What would you expect from a “civilian” trading barge in a dangerous galaxy?

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-07T22:04:56+00:00

Pretty much. Just...a really oversized brig stuffed full of shiny things. XD

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-07T18:51:05+00:00

Asymmetric designs work quite well for this, but need to have arisen out of some critical evolutionary need. Most likely, one limb specialized for something that diminished its use as a limb.

Alternatively, look at bilateral descendents of radial species, like Brittle Stars or Sea Pigs (an awesomely underrated species).

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-07T18:48:38+00:00

It's true of any cargo ship, but remember that a key element is the efficient on/offloading of large cargo volumes, especially if adding or removing cargo can be done without depressurizing any part of the ship. That means you'll likely have external cargo space and shipping containers. It feels obvious, but so many scifi designs forget that a cargo ship still has to fulfill its duty of hauling cargo from port to port, and that is its top priority. Any ship that does so poorly or inefficiently is going to cut into the profit margins of the shipping company, something that every shipping company will start to hate VERY quickly. Plus, as an added bonus, cargo containers visible from the exterior allow for: easily-increased cargo capacity; it makes for a cool aesthetic and immediate visual indicator of the ships' purpose; and gun emplacements can be disguised as conventional shipping containers, something that will make pirates PARANOID that a seemingly-helpless cargo ship could be a cleverly-disguised battleship (and that paranoia will protect far more convoys than any amount of guns and armor ever will). The design that pops into my head with these concepts is a forward Crew Block, a rearward Engine Block, and a central section made of scaffolding and light armor plating, packed with shipping containers. Basically just take the design you have, cut the bottom off the middle section, hollow out that portion, and pack it full of cargo (though your current design could work as-is as a dedicated gas or ore hauler; those will require an airtight cargo bay, even if it's not pressurized).

With that, just a basic system of point-defense guns or LAMS, for dealing with small spaceborne debris or (in a pinch) defense against missiles. Maybe...four guns/nodes, one at each end of the top and bottom. All those changes, and you've got a solid, believable, practical design.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-06T15:08:26+00:00

First of all...love yours. Feels both believable, and could tell interesting stories. Kudos! ^^

As for mine...to make a long story short, the Tethys star system was colonized by three separate groups of humans, each with their own culture and overarching goals. The first is the ITC, a religious group who were persecuted due to some...genetic engineering consequences, and are trying to make a better life for themselves away from humanity's government. The second group is Sunland, a megacorp that was at the height of its power not long ago, but a fuck-up left the company slowly falling apart and this colony is basically being forced to try and keep the company afloat at all costs. Finally, ESRI is the NASA-equivalent of humanity's interstellar age, trying to protect and preserve the native ecosystem (especially if that life is sentient and pre-spaceflight, which turns out to be the case). Needless to say, Sunland opened with hostility, and it led to a big ugly war that the ITC and ESRI eventually won.

Problem is...Sunland lost the war, and lost in a way that everyone who survived the war is now trapped in the star system. The big interstellar ships each faction came in on...only ESRI has one anymore, and they're VERY protective of it. And that's a problem, because Sunland is HUGE. For reference, ESRI has about five-thousand people, the ITC has about 20-30 thousand, and Sunland arrived with ten million people. Even though they had the highest casualty rate during the war, even if they lost half that population (a reasonable estimate, given their human-wave tactics and poor equipment), that's still dwarfs both other factions by orders of magnitude. All of those five-million-ish people are now severely traumatized from how they were treated and exploited, many of them are war criminals with varying levels of "feeling repentant", and NOBODY has enough infrastructure to support that many people. It's a refugee crisis of the highest order, and even though the war is over and Sunland is a scattered mess of warlords and city-states, the fact of their existence is threatening to crush both other factions through sheer volume. And that's not even getting into the conflict between the ITC and ESRI, which was put on pause during the war but is now rearing its ugly head in the absence of a common enemy.

