There's one hitch though: Every experiment into this fails miserably and totally. The cocoons created in the process, having various lab animals implanted in them, result in massive versions of said animals which promptly expire; or in multi-megaton piles of deformed biological matter.

Obviously; something had been missed. One of the lead researchers reaches a conclusion and begins testing the process on himself, against any attempts to dissuade him.

The discovery he makes is that the missing element is sapience; the process is reliant entirely on the sense of self, and without it the necessary conversions simply don't take place. The original creators of the tech had created a sort of semi-sapient construct for the purpose, but in their haste, humanity has simply discovered how to create living starships out of themselves.

The nature of their biological FTL drive means they're the only viable means of lightspeed travel man has discovered; and with no viable alternatives, volunteers are sought and production goes into full swing.

TL;DR -> Setting about mile tall starship cyborgs.

If the ships are biological, why did you summarize them being cyborgs?

Anyway, how complicated is the conversion process? What sustains the ships? How do they interact with the crew? How fast is ship production/volunteer rate?

Failing that, Ship-Tan thread.

<.< Woulda liked some thoughts thought

>>18734459
It's an interesting idea, although, I have to wonder, what kind of shape would the ships take? A humanoid shape and form, even sized up is not really the most practical form for space travel, not to mention square cube law.

Just how willing are people to give up their humanity to form these star-ships?

>>18734458
They are biological; but cybernetics are generally used to enhance their performance in this way or that.

The process is complicated enough that human scientists arn't sure they really get it. They're just following the instruction manual and crossing their fingers for the most part.

They run on internal fusion; basically via a biological reactor that replaces the heart. Any additional materials for repair or cell restoration have to be ingested normally.

Generally via voice communications, but they also generally have a clone made of their original body before the process starts, and remote control it inside themselves.

Process for a standard ship takes about two years, I'd say.As for rate of volunteers? Hard to say

>>18734459
Ship-tan you say? Any chance you have Star Destroyer-tan or is that outside the scope of whoever has done this stuff?

>>18734487

>be a giant
>travel the cosmos
>herald your species' arrival to the stars as a technological demigod

Uh, yes? Please?

Well that's just odd, and fetish-y. It would make more sense if you weren't making ships out of people so much as turning a person into the core of a ship, and then they and the system guides the production from there into whatever form is appropriate.

>mfw This is my fetish.
Writefag reporting in. Are my services needed?

>>18734487

Not the most practical at all, no, but it's what you get, and at the scale, there's plenty of room to play with.

What were muscles act as gravity induction generators in them; they exist in a constant state of microgravity.

>>18734529

Romance between ship and crewmember of opposite gender?

>>18734487
> I have to wonder, what kind of shape would the ships take?

For space travel? As much as I like giant women, cyborgs, and combinations thereof, I'd say the more inhuman the better. Big metal and flesh constructs that look like ships rather than people, with the brains of humans controlling them. Maybe have internal flesh avatars to control to interact with people onboard and try to be connected to people still, but definitely shiplike in form.

>>18734529

Knock yourself out. I've got some established lore in my head. (and even a pointless justification for why they're predominantly female, even if in canon they're not)

>>18734519
Oh yes, I won't lie, the idea is straight out of the macrofag community, so fetishy is something it is. But I figure there's a lot that can be done with it outside of that.

>>18734517
That'd be the big attraction of it,y es.

>>18734560
Possibly even between ship and commander, that's an idea that's been thrown around in private discussion.

>>18734571
That'd be the more practical approach, yes, but the idea was more about fun than practicality.

>>18734529
Tell the life story of a woman who volunteers for this, plus experiences in space, as a flashback as she dies from the guns of a pirate vessel. Maybe implicate the pirates get their ships from non-willing subjects for a bit of horror.


>>18734560
Or that. That's good. Maybe have the ship board avatars mentioned above come into play, but only after a while. Have our POV character not know that's a thing I guess, let him agonize over the relationship for a bit before going 'oh, that's much better'.

>>18734573

Fetish or no, I have to go with this;

>>18734517

Imagine, if you will, a giant xeno-humanoid figure appearing in Earth orbit - visible with telescopes. You'd shit yourself. Doubly so when the dudes you see on TV shaking hands with the president look just like it.

Now imagine being on the other side of that equation. Terrifying space gods would-

oh my
oh fuck

A FLEET OF GALACTUSES

HOLY SHIT

>>18734573
>pointless justification for why they're predominantly female

I can think of it along these lines:
Women are more likely to be colony ships and research vessels, being better equipped to nurture its inhabitants.
Men are more likely to be warships or explorers, more aggressive or filled with wander-lust to 'hunt' down new areas.

>>18734571

>pic related

well..
just be careful about gigantism fetishists.

That said, Interesting?
Are they still people-shaped or have they been steamlined or even converted altogether into something more like the original Living Ship?

because if they were just giant humans it might be really weird.
>>18734487
ah, someone else askes as i type.

Could be neat.
Makes me think of the BrainShips series/setting from McCaffery, but that was genetically crippled humans getting a chance to live a rewarding life by being wrapped in life support and neural links to plug them into spaceships, stations, cities, all kinds of places.

Her writing were usually on a smaller level, with small scoutships piloted by one of these augmented individuals being accompanied by a single human partner. And having hijinks.Brain and Brawn.

A giant ship with a human consciousness and a large crew makes me think of EveOnline, if a pod-pilot was actually turned into a ship instead of just Perceiving themselves as the ship while they were plugged in.

>>18734519
this post makes the most sense.
The human-based biological element is the core of the ship, maybe some kind of impossible to replicate biological fusion system and stardrive combined. Their surface (which still looks like skin, mostly) gets wrapped in shielding and armor along with more traditional Terran technology docking thrusters, fuel and food bladders and a pod of life-support areas for the crew of assistants. Systems would tie into the greatly-enhanced mind of the subject with fairly standard (for the setting) technology.

>read again before posting.
>conformed for fetishy.
>well, i tried.

>>18734603

Entirely possible. I was running with humans pre-discovery tech being eclipse-phase level, so possible to just erase a ships head and rig controls. Though on that note, I figured other races, and some human factions, still use traditional starships. Humanity just didn't figure out a mechanical means of FTL. Yet.

>>18734596
>That'd be the more practical approach, yes, but the idea was more about fun than practicality.

I thought my idea could still be fun...besides, when you get into it, I think there's a lot more awkwardness and fun you can have with a starship that the people flying don't think of as a human. As a person? Sure, they talk with her all the time! Great sense of humor and shares music tastes. But it's still a genderless ship. And then it starts to flirt with you, and you realize that you might be interested back.

>>18734628
That'd make the most sense.

My "pointless justification," is that the mental software patching the process requires was under government control, and it being a simple matter of slipping in a few lines to exacerbate maternal instincts and direct it towards normal humans, as a sort of subtle insurgence policy against any rogue actions.

>>18734645
OP's take on it, and thread content, confirmed for fetishy, but the neat thing about ideas is more than one person can have them. If you want to take your view on this and run with it, then by all means.

>Ship keeps hands and arms to proportion
>Dig out chunks of earth and grab asteroids

best mining vessel ever.

>>18734603
The ship weaved in and around the massive ice crystals. Ordinarily, she would be feasting upon the free water and minerals, but a sudden volley of steel upon her back reminded her of why she was fleeing.

Reminded. Remember. Memory.

Memory isn't something unfamiliar to Ships. No one ever told her, but she was sure that everyone on board knew she could remember every detail of her life before the Switch. They probably felt bad for her. As she hid behind a small moon, she realized that this was probably the closest thing to regret she would ever have. The regret that she never told anyone that she would much rather die in the cold black of space than to have never done any of this.

>>18734825
A bad boyfriend. A stolen car. A last chance.

It was the only reason she was where she was. Convicted of grand theft auto. Attempted murder. The only reason she didn't get a sentence was because the bastard deserved it and any lawyer worth his shit could see that. Defense didn't even care about the trial, they just wanted the bastard out of their court. Last she heard, he was doing hard labor out of Liefstead.

You don't steal a million dollar Old Earth car without getting something, though. Her life was a wreck, the only home she had was under the wheels of a corvette. If there had ever been anyone with truly nowhere to go, it was her.

