STGOD 2k8 background thread

[Crossroads Inc.]

Well I posted images of what the main battleship wouldlook like.. its the Blue Diamond ship farther up.

[Darkevilme]

so...Big long triangle + stubby fins + fluting + bops and turrets? got it.
*looks at piccy of the eltreum* oooh

edit: Hmm, behold inspiration yields fruit.

[Nephtys]

Eletrum is shaped silly-like.

[Adrian Laguna]

Final one for Adrian.

That's awesome, almost orgasm worthy. Triple-barrelled big bruiser guns surrounded by smaller but more numerous secondaries. Anything that gets in front of it better be one tough mother.

[Covenant]

That's awesome, almost orgasm worthy. Triple-barrelled big bruiser guns surrounded by smaller but more numerous secondaries. Anything that gets in front of it better be one tough mother.

I'll see your spaceboat and raise you an amended Imperial Battlesphere. Half sphere, half hawksbill ship. The bottom should be imagined bronzed, floating over your world, and engraved and embossed with a massive mile-high depiction of the Vitruvian Man just to remind you what species is boss.

I'm only including that tiny little baby picture of it because I'm working on making it look like an actual vessel intstead of a toy. I'll be giving it banks of weapons set down behind the armored circle walls, launching and landing bays, hull details to help it look more like an ISD, and other cool bits. Right now it's facing Right, with the engine area in the back--a big millenium falcon style engine array. I love those and we never ever see 'em.



And a front view. Not sure where all the guns are gonna go. Gonna have to buttress the spacedocky wall bits down to curve smoothly into the spehre portion, and put a large amount of firepower there. Wouldn't want someone under the thing to get off free shots. Even if the bottom is all armored up to hell, free shots are annoying. Eventually I might just descide to take these pics, render them out in black and white, and color/detail them in photoshop. It'd be a good way to get that nice Homeworldy feel with 'em. Or I could use the Kushani textures I ripped from HW2 when I made that shipset of them and texture my vessels with Homeworld textures. That might be interesting.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

I finally managed to finish my history of Haruhiism; it's stranded on Page 5 of this thread if you want to look at it.

[Darkevilme]

This is what happens after a Bentusi harbour style ships catch the exelion down a dark alley.

[Crossroads Inc.]

This is what happens after a Bentusi harbour style ships catch the exelion down a dark alley.

Omg Dark! I love you baby! <hugs>

[Darkevilme]

This is what happens after a Bentusi harbour style ships catch the exelion down a dark alley.

Omg Dark! I love you baby! <hugs>

Uh glad you like it >.> ^^

Anyone else want to be made happy?

[SirNitram]

Murder-bricks would be kinda fun to see how you do 'em, if you've the spare time.

[Darkevilme]

Unfortunately my way of doing them is likely far too stylish for them to be Enclave.

I have failed thee nitram.

[Adrian Laguna]

Murder-bricks would be kinda fun to see how you do 'em, if you've the spare time.

Murder bricks?

Murder brick?

Murder brick?

Murder brick?

Murder brick?

Murder brick?

Murder bricks?

Murder brick?

Murder brick?






EDIT - Dammit, I took so long re-reading Schlock Mercenary that the comedic effects of my post are lessened, since in the mean-time Darkevilme was able to make something.

[Covenant]

Been doing some extra details to my big fancy ship. Working on one of the heavy beam turrets at the moment, and just finished up on it, mostly. The modelling bit is done--it's still untextured in any real way, just a cream-colored plastic/metal texture to tide me over for now. Here's the turret--note the two beam cannons mounted on turn-able screws mounted atop a circular turret base. Gives an excellent range of fire--and the little O shaped thing at the lower right is a radome FCS system, one per gun. Based it off of a modern AA gun.

Don't pay attention to the crud in the background--those are other pieces of the ship I'm working on, some bitz from my virtural bitz box, and the tiny turret-shaped dark object is actually a turret I've discarded.



Here's a shot of the emitter array up close, just so you can see a bit more of the mechanism, the hinge, the beamer, and the locking mechanism. I wanted it to be clear that's a lens cap. It's all parented and such so I can animate it. Ideally I'll have the ship look nice, but also be able to be animated a bit--I could create a short video of my vessel bringing the pain. Click Click THIS to see the old version of the turret aiming down--you can see a bit more of the way the radome paints the target, and the way the screw mechanism keeps the laser on target.

