StarDestroyer.Net BBS

I too have started making my own take on the 'flower o' doom' killer satellite weapon that will unfurl in some cinematic way and then dispense white-hot crispy death from above. Took about 45 minutes of modelling and experimenting with wing shapes to get this far, nearly the same again to light and render the 2 pictures! Damn, I'm getting lazy. There's no real detail in the thing, this is the basic shape and nothing more until I can be arsed to sit down and detail it correctly. I'm trying to fit this in between a high detail original Trek ship and my real work, so progress will be a bit stilted. Anyway, here's a start...

Wah...kicks mines for sure.

Nah, yours is pretty sylish too. I must admit that when I saw yours I thought "shit, he's had the same kinda idea I had for the design", so I opted to make mines rounder and smoother than I'd originally planned to. I'm going to add a fair bit of glowy detailing touches to the main body and focusing spike, along with a few random aerials and antennae here and there. I'm also toying with the idea of adding some solar panels to the rear of the petals or hanging off the back end somehow, just as a back-up power supply for station-keeping and suchlike.

Everyones had that idea, Kenny. It's a very common thing. Space-gun version of Babylon 4. Old stuff.

kojikun wrote:Everyones had that idea, Kenny. It's a very common thing. Space-gun version of Babylon 4. Old stuff.

You gotta admit B4 would look perfect as a Big Honkin Space Gun!



Pic stolen from www.b5tech.com (please visit it a lot )

A new update, changed the wing structure completely and replaced the cannon and body sections with more detailed versions. I need to detail the rear section of the main body and then add the next set of panels, 3 solar arrays that will go in the spaces between the main 3 focal arrays. I've set it up so that it's all fully animatable, so I suppose I might do a little firing animation too.

Hrm, I've never seen gold solar panels. Neat looking, but wouldn't it make more since to have the a dark color, since bright colors like yellow reflect more light than they absorb?

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:

kojikun wrote:Everyones had that idea, Kenny. It's a very common thing. Space-gun version of Babylon 4. Old stuff.

You gotta admit B4 would look perfect as a Big Honkin Space Gun!

http://www.b5tech.com/babylonproject/ba ... /b4pic.jpg

Pic stolen from www.b5tech.com (please visit it a lot )

I have the wallpapers of B4 with Minbari ships surrounding it,also two Vorlon ships one on each side.

Gil Hamilton wrote:Hrm, I've never seen gold solar panels. Neat looking, but wouldn't it make more since to have the a dark color, since bright colors like yellow reflect more light than they absorb?

Got you! Those aren't solar panels, those are a kind of focusing array for the actual weapon. I'm either going to have the weapon simply deflecting a beam from the planet onto target, or create some sort of effect between the panels and those prongs at the end of the cannon to suggest some sort of field effect is taking place. I'm going to make proper solar panels, 3 in all, which will fit on smaller arrays between (and slightly behind) the focal arrays.

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote:

kojikun wrote:Everyones had that idea, Kenny. It's a very common thing. Space-gun version of Babylon 4. Old stuff.

You gotta admit B4 would look perfect as a Big Honkin Space Gun!



Pic stolen from www.b5tech.com (please visit it a lot )

I can see a few captions for that pic used as a space cannon


concession accepted

In earlier news today the HAB reveled there deep space "Peace" platform

Give the Trekkies a blindfold and a final smoke

For some reason, whenever I see that satellite I start humming Faith of the Heart ...

One finished Advanced Beam-weapon Defence Station, not the greatest looking satellite weapon ever but certainly one of the brightest and spikyest. This is my entry for the SpaceBattles.com modelling challenge, do with it what you will gents. It'll be up for download on my site as soon as I get the finger out, it's articulated in several places so it can be animated unfurling and aiming. Enjoy.

I'd like to know what the hell the blossoming design is for. I hate pointless design elements and this seems to be one..

kojikun wrote:I'd like to know what the hell the blossoming design is for. I hate pointless design elements and this seems to be one..

To look cool.

1. To look cool
2. To focus either sensors or the beam itself on the enemy.
3. So you don't need a 50 metre wide rocket to get it up there in the first place.

If I do an animation of it you'd see what i mean about the beam focus element, but I don't have the time right now.