Diving behind a crystal structure and twisting her body into a crevasse, she remembered the one thing that had saved her. Or rather, salvaged her. "See the stars! Be a hero!" the advertisement read in the clerk office. After scanning the number to call, she made the decision that would end her life, and help her start a new one in return.

Nine months. 7 of them were spent in a weightless womb, growing to inhuman shape and proportion. Her body stretched and grew, becoming more streamlined. She kept her arms and legs, which would hep her "defend human interests across the black". Her insides grew hollow, and massive. Her chest exploded forward in a bizarre answer to the problem of living space. Her neck grew more flexible, allowing her to turn her head in nearly every angle. She remembered the first thing she heard when she came out of that hellish womb.

The scientist in charge of producing her gazed at her. He could only whisper in awe. "Beautiful."

No one had ever called her beautiful.

Memory isn't something unfamiliar to ships. Regret was.

What kind of weaponry load outs would these ships have? Would the weapons be integrated into the ship or would they be external? Also how would this apply to mining operations?

>>18734839
Depends. For dealing with small threats, (Obviously relative to ship size,) it would be turrets or launcher hardpoints.

The general solution to ship defense I have in my head is a Steyr-produced semi-automatic rail pistol with a four meter bore.

Ah, the classic love story of Boy-ship meets Girl-ship.

HEY BABY YOU GOT SOME FINE NACELLES
YEEEEEAAAH I WANNA GET SOME BOARDING ACTION ON YOU
I LIKE A GIRL WITH BIG CARGO BAYS, YOU KNOW

>captain's face when

Slowly stirring awake, Angel stretched her arms out, then her legs, unballing herself from the curled up position she'd adopted in her slumber. She gave a slow spin around, her long pinkish purple hair forming a graceful arc behind her, and took in her surroundings. Far, far below, or, relatively below, her the planet mars glittered like a diamond-dust flecked red jewel, it's ruddy color mixed with the lights and reflections of an untold number of bio-domes upon its surface, and marbled by the dark clouds of gasses belching from the terraforming machinery.
In the opposite direction gleamed Phobos, one of the worlds two natural satellites to which were anchored mankind's largest shipyards. Deimos held seniority, and little of that planetoid could even be identified, the mass of materials about it shrouding it in the gleam of steel. Phobos retained its shape however, as much of the work there was done in independent orbital facilities; Facilities with which Angel was intimately familiar.
She completed her turn, her hair now billowing in a complete arc about her, and a small shock of electricity caused the strands to snap out straight, evenly spaced, the better to catch hint of the bursts of radiation speeding about the ether. Taking a deep breath of the void, a simple reflex, she concentrated on separating them, identifying the transmissions from the star-noise, slipping up as she allowed herself a moment to wonder at the fact she could do such things.
"Systems green..." A small male voice said in the back of her head, "Would you mind giving us some time to check things over when you wake up, Angel? We’re supposed to clear you before you start moving around like that..."
"Bite me Mark," she thought back, her lips curling in a small smile, "It's my body."

"Yes, well we're along for the ride, so let's have some consideration, eh?" The response came, sounding a little resigned, but amused regardless, "You're good to go...officially, now. You about ready for your jump test?"
That gave her pause, and she brought one finger to her lips in thought, deep violet eyes glittering in sudden eagerness, "Well I think I am, yes...I'm growing a little tired of just floating in orbit...it will be nice to actually move around some..."
"Well don't get too excited now, we're not going anywhere overly spectacular..." the voice of her operator, her captain, as he was officially titled, reminded her.
Captain! She thought to herself, how ridiculous to think he's the one in charge! Of course...there was the fact that there was more to her than she could manage herself, now that some of it did require conscious thought and intervention....she heard that the more experienced sorts could perform a lot of those tasks without any help, calculating jump vectors on the fly, multi-tasking through hundreds of interior tasks…but experienced was one thing Angel didn’t mind admitting she was not. Her lack of status did give her some excuse to be a little…unprofessional, now and then.

“I think it’ll be nice to see earth again at least. Up close, I mean.” she replies at length, her hands running over her still naked body. Most Navits had at least a body glove to call their own, though any expenditure of resources on her scale was something earned. She had heard a lot of arguments against bothering with clothing at all; certainly the resources could be put to better use. But in the end, it did still protect a Navit from charring on re-entry, and a bit of modesty never hurt anyone.
Besides there was so precious little she could call her own. The idea of owning clothes again was exciting.

Aaaand that's where I petered off when I wrote this a few months ago. I'll fiddle with it when I have more time

I'll do it, as long as I get Ideon armor.

>Biological carriers with biological fighters.

>>18735040
>smaller humans released from larger humans
>carriers renamed WOMBSHIPS
>ASSUMING DIRECT CUNTROL

No offense, but almost none of that is original. The ship could easily be a Reaper or a nid. The only thing original about it is the particular combination you made.

Macrophile here, and I just gotta say, do NOT make them human shaped. As awesome as it would be for me and others with the same fetish, it would be pretty damn weird for anyone else.

Buuuuuut, if you did make them human shaped, I imagine a giant hollow space marine. They float around space with back thrusters and feet thrusters. The metal suit they wear would be integrated into them and requires extensive work to remove. The benefits of having them be human shape makes it easier to relate to them in social situations and of course being able to land on a planet and walk around. You could also get some cool giant cyborg wrestling matches.

You know while you're at it just make it so their all female, lets just fuck it and make it as fetishy as possible. Screw the rules!

>>18735072
It would be weird, but that's the point, really. The point of giant human sized spaceships was that the whole concept is supposed to be at least a little uncomfortable.

>>18735062
>The only thing original about it is the particular combination you made.
That is the only possible original thing nowdays. Original combinations of unoriginal concepts.

>>18735097
>Human *shaped*

Man, it's too late to be typing.

>>18734296
Tleilaxu did it.

Almost everything they do was made of humans.

After years of failed attempts, they discover that all biological matter aboard the ship must be sapient.

Thousands upon thousands of the poor and weak are rounded up and fed to the construction process.

As humanity finally begins its first voyage with a bioship, they realise that the souls of those sacrificed to the ship remain onboard, haunting every inch of it. The only thing that prevented this discovery back on Earth was the planet's magnetic field, which overwhelms the souls' weak ESP abilities. Once in deep space, however, their hold on the crews' psychological state is unquestionable.

The first voyage brutally murders all on board. It still floats around the solar system, self-driven, as a ghost ship of a darker age.

ESP suppression systems are designed, and in the future will represent a ship's weakest point for sabotage.

Years later, certain "skilled" individuals learn to communicate with the souls. They become the most sought-after operators, as they possess an intimate link to the ship that no computer can emulate.

>>18735123
This, I like.

Sounds interesting. Were you ever planning on doing a campaign on it?

>>18735172
Possibly. Not quite sure yet how I'd go about it.
Also, found the perfect image to get the basic gist across.

How should these things be named? I think all ships should be called by their human names, but also allowed to choose titles.

Expect a rush to claim "Enterprise"

>>18735123

These "operators" as they would come to be called are a rare commodity. In the context of wholly uncontrollable overpopulation, the military detains millions for experimental research - to discover what makes an operator, and how to synthesise it.

Their eventual discovery, which fuelled great wars and marked the death of "humanity" (in the sense of human rights and such), revealed that operators could be created in a similar fashion to the bioship creation. Millions more are slaughtered in the name of research and development. Humans with the desired genes are bred in special facilities.

>>18734487
>not to mention square cube law.

The square cube law has ABSOLUTELY NO application in zero G. None at all. It also does not apply underwater, which is why whales are the largest animals.

As for practicality, there's no real reason why a humanoid shape isn't practical for space, other than the fact that our bones, mussels and limbs were all made for gravity. But aside from that, all that's really important is how much thrust these things can make. Also, a humanoid shape has a lot of surface area, which might be a good thing for heat dissipation (Although wings would probably be even better)

>>18735097
Uncomfortable in the 'I don't really know if we should be forcing a fetish out there' way and not the 'where does humanity end? Is it still a person with thoughts and goals? Can one have a human relationship or even friendship with this alien looking vessel?' way.

