Something big

[evillejedi]

I'd like to see your thoughts on Anon destroyer #3 http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics ... royer3.jpg :-p out of all of the ships listed on SWTC that one leaves me at a complete loss

[fractalsponge1]

Anon 3 is rather an odd ship; shall we call it Proelium, for ECR's sake?

SWTC reckons it's a chevron, and ~2.14km. For all that length and potentially width, very shallow hull and a very small tower. The superstructure looks Venator-ish, actually, with the ziggurat instead of terrace and the long, thin bridge module at the top. Bulb possibly in the middle, maybe built into a shallow terrace arrangement.

I know ECR has a potential breakdown of armament, I'll let him post it if he wants. With the Venator superstructure, and the relatively large area to play with for hangars, I'm thinking it's more a general-purpose large destroyer in the mold of the ISD, rather than a fleet combatant heavy destroyer like the Allegiance. Leadship to provide fighter and troop assets to support bayless-vessels in company, or survivable pseudo-carrier for fleet actions.

Now, a mock up; this is very ugly, but what do you expect in 15min?

Original:

[Thanas]

No offence to your model, but the block in the middle ruins the whole silhouette. I am more a fan of the Humpback destroyer. There was a great model of it somewhere on the internet with very beautiful lines...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

I was in two minds over this ship; assuming that form follows function, and accepting that the swallowtail is there for a reason, what might that reason be?

I'm not convinced she's general purpose; there are other, more conventionally laid out ships that fill the role. She's almost the same length as the much more solid Allegiance class- 2.2km- and that and the older Shockwave class seem to have the general purpose heavy role nailed down.

I can see two possibilities, the most plausible with that thin hull being that the ship is a lightly built (relatively, of course) pursuit destroyer, with massed engines for that purpose which the swallowtail is there to support, and primarily armed to fight the ships fast and nasty enough to need a large pursuit destroyer to chase them down.

Massed light weapons, with good arcs of fire forward- twenty-three quadruple 32- teraton turrets at a first estimate, probably forward of the superstructure; a row of six superfiring over each other and tiered down the centreline, a row of five on either side of the ship maybe a third of the way back from the bow, and a row of five on the underside of the bow.

medium and massed light turbolasers, definitely, but the fighter- weight point defence fit would be antimissile, if anything; if she's that fast, around 3800-3900 'g', she can outpace most rebel fighters in a straight chase.

Not much more than an Imperator but on a substantially larger and more heat- dispersive hull, she should have the advantage of her size in a straight fight. Definitely the large bays, for three reasons; the visual clue of the Venator- like tower, the potential usefulness of a large fighter complement in search, and that I think troop and fighter space tends to lighten the ship, taking up a lot of volume without adding much mass.

Fractalsponge, is it possible you could add a couple of structures to the underbelly of the ship, shelters to cover the fighter complement as they launch, screen the bays from fire from dead ahead? I'm thinking four six- squadron wings, but with a relatively small ground and dropship complement- I can see this ship getting involved in more boarding actions, space to space, rather than planetary assault space to ground.

[Thanas]

^If it is a pursuit destroyer, why massive hangar bays? Carrier role and pursuit destroyer don't mesh well.

But I'd prefer it if fractalsponge would finish the Dreadnought first...

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Partly because the hangar bays with their manoeuvring volume seem extremely likely to mass less than a comparable volume of heavy weapon mounts, structural bracing, powerplant to energise them- a ship with a lot of bay space is going to be at least potentially very fast, and might end up in the pursuit role by default because of that.

Secondly, there is the utility aspect of supporting bayless types, but also I'm thinking of lost contacts; having to sweep a planetary surface metre by metre, search through a dense asteroid belt or a cometary halo- picking up a chase seems to be a fighter's natural job.

The main problem for the fighter complement that I can see is the prospect of being left behind; that is a valid counterargument, but it leads to an operational issue- you have to have something like an escort carrier following in the big ship's wake to perform retrieval.

[Thanas]

Except that it seems to be against Imperial doctrine to have retrieval done by a ship other than the original carrier. And fighters are not used in asteroid belt searches, if ESB is a good indication. Piett clearly does not think so.

Anyway, when I think pursuit destroyer, I think of a heavy ship composed of a)engines b)sensors and c)weapons. Fighters are pretty bad at hurting capital ships anyway...