[Darkevilme]

Covenant, assuming that thing on the side of the turret that looks ladderlike is in fact a ladder and assuming that humans will not be some kind of 40k battletitan sized giants i'm gonna have to ask how big this thing is.

[Adrian Laguna]

It's about the same size as the turrets on an Iowa-class battleship. Given your "battle titan" comment, I gather you agree with me that it is probably too small.

[Darkevilme]

when i picture an imperium ship i think 1km+. up to probably five or six km. This thing is what? a spacetank?
Also what's it made in program wise?

[Covenant]

You seriously want the small AA emplacements to be a fraction of a kilometer in size? What are you guys, nuts? A fuckin' turbolaser turret isn't even as big as an Iowa turret, and I never thought anyone considered them 'too small'.

[Darkevilme]

*thought....* ooooooh. so that ringey bit....ah... for some reason, heavens knows why it might be staying up till six last night that did it i thought that was the entirety of the ship i was seeing. So the imperium deathsphere had become a halfsphere with a turret on top or something... nvm me, i'll make sure to be firing on all faculties before posting in future. though what program are you using?

[Covenant]

Ugh, no. I said it was a damn turret. One of 'em! It's not even one of, like, six, it's one of the big beams used for whackin' fighters and shit mounted on the spacedock harbor pads that jut from the equatorial ridge.

Here's an old shot of where I was thinking of mounting these. Put that in reference with my old design to see what I mean. There's going to be more than 20 of these cannons on this ship, at least, and several other weapontypes as well.

The section closest to the camera is the one I was tinkering with--trying to get it to look proper. I mean, hell, I made it quite clear that it was a turret. Why would I want a ship with only two guns? ;p

[Darkevilme]

Yes i blame myself for not paying attention. But what program is it being made in covenant?

[Covenant]

Just Maya. It's not all that great at making the best looking models, as it's raytracing and texturing isn't as good as Max, and honestly Max has superior toolsets in a lot of other ways regarding modelling, but I find Max absolutely headache-inducing to work with so I'm just doing it with Maya. IE, Max is really really ugly and it's squashed isometric view is disturbing and bizzare. The ship'll look more impressive once all the pieces are assembled and such, but right now I'm still working out the kinks of the design. I will, however, remove the ladder-like apparatus. I'll stick a tube inside of it and we can call it a heat exchange.

[Tanasinn]

As far as my posthuman meritocracy is going to look navally, I present the Minmatar Hurricane to give an idea.

Slab-daggers ftw

[Noble Ire]

Since this STGOD is shaping up to be a bit less serious than I thought it would be, I've retooled my faction a bit. Its pretty much the Eighth Enclave with a different name (for obvious reasons) and a rather more... interesting fleet.


The Consolidated Dominion of Gemude


Unlike many of the more distant portion of Imperial domain, the Consolidated Dominion of Gemude was founded as a colonial region, specifically as the Eighth Expansionary Dictate. Founded during the Terran Empire’s second major period of expansion, the Eighth was composed of several prosperous, relatively young agricultural colonies, arrayed around a section of one of the major trade routes that connected the Empire’s heart with the ever-receding frontier. These worlds, confined to the Gemude star cluster, relied upon the protection and governance of an Imperial fleet and an appointed civil governor in exchange for food stuffs and workers who kept the trade route functioning smoothly. The region enjoyed nearly a century of relative prosperity, but the collapse of the Drassian imperial line and the subsequent civil strife, though brief, stemmed the tide of expansion and shunted the region into relative obscurity, just one of many tributaries of the core.

With the Imperial core worlds turning to more convenient sources for agricultural goods, the people of the Eighth turned to dense asteroid belts, planetary rings, and nebular systems that populated their star cluster in unusually higher numbers. Instead of finding ore deposits, however, the first mining expeditions found an unexpected and extremely unusual resource. The beautiful drifts of space debris were not devoid of life, as everyone had expected; instead, they harbored entire communities of titanic space-borne beings.

The xenophobic policies of the Terran Empire might have brought the creatures a quick and unpleasant end, but economic necessity intervened. Named Ebon Treaders for the undulating movements they made when they propelled themselves through space, the aliens were awe-inspiring spectacles: octopus-like amalgams of multi-hued crystals and dark, rocky “skin”, the starship-sized life forms moved through their magnificent environments with grace, playing with their fellows in complex dances and games of hide-and-seek and feeding like schools of fish on comets and asteroids. The docile beings were the ideal tourist attraction, and the Eighth Expansionary Dictate’s presiding governor knew that his region needed the economic boost. After much coreward wrangling and more than a little bribery, the Treaders were granted protected status.

