Something big

[fusion]

At this rate, I would want to see a 300-500 meter range ship before I see another Star Battleship.
It is just a bit over whelming to be thinking about how huge this ship is...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Black Prince and almost any of the named, and dented, craft would, I reluctantly have to admit, be a royal pain to do; so much of the outer skin is effectively patchwork, the texturing would be the biggest problem.

That 'Little doodle'- conventional layout, multi tiered superstructure, and very roughly, measuring off the scanner domes, 2.5km long? Well into heavy destroyer, but not any of the known types- there's the double-bulb type, which may be this length it's hard to tell, the swallowtail type, Shockwave, Allegiance and Invincible classes- so, a sixth type? Just try not to make it too well armed, or we could end up wasting a lot of time wondering why it wasn't in the movies

If you have time, there are two things I'd like to see;

the Demolisher- class, as I had originally pictured them, were something of a counterpart to the Rendili Dreadnaught 'heavy cruiser', carrying a much smaller number of big guns- originally, going off screencaps from the Droids cartoon, I had thought the two blocky structures either side of the superstructure were the base for two single HTL turrets a side.

Between making that up and now, new info came out identifying them as Gladiator class, mass medium weapon carriers. Damn. I'd like to see it as I had originally intended.

The other thing is this, http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics ... igate1.jpg- Anon Star Frigate I which I've portrayed as "Fulgur" class recon frigates. The image is tiny, and considering that Grey Princess and Provornyy were both Fulgur class, useful and effective ships. The type deserves better but there may not be enough to go on.

There are only four, maybe five known heavy frigate types, and of those four are either Acclamator variants or lookalikes, and the other is the Sienar 417 Vindicator, a domeless Interdictor. Something new? Go for it.

[fractalsponge1]

The doodle was meant as my interpretation of the Allegiance. 2.25km, a bit of perspective effect in that shot. This concept has a bulkier superstructure than the hypothetical Byss cordon ship reference, but about right for the eclipse screening references and battle of mon calamari references. The ship in the Byss cordon almost looks like it has an eclipse-style sloping terrace, which I'm not particularly a fan of; I like this kind of multi-level stepped terrace much better. I took some ideas of how to arrange this many terraces from evillejedi's old warlords allegiance model:

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... e.jpg.html

I simplified the terrace a lot, and the proportions are quite different between his and mine. His is a bigger ship, for one.

Otherwise took the standard hex module bridge (same as the front part of the Bellator's currently, in fact), primary reactor scaled for about 6x ISD output. I'm thinking quad 175-teraton cannon as the base armament, two staggered turret lines port and starboard of the superstructure, six turrets to each line. The turrets will be smaller than what has evolved into the quad 240s of the bellator, probably like a 35m vs 40m barbette, less heavy looking, smaller gun barrels. Axial cluster, up to single 720s. Triple heavy ion in trench ball turrets, possibly alternating with quad 175 ball turrets. Probably no missile tubes on this one. That's probably a fair match for a multi-role light cruiser in the 3km range.

One thing I can't quite understand about the Allegiance - much higher power in the hull relative to volume than an ISD (unsurprising given the role and the humongous bulb) - but there's not really all that much difference in engine layout - unless it's actually slower than an ISD, the engines have to be driven a lot harder than an ISDs for the same acceleration. Probably will have to make the engine bells look beefier and as large as I can and still approximate the rough comic sketch.

And we can ask why it wasn't in the movies for a lot of ships

-------------

I did have a heavy frigate idea a while ago:



Never got very far, as you can see, but 700m hull, was going to put a sienar interdictor-style bridge module on top. Might serve as a concept for later though.

-------------

The Demolisher is currently being worked on:
http://www.3dscifi.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1804

I believe he's going for a cross between the Gladiator sketch and the droids cartoon reference in terms of proportions, but it looks like he'll keep the load of twin mediums. Early enough at this stage that it can be changed, and very easy to change if I can get a hold of the mesh when it's done

As a digression, MTLs seem to be funny things - you can have a ton of them, but they're basically irrelevances past heavy frigate despite taking up a decent amount of space (i.e. you can slot an HTL on the same sized mount that can output a whole lot more than the MTL mount, unless it mounts a ridiculous number of barrels). Obviously HTL will be a lot harder to power, need more bracing, and be more expensive and all that, but if you had the money, mass, and power output already for the hull, why not just mount 1-2 teraton heavies instead of 200gt mediums? Is killing frigates by the death of a thousand cuts really worth the savings over light HTL? Or are the firing rates that far off, the MTLs firing a few times per second, so making a quad 200gt really like a 4tt over time?

