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Alliance Normandy SR2 redesign: Deck 3

The crew deck sits in the middle of the ship, where the hull is widest. This is where design for a larger crew really comes into play.

#mass effect meta #Alliance Normandy SR-2 #Normandy SR2 redesign #BTW my partner named Mukerjee last night #I waffled for awhile about whether it was ops or logistics and whether the role was filled #So they are Officer Not Yet Appearing In Fic #and lack pronouns a first name and a personality #too much to think about when I was busy redesigning the galley #Priorities #Normandy SR-2 #SSV Normandy SR-2 #mass effect #fire the headcan(n)on

Alliance Normandy SR2 redesign: Deck 1

The Alliance refitted Deck 1 for an Admiral, but they were working from the original Cerberus SR2 layout, which is decadent even for the shiniest of top brass. The Illusive Man is absolutely a believer in the Great Man theory of history, and the belief that a Capital-L Alpha-human Leader both requires and deserves luxury. From his point of view, this is the bare minimum. Why is there a fish tank on the stealth frigate? Because the Illusive Man decreed it thus. Then he went back to snorting space-blow off the ass of an asari hooker.

(During the refit, Anderson performed some interesting conversational and logistical gymnastics to keep the giant bed and the fish tank, without seeming like he was personally invested in a big comfy bed and a fish tank).

General note: I drew bulkheads one foot thick throughout. It matches the game's thick walls, makes the plans legible when zoomed out, and allows plenty of space for wiring, plumbing, life support, etc. The ladders and central elevator access every deck of the ship, and the elevator has doors both fore and aft.

Redesign/refinement

The loft is more refined than redesigned. The head is pushed out to use the empty space around elevator, and I added a tiny private cabin for two admiral's aides. (On Rhi Shepard's Normandy these were never completed, which she is deeply thankful for; fraternization is hard enough as it is).

The hull outline comes in and clips the ladders. This is a limitation of plan-view; that is actually the hull outline at the top of the space, where it's narrowest. The ladders aren't hanging outside the ship, they just have slightly less head-room (still not a problem, even for a turian).

Inside the cabin, the L desk is rotated 90 degrees, because no N7 in the world wants to sit with their back to the door. This also makes it more comfortable to have working meetings with subordinates. The extended wing of the folds and can be stowed out of the way under the rest. Pushing the head out into the corridor also means better visibility and more usable pace here.

To the left of the door, a small stowable table is a space for more casual conversations or private meals. It's also a place for more formal meals; with the L of the desk folded away, the small table can actually extend to seat eight, allowing the admiral to wine-and-dine visiting dignitaries or senior staff.

Rhi Shepard refers aloud to her model ship collection, but in her heart they're toy ships. The lack of fish is absolutely NOT because of her horrible track record with previous fish; it's because using the stealth systems means accumulating a lot of heat, and water is an excellent auxiliary place to store heat. It may not seem like much next to the ship's massive built-in heat-sinks, but every little bit helps, and with an estimated 4' height, that is a 485 gallon fish tank*.

*Thank you Aquarium Volume Calculator, which is also how I learned that aquarium stocking sizes are given in "inches of fish." This tank can hold about 598 inches of fish. A marvel.

The seating area is basically unchanged, except that admirals rate their own coffee maker. I also added a frosted translucent panel dividing the living/entertaining area from the sleeping area, because sometimes you want to entertain guests without feeling that all focus is on the sybaritic splendor of your bed. The panel also displays media (from either direction).

Normandy redesign posts

Intro

Loft

Command

Crew

Engineering

Hangar

#Normandy SR-2 #mass effect #mass effect meta #Normandy SR2 redesign #Alliance Normandy SR-2 #Sunset and Evening Star #fire the headcan(n)on #Rhi doesn't know about the table yet #it's a stealth table #don't know if it'll ever show up in fic #but I did write about it #N7 surprised by her own furniture #SSV Normandy SR-2

Alliance Normandy SR2 redesign: Deck 2

All of the decks are longer and skinnier than what we see in game. (This isn't a complaint; running through a long skinny map is tedious!). The command deck is a particular puzzle, because it doesn't need to be as long as it is, and we're supposed to believe it's much longer — extending all the way to the nose, which it can't do unless the deck curves down:

Aesthetically, I'd like the command deck to extend farther forward than I've drawn it. Practically, I can't think of a reason why it would.

CIC & cockpit

Spaceships fly by instrumentation; you can steer from anywhere, so there's no reason to hike an extra forty-four meters to the cockpit. There are also far more work stations shown in game than seem reasonable: 14 in the CIC and corridor to the cockpit. What are they all doing? When you take into account capable Virtual Intelligence systems (the Alliance didn't know about EDI, but would have designed for a VI) it's even sillier, so I drastically reduced the number of stations in the CIC, and removed them from the corridor entirely.

The corridor needs to stay to keep the feel of the space, so I used it for escape pod access. In the CIC itself, I kept the shape but oriented the workstations forward in case of inertial-buffer overloads*. There are two doors to the CIC, so the Officer of the Watch doesn't have a door directly at their back.

I also added a ready room, the office for the Officer of the Watch (accessible from the CIC), which also serves as a briefing room. In Sunset and Evening Star, this is where Shepard and First Office Nguyen have their morning meetings.

*Any system can overload. The trick with inertial overloads in fiction is convincing the reader that there's enough overload to feel without mashing everyone inside into paste, which is an astonishingly narrow window. It's an even narrower window if the human is sideways to the inertial force; we are very bad at surviving that.

The awkward middle

I stretched out the area forward of the elevator as much as I could. As well as the two new offices, there's a head for the CIC crew, another escape pod, and access to the secure areas aft. Moving that access here reduces traffic through the CIC.

(It's still a big waste of space).

Moving aft: from tactics to strategy

While the Captain commands the ship in the Combat Information Center, the Admiral leads the fleet from the War Room.

Turning starboard from the elevator, there's a security station (so Private Campbell can remain the most put-upon person in the Alliance Navy). Past that is the Admiral's office, which wasn't finished when the reapers attacked Earth.

The Alliance is actively trying to take a larger role in galactic affairs, so there are some concessions to other species. In addition to the conference room, there's a head with a stall big enough for a krogan, and a beverage station set up for both dextro and levo species. Please click to embiggen and admire my stupid little coffee mugs.

The war room is centered, in the most protected part of the ship. It keeps it's general layout, but with fewer stations (focused inward so staff can see the strat map holo display). Only one is usually manned. The Strategic Map is the grand-scale equivalent to the Tactical Modeler in the CIC. (The names are wishful thinking; in a real military both would be impenetrable acronyms).