>All that means is that the ship's company of the IKV HoSghaj
>are perfectly capable of figuring out their own missions without an
>elephantine High Command structure to guide them. The ship doesn't
>literally make its own decisions...

Ah. My apologies then. Just kind of thought a nice secret weapon would be a Klingon battlecruiser with a fully funtional, onboard ACI. Since the IPO has a mission statement of trying to build ships that are unique, I figured a ship that was either fully self-sustaining or possessed variable geometry might fall into that category. My mistake... Got a bit excited... I'm going over there for a while and calm down. :-)

Static-Pulse
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com
(edited for grammar)

>Static-Pulse

You just threw a thought my way. What would the personality of a Klingon ACI be?

"Klingon honor demands that I do the fandango on your core!"

--rR

>You just threw a thought my way. What would the personality of a
>Klingon ACI be?

"You are using a visual language to create that program? Your poor programming knowledge brings dishonor to your domain. A true Klingon hacker would have used C."

Static-Pulse
...or is that what I would be like as a Klingon ACI?
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com
(edited for grammar)

To hack with honor requires a grasp of Assembly language in three DIFFERENT hardware architectures! And enough raktajino to raise Kahless from the dead THREE MORE TIMES!!

(Raktajino is the Klingon equivalent of coffee. I find not one reference to a Klingon equivalent of Jolt, Coke or Moxie.)

--
Geoff Depew - Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Malakite of Lightning and Angel of Tech Support Professionals
(They won't give me LARTs, they say that's restricted to Michael.)

I bow to your excellence! :)

Static-Pulse
- the most impulsive post alive
DarkBeast.com

Maybe it's just me, but I can't see a Klingon of any variety doing a fandango of any variety.

-- Bob
---------------
500 plastic ducks.
1 world.
Infinite possibilities.
http://www.ifoundaduck.com

It's not a fandango. A "fandango on core" is when a program gratuitously overwrites memory. The image should be one of Riverdancing on a fallen enemy.

--rR

reRob, I know that -- I know my Jargon. I was attempting (and obviously failing) to be humorous.

-- Bob
---------------
500 plastic ducks.
1 world.
Infinite possibilities.
http://www.ifoundaduck.com

In other words, it's not Andromeda Ascendant? ;)

Patrick Chester
"...could you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

"Ah, Captain Kirkules. Pleasure to have you aboard. I've heard so much about you."

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

This is correct. Lots of probably boring technical details follow. You have been warned.

The Predator-class scout was based on a captured B'rel-class Klingon escort ship (commonly nicknamed "Bird of Prey") in the early 2000s. It's rather smaller than the B'rel, having a crew of only one or two rather than the Bird of Prey's 12-15 - about the size of a Corellian light freighter, less the wings, with a two-place cockpit in the forward pod, since it's not big enough for a full bridge.

(The Klingons have been using that basic design since the 1980s, and the D-series battlecruiser design even longer. Once they find a spaceframe that works, they upgrade the internal equipment for as long as possible rather than inventing new things for the sake of having them new. They reverse-engineered the Predator not long after they went into WWWA service - they call that version the toQDuj mach (Little Bird) class. There's also yet another version of this same spaceframe, the K'vort class, which is bigger than the B'rel, a light cruiser comparable to the Miranda class.)

IKV HoSghaj, the warship on loan from the Imperial Defense Forces to the IPO, is a D-7M K't'inga-class heavy cruiser. We'll meet some of its crew in the next story.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

Still thinking....

A Conestoga-class transport (the USS Sulaco) might be suitable, but I'd suggest making some modifications:
1. Replace the tachyon shunt with a hyperdrive motivator
2. Add shields
3. Beef up it's armament
4. Maybe replace the engines

Zack Cohen

5. If using the Sulaco, be sure any extra "passengers" have been removed...

Regards,
Jeanne

http://www.jhedge.com
http://go.compuserve.com/Anime

Jeanne

Ewww...

Of course, FTL travel in UF doesn't require all passengers to stay in hibernation so it's possible to actually search the ship en route.

