SDNW5 Preliminary Discussion Thread

[Panzersharkcat]

Hey, I use Gimp!

[Imperial528]

I use paint.net, it's a free program. Can be kind of a memory hog if the image is big though, but it handles well otherwise.

[Rabid]

Hey, I use Gimp!

I feel your pain.

[Panzersharkcat]

I use paint.net, it's a free program. Can be kind of a memory hog if the image is big though, but it handles well otherwise.

I have that, too. I just never use it. I rarely Gimp, actually. Only if I need to retexture something do I ever use it. Anyway, I'm up for using decimal time as standard Bastet time. Because I am a filthy sadist, the Bastian day is about 27 standard hours long. The Neithian union had a different system but that fell out of favor a few thousand years ago.

[White Haven]

The real downside of the League is that I can't really use awesome spaceship art for them, because they don't have awesome spaceships. I might have to see about getting a friend to do some commissions at some point.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well...I would use paint.net, but I am on a Mac, and its the schools laptop, so downloading stuff is a big no-no. If anyone has something that can run on a Mac, then feel free to let me know. Otherwise I won't be any help with the map...sorry...

[Vanas]

The 'Banshee' ship in this post of Shroom's is pretty much what inspired the overly winged and weird form of Bee warships... though each Bee squadron's ships look unique and all of them look like they've been painted by Chris Foss on acid. Screw that bare-metal look.

Ground-wise, I'm pretty sure that there's a little EDF/Ravager influence for bees, especially the mechs. Same horrifying paintjobs though.

I'm trying not to actually copy the designs, but it's what I'm keeping in mind at least.

[Simon_Jester]

The 'Banshee' ship in this post of Shroom's is pretty much what inspired the overly winged and weird form of Bee warships... though each Bee squadron's ships look unique and all of them look like they've been painted by Chris Foss on acid. Screw that bare-metal look.

I'm not entirely sure there's a difference between "Chris Foss on acid" and "just plain regular Chris Foss..."

[Vanas]

That's... a pretty good point, really. But add more random colours. Cyan and ultraviolet hazard stripes with green polka dots over half of a ship wouldn't be entirely out of place, for example.

[Skywalker_T-65]

Well...I tried to find some online software for making the map but I couldn't find anything that worked quite right. So I'll just bow out of helping on that front now, and leave it to the people who can actually work on it.

(Also, nice ship designs BEES...)

[Feralgnoll]

People who baber and are incapable of speaking the One True Language, Latin.

Today's barbarians are those who can't speak 'Murcan.

This reference pleases the Crab Goddess. The big muthafuckin crabs will muthafuckin ship one fuckin item to any one fucking place, for muthafuckin free.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

On a serious note, weren't we discussing WAY back in the thread about Arcadia being partially formed from dissidents that fled the Holy Empire? If we went with that, it would be easy enough to say they took the ideas with them (if not the designs, depending on how old they are). Or just go with convergent evolution. Though with Arcadia First using the destroyer...that could get real interesting real quick.

(Plus, the Halo designs are in the minority...most of them are Stargate or SW inspired copied.)

Your Akagi class frigate is close enough to the Hirano class in terms of general capability that they could reasonably be related to each other; they diverged from a common design in the past, but they still share enough aesthetic similarities that a casual observer could easily mistake one for the other. As for the UNSC destroyer, the Lee class and its derivatives outweigh and outgun the SPACE VIKING Gustav class considerably, so it'd be convergent evolution in that instance.

As for visual analogues for my heavier ships, my preliminary choices are as follows:

• Nagaru Tanigawa class cruiser: Elle Ciel
• Amuro Ray and Kira Yamato class fleet carriers: Nebula class
• Ushijima class assault ship: Phoenix class
• Bouken Desho Desho class fast battleship: Pellaeon class
• Kamina class supercarrier: Imperious class
• Nanoha Takamachi class super-dreadnought: Vengeance
• Mio Akiyama class super-dreadnought: Assertor class
• Homura Akemi class super-dreadnought: Executor class

Older SOS Imperial Navy frigates and destroyers would still resemble the UNSC frigates and destroyers to some degree, while cruisers would more closely resemble the Halcyon and Marathon classes. Most of the other older capital ships would probably skew closely towards the Acclamator class assault ship and the Venator, Victory, and Imperial class Star Destroyers in terms of aesthetics (forming yet another connection to the Arcadians, as their most current battleship design is an Imperial clone and the mothballed battlecruiser stolen by the SPACE VIKINGS was a Victory clone). Names for these old ships would primarily be a mix of historic Imperial Japanese Navy and Royal Navy ship names, with other historic ship names mixed in for variety.

