Travis Edmunds wrote:
>
> How about a Berserker? (Mr. Blankenship should know what that is)
>
> >If you think Tinman and a Leviathan gunship are too outlandish, how about
> >the Scimitar from Star Trek: Nemesis? It took two Romulan Warbirds and the
> >Enterprise E just to cripple the ship (and the battle resulted in the
> >Romulan Warbirds and the Enterprise E being even more crippled than the
> >Scimitar, only an internal attack on the Scimitar resulted in its
> >destruction).
>
> Nothing is too outlandish, as long as it adheres to some unwritten,
> unofficial rules. As long as we're talking about starships, it makes no
> sense to say something like "Q could take em all".<lol>
>
> But even sentient creatures like the Crystaline Entity are valid.
>
> Let me pose a scenario. Lets say you colonize a system (this is a
> conglomeration of any and all fictional Universes that you can dream up).
> You have ten million "drones" working for you, just to begin some
> rudimentary industry, whatever. Anyway you have the Edo Guardian orbiting
> your planet (looks like a phased cloke, could possibly be
> inter-dimensional). Suddenly you detect a Borg tactical cube on an intercept
> course with your planet. You have the Edo Guardian protecting you, but are
> you afraid? Do you have faith in the ability of the Edo Guardian to protect
> you and your planet. If not then what other singular craft or in some cases
> entity would you want for defensive purposes?
This is interesting. The best starship for offense might
well not be best for defending a planet.
For offense, you might want to impose some size limitations.
I can probably produce stories that have STARS being moved--a star
would make a pretty good weapon. Certainly the _Cities in Flight_
series by James Blish has a planet, piloted as a starship and used
as a weapon.
Comparing starships from different universes is difficult,
to say the least. I would probably go with Sleeper Service,
featured in _Excession_ by Ian Banks. Dimensions in the tens of
kilometers, with many thousands of "full-sized" starships in its
bays. Crew optional, since it's run by a superhuman AI. I guess
the ships have shields, since force fields are used a lot in the
Culture. They also have "matter transmission" and antimatter,
which already gives one pretty powerful weapons. These seem
to be fairly standard, so I assume they are all admissible.
The weapon that you might not allow is 'gridfire',
which remotely induces the vacuum in a location to manifest
large amounts of energy.
---David
_______________________________________________
http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
