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How do!

No, not poseur. Poser. As in question.

But there’s something been floating just below the surface of this sad morass I guess I have to call a mind. And it’s inspired by this scene.




Yet it’s not a particularly Star Trek thought.

But, you see Earth Space Dock? And it’s quite staggering size? What if *that* was the craft capable of inter-galactic travel? A mobile dock, replete with scout, colony and battle ships. Something designed and intended to hurl itself into the void and the unknown. And for sake of “but how are am it resupply” with some space wizard tech which tethers it in orbit around an uninhabited world, where a tractor beam or whatever draws raw minerals and resources up as and when needed.

The ships assigned to it may or may not have FTL equivalent drives - it really depends where you want to take its mission (exploration, conquest, and that).

My main question here is has anyone, ideally at least semi-competently, written such a tale? If so, where can I read it?

The Lost Fleet series is a bit like that. In a Battlestar Galactica style “isolated fleet surrounded only by enemies” it has various plot threads about using the support vessels to repair and rearm between battles.

Songs of Distant Earth has a touch of that “resupply at distant planet on a journey of colonisation”

Excession (my absolute favourite Banks book) goes into more detail about the Culture ship capability for creation and sustainment of fleets. Your statement basically describes the GSV concept.

In the Star Trek: Voyager: Full Circle novel series, the USS Achilles (Mulciber class) is only 960 meters long, but is a fleet carrier (for attack fighters) and builds the transwarp beacons as the fleet returns to the Delta Quadrant.

The ship also has 5 industrial replicators and is essentially a flying Starfleet repair dock.

In Babylon 5, Earthforce had the Explorer class ships. Not only were they used to explore the outer rim, they were also used to extend the jump gate network as they went, giving these large ships (6 km long) the added benefit of a way back home in case their own Jump Engines failed.

I wouldn’t say any of the stories are written around them, but that’s pretty much my understanding of Guild Heighliners in the Dune novels.

Important note; in the original books they’re just “conventional” FTL ships and the navigators job was to look slightly into the future and stop them from smashing into stars, planets, etc. (similar to Star Wars hyperspace calculations). The whole “folding space with their minds” thing only comes in with David Lynch’s film, as far as I’m aware. I don’t think it’s ever explicitly stated in the books, but I think it’s implied that there is no FTL communication system, so messages have to be couriered, with the consequent time lag, risk of interception, etc.