Colours and Markings on Sci-Fi Spacecraft

There is also adding markings to commandeered enemy ships to distinguish friend from foe.

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STARSECTOR MENTIONED!

No mention of Nexus 😞 They literally had markers for the "companies" that are like factions. If your factions are companies / bigtech there is really an easy in-universe explanation why cool markings are there…. guess what… for marketing 🙂

Where do I read about syncverse? I can't find it online.

Archangel (Gundam Seed) please.

Another good thing to consider is some smaller, practical markings. Bright highlighting for things like ports for refueling umbilical to plug into or highlighted reinforced hull segments for docking clamps to latch onto to make safe docking easier, and the reverse too, you wouldn't want a docking clamp crushing your phased array radar panels or damaging the hatches on your VLS tubes.

Safety markings for EVA maintenance crews to make sure they stay a safe distance from things like the engines, RCS thrusters, or anything that might suddenly move like radiators, amiable sensors (especially ones like radar that could accidentally cook someone who gets in front of it if it's on), or turrets (even if those hopefully shouldn't be moving while you have anyone EVA). Even markings directing anyone to the closest airlock in case they need to get aboard rapidly.

They can also be used to help approaching shuttles or fighters safely approach a hanger bay. Either by avoiding accidentally frying by flying in front of an active radar or by helping them know their relative speed so they don't accidentally plow into you at high speed.

I love the classic white look but it was exciting to see all the colours in Babylon 5 back when it was a new thing.

The design of earth ships in B5 was always so utilitarian, from their build to their paint, because they were meant to do one thing and everything else was fluff, or you had to know when things were not standard. Like, Earthforce One? Big hub module, dash of paint, no other frills iirc. Your run of the mill Omega? Uniform grey, with only identifiying markings like name and number. PsyCorps ships? Intimidating colours and spec-ops at first glance. And let's not forget Clarke's pet project ships. Those were just nasty and you immediately knew what they did to them.

"The Klingons do whatever they want" is basically true whenever.

One time I was doing some hauling with a group in Elite Dangerous. My Cutter was sporting a mostly-black paintjob, which caused a few mishaps when people had trouble seeing my ship!

I feel like "Painting" things, anything, marks it if you will, as Human. I know that ailen things sometimes have wild colors but personally, I think that would come from the actual materials of the vehicle. I feel like "Ailen" vehicles would be obviously that because of "alien". Maybe not only design and equipment but maybe something like filigree or sculpture integrated or containing or applied to the non human vehicles. Where as nothing screams Human like being smeared in pigment of some kind. Lmao I almost died from the irony as I'm Lakota and the thought of a stolen alien vehicle,idk maybe smeared with red clay hand prints or something 😂

Right before you mentioned Chris Foss, I was thinking that that ship from 'Mighty Space Miners' did look like something he would have painted.

I thought the same about…..I'll call him 'Pirate Captain Tree Beard's" ship (can't recall his exact name) in an episode of "The Mandalorian", which had stripes reminiscent of Foss's work as well.

One example of paint being thematically important is Eve Online's Guristas Pirates. All of their ships have the same hull design as ships in the fleet of the Caldari State, their primary enemy and the Guristas founder's "country" of origin. So, Caldari ships with pirate colors serves both to distinguish the Guristas from the Caldari and to communicate the general ethos of the Guristas: take what is yours and make it my own.

As far as I'm aware the SR-72 Darkstar is no longer fictional

I also like when Colours in Starship designs have an in-universe meaning, such as in Star Wars, where the Chrome of the Naboo Ships we see represented the Monarchy of Naboo, leading to the Royal Starfight Corps being partially Chrome and the Royal Yacht fully Chrome – as well as the Red used for Diplomatic vessels (though the Republic kind of appropriated it for the duration of the Clone Wars)

so… on thought on 'color' markings comes up with polar bears. yeah. I know. not space ships and unless they're cyborg polar bears not particularly sci-fi. (please don't make cyborg polar bears. they're scary enough already.)

But their fur is interesting. the guard hairs are hollow, and both the guard hairs and underlying fur are transparent. The reason for this is the skin is black, which allows the bear to absorb more sunlight, while on the other hand, still blending in with the snow and ice.

Modern stealth aircraft use materials that absorb and trap radar to reduce it's returns- they convert it to heat. but some kind of FLIR imager can scan huge swaths of space without any active emissions, and a constellation of them would be able to defeat any management of thermal emissions. (like keeping radiators from being visible forwards and emitting backwards.) So…. you wouldn't want modern stealth anyhow. (Cuz, glowing is kinda a bad way to do stealth…)

In the scifi setting me and some friends are making there is a faction that is extremist libertarian and uses "chin markings" on there ships to show the different clans/factions which are inspired by Māori tattoos

Can you do a video on darth maul's ship the Scimitar

Klingons doing whatever they want is a consistent theme

I love wacky Chris Foss-esque ships