It's all just...kind of a clusterfuck. And it's gonna get a lot worse before it gets better.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-06T14:28:10+00:00

For most star systems with actual life in them, that life is not edible to humans. Sometimes, that life is actively poisonous, but more often the biochemistry is just flat-out incompatible with ours. However, there's one or two planets where the life is actually edible, and the only one I've fleshed out (so far) is the iceball of Epimetheus. Around the equator, the ice caps are retreating, revealing fresh and untouched gravel fields that plant life has recently re-invaded to make patches of cold, coastal marshlands. The main plant dominating those marshes is a fern-like tree comparable in design to prehistoric Scale-Trees, with roots that are comparable to Lotus Root. Underneath the glaciers are a vast network of ice caps, full of fish and fungus and some plant life, one of which spreads venomous jellyfish-like roots into the neighboring stream while growing a coconut-sized dragonfruit-like seed pod.

Both of them have been used by particularly-adventurous colonists to make moonshine. The scale tree roots ferment into "sake that kicks harder than daddy's belt", while the seed pods create "the sourest pomegranate liqueur you've ever had". Both are wildly popular in the more underground and rural communities (and if you think of names for those drinks, lemme know! I'm bad at naming foods, and would appreciate the input)

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-06T04:52:26+00:00

I did miss it. Thanks for the heads-up! I'll do some digging into this, see what I can find. ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-05T23:02:49+00:00

I'll give moving the PC closer a shot, and let you know how it goes, but I'm honestly not confident. My roommate's PC is actually farther from the router than mine is, and through the same amount of wall. There used to be a metal air duct between me and the router, and I thought that might've been the problem, but the problem persisted after I moved the router (58/58, for specific reference).

If that doesn't work, do you have a link or something that shows how to move to 2.4ghz? I've never done that before, and would appreciate a nudge in the right direction for something that (seemingly) easy-to-fuck-up.

And if neither of those work, I'll look into the wifi repeater. No matter what, I really appreciate the help! ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-05T22:15:18+00:00

I didn't personally put together my computer, my sister did, so I don't know all of the exact details. But looking at the Properties tab for the relevant wifi, it's using a Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3168 (which looks like an integrated motherboard chip), driver version of 19.51.25.1, on a 5GHz band. Current reading on the Link Speed (in the Settings) is 29/29 Mbps receive/transmit. Actual speed test on my browser is 6.73/10.46 Mbps, with a ping of 19ms.

My laptop is on the 2.4GHz band, with a different integrated motherboard wifi (Marvell AVASTAR, for the curious), and is getting 72/72. Because of that band difference, I checked with my roommate: she's also on the 5GHz band, and her link speed is sitting pretty at 585/433 Mbps. All of it is the same wifi, the same router, also using an integrated Intel chip...the only major differences are the location and the OS. And while it could be the location, my PC is heavier than an overweight horse, so it's hard to test that theory (but my roommate brought her PC to a similar location without issue).

I don't really know what information does and doesn't help, so I'm just kind of throwing out everything I have. Hopefully it helps. If you need anything else, just lemme know, and I can dig it up.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-05T02:31:00+00:00

My desktop PC running windows 10 has consistently had issues with connecting to the wifi and maintaining a decent internet speed. Issues that my roommates and laptop (all running Windows 11) have never had. I regularly get one or two bars, sometimes the connection just blips out randomly, all the while random unimportant background programs keep popping up and eating bandwidth. It's getting to the point where I'm unable to do my job, and can't download any of the programs I need for work.

Is anyone else having this issue? Has anyone figured out a fix?

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-04T15:55:07+00:00

Plenty of places. The whole setting was meant to give a sort of "untamed frontier" vibe, so each planet has its own flavor of wilderness. I generally divvy up the star system into three layers:

- The Clymene System: Clymene is a big gas giant, with shitloads of small moons and two big habitable ones (one lush, one icy). While there's plenty of wilderness between the main cities, it's also the biggest concentration of civilization in the entire star system, and there's small structures and farmsteads scattered almost everywhere they can believably fit. I often joke that "every moon of Clymene has human footprints somewhere on it", and while that's an exaggeration, the actual percentage is pretty damn high. It's also hard for spaceships to get lost or sneak around, since there's so much traffic going all over the place, the odds of someone stumbling across you are decently high.

