>>35407266
>50% Of the manuals read "Hit it with a wrench, apply sealant and black tape. Hope."

>O2 and H2O filtration are connected to each other.
>No, really. They filter out to each other. The last filters that were supposed to clear up the air and water broke, so the engineers just jury-rigged something together.
>Every month, one of the engies gets the pleasure of going into the maintenance room and restarting the systems through clearing out all the shit on each filter.
>This task is now being beton through Poker. Bob is very bad at Poker.

>>35407266
The ship's navigation software suite has developed a personality overlay. Quite helpful and polite, but a horrible backseat driver when the crew need to get out of trouble.

>>35407266
>The ship's simulated gravity fails half the time. It usually acts up when most of the crew is sleeping. Once every ten minutes, people will just start floating into the air. The solution involves a lot of BDSM bindings, which one of the female crew mysteriously provided.

>No one knows why, but the showers only have one setting - ice cold. An engineer wrapped around some lighting wires to heat it up, but now the lights seem to flicker on and off at the bathroom. Needless to say, people are taking less showers.

>>35407266
>At one point Someone tried to purchase a repair robot to make the ship less of an inevitable death trap.During the initial tour of the ship the robot had a breakdown, and locked itself in the only remotely up to date room: The kitchen. On the bright side, the kitchen never has problems anymore

Cracked O-Ring.

>>35407922
>He also cooks for us.
>I do however, miss our spaceworm and cockroach mid-night snacks.

>The ship was bought second-hand from a Tuumb trader
>The Cephalopoda prefer to use lots of basic geometric shapes in their designs.
>As such, you can NEVER tell which end is which from the outside
>Ever
>Even if you KNOW which way it was facing when you parked it

>>35407968
Probably that pesky navigational computer trying to get its revenge on you for not taking the exact parking route it planned out, even if you only deviated by less than a meter

>stardard but relatively expensive power couplings have been replaced with clumps if wiring, using varying tolerances and capacities in an attempt to match the intended functionality
>large capacitors attached to major systems have been replaced with banks of much smaller capacitors that have a habit of exploding under stress
>several mechanical components of the engine are home-machined replacements. the combustability of these parts is significantly off of factory standard

>>35407266
>Last week, Frank knocked over the main temperature control valve for the cooking unit. Now most of the food is going to come out over cooked, unless a brave soul is willing to risk their hands and dive into the oven.

>Some of the doors like to hiss open, blasting air in the face of people trying to get through. It only seems to occur whenever someone takes too long in trying to get through. The captain has learned not to be so lengthy in his speeches.

>The ship's vending machine unit only dispenses one drink - orange soda. No one is willing to point fingers, but the fact that the chief medical advisor's teeth seem to be tainted orange all the time are a large coincidence.

For whatever reason the environmental settings reflect the mood of the highest ranking crew member present. The problem is that the captain got a brutal Dear John letter just five minutes before launch. So how do you keep him from reading it for a twelve week flight?

>Using a bit of home-brewed ingenuity, the communications engineer created a sort of long-wave radio to catch signals and hear what people are saying in space. The only problem is that there's only one station being broadcasted, and it's of a televangelist preaching his fatalist religion. The engineer forgot to build an off button.

>>35408001
Nono, I mean from looking at it from the outside.

You know how you can tell which end of a car is the front just by looking at it? With this ship you have no fucking clue.

Even when you know you pointed it one way, when you step out and look at it you think 'Hang on, which end was it facing again?'

Watching it flying is somewhat disturbing, because it looks like it's flying sideways and backwards and forwards and up and falling all at the same time.

>At some points the air-lock breaks and doesn't fill the chamber with air. Have to play Rock Paper Scissors to see who takes off their helmet first.

The former owners were teetotalers and installed a breathalyzer to allow the navigational controls to work. Unfortunately they screwed up the parameters and now the ship only responds to a pilot twice over the limit.

These are from a game I ran a few years back.
>The Hyperdrive is mounted sideways due to defect in the design. Because of this, the ship enters and exits Hyperspace sideways, port side first.
>The reactor is a prototype and has buggy control software
>As a powersaving feature, the inertial dampeners automatically turn off at any speed under mach1
>The ship requires a remote keyfob that burns through batteries at one a month for no apparent reason. The ship will not start without the fob.
>The Oven has a tendency to short out the lights in the bathrooms
>All the computer core software is shareware and demo versions with nag screens
>The cargo bay crane has a 2 second delay on its controls

>Yes, the outer airlock has a crank to open it. No, we're not changing it because it's more trouble than it's worth.

>The engine usually has a warm up and an automated pre-start safety check, but you can usually skip that by kicking the engine control console hard enough.

>The doors kind of scrape and grind loudly when opening and closing so we just use hanging beads and cloth instead. It really makes it feel like home.

>It turns out there was a bee hive on one of our crates and now the cargo hold is infested with hornets. Nobody goes there anymore.

>The ship has the ability to be reformed. Each chamber and component can be placed elsewhere in the ship, and all of the hallways and rooms can move to other chambers. This becomes a problem when the heartbroken gardener starts shifting the rooms erratically, to spite the apathetic chef.

>>35408097
>due to docking regulations, no decoration is allowed on the exterior of ships, except for the name of the vessel, forcing the captain to recristen the ship "This end up"

>>35407266
>Computer has been infected with a virus, which has embedded itself deeply enough into the computer system it can't be removed without wiping the whole system. As a result, turning the ship on requires a micropayment to an anonymous account, as does jumping to hyperspace and opening the cargo bay doors.

>Navigation computer assumes the ship is a perfect sphere for unknown reasons. As a result, all jumps are wildly inaccurate unless the calculations are corrected by hand.

>Shock absorbers on the landing gear are wonky and prone to collapsing under any but the gentlest of landings. Fortunately, the hull is strong enough to take the occasional belly landing.

>Ship is mil-surplus ammunition carrier. Good cargo capacity, fast, easy to maintain, rough-field capable, but the autopilot keeps mistaking traffic control radar for fire control radar and trying to evade, so it has to be disabled for takeoff and landing. Also, if it detects a fire on board it jettisons the cargo to prevent it from cooking off.

>The external waldo is missing, so any external repairs must be fixed by a crewmember physically going EVA.

>Hydroponics is infested with low-grade grey goo.

The code for large parts of the highly customized FTL navigation program is extremely esoteric and hard to understand. It doesn't help that most of the comments seem to be in an alien language nobody even recognizes.

>>35407924
Underrated post

All coffee produced in the galley is automatically and completely decaffeinated.

>The forward turret on the ship is manually controlled, but comes with the hologram of a pretty woman as an AI. This woman is very scantily clad, and only allows heterosexual men to enter her turret. She then proceeds to flirt heavily win him, going so far as to block his view if he isn't paying attention.

>There's an empty room in the ship, not meant for anything. No, really - placing furniture in the room will be met with violent force by the room, to the tune of jettisoning the objects within. The captain currently uses it as an interrogation room, and he comes in hoisting a chair whenever he needs to shake someone up.

>The nav systems are a clusterfuck of electromechanical systems from varying periods in history. And want the fuck is a "Norden", anyway?

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>>35408271
Oh god.

The port escape pods are long gone, and their compartments have been refitted into bunks customarily assigned to new crew members. They've all been welded shut on the outside and their controls rewired, of course, but there's the persistent rumor that the servos and electromagnetic launchers are still in there, and who knows what might happen if you push the wrong (unlabeled) buttons on that console?

>>35408317
The crew would probably revolt within days

>The full code to start the IA in case of a full reset is singing the spanish national anthem. Because of this the main IA has been running 24/7
>The last engineer manual just read "hit it with the wrench, apply ducktape" to nearly all. The main motor is 60% ducktape and melted wrenches.

> The Ships security system has developed a god complex, and only activates if you promise to bring it offerings of ammunition and for some reason, stuffed animals.

Welcome to being a farmer, anons.

>The heatsinks on the main generator are poorly fitted, causing it to overheat quickly.
>The engineer juryrigged an additionally cooling system that uses the excess heat to distill various spirits.

>>35408367
Goddammit Peterson get the fuckin FTB enabled NOW!

There cargo bay is home to a huge metal container placed at a seemingly random angle. It can't be moved nor opened because it's welded to the floor, serving as an extension to the hyperdrive's resonant cavity. Stacking cargo around the thing is an art form many have had to learn on the ship.

>>35408391
Did your ships AI suddenly decide the project garden was such a success, every room (Including the bridge) requires one, like mine did too?

Most of these make me question why anyone would willing fly these ships. There is unsafe and then there is suicide.

>>35408198
>Life support systems were designed to accommodate a wide variety of species. However, the contractor cut corners, so the auto-recognition systems are wonky and a generation out of date, and the manual controls are infuriating to use at best, so you just have to hope life support doesn't suddenly decide you're a methane breather or something.

>Onboard diagnostic systems keep reporting fires all over the ship for no apparent reason, so the fire suppression subsystem has been disabled. If a fire breaks out, it'll have to be activated manually.

>Gravitics are badly mistuned, amplifying turbulence and g-forces as often as it suppresses them. The crew just keeps them off.

>No wifi.

>Consistent hyperdrive malfunction have resulted in the inside of the ship being bigger than the outside. Exact dimensions vary.

>The gardener robots in hydroponics refuse to grow anything but kale.

>Point-defense systems are trigger happy, and will fire on anything larger than a pebble in range unless under full manual control.

>>35408097
>"captain, why did you buy a Borg cube again?"

>>35407266
>The cooking systems of the ship have somehow become intimately linked with the other systems.

>The hob is tried to the propulsion systems
>Dog-fights are ideal for stir-frys

>The oven is linked to the weapons.
>Baz's attempt at a late night drunken curry once destroyed a small moon.

>Scanners to the microwave
>The mineral survivor is super fat from all those ping-meals

>>35408423
I wouldn't apply more than one of these to any given ship to be fair, and at that point it'd be manageable.

Plus, you underestimate the amount of risk a group of down on their luck space ship workers are willing to take, for a payoff

>>35408413
Is the main engineer named Stibbons, by any chance?

>>35408448
>Ship was designed with a 'tessellating' structure, meaning it's made of thousands of individual modular components. This means the deck plan is easy to modify, but the tessellation systems tend to activate unpredictably, rearranging the internal layout near-randomly.

>Ship is mil-surplus logistics ship. Excellent in nearly every respect (except comfort, of course), but internal security gravitic systems are still active. Anyone on board must present correct and comprehensive identification frequently, or be smeared like strawberry jam against the nearest bulkhead.

