Do you like the Illustrated Novel Space Ships?

So they are made a bit more stark towards each other then. Make the differences more apparent. IIRC, the only real difference between the ships in the pirates of the carribean were slight line changes and sails and colour, yet people were able to tell the difference between the pearl and the British ships. (Flying dutchman was another story). Add a paintjob to both ships, make the manty ship sleeker, and the havenite look more battered and built cheap like its a military nostromo, and they will be easily distinguishable i'm sure....

MaxxQ wrote:

Spacekiwi wrote:Try this.

Havenite ship.



clearly boxy, looks brutish, and not as sleek as it could be. It looks like a basic design.


Manty ship.




Rounder, sleeker looking, less like a box, and more like a ship. It suggests a higher level of tech over the havenite ship with the sleek design, and the fact that its slightly less cluttered suggests its design has been refined over time.


add a paint job to both, which is semi plausible to be a new part of canon due to smart paint having been mentioned in text, and you have clearly delineatable ship designs between haven and manticore.


Best part? both images are of correct nationality of my suggestions, and are off the wikia page for HH, so differences in looks are already distinct enough, as well as being canonish images.

Now try flashing those images at someone *not* familiar with the universe for just a few seconds (about the time one would see them onscreen) and ask them to explain the differences, or tell you which ship belongs to which side.

I'm not trying to be antagonistic, but trying to think like someone not familiar with the Honorverse.

1) Space battles in the Honorverse are long distance, ships are points of light to each other to the M1 eyeball.

2) Manticorian and Havenite uniforms are different so when the crews chear hits in the cut scene the audience will know who's ship was hit even if they look exactly alike.

Poker

I think we all agree that to a certain point, violation of canon ship visuals is necessary for movies....

In that case, i think one of the best, simplest and least violent way to go are color schemes:

Solarian league: yellowish/golden (Solar - sun)
Havenite - red/redish
Manticore - grey
Andermani - blue
Grayson - Green (color of the planet)

Think a soft return to 'war paint' of old time wargalleys etc....

While everyone of us can point out (and i agree) that this would go against the established color schemes in the books, it's the simplest way (color > shape in recognition, if you don't wanna go star trek way and use all possible shapes (Romulan Warbird anyone ?)), would do the least 'damage' to canon and i think that despise any hardfan of Honorverse, would be easiest to accept.
'well, you see, in the books the color schemes are not that different, they had to do it for you laymans so you could differentiate between the nations.

IF you throw in some minor shape changes (it more boxy for Haven, more sleek for Manticore, dorsal sensor pod/bridge for Solarian), it would do what is needed while not throwing canon and hardcore fans out of the airlock....

pokermind wrote:1) Space battles in the Honorverse are long distance, ships are points of light to each other to the M1 eyeball.

2) Manticorian and Havenite uniforms are different so when the crews chear hits in the cut scene the audience will know who's ship was hit even if they look exactly alike.

Poker

Yes exactly. Its really not that hard with a carefull editing. When it comes to Honor of the Queen i dont know what the problem is to begin with.
Grayson and Masadan ships (especially the later) can look pretty much any way they want. Those ships will never be seen again and its native tech. Even the ships in the companion look very different from regular ships.
So the early battles of HoQ wont be a problem at all visually, even if Thunder of God and Principality would be clones of RMN ships.
And for Honors death ride against Thunder of God its really not that difficult to explain the difference in size between those ships.
Just show Thunder as an enormous armed to the teeth hulk. Close Ups filling the screen, awe inspering music, multiple missile launches, roomy bridge, bigger smybol on the tact display. Show Fearless hunkering down under her impeller band, long shot from distance, fewer missiles, smaller bridge, its not that hard.

Hell, i think the easiest way to distinguish between ships hasnt even been mentioned yet: Make very visible impeller bands and color the distortion differently. Just say that different frequencies used by the impeller bands produces a different color. RMN ships get a nice red orange, PHN get a uglier brownish orange, Grayson more yellow or whatever.
Color, best visual identifier in history of film making.

Doesn't work when rendered black and white.

