My heart literally broke as soon as I saw it... explode.

This is pretty much a "game over" right from the start, hidden in plain sight.

@Wolfe-Knight:

It could be. But there's still hundreds, maybe millions of pieces drifting in Orbit, on the surface out of our reach, deep in the Clockworks, or blasted out of orbit as space debris.

It could explain why it looks like the moon is disintegrating?

EDIT: Forget my moon statement. I just realized from the start those were moon chunks

@Xtweeterx

No doubt most of the pieces are still in orbit or on the moon but it makes you wonder, if a whole engine made it to cradle what else did? I am just the guy who tries to figure out the silver lining in everything (you know, the guy no one every likes).

I guess we need to build a new ship. The gremlins could probably help us with that ... if they would stop trying to kill us.

Presumably Captain Ozlo and the rest of the command crew escaped, since Feron mentions him in his dialogue. I certainly hope so. It would be the height of stupidity to kill off a character literally seconds after they were first introduced.

... why is this beginning to remind me of March Upcountry? Nick, have you read this?

Who/what's Lorien?

I can totally see a Saving Private Ryan thing going on in the future. Only it's Captain Ozlo.

Well..To think about this one,Skylark, was shot by some sort of Laser thingy.Probably Crimson Order work.

Incorrect. No official source directly states that Skylark crashed on the surface in one piece nor whether the crash was the major damaging factor. The two recon modules state that the "Skylark Crash was horrible", but unless I'm missing something ingame, that's the only previous written information we had. The statements "pulled towards Cradle" and "crash on the surface" were placed on the page by Hyperanthony when he created the page, and no-one challenged it because no-one knew any better and it wasn't really a big deal how exactly the Skylark crashed. The Skylark page has only had 3 edits since its creation in late 2011, none of which are from Three Rings staff.

Judging by the fact that we have pieces of the Skylark intact, it's very likely (almost certain) that the Skylark hit the ground in multiple pieces. Therefore a large crater would not have been made.

I almost though of the multiple pieces thing myself.

If THAT were the case, they'd have to explore the entire surface of Cradle, maybe some hidden nooks and crannies in the CWs, find all the important parts for an integral engine, hull, outer body, and controls. And Vog knows how long that will take.

That, or they burned up in the atmosphere at such high pressures that some might have disintegrated and turned to ash. Kind of like how a small meteorite hurdles towards Earth.

Isn't the swarm the result of some kind of void-spawned personality? The Swarm is to The Child as the Xel'naga's directives is to the Overmind's free will. Actually, a better example would be The Morganna System and Aura: The System was supposed to be an inanimate program built into the MMORPG "The World", purely designed to assimilate the personality data of the players of the game and use it to give birth to Aura, the Ultimate AI. Morganna developed sentience when she realized that once her fraternal purpose was complete, she'd cease to exist. In an effort of self-preservation she refuses to give birth to Aura, trapping anyone (by separating their consience from their mind, rendering them comatose and keeping them logged into the game) who attempts to help Aura.

The Fetus, or Child, or whatever it's called (The planet is called "Cradle" for a reason, no?) could be some incredible synthetic deity created for some divine purpose, but perhaps since there's a Yang for every Ying, the Swarm arose from this imbalance. Or perhaps the Child is the Swarm but its body evolved so rapidly it learned how to operate separately from the "mind", which is Child, and is corrupting and absorbing everything in an attempt to find its own "form", to become a separate entity?

Remember there is some benevolence within the Swarm. Be that a part of its entire dark plot, or a rebelling fragment of its personality, we don't know. In the supposedly-alternate dimension, the Shadow Lairs are depicted as what happens once the swarm escapes, and the Sanctuary (which is inside the core) and whatever sentience remains after the swarm disperses is left. Perhaps the Shadow Lairs are a dream the Child gives the Knights telepathically.

Anyway, that's assuming the Swarm was a result of scientific creation. It could be a backlash of rift technology.

But what if we're the decepticons?
What there's a darker reason for why we need such a large power source?

Explosion ≠ crash. If you shoot down an airplane, it crashes. If you blow it up midair and vaporize it, it doesn't "crash". It explodes.

It would be cool if the knights had to choose a side: Back the order OR rebel.
It could be a better excuse for pvp.
I'm backing my boy Ozlo all the way! I bet the Morai deserve it.

Whomever the morai are they don't appear to be the same species as the knights since they "brought us to the brink of extinction."

Yes they would deserve it, but by this point of the story's development it seems that a WMD is too far off to even think of. A ship scattered across cradle, one seemingly functional engine (that we know of) residing in the lab, a massive energy source of questionable intelligence, and the somehow dimension bending void-like being the swarm that encroaches the core slowly.

Explosion ≠ crash. If you shoot down an airplane, it crashes. If you blow it up midair and vaporize it, it doesn't "crash". It explodes.

I thought we discussed this before. How would an entire ship, made out of a material strong enough to withstand the vacuum and Ultravoilet radiation oxidize into nothing?