Just don't chase after the ship's cat.

Patrick Chester
"...could you and your associates arrange that for me, Mr. Morden?"

No...the Nostromo is the ship where you don't chase the cat.

The Sulaco is the ship you check over from stem to stern before leaving...lest you pick up anything...unwanted. :)

Brian Yaple
BYapes
...who totally ignores Alien 3...

Okay people, the jokes are going completely over my head. Start explaining.

Still thinking....

The Nostromo is the ship from the movie Alien.
The Sulaco is the ship from the movie Aliens.

--
Geoff Depew - Mephron
Haberdasher to Androids, Malakite of Lightning and Angel of Tech Support Professionals
(They won't give me LARTs, they say that's restricted to Michael.)

Ah, okay.

Still thinking....

The Nostromo set down on LV-426 to answer a distress call. One of the crew members, Cain, brought back a parasitic xenomorph that was responsible for the deaths of the other members of the crew, with the exception of Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley and the ship's mascot, a marmalade tabby named Jonesy. During the crisis situation, the ship's synthetic person, Ash, malfunctioned and injured several members of the crew before being destroyed. At least that's what the Company says.

The Sulaco was the U.S. Colonial Marine Corps transport assigned to investigate the loss of contact with the terraforming colony on LV-426, more commonly known as "Acheron." According to the military reports, they encountered a number of the xenomorphs that Warrant Officer Ripley originally encountered, and the two squads sent were killed in action, with the exception of Lcp. Hicks and civilian consultant Ellen Ripley, who was sent as an expert on the situation. The synthetic assigned to the unit, Bishop, was damaged in action, but it is believed that its memory core was recoverable. One civilian, a young girl, evidently was also rescued before the nuclear power plant for the colony went critical mass and exploded.

>Still thinking....

Well, that's good. Too many people don't.

Ebony the Black Dragon
aka Draco Draconis Ebenium
known to the U.S.C.M.C. as Aaron F. Johnson,
Senior Editor, Living Room Games
http://www.lrgames.com

Watch the Alien movies. Well, the first two and a bit of the third. The ships used in the jokes were the ships from the first two movies. The Nostramo was the ship that first encountered the Alien, which ended with Ripley blowing the nice ship up, only to have big black and acidic stow away on the escape pod. The Sulaco was the ship the transported the marines to the colony where they were all killed in a number of violent and painful ways. Eventually Ripley fought the queen alien on the Sulaco, before she blasted it out the Airlock. Of course, in the few seconds before anyone noticed the queen, she laid several eggs that resulted in facehuggers wandering the ship, and led to the last two Alien movies.

Matrix Dragon
"What is it about Aliens and airlocks?"

Hmm, I'm sure theres a sick joke in this somewhere.

And I'm not gonna say it.....

No, don't watch the 3rd movie. It is bad - utter shit. It starts with a plot hole big enough to fly the SDF-23 through and goes downhill from there.

>Of course,
>in the few seconds before anyone noticed the queen, she laid several
>eggs that resulted in facehuggers wandering the ship, and led to the
>last two Alien movies.

And this is the plothole - SHE NEVER LAID ANY EGGS! Her egg-laying bits WERE BLOWN UP! SHE DIDN'T HAVE THEM WHEN ONBOARD THE SHIP!

On top of that, she never, ever left the hanger. Alien3 shows the eggs in the cryo-chamber area! WTF?!

It is like the writers never watched Aliens before writing the movie.

That and they completely changed the alien's biology - the host creature is not supposed to have any effect on them. They're just parasites really. But they made the one in Alien3 4-legged since it comes out of a dog.

Christ it sucks.

And Alien4 starts with the disadvantage of having to have had Alien3 happen to set it up - and goes downhill from there with *hideously* bad 'cloning' pseudo-science. *Again* changing the biology so that somehow the alien DNA mixes with the host - so that a *blood sample* from Ripley in Alien3 allows them to clone her *and* the alien - because she was infected when the sample was taken...

