As far as I can tell this is Russian-peculiar jargon; in American and European space programs, a “complex” refers to the unified final assembly/integration, launch pads and gantries, and launch control facilities to support a launch vehicle. For instance, Launch Complex 39 (LC-39) consisting of two pads/gantries (39A and 39B) is used to support the US Space Transportation System (Space Shuttle) launches, and in previously supported Saturn IB and Saturn V launches.
Stranger
An obvious choice would be to use ship-related words that aren’t “Ship” itself. Any very large craft can be described by terms like “Cruiser,” “Ferry,” “Liner” or “Conveyor,” and of course warships can take on terms like “Frigate,” “Destroyer,” etc.
Maru from Japanese, meaning something like “unit.”
Or perhaps you could live with “Hull,” which is even less nautical when the Hull is unnamed.
Adama always called Galactica’s fighters planes, and I loved that detail.
Now if we can just avoid using “ship” to describe the awkward romantic/sexual hooking-up of two ill-suited (to each other) characters, I’d be 100% happy.
So, fun trivia, of the four types of ships you named, three derive their names from what they do (they Cruise, they Ferry, or they Destroy), one derived its name from its association (Liners are all associated with a “Line”, or a people transportation company, be it an airline, an oceanline, or a bus line), and the last one, Frigate, traces its etymology back to an Old English word that meant “Boat”
If you are going to have only one or a very few of these ships, I’d say just give them names that relate to their relation to each other, ie: big ship is Demeter and smaller ship is Persephone (bonus points if you wanted to give a poetic sounding name to some sort smaller transport ship that perhaps carried personnel from the safety of the mothership into harms way)
If the larger ship carries several of the smaller ships, you could call it a carrier. For the smaller ship, you can just call them shuttles, or reach around for other words to describe the same thing, such as Cutter or Pinnace (the Honor Harrington series of books uses Pinnace, Cutter, and Shuttle to describe a variety of smaller vessels dispatched by a larger ship to visit other ships or planets, the far more modern sounding “Light Attack Craft” or LAC is used to describe smaller skirmishing craft often deployed from larger ships).
Really, “Ship” is such a general term, it’s hard to avoid without looking for more specific names. The only reason Airplanes wandered away from “Ship” for their names is because of their defining characteristic, the large airplanes (wings, airfoils, stabilizers, tails, chines, etc.) from which they generate their lift, as opposed to what we normally call an airship (Dirigible, Zeppelin, etc) which get their lift from the same source ships do: Buoyancy and volume displacement. This is similar to how planes propelled by turbine jet engines are called “Jets”.
Relationcraft.
Relation module.
Relation tin can.
Hm. Let me get back to you.
You could give it some stupid sounding name like “trans-stellar moveatron” or “interplanetary travelodyne” if you want to move away from the commonly used “naval ships in space” convention.
I just thought of another one:
Astrosphere (like a bathysphere, but astro). Gives more of an impression of a habitate than a ship in space.
So would people who engage in such persuits be called Mods?
d&r
How about you just add a negater to the word? No-Ships!
No wait, nevermind, that was in the Dune books already, IIRC.
You really need to get over yourself, “ship” (and variants thereof) is a perfectly adequate and useful term, and doesn’t cause most sci fi fans to break out in pedanty hives. Trying to dance around the term is just going to make your writing awkward and clunky.
To say nothing of heighliners.
Agreed that there’s nothing inherently wrong with the word “ship” in this context. It’s a common, useful phrase and you’re still free to describe the starcraft (ooo, there’s another!) with any level of detail you wish.
Yes. I just have to ask the OP, Tracer, what you are trying to acomplish by avoiding the use of ‘ship’?
Is this story going to involve a bizarro universe where the word was never used? An alternate reality?
Because if you are writing a story about the future of this world, how ever far into the future it takes place, the nautical terms for many things will still be in use.
There could be a whole thread here about common terms that originated from nautical or sailing usage. So many that you might not be able to even write a decent story without using any of them.
I can understand the ‘spaceship, starship, Earthship’ thing being over done, but without any use of ship, I doubt that you get a credible story.
The point isn’t if there’s an analog in the modern world. The point is that the reader is coming in with decades of SF and fantasy exposure under his belt where space ship/spacecraft is easily identifiable. If your conceit, ill founded in my opinion, about the issues with the use of the word “ship” soak through into your writing or if your alternative comes across as forced or confusing it will spoil the story completely and irreparably. The fact that you are exerting so much passion and effort to force an alternative for something so basic doesn’t speak well for the story’s chances. If the technology you invent even *remotely *resembles what people have come to recognize as a spaceship in pop culture and SF calling it something else will be terribly distracting to the reader.
That said, the best solution is to just rely on Proper names. Give the two vehicles livery and a registry name. Have the characters assign affectionate or derogatory nicknames to them. Invent a corporation and manufacturer and give the vehicles brand names and model names. Use these terms interchangeably.
Let’s face it, how often do you think sailors on the Nimitz refer to it as a “ship” and “aircraft carrier”?
Hell, you’d be hard-pressed to find much aviation terminology that didn’t find its origin in nautical terminology. Cockpit, rudder, pitch, yaw, stewards/stewardesses, being organized into squadrons or fleets, “This is the Captain speaking”, etc. all goes back to sailing, as that was the closest analogy when they were building the vocabulary for air travel.
Why try to reinvent the wheel if the wheel seems to work so well?
I’m pretty sure “Starcraft” is trademarked by Blizzard, although it might just be the version of the word where the letter C is capitalized that they called dibs on.
Space pirates.
I mean, come on. Space pirates?!
They call it “The Boat”.
That’s odd. One of my private-pilot flight instructors said that the surest way to tick off a Navy guy was to ask, “Where’s the front of the boat?” “It’s not a BOAT,” they’ll inevitably retort, “It’s a SHIP! And this is the BOW, and that is the STERN!”