Home Forums Sci Fi General Sci-Fi sci-fi propulsion preferences

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  • #12340
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator

    I am very much a tracks and wheels (props and blades) kind of sci-fi guy.
    I just don’t get hover and all that, I know I am not cool, but hey!
    🙂
    Well I don’t mind it in some settings, like Luke’s Landspeeder but I can’t get my head into it being used on tanks the like.

    Anyway, what sort do you all prefer, and also what does GEV and Hover and Blower and Anti-Grav all mean to you?

    #12345

    I only used wheeled vehicles as I can’t see any type of AFV being anything other.

    #12348
    Avatar photoShandy
    Participant

    I’m a pedestrian, so walkers! 

    #12356
    Avatar photoEvyn MacDude
    Participant

    Me, I am all about the Gravity Skimmer, hovercraft are all right but like tread layers and wheels and legs they are all so vulnerable….

    Actually i have an interesting idea for walkers, give them all contragravity generators so they can jump and move through the environment like large metal Parkour practitioners.

     

    What I don’t get are full flight Grav vehicles that are shaped like ground vehicles.

     

    The other thing to ponder is less about shape and more about what weapons said vehicles are carrying. My skimmer tanks generally carry energy and other low recoil weapons, I have a problems with vehicles equipped with navel cannon floating around with nowhere to transfer the recoil energy to (Note this has been on of the traditional problems with wheeled vehicles with tank turrets on them).

    Evyn

    #12386
    Avatar photoSteve Johnson
    Participant

    Craig, my regular gaming chum and I were talking about this on Saturday in regards to forces for Gruntz. I’m certainly a track and wheel man through and through, but if both sides are equipped like this, it doesn’t feel much different to Cold War/Modern Conflicts to me. I’m not a fan of Grav etc, but I’m thinking of going down this route to give one force a completely different feel to the other. If not I may be thinking 1980’s BAOR with Mecha units when I play.

    #12390
    Avatar photoAngel Barracks
    Moderator

    I’m certainly a track and wheel man through and through

    No Junker HoverTanks then?

    😀

    #12449
    Avatar photoEvyn MacDude
    Participant

    No Junker HoverTanks then? :D

     

    Crap!!! That is project buried in a box…

    Evyn

    #12473
    Avatar photoMr. Average
    Participant

    I don’t mind Grav vehicles so much, but I like them to look distinctively different and to have a reasonable rationale in a given universe.  In my own Federated Space sci-fi canon, they are actually “repulsor” vehicles, using a planet’s magnetic field to lift them, and therefore useless on planets with magnetic fields that are either weak or negligible, or radically too strong.  I like the Grav vehicles the Foundationists use (from Microworld’s line), and the smooth-hulled DEIMOS series from GZG.  Darkest Star’s LODAV vehicles are particular favorites of mine, too, with a reasonable rationale (low-orbit reentry drop tanks launched from spacecraft).

    All in all, though, I prefer hover and tracked vehicles.  They’re things we already know we can produce, and are unlikely to go out of vogue any time soon.  Wheeled vehicles are nice, but I think there’s a glut of them at the moment, model-wise.  Everyone and his uncle is making a sci-fi version of the BTR-90 or the Stryker, and it’s getting to be a cliché.  I rate the O8 M-577 series as a significant exception, as the design is just so slick, recalling the Colonial Marine APC, that I can’t help myself.

    #12547
    Avatar photoEtranger
    Participant

    My science fiction setting is around 400 years in the future. Given the accelerating pace of technological change it’s hard to predict just what sort of propulsion will be available. That said, on a frontier system such as that of Harmony’s; it’s likely that technology will fall into the ‘rugged and durable’ category, rather than the latest and fanciest machines.

    Most civilian vehicles are still wheeled/tracked in nature, albeit powered by highly efficient fuel cells.  Hover vehicles are present, but they’re a little fragile for the terrain away from urban areas. Ground Effects Vehicles (GEVs) to my mind are high tech hovercraft, but a bit more rugged and likely to be predominantly used as military or corporate tech. there’s also an overlap between GEVs and dropships, air assets etc.

    Anti-gravity and the like will exist, but to a limited extent, being expensive, relatively fragile and complicated to maintain. It might feature mor e  with advanced alien races. There is a lot that can go badly wrong with a badly maintained  AG drive!  My aesthetic would also be that AG vehicles should look ‘different’ too, as someone else noted before.

    #12559
    Avatar photowillz
    Participant

    I am a clockwork man myself.

    In 1977 I proposed to the Royal Navy a clockwork propulsion system for its fleet but sadly they rejected it.  As I pointed out endless power source, renewable, and all those springs and brass are smart looking.  I have now patented it and am going to put my plans forward to the government in the hope of getting a grant.

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