>>18735232

Can see the fetishy aspects of it, but you have to be pretty entrenched to declare anything with giant humanoids of any sort macrofaggotry. I prefer to see it more as Starship-Tan, the setting.

>>18735232

The fetishist would obviously want them to have completely human personalities. I can just see a little-girl starship going "uguuu~", while hugging her oni-chan-ship's leg.

For those like me who prefer the more grimdark approach, this "person" (for lack of a better term) would be tormented and hate-filled, permanently in a form of coma, and unable to communicate with humans.

>>18735274

The idea was that they'd have more processing power available than normal humans, and though their personalities would be perfectly human at first, they'd increasingly lose touch, and come to see human beings as simple, backwards, and inconsequential as anything but their own means of reproduction.

>>18735274
+
Communication and ship control would be via mind-probing. The ship's bridge would be the brain, and personnel serving there would require regular psyche evaluations.

+ for fetishists
Each ship can wake up to a FINAL FORM.

Captcha: Aievisi Nathaniel
(best ship name ever)

>>18735265
I'm just uncomfortable with leaving the blatantly exploitable fetish element. Also I like the starship like ships more, honestly. Themes playing with the meaning of humanity are fun for me, so I prefer the utterly inhuman starcraft. They're still humans deep down, but people can't see it easily. The hard physical changes, and mental changes brought on by the process could easily alienate people, but the humans who try to reach out past that are made for PC status. I'd probably run a game like that, with the party as crew on a vessel. The main story would be a political land grab by an antagonistic space nation, but the party interacting with the ship would be a fun thematic thing to play with.

I'm already planning to do something similar with an L5R game in the near future but with one of the founding Kami. It walks like a man, acts like a god, but is still an individual that wants to get along with the party, since they're important in the story.

I think I'd prefer the ship being more ship-like, with a human avatar.

If they have to be human-like, make sure they get some fucking battle-armor, like >>18734990 this guy.

I'd also be pretty interested in a campaign.

Normal RPG characters require a sanity check when they find out their ship's AI is actually a gigantic human brain.

For techpreiests it's Tuesday.

>>18735378
>I think I'd prefer the ship being more ship-like, with a human avatar.

In my vision of the setting I'm developing for a campaign pitch to give sometime, the ship the party is on doesn't do that. And since a lot of knowledge about the vessels is just hearsay, they probably don't know it can be done. I want them to be surprised when it extrudes a flesh golem or hard light construct. I might even flat out lie to them about it being able to do so.

>>18735412
>The PC's wouldn't be playing as ship(s)
Eh.

>>18735394

For a techpriest it would be TRIPLE HERESY.

>>18735394
If it was me I'd be pretty 'Oh shit this is so awesome.'

>>18735425
Fuck that man. If I wanted that we'd play a wargame. Maybe one if they want, but I cannot fathom out how to handle that mechanically or narratively.

>>18735529
To further exposit, it would run into the same issues if I were running Exalted and one character wanted to be an Alchemical who has since become a city. There's no rules for that shit, and I don't know how I'd let them be relevant to the party when the players are doing something that a city/ship can't participate in.

>>18735545
>>18735529
Get someone who'd be fine with not always capable of being there?

'Course this sounds like its going to be a pretty exploration-centric game, so the ship would be pretty involved, as it could actually help during planet shenanigans.

Or go the avatar route.

>>18735571
I think I might want to keep the ship in GM hands honestly. It's a lot of power, and it lets me use it as a plot device in some ways. I'll probably dwell on it more as it gets closer to being actually run as a game, since I currently have a full block of games. I am not comfortable running more than two, just for quality control reasons.

>>18735503
And then you realize that the ship was originally designed for a crew much larger than normal humans, even void-born.

And you realize the AI-brain-system isn't exactly installed with standard components. And all that red paint in Cargo Bay 3 is starting to look really suspicious.

Durendal directed me over here; I was one of the folks who did the original seed concept although he's done more than enough work with it that it's totally his baby too.

While there's certainly macrophilia-ok bits there, it's more intended as otherwise semi-hard sci-fi. Why use ships that look like humans? Because it's ALL THEY HAVE, and by the time humanity can research more technological means... well, everyone's used to Homo Sapiens Navitas."Why would you want to put all those citizens, many of them veterans who turned to civilian freight or passenger jobs, out of work? You some kind of *communist*, boy? My SISTER joined the Navy!" (And so on.)

Which isn't to say there aren't possible bumps in the timeline. There can be other races who don't have such extravagant ships, the aliens who left the tech behind... one possible line that's been kicked around: the technology was actually the first step to a form of transcendence; the original species that invented it are essentially all Q Continuum space-god types; a few seeded versions of the tech modified for other species in case they needed allies, or got lonely, or needed lulz, whatever.

So what happens when some well-established ship vanishes for a long time, only to reappear with whatever trigger to go to the next stage active? (Aside from all involved shitting their pants.)

Well I see that the size of the ship is related to how tall the person is and personality before going in. Also how the ship looks is depending on the person's subconscious' desired shape.

So you get some ships are "small" and look more like traditional spacecraft. Others are huge and other worldly, or any combination. However there needs protection against the void of space, and danger there. So external skin needs to be harden maybe ranging from chitin to metallic outer shell.

Of course being organic in nature, self repair is key. Also I like that FTL required an biological component which would explain the bioships.

>>18735628
It would be more unique to have the players be ships, like a merchant/pirate fleet. It adds a bit of a twist, otherwise it's like "oh ship is human, w/e" and 99.9% time most action will probably be planetside and having human bioships is a sideline thing.

Okay, quick notes on my initial thoughts for this game. Please, tell me if I'm an idiot or coming across as sleep deprived:

The party are the bridge officers on a relatively small vessel. One of the last of it's kind, the human born living vessels fell out of favor after we made first contact with a species that could perform FTL by purely scientific means. Our culture benefited greatly from their tech influx, and now the remaining living vessels are basically slowly being reduced by attrition. A pirate here, a border skirmish with a small xeno empire there...

Humanity is, at the moment, at peace. We've carved out a corner in the last two hundred years that is nothing short of staggering to human minds, but to the established races of the galaxy? We're a minor star empire, barely three hundred light years across, when the hundred and twenty thousand of the galaxy are but a few days journey for any determined party with a non-damaged FTL. However, our close alliance with the established species that shared tech with us has embroiled our young species in galactic politics as an allied state.

>>18735824

This enmeshment brings us to the party, in the unaging exploration vessel. Their mission is to survey and explore the vast wild space of the galaxy, find exploitable resources for our own people and as trade goods. However, one of the other dominant xenos species in the galaxy, chronic enemies or irritants of our own allies, begins to flare up old wounds and makes hostile moves on newly discovered resources. Our crew gets caught up in the mess when a small raiding patrol stakes a claim on the same rock they are.

>Hopefully this ends dramatically with both politics and a final showdown in space and land.

>The reason I wanted the living ships to be fading away is to add mystery to them. The crew, working with one, doesn't even know the standard capabilities besides raw metrics about speed and power. My hope is that they *start* thinking of it as a means of A to B, to surprise the characters over time with the character.

>>18735780

>And all that red paint in Cargo Bay 3 is starting to look really suspicious

Fuck, the ship has her period again.

>>18735819
>It adds a bit of a twist, otherwise it's like "oh ship is human, w/e" and 99.9% time most action will probably be planetside and having human bioships is a sideline thing.

I don't necessarily agree with that conclusion. I do think that a game of nothing but ships can be cool if you want to do it, but I don't think I'd enjoy running that game all that much. And if I'm not going to like it, why would I GM it? I enjoy this concept more looking at the human to ship interactions and using the ships to explore the nature of humanity through the eyes of people. If you want to just have a sweet game about being ships, that's fine. Just it doesn't touch on the conceptual ground I'd like to use as much.

>>18735824
Did the alien race increase FTL rate? Did they somehow fix the cost to make a vessel handle the stress of space vs having humans turned into ships?

Why even include people-ship besides a footnote?

>>18735824
>relatively small vessel.

This is, of course, relatively small in space terms.

>>18735894
Because...honestly I wish I had spoiler tags.

