Something big

[Shroom Man 777]

So it is! I misthought that they were yellowish... that's Protoss carriers, my bad.

I do like how - probably painstakingly - accurate the... shades are. I wonder if those are actual color-patterns to the Mon Cal eyes, like wild zany stripes in the UV spectrum, or just wear and tear and space-dirt on the hulls.

[Sea Skimmer]

["Shroom Man 777"]
Hmmm... sure I am assuming that the worlds took time and effort to terraform when in fact they were either naturally habitable or even possibly altered by ancient superpowerful aliens ala the Corellia system, while trans-galactic travel has been a norm for eons... so my question is skewered.[/quote]

That doesn't sound very grim dark for your recent trends. I think its the other way around, considering how filled with diverse alien life the SW galaxy is they probably started out with hoard of habitable planets, and may well have destroyed many of them or turned them into deserts. Like Tatootine makes no sense to be habitable if it was always 100% desert. But what if it once had oceans, top soil and forests which were all harvested and hauled away 5000 years earlier, but it's just not run out of breathable oxygen yet? And say Hoth, an ice planet? What? But maybe massive amounts of metal smelting blew so much smoke in the air it froze from a nuclear winter effect, and they just kept mining under the icesheet until everything useful was gone, the abandon it so long ago the Empire no longer thought of it as settled.

Though don't you love how in Wars they so often rattle off random ass system names and people seem to instantly know what they are?

Atmo performance - oh god, I'm so glad R1 killed the idea that ISDs can't operate in atmo. Such a stupid idea, given the power generation potential.

Yeah, but then on the other hand you would think the NOISE would be a problem! Radiant heat, maybe not since they pretty much must be using neutrino radiators or similar sci tech, but Star Wars must have some incredible mastery of active cancellation of vibration for the damn ventilation fans of an ISD not to be noticeable! This is a big limitation on real tech life, it almost scuttled the damn F-35 program for example that the weapons bays were so loud they'd damage the aircraft's own weapons.

What I'm wondering about is why an ISD's engines aren't creating a thermonuclear blast in atmo. Those engines are what's keeping that mile-long hunk of metal moving, for God's sake. I could understand if they just used repulsors (granted, I wouldn't want to be under them), but the scene in Rogue One where the Star Destroyer over Jedha lights off it's engines seems absurd. The city should have been turned to ash by that. Am I missing something?

Look at all the times the Falcon and fighters blasts away from people without the slightest harm, or even much noise or wind. Meanwhile the exhaust of an F-15 can burn your skin at 500 feet or something like that, and an F-15 sure can't reach orbit in seconds!

My theory is the engines are just 'pushing' on hyperspace all the time, and jumping to light speed is just a super mode of that. This would make sense since they seem to use the same engine nozzles for hyperspace propulsion, and they even flash as they jump.

[fractalsponge1]

Yeah, but then on the other hand you would think the NOISE would be a problem! Radiant heat, maybe not since they pretty much must be using neutrino radiators or similar sci tech, but Star Wars must have some incredible mastery of active cancellation of vibration for the damn ventilation fans of an ISD not to be noticeable! This is a big limitation on real tech life, it almost scuttled the damn F-35 program for example that the weapons bays were so loud they'd damage the aircraft's own weapons.

My guess is it's tied to inertial compensation, which seems to be good enough that multi-thousand g acceleration is smooth enough that bridge staff don't have to be strapped into harnesses.

Look at all the times the Falcon and fighters blasts away from people without the slightest harm, or even much noise or wind. Meanwhile the exhaust of an F-15 can burn your skin at 500 feet or something like that, and an F-15 sure can't reach orbit in seconds!

My theory is the engines are just 'pushing' on hyperspace all the time, and jumping to light speed is just a super mode of that. This would make sense since they seem to use the same engine nozzles for hyperspace propulsion, and they even flash as they jump.

That's...actually an appealing theory. Certainly easier to deal with that than mucking about with wondering what kind of real mass is being ejected from the nozzles and how it's all stored.

[fractalsponge1]

Hangar and engines.

[DesertFly]

Hangar and engines.

I love the fact that it's not perfectly symmetrical. Makes it seem more alien.

[Lord Revan]

Looks like the MC-90 with SD like rear cluster of engines without a "tail" or "bulb" at the end.

[fractalsponge1]

MC-90 has a SD-style engine bank, and no tail or end bulb. MC80 does have a tail.

[DesertFly]

Nope, still not sure why people are so in love with the MC-90, even after looking it up. Still think this design walks the line between angular Star Wars design, and something more exotic, like the ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind.

--EDIT--
And I like what you're doing!