To facilitate their control and increase the spectacle they offered, the colonial militia herded the creatures from their old feeding grounds and shunted them through hyperspace to a handful of contained reserves. The Treaders offered little perceptible resistance to their mass-relocation, and soon the Dictate’s coffers were filling with revenue from dozens of resorts and cruise operations. More than simple sight-seeing excursions, a plethora of Ebon Treader-based businesses took shape: rich vacationers could take home fine jewelry fashioned from the hulks of dead Treaders, name the beings, and even ride on those equipped with specialized carriages that transmitted simple, electrical directives into the Treader’s neural core cluster. The potential self-sapience of the Ebon Treaders, despite the complex communal behaviors that they displayed, was never considered; they always responded well to the tiny creatures that objectified them, and never showed any signs of violent intent. At least, not until one enterprising entrepreneur attempted to capture smaller, adolescent Treaders and export them as pets.

The incident was covered up, but the twisted remains of the operation’s capture vessels and star platform were evidence enough to those who were allowed access to them that the Treaders were not the harmless, dim-witted beings that they appeared to be. Over the course of many decades, a specialized committee of scientists began to study the mental structures and capabilities of the Treaders in-depth, completely without the knowledge of the Imperial authorities.

The Imperial war with the Conclave placed the Eighth Dictate in a perilous position. Though the region was not immediately threatened by the invaders, the local fleet was recalled to help with the war effort, and the area was left bare to pirates and opportunistic elements of nearby Imperial satellites. The reigning Imperial governor Lynus Adrati knew that the small, civil militia left to him would not be up to the task of defending either his worlds or the increasingly valuable shipments of fuel and heavy machinery from the Core and more industrialized colonies. As the far conflict dragged on, raids became more and more common, and the Dictate began to fall apart.

It was then that Adrati found his salvation. A large gang of pirates assaulted one of the smaller Ebon Treader reserves, one of the most daring attacks since the start of the war. The tourist facilities, in a state of disrepair from the rapidly-diminishing pool of wealthy, Coreward visitors, were swiftly overcome and plundered, and the pirates decided to have some sport with the quiet titans who had passively watched the destruction of their keepers. Instead of easy prey, however, the pillagers were only able to tear into a few of the creatures with their guns before dozens of them fell upon the ships with eerie speed, boiling away armor plating with charged claws of hardened crystal and smashing fleeing raiders with ion-propelled asteroid fragments. When a squadron of militia warships finally responded to the destroyed resort’s distress call, only the Ebon Treaders remained, docile as ever.

Adrati reviewed recordings of the incident taken from the wreckage, and immediately sought out everything he could on the enigmatic creatures. A concerted inquest revealed the secret committee and its findings; the Ink Treaders were indeed self-sapient, although not entirely on a human level. Their biology, specifically their ability to project highly-focused ion streams and high-band radio waves, allowed them to move at rapid rates of speed in realspace and communicate over interplanetary distances. They were structured into close-knit, highly-social communities, which were disrupted by the forced relocations. Moreover, their reproduction rates were plummeting due to the confined areas which they were allowed to inhabit, and many reserves were beginning to run out of certain essential minerals from over-harvesting.

With the Terran Empire on the point of collapse and the lives of his citizens in the balance, Adrati made bold decision, one which would have likely landed him in exile or worse had the Imperial authorities been in any shape to pay their colonies any notice. After assembling all the experts he could on the Treaders and hobbling together what little was known of their frequency-based language, he approached the inhabitants of the largest reserve with an offer. He would disband the reservations and allow the Ebon Treaders to re-colonize whichever areas of the star cluster that they wished. In return, they would provide him with warriors to supplement his meager militia. Despite the abrupt nature and tenuous nature of the negotiations, the Ink Treader elders quickly discerned Adrati’s intent and agreed with little dissention. The following year, the star cluster reorganized into the Consolidated Dominion of Gemude with Adrati as its Supreme Commander and Chief Councilor, all but declaring independence from the teetering Empire.

