blackaeronaut Wrote:Sorry guys.  Things have been kinda hairy on my end.  :p
The
primary finish of most Roughrider ships (with the notable exception of
Blackbirds) is mirror-finish chrome in honor of the Apollo Astronauts,
whose capsules were finished in a similar manner.  On the Peacemaker,
it'll still have the blacked-out area over the nose simply to keep any
glare from the Sun out of the command crew's collective faces.  Of
course, this is gonna be one of those matte black finishes.
The Air Force roundels should be replaced with Republic of Texas flags
and the SAC shield with the Gonzalez Banner.
Every Peacemaker is a flagship, so it would only be appropriate that the
Unit Patch would be proudly displayed as tail art.
And, of course, replace USAF and US AIR FORCE with RR and ROUGH RIDERS.
(EDIT:
Oh yeah, and nix the checker marks on the landing gear doors, tail-fin
tips, and the yellow on the propeller hubs and engine intakes.  I don't
think I've ever seen a picture of a B-36 like that before and it looks
ghastly to my eyes.)
F-EZigs are carried on pylons under the
wings, between each engine (with the last ones outboard of the fusion
torch engines).  Properly fitted, a Peacemaker can touch down and take
off at a 'Dane-side airfield with its F-EZig accompaniment docked.
By
all means, Star, hack away.    And I don't lay sole claim to the
F-EZigs.  If I like what I see, I'll just say, "Yeah, Roughriders got
those, too." 
One final thing... Ben wouldn't be so evil as to
make that many people operate on a forward-deployed basis like that...
He'd give them several small facilities, hidden in the Belt on which
they can rest, recuperate... and, when needed, scramble and come flying
like bats outta hell.  It wouldn't even have to be an asteroid.  It
could be a small space station.  Nothing huge, probably on the same
scale as the ISS because it would have food, living quarters, plus parts
and munitions for the entire squadron.  (At this point, I'm gonna say
that a typical Roughrider Squadron is two Blackbirds, twelve F-EZigs,
and a Peacemaker.  Peacemaker carries eight F-EZigs each and each BB
piggybacks two more - their hulls are so short, after all.)
Long
duration configuration on a Peacemaker would probably be three-of-four
modular bays fitted with a living unit (racks for the entire crew plus
eight fighter pilots, plus galley and hygiene) and one heavy missile
unit (incase they run across something really tough).
For
more flavor, Peacemakers, despite being well built machines, are quirked
to break down in some bizarre way.  However, during the design phase
Ben did foresee a need for them to be easy to work on. 
Therefore, most breakdowns can be repaired in-flight by the flight
engineer.  Therefore, you can have the engineer grumbling about some
repair he/she just finished up (easy to work on, yes - convenient, no).
For
the flight engineer... you could use that character I thought up that
riffed off of All Purpose Cultural Catgirl Nuku Nuku... she was the one
that started out as a farm girl who just wanted to help her dad out by
making sure the tractor never broke down again... and got herself a very
unique kind of catgirl biomod.  (The 'bio' part of that is debatable as
she is roughly 20% cybernetic now.)  Ah, yes!  Here she is: http://drunkardswalkforums.yuku.com/topic/5426
Someday I am really gonna have to do a better job getting some of this stuff wikified so it's not a big question mark.  :p
EDIT2:
Just for scale, Star.  Nothing really brings home the sense of scale on this thing like this picture.  Yes, those are chairs they're sitting in.

M Fnord Wrote:Hard to tell that from the angle of the shot, though.

Star Ranger4 Wrote:positioned under wing for spacing check. I dunno about you all but it looks to me like they need folding wings if they're gonna fit like BA wants...

M Fnord Wrote:Huh, Helvetica for the markings? I'd have thought Microgramma or Eurostile, or maybe one of the common-use military typefaces.

Star Ranger4 Wrote:

As you can see, the wing folded model does fit much better under the wing. Unfolding them prior to launch might be a problem though.

A possibility to consider is to trim the wings, perhaps as short as placing the vertical stabilizers just outboard of where the 'fold' is.

robkelk Wrote:Wings are useful in atmosphere, which in Fenspace includes Venus, Titan, and (to a lesser extent) Mars... Oh, and Earth, too.

Star Ranger4 Wrote:Eheheh... Mostly cause its my sans serif system default so thats what Gimp threw up.

And your exactly right about the way I was thinking Firvulag. Also
considering both a) shortening the overall canopy, b) moving the rear
seat slightly forward to allow for more 'fuel tankage' behind the pilot
and c) making some additional canopy changes to decrease the area that
has to be 'sealed' at the bottom of the access tube to allow for pilot
access

Firvulag Wrote:The
Zigs look good.  Although I wonder about the nose mounted coil-gun.  It
does look good there, but is there enough room for the barrel and
ammunition feed?  The Zig is a little over 5 meters long, and it
(potentially) only has one seat instead of the 2 a Long-EZ has, so
there's more room.  Hmm.  I think we can make it work like this.

blackaeronaut Wrote:

Firvulag Wrote:The
Zigs look good.  Although I wonder about the nose mounted coil-gun.  It
does look good there, but is there enough room for the barrel and
ammunition feed?  The Zig is a little over 5 meters long, and it
(potentially) only has one seat instead of the 2 a Long-EZ has, so
there's more room.  Hmm.  I think we can make it work like this.

In the nose?  I thought the coil guns were to be carried in a pod under the fuselage.  This would make the entire unit self-contained, and rearming can be as simple as swapping the pods out.  (Each Zig can have two coil gun pods.  When they get swapped for repair or rearming, the gunnery crew can do the actual work of repair/rearm when it's convenient.)