In the future, ponies have settled on other planets. Transport with starships is common.
These ships are spaceplones - voidcraft plane ponies equipped with artificial intelligence sophisticated enough to feel true emotion and experience friendship.
The friendship between the pilots and the AI is not only necessary to maintain the pilot's sanity on long, lonely journeys, but also to keep the FTL Friendship Drive operational.
What is life like for these ship AIs for whom the words ownership, friendship, and employment are almost synonymous?
An introspective story from the life of Connie, a heavy freighter.
The setting is mostly inspired by the game Elite Dangerous and its famous misunderstanding of the ship computer's voice line "Frame shift drive charging". However, the FTL experience is vastly different and the story also incorporates ship designs and ideas from Star Citizen and other scifi. Cover art by Reterica. Design of Dirius' OC used for Pinwheel with permission.
i am very open to comments and welcome them
Proofreading is being done by Vayandas and Triton Mk IX. Thank you so much, my spelling really needs it <3
now with a discord server: https://discord.gg/axcw2DB7ZC.
thumbs.gfycat.com/BothSolidAnura-size_restricted.gif
FRIENDSHIP DRIVE CHARGING
you would probably like infinity battlescape too
10321829
pretty much exactly that
10321866
oh yeah. i have been following that game since its original idea as something with the scale of the original elite games. then its development kinda halted and it phoenixed years later with the reduced scope it has now. how is the game now? is it just a space shooter?
Not a bad start, got me interested.
This is great fun! Hope there's more to come soon.
I sense thargoid ships as changelings in our future, or maybe the changelings settled Ridley Scott station and are the source of leathery eggs.
10322333
ehhh ever heard the phrase a mile wide an inch deep. sums up elite pretty well.
we have deep core mining now aka blown shit up.
thargoids are a thing now
as is guardian tech (a group of extinct aliens that had super advanced thargoid tech)
still grindy as all hell (then again i like pain, considering i fly a 30 million credit ship that i bought using mission money )
WHERE GETTING SPACE LEGS !!!!!!
oh and exploration got an overhaul still boring a shit but its better
still im a combat pilot i live by the seat of my pants flinging my railgun eagle around asteroid belts FAoff so i mainly do combat XD
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i was talking about the other game, "infinity battlescape", that tiwake recommended in their comment :P
E:D i still play very actively. got a carrier and the two rank-locked big ships
10322745
noice
windshield washer nozzles uwu
yay!! uwu
10510044
what did you think how plones cry :P
Its creative and sad owo *pat pat sad Plone*
Love that detail there, timing the approach at the song's climax. When she said the 28th measure, I couldn't help but smile wide!
Heh, nice. I like the 'equuiform' term.
I can't quite decide if smaller wheels would be better with higher gravity or if smaller ones would. I'm leaning towards bigger wheels would be better. Say the ground is soft, with more gravity you will want more cushion gained with bigger wheels. This would seem to be especially true with sands or muddy dirt. At the same time, such things like dirt or sand would be packed together a little tighter than with less gravity. Probably. Maybe the two things would net-0 and ideal wheel sizes would stay about the same.
Looking back at what I just read in this chapter, I was slightly disappointed at not seeing Pinwheel struggle slightly from the higher gravity. Truckers in general don't get a lot of exercise, and I can't imagine it would be any better in this alternate reality futuristic fiction universe you built.
Overall I like it though! Cheers to another chapter and hoping the next will be as swift as [insert name of fast ship]
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oh yes, struggling under the gravity is a missed opportunity. kicking myself over that one. oh well, i'll include that feature when odyssey is released. in the meantime, just headcannon that pegasi are not struggling very much because they are very light. :)
about the wheels:
yeah, i sort of guessed that one. maybe you're right about it not making much difference.
>equiiform:
horse puns are mandatory. :)
I finally got to reading this. This chapter was a nice little interaction. I enjoyed it very much!
I suspect these passages poke fun at Elite Dangerous' present lack of first-party logistical aids. EDDB can do only so much, and I myself have traveled hundreds of light years expecting by its information to find a particular good at a certain station, only to find the item had sold out long before I arrived. That was good times.
I feel your pain there.
Is that a Star Trek reference?