It'd be because of the above reason someone suggested about it being a grand experiment from a Q style species. They're going to turn out to be the real villains, and the ships that are left wind up being our link to them and way to strike back. And maybe send the whole galaxy on a greater path.

Durandal, you should take a look at the Night's Dawn trilogy. Sci-fi, there's a human faction that uses a lot of biotech, among which, their starships. Organic, sapient creatures, but not grown from humans. They're an artificially created race, I think, and are bonded with one specific human who then acts as the captain.

>>18735904
>Is this stupid? I thought it was so clever when I thought of it. These 'relics' of an early age of exploration wind up being our direct method of salvation and the betterment of the galaxy for everyone. Even the asses who started the shooting back in the beginning.

>>18735927
I'm going to bed but bumping the thread in the hopes it is here when I get up. I know the campaign idea I'm proposing here is more expansive than the OP's universe and looks quite different, but it was kind of entirely beholden to it. I'd not have spent a lot of time thinking on this subject if not for them, so I do want to keep this where they can see and comment too. Plus, now I'm sort of enamored with the idea of the ship slowly becoming more and more a real person to the party, while it in turn flexes long dormant interest in humanity. One last tidbit before sleep though:

>The reason for the Q-lite species being the villains is because they play games of our galactic politics for fun. That age old feud only started and keeps flaring up at their whim. Stupid or something that might be cool?

another bump

So those that undergo ship-conversion keep their human form to some extent? In that case I'd be very disappointed if at least some of the ship-converted people didn't mod themselves to look like a semi-biological or (going by the posted writefaggotry) even a flat-out ship-tan version of the attached pic.

This is reminding me a lot of Farscape.

Moya was a living ship, but she has no way to communicate except through a symbiotic creature called 'Pilot'.

One thing that intrigues me about this concept is the idea of how intelligence works.

Specifically, the idea that our brains process in the background, and conscious thought makes up only a very small portion of what our brains actually do. Basically, that old saw about us using only 10% of our brains is backwards - we are conscious of only 10% of our thoughts, because most of the rest are ideas that are processing, compiling, or being rolled about. Like how you can't think of something, and then, when you go off to do other things, you remember that thing (For instance, you are trying to remember the name of the writer of the first English dictionary, and you can't think of it, so you make yourself a sandwich, and midway through slicing the cheese, you remember it was Noah Webster). That kind of corporate approach to consciousness seems very in-tune with a mainframe running a ship - The crew keeps posting all these subconscious thoughts, and when there is enough, a new though pops into the AI's head. Or the AI is trying to figure out the proper calculations for the jump, and the jump navigator promotes the numbers into consciousness once they are computed on her terminal. It's like think-assistance, but towards a purpose. Imagine if every time you went off-topic, the main line of thought remained at the forefront of your brain.

This seems like an odd mix of cyberpunk, grimdark, and transhumanism - your thoughts may not necessarily be your own, but they make you useful and purposeful. I can only imagine psychological screenings to pick the optimal personalities for ships, followed by targeted therapy to sculpt their body-images into something appropriate for the Navy's purpose. They navy needs more carriers - so some psycho-surgeons and psychologists induce gender identity crises, so that the new recruits will identify as cavernous womb-like carriers...

>>18739280
>con't


This kinda seems cooler the more I think about it. I can't help but think of the ships developing personality quirks, like one ship prefers 5w30 in the main battery, and 10w40 as the lubricant for most other parts. If he doesn't get that, he tends to scratch with an artillery cannon. In this context, developing an autonomous drone-shell, like a Ship-tan, would be less odd than splattering the crew around when they were asleep, but more bizarre than ship-like behavior. Maybe the other ships would make fun of her, because she is still playing with dolls...

One thing is, humans are social creatures - we seek out bonds and connections and interactions with those we feel are like us or related to us. I find it unlikely that any of the ships would want to talk to humans that aren't either other ships or their own crew. While it would be hard for a ship to interact with the crew on an even footing, I imagine that ship-to-ship interaction would be discouraged. Imagine a messy break-up between two heavy battleships assigned to the same fleet...

>>18739288
Better yet, imagine the first starship BORN from the mating of two ships! There's a campaign arc if I ever heard one. Protect the "mother," then protect the infant, train the infant, and finally lead it into battle. A creature that was born of "human" parents but has never lived life as a human.

>>18739434
You...

Wow...

I just...
A lot of my friends have kids now, and I'm picturing those babies with massive ship-to-ship viable weapons strapped to them. It's... It's an impressive, and disturbing, thought.

Maybe that would be the electronic warfare ships - they just start crying over radio, on all channels, so that nobody can hear or see anything except by optical sighting...

>>18739288
> Maybe the other ships would make fun of her, because she is still playing with dolls...

Intelligent dolls aren't really dolls though. That sounds more like slacking on the job to me. Hanging out with the crew detracts from time spent sweeping the asteroid belts!

I find this idea to be potentially hilarious.

>>18739288
> Imagine a messy break-up between two heavy battleships assigned to the same fleet...

I'd hope that professional soldiers would be more professional, but I'm sure there's failsafes in case one goes rogue. Maybe built into the brain is a chemical cocktail to drop a ship into a medicated coma if the captain feels it is out of line that far, that lasts long enough for backup and a trained psychologist to show up.

>>18739938
If you were on a battleship and you needed to operate it, why or how would you shut down the main computer? Especially when you had to operate the vessel under combat conditions? I'm with you on the dedicated ship's psychologist, but rendering your ship comatose at all seems more like an act of decommissioning than of momentary panic. After all, if the ship was behaving so erratically that it had to be shut down, would you want to serve on that vessel?

I just can't think of how a drill sergeant type can intimidate the recruit when said drill sergeant type is standing inside the recruit. Maybe they would limit themselves to people of a certain rank to become vessels? Like, (off naval rank) with a minimum rank of commander, to ensure some time was spent getting accustomed to service and whatnot. But that seems like it would only be a rule followed when possible. The early test ships, at least, wouldn't be so formalized, especially not for humanity's first jaunt through the stars.

I'd also imagine that the feeling of otherness, of disconnection from the tiny dolls that service your body and do your bidding, would only grow as time goes on, until the only sensations at that scale are vague, half-forgotten memories, waxing nostalgic with time.

>>18740316
>I just can't think of how a drill sergeant type can intimidate the recruit when said drill sergeant type is standing inside the recruit

All the easier to kill you, I guess, but that makes a single infiltrator armed with neurotoxin more threatening than someone you know will not kill you.

Friendly bump so I can come back and make comments about this myself later.

This is relevant to my interests.

The Millvania took a slow steady breath, shuddering slightly in the artificial womb. They were only faintly aware of things- The legs that they'd never been able to feel had been swallowed up whole in the rapid growth they'd undergone, their arms following suit shortly after. Half grown, or so the faint whispers of scientists told their mind. Half grown and already named. They murmured so many things, quiet little things the ship's mind didn't understand- Things about natural hormones and development already occurring, nervous systems repairing as they were prepared for further growth. They twitched idly and relaxed. The part of them that heard and understood what those outside told them heard talk of how they'd be ready for sensors soon. The Millvania was going to be a carrier, one of the largest yet. After all, children just reaching puberty made for the best ships, or so the scientists had said when they'd arrived to sign up. All they'd really known was that they were gonna go into space and they was gonna make their parents proud.

The living ship squirmed a little more in it's artificial womb as it continued to grow, unaware of how rapid their chest had warped to create cavity spaces in which people would live, or how hollow vessels had developed to create hallways. The soon-to-be ship didn't understand the many things it had supposedly surrendered in pursuit of it's dream, or how people had at first protested the testing of such an unknown system on a boy who hadn't even passed puberty. He knew only peace and the faint vibration of the orbital dockyard's engines in the water.

Yeah guys but d and d fourth gen amirite?

I disagree with the vision forwarded by those in the thread who would seek to craft humanoid bioships which are in essence very large human beings covered in armour.

I do not think that is an appropriate approach to this idea which can be taken in so many different wonderful and twisted directions.

There is an old PC videogame which was an attempt at making a slightly stranger Homeworld called Genesis Rising.

The gameplay mechanics were poor, the storyline a bit muddled, but the ship design was intriguing.