>Ship was once used by notorious pirate king, and is still logged in law enforcement databases galaxy-wide as such.

>Ship has been 'riced out' with a number of modifications of dubious use at best. Atmospheric maneuvering wings, turbo-boosted maneuvering thrusters, surround-sound stereo in every room and corridor- even the cargo bays.

>Former crew of ship were promiscuous spiders. Still a number of egg-sacks tucked away in odd corners of the ship. Fumigating the whole thing would legally be murder in most jurisdictions.

>Heat radiation systems are stuck at full blast, so internal temperature rapidly drops unless all the other systems are also near full power, which is very fuel-inefficient and causes a lot of wear and tear.

The control room for the reactor safeguard fields seems to have a leak. It rapidly loses pressure unless the life support system is rigged for maximum air flow. Since that would bleed the ship's air supply dry pretty quickly, the room is usually left in a hard vacuum, and any adjustments have to be made wearing a space suit.
The weird thing is that the reactor safeguard control room is deep in the heart of the ship, and nobody knows where all that air is actually going.

The ship is a hollowed-out asteroid with mighty engines attached to it. This gives it massive cargo capacity and great protection against blueshifted cosmic radiation, but automated planetary defense systems tend to get a little paranoid when it's around.

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>The ships AI regularly patrols dating sites looking for skilled crew, flirting with them and luring them to the ship for a date. They tend to be highly devoted to the AI, although occasionally fights break out over who loves the ship more.

>>35408423
I've heard about this sort of thing in RL harbors. The corps that own them encourage horrible maintenance practices because the thing is going to be scraped in a couple of years anyway. The ship is already paid off, which makes any income it produces pure profit. So they run the poor things into the ground.

The best one I remember was a 40 year old ferry
>unable to load cargo to the lower deck because corporate doesn't want to fix the ship's crane
>this makes the ship ridiculously top heavy, it's a wonder the thing didn't capsize every time they left the docks
>crew doesn't care, now they have enough room to play basketball in the empty cargo deck

>The previous owner modded the ship a lot, with massive exhaust bells, a new set of spoilers and wings and a massive stereo. The exhausts now work absolutely terribly as rockets, the wings make it uncontrollable in atmo and they are legally forbidden from using the stereo on several worlds due to the vibrations.

>>35408760
>>The ships AI regularly patrols dating sites looking for skilled crew, flirting with them and luring them to the ship for a date. They tend to be highly devoted to the AI, although occasionally fights break out over who loves the ship more.

I have a new conspiracy theory about Firefly.

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>>35408135
>All the computer core software is shareware and demo versions with nag screens
this one got me

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Some of the shit that actually happens with aircraft would make great quirks
>MiG-25 "Foxbat"
>Designed to counter the XB-70 Valkyrie SSB projest
>Basically two monstrous engines strapped to some wings with a radar powerful enough to kill rabbits at 50 meters
>Highest recorded speed was an Egyptian pilot hitting mach 3.2 over Israel
Although they were designed to travel past Mach 3, the engines' throttle was redlined at about 2.8 because any faster and the engines turned into Scramjets, and the pressures overrode the fuel pumps' ability to control flow to the engine, so instead fuel was dumped into them as fast as physics would allow. In the process of the runaway the engines would begin tearing themselves apart and pulling in other parts of the aircraft. When/If they landed afterwards, the engines were two pringle-cans of scrap metal and the aircraft would likely have terminal structure damage.

But hey, at least they could break mach 3. Because Russia.

>>35408010
>temperature control valve

I... do you guys even basic engineer?

>>35408872
It's a valve that controls coolant flow

>>35408889
>>35408872

Oven uses excess heat from the engine I take it?

>>35408448
>>Onboard diagnostic systems keep reporting fires all over the ship for no apparent reason, so the fire suppression subsystem has been disabled. If a fire breaks out, it'll have to be activated manually.

That's a really good one, actually.

>The Ship's A.I. permanently altered it's Hologram avatar of it's self and voice pattern into what it claims to be the captain's 'Waifu'. The captain denies it to be the case and wishes it would just use the standard default avatar.

>Ship was made out of sections of other scrapped warp capable ships by a clever but poor captain. Now the ship performs wonderfully, but looks like a scrap heap it was pulled out of.

Since the main engines' thrust vectoring is busted, a previous captain had atmospheric control surfaces installed to keep the ship controllable during landing. Unfortunately, one of the control surfaces blocks the docking umbilical, so docking with a space station has to be done with a cheap, flexible " oversized garden hose" umbilical, deployed via EVA.
It goes without saying that the controls for the automated umbilical still exist, "in case we might need it some day", and have been "secured" with a large, taped on DO NOT TOUCH sign.

http://pastebin.com/CckaVVE4
if anyone needs this stuff.

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More ideas from an archived thread:

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/26937160/

>the ship is one of a kind, built from scrap by an old hermit living on a junk planet
>most of the junk was left over from the Second Space Race and First Interstellar War
>as such, many of the systems are in Russian, and the rest in Americanized English
>for some reason, this causes the ship to not function properly at times
>it will start squeaking and rattling like a house settling, and linked systems from the different nations will show errors while trying to work together
>trial and error have shown that degreasing certain alloy segments with vodka and then applying Cosmoline will help, while frying bacon in the cockpit and listening to classical music, mainly AC/DC, will settle the issues and let the ship fly proble-free for at least another week

For some reason vocal commands to the navigational system only register when spoken in a mixture of Esperanto and Klingon. It appears to be a practical joke by a former head engineer who had been laid off.

>>35407266
The thing that heats all the water on the ship stopped working for a good 50 years. No matter how much of the required fuel was put into it, it would never seem to function. Then one day a crewman tossed a jelly-belly in there instead of in the sanctioned disposal unit, and it started up. It now runs on sugar. No one is sure why

>captain insists on only attempting re-entry at night.
>every time the ship re-enters the atmosphere the super-heated hull burns off all the paint
>after it cools down the hull immediately starts to oxidize in specific places etching the image of a dick into the ships nose.
>none of the crew ever figure out why the captain keeps paying to refinish the nose art.

>the ship had a broken water system and engine-cooling system
>the engineers jury rigged a solution for both
>the engine is still prone to overheating, but at least it won't explode
>unfortunately, there is no cold water aboard the ship, only piping hot
>you'll get third degree burns if you let that shit near your skin
>the crew hasn't bathed in two months after Johnson burned his hands off
>you can't escape the smell

>The ship is recently built, but rejected due to production errors.
>Broken systems have been replaced with close proximities from junkyard parts.
>Jumps take 5 minutes longer to calculate and are prone to rounding errors due to the Nav computer and Hyperdrive Control systems having radically different architectures.
>The ship's centre of mass is about 2.4 meters closer to the nose than intended.
>the aft starport airlock doesn't match standard docking sockets

>There are no moving parts on this ship

The ship's main sub-light engine is actually a gutted electrohydrodynamic beam cannon. The highly complex focusing mechanism that would turn it into an actual weapon is missing, of course, and thing guzzles fuel like crazy, but nary a week goes by without the Old Man telling the story of how he once scared a pirate away by pointing the ship's stern at him and initiating the "cannon's" highly recognizable warm-up sequence.

Navigational computer and the ship's kitchen are on the same circuit breaker, which can't handle multiple appliances running at the same time. Do not use the coffee maker while microwave is running, or everything shuts down and the computer forgets your current position.

>The ship was a one-off prototype that could be refueled at all the standard pitstops one finds across the galaxy, but could also deploy specially designed scoops and electromagnetic shielding to, theoretically, harvest hydrogen fuel from the very stars themselves. While this "innovative" refueling system never underwent practical testing, the ships computers are still hardcoded to initiate star harvesting protocols when the fuel tanks empty below a certain threshold. As no one on the ship's present crew wants to take the chance to find out if the system really works, they must remain extremely fuel conscious and make frequent stops to top off the tanks.

>>35407759
Step 1: Light incense
Step 2: Say prayer
Step 3: Flip the switch
Step 4: Receive the sustenance that your weak organic parts still require.

>>35407924
Those are always a challenge to spot.

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>>35407924
fffffuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu

>>35408135
>>The Hyperdrive is mounted sideways due to defect in the design. Because of this, the ship enters and exits Hyperspace sideways, port side first.
I'd use this as an excuse to make gravity in hyperspace 90* off of gravity in realspace. Think about how obnoxious but not crippling that would be.

>>35408351
The ship's internal affairs require you to sing the Spanish national anthem?

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The glide-slope airbrakes have a tendency to jam open, so we make a deliberately hard landing to shock them loose. This also gives us better water pressure in the shower for a few days but we also have to clear up all the dust that gets shaken loose.

On rare occasions during system diagnostic checks, the port & stb engines de-synchronize. The only solution we've got that works 100% of the time is to shut down both engines, disconnect ALL of the nav-control cables at BOTH ends, and plug them back in before re-starting. There is no reason why this should work, or even do anything.

One of the hull-mounts for the drive system has a defect which causes it to come loose, it doesn't cause any harm, but the ship vibrates and clatters like hell. The solution is a high-G roll to port for about 6 seconds to re-seat the coupling.

Upon buying a new ship, you notice the nav system has a yahoo toolbar.

Because the previous owner -needed- a granite counter top in the galley, the ship rolls about 1.7 m/s faster to starboard than to port and it plays hell with the autopilot.

>The captain bought the ship from a galactic police force seizure auction (at a bargain he thought at the time) and only went by the general capability and square footage space.
>After signed on the title to him, the Captain realized at his first inspection that the ship was floating bordello and was laid out as much.
>The ship still gets hailed every so often in seeing if it was 'back in business'
>Our female crew members either vocally grumble about the rumors that are said them.
>The captain kept the shag carpet in the living quarters and bar and lounge in cargo bay one.

The ship is ancient. Really, really ancient. It's so old that its landing legs use the very same pneumatic pistons that were once connected to an ORION shock plate. Rumor has it that somewhere within its labyrinth of engine rooms and cargo bays, there might still be some of its old "high-yield thermonuclear combustion pellets" left lying around.

The port-side impulse engines are significantly more powerful by those on the starboard side.
Normally, listing can be corrected easily.

During evasive maneuvers, however, it's a different story, something any captain will have to bear in mind.

Security system INSISTS on having a "secret knock" instead of an airlock password, and it will not allow anything other than shave-and-a-haircut to be selected.

