Motile Vehicular Components

Above: A Cosmo Zero stored in the hangar. Below: A Cosmo Zero ready for action.

A common way of showing that a vehicle (usually a spaceship, but other vehicles aren't uncommon) was built with high technology is that parts of it move around for some reason. The machine is built in several smaller modules that are connected to the main hull by a gimbaling system that allows them to move to a new, advantageous position as the situation warrants. The smaller and more mobile the system is, the better.

The exact components mounted on the gimbals varies. Often, it's the engines; less commonly, they're entire mechanical arms. Extremely rarely, it's the inside of the vehicle that can rearrange itself.

Gun turrets, rotating engine components (turbofans, propellers/impellers, swirly energy thingies, etc.), Centrifugal Gravity spinners, and control surfaces are specifically discounted, unless they're able to up-stakes and move around on the hull. They're mobile, but not mobile enough. More to the point, the audience expects them to move, albeit in a very specific way.

Compare with Transforming Mecha (a vehicle is able to swap between anthropomorphic and non-anthropomorphic forms) and Transforming Vehicle. If the components are able to jettison and move around entirely by themselves, they're Disposable Vehicle Sections.

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Examples:

Anime & Manga

• In Cowboy Bebop, Faye's ship has its guns mounted on a pair of bulky mechanical arms, themselves mounted to either side of the cockpit.
• Gundam:
  • The Hand Wave in the original series for why Gundams were built in a humanoid form is that it's so they can maneuver in such a way that they can reserve all their delta-V for actual forward motion, like how a properly trained astronaut can reorient themself by using the momentum of their limbs. A nice side-effect of this is that they can be used as either Space Fighters or Humongous Mecha, depending on whether they're deployed in orbit or on the ground. Adding hands to their forelimbs allowed tactical flexibility by quickly changing weapons.
  • In Mobile Suit Gundam SEED Destiny, Minerva-class space battleships can retract their combat control centers into the heavily armored core of the ship when under combat conditions.
• Episode 5 of Irresponsible Captain Tylor shows that the Soyokaze has a pair of huge arms it uses to repair itself. They fold away underneath the hull when not in use.
• Smaller ships in Outlaw Star utilize mechanical arms (they're called out as repurposed cargo loading equipment) to effect grappler wrestling moves (in space!) on other ships, and act as quick-change points for certain kinds of weaponry (an SMG the size of a car and an equally big tactical tomahawk).
• Space Battleship Yamato/Space Battleship Yamato 2199:
  • The eponymous battleship has a pair of retractable "wings" that extend from the port and starboard hull and aid the ship with in-atmosphere flight.
  • The Cosmo Zero fighter craft's wings and nosecone fold upward to economize space when not in flight.
• Superdimension Fortress Macross/Robotech:
  • The SDF-1's Reflex Cannon is built into its bow, which split apart into a Wave-Motion Tuning Fork when firing in Episode 1. Several miles of irreplaceable conduit being sucked into hyperspace after an in-atmosphere FTL jump necessitates the ship being rebuilt on-the-fly into a full-blown Transforming Mecha in order to fire the reflex cannon when in combat.
  • In-between a Variable Fighter's giant robot and fighter jet forms is the attack-helicopter-like Gerwalk/Guardian^note its name in Macross and Robotech, respectively form, which looks like half a fighter jet with arms and (mostly immobile) legs coming off of it. It's useful for rescue operations and storage. Variable Fighters can also extend thin, wiry repair arms to help fix each other out in the field.

Films — Animated

• Captain Gantu's ship in Lilo & Stitch has extremely mobile engine mountings.

Films — Live-Action

• The APC from Aliens has its guns mounted on a turret that can be rotated flush with the hull for storage and carrying on a Drop Ship. The tie-in tech manual states that it's recommended the turret be locked in place as soon as possible after deployment to avoid fouling the rails.
• Guardians of the Galaxy:
  • Over all three films, Peter "Starlord" Quill prefers a certain model of Ravager space fighter with a quartet of gimbaled engines. Two engines are mounted on two articulated semi-circular tracks; one top and one bottom, which they travel around on.
  • Yondu's ship from Volume 2 is covered in ball turrets that are able to roll around in trenches built into the hull, either to dish out Death In All Directions, or to act as a Converging-Stream Weapon.
• The Last Starfighter: Gunstar One has a unique new feature that separates it from other Gunstars, a prototype weapon called Death Blossom Mode, installed by Grig. Panels along the engine block open up, referred to by Grig as Petals, and expose Photon Orb launchers and extra laser cannons; when engaged, they allow the Gunstar to spin in a spherical axis and obliterate every target in range.
• Starfighters in Lost in Space are built around a bubble cockpit, which remains vertically stable as the ship maneuvers. The bulk of the ship turns around the cockpit in-flight.
• Star Wars:
  • In The Phantom Menace, Darth Maul's ship is built around a spherical cockpit, and its control surfaces rotate out of the way to open the door.
  • In Attack of the Clones, Count Dooku's personal ship is able to deploy a hidden Solar Sail by opening up its quadrupartite nose cone.
  • By the time of A New Hope, the Rebellion's basic starfighter is the the X-Wing. The ship is named after its ability to, well, open its wings into an "X"-shaped configuration. This connotes Diverting Power from its engines to its quartet of laser cannons.
  • Return of the Jedi:
    • The B-Wing fighter-bomber has a pair of fold-away stabilizers, and the whole ship swings around the cockpit from a horizontal to a vertical configuration when they're deployed.
    • Imperial Shuttles have very long dorsal, port, and starboard stabilizers that give the ship in inverted "Y" shape. The two ventral wings swivel upwards when the ship lands.
• Transformers: Dark of the Moon: In keeping with the Transformers themselves, the Decepticons' fighter craft are constantly reconfiguring and rearranging their components and parts of their components to suit current needs — guns, engine pods, and even cockpits all flipping around and changing positions, sometimes in bizarre and dizzying ways.
• The alien ship in Zenon: The Zequel has four long, elegant wings that flap. In space. Yes, really.