The attached picture has an example of the 'mothership' under the players control during gameplay. Built into the mid-rear section of the keel, right between the two engine nacelles, is a fleshy pair of labia that open when the ship births a smaller class vessel. The smaller vessels are actually grown within the mothership like a womb.

Gentlemen, that is how you design a squicky, twisted bioship.

Now all we need to do is attach the creation techniques utilized by the Original Poster's concept and marry the two ideas together.

In that vein, I will further articulate my opinions in the following posts.

>>18743237

You, sir....You I like. Please do tell us more.

>>18743237
>Gentlemen, that is how you design a squicky, twisted bioship.

Really all bone freaks me out more. I've been imagining them as terrible spiky bone white creations with a fleshy/metal union at the engines and eyes. Inside you go from more fleshy areas to metal installations as you want as GM I guess.

>>18743333
More incoming as I write it out in a separate profile.

>>18743403

The game featured enemies whose bioships were primarily jutting sharpened bone structures arranged in almost fragmentary formations around the ship's hull.

I can find no screenshots of them.

>>18743237
>>18743490

OP's idea can go in multiple directions, it could be played very light where it's just giant robot fights in space with a twist. Or it can go very dark, similar to what you said.

I think we need to get a vote on this, to bring everyone to one focus. So light or dark?

Light for me.

>>18743490
My thought is also that a hardened bone shell is probably better for space flight than fleshy anything. The fact that this was once a human honestly is harder for me to imagine with the bone than just a straight up sciencey looking ship or anything, because it reminds me strongly of bugs. Which I like. The more distance there is between the ships and people, the more interesting nonsense can be done with the players. This is a meta sort of thing, since IC it's all still strange, but trying to make players who naturally have a sort of emotional and mental distance uncomfortable takes a bit of work.

>>18743565
>sciencey or fleshy looking ship

Would this be something along those lines? People who are either born physically crippled or severely injured turned into bio-mechanical starships.

>>18743593
I'm actually surprised it's taken this long for that to come up. I can see a lot of parallels between the ship who sang and this.

>The discovery he makes is that the missing element is sapience; the process is reliant entirely on the sense of self, and without it the necessary conversions simply don't take place. The original creators of the tech had created a sort of semi-sapient construct for the purpose, but in their haste, humanity has simply discovered how to create living starships out of themselves.

My first thought was 'or maybe they could use dolphins'.

My next thought was '...maybe turning a race of fun-loving sociopathic rapists into a kilometer-long starships might not be the best idea'. Humans have their issues, but at least they'll have some empathy for other humans and personalty based on human social mores.

Although, a pod of rogue dolphin-starships preying on the trading lanes could make for some excellent antagonists.

>>18743559
Does the inhuman ship design really have to be considered dark?

I believe you are forcing your own perspective onto the definition of light and dark, one which I disagree with.

I'll get into examining your statement in a bit, but for now. I wish to continue what I have suggested.

>Begin
Things that have been discussed in this thread which I like are:
>>18734507
Artificial/Genetic augmentation
A bioship which is enhanced or supported by cybernetic augmentations throughout its hull, to supplement its baseline capacities. Assume that the vehicle's baseline capacities would be: propulsion, power, and performance (handling, speed, accelleration, etc). Weapons, sensor systems, supplemental auxiliary systems (specialized cargo facilities, refinery or internal manufacturing plants, etc) must be provided by mechanical assistance...

Exceptions to this being instances where genetic modification is at such an advanced stage where you can cultivate and GROW these other systems in organic forms, like the ships of Genesis Rising.

>>18734628
Functional design dissonance by way of the Seed's Gender (I forward the use of the word Seed as the noun used to describe an individual who voluntarily undergoes the process of shipification).
Hulls whose Seeds were originally female are more likely to acclimate themselves to the function of a colony and research vessel because they can easier accept components designed for those functions.
Whereas hulls whose Seeds were originally male are likely grow into a hull that more easily acclimates itself to military or exploratory uses.

Of course there are always exceptions to the rule.

>>18739280
>>18739288
Psychological deviation from the original human brain that was once there.

This is a good idea, but I would push it even further...

The ships themselves no longer act human, but their behaviour will have shades of human thought. The bridge crew tend to have the most immediate contact with the ship's Prime Consciousness, that original mental spirit which represents the person the ship once was, but when you switch bodies and become something more akin to a living city... that changes how you perceive the world, it changes how you perceive what it means to be human (maybe you stop seeing yourself as human?) and it changes how you see the things clawing around inside your veins that once you might have called brothers and sisters.

But now these people who are now ships are something so much more. Do they see themselves as gods, tolerant only of the things inside them because they must be? Or do they see themselves as simply something higher than the men and women they once were?

>>18744075

In effect what we have done to these people is opened up a maddening biological and mental pandoras box. They will be spirits of men and women trapped in non-human bodies that, nightmarishly enough, are actually their original bodies, but so warped that in order to fully understand their capacities will essentially require an entirely new childhood.

Just like how it took us our formative years to learn how to walk and run, so too will it take these changed men and women that same amount of time, if not MORE, to understand how to go forward, back, turn, release fighters, skim the surface of a planet's atmosphere, play tag with a comet, talk to other ships, talk to the crews inside them, or, hell... Learn to eat all over again.

Imagine having to relive several months to years inside the body of a gigantic several hundred foot long baby, but with the mental capacity of an adult, and yet, each day you run the risk of losing who you are to the sheer terabytes of data being generated by your new sensory systems, getting used to the new beat of a strange thing that has replaced your heart... And forgetting you no longer have to BREATHE.

That does things to you

Gentelmen, these people will in fact become Human Elder Gods. Starfish aliens with a human mind controlling them.

Now... onto what I believe the aesthetics of these things should be...

The associated picture is what I believe to be a cruiser from Genesis Rising.

what happens when the ship gets sick?

or cancer?

IN the not so distant future after a startling breakthrough in sub-atomic particle research human beings discover how to transfer information backwards through time by quantum entanglement. Using this, a highly funded world organization is set up with the sole purpose of bettering all of humanity through the use of information sent from the future. Response teams are set to read off received information sent back in time by themselves and to transfer it to the appropriate authorities. This system is used to quickly transfer all important data about natural disasters, viral outbreaks, medical advances, and even locations of archaeological dig sites, stellar mapping, and what kinds of long term research to be developed to benefit the future. Eventually all world governments become directed by these words from the future.

But the uncomfortable truth is, because the organization prevents events from unfolding as they are described they never have to actually use their high-tech instruments to send information back into the past, although they are always active and at the ready. Growing concern about the seemingly inherent paradox of where and when the information obtained originates from begins to cause general outcry. Outspoken critics call it unethical and go so far as to claim that all of our benefits are built upon the destruction of those people of the future whose futures we rewrite so casually every day and that they would not want to cease to exist if they knew what they were doing.

And then, amid growing social unrest, messages begin arriving detailing more and more oppressive requirements to keep the peace. As the chief commander of the organization you become more and more distressed by the strains placed upon you by your own future self. Until eventually a seemingly unthinkable order appears on your personal emergency alert data feed:

DESTROY THE DEVICE

OP here. I'm back.

You guys...have really put forward some great ideas.
Personally, the humanoid starships was the entire point, so I'mma stick with that for my own thing, but you gents have really got something going in your own direction.

If your own version was a game, I'd play it.

>>18743237
Genesis was awesome. It had bioships, zealoty humans, space dorfs, and 200 foot, all female frost giants. Can't ask for much more in a plot.

Though the square cube law has no bearing on space ship design, since you can technically make something as large as you like and it won't matter as long as you can ensure the internal structural integrity of your ship when it gets hit by debris and various spacial objects (like an asteroid or micro-asteroids), the human body is NOT a good base to build a ship inside of. There are too many limbs which can be hacked off by laser weapons, and some very obvious weak points. Example: imagine a headshot through the eye socket with an armour piercing torpedo that has a plasma warhead equivalent to that of a multimegaton nuclear device fired from the bow of an alien ship.

Ouch.

So, though the human body is a bad design choice...

Body parts, particularly organs, or rather the materials used and the shape they take in the human body may be useful as a base from which to draw out design aesthetic.

Let's start with teeth.

Teeth are covered with a layer of the hardest material in the human body. Enamel.

