Spaceship flotilla

A flotilla (plural flotillae) is a spaceship composed of a number of smaller interacting spaceships. Often one or more of these is not a true spaceship (e.g. an overweight spaceship) and could not survive without the support of the others; those ships are said to be escorted by the true ships.

Example

In the following example, a long overweight spaceship is being escorted by two heavyweight escorts; most of the 10-bit spark that would make it unstable is suppressed by the HWSSes, except for two cells that dissipate harmlessly.

Standard spaceship flotillae

There are 42 flotillae of two standard spaceships (lightweight, middleweight and heavyweight); 39 of these are actual spaceships, while 3 are pseudo-spaceships.

  • 1 LWSS on LWSS (a pseudo-spaceship)
  • 3 LWSS on MWSS
  • 8 LWSS on HWSS (including 1 pseudo-spaceship)
  • 5 MWSS on MWSS
  • 15 MWSS on HWSS
  • 10 HWSS on HWSS (including 1 pseudo-spaceship)

LWSS on LWSS

LWSS on MWSS

LWSS on HWSS

MWSS on MWSS

MWSS on HWSS

HWSS on HWSS

Further flotillae involving sidecars, pushalongs, x66s and Coe ships exist.

gollark: I'm probably not Russian, so no.
gollark: Oh, sorry, I might have accidentally feedback.
gollark: And yes.
gollark: Audio, probably.
gollark: https://images-ext-2.discordapp.net/external/5lkicEOU33i-vZuEyUpyW9YNtlnA7jlsywl-objzl7I/https/hackaday.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/1280px-SF6_mm.png?width=1104&height=623

See also

References
  1. Adam P. Goucher (July 18, 2019). Re: Thread for basic questions (discussion thread) at the ConwayLife.com forums
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