This makes me want to play FTL: Faster Then Light again.
The amount of times the Engi or AI crew would yell at me in Captains edition for having a system at least two hundred years out of date then upgrade it for free made me want a techno organic sultry Medbay operator.

> All horror movies are banned from the ship. After a horror movie night a few decades ago the ships AI nearly drove the crew insane pretending the ship was haunted. While the crew wasn't fooled, the AI became offended until the pretended they were.

Just going to post a bunch that belong to one ship.

>so old it has "polarized hull plating" instead of shields; nobody really knows how to fix it
>ship's AI takes form of old man, routinely treated as the captain by customs inspections crews because the captain is a young woman
>holographic entities linked to systems have become corrupted and now permanently reside aboard the vessel, jealously guarding "their spaces"
>capable of traveling smoothly through setting's hyperspace equivalent; doing so literally kills setting equivalent of kittens (crew prefers to take it rough)
>rubber parts instead of post-rubber; drives engineers insane with rage finding/replacing them
>AI has plans of its own, actually does recruit crew members without captain/officer input
>maintenance records? this thing is like 10,000 years old, kid

>>35409148
>classical music, mainly AC/DC

I really hate when futuristic settings do this. Classical music is not named classical because it is old. It is named classical because of the neoclassical art period in Europe. Classic and classical are not at all the same.

>the ship has strange organic geometry everywhere
>hallways look like the inside of a ribcage
>some rooms have gigantic pumping organs
>the last 200 levels towards the aft are flooded with some sort of organic sludge
>the sludge is excreted by randomly appearing pulsating orifices
>no one knows what system the ship's servitors are slaved top, but they seem to act independently and pump away most of the sludge
>internal cargo hold number 2 has 40 massive weapons labeled 1 to 40, except number 37 is missing
>no one knows the destructive yield of these weapons and how to use them, but scans show disconcerting amounts of Hawking radiation emitted every now and then
>attempting to tamper with these devices makes them produce a field of pure terror
>the devices have snarky personalities
>the gunnery officer's quarters have a picture of a humanoid with a bird's head painted on the wall with blood
>the eyeless sockets of the painting seem to follow you around the room
>the armory has been massively upgraded and can produce every known handheld weapon system in known history
>the gamma-level AI of the armory has a fetish of weapons
>all the weapons have been coated in black leather
>there are reports of the old captain manifesting himself in lesser used sections of the ship
>he always appears as a 21st century astornaut

> To save on mass, the ship's reactor is located on the back of the ship and only has shielding on one side - the side facing the rest of the ship. EVAs with the reactor running must be careful not to stray from the neutron shadow, and when docking or approaching populated areas, the reactor must be shut down entirely and the ship has to coast in and back out on backup power and chemical rockets. Repairs to the reactor require either a full shutdown, or the use of teleoperated waldos and drones.

>By reconfiguring the neutron reflectors and fields, the engineer can actually shower enemy ships with a semi-targeted beam of radiation, although this seriously strains the reactor.

>One of the techs decided to play a practical joke on the clue by installing a plugin for the Ai system that cracks Dad-jokes whenever the opportunity comes up. He can't figure out how to remove it without wiping the entire system.

>>35409922
>you will never chill out with The Captain/Nostalgia for Infinity

>>35408964
> Due to a design flaw, when active, it tries to suppress all areas with ambient temperatures above 35 deg Celsius.
>This includes all human crew members and the entirety of the engine room.

>The air system was routed through the sewage lines on one deck after life support was cut off by battle damage. No one has gotten around to fixing it and the smell has faded over the years, all the cabin bathrooms on that deck just have an out of order sign on the toilets. Woe betide the dumb rating who ignores the signs and craps into everyone's air vents.

> At some point one of the techs built a Still inside some of the excess armor plating. Surprisingly it still works after the plating was installed on the outside of the ship. Its become tradition to name the latest brews after the last skirmish.

>One of the thrusters has just slightly less push than it's supposed to, so you have to give it just a little bit more power than the rest to fly straight.

>The port side airlock's outer door doesn't close all the way sometimes. Every time it's used, someone has to check if it closed all the way.

>A few of the repair bots malfunctioned a while back and mess up repairs or even break things for no apparent reason sometimes. The crew has taken to calling those ones "gremlins". They still function properly most of the time, the functional ones always fix their mistakes, and they're far too expensive to replace, so they haven't been replaced.

>This model of ship is so old and cheap that it has no proper windows and the cameras it uses instead lag a little bit and have several blank pixels.

>For some godforsaken reason, all the displays in the ship are CRT monitors. They were made obsolete and stopped being produced centuries ago, and yet here they are. Nearly anything else this old would be worth a fortune, but these are just worthless.

>>35409896
>ship's AI takes form of old man, routinely treated as the captain by customs inspections crews because the captain is a young woman
This one got me
I can just imagine the captain is always furious at the AI and the customs guys

>>35409768
>All the stock buzzers and alarm sounds on the ship have been replaced with women moaning, in various states of orgasm, roughly corresponding to the danger posed by the situation.

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>>35408198
>The external waldo is missing

welded onto the pilot's main console is a small artifact with symbols of an apparently unknown and incredibly ancient race. You could probably sell it for a pretty penny, if it weren't for the fact that the ship, of human design, will not work without it.

The ship has all decks and passages oriented for atmospheric flight, but does not have and was not designed for artificial gravity.

The highly monarchical race that provided you with custom-fabricated parts didn't quite understand what you meant when you said you needed 'imperial units', so now half the ship is held together with 3/4" steel nuts and the other half with jury-rigged 20mm gold nuts, but you're assured the gold ones are worthy of an emperor.

The ship was initially intended to be stationed on a carrier, and its airlocks are simple doors that don't interface with space stations, so any time you dock, you can only get onto stations via EVA jumps. Better hope you don't miss.

>>35409876
>Horror movies are banned from the ship. They scare the ship's AI, and it refuses to let the crew "split up" even to sleep or investigate any unusual noises.

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>the ship's AI was salvaged from a military wreck and occasionally suffers from severe flashbacks

>The automatic reactor pressure control system has broken down, and the previous crew lacked components to fix it properly. Instead a manual pressure release system was installed, requiring an engineer to stand by next to a release vlave incase the pressure builds up too much.

>The previous owner has replaced the engines with ones taken from a decomissioned patrol ship. Though capable of high speed in both sublight and FTL, the new engines are not exactly what you would call compatible with the hull, and moving at maxium speed has a veyr real risk of literally tearing the ship apart.

>During the colony wars, this cargo ship was refitted into a torpedo boat, it's cargo hold converted to house military grade-missile launchers. After the war the weapons were removed, but the missile launch button still exists on the brige. Pressing it may or may not open the port cargo ramp and launch the contents of the hold in space; nobody has dared to push it find out.

>>35410282
But when you get the cargo in on time it feels like a hero

>>35410282
>it is also bloodthirsty as hell
>all the flashbacks are of it killing thousands
>and laughing maniacally
>good times

>>35409934
>The ship's computer runs on an advanced neural net bought from an alien vendor. While often ingenious and extremely energy-efficient, it's also only about twice as fast as an actual human being. Jump calculations that should take seconds take hours.

>The gravity generator has some kind of resonance or feedback between the GRASERs that causes awful, sickening gravity fluctuations. To "solve" this, the engineer has deliberately misaligned them by hitting one with a wrench. The resonance stopped, but now every room in the ship feels like it's listing to starboard.

>The ship has an advanced communication system - an axion relay, which converts laser photons into dark matter particles and vice versa. Lets you beam data straight through a planet, unimpeded. They were only ever installed on five models of ship, until they were mysteriously discontinued. The previous owners have covered it in extremely emphatic warnings NOT TO USE IT IN HYPERSPACE, with no explanation. It's useful, and lets the crew scan for stasis fields easily because they're the only thing that reflects axions, but they are extremely careful to shut it down lest they find out why the warnings.

>The engineers, as is traditional, have surreptitiously built a still hidden in the engine coolant piping. Some combination of the raw materials, radiation exposure, and the effects of the jump engine core on the brew fermenting a few centimetres away have given it deeply exotic effects - after the captain found out, he banned drinking it and sells the stuff on the black market as either a lethal poison or a street drug.

>The two main drives are skewed slightly
>in normal transit, it spins
>on the bright side, it means you can leave the artificial gravity off
>on the not-so-bright side, 'out' was not supposed to be 'down', and it starts shaking itself apart if it tries to sprint

>>35409975
>Shippment of fruit
>"I'm absolutley BANANAS for the new cargo!"
>"It appears ensign Riky doesn't find the cargo as A-PEELING!, Get it peeling!"

>>35410225
>After years of showing old classic movies in the ship's lounge, the A.I. lifted movie lines and voices of the actors in the movies that were shown in just about everything vocial interaction with the ship's A.I.
>It has favored sounding like Robin Williams.
>The A.I. only does it around the offical crew members, and not around non crew members... so far.

>The ship has two fuel tanks. The left one depletes slower than the right one, but no one is sure what it powers

>Every now and then the temperature sensors go haywire, and think the heat caused by engine is a fire. This will cause the toilet to seal itself off with fire doors. No manual way to open the doors have been found

>gravity in the bedrooms is slightly skewed, making sleeping rather uncomfortable, with new crewmembers constantly falling off while sleeping

>>35407266
"magical" nanotech never came round, so to make up for parts wear over long periods of time, bio-engineered parts with limited regenerative capabilites are used. Generally plant dna is used as basis, but some companies use cheaper, animal-based systems.
>Ship's radiator panel extenders were bought on sale as "100% floral product"
>Turns out they were cheap jovian knockoff based on dog dna.
>Radiators wont extend unless the system's "belly" is scratched.

>>35409909
Certainly there is a difference between "Classical music" and "classical music". Are you trying to say that "classical music" isn't just "old music"?

There's a drone accompanying the ship. Nobody remembers where it came from, nor does anyone recognize the model or make. It usually clamps to the hull with a magnetic arm, but nimbly evades any attempts to physically access it. It also doesn't respond to any hails or comms protocols, but it does automatically repair micrometeorite impacts and generally appears friendly and occasionally helpful during EVAs.

>>35410424
Classic music is music that became classic because of it's timeless qualities.
Classical music is music from a specific time period.

>the various gunnery positions aren't accessible from inside the ship. They're perfectly safe, but to get back inside you have to walk on the hull.

>the ship has facilities for launching drones and satellites, but none for retrieving them. most planets have pretty strict littering laws.