Of all the elements commonly used to construct spacecraft, the lightest of all is Aluminum (13 compared to 22, 23, and 26) and since we don't know the exact compound used to construct Skylark, we'll just assume it was made entirely out of pure Aluminum. The other compounds would have been heavier and therefore required more oxygen to oxidize, so I'm just using the ideal situation for your point. Aluminum(III) Oxide is formed when Aluminum combusts, and its chemical formula is Al2O3. Aluminum's density is 2,375 kg/m3 and its molar mass is 26.98, so a cubic meter of Aluminum contains 88028 moles. Oxygen's density at STP is 1.43kg/m3 and its molar mass is 16, so a cubic meter of Oxygen contains 89 moles. So for every cubic meter of Aluminum we have, we'll need 88028 x (3/2) = 132042 moles of Oxygen to oxidize it. That's 1483 cubic meters of oxygen. If that was a cube room, that would be an 11.4 meter wide room. That's a big room, there probably wouldn't be a lot of those. (Large and cube rooms are the most efficient use of construction material) It would require 779 square meters of material to encompass. If that one cubic meter of Aluminum was used to make that room, it would be stretched thin to 1.28 millimeters, assuming it was made out of a single piece. I heavily doubt that the ship was made out of sheets that thin.

So no, an entire ship would not vaporise from an explosion. It certainly could end up in a lot of chunks, depending on what exploded, or could melt entirely if the explosion was very very hot but there's nowhere near enough oxygen to turn even a sizable amount of the ship to dust.

Melting, maybe, but wouldn't the force of cohesion mean that the globules stick mostly in large lumps? Anyway, to melt even just the insides of the ship, we're talking Hiroshima. To turn the ship into a gas, that'd require something like a mini-sun's worth of heat and energy.

I used pure Aluminum because spaceships are made out of a compound of Aluminum, Vanadium and Titanium, and Iron is a frequent element used for construction of things, but I had no idea of the ratio of that alloy. Since out of those four, Aluminum has the lowest atomic weight, it requires the least amount of oxygen to oxidize, and hence why I used it. The proper alloy would have used far more oxygen to oxidize (and would have taken longer to calculate)

As we have no way to determine the technology used behind whatever exploded, we just have to judge how powerful the explosion was by its appearance.

You don't know if it was the beam that destroyed the ship or an exploding internal device like an engine or generator.

Can a highly focused beam cause material to explode? I don't really think so... unless it worked by seperating atoms/molecules in an exothermic reaction. I don't really think metals do that, but then again I don't know much about fission and the like.

anything above carbonium is fissable, although you don't get "much" energy in return. and I'm not talking about pure carbonium but an isotope, don't remember which one though.
and it should be easier to melt something near the engine of the ship to make it explode to make the skylark crash. although the lazur hit the body of the ship, and not the optimal position for an engine. maybe it hit the armory and all weapons exploded. think of all the nitromes!

in a spaceship usually fuel is the most protected part of the ship, along with engines. armory should be less protected cause it should be also easily accessible by knights.

fuel is highly flammable just like weapons, it's common sense to protect it. cockpit protection is the second most protected part to me, cause 1 you gotta see what it's outside 2 with no engine you get nowhere. I have written "along with engines" cause you would like fuel to be near the engines, so you store it with the engines.

@Hexzyle: I wasn't trying to prove the beam itself destroyed the ship, I was just demonstrating how you can calculate the beam's energy without understanding the underlying mechanism. My best guess for the explosion's source would be a combination of the ship's atmosphere igniting and maybe some parts of the ship's structure itself burning. And you can't achieve fission in light elements like steel and titanium, you need a much denser material (Thorium is the lightest one you can use).

@Thunder/Arkate
Sci-fi spaceships and real ones are very different in design. Generally speaking, Sci-fi ships are much closer to oceangoing ships in design and function.

Some fuel types are very easy to ignite, some are not. US navy carriers run off nuclear power (and nuclear reactors aren't that explosive, contrary to popular belief), and the fuel they carry for their aircraft is so stable they actually use it as part of the torpedo defense system. I doubt the Skylark used conventional fuel as a power source (its terribly impractical and inefficient to do that, because you have to burn so much fuel to maneuver). They also don't use matter/antimatter, because if they did the resulting explosion stood a good chance of killing all the knights before they could get a safe distance away. Fission is unlikely, but possible. Fusion is a strong possibility, since it generates a lot of power without being volatile (you can run it off of water). Or they could use some entirely unique power source that's beyond modern science. Whatever they used, it's entirely possible they didn't have fuel tanks big enough or dangerous enough to pose and exposition hazard.

The ship's armory would be a negligible explosion hazard. Remember, it took Kiloton level firepower just to get through the ship's armor. That kind of power makes a BAB look like a dart gun. A broken dart gun, with no ammo. If the Skylark had weapons that fired physical ammunition, then its possible that stuff could have cooked off, but the munitions storage room would be designed to prevent that.

@Arkate, post 44:
A dedicate warship would have armor. If you have the resources and technology to build one, then you're not worrying about power issues, since if you had them then you wouldn't be able to build a spaceborne warship. Also, you don't need to build a streamlined shape, because there's no air in space, and streamlining it wouldn't help with the launch either. With something the size of the Skylark, you likely couldn't build it on a planet's surface due to sheer mass and the difficulty of launching it. It'd be far easier to build it in an orbital shipyard like they do in most sci-fi shows (or how they built the ISS in real life).