Our bioships are therefore covered with a superdense Enamel substance that can act as the ship's initial armour layer. This layer can be considered thermally resistant for use as protection when penetrating a planets atmosphere and performing reentry maneuvers.

It can also act as a last ditch defense in the form of combat armour - but we are assuming that these ships will be augmented by artificial components.

Ligaments and tendons can be used as struts and supports for the integrity of internal architecture.

Flexible muscle tissues, or even fat, can be used as flooring, insulation, doorways, and so on. Par for the course of normal bioship design.

Except the substances are all human in origin, just larger.

In fact, it occurs to me that you could potentially use the peristaltic motions of the vessel's veins in place of a gravelift system - as long as you have an understanding or mapping of the ships vascular systems.

I mean the last thing you want is to find yourself sucked right into the ship's heart and get burned alive by the plasma reaction when you were intending to go to the mess hall for lunch.

And on that note...

There's a lot of interesting things you can do with blood.

The implication of the ship being made from organic components also means a whole new definition of salvage.

The act of salvaging involves consuming a dead or dying ship.

Imagine how psychologically unstable a salvage barge must be in this setting...

One final bump.

An image of what I imagine a human being looks like during the Shift from human to ship.

No further interest in this idea?..

What a shame.

>monitoring this thread still.

Still very weird.

>>18744256
Lets see, perhaps the response time and effeciency of the human-based immune system would have not be sufficient.

Draw off a blood sample and culture the organism, provoke an immune reaction in a small sample then bulk geneingeer an effective artificial antibody. I assume a lot of bio-stable nanobots in there as well, along with artificial "liver" structures filtering for contamination.

As for cancer.. I am going to need the probe-MRI, a full packet of scrubber nanites and the laser incisor. Oh, and 3 orderlies to peel back the overlapping enamal plates in that area and cram in the spreaders to allow access. We will remove as much of the aberrant tissue as possible then cram in the scrubbers. Up the function on the secondary filters, we don't want any toxin feedback.

There there hun..
>pat pat pat on a smooth length of glossy bone that protrudes through the ceramic-metalic composite of the cramped aft medical-suite's wall.

You will be Fine, trust me.

>this thread

What system should this go with?

>>18747328
i dunno, but champ-tier would be to run two layers of game.

the gaming group treats the ship as an environment/transport at first, doing stuff.

the GM has a secret extra player, unconnected to the other group. secret player is the ship, making some decisions, rolling some dice and giving short statements to the "crew".

Crew assume the statements are text from the GM.
Eventually the ship matures/the crew makes some addition from their loot or remove a system-lock without knowing the ramifications. THEN IT TALKS

That is, the GMs Laptop, set to one side, has been running vid skype all session long, with no display at this end. Ship starts making suggestions for herself/himself.

I used to have a side in my Sci-fi game that was sorta like this actually. Full of tropes, so the "Biological side" used all organic ships.

Unfortunately I never got to play around with them that much as everyone picked either Earth, Space-ZOE, or Medieval knights in space. Oh well.

One of the major problems they had with these biological ships is that sometimes they could go rogue and turn into a "Zoecyte". Their evolutionary systems go haywire, and use everything on board to try and further their evolution. This is a problem if they absorb something an entire biological city worth of biomass. All ships are watched very, very closely by their "Handlers", who are basically in charge of the ship's morale, mental, and spiritual well being (Physical too, but the repair crews often take care of anything else serious)

She could feel them. She could always feel them. The tiny little dolls, wandering through her insides. They covered things up so she wouldn't be so disturbed, but she could feel their footfalls right through the plating laid in her corridors. She could feel the heat of their bodies, their ambling motions, the crawling in her womb as they entered the vessels stuffing her so full. She could almost feel the motion of the implants, the turrets and sensor probes that were carved into her flesh as she became a Seed. But nothing was as clear as feeling them scrabbling about inside her, going through their motions, her lovely dolls.

"Miranda, we have some odd feedback in your core. Is everything alright?" The psychologist's voice cuts right through her distraction. She focuses on the task at hand, and starts to think of the thrust ratios needed when the numbers pop into her mind. She begins to follow the pattern, only to realize it hasn't been ordered yet. "Miranda, talk to me." Him again.

A tendril of consciousness replies to the psychologist's insistence. "It's OK, I'm just settling in. I needed this shakedown cruise. I'll do better." The words are what he wants to hear, right?

The atmospheric system cycles with a whuff as Miranda expels her frustration into her corridors. It'll be OK soon, she just has to focus, and with a quick glance, she makes sure nobody is around, letting the data from the active scanners fade to the back of her mind. Then, the captain authorizes the operation, and she launches herself amongst the heavens, where she always wanted to be. That's what they told her, at least.

>>18747328

D20. Old faithful has never let us down.

More seriously, FATE and M&M come to mind. Traveller or Eclipse Phase could also be candidates but I lack knowledge of their systems to make a proper call.

I think, when I am done with my own... private project...

I will inflate the already burgeoning volumes of fluff that have been written here...

With my own.

It may take me about as long as it took me to write the Norn fapfic, but at least it will be original content and non-fetishistic in nature...

At least, by certain definitions of fetish, at anyrate.

>>18748223
everyone waits with a mixture of guarded interest and fear.

>>18747995
one can run scifi with fate, right?
could work.

EP would be somewhat heavy and require a great deal of trimming.

>My "pointless justification," is that the mental software patching the process requires was under government control, and it being a simple matter of slipping in a few lines to exacerbate maternal instincts and direct it towards normal humans, as a sort of subtle insurgence policy against any rogue actions.
I like this very much. Gives a whole new meaning to the word 'mothership'.

I want to be light space cruiser, /tg/.

No, seriously, this has been something I've daydreamed since I first saw Farscape. Moya, the Andromeda Ascendant, all dem Tenchi Muyo ships, and of course the Doctor's TARDIS.... they're all awesome, sexy and neat. How could I not want to be one?

>>18748223
Oh god its that guy

So I herd u liek living ships, so here's some Uchuu Kaiju 4 u ♥

Darkness. Silence. There was nothing. Except that it wasn't silence. It was a scream that filled all capacity for sound, drowning out everything

else Zara could perceive. "Who...?" She began, but no sooner had she begun to speak then the scream had stopped. "I was screaming? But why?" Then the

memories came back, all at once.

***

She had finished the process of become a Ship, one of the star-children, a human to carry the human race through space. After basic training,

maneuvering, interstellar jumps and resourcing they had called her in to be 'outfitted' for her chosen role. She was going to be in the navy, and

everyone knew that the navy ships had the most extensive cybernetics. The basicy human, although gigantic, form that the starships had needed heavy

arms and armor augmentation to be ready for the front line. Extra maneuvering thrusters, targeting arrays, com stations, and entire secondry control

systems for her normal sized crew to use in case of damage, the list went on and on.

Zara had been shocked when she saw her augments in the gantry. In addition to the communications headpeace and other things she expected there was an

entire left arm! When questioned the engineers told her it was because the shield generators did some nasty things to biology. The alien method that

was used to transform her into a starship was mutually exclusive with the shield projector technology of human invention. Besides, they told her, it

was fantastically useful: she would be able to manifest a shield to protect her, many more guns were able to be mounted on a stable metal base, her crew

would have extended quarters onboard and there was even a command bridge included.

>>18753303
Oops, word wrap errors...

After strapping herself in and gritting her silicocarbonate teeth the plasma torch lined up with her shoulder. Then nothing happened for a moment. "Is something wrong command?" Zara asked. Curiously there was no reply. Usually the comm tower was good with starships and gave prompt answers, but now, not even an acknowledgement of reception. Zara cast her gaze over to the command bay, on the other side of the gantry. She caught eyes with a single technician, and realised that nobody else, not one of the one hundred thousand tiny people on the station was looking at her. The man was holding his hardhat in his hands and his mouth was moving. She heard the voice in her mind, despite that she knew he was too far away. Zara heard the words that she knew she would never forget:

"Morphene doesn't work on starships"

***

"So that was why." Zara opened her eyes and saw she was resting in a stable orbit behind phobos. All sorts of information flickered over her vision, flight paths of ships and asteroids, communications to and from her crew, power and structural readouts from her augments. The ship could see the captain trying to get her attention from the bridge but she was much more interested in examining her new augments. The antenna's resting behind her ear seemed to be functioning fine, and the eyepiece was already proving perfectly capible. Next up was... Ah.