>the ship's coms systems are nearly fried every time the jumps back in from hyperspace, and they can take days to get back online. until then, you're stuck using manually-aimed lasers for morse code.

>ftl drive is prone to making detours into hell

>>35410323
>the weapon systems were all fitted with manual cutoffs after the AI had its first 'episode'
>the weapon systems were later fitted with secondary cutoffs after the AI worked out that it could toggle the artificial gravity to flip the primary cutoffs

>>35410201
You want to fill us in there, sport?

>>35410392
>The ship's AI only responds to the name "Lassie"
>It still interprets vocal commands correctly, but gives all audio feedback in barks, which have to be deciphered.
>"What's that girl? Timmy fell into the reactor core?!"

>>35410576
>the AI has a automatic cutoff
>a small EMP generator that triggers any time gravitc's power draw climbs too high
>as far as anyone can tell, the AI occasionally forgets this

Why not 3d print new parts?

>>35410621
It's a where is waldo, joke. Or at least that anon thinks it is.

>>35410667
Because retro scifi?

>>35410667
Because that might work for basic things, but for industrial strength components, you want it to be solidly built and machined, which 3d printers can't give you

>>35410459
Yes, Classical music is European art music from (very) roughly 1700-1800, but classical music (note the lack of a capitol letter) refers to "old music" for the most part.

>>35410667
3D printing metal is kind of inherently sucky. Metallurgy is complicated, and sintered metal powder is just never going to have the same strength and toughness as parts you actually did metallurgy to.

>>35410737
>what is laser sintering

>>35410737
Hat part about future tech do you not get? If you 3d print atom by atom you get exactly what you want

>>35410640
>the crew suspects the AI might be suicidal and that it might end up crashing the ship into something to kill itself
>nah, it just wants to kill things
>especially a rival AI that defeated it during the last war
>it fucking hates that thing
>fucking WHITE_WHALE
>fuck that guy

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>>35408832
Reminds me of something that happens to the SR 71 Blackbird (Pic related's spy brother, and the fastest jet aeroplane on the planet)

Its outer fuselage heats up and expands above a certain speed.
In flight the plane is fine, but at low speeds and on the ground the "skin" shrinks, meaning the plane constantly leaks fuel.

It's also got analogue controls.

But hey, Mach 3.3

>>35410806
Might as well conjure a space unicorn then. It's like you don't want the captain to make a recreation of Versailies on the rec room floor.

>>35410788
I refer you to
>>35410750

Source: I actually build spaceships for a living[1], and we're constantly trying to 3D print parts because of how beneficial rapid prototyping would be, and it's just not good enough compared to machined parts.

[1]Not role-playing, this is my actual job

>>35408832

I seem to recall reading somewhere that the radar on a foxbat is capable of killing rabbits at like 500 meters away.

>>35410859
That was my least favorite Leslie Fish song.

>>35410667
In the far future, patent laws are the most restrictive of all, and attorneys are more like legally-sanctioned assassins. It's just not worth the risk.

>>35410859
I dislike the manatee

>>35410895
Really? I quite like it. I think Earth's firebreathing daughter was awful...she went from scifi filk to preachy wiccan bullshit in it.

>>35408607
>Former crew of ship were promiscuous spiders. Still a number of egg-sacks tucked away in odd corners of the ship. Fumigating the whole thing would legally be murder in most jurisdictions.

Yeoman, are the insurance papers up to date?
>aye, sir.
Navigation, one-quarter speed to nearest star, then all hands to escape pods.

>>35407266

There's an ancient repair robot that was trapped on the ship after an accident that sealed the surviving crew members in different parts of the ship. The crew members took a long time to die, and communicated with each other in Morse code (or equivalent sci-fi low tech emergency backup encoding method). Occasionally as the repair robot is doing something it'll start taping out the desperate calls for help from men who have been dead for years. There's a legend that the robot is haunted, somehow, by the crew members, and that you can converse with them by tapping on the hull in morse and waiting for the robot to answer.

Some people have tried it, and they all refuse to give details. Most try to get the robot scrapped.

>>35410917
>>35410895
Plebs. You probably hated Banned from Argo too.

>>35410903
Nah they will more likely sell rights to the print file. For a huge price of course. Pirating is a hanging offense.

>>35410868
I don't see how that's a problem. If there's a setting with fictional "jump drives" for 3D printing to have progressed to the point where it can make better parts.

>>35410806
Atomic synthesis is limited by thermal noise. It becomes impossible to reliably build structures larger than a few micrometers because eventually too many molecules will end up in the wrong places.

> Bored techs a while back installed an ARG into the main computer. The ship only lets you do things if you've got enough points, but refuses to tell anyone how to gain them.

>>35410942
What? Banned from Argo is a solid laugh. It's overrated maybe, but it's still great.

>poor as shit space captains
>being able to afford 3D atom printers

>>35410920
I kinda like that one but I prefer the Odin one. Always be kind to travellers. Most of Avalon is risen was good. Wish they sold carmem irandas ghost as a CD. I love it.

>leslie fish
http://youtu.be/ATmGwOdSEk0

>>35410946
That's a wrong assumption. The same that made people in the 60's think we'll be living on the moon by now and flying to work in jet-cars. Just because at this moment technology develops in certain directions is no guarantee it will continue in those directions. We've been a decade from cold fusion for the last four decades.

>>35410998
You can find it on YouTube and DL it.

>>35410833

It's amazing what you can do when you have an incredibly skilled and well funded optimizing for a single quality.

>>35411015
>tfw found The Moon is a Harsh Mistress as audiobook on youtube the other day
>tfw listening to glorious 50s scifi read by good voice actor with russian accent
>tfw will never be

>>35408832
That's pretty neat.

Speaking of real-life stuff that could work for a spaceship, I remember reading about some shit called the cavitational torpedoes. They're more like missiles (with their own jet propulsion and all) launched underwater that create their own air-buble around themselves in order to move through water faster. A theoretical cavitational torpedo could reach up to 5300+ km/h.

Downside, to have it move that fast you need to coat the entire thing with a special wax that gets dissolved in water. So you have to include a coating system into your missile, or you just make them go for a short distance before detonating them.

Now imagine a ship that can move extremely fast, but you have to give it a new paint job at every stop or it starts falling apart.

>>35411051
I'm prepared to state with confidence that if suborbital flight pans out in the next five years, we'll see a return to the Moon (for sustainable prices) in twenty.

>>35411015
But assuming FTL travel is fine? Or Anti-matter reactors? Or practical nano tech? Or Holographic imagery?

Where to you draw the line?

>>35411084
Not in time for a glorious lunar revolt of 2076 though.

>>35411092
Whatever fits the feel of the setting you want.

>>35410998
The best of that album was, suprisingly enough, the hymn to nightmare for me. Also yes, either Carmen miranda or Freefall and other delights. But not Minus ten. that's just depressingly optimisic.

>>35411092
To be fair, these are for SHITTY ships for POOR CREWS, lets just say no one can afford a fancy 3d printer and go back to enjoying our fictional spaceships?

>>35411084
I hope that project about solar plants on the moon actually happens.

Imagine lasers and masers transporting electricity from the moon directly to your crib. Fucking awesome.

>>35411065
What's going to cause the paint/coating to peel/dissolve in space?

>>35411116
Those two are my favorite of her albums, too. I listened to my Dad's big CD of filk when we went on road trips, and it was a joy to be browsing YouTube and find all those songs again (and some new ones).

>>35411065
>tfw no supercavitating littoral multilevel trimaran supercarrier

>>35410868
...b-but you have a CNC lathe.

Why?

"I have this awesome pneumatic hammer, but I really want to see if these el-cheapo plastic hammers can do the job."

Granted I get the long term net benefits of 3D printing parts (IN SPEHSS), but like...you know it's not there yet. Why keep trying?

>>35411145
Hyperspace physics.

>>35411092
Where you want it. Tech held by spit and duck tape is such a fun trope removing it cause "muh 3d printing" is like going "why dont you play easy mode? It's so much easier!".

>>35409934

The Kzinti Lesson: There is no such thing as an unarmed starship.

>>35411145
Radiation.

The coating technology didn't really catch on.

>>35411114
The only correct answer.

>>35410868
What if you used a 3D-printer to print a robot smith and casts for forging?

Would that work?

>>35411193
So you know you're there when you get there?

>Ship was built as military transport in the heyday of EMP/EQP weapons. Thus, the mainframe runs of vacuum tubes and the control systems are analog.

>Gravity generators 'rotate' counterclockwise in time with the ships clock when not in a planet's gravity well. The only time gravity is oriented directly at the floor is noon. It's a hardware fault, and replacing the generators would be too expensive. Fortunately, the ship was originally built for zero-g, so 'floor,' 'ceiling', and 'walls' are poorly defined at best, so it's not immensely inconvenient. Everything that needs consistent gravity, like cooking, has been mounted on gyroscopic platforms.

>The smart windows are all stuck on disgustingly picturesque nature scenery. For some inexplicable reason, they require a password to change, and none of the current crew know the password.

>The computer system is infested with Venusian warware. Every time you want do do something, you have to sit through thirty seconds of Space Communist propaganda first.

>The ship was originally built for high-grav dwellers. All the furniture is slightly too large for humans, the wrong shape, and is too sturdily built to be removed without some very expensive welding equipment.

>>35411193
Saving on weight and material. The fancy shapes you can get with 3D printing could seriously cut weight, while maintaining strength, if the material kept its properties.

Also, titanium is a huge pain in the ass to machine, but takes well to sintering.

>>35411193
Not him but I worked for the missiles industry.

Because managers always want to try 3D printing in hopes it will be less shit than the previous batch they tried.

It's never the case.

>>35407266
This thread renewed my enthusiasm for painting my spaceship minis. i picked a very "dirty" scheme and wasn't very happy with it recently, but the ridiculous ideas reminded me why i picked it in the first place.

>>35411287
There's easily identifiable thresholds that haven't been met yet.

For example, after someone 3D prints an entire steel frame house it might be worth investigating whether one can machine parts to a high enough specification to be usable for spacecraft.

Sounds like you're just wasting taxpayer monies. Or, you know, corporate funds. If it's the latter carry on I guess.

>>35411114
>>35411122
>>35411232

I like these answers.

It definitely beats >>35411015

>Due to faulty wiring, the power on all non-essential components cuts off whenver the ship engages its FTL drives. This includes all onboard lights. Crew members are instructed to always have a flashlight on their person when on board.

>Due to a malfunction in the life support system, the air humidity is kept at 100% at all times.

