Starship Designs

When I first was seriously thinking about West World, I was trying to think of a technology that would really make my story unique from others out there.  For example, Star Wars has the lightsaber, Star Trek has the transporter, and so on.  Since my story evokes the past, I thought it would be really cool for my starships to have solar sails.  Especially since the story revolves around a lack of natural resources, I thought it would be unique to present these huge vessels as needing a secondary power supply.

That was in 1998.  Since then, a movie called Treasure Planet came out that had starships with solar sails, Count Dooku's ship - the Solar Sailer - made about a 30 second appearance in Star Wars: Episode II, and now we have "hybrid" cars that combine two power sources.

I really like the designs of my three starships.  The only thing that I don't think comes across in my drawings is that I picture these vessels as being massive.  I picture them as being about the size of the Star Destroyers of Episodes II and III of Star Wars - large, but not so gigantic that they couldn't land or dock on a planet's surface.  These drawings also represent basic vehicle classes; in other words, not all Yewkanian starships are going to look like carbon copies the one pictured here, but they would share commonalities.

This Yewkanian ship is the last ship design I created.  Since the Yewkanian Fleet is based on the British Navy, I imagined these vessels as being the largest and most powerful of the West World universe.  In my mind, all Yewkanian ships would have a boat-like hull and sails that are similar to a sloop, along with the bridge placement being about center.  The design inspiration for this drawing is the handle of a cooking pot we own crossed with a night light in our bathroom.

Latanian ships are representative of the Spanish Fleet.  In the West World universe, Latanian ships are - as a class - the fastest ships in the system.  All Latanian ships have a sleek, bridge-forward design.  But the most distinguishing feature of these vessels are the five rotating solar sails at the rear of the ship.  It is obvious that the design inspiration in this drawing was a windmill.