I for one like this Organic ships idea. I mean the main plot of SoaSE leaves out one major thing, what race of beings broke the Vasari Empire in the first place, maby this could be the answer to that most nagging question.

Because what appeared to be a somewhat logical debate over the feasibility of organic ships you took as little more than 'LOL UR IDEA SUX', and so you threw such ridiculous notions as 'growing a hole' in to 'counter' our arguments.

Organic ships is a stupid idea for a huge variety of reasons. As I said before, I can see organic parts being utilized IN ships as a biological component to create what would otherwise be an extremely expensive, large, complicated machine (for example, an organic life support system - it takes a huge machine to convert carbon dioxide to breathable air, but a plant leaf can do it), but as for an organic ship in its entirety - there'd simply be way too many flaws, as I pointed out. If you can genetically engineer an organic ship, it'd be trivial to engineer an extremely lethal biological or even chemical agent that would inhibit major functions.

A creature doesn't just 'adapt' and change its entire genetic structure. Adaptations come about from the embryonic single-celled stage, as the single cell is the beginning of all life. A single change in that one cell will reflect on the greater whole as it grows - a single change in a single cell on the greater whole will have no effect, and actually probably be destroyed by the whole itself.

I’ve got to say, I agree with Uranium. Although to be fair, Sins of a Solar Empire isn't exactly hard science fiction, here! It's not exactly Greg Egan or anything!

Even so, the whole idea of "organic/natural" versus "mechanical/unnatural" enforces this ridiculous illusion that there's something essentially different about "life" that sets it apart from "non-life". Nothing could be further from the truth. It's all the same thing at the bottom. A really advanced species (more advanced than the Vasari, if they're only a bit over ten thousand years old as a spacefaring civilisation) wouldn't recognise a distinction between living and non-living (unless they know something radically different from what we know about life, which is possible but unlikely as far as science is concerned). A really advanced civilisation would probably look something like the Scrin in C&C3, with no distinction between something intentionally designed and grown naturally. It makes much more sense to treat things in terms of methods and models than in terms of this sharp, delusional binary divide.

For instance, you can't have "organic-type" structures on the outside. You can't even have them in a gaseous atmosphere. All organic activity that has evolved on the Earth requires a liquid medium - even extremophiles, which can often survive desiccation, stop their metabolisms pending rehydration. "Wet-works" organic behaviours will only work in encapsulated space - probably good for inside the ship, but not outside. Very straightforward thermodynamics.

The outside has to be durable and radiation-variable. A smart people would probably maintain a capsule around the ship organically - find a way to engineer sedimentation to keep the shell at a constant density. OR, just build an incredibly tough outer shell and shore it up with less dense layers that are maintained organically. A smart race would also want to have an extremely low pressure environment inside the vessel - clearly the existence of the vessel implies a high pressure environment, but you want to limit "haemorrhaging" (an inappropriate term, I know) as much as possible in case the capsule is punctured. Either this would mean a largely solid interior, or at least a partitioned non-gaseous one. So a smart race wouldn't build ships that little people were going to be walking around in unless it was specifically tasked with carrying little people. A real battleship for a really advanced race would therefore likely be intelligent and would not house elements that weren't part of its own metabolism or utility complement (weaponry, phase drive, etc.), especially if those superfluous elements (like humans) required complex support mechanisms.

Quite frankly, not only are "organic" ships clichéd, but much more importantly, they make no sense at all. They're not even interesting to those who take an interest because their very presence demonstrates that not much thought went into their design. A really thoughtful design would likely look organic in some respects, but we wouldn't think of it as a space ship in the contemporary sense at all. It just doesn’t make evolutionary sense to lug around a whole bunch of crap that drastically reduces the inclusive fitness of a space-borne vessel, while contributing nothing to its function.

Honestly to those who say that organic ships are cliche are clearly thinking of the SPACE BEAST type of ship. What point in the future, where nanotech is common, do organic and metallic blend? Seriously go take a look at schlockmercenary.com, who says petey is not alive?

(Bah, edit is broken again)

Another issue with organics is that, every creature, no matter how big or small, needs energy to survive, nutrients, proteins, and so far, water.

As it's unlikely that any of these things are going to change (I should mention a water-based organic creature in space is all manner of bad news in a vacuum), it comes down to feeding your army. A massive capital-ship sized creature, which, assuming it can rapidly heal itself after a fight, would require an EXTREMELY high amount of food to metabolize. The food can be anything, I suppose, that has some sort of nutrient value (I doubt you'd make them eat asteroids successfully), but it comes down to keeping something with such a high metabolism fed. An organic ship, and I'm willing to bend a little on the length of time, would be unable to operate in remote sections without a supply line of 'feeders'. Simply sieging these supply lines would literally starve these creatures to death - a mechanical ship crewed by people would consume far less food, if your ship is big enough it could be produced locally, it'd be easier to store, and most importantly, battle damage wouldn't rapidly deplete these resources to nothing. Even blood or ichor loss provides a significant decrease in the amount of fluids in the system, reduces the effectiveness of delivery of nutrients (which means longer to heal) and requires more metabolic processes to replenish (meaning more 'food').

As I said we don't have to have an alien race that is inside or control those organic ships, they could the species it self. Something like in the Star Trek Voyager when they encounerd that huge life form IN SPACE which swalowed them.
  

The whole arguement against organic ships makes no sense in context. We're dealing with science fiction here and if we wanted to get deep into the "realism" debate then we should take a step back and realize that there are very few realistic elements in SOASE. If it is possible to swallow the idea of phase lanes around space or harnessing antimatter, then why not organic ships? Additionally to say that the idea of organic ships is cliched is very ironic considering SOASE takes nearly every cliched idea in Scifi and builds a game around it. As someone said before, anything with a good implementation will be fun to play so it is pointless to argue the impossibilities of it.

Organics COULD work... what they really need is a race to explain WHY the Vasari warship that returned had an insane crew.

I'm pretty sure "Lulz they shot our ships!" doesn't drive you insane.

Seeing something EAT the ship might. Or maybe its some sentient Black Hole, or... something. It's space. Anything can happen.

No what really happened was they all got into a big argument from realism about a video game .

Sam Skinner

You do know that specific metals and alloys when polished have a large reflective spectrum, a ordinary mirror these days is 98% on the visable.

also highpowered lasers are by default not effective agasint metal.

Metal acts as ablative armor and evaporates taking the energy from the laser and creating a gas cloud which defuses the rest of the incomming beam.

What they have found is, that a very highpowered laserbeam which a short fire time, where talking tenths of a hundrenth of a second can cause explosions on magnituides higher then the most powerful therocetical chemical explosive.