>The gravity generators on deck 2 are known to malfunction at seemingly random intervals, eighter turning off or doubling the effective gravity without warning.

>The sensor on the starboard airlock is damaged, causing the computer to not register when it is closed and seal the bulkheads leading to the airlock whenever the ship leaves port. The crew opted to turn off the emergency override instead or replacing the sensor (compatible models haven't been produced for 50 years, so finding a replacement would be difficult), which fixed the problem but now the crew must remember to manually close the airlock or the entire ship depressurises.

>>35411193

Don't lathes have some issues as well?

IIRC, one of the things about forging is that you can, to a certain extent, control the structure of the metal, making it stronger along directions where stress is expected. Again IIRC, it's why we still forge things, rather than just cast or machine them.

>>35411402
>IIRC, one of the things about forging is that you can, to a certain extent, control the structure of the metal, making it stronger along directions where stress is expected. Again IIRC, it's why we still forge things, rather than just cast or machine them.
You are perfectly right. Forging induces anisotropy in the grains of the metal.

>>35410936
I remember this story, but can't remember who wrote it. I think it wa Stanislav Lem.

>>35411312

The military was interested in it for rapid repair and simplifying the logistics tail. Rather than having to keep spare parts for all the vehicles you just have a truck with a printer and produce them as needed. Similar logic for a spaceship where space and weight are usually pretty critical concerns.

>As a power saving feature, all internal lights automatically shut off and all window coverings open when the ship is near a star.
>Using more than four bolts to hold the main engine access panel on causes the entire electrical system to short out.
>The use of fans, waving your arms or anything else that causes rapid air movement makes the life support system's air quality monitors to flip out and start over-saturating the area with oxygen.
>the forward cockpit windows have windshield wipers and wiper fluid. Although useless in space, if the wiper fluid tank is empty, the ship refuses to disengage docking clamps until the situation is resolved.
>Due to a technical defect, the astronavigational display prints everything backwards. A mirror has been provided by the captain to resolve this issue.
>Half of the escape pods have been converted into cold storage cargo tanks. The remaining escape pods have a second seat welded inside to make up for it.
>The communications system can not select any frequency that ends in an even number due to the way the selector nob is wired.

>>35411402
>>35411445
Yes, CNC lathes have their own set of problems. But you have them. And I am jealous. So jealous.

>the warp drive is an old prototype picked up on a colony world for pocket change
>it's got the doubling effect to a certain degree
>when in warp, a mirrored, semi-transparent copy of the ship can be seen drifting out of the ship and into the wall of the warp tunnel where it breaks apart
>at times, people looking eerily like the crewmembers can be seen staring back from the copied ship
>a piece of salvage was retrieved after a warp
>the metal was brittle like glass and broke apart in the hand of the person who touched it
>a ghostly image of the scrap lingered on the floor for days before slowly disappearing
>apart from the creepiness, the warp drive works fine, which is why no one considers replacing it

>>35411490
Yes, like I said understand the simplification of the logistics tail. I used to do logplanning.

>>35407266
>used to be owned by a fan of an ancient cult broadcast programme
>first trip seems perfectly fine, leave spaceport with no trouble, spend a few days in space no trouble at all
>arrive at destination
>tractor beams begin to pull you in to the docking station
>suddenly the entire bridge begins to shake as if on some kind of hydraulic system, lights go dim and flashing red LEDs light up the walls, then the control panels begin to send out sparks for no reason and dry ice is pumped into the room occasionally
>everything goes back to normal once docked
>"...what the fuck was that?"

>>35411488

Bingo. It's from the story "Terminus" from "Tales of Pirx the Pilot". It popped into my head when thinking about shitty spaceships.

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>>35410667
>the ship is a discarded prototype built largely out of self-assembling nanomachines
>the nanomachines break down when exposed to intense heat or radiation, meaning that the reactor will physically destroy itself if it runs above 40% power for more than a few minutes

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>>35407924
>single cracked o-ring
>hours of disassembly to get to it
>leftover parts when you reassemble
>it still leaks when you reassemble it again

>>35411512
>>The communications system can not select any frequency that ends in an even number due to the way the selector knob is wired.
>To remedy this, the engineers have jury-rigged a second radio that can only select even numbers.

>>35411622
Cracked o-rings are made of pure hatred.

>>35411575
>used to be owned by a fan of an ancient cult programme
>whenever you're more than 3 days out from port, the ship goes into lockdown until at least one crewmember goes into the rec room
>the AI then selects an ancient, terrible movie and forces the crewmember to watch while the maintenance robots crack jokes about it

>>35408227
>NASA's Copernicus orbital mechanics system

>>35411679

"Who the fuck were the 'COBOL' and why did they write to code for this computer?"

>>35411590
Ah man, I only remember one story from that.

Which was also a good "shitty technical problem space ship story."

He get's assigned to patrol this area of space pilots keep going missing in, with all sorts of rumors about alien space ships.

Near the end of his shift, he starts to see another ship on the scanners, but he can't see it and it acts odd, so he begins chasing it/or running away, I don't remember.

Eventually he realizes the ship doesn't exist and it's a bug in the systems of that kind of ship, and responsible for the disappearance of the other pilots, as they went chasing/running from ghost ships until they ran out of fuel.

>>35411738
Was it sensor? I though it was actual trick of light in that part of space. I do have to admit, it was some time since I read it.

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>>35410833
The best part of the SR-71 was that it didn't carry any last line point-defence systems like flares and the pilots weren't instructed on defensive maneuvers other than "put the balls to the wall and laugh as you outrun missiles"

>the warp drive is unlike any other warp drives
>when out of warp, it takes an additional sub-system to restore the ship and its interiors, crew included, to their original state
>before this, they can take literally any shape
>know examples are flower pots, gel, sea mammals, footwear, yarn, clockwork, and living room furnishing
>also, if the warp drive is engaged without coordinates, you will end up somewhere random where stuff always happens to you for some reason

I've always thought FTL spaceships should use their warp drives or whatever propulsion there is as a weapon system too. It doesn't make sense having some dinky laser or gamma radiator beam when the engine can sidestep the laws of physics.

>ship is in possession of an ancient but still working military cloaking system
>nobody knows where its from, there is no info about it anywhere
>it's a complete mystery
>it renders the ship absolutely invisible to enemy systems by using a ridiculously strong EM field to refract light around it
>requires enormous quantities of electrical power to be activated, meaning that the ship would be extremely limited in what it can do
>additional noted side effects included gravitational fluctuations aboard the ship as well as sudden changes of energy and mass
>once activated, crew began complaining about psychological issues
>they started reporting feeling separated from their bodies, their arms moving through solid objects, or having audio-visual hallucinations
>there were no medical side-effects, all effects are purely psychological
>at least, that's what we know so far - nobody has kept the thing active more than an hour
>who the fuck made the Philadelphia Experimental Cloaking Device anyway

>>35411777
Might have been, as it would also explain why it only happened in this one part.

I was pretty certain it was a bug, though. But frankly, yeah. Been too long since I read it.

>>35411738

Yeah. A lot of the stories in "Pirx" are like that. There's one where he's still a cadet, and has a test flight that involves a pair of flies, a missing key, and a loose panel. These things combine to nearly crash him (kinda) into the moon. It's a really fun one as well.

As far as shity spaceship stories goes: There are rats aboard. They've tried everything, up to and including blowing all of the airlocks and dropping the radiation shields and just leaving the damn thing for a day or two. But there are still rats.

Why would a ship need to continuously use it's engines, wouldn't inertia move it?

>>35411780
>red star
>singleprop
Is that supposed to be a nazi or a Fin?

>The inertial dampeners are not to be engaged at any time. Due to some malfunction, they work backwards, so the crew will be smeared on the stern bulkheads if you turn them on while accelerating. To compensate, all personel has to be strapped on their seats whenever undergoing acceleration.

>The ship computer is an ancient model that hasn't been in production in decades, but the onboard systems are not compatiple with newer computers. The operation system is extremely, some would say aggressively, user unfriendly and prone to suffering from bug at inopportune times.

>After the computer finally broke down, the only fix the engineer could jury-rig was hooking up an old domestic assitance robot he found on some junkyard onto the system (the damn thing happens to run on a similar operating system), and letting its ai perform some of the tasks the ship computer should do. However, he refused to have the thing dissassmbled. And that's why there's a robot maid on the command bridge and why the klaxons start ringing whenever somebody enters the ship without wiping their feet or leaves the toilet seat up.

>>35411917
Fine calibration of movement.

If you want to move in a straight line, then yeah, you just need to fire them up once and get that shit going. If you want to move around and not get hit by a moving rock or some other shit (these are ridiculous speeds we're talking about) you'll have to fire them up from time to time to avoid getting slammed.

>>35411917
If you accelerate for half your trip and decelerate for the other half, you're there faster.

>>35411917
Non-reaction drives get you from A to B faster, anon.

>FTL actually uses time-travel to move. Ships are under strict order to not move through human-occupied periods of history.
>No matter how the astrogator tries, the navcomp still takes them through Rosewell 1947. Every damn time.

>>35411717
The code for the main computer is written in FORTAN.

>Diagnostic alarm is incredibly annoying, and diagnostic systems turn up spurious problems with exhausting regularity. As a result, the automatic systems have been disabled entirely; all maintenance checks must be initiated manually.

>Hyperdrive capacitors cannot hold a charge worth a damn; ship tends to drop out of hyperspace at unpredictable moments, necessitating a few days and hundreds of kilos of fuel to recharge. Also, capacitor room is filled with static electricity as a result; all crew members must be well-grounded when entering.

>Sensor systems will occasionally overlay recordings of prior communication and readings onto the current output, resulting in ghost returns. Also, due to the way the UI is set up it's easily to accidentally drop out of simulation mode without warning, so be careful when practicing maneuvers in populated space.

>Heat sinks occasionally start dumping heat into the air vents, causing sudden internal temperature rises until they're fixed.

>>35408872
>>35408889
>>35408914
or, they have a very, very regular Techpriest, who found it is supposed to be that way in the manual.

>>35411997
Man, I'd take FORTRAN over assembly any day.

At least there you know what's going on.

>>35411997

Everything else was done with Hypercard.

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>>35411801
>due to a flaw in the space folding process, the ship is temporarily compressed to 1/70,000 of its normal size after a jump
>the exact duration varies, but it rarely lasts more than a few minutes

>>35412076
>>35412078
You guys are like over-the-top villains.

