Something big

[Abacus]

That....is....AWESOME.

[Crossroads Inc.]

The FSC ship is freaking AMAZING! I have said many times before, one of the things that makes your work so different than so many others, is your open willingness to do the more "boring" ships.
Transports, Utility ships, Cargo ships, etc.
Good job on ya mate!

On another note...

I am curious, that commission, could I ask, perhaps over a PM, how much the person paid for it?

[Burntstrobe]

@fractalsponge

Hello Fractal, I'm a long time follower, first time posting

Your work is amazing, I've loved following your progress over the years. I was wondering if you ever finished the MC90? I really enjoyed your solution to the MC turrets and blisters.

Also, while you seem to be focused on Imperial ships, have you considered branching out and attempting some of the New Republic or Corellian style ships? I would be very interested in seeing your take on the Sullustian Dauntless, Nebulon B or the community favorite Corellian Destroyer. Just curious if you ever considered attempting one of these style designs.

The Kandosii is great looking so far, although i'm surprised to see work being made on a ship that is so much older in the SW timeline. When you mention it is is 'commissioned', are you creating models for an actual project such as a game or a film?

If you ever need to see inspiration for ship ideas, we've been attempting to create every ship from the New Republic Era here at our project: http://www.moddb.com/mods/yuuzhan-vong- ... e#imagebox. You have been a huge inspiration for us, and we thank you for all your work, and promote you whenever we mimic a low poly version of one of your designs.

Strobe
Leader of the Vong Project

[fractalsponge1]

What is the Corellian Destroyer? I've seen a lot of concepts, but is there an official one?

Who likes greebles?

[phred]

looks awesome. I'm not too keen on the concept, but it's very pretty.

[fractalsponge1]

Update:

[Burntstrobe]

RE: Corellian Destroyer

There has never been a canon release picture of the Corellian Destroyer, but the SW modding community has always been seen using this model, which was originally created by EvilleJedi, and then again improved by Farseer.

At this link you can see my edits to Farseer's model:
http://www.moddb.com/mods/yuuzhan-vong- ... e#imagebox

and here is a picture of EJ's original textured version uploaded by someone else:
http://s301.photobucket.com/user/Jascar ... 8.jpg.html

and here is a picture someone else uploaded of all of EJ's corellian ships:
http://media.moddb.com/images/mods/1/15 ... _Fleet.jpg

I've always found the Corellian Navy to be interesting, modular components made for fast production/easy repairs of ships, heavy weapons on fragile fast frames, suited to anti-piracy tactics, although there were deviations such as the CC-9600 light carrier and the CC-700/E

I believe EJ proposed a concept design for a Corellian Star Destroyer, but I never noticed it receiving much widespread acceptance, at least not as much as the Corellian Destroyer.

I am also in process of making the Corellian Tactical Dreadnought, seen as the bottom left big ship in this picture. You can notice the iconic corellian cylinder form that was used on ships such as the CR90:
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2010 ... eFleet.jpg

I'd imagine if you ever chose to make a Corellian style vessel, your greeble effects would be well suited to the task, but I'm sure you have a long "to do"list already

[InsaneTD]

Sometimes I look at your work and think, the number of pixels in that is scary.

[fractalsponge1]

[swan2swan]

If you are running a carrier with several thousand starfighters and an enemy starfighter gets near the hangars, you're doing something wrong . Besides, the point defense around the bays will outgun a couple of Lancers as it is.

You are right. I spent many months reading and planning how the escorts would look like for different imperial warships and etc. I just gotta get used to the idea of that your warships do not suffer from lack of firepower like canon warships do.

A lot of EU brainbugs there. I mean, seriously, capital ships have the space, weight, and power budgets for obscenely large point and area defense armaments, and can take care of themselves against anything but a huge fighter strike. An ISD could be packing several hundred fighter weight area lasers or long range anti-fighter light turbolasers, easily being more efficient at defending itself than a few Lancers (especially when considering it can dispense with the extra crew, engines, hull frames, etc. that the smaller ships would need).

This is also assuming that your typical fighter swarm is going to be doing much against a destroyer-sized ship. The standard ISD mixed fighter group certainly shouldn't worry another ISD, unless there's two-digit-teraton-scale fighter munitions out there. Assuming single teraton maximum for fighter warhead yields, 24 TIE Bombers would be packing 288 teratons total, which is barely over a tenth of an ISD's turbolaser yield. You'd need a Group-level bomber formation (6x72 - 432 bombers) to get in the same ballpark, which by command-equivalence at least makes sense. And even then, the fighters only have 5.2 petatons of yield to unload onto the shields, so it's not a big margin for error.