[Elheru Aran]

Look at all the times the Falcon and fighters blasts away from people without the slightest harm, or even much noise or wind. Meanwhile the exhaust of an F-15 can burn your skin at 500 feet or something like that, and an F-15 sure can't reach orbit in seconds!

My theory is the engines are just 'pushing' on hyperspace all the time, and jumping to light speed is just a super mode of that. This would make sense since they seem to use the same engine nozzles for hyperspace propulsion, and they even flash as they jump.

That's...actually an appealing theory. Certainly easier to deal with that than mucking about with wondering what kind of real mass is being ejected from the nozzles and how it's all stored.

You could even use that as their means of inertial compensation. If the vehicle isn't actually pushing against matter in our dimension to thrust forwards, perhaps they don't NEED inertial compensation because from the perspective of normal matter, the vehicle isn't moving?

(that doesn't sound right but maybe someone can take that thought and run with it)

[Lord Revan]

MC-90 has a SD-style engine bank, and no tail or end bulb. MC80 does have a tail.

yeah that's my point, MC-80 had the tail and the Home One style ships had bulb with with 4-8 engines clustered aroung the rear.

[Iroscato]

One of my favourites of yours so far, and I've been following your work for years now. Excellent job

Would you say modelling a much smooth, rounded ship like that is more difficult vs a sharp-angled Star Destroyer and the like?

[Knife]

Looks great, been wanting to see a Mon Cal ship by you for years.

[fractalsponge1]

Would you say modelling a much smooth, rounded ship like that is more difficult vs a sharp-angled Star Destroyer and the like?

Not any more I still like angular designs better though.

[Shroom Man 777]

That doesn't sound very grim dark for your recent trends. I think its the other way around, considering how filled with diverse alien life the SW galaxy is they probably started out with hoard of habitable planets, and may well have destroyed many of them or turned them into deserts. Like Tatootine makes no sense to be habitable if it was always 100% desert. But what if it once had oceans, top soil and forests which were all harvested and hauled away 5000 years earlier, but it's just not run out of breathable oxygen yet? And say Hoth, an ice planet? What? But maybe massive amounts of metal smelting blew so much smoke in the air it froze from a nuclear winter effect, and they just kept mining under the icesheet until everything useful was gone, the abandon it so long ago the Empire no longer thought of it as settled.

Though don't you love how in Wars they so often rattle off random ass system names and people seem to instantly know what they are?

(Hey the grimdark stuff was just me taking a pisstake)

Oh man, those are horrifying yet brilliant yet also like sociopolitically hard-hitting ideas. Wow. That does make sense if the SW universe is of such huge and long-term scale. An "unknown" or fringe world that they end up in might've been some place that was bustling a few thousand years ago that ended up being a forgotten, forsaken nowhere after it went bust during an era where sustainability was not a concern, when millions of habitable worlds were out there. Imagine what the galaxy was like when only some races had hyperdrive while significant numbers of species were still pre-hyperdrive and not yet connected to interstellar civilization. Imagine what happened between that point to the current way of galactic affairs, one that's already lasted for thousands of years at least!

It's something like pilgrim-era "the forests are dark and unknown beware pilgrims!" America vs. today with highways and amusement parks everywhere.

And yes, it's so preposterous the name-rattling. In our RPG we need to trawl through the galactic map and wookiepedia to figure things out. Though maybe Han and Leia - by virtue of their respective professions - have like near-mentat level of cosmographic proficiency.

[Knife]

I would imagine Leia, both a Planetary leader, a Senator, and a rebel general would be familiar with an huge amount of systems. Both settled, civilized, and not so much for rebel uses. Han would as well, both running cargo and the seedy underside of the galaxy to boot. Those two make perfect sense to toss around a bunch of names. Luke, a dow eyed farm kid? No so much. Jedi in the prequel would also make some sense, they are supposed to be guardians of the Republic, at the very least they should know the major worlds and what every systems are considered problems or possible problems.

[fractalsponge1]

[Abacus]

Shiny.

[Shroom Man 777]

So pretty Ansel!

The bluey hue is reminiscent of deep sea creatures. So niiice.

[Sea Skimmer]

That's...actually an appealing theory. Certainly easier to deal with that than mucking about with wondering what kind of real mass is being ejected from the nozzles and how it's all stored.

Yeah it solves a lot of problems. Its been my go too method of explaining space propulsion for a long time, originally I wanted it as means to make paddle wheels and screws viable space propulsion systems. For Star Wars it works as well as anything else will. Otherwise craft like an ISD would need a tremendous amount of obvious thrust just to do the slow speed move seen in Rouge One.

