Hiver Design

[Ran Targas]

Y'all,

Has anyone given thought to deckplans for Hiver starship designs?

I've been toying with Hiver designed starships based on variations of a 26 m^2 hex instead of a 2.25 m^2 square. I justified following this design philosophy by 1) assuming hexagonal body plan would encourage an affinity for hexagonal structures and shapes and 2) rewriting OTU history slightly so the name Hiver came natural to the first human contactees due to the similarity of Hiver constructs to bee hive cells. Does that make any sense at all?

Just curious to see if anyone else has done any work in this area?

 

[far-trader]

(the following post is brought to you by neuronic regeneration, make a donation today and prevent another tragic example of confusion...)

Howdy,

That's a good idea, and not just limited to Hivers and Hexes. By mixing up the basic building block when designing deckplans you can make your creation more individualistic and get away from the human standard of 4 straight walls. I use ovals for Aslan design myself for one example. And I did an Alien/HR Geigerish mystery craft way back by using very organic shapes.

I would say that as nice as the idea of "Hiver" coming from first contact idiocy* I'd hope by the time we really reach the stars such simple minded prejudices and presumptions would be lost, but I'll bet I'm wrong

* example: "We have discovered India therefore these savages must be Indians."

So I'm not calling the idea stupid Ran (just the dummy on that first contact

) but I'm not sure I'd use it for another reason. Bee-hives aren't hexagonal. Honeycombs are but that is a small part of the hive. Still I do like the hexagonal idea from another perspective, that of a geodesic design. If you aren't familiar with geodesics and more importantly Buckminster Fuller please explore this site:

http://www.bfi.org/domes/

Basically for your Hiver design idea a geodesic dome makes a lot of sense. Sphere's are the best way to build large enclosed volumes (uses least material) and made of triangles arranged as interlocking hexagons is the best way to do it from a materials light but strong approach.

The first contact humans may very well have noted the hex design on the hull, perhaps even in the jump-grid glow and drew the analogy to honeycombs and been ready for slapping the Hiver name on whatever was inside. Which brings us back around to your idea, so yes, now I can get behind it

Now internally, how would the Hiver ship be built? I'd propose dividing the sphere into two domes, the "top" being the living space and the "bottom" being the engineering space.

The "top" would be mostly open and flat with an artificial grass-plains environment complete with some small animals and insects, a few trees and other plants, and a watering hole. While overhead the dome would be a holographic recreation of the skies of their homeworld, with hidden sytems to create rainfall and winds and temperature. The edges of the field would house camouflaged interfaces and control stations, as well as huge airlocks with open top grav-sleds for planetary access. I'd also put the, er, sanitary facilities here too. They would consist of nothing more than designated areas with quick drainage and clean-up bots that come out when the job is done. The illusion of being on the Hiver homeworld would be most convincing close to the center, probably where the watering hole would be, and less so at the perimeter, especially at the control stations.

The "bottom" would have all the fuel and machinery, and the maintenance bots to handle it via remote operation. The weapons systems would also probably be in this hemisphere and again remotly operated. And the cargo holds, yet again serviced by bots, with remote small craft even, would also be "down" here.

Dang

Now you've got me all interested in doing a set of deckplans for one of these monsters and so little time

Thanks for the inspiration

 

[Fritz_Brown]

Dan,
The Hivers are different from the K'kree, right?

 

[far-trader]

Thank you all for participating in this test of subtle manipulation. Now that Fritz88 has shown up as the first subject to be able to resist the influences embedded in the test the program is closed.

Now how the bloody hell did that happen? <Ahnold kkcent> "It's not a tumor."

Somewhere in there I was betrayed I tell you, by my own mind. IT'S THE HIVERS FAULT.

<ahem> Yes, I do know the difference but somehow jumped in with the wrong picture in my mind, sad and bizarre. Oh well. Just ingnore the post, I kinda think you all were anyway till Fritz88 showed up. Or you were all to kind to tell this old addled gamer he'd lost his mind

 

[mike wightman]

Originally posted by far-trader:
The first contact humans may very well have noted the hex design on the hull, perhaps even in the jump-grid glow and drew the analogy to honeycombs and been ready for slapping the Hiver name on whatever was inside. Which brings us back around to your idea, so yes, now I can get behind it

Now internally, how would the Hiver ship be built? I'd propose dividing the sphere into two domes, the "top" being the living space and the "bottom" being the engineering space.

The "top" would be mostly open and flat with an artificial grass-plains environment complete with some small animals and insects, a few trees and other plants, and a watering hole. While overhead the dome would be a holographic recreation of the skies of their homeworld, with hidden sytems to create rainfall and winds and temperature. The edges of the field would house camouflaged interfaces and control stations, as well as huge airlocks with open top grav-sleds for planetary access. I'd also put the, er, sanitary facilities here too. They would consist of nothing more than designated areas with quick drainage and clean-up bots that come out when the job is done. The illusion of being on the Hiver homeworld would be most convincing close to the center, probably where the watering hole would be, and less so at the perimeter, especially at the control stations.

The "bottom" would have all the fuel and machinery, and the maintenance bots to handle it via remote operation. The weapons systems would also probably be in this hemisphere and again remotly operated. And the cargo holds, yet again serviced by bots, with remote small craft even, would also be "down" here.

If you flatten the sphere then you end up with a canonical K'kree ship - including the engineering robots

Which is exactly what the Hivers want them to look like - great big archery targets floating through space

Ran does state, however, that this is a non-canonical version, so making the internals more cell-like in construction may not be a bad idea.

 

[Chuck Anumia]

I was considering that the Hivers would be travelling "Forward" so the ship would be divided fore and aft. The living space/Flight control room forward and the Drive room aft.
Perhaps the cargo bay would be under the living space? Or between the living space and the Engineering section?

HMMMM....Yup.