>>35408345
Especially if it was the dudes from "Moat in God's Eye."
Those assholes fucking love coffee no matter how shit they say it tastes.
Also Moaties wouldn't understand this thread.

Due to the..."unique" aerodynamics of the ship in atmosphere it has a rediculously high stall speed. When landing on a runway, the procedure is to dive steeply toward the end of the runway until 20 meters, then pull hard and flare and hope you got the angle right as the ship drops the last few meters like a rock.

The ships warp-translation software and hardware are, while functional, not designed to be compatible. One of the symptoms of this ad-hoc arrangement is the ship will tumble out of warp space rather than glide.

The ship, while capable of it, was not designed for planetfall. When initiating drive start-up on a planetary surface or hanger with an ambient temperature above 31celcius, the engines will vapor lock. The are must be cleared of all bystanders and flammable objects, and the engines must be started with the fuel regulators and throttle set to "FULL". It is advisable that all crew are in inertial seat restraints and in the "brace" position.

>>35411939
Rusky

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>>35410534
> mfw

>>35412158
>moat
>moaties
Moat (noun); ditch, often filled with water, encircling or inhibiting access to a fortification
Mote (noun); small particle, diminutive and miniscule

>>35409868
It makes me want to play Space Engineers more.
>The distribution systems for the generators and the missile launchers are connected. Crew are encouraged to check both whenever they pass by, so we don't just shoot fuel rods in a firefight
>The ship has no life support, all the crew are forced to wear the huge, bulky EVA suits at all times.
>The ships mining arms have been broken by mishandling hundreds of times. The new ones are jury-rigged piles of joints and struts with drills on the end, controlled via a camera and a panel of poorly wired, unlabeled buttons

>>35412181
Red Iculous was my favourite crayon.

>The ship was built as a trap for in wars. The engine isnt properly secured to the ship, so going into FTL speeds causes the engines to launch themselves through the entire ship, leaving the broken hull behind. Now decomissioned, it simply has a post-it note on the FTL controls.

>Due to many problems with the motorised hinges and the laziness of the previous crew, the main door literally will never open. Instead, the crew break the door off and weld it back on from inside. As a bonus, it wards off intruders.

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>>35412229
Well it was more a reference to Event horizon, but FUCK YEAH DOOM.

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>>35411817
You'd probably enjoy "Ringworld", then. It's a book series by Larry Niven.

>>35411998
>Some unimaginable madman coded the entire OS in Malbolge and Whitespace.

>The weapons systems cannot be controlled manually. The targeting systems are always active, causing no end of misunderstandings with local customs agents and militaries, but so far they haven't shot at anything yet. Your insurance company insists on you having functional armament.

>The autodoc prescribes "Walk it off, you pussy" for everything short of immediately life-threatening injuries.

>The hyperdrive is one of the older models that generates a continuous electromagnetic disruption field while active, preventing any electronics from working while it's active. All control while in hyperspace must be done by analog.

>>35412153
If I wanted to be an over-the-top villain, I'd write everything in Chef.

>>35410812
>the AI sometimes addresses people using the names of its past crewmembers
>this is a reliable sign that the AI is about to have an issue

>>35412158
For having read anything Niven, I like you.
For having read The Mote in God's Eye, I like you even more.


I love this whole thread.

>>35410037
FUCK I KNEW I RECOGNIZED THAT DESCRIPTIONS

>>35407266
OP, you basically just described a Los Angeles class attack submarine.

Except replace windows held in and sealant with leaks patched and tourmaline grease and jump drive with emergency blow.

>>35411817
"The Kziniti Lesson"

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeaponizedExhaust

In a lot of Niven's stories, it tells about how ships can be used as weapons. From Bussard Ramjets which are giant hydrogen-burning single-ships that could destroy a good deal of a continent, should they choose to crash one into a planet, to nuclear powered ships meant to fly around the solar system which each contains what could basically be turned into a nuclear bomb. And it's trusted that nobody would ever do it.

>The primary airlock's inner door as a shorting curcuit that nobody can be bothered to fix. The doors will open, then slam almost closed, then open and stay open.

>The ship uses and ancient V8 piston engine as the starter motor, which can double as a backup electricity generator if the shit really hits the fan

>The crew often remark on the pleasant, decorative solid-oak beams in the ceiling of the galley
>they aren't decorative

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>>35412232
whoops, forgive me.
Though in the context of the story, The mote is like a moat

>>35407924
to m8 fuk u

>>35412323
Actually, anything from here would work.
>http://esolangs.org/wiki/Hello_world_program_in_esoteric_languages

I want this ship to be coded with hate.

>The ship's version of a holodeck is leaky. Every now and then, you can see a ghostly person walking through the halls, or a cat jumping through the kitchen, or Mechagodzilla charging into the captain's quarters

>>35410812

"What the hell was that?"

"The ship's AI steered us through an ion storm"

"Well it's not as bad as the time it impaled Wilkins with the grapnel. Does it say why?"

AI: "Look ye, Nantucketer; ... I hold his death! Tempered in blood, and tempered by lightning are these barbs; and I swear to temper them triply in that hot place before the engines, where the White Whale most feels his accursed life!"

Intercom: "This is the captain speaking, all crew members who have stills you think I don't know about are ordered to bring a jug of whatever you've made that didn't make you go blind to the bridge immediately."

>>35412489
>The code is from an old but usable system
>all of the comments are in a dead language that nobody understands

>>35412410
Actually, there's nothing about pressurized poo spraying out of anywhere, so it can't be a 688.

>There are no manual controls, all maneuvers, calculations and commands must be entered verbally and in a French Parisian accent.
>There is an unexplained door on the warp drive. It can not be opened and occasionally something knocks on it from the other side.
>There is what appears to be a swimming pool under a massive retractable floor panel in cargo bay 4. There is, however, no gravity plating to keep the water from floating around.
>There is a screen door mounted on the outside of the ship's port side airlock. Originally installed as a joke, it has since been made a ground for the port side electrical lighting systems and the screen itself has been modified into a communications array. It can not be removed under any circumstances.
>The forward laser cannon produces massive amounts of recoil when fired. We don't know why.

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>>35407266
Every time you turn the steering wheel, it makes a god awful screeching noise, and it doesn't stop until you return to a straight course. Even if you're just holding it still while making a turn, it makes the schreeching noise.

Nothing appears to be wrong with the ship anytime you take it into a dock, and it never does the noise if a mechanic takes a look at it.

this is inspired by my fucking car

>>35412460
>nuclear powered ships meant to fly around the solar system which each contains what could basically be turned into a nuclear bomb.
The kind that rapid-fires (relatively..) nukes behind a huge blast shield to generate thrust? That's currently the most sensible idea for interstellar propulsion. Naturally weaponizing such a thing is almost trivial.

>>35412512
Ah French...

>>35412507
>>35410812

http://darktower.wikia.com/wiki/Blaine_the_Mono

>Due to its cobbled-together nature the ship actually has two modes of FTL transport. One is a conventional hyperdrive, though it is old, clunky and will only move the ship slowly through hyperspace. The other is a prototype jump drive salvaged from a skunkworks during the war, which can move the ship instantly to its destination. This is very power intensive, uses a complex navigation program designed for a different computer system and the power requirement increases exponentially with distance. With the spare fuel tanks full, the reactors at maximum power and the AI core powered down the ship is one of the fastest ships in the galaxy. Otherwise it is a slow tramp freighter with several potential cargo spaces filled with machinery and fuel tanks.

>>35412512
>everything is written in Fugue
>the AI can't communicate with the crew in any other way but by playing soft piano music
>the crew loves it
>it's trying to tell them the engine is leaking and they all have radiation poisoning

>>35412489

PROLOG or LISP should work for that without resorting to deliberately obfuscated languages. Just something that was coded by people who did not give a fuck about what anyone else did, used, or thought. They produced a system that is good in some ways, odd in most, bad in ways that most other systems aren't, and most importantly: Incredibly difficult to understand or maintain.

The hate comes from 4 generations of programmers applying patches in a language they almost but didn't quite understand and digging themselves ever deeper into a morass of bugs and failure as a result.

>the ship is fitted with a rapid-cloning system designed to produce soldiers for a planetary invasion
>the system never really worked and no one can turn it off, so the cargo bay is always filled with cloned soldiers wearing WW2-style uniforms and gas masks

>>35412705
>LISP
Oh God. I still have nightmares about the last time I worked with it. Fuck that shit.

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>>35412739

All the roles redshirts take up in start trek are now done by soldiers in gas masks. (for maximum creepy it should be WW1 style though)

>>35412701
It cant blink up a pictogram? What idiotic air is this?

>>35412410
When I read emergency blow, I thought that meant it dispensed cocaine, for those stressful situations.

>>35412951
It's a shitty ship, man. Be glad at least the speakers aren't busted.

>>35412971
Damn you now I can't stop laughing

>>35412979
>>35412971
Damn good thing we have our emergency blow then.

>>35412971
I'm talking about the thing where if you use it you go from chilling normal submerged operations to "OH GOD WE HAVE A 30 DEGREE UP ANGLE, GAUGES UNABLE TO TRACK DEPTH RATE, HELM REPORTS LOSS OF STEERAGEWAY, STERN PLANES CAN'T MAINTAIN ORDERED BUBBLE, DIVE FELL OUT OF HIS CHAIR, CHIEF OF THE WATCH PASS OVER THE 1MC PREPARE TO EMERGENCY SURFACE" closely followed by some very loud noises, rocking motions on all three axises and other generally chaotic things.

Although your kind sounds cool too.

>>35413239
>>35412971
One is for functional militarized submarines, the other is for Shadowrunners.

Ice Freighter class ship "Assula"

> Cargo's temperature control is always off by crazy amounts, no one can figure out why. Every time you open the doors water floods in

> GyroNav references off random objects in space, keeps flipping the ship around thinking its straightening itself.

> some of the medical bots visual sensors are cracked and think spilled coffee or any brown liquid is blood, proceeds to quarantine entire area till it's clean.

>When they bought the ship they were told it came with a full detailed ship Interior map, turns out it was a map to a Mars amusement park.

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>>35412181
> Due to the..."unique" aerodynamics of the ship in atmosphere it has a rediculously high stall speed. When landing on a runway, the procedure is to dive steeply toward the end of the runway until 20 meters, then pull hard and flare and hope you got the angle right as the ship drops the last few meters like a rock.

> When initiating drive start-up on a planetary surface or hanger with an ambient temperature above 31celcius, the engines will vapor lock. The are must be cleared of all bystanders and flammable objects, and the engines must be started with the fuel regulators and throttle set to "FULL".