[Grandmaster Jogurt]

One difference in the silhouette of the drawing and latest model is that in the drawing, the line of the top of the hull is not straight. It's actually higher adjacent to the bow side of the tower than the stern, and the entire bow segment is at a steeper angle. This might not have been a deliberate choice of the artist, but I feel it adds to the look of the ship. I would also say that the bump on the bottom middle is some sort of "wing" section extending from the sides of the ship, not a terrace on the midline, due to its colour and lines.

[fractalsponge1]

You people post very fast.

Firstly, no plans to actually do this ship; dreadnought has priority till completion. I was blocking it out since evillejedi asked.

By the way, which humpbacked destroyer are you talking about, Thanas?

Second, I agree the tower doesn't work as well as it might, but it's a dead match for the reference, so I put it in as is. It does have a certain DDG1000-ish charm to it as is though. Good catch on the non-straight top profile line. I think that's just a matter of rotating the hull down a few degrees; the cutout at the rear of the ship already makes the top line uneven; the way I have the ziggurat oriented and the camera angles just make it look completely straight.

I'm not a fan of the idea of winglets, at least of any great size; quite apart from the interpretive problems with the reference material available I think it'd look a bit like a plucked chicken to be honest. That central area could also easily be hull-width terrace or just the outline of a very shallow bulb.

Hangars, if I were to do them, would be lateral hangars in partially recessed bays like the Bellator. I think hangars can mesh well with pursuit ships, assuming carrier considerations do not compromise the rest of the ship's warship characteristics and hyperdrive-equipped fighters were used; the ship can send out its own recon shell, jump to support the fighters against whatever they find, then if necessary pursue with the fighters being picked up after the target is found. Against a single ship in sublight, assuming fighters can be launched quickly, the air group can harass the target and potentially force it to maneuver and screw up its jump plan. Sublight fighters would be sub-optimal because of the pickup issue, but mobile fighter units would be very useful in fanning out and scanning a large area at once.

The swallowtail also might just be an experimental hull form - more off axis thrust, more space for hangars and easier hangar and internal arrangement. Just throwing it out for consideration.

[Captain Seafort]

By the way, which humpbacked destroyer are you talking about, Thanas?

I think he's referring to this one you used as inspiration for the Bellator.

[Thanas]

By the way, which humpbacked destroyer are you talking about, Thanas?

This one.


The warlords mod interpreted it as such:

link to gallery

All the files labeled implac/implacable are about this concept.

this one and this one seem to me to be the best representations of the concept.

In any case, this is the DE class I most like, except for the sovereign.

I was unaware it was the basic idea of the bellator - to me your bellator is way superior to this one (not having oddly slanted engines, for one).

[JointStrikeFighter]

I kinda get a big AEGIS phased array vibe from the sides of the tower. Fuckoff huge scanners supports the pursuit ship role in my mind.

[evillejedi]

Thanas, it was discussed maybe 2 years ago? the design idea I followed when the bellator was just being mocked up, however the bulkier bellator design I think is a much better ship. I was simply trying to mock up and rationalize a vessel that was too thin to have much hull volume for its length and playing with engine designs to try and fit what was shown without looking at was actually useful, I never finished that mock up anyway :-p the oddly slanted engines are probably purely from a very flat perspective (I think max 4 or 5 had some really bad zoom extent issues that would make it nearly impossible to navigate with the camera or viewport default enabled, so you were always fighting the perspective tool to try and get a model displayed in the viewport, I assure you the engines are round and aligned with the rest of the vessel properly)

a note on the mandator design I worked up, http://warlords.swrebellion.com/wp/?pag ... itemId=776 it was a commission specifically to have an 'old kuat vessel' presumably something that was designed after the rusaan conflicts as a kuati battlewagon, the bow was a punt to be honest and I would probably do something radically different now. it was referenced from this http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics/de/cruiser4.jpg

some other vessel interpretations

Tagge/wermis kitbash http://warlords.swrebellion.com/wp/?pag ... itemId=867
I'd love this to be the Praetor for some odd reason
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/Pix/comics ... eeting.jpg

an old shot at cruiser #1 http://warlords.swrebellion.com/wp/?pag ... _itemId=99

Giel's battleship http://warlords.swrebellion.com/wp/?pag ... itemId=261

a woeful attempt at destroyer #3 http://warlords.swrebellion.com/wp/?pag ... itemId=410 (told you I'm at a loss)

and another commission to fit with the mandator design age and lineage (completely ignores SWTC postulations and I know I will get lots of flak for the design, but hey KDY builds lots of ships that are not daggers, they just happen to be under 400m :-p ) procurator http://warlords.swrebellion.com/wp/?pag ... itemId=891 this ship shows up at least three times in DE shots of byss and it is one of the more consistent designs which is strange because their are so many kitbashed 1 km+ dagger ships