Literature

• Leviathan: In Behemoth, the Orient Express has mechanical arms to aid in loading cargo.
• The Machineries of Empire: Exaggerated by the nigh-magical technology of the Hexarchate. Their spaceship interiors are self-aware Eldritch Locations that the captain can alter at will, configuring the layout with no regard for three-dimensional space.
• Star Wars Legends: The New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels states that while Republic Acclamator-class troop transports are heavily armed, most of their guns are arranged in positions that are good for providing Orbital Bombardment to support ground forces, but less-optimal for ship-to-ship combat. The turbolaser turrets can be repositioned via a rail system for space combat in a pinch, but this takes several minutes.

Live-Action TV

• In Knight Rider, KITT can go into Super Pursuit Mode when extra speed is needed. The trunk lid rises up to reveal extra exhaust vents, the door panels extend to provide extra air intakes, the front bumper extends out to reveal an extra spoiler to keep the car on the ground, et cetera.
• Star Trek:
  • Star Trek: Voyager: The warp nacelles of Voyager shift upward when they're in use.
  • Star Trek: Discovery: By the 32nd Century, detached warp nacelles are a standard feature of starships. Book's personal starship is basically a living space with a bunch of constantly shifting parts surrounding it, which rearrange based on whatever need is currently required.

Tabletop Games

• Traveller: The Express Boat Tender starship from the Classic product Supplement 7 Traders and Gunboats cannot maneuver while recovering smaller ships. To defend itself in those situations, it has two weapon turrets that can move around on its hull on tracks so they can fire in more directions than a stationary turret could.
• Warhammer 40,000: Ork battlewagons can have what is called a "Grabba", a huge power klaw (sic) on the end of a mechanical arm. It grants a melee attack to the vehicle. Canonically, it's to... well, grab an enemy vehicle and hold it in place for boarding actions.

Toys

• Some LEGO Space ships are equipped with robot arms or swinging wings:
  • The Classic LEGO Space ship 6822, the Space Grab, has a robot arm ending with a mechanical claw.
  • 6901, the Mobile Lab, has a mechanical arm that can either be fitted with a shovel or a sensor array.
  • 6940 is usually a Walking Tank, but its front and rear modules can be detached and linked to form a spaceship with an arm that, like 6822, ends with a claw.
  • 6894, the Blacktron Cruiser, has wings and solar panels that can be set at different angles; so does its 2023 remake, 40580.
  • 6939, the Saucer Centurion, has a claw-equipped arm.
  • 6822 is a model of the Space Shuttle that mirrors the real life prototype with opening cargo bay doors and a robot arm.