A couple of minor points for revision, if you don't mind me suggesting them:
Unless I'm misgendering Pinwheel (and if I am, I do apologize), the correct term would be "colt" for a young male pony, or "foal" for a young pony of unspecified gender. Since the narrator refers to Pinwheel in the male sense, I assume that "colt" is the intended meaning. The word "foal" would work equally well in cases where a softer consonant sound is more natural in the sentence's context.
Do not feel overly pressured to revise your work; it is yours, and the story shines through regardless. These are only a few minor suggestions in case you feel inclined to implement them.
I look forward to reading the next chapter! (That'll be very soon, if my other obligations permit.)
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thancc for comment <3
:D
Elite, and many other games with a trading component. scifi often forgets technology we have today and it's not only annoying, but immersion-breaking.
We already have stock trading bots, fully automated warehouses, and delivery route planning software IRL. did those systems gain sentience, became aggressive and were subsequently banned? or is there another reason why they are gone in the 34th century?
i'm currently playing the odyssey beta, and damn, trading is unusable without eddb.
yes!
there are several references to star trek and other scifi all over the story. Like that danube docking maneuver from an earlier chapter. stolen directly from Stanley Kubrick. see if you can find them all. :D
blame fimfic's on-site editor, which doesn't display the distinction clearly. i am already moving to using double newlines from now on.
it's more an "attitude", or "behavior" term meaning juvenile, playful, innocent, rather than a gendered term. :)
I know the feeling. I've visited only 819 unique star systems myself (to date, according to EDSM); I do not remember each one in detail, but I do remember a feeling of awe as I dropped onto each new star. I wish I had hours to spend exploring and admiring each system, star, and planet, but I make do with the time that I have. Pinwheel's words here make me so happy.
Also same. I remember my first few excursions in my Asp Explorer, admiring how the new cockpit framed our perspective of the perpetual night. I also took her out dancing for just a few minutes.
I loved that Hitchhiker's Guide reference.
I agree that more could probably have been done with the higher gravity. Stockier locals perhaps, or maybe cybernetic aids to their walking ability under Overland's heavier conditions. The story works, though. Some good feels, and some fun world-building. Great job!
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remember when i told you that your enthusiasm about exploration inspired several hundred words of content for my story? this is the result :D
Oh elite dangerous references that makes so much more sense now for some of the jokes
10766587
i'm not sure what exactly you're saying
10766735
I didn’t read the far bitten off the description before So I got confused during the scene of them setting up there trade plan but when the Delaney Anaconda was mentioned I realized it was a elite dangerous joke on the need for a third party application to find the items you need without aimlessly wandering ing
10766814
ah i see. that makes sense. but also funny that you didn't notice the other manufacturer and powerplay character puns :P
10766892
there are powerplay character puns in it?
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chapter 6
nowadays, they are just as much of a sovereign power as the Equestrian Federation."
Pinwheel questioned further, "That must mean they have their own princess."
I replied, "Yes. The current ruling princess is Princess Arissa LaWhinny-Duval.
the new cover art looks nice. I cant help but wonder at the ground-bound movement capabilities of a ship the size of Connie. how much like a pony are her movements. would running, jumping or any other irregular movements be damaging? a ship with the abilities to travers terrain would mean that the ship can go places traditional ships cant.
then there's ship to ship combat. Connie is a big girl, I cant help but imagine the kind of devastation she could cause if she where to kick a smaller ship. grappling and biting might not be out of the question either.
other kinds of vessels beyond the cargo or exploration shown. like passenger ships, mining vessels, military vessels, luxury ships like cruise liners and yachts. smaller vessels like civilian pleasure craft, the equivalent of shuttles and runabouts from startrek.
all these possibilities.... I might have to write something myself....
10790250
oh yes. Connie weighs 420 tons empty and has a cargo capacity of 621 tons. when she walks around the neighbourhood, you can definitely feel that. don't place fragile items on high shelves if you live near places where big ships walk.
There is also a scene in chapter 3 that explains that ships are required to use the HFMP to reduce their effective mass relative to the ground when walking in residential areas to minimize the ground shaking. Similar to how some towns ban the use of Compression Release Engine Brakes of semi trucks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3bLqjPBlx8 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:No_Jake_brakes_within_city_limits.jpg
Both her and her avatar can walk, jump, and kick like regular ponies. With artificial gravity and inertial dampening, jumping around shouldnt damage the cargo inside her. The scene in chapter 9 when connie damages her legs leaping off a cliff side is consistent with how i want the movement capabilities to be. intense impact like that causes damage, but not regular jumping. And the scene in chapter 6 where connie dances on asteroids Although for ground traversal, it is more common to leave the big ship at the landing site and use the avatar to move about the surface.
i have not thought about ship to ship combat much, except for the minimal armament that connie has. I'm a freighter, not a warship. Although i have considered and discarded an arc about a freighter becoming an accomplished warship in a "follow your dreams and be what you want to be" storyline.