Escorts are good for beefing up on the things capitals can't just power generate away; attention and reach. But it's stupid to say capitals could never operate without them though.

The new canon seems to be switching this up; the Vigilance was able to destroy two A-wings so quickly her neighboring ships never knew the A-wings were even there. The old Venator ships were shown to have lighter guns capable of fast-tracking and destroying tiny discs while the right man was at the controls (Episode 220, "Death Trap"). I find it hard to believe that designers would shed those sorts of emplacements, and find it far more likely that they were simply never needed in the movies. Odds are that emplacements as small and light as those were simply not effective at firing at a fleeing ship five kilometers away; they would come online when fighters and bombers made an attack run, returning fire as the snubfighters made their assaults. Mid-range guns and fighter waves would be far more effective.

But yes, as someone noted, a lot of the EU capital ship capabilities were based on the X-Wing games...and games, unlike warfare, always strive to make things "fair". While it would be sensible for a Star Destroyer to not be specialized in anti-fighter capabilities, they would want to have something besides deflector shields to protect them from bombers (especially after what we saw in the Battle of Ryloth). When the ISD Perilous came under attack in Lords of the Sith, her guns were able to shoot down hundreds of mines, droid fighters, and bombs.

That being said, it would be cool to see designs of an "unconstrained by budgets and time" ISD with detailed gun emplacements and theoretical arrangements...I've been doing mental maps in my head, but I don't have the tech to work on something like that myself. Still, maybe Rebels will one day be granted enough resources to build a detailed ISD model. Also, the Inflictor wreckage in TFA may provide some cool new looks at the classic Destroyer...

[fractalsponge1]

Pretty much done:

[Eternal_Freedom]

As awesome as that design is, what is the point? Why is a forcefield needed around all the containers? Are they not air-tight or something?

[fractalsponge1]

The force field I think is to hold the containers together and transmit force from the the engine unit through the whole assembly. The advantage over solid structure is you don't need to build it, the ship is collapsible when not carrying cargo, and it allows free entry to tug-, tractor-beam, or other methods of handling the containers.

[Patroklos]

It may be cool graphically to do a liquid transport load along the same vane. The field compresses a gas or holds in a liquid instead of the containers. It could even be gravalized raw metal or ore resource loads. Think current LNG ships.

For the current design I think you can make the spheres far bigger. The way it is now most of the containers, probably well over 50% of them are in line between the front and back of the ship so are actually already transferring thrust, the fields would only affect the smaller portion bulging out. Unless the fields are transferring thrust AROUND the loads but I don't see the point in that. I guess you could say the containers are not sturdy enough to act as structural support for forward movement and there would be the problem with off access movement.

[Abacus]

Yeah, generally speaking shipping containers are not built to the same specifications and requirements that ships themselves are -- so that's why you have the force field in which they all fit nicely into without being required to do anything other than sit tight.

[fractalsponge1]

I think containers would probably be too flimsy, and if you did make them load bearing you'd have to pack them a lot tighter and more carefully than "jumble approximately into a ball and field-lock them." The bubbles could certainly be bigger, but then you're dealing with poorer transfer of thrust - more importantly, it'd start to look off from the reference concept.

I could definitely see compressed gas, piles of ingots, or other bulk cargo in the future. Possibly I'll do an extended bubble with annular projector rings that can haul capital ships for repairs as well...

Kandosii update:

[Lord Revan]

something I like about the Kandosii is that while the hull is detailed it's not too "busy", which is really only major critique I have to give is that alot of the designs seem to have random things stuck to the hull with no rime or reason making them look really "busy" and taking the attention away from some the nice details like the turrets and such.

[fractalsponge1]

[Abacus]

So close to being complete! Looking great!

[phred]

that is a sexy looking ship

[fractalsponge1]

Final Kandosii gallery is up:

[Raesene]

Looking good !

Somehow I wouldn`t have placed such a design in the Star Wars universe when shown without prior knowledge. Reminds me a bit of an old ship of the line, with the broadside guns.

Are you going to do a Finalizer-model too ?

[Captain Seafort]

Are you going to do a Finalizer-model too ?

He might already have done something very much like it, five years ago. I might be seeing or misremembering things, but this looks distinctly Finalizer-esque.

[fractalsponge1]

Yeah Finalizer will probably get done eventually when there are better references.

Playing about with another commissioned piece, the D-5 Mantis from the Old Republic games. There are going to be numerous modifications to it, so perhaps a D-6 Preying Mantis :p Here are the design evolutions leading to the final layout.

[fractalsponge1]

Panels, forward details, fixed ion cannon emplacements, and retractable sensor rectennae: