Salutations!
In my opinion,
an organic starship
COULD be a very possible and potent creation.
As said before, most modern twenty-first-century weapons, (not to mention Vegastrike's futuristic energy weapons
) can easily penetrate organic armor without a problem.
However, it must be taken into account that nothing has really had the chance to evolve to protect itself against this kind of attack.
Anyway, ancient dinosaurs had armor that might have been somewhat bulletproof. After all they did have to protect themselves from their carnivorous cousins, many of which could exert incredible force with their jaws.
It should also be remembered that carbon-nano-fibers, one of the strongest modern materials,
(apparently far stronger than steal
) are made, of course, from carbon, the same substance that life is made of.
Diamonds, the hardest natural substance, are also made of carbon.
Wood, although not nearly as strong as metal, is very strong for its weight, as are bones.
Dformations of chitin, keratin, or organic calcium, can be very strong. Think about the shells on a crab or lobster. No, not as hard as metal, but make it a meter thick thick, and you do have considerable protection, although probably not space adequate,
without modifications,
especially to stop radiation.
Spider silk is
EXTREMELY elastic, and is said to be
three times stronger than steel.
I have also heard of bacterium capable of living
inside volcanoes,
not only enduring incredible heat, but also massive preasure and toxic, acidic gases.
Some algea grow inside of the ice and rocks on the top of mountains, where the ice never melts.
We must also remember that it is very likely that other planets have their own unique lifeforms, some of which might have evolved to grow armor that is far harder and stronger than any substance we have ever encountered.
Add the Rlaan's bio-engineering technologies to an organism that already produces armor harder than steel, and you will have something amazing.
The fact that life can regenerate and adapt is also a very valid point. Over time, idividual lifeorms do adapt to their surroundings; arctic wolves change their color depending on the season, plants grow diffferent types of leaves depending on how much sunlight they are exposed to, and organisms become immuned to dissease.
And these changes are displayed in indivdual organisms;
let a few millenia pass, and the changes are drastic.
Again, we have no idea what extraterrestrial organisms are capable of.
I would not be surprised if their was a creature somewhere that has
living, growing armor, that can regenerate from a serious wound in under a minute.
This hypothetical extraterrestrial creature might have spead up the evolutionary process the same way it could have spead up its regeneration process (amphibians have essentially spead up the evolution from a water living creature to a land living creature, so that it takes only one generation) and be able to adapt so quickly that it would be immune after the first blow, to whatever type of force that hit it.
Far fetched yes, but definitly not impossible.
Again, add the Rlaan technologies, and you have a starship capable of far more than just your average metal vessel.
And of course, this is a sciencefiction based game.
Scientists do not (yet)
really know how to create a SPEC drive or how to activate a jump node.
This is all about being creative, and exploring the possiblities. That is part of what makes Vegastrike such an amazing game.
Speaking of possbilities, an organic armor with a way to heal and adapt to be semi or completely immune to what it is being attacked with, would be an extremely nice addition to the next Vegastrike version.