Kenny_10_Bellys wrote:1. To look cool
2. To focus either sensors or the beam itself on the enemy.
3. So you don't need a 50 metre wide rocket to get it up there in the first place.

If I do an animation of it you'd see what i mean about the beam focus element, but I don't have the time right now.

Those things can only de-focus a beam. Not only that, but its not a proper paraboloid, and its missing a huge portion of the proper surface. It's a useless and you know it. It only serves to "look cool".

The main function of it is to look cool, it is after all only a piece of conjectural art showing a design straight out of my imagination. As a matter of fact I changed the arrays from a paraboloid to this as the parabolic ones served only to focus on one point, whereas these can be altered to bring the focus from the end of the point right out to infinity. I seem them as heat exchangers or a targetting array, not as solar sails or functional light focusing equipment.

If looks were important we'd all be fans of Star Trek.

kojikun wrote:If looks were important we'd all be fans of Star Trek.

LOL!!!

Actually some of us more technically minded people wouldn't like it too much. One word: Panels. Notice how windows (basically a special type of panel ehen you think about it) and other panels always have either a deep indent or a step where they protrude out of the hull surface a good four or five centimeters? That can't be good for something traveling at, say, 0.1c through the interstellar medium or medium-high Mach numbers through an atmosphere. All those little hull discontinuities each have a shock coming off 'em, boosting the skin friction drag to truly massive values. I prefer my ships with everything flush with the hull so the poor ship doesn't need a technobabble deflector shield just to cut through space or atmosphere at any reasonable speed. Bonus: It always looks hella sleek, too.

kojikun wrote:If looks were important we'd all be fans of Star Trek.

When I design my first real, flying space-craft you can be the first to criticise it's aesthetics, but as this is a form of art it's main (and some would say only) function is to look good. As Einhander has also pointed out, nothing wrong with sleek shapes in fast moving vehicles. Maybe Trek is a blueprint for the future?

Kenny, I really, really like it. Functionality be damned. (I wouldn't know the difference either way) [perhaps you could say they are advanced solar panels, as the satellite doubles as a super advanced intelligence gathering device. After all, batteries only last so long.] Like this:

Airman: Sir, Kilo Sierra 2 has located a secret cache of WMDs inside the borders of the former Iraqi republic.

Commander: Onscreen. Hmm. Yep, it's a crate of AK-47's. with NUCLEAR BULLETS! And...Umm....Mustard gas!

Commander: Glass em.

One question: Why is the picture grainy?

I agree with the aesthetics crowd. Functionality be damned! I think it looks cool, just say that there's hidden elements to it's design that only future engineering can explain.

Well personally I think pure aesthetics is a cop-out for people who don't want to put effort into a cool looking yet functional craft. Beauty isn't just about aesthetics. You can't deny the inherent coolness of a Nimitz carrier or an B-2 bomber, or the awe inspiring Saturn V boosters. And I doubt anyone from HAB would say that a tank doesn't look fucking AWESOME. And yet all of these things are pure function, not a single bit of aesthetics were put into them.

kojikun wrote:Well personally I think pure aesthetics is a cop-out for people who don't want to put effort into a cool looking yet functional craft. Beauty isn't just about aesthetics. You can't deny the inherent coolness of a Nimitz carrier or an B-2 bomber, or the awe inspiring Saturn V boosters. And I doubt anyone from HAB would say that a tank doesn't look fucking AWESOME. And yet all of these things are pure function, not a single bit of aesthetics were put into them.

The things you listed happen to look aesthetically out of sheer coincidence.

If we went with pure functionality, we could go with the ROUs of the Culture. They're deadly as hell, but look like a cross between a collection of blocks and spheres and a giant dildo.

Hmm. An Abrams and an aircraft carrier could potentially rip a swath of destruction across a continent, as this sattelite o' doom could, arguably. But they can't do it from SPACE. Which increases it's coolness/beauty factor 20 fold. And, Koji, I pose this question to you: Are you so knowledgeable about the design specifications of Satellites of Doom that you feel you are in a position to question Kenny? It IS his satellite, after all. ( I watched a show about the JSF, where it was indicated that one of the factors working against one design and for another, was that one deisgn was ugly as all get out, and the other, sleek and sexy, sad as it may be. [the ugly duckling would later prove itself very capable, but ultimately losing.]) But I digress.

Did you like the Death Star? Did it not have "Focusing thingys"?