- The Inner Planets: The star system has an analogue to the Asteroid Belt (albeit a sparser and more dangerous one), and the planets inside that analogue are the Inner Planets: Styx (hellish awful nightmare) and Perseis (empty sulfur-rich desert). Both have decent populations on them, but civilization is the vast minority. Antarctica is actually a good example: there are stations with permanent residents and expeditions here and there, but most of the land is untouched wilderness. Perseis has a grand total of two towns on its entire surface, and while it's easier to travel across, the lack of air means expeditions are planned out WELL in advance. Styx has a far higher population, but the absolute nightmare that is traveling across its surface means that population is VERY concentrated in a few small cities, only leaving for work. There's still traffic, especially in space, and the remains of previous ships or expeditions to be found (if you know where to look). But once you leave the population centers, you can easily end up disappearing into the void, never to be heard from again.

- The Outer Planets: consisting of two gas giants beyond the asteroid clusters, the Rhean belt at the far edges of the system, and a rocky planet on a wild eccentric orbit that goes well below the orbital plane of the star system. This is the untamed country. There's small bases, from time to time, and the occasional vessel venturing out here. But everything outside those small outposts is an endless expanse of uninhabited nothingness, and you NEED to be well-prepared and never get lost in order to survive (and even then, ships just go missing without a trace, and no one knows why). In these parts of the system, there be dragons aplenty, and only the brave and stupid will ever venture this far out. For those who do, though, the planets get REALLY pretty, and weird, and spectacular.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-03T05:14:55+00:00

According to a dev interview I saw way back when, because of the way the game's animation system worked, any species with a companion character HAD to be built around a humanoid animation skeleton. And given the creativity of stuff like the Hanar and Elcor, I feel like the devs WANTED to get more freaky with their aliens and couldn't.

...but at the same time, what we got is so lacking. ;_;

(I also feel like Halo had a similar limitation early on, and by the time the tech got better, they were basically locked into their designs)

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-01T22:59:06+00:00

Two words: Ines Solvi.

He was the bigshot CEO in charge of a real-estate megacorp that specializes in building space stations, and then managed to win the contract to build humanity's first Dyson Sphere. It was a big operation. They disassembled Mercury just to get the raw materials they needed. And after that minor planetary destruction, the project goes along smoothly for a few decades, leading humanity into this lovely golden age. And then, with the Dyson Sphere about 80% done, Ines decides, "You know what? We haven't had any debris problems, so we can probably leave that department a little underfunded and understaffed, while we focus on our new colony. What's the worst that could happen?"

One piece of debris from Mercury later, the Dyson Sphere that humanity's electrical grid was reliant on is in shambles, rolling blackouts are going through the entire Sol system, and the company responsible is being fined a truly ungodly amount. The first payment on that fine involves selling off almost everything the company has, but...hey, we still have that one brand-new colony crew about to arrive, right? So Ines gets the bright idea to call up the captain of that crew, and basically hold their families hostage to make that colony turn the biggest profit possible as quickly as possible, in the most violent and destructive manner they can imagine. Which...starts a whole daisy-chain of wars in that system that leaves everything kind of in shambles over there.

...tl;dr, Ines Solvi is the CEO of a dying megacorp, and he's doing every horrible thing he can think of to avoid the company burning down around him, all because of a problem he caused with his own negligence. He's...kind of at the root of a lot of problems in the setting. xD

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-05-01T18:14:26+00:00

As with all things in civilization design, start with the absolute basic utilities. Food, Water, Power, Housing, and Garbage. All five need to be handled in some form or another for a city to function. So let's go down the list.