Now that word has reached the outer territories of the destruction of Terra, more than a decade of tension has been released, and dozens of pirate lords and former satellite states are vying to fill the power vacuum. Most of the remaining “inner” colonies have been consumed or destroyed, and the CDG is one of the last bastions of old Imperial order left. Its relative stability and prosperous agricultural worlds have made it a prime target for conquest, and with the threat of Imperial reprisal finally eliminated, Adrati knows it is only a matter of time before he is besieged. Another threat hangs over his head; with the final collapse of the old trade routes, the CDG’s worlds, long dependant on imports of fuel and heavy industrial goods, are running dangerously close to an economic collapse. Adrati must find a new way to supply his people with what they need, and if new trade routes cannot be forged, then he may have to put aside ethics and carve his dominion a place in this new, blood-stained galaxy.


The Ebon Treaders

The Ebon Treaders are native to G-205, commonly known as Tempest, a star system near the heart of the Gemude star cluster. The binary system is extremely active, formed by the collision of a maturing protostar and its molecular cloud with a main-sequence star system. The ensuing solar soup created an area in which the Treaders were able to evolve. They developed from intricate crystalline structures orbiting the system’s innermost gas giant, Echo, and took shape over tens of millions of years, basking in solar radiation and feeding off rich mineral deposits in Echo’s ring and moons. Eventually, they grew large enough to voyage to new feeding grounds around planets and in debris fields of their home system, and by the first human settlement of the Gemude star cluster, populations resided in at least fifteen star systems, some several light-years from Tempest.

Treaders are undeniably intelligent, but their thought processes are generally quite dissimilar from those of humans. They normally live in groups of twenty to fifty, called lattices. These lattices generally occupy a single asteroid field or moon system, where its members spend much of their time feeding on mineral deposits through specialized crystals imbedded in their tentacle appendages. With no natural predators, most of the rest of their lives are spent conversing, playing, and “mating” with other members of the lattice (although two or more Treaders do combine “genetic” material to grow offspring, the behavior commonly described as mating by humans is actually a more intimate form of communication, in which Treaders interlock with one another and communicate via direct electrical current rather than by radio-wave “singing”). Lattices are each lead by one to five of its oldest members, depending upon its size (the oldest living individuals are at least 90,000 years old).

Violence seems to have been relatively unknown to Ebon Treaders before first contact with humanity, a fact which facilitated their capture and exploitation. Conversations with certain individuals seem to indicate that they viewed and still view humans with curious interest, and did not resist their relocation and usage because it was simply a new experience and seemed to pose no threat. However, as mineral resources dwindled and the practice of “mind-jacking” Treaders for joyrides increased, dissent grew. The attempted kidnapping of several young Treaders from one reserve almost pushed its population to rebellion, but the unfamiliarity of the concept stayed them. However, when pirate vessels began to kill members of their lattices, their restraint was used up and they threw themselves wholeheartedly upon the offending ships. Most were, however, able to distinguish the marauders from the less violent human factions, and when Adrati approached the largest assemblage of lattices with a proposition that would give them new freedoms and opportunities, they agreed to it quickly. As news of the accord spread throughout the star cluster, the Ebon Treaders began to prepare themselves for life alongside the tiny creatures, not just as mutual objects of curiosity.

One of the most remarkable parts of Treader physiology is their thermal core. Deep within each of their dense carapaces is roiling vortex of heat and energy with energy potential comparable to all but the mightiest of Imperial battleships. As part of their birthing process, Treader parents take the growing crystalline husk of their offspring within close proximity to a star, where they refracted enough solar radiation into a hardened chamber within the husk to initiate a nuclear reaction. This reaction must be sustained throughout the life of the Treader, meaning that it must consume massive amounts of heavy metals and fissionable matter, but it provides each being with massive amounts of energy, only some of which is used for its body functions. The rest can be easily tapped and bent to other purposes by appropriate machinery.

One of the key provisions of the accord between the Ebon Treaders and the CDG, known as the Tempest Compact by humans, is that at least one member of every lattice be given an FTL drive. Before contact with humans, the Treaders were limited to realspace travel, and achieved interstellar flight by collecting a massive amount of “food”, joining the collective impellors of a lattice together, and then entering a sort of partial hibernation to conserve energy as they made the multi-millennial voyages between star systems. Once a larger individual has been grafted with an FTL drive, however, it can ferry an entire an entire lattice from one system to another in a matter of days or weeks, and can easily communicate with the members of other lattices. Ebon Treaders have only had access to this technology for little over a decade, but they have taken to it quite readily, and their fundamental societal structure is undergoing a process of expansion as more and more individuals undergo the procedure.

