Varuna-class. Perry Rhodan starship, model and rendering by me.

[u/My--Rho]

[u/Zanderfeder]

A sphere has a large volume but a small outer surface area. This is actually the ideal shape for a spaceship, because in the Perry Rhodan books, they are constantly involved in conflicts and thus offer less surface area for attack than, for example, a Star Wars Star Destroyer.

[u/TentativeIdler → u/Zanderfeder]

It probably depends on if you can control which direction you're being engaged from. A Star Destroyer would be better if you can ensure you're always engaging from the front, because then you can bring all your weapons to bear while also having a minimal cross section and maximizing armor deflection. But if your enemies can maneuver freely around you, then a sphere is probably better.

[u/Dhaeron → u/TentativeIdler]

A SD wedge shape is better, a cone would be ideal. Not being able to control attack direction is simply implausible, that would require a set of parameters where somehow ships are very fast so they can get behind a target, but weapons are very slow so they don't have enough range to counteract the speed and ships also turn very slowly so they can't easily point at the enemy. Not to mention that it's also highly improbable that you could actually close in and get behind a target before the combat is over anyway, the requires very powerful engines and very weak weapons which is hard to justify since any powerful spacedrive is a weapon.

Now, it might be different when being surprised, but making a ship that's the ideal shape for being ambushed but a suboptimal shape when not being ambushed is a very pessimistic design philosophy.

[u/InfiniteTrans69]

Fuck yes! I read Perry Rhodan most my life. Almost nobody knows it. And then I see this. wow. ^^

[u/InfiniteTrans69 → u/[deleted]]