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

As a digression, MTLs seem to be funny things - you can have a ton of them, but they're basically irrelevances past heavy frigate despite taking up a decent amount of space (i.e. you can slot an HTL on the same sized mount that can output a whole lot more than the MTL mount, unless it mounts a ridiculous number of barrels). Obviously HTL will be a lot harder to power, need more bracing, and be more expensive and all that, but if you had the money, mass, and power output already for the hull, why not just mount 1-2 teraton heavies instead of 200gt mediums? Is killing frigates by the death of a thousand cuts really worth the savings over light HTL? Or are the firing rates that far off, the MTLs firing a few times per second, so making a quad 200gt really like a 4tt over time?

Smaller guns track faster and more smoothly than bigger guns by the simple virtue of having less mass. And since it's known that ships don't fire their guns at full power at all times, intermediate guns can have a useful niche by being a better choice than firing your big guns at fractional power.

[fractalsponge1]

Would firing step-down power for the heavies be less efficient than a full power shot from a medium? I can see division of effort and all that, intermediate batteries freeing up the HTLs that can actually track small targets (which seems to be at least up to the Venator's DBY-827 scale).

Also, I'm not really talking about replacing quad 200gts with octuple 32tt mounts. More like an HTL in the 1-10 teraton range. Just wondering out loud where the inflection point is in cost and tactical effectiveness between the two types for anti-small craft work.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Wow Would love to see you finish the "Demolisher" see, I love smaller ships, its one of the reason why I love the Old Republic Dreadnought, as well as ships like the Carrack and Marauder Corvettes.

[Raesene]

The frigate-concept is beautiful - a mini-Executor. I also vote for finishing it

[fractalsponge1]

Well the Demolisher isn't mine, remember - Not sure how quickly Road Warrior will finish it.

As for the allegiance, this should give you a better idea about the scale:

[Vehrec]

It looks like we've got a midget executor and an overfed Imperator. After a while, these Kuat ships start to look the same.

[Ekiqa]

It looks like we've got a midget executor and an overfed Imperator. After a while, these Kuat ships start to look the same.

It would be the "Lira Wessex" design touch.

Would the Procurator and Mandator then look similar to the Acclamator and Venator? Would be interesting to see.

[fractalsponge1]

It looks like we've got a midget executor and an overfed Imperator. After a while, these Kuat ships start to look the same.

You were expecting them to look completely different?

[fractalsponge1]

Some updates, now that I have finished moving into the hinterland.



Been working on a collection of sorts as well:

Front row, left to right:

Octuple 32/40 teraton turbolaser
Quad medium turbolaser

Back row, left to right:

Quad 240-teraton HTL
Twin 720-teraton HTL
Single 720-teraton HTL
Ball single 720-teraton HTL
Quad 175-teraton HTL
Ball triple heavy ion cannon
Ball quad 175-teraton HTL
Ball quad heavy ion cannon

[fractalsponge1]

working on the terraces now

[fractalsponge1]

Work proceeds through the afternoon

[fusion]

The ball mounted turbolasers are new...
I won't comment on them yet
So far excellent work.

[fractalsponge1]

Two terrace layers done. Not really been moving very fast with this one, lots of distractions.

[fusion]

Why is there another star destroyer below the fist one?

[fractalsponge1]

It's how I model sloped terraces - much easier when the layers are aligned to the coordinate system. So, I rotate a dummy hull in order to assemble the details, and rotate them back after I'm done.

[Zed Snardbody]

Why is there another star destroyer below the fist one?

Where do you think little star destroyers come from?

[fractalsponge1]

terrace coming along this afternoon

[Havok]

What is that little blue thingy?

[fractalsponge1]

What is that little blue thingy?

Not seeing it.

[Havok]

What is that little blue thingy?

Not seeing it.

On the bottom picture on the bottom right... It looks like a hanger with something in the middle of it. Same thing on the top pic. Did you forget to render something?

[tim31]

I don't think it's a hanger, Hav... There's several properly rendered similar objects on the next terrace up, they're probably ports or shield generators or kissing booths or something.

[fractalsponge1]

oh I see it - some object I didn't put a texture on. If you ever see something in odd primary colors again, that's what it is