Vertical ships

[IronXZ]

Will vertical ship designs be possible to make? I think it would be great if it was, as it would increase the diversity of ship designs across the galaxy immensely. And vertical ships are really cool, of course:

And before anyone thinks the 3 sections ship design make it impossible, Sword of the Stars had vertical ships and 3 sections design.

 

[Red_warning]

Making a star ship with broadsides, stern and bow seems so impractical. Wouldn'the the optimal space ship design be a sphere? You could fire everywhere and turn on a dime, and you'd get the best possible structural integrity. Kinda boring though.

 

[Anschau]

I am pretty sure I saw some vertical ships in screen shots/concept art for Stellaris...

However, you forgot to the most impressive vertical ships, which are of course the of Advent capital ships. Praise the Unity.

 

[ParagonExile]

I am pretty sure I saw some vertical ships in screen shots/concept art for Stellaris...

However, you forgot to the most impressive vertical ships, which are of course the of Advent capital ships. Praise the Unity.

Unenlightened savage! The Unity must be cleansed and renewed!

But yeah vertical ships are neato.

 

[Angelic_Daemon]

Will vertical ship designs be possible to make? I think it would be great if it was, as it would increase the diversity of ship designs across the galaxy immensely.

I want my Nightmare and Bhaalgorn back.

 

[Chat]

Making a star ship with broadsides, stern and bow seems so impractical. Wouldn'the the optimal space ship design be a sphere? You could fire everywhere and turn on a dime, and you'd get the best possible structural integrity. Kinda boring though.

Generally, no. It's perfectly good if you're the most powerful thing around and can afford to have your entire battle plan being "I'm just going to plow straight through any hostile fleet with no regards to anything." So it's great when you're the Borg, who literally do just plow through fleets and just not care about the nuisances poking away at it from every side.

For everyone else, you're generally not going to be sitting in the middle of enemy fleets whenever you get into a fight. You might be fighting one on one, or against a fleet, but either way you're generally going to be keeping them in as few directions in regards to your ship as possible, which makes spheres or cubes a problem; only half of the ship can ever target another ship with direct fire weaponry. A pyramid shape on the other hand will only have one side that cannot fire on a given target, and if you flatten the pyramid into a dagger shape (Star Destroyers), you decrease the frontal target size and the space at the back that otherwise might not be doing anything, but keep roughly the same amount of guns on the target.

The other thing to remember is that spheres and cubes will have quite a bit of internal volume for its surface area, which might be perfectly fine or bad thing depending if you need that space, but it does mean more weight. A dagger/arrowhead shape will have much less volume compared to surface area, allowing for more weapon/sensor/thruster/etc emplacements for the ship's mass and size. So a well designed dagger shaped ship might be considerably more agile than a spherical ship while bringing far more weapons to bear. Even if the sphere comes at the dagger from above/below/side, the dagger still has the same number of guns on target as the sphere. The sphere only really gets an advantage when it comes from behind, but that's less likely since the dagger is probably more agile.

 

[Haldan]

Go to the Dev Diary about Fallen Empires.

 

[Umega]

This Dev Diary screenshot shows vertical ship designs in the distance, but it's a unique "fallen empire" design.

 

[Lord Kelvin]

Well, you can say something is horizontal or vertical depending of the surface point of reference. Given that in space there is no such a plane of reference, there is no vertical or horizontal concept

<mindblow>
In an alien fleet full of 'vertical' ships, your horizontal ships may very well look vertical to these alien creatures.
</mindblow>

 

[Korashy]

Well, you can say something is horizontal or vertical depending of the surface point of reference. Given that in space there is no such a plane of reference, there is no vertical or horizontal concept

<mindblow>
In an alien fleet full of 'vertical' ships, your horizontal ships may very well look vertical to these alien creatures.
</mindblow>

Well, yeah, but in a system, the frame of reference will probably be the planetary orbits. So you can at least cut it into two and then assign "up" and "down"

 

[Remoria]

Unless Im say an arachnid species that uses webs, in which case I might interpret the plane as being up and down Like a wheel in which case your ship is either left or right.

horizontal or vertical is a nonfactor for space craft, its depth vs width. Deep ships, shaped like the fore mentioned star destroyers as opposed to wide ships like the ships shown in this thread. The only universal frame of reference to measure by is in relation to the main engines, on anything but a pure sphere.

(And no pure spheres aren't the ideal large spacecraft design for a multitude of reasons especially with reaction drives)

 

[aruon]

i'd love to have ships that are vertical, saucer, cube or other odd shapes (goa'uld mothership anyone?) in addition to their design, there could be additional tactical options if stellaris AIs can accommodate such thinking.

 

[Samusas]

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[IronXZ]

This Dev Diary screenshot shows vertical ship designs in the distance, but it's a unique "fallen empire" design.

I did not pay attention to that detail of the photo, but my question still stands. Will players be able to build vertical ship designs? I don't want only fallen empires to have that option.

 

[XRW]

I don't see the significance of a vertical ship. Just insert your "ship model" mod of choice into the game and have at it. If there aren't mods for every major sci-fi franchise I'll be sorely disappointed.

 

[ashbery76]

I did not pay attention to that detail of the photo, but my question still stands. Will players be able to build vertical ship designs? I don't want only fallen empires to have that option.

You can pan and zoom to make them that way.

 

[Safehold]

I did not pay attention to that detail of the photo, but my question still stands. Will players be able to build vertical ship designs? I don't want only fallen empires to have that option.

The Fallen Empires are using a specific shipset. So it might be moddable in that you switch a few trait names around and edit your own shipset style with the ships you want in it. That's assuming there's no way to actually get them in game as your own.

 

[Esben_DRK]

Dear OP:
You link the Nightmare, the Myrmidon and the Tornado, but not the M O S T
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spaceship of all times, the everwonderful (t)rusty Naglfar, with two Quad 3500mm Siege Artillery batteries. To rectify your grave mistake:

 

[Kaiser Timo]

Vertical ships seems impractical to me, why amass great area of hitbox for asteroids or space junk? To me, a vertical battleship need to utility all its defenses to 100% when presenting such mass to the enemy. Thus straining the power of shield and defense abilities to the maximum when under fire.

 

[ParagonExile]

Vertical ships seems impractical to me, why amass great area of hitbox for asteroids or space junk? To me, a vertical battleship need to utility all its defenses to 100% when presenting such mass to the enemy. Thus straining the power of shield and defense abilities to the maximum when under fire.

Strictly speaking, in space a ship that isn't a cube or sphere is vertical no matter what. There's no such thing as vertical orientation in space. If the ship is bigger along one axis then it will be "vertical" from some perspective.