Ok, ok, I'm stopping myself now before I *really* start to rant about what shit those two films are.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

The real irony, to me, is that Sigourney Weaver was quite vocal in her approval of the last two movies (and I think she was a producer or somesuch on the fourth one), despite the sheer idiocy and utterly fucked-up mythology (acidic blood that eats through several decks of the Nostromo only burns someone by A4?) within them, yet she had the nerve to decry an Aliens vs. Predator film (and the novels, and comics, and games, for that matter) as being untrue to the Alien mythos.

Idiot.

-- Sean --

http://www.thebrokenlink.org The Broken Link 4.0 is live!
"All tribal myths are true, for a given value of 'true'." -- Terry Pratchett
Follow my random thoughts
Follow my creative process

Yeah - and after Aliens she said she didn't want to do more. Then she did Alien3. Then she said she was really, truly done with the franchise. Then she did Alien4.

Not that I wouldn't star in Alien5 if they threw that kind of money at me.

>fucked-up mythology (acidic blood that eats through several decks of
>the Nostromo only burns someone by A4?)

That I didn't have a problem with - if you accept the fscked up biology and cloning crap the money is based on. The blood wasn't full strength alien blood, it was hybridized with human blood - watered down in a way.

-MegaZone, megazone@megazone.org
Personal Homepage http://www.megazone.org/
Eyrie Productions FanFic http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
See what I'm selling on eBay

That's kind of an awkward crew size for UF, for some reason. Warships, if that's what you're aslking about, tend to be smaller (a dozen or less) or larger (several hundred). In Star Trek, the Defiant class supposedly has a crew of 40, but those don't exist in UF. (Well, there was a class of starships named Defiant, developed by the WDF not long before the Fall, but they weren't like the ones from DS9 and they weren't successful. The technology didn't exist at the time to mass-produce a capable warp ship that small.)

I'm not sure of the crew complement of a Corellian CR90-type corvette (à la Tantive IV), offhand. That might be suitable.

The Freespacers might also have something that size, but Kris is at a con this weekend.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

Hmm, so I might have to create a larger crew. Jeesh, and I've only made seventeen people so far. After that blasted Wolverine storyline it's been harder to make large amounts of characters.....

Thanks!

hmmmm. Gryph has been at the retcon cookie tin again, I see.

Haven't you stated a couple of times that the B'Rel was copied from the
Predator, which Gryph created based on the ship from ST3?

Or is this another symptom of that "transfictic settling" you described in another thread, wherein the universe 'forgets' that Star Trek existed and accepts that things like Klingons are normal?

>
>(The Klingons have been using that basic design since the 1980s, and
>the D-series battlecruiser design even longer. Once they find a
>spaceframe that works, they upgrade the internal equipment for as long
>as possible rather than inventing new things for the sake of having
>them new. They reverse-engineered the Predator not long after
>they went into WWWA service - they call that version the toQDuj
>mach (Little Bird) class. There's also yet another
>version of this same spaceframe, the K'vort class, which is
>bigger than the B'rel, a light cruiser comparable to the
>Miranda class.)
>
>IKV HoSghaj, the warship on loan from the Imperial Defense
>Forces to the IPO, is a D-7M K't'inga-class heavy cruiser.
>We'll meet some of its crew in the next story.
>
>--G.
>-><-
>Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
>Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

--
"Eat hot blazing photonic pulse fire, you alien invading human-abducting saucer-alien bastards!" -- Captain of EAS Bellerophon, firing on a Vree cruiser.

You can take it as that, or that I've (as you speculate) done a retcon, or that I'd forgotten the order they came in - and, having forgotten about the Predator's origins, thereby made a number of inaccurate assertions as to what Our Hero's first starship design was in recent months. If he did design the Predator, it had to have been first, since they were in service by the early 2000s, centuries before Love Missle F1-11 or NX-01.

(OTOH, that means the original Predators must have been hyperdrive-equipped, not warp-driven; that'd be a relatively new modification - but I digress.)

Under this assumption, the B'rel and K'vort classes would both be upscaled copies of the Predator.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor in Chief, Netadmin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/