Farscape

[Drashner1]

Depends on what you mean by 'template'. In terms of the article you linked to providing a fairly basic list of features which a bioship might have, I suppose it could work as a starting point, although OA tech and setting parameters would likely take you far beyond that list in short order.

In terms of the actual design and technology described, not so much. Leviathans in Farscape apparently generate artificial gravity, which doesn't exist in OA. Same for the 'Starburst' ability. So an OA bioship would either need to be designed for periodic (or indefinite) periods of free-fall or to spin for gravity or to generate 'gravity' via acceleration - or some combo of all of these. Unless it was created by or gifted by an S4 mind or higher, it would also be limited to reaction drives, which might or might not be biological (that would require some degree of forum discussion to figure out if it was practical).

If you're looking to design a biological spacecraft within OA, I'd suggest starting off by listing out what sort of parameters you'd like to work within. Such as:

a) Operational environment (space only, ground to orbit, interplanetary space, interstellar space, etc.).

b) Propulsion, power, and performance - basically what sort of propulsion method and how fast can it go?

c) Crewed or not?

d) Primary purpose - cargo? military? passenger transport? multi-purpose? something else?

e) Size

f) Technology level - modotech, transapientech, godtech?

g) Purely biological or an amalgamation of bio and cyber tech?

Once you have those basic questions/'wants' listed out, then that can drive discussion and ideas for the rest of the design.

Hope this helps,

Todd

[Deleted User]

Any more ideas how to make Farscape concepts for compatibly with OA?

[selden]

As with any franchise, you might try describing one of their ideas without including any information specific to that particular "universe".

[Drashner1]

As with any franchise, you might try describing one of their ideas without including any information specific to that particular "universe".

Agreed. Simply talking in terms of 'Farscape elements' doesn't really tell us what you have in mind or why we should want to include it.

There's also the issue that OA aims to be its own setting and franchise, and so we are generally not going to jump on board to the idea of simply pulling lots of ideas from other settings and adding them in without very good reason. While it's true that SF as a whole is a rather 'incestuous' genre, with lots of core ideas existing across multiple settings and while it's true that it can sometimes be fun to look at some piece of tech or other element from another setting and try to figure out how it might work in OA, what you're describing rather comes across as 'Farscape is cool, so what concepts can we pull from it and incorporate into OA?' Which is not really the same thing and not really what we're on about here.

Or to put it another way: Why would we want to incorporate elements from Farscape into OA in the first place?

Beyond that, I would point out that our earlier discussion on this ended with me providing a good sized list of elements that could be considered when creating a bioship in OA, using OA technology. OA does have bioships and extensive biotechnology after all. It would be a fairly straightforward procedure to start from my list, explore the EG for the relevant technologies and systems, and start a design proposal discussion about a bioship using such tech/system or how a bioship might produce biological equivalents to such tech/systems.

So, if this is an area that interests you, my suggestion would be that you start doing just that and present the group with the start of a design idea for an OA bioship. If people are interested at that point, the discussion will grow from there.

Todd

[selden]

Terranova,

I'm not sure why this came to mind, but here's an example of how one might start such a translation.

In one of the later episodes, one of the protagonists was somehow chopped into many indestructible(?) pieces which the others had to reassemble before they could revive him.

How might one accomplish this type of destruction and revival in the OA environment?

Note that I am not offering to try to write anything about this, just offering it as a thought experiment.

[Cepinari]

I wouldn't call Moya a bioship, if anything she'd probably qualify as some sort of synship.

[Deleted User]

I wouldn't call Moya a bioship, if anything she'd probably qualify as some sort of synship.

Well, I guess that's true.