[White Haven]

The crabs would approve. The League just uses freighters...or...space trucks, as it were.

[OmegaChief]

For visual reference the ships of the Authority are either taken from, or inspired by Vasudan design.

With I guess ground forces taking some inspiration from Mass Effect, what with all the mass accelerators and gravty manipulation tech.

[Simon_Jester]

I made mine up from scratch except the fleet carriers, and the only reason those aren't made up is because of the opportunity to riff jokes off of Shep.

[Rabid]

Same as Simon, my own ships are designed from scratch. The use of reactionless Gravdrives pods and the absence of thruster exhausts being the biggest influence on Doxa's ship-design.


Though cases of convergent evolution can make some of my ships look like other well-known examples (pictured : a Commune, not to scale)

[The Romulan Republic]

I've added a bit more to my Nation Description, particularly to the history part. Which explains why my people are more democratic than canon Romulans.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Same as Simon, my own ships are designed from scratch. The use of reactionless Gravdrives pods and the absence of thruster exhausts being the biggest influence on Doxa's ship-design.


Though cases of convergent evolution can make some of my ships look like other well-known examples (pictured : a Commune, not to scale)

My Own ships Tend to look like great big "Space Bird" things
They were designed almost 10 years ago when I thought that "big fancy wings" and "pointy beaks" where simply the Height of "cool" :p EDIT: Sizes woefully out of date

[Imperial528]

All of my ships will probably be 3d modeled by myself at some point when I get around to it, as they're all custom design.

Oh, that reminds me. Crossroads, I completely forgot about the models you'd asked me to make. I'm in a bit of a stressful situation school wise and am very busy, but I'll try to get some more work done on those.

[Skywalker_T-65]

I think my only original designs are the twin destroyers (Tiger and Lion class), which are big wedges. And I didn't realize my ships were that similar to the Holy Empire's... (<---More for the amount of ships that are similar)

Though at least (for now) my Stargate inspired designs are unique. Those being the Asgard class Super-Dreadnought, the Furling class Battleship, the Naverra Class Furling Super-Dreadnought, and the SPACE VIKING Odin class Cruiser. And I'm fairly certain that the Musai class is also unique at the moment, being based off the Normandy SR-2. Same goes for the Valkyrie class Battlecruiser which is based off the Battlestar Pegasus.

[Darkevilme]

I'm going to get around to finishing the Chamarran Destroyer so you lot know what it looks like when I'm not fighting the dreaded final report monster. Even when i get to work on it again though it's going to take an age, i think it might be the biggest thing i've ever tried to make.

[cadbrowser]

Wow, sorry everyone...got super busy at work and equally busy at home, haven't had any time to revamp and work on finishing up OMNI. Points to note: 1. I still need to be put on the map (no rush of course) & 2. I still have 2 trading slots open (omni makes automated mining equipment).

[Imperial528]

Hm, so since the game is starting at 3300, that sets Cerna at about 636 years old as a nation, with it's much larger, far away, parent nation being ~800 years old, and probably originating as a settling group ~900-1000 years ago. (Since they're so far away, enough that they still aren't in reachable distance of the game area, it makes sense to have had many decades, even more than a century, of travel time.)

So, from there, I'm willing to bet that certain groups, such as The Nation, or other groups that like to scout places far away, have had some sort of limited contact or observation of Cerna's parent nation, and it is possible that sufficiently old polities or beings have some sort of memory of the initial colonization exodus.
If anyone wants to discuss this with me, we can do it here or by PM or both, because I think a lot of story potential can come from such histories.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Oh, that reminds me. Crossroads, I completely forgot about the models you'd asked me to make. I'm in a bit of a stressful situation school wise and am very busy, but I'll try to get some more work done on those.

No worries mate, Just getting models from you is awesome ,I won't rush things

[Esquire]

Since we're talking about ship design, my naming ship classes after their number of engines lands me in an interesting predicament. Hexaremes (heavy cruisers with modular pods) work very nicely with nBSG battlestar designs, but other things are a bit more troublesome; anybody know of a good source for ship designs? I'd like to believe somewhere on the Internet has collected all the best ship designs in sci-fi in an easy-to-use database, but I can't find the damn thing if it really does exist.

Failing that, I'd be interested in learning to draw my own, like Darkevilme was talking about. Anybody have a favorite program or a general 3d modeling guide to recommend?