You are welcome and encouraged to write your own fiction based on this. If i can inspire recursive fanfiction, then i can truly consider myself an accomplished fanfic writer. Although one difficulty might be that i might introduce lore and rules how combat works later in the fic, and then we have conflicting lore on how that works.
10790301
420 tons.... oh so about the mass of a tugboat, ok
so Connie has about similar operating capacity to a AN-225.
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i'm using masses that are consistent with the masses in the game.
The scaling in Elite Dangerous is super weird though. Case in point: The imperial Cutter: a 200x100x30 meters large ship having an empty mass of 1900 tons should be able to haul more than 794 tons.
10790322
considering those are the approximate measurements for Zumwalt... ya. you should weigh in the thousands of tons and be able to move cargo in the thousands of tons... sometimes sci-fi is weird...
10790322
if you have ever scene the show "firefly" in the early chapters I imagined Connie having similar size and operational characteristics to a firefly class freighter. especially with her main engines placed where they are.
10790331
Accurate. the firefly class has a structure like a head where the cockpit is, engine pods protruding at the side, a big butt, and a cargo ramp that lowers from the ass.
they are almost the exact same ship and firefly has been an inspiration for Connie's design and features.
F in the chat for a good series that did not deserve to be cancelled to early.
10790337
"I am a leaf of the wind, see how I soar!" ~wash
F
Looking at you top 1% :) i like this already.
I finally got round to reading this and... that was riveting! And intense! I was worried for a few moments that this wasn't a dream.
I liked the "loitering is a crime" bit. I suppose the "punishable by death" part wouldn't have worked so well here, hehe.
Overall, good job with the storytelling! I could see something of the ideas presented here expanded into longer-form sub-arcs. Connie's concern for Pinwheel's wellbeing, her feelings at seeing in simulation several ways he might've died, to name a few.
I look forward to reading more of the adventures of Connie and Pinwheel.
As a fellow Elite fan "Neighkon" gave me a chuckle, cant wait to see what other fun references there are :3
I LOVE THIS SO MUCH!!!!!!!
That is, indeed, very cute. 10/10 would hug back
10920934
you get a cabin hug <3
Very interesting fic. Definitely shouldn't have caught up in one sitting. Doesn't seem to be going anywhere, but neither does life, huh? Just little snippets of a space-fairing pony race. I do like how the ships have personalities. It makes the read far more enjoyable. Very nice lore to set it up too since there are definitely downsides to a ship refusing to carry fertilizer.
As someone who has never played the crossover game, but attempted to enjoy EVE a few times as a cargo transporter, I find this fic a very peaceful thing to chew on. Kind of like reading a quick shipping fic. No larger goal, but enjoyable. Keep going, it's a nice world to see.
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i'm not a hero faced with a world-ending calamity. i'm not on an adventure to find treasure. i'm a freighter and this is my day job. so you're absolutely right :)
of course the plot will be mundane, resembling the open ended sandbox gameplay of the game that doesnt have a main story either.
this story is indeed heavy on the worldbuilding. my main motivation is not to tell an epic story, but to introduce myself and my idea of my scifi universe and inspire others to create spin-offs. there is at least one spin-off story like that in the making ( https://www.fimfiction.net/story/371450/fsdc-cannon-fodder ) and it seems to be more heavy on the plot.
this story so far
pbs.twimg.com/media/FGPTUD5XsAEgvM4?format=jpg&name=900x900
Heck of a hook, really got my interest!
That's an interesting first memory. No childhood, then?
11117269
No childhood. i am assembled in the factory and my mind contains all the data and personality i need to begin working immediately.
maybe someone can write a spin-off of a computer hoked up to a simulated environment that provides a childhood.
but since ships are products that are made and not grown, it is not a requirement
11122913
Fascinating setting! I'm greatly enjoying reading this.
I'm enjoying this fic. Connie and Pinwheel are so nice together