to beams. Of course, there is no real assessment of the effectiveness of beam weapons against the Lucy's shield since the Lucy has never been attacked by such a weapon.

Concerning the placement of the weapons, engines, and other components, these items would still be attached to the structure of the ship. The frame and everything else would remain in place but there would be no hull around it. It may be easier to imagine a regular ship with multiple compartments on the outside that are exposed to the elements. Of course, there are some key differences between the actual concept ship and the ship in the previous sentence but the example should be easier to imagine.

It would also be interesting if shivans could be animated crawling all over the ship.

[General Battuta]

A skeleton ship would look very cool, but as has been pointed out, all beams seem to penetrate shields (at least fighter and bomber shields.)

[BengalTiger]

And since the Big 'C' was designed to kill a Lucy without using subspace 'exploits', I'd say that TerSlash is enough to pierce a Lucy's shields, at least in the eyes of GTVA constructors and engineers.

What about putting the crew inside the "bones", and keeping a skeleton design to allow beams that hit the ship...

fly through it doing mostly no damage at all?

Then the shields would also make sens to keep non-beam weapons out.

[Sushi]

Along these lines, what I'd like to see is a "shield generator" support ship that projected a large, tough bubble shield for fighters or bombers to hide behind. The main use would be supporting bomber runs. Naturally, the shield wouldn't prevent enemy ships from flying inside of it or from using their weapons to full effect once inside. Basically, it would force anyone attacking to close to inside the shield range before engaging (or use a ton of firepower to take the shield down first).

[Commander Zane]

Basically, it would force anyone attacking to close to inside the shield range before engaging (or use a ton of firepower to take the shield down first).

Or just use their cruisers to pop everything with AAA beams.

[Flipside]

I did a tech-test of a shield generator ship once, it worked pretty well, all things considered. The hard part at the time was actually getting the ships it was escorting to stay behind the shield when enemy appeared, instead of zooming out to meet the enemy, thus rendering the shield-ship useless.

I'm wondering if the SCP supports non-solid shield meshes, however, so you could have large, shielded ships, but with gaps in the shielding, or ships that simply project a large shield forwards, but are weak from behind?

[Commander Zane]

You could probably just model the shield as such so part of it goes into the ship.

[Flipside]

I tried something like that, problem is, the shield has to be 1-sided, if you create the shield so that it folds down inside the ship, you end up with normals facing towards the ships it is supposed to be protecting, so your own ships would end up being unable to fire out from behind it.