A question for the Starbound readers... · 6:56am May 7th, 2023
Hello again. I know it seems like it was only yesterday I was observing just how stupendously massive Princess Flight's ships must be, but, there's more. And no, it's not the part where those ships' sizes and construction times suggest that Equineothame has a truly impressive economic backbone despite having as apathetic of a population as it does, as both ships were completed in just a year or two- much faster than modern aircraft carriers, which take around 6 years... and nevermind the country was bribing pirates for the entire time.
No, it's more about the future of the story. I recently went back to look at it, and I'm going to need to do some in-place rewriting before it can really get off the ground again, but it won't be dramatic, just corrections of details like the sizes of vessels... and of course, where they can fly/park those vessels. If the First Light is two miles long, chances are she will be too big to land on the Capital City Landing Pad, and have to pick somewhere a little further out of town. Especially if her engines are undoubtedly powerful enough to flatten the Capital City just by hovering nearby. So it won't be the kind of thing you need to reread for, but it could be amusing if you do... that said, I looked at the opener of Chap. 1, and something tells me I'll be improving a lot of scenes along the way, so it might be worth the reread.
Anyways, once I name and publish the fully written Chap. 13 (which will probably be after I catch up with that retweaking), Princess Flight has made it superluminal with the Dawnbreaker... and I simply have no idea where to take the story from there. Ideas?
I have a vague idea where I want her to encounter various civilizations in her exploration, and pick up some crew with each one. It wouldn't be hard to inject a few crossover sources (I'm not familiar with very many, so I likely won't be using characters from anything other than MLP or Harry Potter, but other worlds may be OK) into the story and have her encounter them (I can just imagine her being... unsatisfied with Voldemort or the like. As in, 50-ton-plasma-cannon-on-full-auto unsatisfied).
These encounters don't have to be near planets, though that'll undoubtedly be the easiest given her method of FTL travel, and I'm also not opposed to letting her gain multiversal capability by some means (ex. discover a ruined ship left by previous travelers, perhaps get given the tech as thanks for saving some largely unarmed travelers with her rather heavily armed warship, maybe even rescue stranded travelers and build/install the tech as a way to get them home...) Naturally, this would cause the story to become League of Sweetie Belles/Sunset's Isekai-esque in that they'd undoubtedly start stumbling across other universes and exploring and encountering... and picking up crew along the way. Because she's pony, the choices of other worlds for her to stumble into would not be restricted to pony works. This approach would go hand in hand with the idea I've been playing with lately that maybe the 'Earth' of her home system actually is a far, far future apocalyptic Equestria, which would tend to mean there was no Equestria out there to find. If I use that idea, her magic need not have a transformative effect on people that encounter it for the first time.
Maybe she'd even encounter Sunset's Isekai itself, though I rather doubt she'd try to recruit Sunset. Or anyone else in her bar, for that matter.
Given the Dawnbreaker's planet-towing capability, she could also spend quite a while at certain places, realigning planets in exchange for something she wants, or maybe even just to help a friend or save a civilization.
So, what do you think- what would be the best way to move the story forward? The crossover thing would be with "vanilla" versions of the sources only; the multiverse thing could have that, but could also encounter other fics (on this site and others, in theory), up to and including (alternate realities of) some of my other stories.
One thing you have to realise with big ships, is that the main reason they can travel FTL but cant land on the planet, is that in space they float, and so have hull wide neutral boyuncy, except round extreme gravitational gradients such as pulsara, blackholes, warp gates, hyperspace portals and the such. If a ship is designed with landing gear, its limited by the ground preparation as material strength can only go so far, and even a wall shield driven hull can only support so much weight before the rock beneath it not just crumbles, but starts to plastically flow, being displaced like slow water until stress and boyuncy equivalence occurs.
In the 1800s, tunnels being driven essentially by hand under the Alps, suffered problems similar where pieces of rock would be fired off the walls as they brittle sheared under the pressure from teh mountain above, or even slowly flow into the tunnel, crushing the cross bracing until it was reinforced to the point where there was barely room to work.
Even at CERN, the ATLAS detection chamber is so large, that the rocks around are deforming, trying to get it to float upwards.
Once your ship gets large enough, either you never land it, or when you do, you land it on easily deformed boyunt water, or you will be landing on not easily deformed boyuant land until you sink in far enough to reach equilibrium. At that point the survivors arounf the landing area are likely to be Very unhappy with you.
As for where to go? There has been at least one Golden Classic computer game, that has No story. Fly anywhere, as long as you remember to fuel up, explore, trade, combat.
Are you good enough. to become ELITE. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzEj4Gq7fT4 Happy 30th Anniversary.
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Oh yes, her engine blast would probably dig pretty big craters before she ever landed, too- so terrain landings would be restricted to heavily-overengineered-materials-runways or the like, either that or use the landing legs that might spread the weight far enough to keep her from sinking too far.