This grafting, the attachment of machinery to the non-crystalline “hide” of a Treader practiced on a smaller scale since almost the time of their discovery also facilitates their role as members of the CDG’s fleet. In addition to FTL drives, which are equipped to all Treaders who are selected by their elders or volunteer for combat duty, they are given varying complements of particle beam and missile weaponry, as well as shielding grids and armor plating. Most armed Treaders also carry a crew cabin, which houses technicians, gunners, support crew, a command staff, and a “Cohort” who serves as an intermediary between the human crew and their “ship”. This crew cabin generally carries a sensor suite, but Treaders are capable of accurately perceiving targets over extreme distances and can navigate in realspace unaided; they can also independently direct grafted FTL drives, but the process is usually faster and more precise with the aid of a human crew. The largest grafted Treaders sometimes carry specialized equipment and weaponry, including mass drivers, comm repeaters, and even entire wings of strike fightercraft.

Although Treader warships carry artificial weaponry, they are fully capable of inflicting damage on their own. The focused ion pulses that they can project from most of their crystalline outcroppings, impellors which they also use to propel themselves through space at high velocities, can also be used to push debris and other projectiles at targets, with a results similar to that of a rudimentary mass driver. These outcroppings are also extremely dense and can be flushed with energy directly from a Treaders core, making ferocious tearing weapons that can crack military-grade shielding and melt away armor plate.

Treaders take a wide variety of forms and sizes, depending upon age, system of origin, and simple biological variation. Mature individuals can be anywhere from 200 meters to a kilometer in length, have a highly variable number and complement of appendages, and possess crystals of almost any hue (and often more than one). They also vary in personality, but most are extremely social, and are always willing to converse with their Cohort and any others who can and will listen. With the rising prevalence of grafting, there also is an increased interest amongst Ebon Treaders in human culture and society. This is especially evident in a current naming trend; Treaders are very fond of words and concepts that are considered “cute” by humans, and many have taken to giving themselves titles like “Hobmuffin the Proud” and “Snugglekin the Broad”.

[Covenant]

Okay, just to clean some things up, I mounted the cannons on their theoretical locations. They're a bit hefty, bit I think it looks alright. I might move them up more. Right now they're mounted behind the entrance to the hangars, and there will be two guns and one hangar per fin, barring the two fins closest to the rear maneuvering array, but I'm not sure about that yet. Not sure about the arrangement of fins at all, but there were 8 of them before, I think. Anyway, an exterior shot, and then an interior shot showing the hangars a bit better.

The hangar is the little hole in the fin.



And a shot of the Hangar dock, as the blast doors open. As you can see, there's some beams above, some thingies along the side (not sure yet) and a set of rails. I might put a tractor beam assembly on the top rail and something else on the lower set. The idea is that a ship lands, rolls along the rails via something until it gets to the wheel, and then the wheel turns the rails for it's connecting section, like a train. This isn't finished perfectly but it's fairly detailed for such a minute portion of the ship.

It should give a better sense of scale to the whole thing if you can see the intended size of a hangar bay in proportion to the guns, and the rest of the vessel.



Addition:

I've just realized, though I'd hoped so, that attacking from under the ship is a very awful place to be. up and down is essentially arbitary, but the main liftoff-and-landing drives will be at the bottom of the sphere. This let it have the nice look of being a big sphere from ground, but have all the benefits of a fortification when landed (it's gotta land!) and in combat. However, I'd never quite given it much thought since, but I like how it looks. If the thing rotated ass-forwards and tilted the guns 'down' as it approached you flying this way, it'd not only look like a battlesphere but it'd also be able to fire all 12 of the big ol' beam cannons your way.



Not a fantastic view for the enemy of the empire. And instead of needing a giant superweapon down there, it could just use the Torch drive to scorch ships the same way Neph's people do, 'cept bigger.

[Adrian Laguna]

Not a fantastic view for the enemy of the empire. And instead of needing a giant superweapon down there, it could just use the Torch drive to scorch ships the same way Neph's people do, 'cept bigger.

Saying that a starship's drive will be a viable weapon in space combat is like saying a bayonet is a viable weapon in an artillery duel. Are we going to have drives that can damage ships 10,000 km behind them? That's the bare minimum for something to be viable as a weapon. Ten mega-metres is not even knife fighting range when it comes to space battles, it's point-blank with shotguns.