Reluctantly Zara brought her left hand up to her face, afraid of what she would find. But to her surprise her new hand was perfectly fluid, she could feel every joint and movement as if it were her own. The arm looked like one of the stylish augments that civillians would lust after except that the fluid, natural curve interupted regularly with the spines of the field emmiters and sockets for mounted weapons. Into the palm was build a thruster, just like the hand mounted thusters that she had trained with previously.

She focused in on her captain who was talking with another member of the bridge, but he interrupted as soon as he saw that he had her attention. "First things first, I'm sorry we had to do it like that Zara, but it's really the quickest way to get all of these cybernetics in and to get you functioning." Prompted by Zara's silence he continued, "Blacking out like that seems to be an artifact of the alien process that we used to create you, damage that would usually be catastrophic causes a total shutdown. But it won't happen again, some of the central nervous systems we installed prevent that from happening again."

>>18753321
"Well that's fantastic then," Zara frowned, "I'll be able to feel being ripped apart from beginning to end."

"Oh quit being silly, you're in the Navy now, you can expect it to be a painless experience. But as part of the rewards program for volunteering we've got a bit of a surprise for you in engineering 4, take a look."

Zara cast her attention into herself to where she knew engineering was located, and was impressed that now she had more then just a feeling for who and what was in each room, the camera system was linked so that she could see where she was looking. And what she saw surprised her.

"It's... Me?"

"Ah, Zara, you are a bit too early, I'm afraid." said the scientist working over the body, who her systems identified as Gerald Chappius, doctorate in human enhancement. "There was a mix up with the control arrays, you got outfitted with a newer model then we expected and we had to upgrade your avatar to match. The amount of bandwidth needed to run these is immense, so we need to get it exactly right."

"But it's me, right down to the hull number painted on my leg. This even has my communicator hair-pin and crazy robot arm
!"

"Yes, the military likes the avatar to be as similar to you as possible, so that you can train with it. It's generally disrupts the trade routes less, and it's much cheaper when something goes wrong."

Well, thought Zara, Perhaps this new life isn't going to be so lonely after all.

>>18753328
I don't usually do much writing (which probably was apparent), but this thread inspired me to write a bit. I wanted to focus on the transformation, huge spaceship girls and transhumanism aspects, and not really go into the grim-dark, evil-biology or mpreg stuff that people above have gone into. The whole feel of the setting, were I to flesh it out, would be quite bright; with happy-happy spaceship girls flying through planetary rings and munching on asteroids and etc, but there would be dark undertones of what it means to be human, and how seperate from even the people who live inside you you could end up feeling.

I have another bit of the story I could write up if you guys wanted. It's sorta like a reverse fapfic? I'm not sure at all how to write smutty though so I'd have to either post it tomorrow or take a shortcut and greentext it up tonight.

Thoughts?

>>18753339
Keep up the good work noble writefag

>>18753339
Keep up!

>>18753339

Op here, just rolling out of bed. You sir, have got this exactly how I imagined it. gogogo.

>>18753339

You're doing gods work. Keep it up.

While we wait for the return of friend writefag, here's some thoughts.

- Navit's have attached weaponry like any ship, but for dealing with each other or large conventional ships, may use sidearms, etc. I imagine that most non-combat ships still carry a multi-purpose sidearm of some sort. (The idea being that this is much cheaper and less stressful than having to buy, install, and crew integrated weapons for ships that may not need them)

-As I had it, the average height is roughly a mile. Ships have the self improving capacity to continue to grow as resources are available. Experiments maybe conducted in much smaller, crew-less fighter girls as well.

-The stomach has a collection of processing nanites and shunt fields to separate anything the Navit eats into constituent molecules, that are then stored in cargo vacuoles in what were the lungs. No further digestive system is needed beyond this; the intestinal spaces are probably used for the crew quarters, etc.

-The Navit's nervous system runs all computer functions, in league with conventional onboard computers and several Muse-type AI's (Running directly in the brain) Since they retain human desire for self improvement, this basically makes every one of them a cyberorganic seed AI waiting to happen.

Reading this thread made me rewatch the last six episodes of Gurren Lagann.

God damnit and I have a final tomorrow at 9 AM too. I hate you all

Uh hey guys >>18753339 here.

I'm surprised that what I wrote was legible, much less that you guys actually liked it. I posted that at 3 am, and apparently I've only had 5 hours sleep. I'll write some more up today, but I wouldn't expect to post it for another 9 hours or so.

As I said I've got another one, maybe two, scenes bouncing around my head. I'll see if I can think of more.

>>18757542

Please do.

>>18757487

TTGL was a big inspiration for this, actually. Along with a bit of Exalted, some Evangelion, and some other pieces of things.

It occurred to me that unless you have an android body or spends most of it's time in VR, the ship would probably be as bored as hell. If it was a giant humanoid, then it'd be difficult to interact with a lot of things, unless you want to make a super ship the size of Cathedral Terra from Gurren Lagann as a battleship.

>>18758118

I don't think they should be THAT big, I still like the idea of them fighting on planets, and even a mile tall is a bit much for that.

>>18758118

All possibilities. Most have android or clone avatars, possibly multiples therof that they can remote possess; and can run VR simulations off their own brains, that their crew or other ships could take part in.

>>18758332

Just noticed this post. No, they probobly don't have to be that big, but it's a size I'm sorta comfortable with myself.

I blame this book: http://www.amazon.com/Enormity-W-G-Marshall/dp/1597803944

>>18760101

Oh...not taking about mile size. Kinda missed the last part of that other guys post.

Dunno. Could get that big, but probably pretty unlikely.

If this thread is still alive tomorrow, I'll try my hand at writing something.

I just... Really need to get this fucking finals over.

Anyone familiar with The Dragon Never Sleeps by Glen Cook?

Ok >>18753339 here again with parts 2 and 2.5, I'm just giving them a quick readover now. Does anyone know the character limit of posts here?

>>18763073
Zara pulled Jo down onto her bed and shut the door with a thought. The last few cycles had been hectic, two errant asteroids near the convoy and no less then four alien scares. Thankfully nothing had happened, either they left after she had made her presence known or the blips were just radar ghosts. But full combat scans took energy and there hadn't been any time to rest, she needed this, needed him.

Their lips met as she removed his clothes, the warmth of his body a contrast to her metallic arm. Her avatar usually kept itself warm, but fresh from the week in maintanence it had not heated up yet. Well, that would quickly change.

He was the only one who made her feel human anymore, everyone else onboard. It was always "Yes ma'am", and salutes from the crew, or terrified awe from civillians. She couldn't even wander around her own body without feeling out of place as everyone scrambled to get out of her way, the replies to her questions were always direct, no nonsense answers to give maximum information in minimum possible time. It was all because of the so called 'Avatar Priority', made by the brass under the assumption that if her avatar was required somewhere, something was seriously wrong. All ineractions were made to get the avatar where it needed to be, and with the information required. But Jocelyn was different: he talked to her, made jokes at her expense and questioned her decisions. She loved him.

>>18763105
His hand traced down her side, and she shivered in anticpation. "Take me," she whispered, pressing up against him.

A twinge in her consciousness told her that her attention was needed outside. "Hold on a sec Jo, someone needs to dock."

"Oh," his eyes smiled as he whispered to her, "They certainly do."

It was the supply vessel from the surface, a standard mechanical transport with no interstellar jump capacity that made the Navitas so essential. Her captain was arguing with the pilot. "What do you mean there's no potatoes on board, how am I meant to feed my crew if we don't get simple food?"

"We're going to have to requisition another shipment from the surface aren't we?" she asked aloud.

"You're probably right, Zara. See if you can get in contact with Nicole Evans from the North continent. She knows me and has high quality food, if you drop my name you should be able to squeeze it into our budget."

Zara knew that she shouldn't wait to place the order, her next assignment usually came within a day of completing the previous and it would take time to ship from the other side of the planet. She flitted back to find Jo tapping away at his communicator, he looked over when she sat up. "I'll just be a minute honey, there's been a mess up."

