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Good question, I don't know. Perhaps by flute-powered cranes and industry robots?

Loud, intensive tones for welding and hammering, and soothing, harmonious tones for the finishing paint job (strictly Engineer Standard Dark Metallic, because a rainbow color palette used on planet Earth is strictly forbidden and punishable by rock in the face) 

LOL

Maybe...

But who really knows, their Technology is so Advanced, that its hard to tell and we cant rule out if their Technology was Stolen or Reverse Engineered.

HR Giger thought the ships was grown, but then we have to remember as the Franchise Progressed the Ships are not as Organic as HR Gigers Vision.

I've always felt they were organic technology along the lines of the Babylon 5 shadow vessels.

Spoiler for the Rage War Trilogy!

In the Rage War Trilogy ships are build/modified by something called "The Faze". These  ships are said to have a "grown" appearance. 

I don't want to spoil too much.

Certainly thats the way they looked.... those in Prometheus and Alien Covenant are less Organic... But we cant rule this out as being Re-engineered.

The only other explanation for the Derelict being different is some event causes the Ship to Mutate, where Organic Matter Merges with Synthetic more than the Engineers Ships... and causes the Ships to thus become more Organic.

We already see the ship in AC, has been overgrown with Plant Matter, if somehow Black Goo had managed to cause this Plant Matter and the more Synthetic Elements of the Juggernaught to Merge then this could explain how the ship would look different.

However.. its clear the ship in Covenant is unlikely to be the Derelict... unlikely but in no way cant be 100% ruled out

@Neomorph

LOL! 

@BigDave

Good point about how the technical sensibilities of Giger and Ridley Scott have changed over time (even retconned!) I wonder how much of Giger's original vision will be preserved!

@Tiwaz

Ah, I haven't read the trilogy, but I've certainly heard of "The Faze". Please provide more details! :)

@Jeffomorph

Good observation! 

Imagine a gigantic tank, akin to a modern day drydock at a building yard.
It's filled with water, and there's arrays of supply hoses as well as equipment for moving large pieces of solid material.

The requisite materials are poured in, along with swarms of microbots. (NOT nanites, there's some real problems with that tech regarding physics)
The microbots operate as builders, taking the 'building blocks' of the ship to be and assembling them, seamlessly melding them by induced electron-sharing, which is basically 'welding' but vastly more sophisticated.

Time passes, the basic 'skeleton' of the hull is formed, then the process continues, sheathing the skeleton in a 'grown' material that is a ceramo-polymer-metal composite, assembled on the molecular level and without flaws, it is incredibly strong.

More time passes as other swarms begin building the internal systems and equipment, some of which is built elsewhere and dropped into the drydock to allow the swarms to place and fit such seamlessly into the structure. Conduits and cabling are formed, in a manner akin to being grown.

The design aesthetic is taken from studies or organic structuring, borrowing from Nature to complement and reinforce the purely mechanical.

Working around the clock, such a ship as the Juggernaut could be built in a month, approximately. The waste heat generated by the activity would be harvested, thermoelectrically converted and fed back into the swarm via wireless power transfer, thus reducing the total invested energy costs.

...or maybe they just toss some seeds into the ground, water them with black goo and come back around Fall. :D

WOW i love it ;)

Love how you can go into detail on such things Blackwinter-witch

Indeed we need to remember how Advanced and Ancient these Engineers are... or their creators.

Mankind would one day love to master the Construction Material of the Real World as far as Organic Life.

If we can Harvest and Replicate Spider Silk then the applications are huge.... If we can harvest structures that take Properties of Bone Matter that can repair itself or the skin, or even look to Plants like Trees and other Plants.

There are benefits to the Molecules of Organic Matter than that of Synthetic and None Organic.

In Millions of years... if we are around then... i think we would have got somewhere closer to new kinds of construction materials that are far from as mundane as Synthetic and None Organic Materials we use today.

@Blackwinter-witch

Interesting!!!! Your post reminds me of an early script of Prometheus, where in place of the Black Goo, the urns contain thousands of swarming beetles (which kill everything)!

...or maybe they just toss some seeds into the ground, water them with black goo and come back around Fall. :D

LOL! Seriously though, that would make a pretty cool scene with the addition of religious imagery!

(i.e. The seed = Rebirth)

Once the elder Engineer had crawled to the top of the stone, he glanced down upon the glistening seas and removed seven seeds from his cloak.

From there, he let the omnipresent gust take the seeds from his palm into the gushing shores beneath. As the seeds had entered the abyssal plains, seven structures grew out of the mighty ocean...  seven ships of pure majesty...

Again, spoilers for The Rage War!

The Faze is described as snail/slug like entity. It moves around the ship constantly improving/redesigning/building the ship/structure according to the needs of the crew or the objective at hand. It does so without any sort of communication it just knows what has to be provided. It is however hinted that it is also more than just a construction tool.

In the books the Faze rebuilds human civilian ships into powerful combat vessels.

The Faze is connected to the Drukathi (I finally have a name for those darn dog-aliens! ;P). A race long gone but not extinct. It is also hinted they weaponized the Xenos.

Along the story it's asked why the Drukathi leave something like the Faze behind when leaving. One of the protagonists then says "Maybe it serves a purpose."

From the sound of it the Drukathi may be even older than the Engineers.

Interesting, Tiwaz!

I just started researching the "Drukathi", they seem really obscure! But I recall reading something similar to their dog physiology in Alien: Out of the Shadows/Sea of Sorrows! Thanks Tiwaz!

@Facehuggers!

As I understand it. The ones in Alien: Out of the Shadows/Sea of Sorrows are also Drukathi or rather what's left of them.

Ah, that makes sense

Makes me wonder if they are the ones above the Engineers? Was it "Drukathi-fire" wich the prometheus reference is pointing at?

BigDave

TY!! Glad you liked my theorizing about their construction. :)

Ever since I got married, I've been by-default learning a LOT about the sciences, engineering, the latest developments, etc, etc.. It all ties in with hubby's career, but I run research for him, as it saves him time.

Spider silk is coming along, they're making steady progress with that, as well as various ceramopolymers that while still experimental DO heal and behave as bone, but far stronger.

It won't be millions of years for us, decades at most. BUT all such tech has be accepted by the Market, that's actually the biggest hurdle.

One of hubby's hobby-experiments is growing chitin based casings for things like smartphones, and there's progress, but you won't see it in the stores anytime soon. :D

Maybe Giger wasn't so far off the track as some folks thnk...

Facehuggers!

OH right, yeah!! Forgot about the original script, been a while since I read it. :) I was thinking about nanites and stuff and all that, then recalled some parts of what hubby's working with...and went with that. :)

The seeds part...well, there was an ad on TV for Jack and The Beanstalk, so that's where that came from :D

Facehuggers!

NICE excerpt!! I like it, and can See it!

Tiwaz

Looking fwd to The Rage War!!! It sounds really good from the spoilers!

@Blackwinter-witch

Just in case the story heavily involves Yautja. But in a nice way.