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Actually justified, if ships use a layered-ablative-standoff-armor setup like the [[wikipedia:Whipple shield|Whipple Shield]] which takes advantage of the tendency of small objects moving at comically-high speeds to shatter on impact, and lets the first armor layer shatter the junk (which makes a very tidy hole through the outer layer), and the second layer absorbs the (much less dangerous) spray of components without having any holes in it. This would have a scarred and pitted look after a while, and if the ship's owner didn't have money to replace sections of the shield as necessary, it could be this trope to a T.
Contrast [[Shiny-Looking Spaceships]], [[Crystal Spires and Togas]].
See Also: [[Scavenger World]]
Usually a [[Mohs Scale of Science Fiction Hardness|Hard Science Fiction]] trope.
{{examples}}
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** ''The Man Who Sold The Moon'', 1951
** ''Citizen Of The Galaxy'', 1957
** ''Farnham's Freehold'', 1965
** ''[[The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress]]'', 1966
** ''[[I Will Fear No Evil]]'', 1970
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* ''The Book of the New Sun'' [[Word of God|describes the future where humanity just sits at home and waits for the money to run out.]] The central character grows up in the hulk of a former starship which still has a couple of operating devices, if you can round up enough apprentices to hand-crank them. Miners dig up old machines rather than raw materials, which were exhausted a long time ago (indeed one of their measures of time, the "age," starts when one resource is exhausted and ends when the next runs out.) The very rich have access to advanced technology, which they appear to get by trading slaves to aliens.
* ''Tales of Pirx the Pilot'' by [[Stanislaw Lem]].
* This trope is pretty much a requirement for any [[Cyberpunk]] story.
* In [[Michael Flynn]]'s ''[[Spiral Arm|The January Dancer]]'', the ''New Angeles'' finds the artifact because it broke down and they had to mine on an uninhabited planet just to repair it.
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* Somehow preventing the ''Destiny'' from breaking apart is one of the constant main concerns of the characters in ''[[Stargate Universe]]''
* In ''[[Star Trek]]'' it shows that minor races that lack the Federation's technology and resources are filthy. The interiors of Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion, Ferengi, Hirogen, Vulcans, etc are all quite clean, and neither the Borg nor the Klingons care.
** In an interesting reversal, the further they go into the future it depicts even more streamlined Federation ships. The further into the past shows the Federation ships as being fairly rough looking. The 2009 [[Star Trek (film)|Star Trek]] movie redesigns the ''Enterprise'' and even shows the rougher USS ''Kelvin'', making it interesting to look at the aesthetics of ''[[Star Trek: Enterprise]]'', the movie, and ''[[Star Trek: The Next Generation]]'' eras.
* What we see of the mid 22nd century in ''[[Terra Nova]]'' seems to be this.
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*** Very rarely are the Necrons portrayed as shiny. It is far more common for them to look as ancient as they are.
* ''[[BattleTech]]'' also plays this trope straight, especially in the beginning. With the technology for most high tech weaponry lost, the best weapons are also the oldest. And in most cases they have been used all the time. Of course, this was only a plot device to rediscover better technology later on, and to introduce stronger units into the game.
* ''[[Traveller]]'' has both. There are [[Cool Ship|CoolShips]] which are for instance private yachts or large ships of, The [[Space Navy|Imperial Navy]] or a Megacorporation. And then there are [[Used Future|Used Ships]] which are meat and potatoes jobs like Free Traders, the IISS or the Sworld Worlder's [[Space Police|Confederation Patrol]].
** In a possible subversion, even Free Traders are major investments. It is [[Your Mileage May Vary|worth a guess]] that even on a small ship, the bridge(if not the hold) will look like a library or an office, rather then like the classic [[Firefly]] or Millenium Falcon style.
* As with the Literature example above, any game with a cyberpunk setting will have this trope in effect by default.
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** It doesn't look like it looked much better even before the infection. It's all rugged-edged metal and screeching doors, hence the developers calling it "an oil rig [[Recycled in Space|in space]]".