Video Games

• In all Command & Conquer games that have one, a repair vehicle is connoted by the presence of a robotic arm mounted on a tank chassis.
• Kett dropships in Mass Effect: Andromeda have a set of six pods that wave around as the ships hover.
• Metroid Prime Trilogy:
  • In Metroid Prime, Samus' Gunship has a quartet of articulated thrusters on its ventral (down-when-in-gravity) side that it uses as landing gear.
  • In Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, Samus' redesigned ship has missile tubes built into its landing gear, and its main engines swivel to provide VTOL capabilities.
• In No Man's Sky, the non-standard ships often come with parts that change position depending on if it's in flight or has landed:
  • Exotic Ships can have a vertical "sail" section of the hull underneath the cockpit, which splits open and rotates around it so that the ship can land.
  • Living Ships have carapace segments that clam together on landing, as if to protect itself or hibernate.
  • Solar Ships are built from three fuselages arranged in a Y formation. After takeoff, the two sides swing forward in an arc, then have hardlight Vesper Sails slide out and extend like an umbrella.
  • Sentinel Ships are the most radical, where most of the wing fins will shift position and even rotate upside-down for no other reason than to look really cool.
  • The Starborn Runner from the Singularity Update is the tamest instance of this trope in the game: the two wing sections flatten out and are pushed outwards from the central fuselage when landing.
• In Rise of the Reds, the American Crusader tank can swap between regular and Hover Tank modes by rotating its tracks out of the way.
• In StarCraft II: Legacy of the Void, the Terran Liberator Gunship can retract its air-to-air missile batteries, open up its hull, rotate its engines over and down, and bring its manually targeted Liberator Cannon to bear.
• Star Trek Online:
  • The seven destroyer-class ships that are given out as bonuses for buying a lifetime subscription all have moving parts that change configuration based on two flight modes.
  • The Avenger- and Arbiter-class battlecruisers have armored shutters that close over the viewports, windows, and warp nacelles when the ship goes to Red Alert.
• Star Wars: The Old Republic: Several of the player ships have movable parts.
  • The Fury-class interceptor captained by the Sith Warrior and Sith Inquisitor has solar panel winglets at the wingtips which hinge outwards when the ship is in flight.
  • The D5-Mantis Patrol Craft captained by the Bounty Hunter has its main engines mounted on three arms that rotate between horizontal while landed and down to vertical while in flight.
  • The BT-7 Thunderclap captained by the Trooper has a horizontal airfoil configuration much like the B-Wing of the films, with two additional wings by the crew compartment that unfold and rotate to diagonally up and down in flight, giving the ship a profile of a letter Y lying on its side.
• Transformers:
  • In Transformers: War for Cybertron, all Transformers have the ability to go into a tertiary mode that allows them to hover as a fairly stable firing platform. Generally, for ground-based Transformers this means their wheels (or treads) flip downwards to provide lift while weapons flip out, while for air-based Transformers this sometimes involves their thrusters moving around to point downwards or the emergence of rotors. This is carried over to the sequel Transformers: Fall of Cybertron.
  • Similar to the War for Cybertron/Fall of Cybertron examples above, Transformers: Dark of the Moon introduces the concept of "Stealth Force" to the various Transformers. This basically translates to various weapons emerging from the vehicle modes, and the developers described this as acting as the "armoured" form compared to the "speed" of the alternate modes and "offense" of the robot mode. It was also one of the big gimmicks of the related toyline.

Western Animation

• Star Trek: Prodigy: An experimental ship using a new Proto-Warp Drive, the U.S.S. Protostar shifts its two primary nacells down and opens at the rear to reveal a third nacelle taking up most of the stardrive section when the Proto-Warp is engaged.
• Star Wars: The Clone Wars: The Mandalorian-built Kom'rk-class fighter transport has its main engines mounted on a pair of wings that rotate to vertical when the ship lands.

Real Life

• Certain real-life spacecraft have what are known as "gimbaled thrusters", which are rocket nozzles mounted in a ball-and-socket joint. They're much more accurate and less bulky than the older vernier thrusters, which were little more than a cluster of five small rocket nozzles mounted on a big box containing a fuel manifold.
• The space shuttle had a single, very long robotic arm (affectionately referred to as the "Canadarm" for its country of origin) for satellite maintenance. It also had a pair of huge double-doors comprising the dorsal fuselage, covering its flatbed-like cargo area.
• Airplanes:
  • Near the end of the Cold War (1980s-'90s), both NATO and the Soviet Union were experimenting with something called a Variable-Sweep Wing or "swing-wing" aircraft. At low speeds, the wings spread wide, and at high speeds (that is, trans-sonic and mach speeds), they swiveled close to the fuselage to reduce drag. Almost all NATO signatories have a fighter jet with this feature. This is a sort of "variable geometry wing."
  • Less common variable geometry wings are "oblique wings", which swivel around a central point, telescoping wings, which get longer or shorter as necessary, folding wings for storage, and to modify their atmospheric profiles on-the-fly (so to speak), and even "polymorphic wings" that can swap between monoplane and biplane configurations.
  • Certain supersonic aircraft have a feature amusingly referred to as a "droop snoot", wherein the nosecone can point itself down ("the snoot would droop", according to one designer who worked on the Concord) to get out of the pilot's field of view. Supersonic airplanes are very long and thin to reduce drag, and such a long nosecone can interfere with the pilot's sight.
  • Tiltrotors can, as the name suggests, tilt their engines to act as both a conventional airplane and as a helicopter. Tiltjets, the same idea but with jet engines, have been produced as prototypes but not put into production.
• World War II carrier-borne fighters sometimes had folding tail assemblies in addition to the folding wings. This let them fold up tight for transport, and be unfurled when it was time to go on sortie.
• Offshore oil drilling rigs have four engines, one at the end of each leg. These engines are able to rotate freely in order to keep the rig stationary.
• Convertible cars can swap between open-topped for nice weather and enclosed for inclement weather. Originally, this was just a canvas structure that fastened down with snap-buttons, but certain newer models have fully articulated, fold-away mechanical roofs that effect the change at the touch of a button.
• Construction vehicles are all characterized by the presence of shovels, cranes, and other equipment. Excavators even have an articulated robotic arm, which may or may not have a modular attachment point for various types of diggers and graspers.
• The German Army's standard tank-transporter of World War II, the SdAh 117, was meant to be towed with its load behind a heavy lorry or half-track. However, the forward section of the 117 was a detachable vehicle in its own right, which could detach itself and move off to one side so as to allow a tank to be loaded. It would then manoevre back into position and re-attach, then becoming part of the drone unit towed behind the prime vehicle.

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