I want to pilot this thing. Now.

>>35413544
>>When they bought the ship they were told it came with a full detailed ship Interior map, turns out it was a map to a Mars amusement park.


>crew have taken to labeling the internals off of the map, in a display of dry humor and to befuddle new officers
>>"We had a coolant fluid breech over at the merry-go-round."

>>35412489
>All on-board software has been rewritten in either Ook or Brainfuck. This is the result of a drunken bet between astrogation techincians during a three weeks long "no shoreleave" down period.

>>35413612

>The engines are acting up again in the tunnel of love

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I know /tg/ threads get archived automatically, but I just thought I'd throw this one up on Sug/tg/ just in case. Feel free to upvote it if you want to.

http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive.html?searchall=Shitty+Spaceship+Quirks

>The backup generator was a giant hamster wheel connect to the alternator and a sign in front of it saying "Run for that air!"

The ship's outboard speakers for blasting a warning klaxon during planetary operations has been re-wired to the PA system, which runs off of the same control program as the stereo in the captain's quarters.

As a relic from it's days as a food supply conveyor, whenever the ship transmits ID codes & docking parameters, it also sends an extensive pricing & daily specials list, to the frustration of ATC personnel.

>>35413878
Alternatively, "get winded!"

>>35413544

>All meals are to be eaten at the... concessions stand and outdoor dining pavilion...?
>Huh. That actually works out.

The fire alarm sysem is controlled by a very confused AI of the ship which loves to celebrate birthday parties, unfortunately this leads to too many events of a sector on fire and "Happy Birthday" playing on the PA

>>35411379
>>Due to faulty wiring, the power on all non-essential components cuts off whenver the ship engages its FTL drives. This includes all onboard lights. Crew members are instructed to always have a flashlight on their person when on board.

This would be great for a horror game.

>>35407266
> The anabiosis deck has some dude stuck there in anabiosis. They call him Mr. Henderson, though nobody knows his real name. The anabiosis camera is broken but still working, the problem is with the door. Everyone is too busy to fix the door, so he is there asleep forever.
> Some of the manuals are written in an unknown mysterious language that looks like some sort of Old Chinese or Messopotamian, and can't be translated. Luckily, those manuals have nice illustrations.
> The cargo module contains a box of blue alien sex dolls, three sets of power armor, a a container of toy lightsabres, a weird-looking large egg in a transparent but strong container, Lagann half taken to pieces, Buick Skylark - also half taken to pieces, a police box (no, it's quite normal on the inside), a huge cake in a huge fridge (you are taking it to one of the space ports for some boy's birthday), a cage for a big animal (also may fit a criminal), and three boxes of vodka (one of them lakcing a few bottles already).
> One of the labs on board is full of weird-looking plants that evolved to survive in zero-gravity and irregular sunlight. They grow everywhere.

>>35408126
I like this one a lot.

>many of the ship's pneumatic systems were modified to be able to accept compressed air from a variety of canisters. Seemed like a good idea at the time... then somebody used something with an embittering agent in it, to keep people from huffing it, and you can't walk past a certain hallway without getting a nasty mouthful and retching.

>the water pipes for the second living block run right through the bunk wall- sleep in there, you'll hear a cacophony of nureeks, squirlookas, and rotuts all night.

>one small section of outer hull is demagnetized, through negligence or some sort of natural phenomenon, which is dangerous for magboot maintenance. It's painted bright red, but greenies still sometimes step on it and freak when they start to sail off. It's become kind of a hazing ritual to take the new guys out for maintenence in that section.

>there's a color coded hazard system in place, but increasing threat levels require a change of bulb.

>astronav likes to go out whenever people use the microwave or hair dryer.

>long range scanners have an actual scope that tends to accumulate grit.

Yeah, a lot of these are from red dwarf.

>The front upper maneuvering pod rattles like hell during maneuvering. No amount of service or repair will fix this.

>On the pilot control board some of the buttons have lost their labels and now have taped-on pieces of paper reading "SHTF", "???", "SKRONK", "SPRINKLER" and two identical buttons with skull and crossbones on them

>There is a bug in the FTL drive software that bluescreens if anyone operates a wireless intercom near the FTL unit. Since it takes a complete restart to unfuck the drive software and no one can locate the damn bug every intercom on the FTL deck is wallmounted and operates like a old early-21st century army field telephone.

>The thrust selector lever has broken off and been replaced with a screwdriver jammed into the socket. Sometimes the screwdriver shakes loose if you accelerate too fast.

all these are inspired by places i have worked at or vehicles i have owned

You guys should use this stuff for a game.

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>The ship's escape pod/shuttle is a converted Soyuz. They're like Toyota pickup trucks; durable, modular, and easily converted to any use. The NeoUSSR made thousands of them back in the day. You'll always be able to find spare parts.

>Of course, this means that half the ship speaks Anglo and half speaks Russian, and all the controls on the Soyuz are labelled with stickynotes, but it's cheap and it still flies.

>The EVA suits from storage did not have nose-scratching velco.

>>35414093
Alternately, the AI is extremely serious and paranoid about fires, and schedules regular drills that must be completed before it will do any other tasks.

These can happen at any time, including:
>during sleep and mess hours
>at the most dramatic part of the captain's speech
>while the crew is away on shore leave
>in the middle of trying to control an ACTUAL fire, on a completely different part of the ship

>None of the power outlets work. Previous "engineers" have "fixed" this by splicing shit directly into ripped up wiring

>The ignition doesn't work. To start up the ship's engines, you must engage the ignition, then grope around for another button you can't actually see and hold that until you hear the engine start

>Also, the safety that stops the engines from starting while throttled up in disabled. Ship has damage on its front from ramming through hanger walls and trees

Following the tradition of >>35414123 and taking inspiration from the vehicle I currently drive.

>>35413239

Do they still used compressed air to blow out the ballast?

I remember reading about U-Boats and one thing that was quite memorable was the fact that if they lost their tanks of compressed air, there was no way to surface. Which was kind of horrifying. I mean, moreso than being 150 yards underwater underwater in an iron coffin that people are trying very very hard to drop explosives onto. Just how minor and anticlimactic it must have been. "This gauge is reading zero" "Huh. Well, we're all dead."

Also, something that would be a reality for space travel, and particularly in a shitty space ship. Dials and gauges with lines drawn on them in black and little notes "If needle is above this line, you are already dead"

Can a modern sub blow out it's ballast tanks without compressed air?

>The hardware for the climate control systems in the living quarters makes a barely perceptible high-pitched whining noise. In every room.

>Occasionally, firing the energy weapons of your ship will result in an "ammo load error."

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>>35407924
you make me sad.

>>35412240
>"Why are the buttons unlabled?"
>"Job security."

>a third party anti-theft device was installed by a previous owner. It's not entirely compatible with the model of ship. It includes a key fob with a very sensitive button that, when pushed, will prevent the engine from starting. The dealer never told the crew what the fob was.

>the original real scanner was extremely cheap, and did not filter through exhaust particles and radiation, so looking behind you just gave you white noise. The solution was a rear view mirror caulked to the outer hull.

>interior lights and the alarm system are wired to the same circuit for some reason- if a bulb ever goes out, the power goes to the alarm- which cycles twice as fast.

>the trash compactor will not actually eject bales, even when it says it does. Someone has to stick a magnet on the sensor, prop the door open, and lever the trash bale out manually. The crew found this out the hard way when one day, suddenly the chute was pushed back through the compactor door.

>one of the landing legs has a stack of e-readers welded to the bottom to account for wobble.

>the previous comms tech left the internal data system open and without a password. Whenever the ship docks, the crew ends up getting overage charges because people are leeching off their wifi. And nobody wants to call the provider and fight their way through the automated customer service to fix it.

>The old solid projectile weaponry has been upgraded to laser weaponry but the old fire-control system was kept to save cash and work hours. Every time you fire the lasers you get a pop-up notice on the fire-control screen with "Autoloader Error 404: Munition Not Found" on it.

>There is a 1-2 second delay between increasing thrust in the cockpit and the engine responding. Engineering blames the wiring but can't find the fault anywhere

>The Air,Water and Carbon Dioxide filters are all just Walgreens coffee filters with replacement dates written on them in sharpie.

>Engineering ran out of pipes so they've been using pool noodles they found in a cargo box with a LOT of sealant.

>The ships AI was a Circus Performance Narrator for a previous travailing space circus and will constantly talk in an old 1940's voice

>>35414485

> The fire control computer thinks it's firing projectiles with negligible mass at .99c; as it's the only way to get it to stop compensating for flight time and actually put the laser point blank on target. Due to poor edge case handling by the original codes firing at anything moving too quickly or too close can result in the weapons targeting essentially at random.

>>35407266

>The previous owner of the ship was a dick-ass hacker, and had the Computer Mainframe infected with a sleeper virus that only was activated XX years after the transaction.
It's quite a brilliant piece of computer science. The AI analyses each pilot's psycho-profile and used that to create a custom-made interactive interface personality for each person. One programmed to be as annoying and grating as possible.

>>35410201
>>35410621
>>35410688
It's a reference to and old Robert A. Heinlein story.
Go read some old scifi, nerd.

>small metallic clangs can be heard within the ships ventilation but repeated investigations by maintenance have found nothing

>>35414269
>Handle of Port side airlock is permanently fused. It can only be opened from the outside.
>The entire ship shakes violently when it achieves speeds of .8C. The shaking stops at speeds in excess of .9C.

>>35411622
>can't ignore it because it leaks an oil antagonist into an oiled area
>oil and antagonist form a gel that quickly eats the bearings of whatever it's in
>so you better fix that fucking o-ring

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>There are two methods of FTL travel. If you use Jumpspace, you have to shut down your AI and all electronics and the trip usually takes days or weeks. It's not easy living by chem-lamps and eating cold food, but it's better than the alternative.

>If you use a Jaunt drive, you need to knock out everyone, set a timer, and hope for the best. The trip is apparently instantaneous, but it kills anything conscious and living. Most corps and cynics like it because it kills vermin and saves on food and air, but everyone else thinks it's a bit fishy.

>Your ship has /both/ systems installed, just in case.

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>Told to go replace an O-ring on engine 3
>Walk into supply, cant find a single fucking one
>Find note on shelf saying to go to Airlock 2 written in crayon
>See a box full of O-rings being shot out of Airlock from window.
>mfw fucking clowns.

Because of were wires and certain electronics are congregated, some of the walls around them are quite magnetic.