I'll probably some day take a shot at cruiser #2, #3 and the ship directly above cruiser #2 in the byss shot

[Thanas]

Hold up - you made those models? Man, that is some fine work right there.

You should open a post in the art gallery here, I'd love to discuss some of your work in more detail. Maybe we can discuss each model in depth - kinda like one model posted per week of those already done. I really like most of them.

I really love your Titan.

[fractalsponge1]

Hold up - you made those models?

Well, Relic certainly didn't make them .

The example of warlords, many ships to fill out an order of battle, was part of my inspiration for starting to do all these other ship types, though since I don't have to fit them into a game I can get away with a LOT more, using real detail instead of textures (star dreadnought is 9million polys now, for example - try putting that into a game engine ). I've been playing warlords since ...0.26 or something like that. Great stuff. I sort of miss how the hardpoints have gone since 0.6; used to be fun counting turrets and seeing interpretations of how the armament was put together for ships we knew almost nothing about.

I'll second doing some sort of Jane's Fighting Ships-esque thread here; much of my stuff is original or only tangentially related to the known ship types for that, and I certainly don't have the catalogue of ships you've built up for warlords. Could be useful for designing new 3d models or fanfic purposes, establishing a consensus opinion on where the cutoffs are for capabilities and size between classes and general principles in SW warship building. Possibly more critique than is healthy though

[evillejedi]

yeah it's a little easier to crank things out when your goal is 15K or less tris :-p
though I don't have the patience to finish anything larger than that I am stuck with actually texturing the things which is its own set of pains

I'll think about the ship review thread, the fun part will be the cracken's threat dossier ships or 'How I stopped trying to rationalize bad New Republic ship designs and ignore them'

[Crossroads Inc.]

yeah it's a little easier to crank things out when your goal is 15K or less tris :-p
though I don't have the patience to finish anything larger than that I am stuck with actually texturing the things which is its own set of pains

I'll think about the ship review thread, the fun part will be the cracken's threat dossier ships or 'How I stopped trying to rationalize bad New Republic ship designs and ignore them'

You know Ej, you should start up a thread as well like Fractal, Ive seen your work in the homeworld mod and im sure there are quite a few people would love to see an "Art Gallery" of your ships

[Thanas]

^Crossroads is three posts late to the party.

[fractalsponge1]

Did the trench area last night (5760pix):



Hey evilliejedi, any idea when the next HW2 warlords will come out? (I'm sure you get asked this often, but I couldn't resist )

[fusion]

Did the trench area last night (5760pix):



Hey evilliejedi, any idea when the next HW2 warlords will come out? (I'm sure you get asked this often, but I couldn't resist )

How much more lighting do you need to do?
Anyways the lighting is great and fun...

[Thanas]

I love it. The only thing that puzzles me - what are the two huge hatches in the front? Methinks one or two guns there might give better coverage instead....(unless the hatches are missile tubes).

[fractalsponge1]

They are supposed to be AEGIS-inspired sensor transmitter/receiver areas, so you'll see them spread throughout the ship. They do sort of look like hatches though.

[The Original Nex]

They are supposed to be AEGIS-inspired sensor transmitter/receiver areas, so you'll see them spread throughout the ship. They do sort of look like hatches though.

I could be misinterpreting Thanas, but I think he means the two sets of prongs at the bow that appear to open into a shaft or cavern, rather than the panels/hatch-looking surfaces I asked about earlier in the thread.

[Thanas]

They are supposed to be AEGIS-inspired sensor transmitter/receiver areas, so you'll see them spread throughout the ship. They do sort of look like hatches though.

I could be misinterpreting Thanas, but I think he means the two sets of prongs at the bow that appear to open into a shaft or cavern, rather than the panels/hatch-looking surfaces I asked about earlier in the thread.

No, I really meant the "panels" and must have forgotten that you already asked about them.

[fractalsponge1]

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