You need patterns: streaks for Manticore as opposed to plaid for Haven.

Sollies can use polka dots, as far as I'm concerned.

Star Knight wrote:Color, best visual identifier in history of film making.

emeye wrote:Sollies can use polka dots, as far as I'm concerned.

What? Not British bullseyes?

Spacekiwi wrote:So they are made a bit more stark towards each other then. Make the differences more apparent. IIRC, the only real difference between the ships in the pirates of the carribean were slight line changes and sails and colour, yet people were able to tell the difference between the pearl and the British ships. (Flying dutchman was another story). Add a paintjob to both ships, make the manty ship sleeker, and the havenite look more battered and built cheap like its a military nostromo, and they will be easily distinguishable i'm sure....

<shrug> Overall, I actually agree with you.

But as I said elsewhere, people are *conditioned* to expect both sides in a conflict to have ships that look vastly different from one another. PotC is an exception that proves the rule, but in the case of that film, I could point out that it's not really science fiction, and the people are *conditioned* to expect that wet-navy ships look somewhat alike. After all, not many people have problems or complain about not being able to tell one ship from another in various WWII movies.

The problem is that people for the most part *may* have difficulty translating that concept to spaceships, *because* they've been conditioned to expect major differences in spaceships. I think that artists are in the same fix, also. They've also been conditioned to distinguish between ships of various factions, and even if the artist himself isn't that way, their publisher may be forcing them to do that.

I think what Evergreen's trying to do is cater to that conditioning, while still trying to stay as canon as possible. Hopefully, if more movies get made, we will start to see the ships from the various navies lose more of the useless "greebles" and start to more closely resemble canon.

MaxxQ wrote:

Spacekiwi wrote:So they are made a bit more stark towards each other then. Make the differences more apparent. IIRC, the only real difference between the ships in the pirates of the carribean were slight line changes and sails and colour, yet people were able to tell the difference between the pearl and the British ships. (Flying dutchman was another story). Add a paintjob to both ships, make the manty ship sleeker, and the havenite look more battered and built cheap like its a military nostromo, and they will be easily distinguishable i'm sure....

<shrug> Overall, I actually agree with you.

But as I said elsewhere, people are *conditioned* to expect both sides in a conflict to have ships that look vastly different from one another. PotC is an exception that proves the rule, but in the case of that film, I could point out that it's not really science fiction, and the people are *conditioned* to expect that wet-navy ships look somewhat alike. After all, not many people have problems or complain about not being able to tell one ship from another in various WWII movies.

The problem is that people for the most part *may* have difficulty translating that concept to spaceships, *because* they've been conditioned to expect major differences in spaceships. I think that artists are in the same fix, also. They've also been conditioned to distinguish between ships of various factions, and even if the artist himself isn't that way, their publisher may be forcing them to do that.

I think what Evergreen's trying to do is cater to that conditioning, while still trying to stay as canon as possible. Hopefully, if more movies get made, we will start to see the ships from the various navies lose more of the useless "greebles" and start to more closely resemble canon.

I'm not sure it's as much of a problem as people think, simply because I don't think it's necessary to show the ships during space battles. These things are, after all, microscopic compared to the distances involved. Let's take two examples of how I'd think a battle would play out.

First, the battle in Ms. Midshipman Harrington. Consider a control room with several Manticoran officers in skinsuits standing or sitting at consoles, facing a huge tactical display. Said tac display has range circles, an approaching ship and a big red line indicating energy range, or the range at which Captain Bafisch has decided he's going to open fire.

Now granted, that floor-to-ceiling tac display isn't showing what a real tac display would show - it's radically simplified for the audience.

Same for the other ship, except that the skinsuits are different, equipment is in different places, various indications that military discipline is a bit laxer, etc. Flip back and forth, making it very apparent that both of their tactical appreciations are seriously wrong, speeding up to increase tension.

Captain Bafisch says "Fire!" The simultaneous fire from the other ship wrecks his control room. Expressions flash across Honor's face as she assesses the situation, realizes she's the ranking officer, and rises to the occasion.

Where in this do we ever need to see the exterior of the ships?