>>18763166
Finding Nicole's storefront was simple enough, but Nicole herself was a bit harder to make contact with. A request for a few hundred tonnes of food lets you talk to the people in charge soon enough, however. Then began the age old tradition of trying to get as much as possible for the money your CO will give you.

After what was certainly far too long a transport was en-route and would arrive a few hours before her expected departure time. With a quick detour via the bridge to infom the captain she glided back into her avatar, waiting a few seconds before sitting up to establish connections and settle into her body.

"Hey love, I'm so sorry about that, but I-", her sentence cut short as she realised that Jo wasn't in her room anymore. On the table flashed a message, waiting to be activated.

"I'm sorry Zara, but I can't", Jocelyn's voice read aloud. "I know you said I can finish without you but it just feels wrong. Your eyes staring blankly at the ceiling as you do a thousand things at once. A thousand things except be with me. But how can I blame you? You are a space ship! Thousands rely on you every day and you serve them well. I've logged a transfer with command and I'll take the next shuttle out."

>>18763216
Zara knew without checking that he was in his room, packing his belongings with the door set to private. She could override, of course, and look in and even talk to him, but what would she say? Jo had said he was leaving and she knew she could not convince him. With tears brimming in her avata's eyes she sat herself down on the end of her bed and slammed the door lock shut with a glare. This was morphene all over again! Every time things started looking up, BLAM! disqualified. "Sorry NZ-4061, Navitas can't be in love, that's restricted to Humans." Humans propper, capital H. Sooner or later they'll forget why the second letter in your designation is a Z.

The captain was trying to get in contact again, probably wondering why the maintanence nanites were being deployed. Well he'd find out soon enough, her captain always did. Well, she thought, even a navitas needs to cry sometimes.

>>18763268
Is nobody here listening? I might post up 2.5/the epilogue and then call it a night.

Jo showed his paperwork to the attendent, and was ushered through to first class. Waiting for him in the otherwise unoccupied cabin was an older man wearing a worn, but well kept admiral's dress uniform.

"Sorry to call you out on such short notice, Six, but you're the best handler we've got. One of the new research Navitas is having trouble coping after her sister ship was sunk out near Kapteyn's Star."

"I understand, George. I think Zara will be alright though, she's a strong girl. She just needs some other ships to talk to. There's a mining expedition with, ZK-3583 that would be good."

"You worked with Karen as well, didn't you?" said the admiral, tapping away on his communicator, "Alright, Done. You know, you could retire any time you want, you've served your term and paid for yourself many times."

"I could hardly! You built headquarters on top of me! And besides you said it yourself, you need me. So this next mission, it'd be easier if I swapped back to an avatar on earth and took that, wouldn't it? I'll have to dust off Daniel though, he's the only other male."

"No," said George looking at his notes, "this time you can go as yourself."

"Oh," smiled Corissa, NC-6, "Well this will be fun."

>>18763406
Some things that I wanted to fit in but couldn't:
Corissa is the first Navitas to survive the transformation process. She claims that it's because she's mad, while the scientists disagree, saying that they perfected the process. They don't disagree that she's mad though. No sane person can run multiple lives with different personalities.

A Navitas' captain has a very specific role. They give general orders to the Navitas from the fleet, but specifics are left to the Navitas to execute. If the Navitas is ever rendered inoperable the captain can take over. The most important task, however, it to be a stable character in the Navitas' life, so that there is always someone that she can rely on. He has full access to the Navitas, and can override any lock, even hers. In the navy the relationship between Ship and Captain is more complicated, since the captain technically outranks the Navitas, and so the relationships are never as close as civilian ships and their captains, but the trust that they have in each other us just as important.

What makes Navitas necessary is their ability to make interstellar jumps, and conventional ships are much cheaper and more commonly used to transport things in-system, especially to orbit and back. Having a navitas to jump in system is quicker, of course. As a side note, this means that you would have carrier-tans launch standard mechanical fighters. I think having a spaceship sized girl playing with her planes is awesome.

Male Navitas are not impossible, or even unusual, I am just ignoring them.

>>18763105
>>18763166
>>18763216
>>18763216
>>18763268
>sad navitas is sad

but really. um, interesting anyhow!

>>18763420
All looks good to me, sorry I didn't notice it earlier. Distracted by Vidya. Unfortunate there's not a lot of other feedback here.

>Durendal5150@gmail.com
>Drop me a line if you want to discuss the stuff more directly.

>>18763414
I never really thought about that stupid Navitas frigate...the Gallente really named one of their frigates a Ship-class Ship?

>>18763799
>>18763420
Oshi, does Navitas have some meaning somewhere that I wasn't aware of? I thought it was the term we were using for spaceship-tans.

Did you want to talk to me the author, or the other guy?

I personally think the making the ships that big is a waste, we only need to hook up a sentient controlling organism.
Like Homeworld.

>>18763870

Didn't Homeworld: Cataclysm also have a viral space alien that melts people down and interfaces their neural system with the ship controls to effectively take over the ship and grow bio armor around it?

I may remember that wrong tho.

>>18763918
H:C had a... thing called The Beast.
It was biological, but the giger or nid kind, not really the curvy space ladies kind (no, not even giger's kind of space ladies).

>>18763833

Meant the author, but if anyone else wants to talk...*shrug*

Navitas is the latin word for "Ship." We're using it here as short for "Homo Sapiens Navitas"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYoq6sovr8Y

Let's see if this works.....

The writefag's story is pretty good, but my only issue is that could the main character really *not* split her attention? Computers do dozens or thousands of operations all the time constantly. It should've been a trivial effort for her to split her attention into hammering out details and eating a hot dog. Unless the technology is fairly far behind.

Then again, my friends said I never understood Saikano either, so I'll leave it at that.

How far in the future would this be? Hundreds? Thousand? Thousands?

>>18771847
The idea was that she is still pretty new at this whole being a giant spaceship thing, and isn't running optimally yet.

Also, I'm taking a leaf from the McCaffery novels: The ship designs a body for herself, but it takes all of her processing power/information lines to run. In order to pilot the body properly you have to leave most of the ship on autopilot. Where's the fun in eating a sausage if you can't taste it, I ask?

>>18772400
As I see it, a lot of trivial details would be managed by crewmen, or by the ships memes/muses.

>>18772742
Exactly! And while i'm sure you could set your avatar to run by meme, do you really want an aspect of your subconcious running around with full access privileges?

>>18772773
I doubt that'd give it full access privelages. I imagine larger Navits may do this all the time. it's possible a Carrier's fighter-girls are all forks, even. Though that's a little creepy.

Chapter 23 of Kid Icarus uprising.

Ship interior design can take from that.

>>18771847

You do realize that you your brain is sectioned out to do specific things at once, and overclocking it doesn't really help, right?

A brain running with full memory use at once is a brain having a seizure.

G-Doc Time

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-Tm4pz3xJW8uL-YFohF70GKOmsJ389ai6SQUIVQFfXc/edit

Some quick thoughts on equipment from the above mentioned doc:

--Shield generators do nasty, nasty things to biological matter. A Navit’s shields must be mounted on a fully mechanical prosthetic. It must be switched off in hand to hand combat with another Navit, as if the shields touch, the overload would almost definitely kill both of them. Though in the event a Shield-bearing Navit can strike an unshielded one with the field, death is likewise near instant.

The ability to mount a full-blown shield system is one of few advantages conventional warships hold over Navitas.

--The standard weapon carried by most Navits for self defence is the H&K HNWS-02 4m 65cal handgun. It is a magnetic induction weapon with a magazine of one-hundred inert slugs. It is absolutely lethal to unshielded targets, and the kinetic energy transfer can punch through a light to medium shield at acute angles. It is roughly equivalent to a light cruiser main gun.

--The point defense of military Navis is handled by a series of five (One on each hip, each shoulder, and on the back) tribarrel 20mm CIWS railguns. All three barrels fire in unison to increase the rate of fire. Instead of utilizing a large capacited charge to maximize acceleration, a constant energy flow throws small spherical pellets at ludicrous refire rates. The weapon exceeds one hundred thousand rounds-per-minute, though it is never fired in such sustained bursts.