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I always drew up deckplans and external profiles of the ships I designed in Traveller.
Ships that would never touch atmosphere got fins.
When asked why I replied that they looked cool.
This often got responses along the lines of, "nobody would really do that."
Sir, I have been to far too many car shows and seen the automotive equivalent of fins on a spaceship to ever think that nobody would ever do that.
I want a BIG American spaceship... with TAIL FINS! Yep. Someone would do it.
ReplyDeleteWell, you did say ship rather than boat, so they're going to have jump drives. The fins may serve a purpose in hyperspace, and I defy any of your detractors to show that they don't.
ReplyDeleteFuzzyGeff was there when I had some odd shaped ship designs that didn't seem to make any practical sense, but looked neat.
DeleteI came up with the justification that hyperspace required the shapes in a form of "streamlining" that improved efficiency. Efficiency not reflected in the rules, but a color note for the game.
The T4/FF&Sv2 answer for "why the fins" gets to include "I needed surface area to radiate out all the heat produced by the various ship systems. Since I needed extra surface area anyway, I decided to add area in a way that looks cool."
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