* The ''[[Doom]]'' games makes use of this. This is especially noticeable in Doom 3's 'mars city' The well maintained sections look pretty rough, the seldom used sections are dilapidated, then [[It Got Worse|the forces of hell turn up...]]
* ''[[
* ''[[Freelancer]]'' has this in spades. The lawful factions mostly have [[Shiny-Looking Spaceships]] (with the exception of Bretonia, whose ships are dingy brown and ugly as sin), while the pirates have to get around in filthy junk heaps. The starter ship, the Starflier, is a heap of rubbish whose one advantage is its manoeuvrability, bases are often simply carved out of asteroids, most of the bars on space stations look like dingy, seedy dives, and the Leeds system is so filthy and polluted that it has smog clouds. Smog clouds ''in space.''
** Ironically the best ship the player can have is a powerful custom pirate ship.
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** Although it should be noted that most of their earth was [[Kill Sat|KillSated]] by the own government, to attempt to slow down their enemies and rob them of any spoils. Those places also tend not to be inhabited by the only remaining formal government's citizens.
** From the bits seen in Jacinto that were actually in somewhat decent if disheveled shape and the backstory provided in bonus materials it's learned that these locations were at one time exceptionally pretty and opulant but after ninety seven years of total war on a planetary scale first between various human nations and then against the locust shortly after what upkeep there has been where it's been had was obviously only aimed at maintaining function. Scrubbing away the grimeor mowing the grass just isn't as high a priority as fending off the hulking xenocidal alien monsters.
** [[It Got Worse|It gets worse]] by the time of ''Gears of War 3'' where humanity has lost all of its cities and all humans exist a self-defending tribes. Everything has predictably become dirtier and more desperate.
* ''[[Infinity the Quest For Earth]]'' has the [[Star Fold]] Confederacy, who are essentially a breakaway faction of industrialists and super-capitalists who don't care about the aesthetics of their ships.
* The ''[[Jak and Daxter]]'' series as of the second game takes place in a [[Crapsack World]] [[Twenty Minutes Into the Future]].
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* ''[[Wing Commander (video game)|Wing Commander]]'', especially ''Privateer''. Not quite so much with ''Prophecy'', and the TCS ''Concordia'' from ''Wing Commander II''. Given that the former ''is'' "fresh from spacedock" on its shakedown cruise, and Tolwyn is using the ''Concordia'' as his flagship, though, this isn't surprising.
** The sleeping chamber from Wing Commander I even has water dripping from the ceiling into a metal bucket standing in the metal-plated floor.
* The Teladi ships in ''[[X (video game)|X3: Terran Conflict]]'' are basically flying rust buckets, assembled in sweatshop shipyards. [[Mighty Glacier|They sure can take a beating, though.]]. The Pirate and Yaki mafia factions have old, repainted and modified versions of the [[The Alliance|Commonwealth]] ships, and capital ships assembled from the rusting ([[You Fail Physics Forever|in space]]) remains of old cargo ships, welded together. The Argon ships also have some shades of this, at least on their fighters - the ships shown visible signs of wear, rust, and bad welds.
* ''[[Metroid]]'' loves this. Most of the games consists of tracking through [[Scenery Gorn|partially ruined]] technology of all kinds of aesthetics, with rusty crashed spaceships and half-ruined bases mixed with wilderness. Then again, the technology levels range from [[Organic Technology]] to [[Magitek]].
* ''[[Vega Strike]]'' firmly stands here. Humans use both cheap fairly good fighters and "shinier" ships at 10-20 times their cost made by an elitist faction, cargo is hauled by [[Space Trucker|Space Truckers]] on ships looking like [http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/cpg/displayimage.php?album=13&pos=120 a box with thrusters and cabin welded on] or [http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/forums/cpg/displayimage.php?album=13&pos=33 a bundle of cans]. The same applies to some aliens -- one of NPC [[Welcome to Corneria|random phrases]] is a joking advice to keep the distance because ''"They say paint job is a structural component"''. Most space stations has pretty rough-and-tumble design style too.
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== Web Originals ==
* ''[[AH Dot Com the Series]]'', thanks to the ship being a battered old ex-battleship kept running by a fraction of its proper crew.
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