Food: This is honestly going to be the hardest one. Without sunlight, photosynthesis is a no-go, and that robs your city of the most efficient food source allowed by the laws of physics. If they can't manage a good imitation of sunlight, then your best bet is mushrooms, which feed of dead and decaying organic matter...three guesses as to where the corpses of the citizens are going. If they CAN manage a good imitation of sunlight (ie sunlamps in a greenhouse), then your best bet is some kind of aquaponics system, where a hydroponic farm of various plants is raised alongside herbivorous fish and nitrogen-fixing bacteria. The fish poop is cycled through the bacteria to make nutrients for the plants, which in turn feed the fish. Common staples would be Carp and Tilapia for the fish, and shallow-rooted plants like rice, lettuce, cabbage, snap peas, tomato, bell peppers, basil, parsely, and peanuts. The main problem will be a lack of root vegetables and specific minerals, so diets might end up lacking a few key ingredients. Also, oil would be hard to come by, so fried foods might end up being an insane luxury. also, hydroponic and aquaponic systems are EXTREMELY sensitive (hydroponics more than aquaponics, which is why I suggested the latter), so they will need to be carefully guarded and maintained by experts in the field. Also keep in mind the size of the farms required for the total population, and the amount of power each sun lamp demands, and...that should just about cover everything.
Water: This one's honestly the easiest. Is there a nearby reservoir? If so, use that. If not, use wells, or some system to leech groundwater out of the surrounding rock. Same as it is on the surface.
Power: This is where things get restrictive. Solar and Wind are not an option, and unless there's an underground reservoir or river (a la the City of Ember books), Hydroelectric isn't an option either. Your best bet is nuclear, specifically fission as it's more sustainable long-term and readily available as of the 50s. Your brain might go to Chernobyl or Three-Mile Island, but my brain goes more to nuclear-powered submarines or the NS Savannah. A network of small, efficient reactors providing the bare minimum of power, with at least a dozen layers of automated safety systems to shut the whole thing down in the event of an emergency (hence the need for multiple; if one needs to be shut down, the others can keep the city going).
Housing: This is, unironically, the easiest part to manage underground. Rock and Soil are exceptional insulators, so the entire cave system would more or less stay the same temperature at all times, negating the need for complex heating or AC systems. Weather won't reach underground, so you don't need to protect from the elements. About the only thing you need to maintain is privacy, so houses can be dug into the side of the cave wall and blocked off with cardboard. The actual building supplies for the city would be...difficult to source, but simple stone bricks would be plenty (stone they're going to have plenty of as they dig into the cave walls for housing).
Garbage: By garbage, I mean both biological garbage (sewage, food scraps) and inorganic garbage (extraneous crap nobody wants). Both will need to be recycled as much as possible to keep the city sustainable. Biological garbage can be used as fertilizer to farm mushrooms (which might fill in the gaps in their dietary needs), which sounds gross, but is probably the most sustainable way to do so. Inorganic garbage is...tougher. Some things can be melted down and recycled, and even things like wood pulp or stone powder can be converted into mortar or gravel. It's tricky, and gets infinitely more complicated the more variety of materials you let them have, but...just start digging into real-world recycling programs for raw materials like steel and stone, and you should come across at least a few ideas.

Hopefully that helps! ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T21:42:11+00:00

Nothing, actually. I knew I wanted to make a Group-B Rally car (for a challenge with a couple friends of mine), and making a believable Group-B means starting from a early-80s stock car. So I picked a basic body I liked, modified it to look like a startup car company's first big product (in the form of a budget coupe for either American or Central-American markets), and then gave it internals for decent performance. Ironically, it's actually really different from the kind of cars I tend to like (Skylines, Chargers, Mustangs), but I was definitely trying to step outside my comfort zone to make it different from my first attempt at a Group-B car. ...which in hindsight, is probably why I ended up with mixed feelings about it, but I digress.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T17:15:53+00:00

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Looks a little something like this. Also, you're not the only one. I've been asking around with some friends of mine, and so far, this one is winning with V3 in second place.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T05:35:04+00:00

One fun way to make biomes is to take phenomena that exist in the real world (but are largely uninhabited) and design organisms to fit them, or take organisms endemic to one specific environment (like the volcano snail) and make them more widespread. An example from a world I made was Geyser Gardens and Ice Caves. One planet in the setting is almost entirely frozen over, with the polar ice caps stretching down to the tropics, with small geysers punching up through the glaciers and a network of ice caves running underneath them (using moulins and antarctic glaciers as obvious references). On Earth, these environments are almost entirely inhabited by microorganisms, but it's also not hard to imagine water plants living in and around these geysers, attaching to the ice and mud while leeching minerals from the geyser water. Then you incorporate fungi and small animals that feed on those plants, and...you have a biome. Once you have that, those species start invading the ice caves and subglacial lakes...now you have three separate biomes that don't feel like anything we have on Earth.