Now, let's take the Battle of Mobius. Similar setup. The control rooms are different, the skinsuits are different colors and so forth. The missiles, though, are all inching their way across a huge tac display.

Maybe it's just me, but the only reason you need the ships to look really different is if there aren't any other cues in the scene as to whose ships you're looking at.

JohnRoth wrote:

MaxxQ wrote:
<shrug> Overall, I actually agree with you.

But as I said elsewhere, people are *conditioned* to expect both sides in a conflict to have ships that look vastly different from one another. PotC is an exception that proves the rule, but in the case of that film, I could point out that it's not really science fiction, and the people are *conditioned* to expect that wet-navy ships look somewhat alike. After all, not many people have problems or complain about not being able to tell one ship from another in various WWII movies.

The problem is that people for the most part *may* have difficulty translating that concept to spaceships, *because* they've been conditioned to expect major differences in spaceships. I think that artists are in the same fix, also. They've also been conditioned to distinguish between ships of various factions, and even if the artist himself isn't that way, their publisher may be forcing them to do that.

I think what Evergreen's trying to do is cater to that conditioning, while still trying to stay as canon as possible. Hopefully, if more movies get made, we will start to see the ships from the various navies lose more of the useless "greebles" and start to more closely resemble canon.

I'm not sure it's as much of a problem as people think, simply because I don't think it's necessary to show the ships during space battles. These things are, after all, microscopic compared to the distances involved. Let's take two examples of how I'd think a battle would play out.

First, the battle in Ms. Midshipman Harrington. Consider a control room with several Manticoran officers in skinsuits standing or sitting at consoles, facing a huge tactical display. Said tac display has range circles, an approaching ship and a big red line indicating energy range, or the range at which Captain Bafisch has decided he's going to open fire.

Now granted, that floor-to-ceiling tac display isn't showing what a real tac display would show - it's radically simplified for the audience.

Same for the other ship, except that the skinsuits are different, equipment is in different places, various indications that military discipline is a bit laxer, etc. Flip back and forth, making it very apparent that both of their tactical appreciations are seriously wrong, speeding up to increase tension.

Captain Bafisch says "Fire!" The simultaneous fire from the other ship wrecks his control room. Expressions flash across Honor's face as she assesses the situation, realizes she's the ranking officer, and rises to the occasion.

Where in this do we ever need to see the exterior of the ships?

Now, let's take the Battle of Mobius. Similar setup. The control rooms are different, the skinsuits are different colors and so forth. The missiles, though, are all inching their way across a huge tac display.

Maybe it's just me, but the only reason you need the ships to look really different is if there aren't any other cues in the scene as to whose ships you're looking at.

We're talking movies here. There will *always* be a need for establishing shots, and a lot of those will be exterior shots of the ships. Think Star Trek, where just after the commercial break, you see an exterior shot of the Enterprise, before going inside to see Kirk talking with whomever. Or Star Wars, after a scene change, it will generally have an exterior shot to let the audience know where they are, then cut to an interior.

Sure, realistically, there's no need to even see the enemy ships in a battle, but one thing a lot of people here seem to agree on is that they can accept shorter combat ranges for the sake of the film, so, yeah, I think we will still see some exterior combat scenes as well.

Of course there is also the problem of captured ships being refitted and re-commissioned into the capturer's navy, with Flag-in-Exile being the most prominent example.

IMO, differentiation is going to have to be a mixture of carefully thought out things, some obvious and some more subtle.

Hull shape/arrangement and ship color scheme are probably the two most important. My thoughts on the best way to strike a balance between canon and easy identification would be to *start* with 2 to 4 nations' CAs or BCs in canon form and work up a series of increasingly differentiated versions of them along national lines, then test them out and the least changed version that meets the % ID threshold is where you aim for. Then make sure identical hulls in different navies can be separated by their colour schemes.

Something that's probably more applicable to the movies than the comics is some of the details. Beam weapon colours for each side and the associated sounds can all help subtly ID which side is which. Maybe make one sides W-sails octagonal instead of circular. All those little things will add up.