The engines and their mountings are placeholders until I figure out something more detailed... and until I get some major PC hardware upgrades. The model's a bit... slow to work with on an Athlon 64 3500+ (Socket 939) running XP Pro with 1 gig of PC 3200 DDR1.
Then there's the whole nose part. It needs a centrally located universal docking and services system, and an personnel access tube/hatch below that, also with universal connection. There's six major races in Compact Space, then later a human ship gets dragged into things and apparently is able to dock to a CS station without any complications deemed noteworthy by the author.
It also needs some type of dorsal docking arm clamping system.
The main frame and the vane support fins are UV mapped. Those aft engine cowls are going to be a be-atch to map.
There's no "real" artificial gravity in this universe, just spinning the stations and the central habitat cylinders of the ships. To visualize how ships dock, take a CD and lay it flat. Poke a finger straight down on the CD near the edge. Your finger is a ship. Imagine the CD and finger spinning around. You see the complications of such a setup!
Apply some basic physics and you see the need for all those ventral and flank engines. During docking manuvers, the ship has to be able to thrust towards station axis with the same force that objects inside the station feel trying to push them outward AND the ship has to thrust sideways at the same velocity as the docking port. Jolly fun and no organic pilot is going to pull that off manually...(C.J. Cherryh isn't big on the tech side of things, but her characters and plots are excellent. Must be doing something right, had over 60 books published!)
Those big vane things, those are the part of the hyper/warp/whatever drive that does the warp-y thing.