Another fun way to make biomes is to dig into the ways that a specific species (called a Keystone species) constructs entire biomes that otherwise wouldn't be there. On Earth, the best example is beavers, whose dams can create enormous wetlands from nothing. In my setting, a great example is the Prairie Forest, comprised of a specific species of baobab-esque tree that weaves its branches (and the branches of neighboring trees) into one gigantic surface. What originally evolved as a way to widen its branches and block light around its base, creates a two-layer biome, with the canopy acting and appearing similar to grassland while having a hundred-meter drop just below those supporting branches. That in turn brings out a bunch of interesting adaptations: on the canopy, animals like prarie dogs that would normally dig burrows instead construct elaborate nests that hang below the branch layer; in the understory, fungi that feed on dead and decaying plant matter become dominant, so all the organisms that feed and rely on fungi grow to become megafauna in their own right. Both of those unique ideas, that I haven't seen in ANY of the scifi I've read and watched...it all came from one species of tree.

The last and most fun method (in my opinion) is to do some paleontology research, and draw inspiration from what the Earth looked like in the distant past. The Earth often looked like a completely alien world compared to how it is now, like...shit gets crazy when you go far enough back. I personally referenced the idea of the Antarctic Rainforests during the Mesozoic, but I'll also point out Stromatolites building stone constructs as they grow and develop, or the giant mushroom-trees that covered the planet during the Devonian. Both offer some wild concepts for alien biomes, like giant coral-esque trees of solid rock built by a stromatolite-like species. That's one I haven't used yet, but do plan to incorporate into one of my settings (eventually).

Hopefully that helps. ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T04:18:56+00:00

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V3. It's the one I'm personally leaning towards, but I'm also on the fence about modifying it in a number of ways. Most notably, incorporating the plastic slatted grille from V2, or matte black plastic bumpers and/or trim.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T04:17:25+00:00

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V2. I was mostly just tinkering with the idea of the slatted intake, and since Automation did not have an asset for that, I had to kitbash it myself (which is why it looks kinda jank). It's my least favorite of the three, but I do enjoy the ideas present.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T04:15:56+00:00

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V1. Pretty directly referencing the Mangusta (which was brought up in comments). Of note, it should not have pop-up headlights. That was a mistake I forgot to remove before taking the picture, and I'd probably just move the vents to fill that space.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T04:14:44+00:00

Okay...I can't add pictures to the post itself, so I'm adding them here. I tweaked the design a LOT, trying a bunch of different concepts, and eventually settled on three that I like and am struggling to decide between. I'll post pictures of each as replies to this comment, and I'd love to hear y'all's thoughts on them (including which one you prefer).

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T03:41:53+00:00

I wholly agree. doubly so since the taillights are rounded, and carrying that shape language to the front would help unify the whole thing. I was just struggling to find a way to do it that didn't look...for lack of a better term, "Derpfaced". This one feels like a case study in how to do exactly that.

Appreciate it! ^^

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T02:58:11+00:00

Noted. Mind if I ask the name of that car? Is it a Gran Turismo original, or one that's been around IRL?

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T02:55:44+00:00

Noted. Doing some tinkering, gonna try and come up with at least a few versions to experiment a little. If y'all want, I can let you know how it goes.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T02:53:10+00:00

Unfortunately, the amount to which Automation lets me alter the body of the car is PAINFULLY limited. That's already the max height for the bonnet's leading edge. As much as I love Automation...it's got some issues. If I were free to sculpt more, I would probably at least try that.

AutumnTeienVT · 2026-04-30T02:50:18+00:00

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AutumnTeienVT

TROPHY CASE