>>35414303
There are two ways to get water off a submarine, pumping with a pump or blowing with air. Pumping is slow, requires power and is mechanically complex. Blowing is extremely fast, requires no power and is mechanically simple. Subsequently for Emergency Main Ballast Tank blows high pressure air is used.

The air used for EMBT blow is stored in massive banks of air flasks located inside the ballast tanks themselves, their use is reserved specifically for EMBT blows and their pressure levels are constantly monitored. EMBT blow is a super high reliability system with backups and redundancy built in all over it and can be expected to work even if there's gaping holes in some of your MBTs.

Also it is important not to confuse main ballast tanks which are used to surface and submerge the ship and are only ever completely full or completely empty with variable ballast tanks which are much smaller tanks used to control the ships buoyancy and that mostly uses pumps.

>despite having no weapons anymore, the power distribution core still assumes the ship is armed and sends the majority of power generated to dead end nodes. It's been diagnosed, and the only recommendation is to install a new node and rewire nearly everything. Attempts have been made to attach something else to the weapon nodes, but the connectors are bizarre and old and new ones would have to be manufactured.

>the majority of the captains panel is devoted to adjusting his seat.

>ship controls are slaved to an XentertainmentboX controlled by a hidden Kinect 4. Saluting and other superfluous gestures are forbidden on the flight desk, and the pilot is able to fly with a vintage game controller.

>a beaded curtain has been permanently affixed to the entrance to the cockpit.

>as far as anybody can tell, the maintenence Droid and ship's computer gossip about the crew.

>briefly, a water-flush toilet and bidet was installed when the crew received payment in the form of a years supply of freeze dried curry. They later reverted back to a vacuu-pot, but the crew says it "sucks ass".

>a bankrupt manufacturing firm sold part of their orbital factory to a crazy man who attached engines to it and uses it for hauling. Long-term investors wishing to perform the ritualistic suicide only heard that the section was being detached and sent into space, and so stowed away. Surprisingly it functions fine, but the captain has an on-board pair of "exterminators" to keep insane folk in tattered suits out of his merchandise.

>the gearbox was installed upside down somehow.

>>35414578
>>35414485
I really like these. They feel extremely plausible and perfectly kludgy.

>Many old spacers from the early 23rd century have fond memories of the Starburst-Intellitech corporation's line of all-purpose shipboard logistics and astrogation computers, especially with regards to how efficiently their A.I.s could multitask and adapt to both technical and social environments aboard the vessels they were installed in.

>The Polaris-IV model, however, possessed an unpublicized and little known problem stemming from its extreme multitasking and adaptation capabilities. Under certain circumstances, the A.I. would fabricate discrete "child" intelligences to which it would delegate certain tasks and interactions as a time saving measure, assigning each an almost random set of personality traits, almost as an after thought.

>The real issue lay in the fact that standard safety protocols hard coded into all Starburst-Intellitech systems prevented these "child" A.I.s from being deleted, eventually resulting in the "parent" A.I. suffering from something akin to multiple personality disorder as more subordinate intelligences were created.

>A work around that some spacers on afflicted ships discovered is that while these children could not simply be deleted, they could be partitioned and downloaded into other systems receptive to A.I. control, robots, drones, appliances and the like, leaving certain vessels feeling rather crowded, electronically speaking.

>>35407266

>Due to the age of the ship, new parts are no longer made and originals are ridiculously expensive. For this reason, previous crews improvised. The repair and maintenance manuals now occupy several ring binders and span five languages.

Why the fuck wouldn't the crew just sell the ship at that point? Assuming they're the typical Firefly-esque motley crew that operates on a shoestring budget, they obviously can't afford to keep the thing flying in a decently-working order and if the ship is so old that parts aren't even being manufactured for it anymore, then it would be worth something to a museum or collector, who would pay more than enough to get a newer, better, easier-to-maintain craft.

The real-world analog to this would be a smuggling crew operating a WW2 C-47 aircraft. Those things are worth something now and it would make no sense for people like that to hold on to it.

The ship cannot turn right, so to compensate the pilot must either make a circle going left and exit in the direction he wants or use Jerry-rigged fire extinguishers on a remote control to pivot the nose.

>Theres a note on this particular airlock saying to apply duct tape to where it connects to the bulkheads after use.

Funny thing is this isn't fictional, this is actually a thing on the ISS

>child locks are permanently engaged.

>certain sections have large geometric panels with flashing colored lights that seemingly serve no purpose.

>the majority of furnishings were picked up off street corners, with all the odd smells and stains that go with that practice.

>ship startup requires inserting two keys into mechanisms in a briefcase and turning them simultaneously. The engine technician keeps a well-maintained suit and earpiece in his quarters and the captain will neither confirm or deny that the ship runs off nuclear power.

>the captain is not so tech savvy- he had somebody set his main computer to switch backgrounds occasionally. Unfortunately, it actually switches presets- layouts and functions are changed as well. He refuses to ask for help again.

>a lot, A LOT of internal paneling has been removed for supposed fuel efficiency. This leaves a lot of moving machinery and perhaps radioactive elements exposed.

>one section of floor grating is not battered down properly and sits slightly above the rest of the floor. People stub their toes a lot.

>the captain gad all the lights in the ship changed to red, thinking they would increase productivity somehow. Mostly, people can't see and are often agitated.

>>35415402

How do you pump water out of a submarine?

This is something I've actually always wondered, because it seemed like the only way to do it would result the air pressure in the sub being decreased (you've moved a particular volume of of water out of the vessel, the air in it has to expand to fill that amount of space.) which AFAIK creates problems for the people in the sub.

Is it just that the decrease is negligible enough that it doesn't matter or am I missing a trick?

>>35415613
Alternatively, roll the ship upside down along whatever axis its length would be, then fire the thrusters that turn it left. You're making an upside-down right turn at that point, but it's still a right turn, and you can roll right side up again afterwards.
>Flying in zero G
>Thinking in terms of land-based movement

>>35407913
Why don't they just install a water heater?

>>35415657
Pressurized air, which compresses easily (compared to water) takes it's place.

>>35415677
Very true but wouldn't doing that too much have a negative effect on your crew? perspective would be flipped around so much it would make everyone nauseous in zero G.

>>35408115
Just put in an analog pressure meter. In fact that should come standard with an airlock.

>>35415582
That's not neccesarily true. A ship/plane/car could have had a short production run, because it was an awful car.

The handful of collectors that collect lemons, probably already have one, or two, and wouldn't be interested in owning a "non-mint" version.


Alternatively, it could just be old and crappy, but not old enough to be vintage or classic.

>The ship has archaic fire-supression devices, dispensing halon if the sensor notices bright light

>The ship's maintenance corridors have no sources of light within, requiring the use of flashlights. They DO however have the light-based sensors in them

>the fuel shifts in its tank- a landing on a down slope will make the sensor think the tank is empty and prevent startup to avoid internal damage. You either gotta park facing uphill, or have a towcraft jack the front up for a while until the fuel shifts back and hits the sensor.

>the dash was shifted slightly in some collision or another, and the needles don't quite point where they're supposed to. Pilot insists he can handle it.

>cabin pressure light is just always on with no explanation.

>the only working media player on board is a VCR.

>the quartermaster doesn't realize the "personal computers" are actually all just extensions of the main computer and everybody can see his browsing habits if they so choose.

>through sheer design brilliance, bunks are located in cubbies separated from the main drive only by a thin wall.

>weapon systems cannot be related or worked on by the user- they must be sent back to the factory.

>ship somehow is in possession of the most unnecessarily complicated door opening mechanisms ever devised, with literal thousands of tiny parts.

>the showers are an ill-fitting modular system that leave gaps around the floor large enough for objects to fall through but require access through a tight crawlspace to retrieve.

>a shipment of golf balls went awry years ago- balls still turn up in the most unexpected places. Well, mostly blocking pipes.

>>35415793
This is space dude. All directions are relative.

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>>35415582

Because everything's that shitty. Once FTL became cheap enough for the masses to afford and offworld colonies became well established, tech levels went all over the map. The major corps have their fancy highliners, but the rest of us have to make do with whatever's left over. Everything is jury-rigged, slapdash, or fused. You'll see system tugs with hulls made of converted C-cans, ships powered by century-old reactors, ships with a halo of solar panels and comms arrays twice the length of the hull, and far worse besides.

It's just... how things are. Mass is expensive, so you use what you have. Tech is widely dispersed and there are fewer and fewer innovations that most people can afford. Even in the age of electric cars, it's cheaper to own a horse if all you have is grass.

>>35415738

Right. That's what I was thinking about in reference to the U-Boat I read about running out of compressed air. I was wondering if there had been some engineering change that allowed them to pump water out without it or if they had just gotten better at making sure subs didn't run out of compressed air.

> The ship's hull has to be regularly painted with a thick polymer based paint. The layers of paint are the only things keeping the micro fractures in the hull from venting the atmosphere over the course of a trip. Condom related jokes about the ship in earshot of the captain are not recommended.

>living spaces are flat packed ikea modules.

>perhaps related, there is a huge box in the stores filled with tiny he wrenches.

>live sustenance containment is a bit faulty.

>stored aboard is a full coffee bar with a variety of machines that nobody knows how to use. People visit the area only to use the tiny drip brewer.

>all previous safety inspections were actually performed by a friend of the captain's in a suit holding a clipboard.

>the ship's computers are set to all run unreal tournament on startup- usually the game is running before the flight OS is.

>ships manufactured in the island nation of California or in plants derivative thereof still must comply with certain "green" laws put in place decades ago by beaurocrats not realizing the difference between space travel and travel in-atmo.

>mostly, this includes pointless things like low-energy, low light internal bulbs, hyper expensive filters with short lifespans, waste recyclers that go beyond the appealing, and armament limitations.

>>35416036
You can recompress the air, so ideally you shouldn't run out. Unless something bad happens. In which case something bad has happened.

>the ship is an old troop transport
>it's slow, not very maneuverable, and is lightly armed
>it has REALLY comfy seats though

>>35416036
They use on-board air compressors to compress ambient air from the ships atmosphere into high pressure air. They replenish their atmosphere and relieve the slight vacuum this creates by in-taking air via their snorkel mast.

>The buttons on the drink machine are all labeled with canisters of machine fluids.

> The AI registers sex as "barbaric violent wrestling" and keeps sending security to the rooms

> All the chairs in the ship are cheap metal fold outs, even the captains seat.

>The ship is all of the above

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>>35416291
>comfy seats
>military transport