In my universe first contact was not with altuistic (but sulky) Vulcans, it was a bunch of Chavy Pikies who rolled up in their inter-stellar white vans and nicked a bunch of satellites. When they discovered Earth could not stop them they grew bolder and started raiding the planet. They would swoop down into population centres and smash and grab loot.
Gold, silver, jewels and just about anything shiny and not nailed down. Humanoid, but at the development stage of Vikings they are equipped with ships by a greedy company from a more advanced ET race. Nicknamed the Hun because of their violent raids Earth has to find ways to intercept the Hun Raiders.
First on the drawing board is a Raider itself, since it is alien I don't have to worry about practicality
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Nice work so far, though. I'm curious about the wings, however. Whatfor are they?
Zanussi, you should paint that thing like an old beat-up Airstream trailer!
That would be cool. :thumb:
The bat wings serve two purposes: Aesthetic to make the ships resemble bird's of prey to frighten their victems, and as primary weapon mounts, to come. The fins are stabelisers and coolant radiators. There is nothing in the least bit sophisticated about these ships, apart from their inertialess drive which is eventually captured and gives mankind the boost into space that the warp drive gives it in the Trekkie universe. Here I have started on the ferrous armour plating, using symmetry at the mo so it is clumsy at the join. They will get a paint job but I want underlying streaks of rust to show hence the texturing.
The whole concept started with a remark by my English teacher at College, he said "Of course any alien race with the technology to come visit us would be immensely superior in intelligence" I quiblled that intelligence and technology could not be linked like that and wrote a short story to illustrate my argument titled "The Phobos Emergency" I went from straight A's to being flunked on the spot. Perhaps it was the line in the story about "only a congenital idiot would assume a more technically advanced race would be also be more intelligent."
True enough, that line about the 'congenial idiot' might have been a tad too much for him, but I like that teacher, talking about aliens in classes like they were the subject all the while.
A rethink of the paint job and now I have a handy name for this ship, the Firebird, Huns decorate their ships with a variety of themes, particularly something that looks like an Earth Wolf which represents their God of War, premier warriors surgically alter themselves to look like great wolves.
In space they rely on speed to escape primitive Earth spaceships with ferrous armour plates reinforced by a gravity focussing flux which is a by product of the inertialess field generator. A hun Raider can shrug off a tactical nuke and nothing really worries them until Firebird is captured almost intact and the secret of the Inertialess field generator falls into earth hands. Though sadly Earth nations and power factions wage open war to control the prize.