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I've been working on this mod for awhile, and a major thing I need to
take care of is the rest of the vehicle designs. The Technical Manual only
gives 2 side-views for the 3 main Colonial Marine tanks, and no pictures
for one that will be in the game.

I know some people here are good at modeling and vehicle design, so I
was wondering if anyone could at least give some tips and suggestions as
to how I could properly design the rest of the Ridgeway and do a reasonable
Longstreet design. I'm formatting my post to accomidate the vehicle size
reference pic, as it is an extremely long .txt image, and the only other option
I have is to link to a page on wc3campaigns.com, which would be cumbersome.
I'll do something about this post if it's too much of a hassle, though.


Keep in mind that they are all more or less to scale, with the Longstreet
sketch being a cut and paste concept design done by me, and the Jackson
providing additional size reference.

Also, I anyone's familiar with the tech manual, I was wondering if I should
keep anything in mind when redesigning the UD-4L "Cheyenne" Dropship
into the UD-24 heavy Dropship. The cargo space seems to be the same
size, but the lift capacity is at least 3-4 times as much (70,000 kg), and
my only guess was to simply increase the size of the engine shrouds,
lengthen it slightly, and beef up the landing stuts. I don't want to go
overboard, as the normal Dropship's image is pretty important to the
game.

Oh, and here's a happy fun party pic for the kids:

I had the tech manual ages ago, and I was very dissapointed by the tank designs when compared to the lovingly crafted APC. I built a pretty decent lightwave model of the APC using the plastic model kit as reference, but I think the guy who drew up the 2 tanks just took the bottom half of an M1 and stuck on the top half of a tank from the old game 'Battlezone' and felt that was enough. It looks pretty straightforward to build, just rather dissapointing in design. Maybe you could use some artistic license and actually mount the main gun to one side of the turret, a bit like the tanks in Tron? Which other vehicle are you talking about being in the game, just the larger dropship or another tank?

To clear up what I said about which vehicles are in: excluding the
Jackson, the game uses those vehicles in the diagram, plus the UD-24
Dropship, done as a larger-proportioned version of the movie's version
(UD-4L).

And unless I want to make the turret spin like a ceiling fan, I don't see
any reason to mount the cannon on the Ridgeway in a non-conventional
manner. It's only the 22nd century; they may be in space, but that
doesn't change how they can fire 115mm shells.

EDIT: I looked up the the tanks from Battlezone and some Abrams pics.
I don't think the Ridgeway or Jackson look even like eachother, let alone
and Abrams:


Took a while to find a decent pic...

The difference in design between them is one reason why I need to make a good
compromise with the Longstreet, so that it's not too similar and yet not too different.

I think that would be a tremendous weapon in itself, a turret that "spins like a ceiling fan" every time it's fired.

Future tank design is a doozy, difficult to see is the future. I know the Ridgeway looks crap though, more like a self-propelled gun than a tank with a barrell that bloody long.

I love it. It's like a computerized heavy assault tank, with low-sloping
glacis plates and a compact turret. Very futuristic.
It's going to kick-ass in AvP:WC, and proably just needs to be designed to be really wide and have lots of stealthy angles to look interesting.






EDIT: Does HAB have any suggestions? I'm trying to keep the design as realistic and sane as possible. I made the Longstreet sketch by cutting
bits fo the turret and treads off the Jackson and filled in the rest with lines, but the finalized design will look like it's own type (I kind of like the glacis plate and part of the turret's base and backside, though). The barrel needs to be longer as well, since it's a 105mm cannon.

The Longstreet is actually a perfectly good heavy tank design. Rather logical really. Low built, with a much smaller turret than modern tanks allowed for by advances in weapon tech and automation. Sloped armor along the entire length of the tank higly improves it's effectivness and keeps the crew (all but one of which is in the tanks main body) safe.


All in all, an excellent design.

You mean the Ridgeway. The Longstreet is a light tank.

But they're very reasonable tank designs, indeed. It's almost freaky how sloped the front is. According to the Technical Manual, even compared to the Jackson (not much older of design, maybe a decade or less), 'Ridge has amazing computerization (only needs a crew of two), anti-personell weaponry, and stealth. It's been described by Marines as being 'invisible at nine paces'. It's the kind of tank you let literally rip through an enemy fortification. Yeah, it's all good.

Anyway, still looking into what can be done with the front & top views fo the Ridgeway and how the Longstreet should be configured.

Just thought I'd let people know I still need to expand on the tank designs, as well as find some modelers, skinners, artists, and animators in general.

There's also a thread in Gaming about this WarCraft total conversion, as well, just so you know.