I like the MC-90, the weapons blisters are an interesting change. I liked the old EU idea of the Mon Calmaria ships having been designed with armed merchant cruiser conversions in mind which might lead to less then ideal layouts, but a ship which can take significant damage because it wasn't built of BS.

[Sea Skimmer]

Imagine what happened between that point to the current way of galactic affairs, one that's already lasted for thousands of years at least!

Think of how many times Roman Empires fell, before all these species even got off the ground. How many Roman Empires fell to 25,000 year old battle driods appearing?

Something I wonder is does Wars ever build moons, or did so in the past? The Death Star raised eyebrows, but that only means such large constructions are not contemporary. I mean say we need more real estate in the Coruscant system, since if you build something not a space station you can probably charge way more for it. Centerpoint Station is cool, but if you can build death stars out of metal then plain building moons out of rock is not so far off. Converting plants to weapons more or less plainly now indicates this can happen! You'd have to cool the mass as gravity shaped it, and probably use mechanical compacting to speed it along but cooling seems like not a Star Wars kind of problem.

It's something like pilgrim-era "the forests are dark and unknown beware pilgrims!" America vs. today with highways and amusement parks everywhere.

Pilgrims is an interesting reference, because while they themselves did not understand it their colonization of America was only possible because Indians had already spent about 7,000 years seriously modifying the local environment. They'd suppressed predators, cleared woodlands and thinned out the undergrowth in the forests that did exist. But it was far different then what Europeans recognized as development, and because of the plague waves the populations had crashed to the point that a partial reversion of these changes had taken place. The stories of the earliest Spanish and Portuguese explorers were also commonly discounted, such as the now proven Amazon basin civilizations having really existed, but imploded into much smaller amazon tribes that still exist in some regions.

All kinds of crazy stuff would have happened in Wars as a result to the sudden clashes of culture over and over, and yet also from the exploiting remains and abandon things. Space Hunters wiping out the death otters for example, paves the way for a totally unrelated species to colonize what was only bonus kills to another.

[Shroom Man 777]

My pet theory is that in ANH when Han said "It's too big to be a space station." he must've meant that there are no space stations of that size in the Alderaan system. Cause I really would like to imagine there are non-military structures of the same magnitude as, or even larger than, the Death Stars.

Like... there are civilian ships huger than aircraft carriers. So why not?

[evillejedi]

Similar in design to my (unfinished) take on the Mediator class which is based on the Golden battleship reference

I would really like to know how you are able to do the panel detailing without getting a mess of overlapping corner vertices and conflicting edges

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... temId=6213
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... temId=6222

[Sea Skimmer]

My pet theory is that in ANH when Han said "It's too big to be a space station." he must've meant that there are no space stations of that size in the Alderaan system. Cause I really would like to imagine there are non-military structures of the same magnitude as, or even larger than, the Death Stars.

Like... there are civilian ships huger than aircraft carriers. So why not?

Yup. If it doesn't have to move then it only has to hold itself together, the sky is the limit since holding back 14.7psi of air pressure is trivial with steel plates. You know star wars could have some pretty cool arena stuff at that point. Like an indoor zero gravity SPACE AIRSHOW, if they had a big enough space arena. Its weird just thinking about how that would work, since you no longer actually need wings to fly, but you need lift generating control surfaces to maneuver. Also it would be even more unsafe as the pod race, and we all know that in sci fi inevitably advanced sports are death sports.

[Shroom Man 777]

Stubby flexible wings? Active aerolastics, either servo-jointed or like flexi smart-materials... Thrust vectoring drives - mechanical vectoring and magnetodynamic and force field-based. Verniers (we see the Ghost have those in SW Rebels actually...). Repulsors.

You'd get racing winged-spheres...

Then there'd be obstacle courses where the craft would need limbs to navigate jungle gyms and bars and whatnot.

They become acrobatic GUNDAM!

[fractalsponge1]

Stubby flexible wings? Active aerolastics, either servo-jointed or like flexi smart-materials... Thrust vectoring drives - mechanical vectoring and magnetodynamic and force field-based. Verniers (we see the Ghost have those in SW Rebels actually...). Repulsors.

You'd get racing winged-spheres...

Then there'd be obstacle courses where the craft would need limbs to navigate jungle gyms and bars and whatnot.

They become acrobatic GUNDAM!

You lot are insane

Similar in design to my (unfinished) take on the Mediator class which is based on the Golden battleship reference

I would really like to know how you are able to do the panel detailing without getting a mess of overlapping corner vertices and conflicting edges

http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... temId=6213
http://warlords.swrebellion.com/g2/main ... temId=6222

1) Unwrap UVs (flat)
2) SlideKnit plugin (free) - generates guide geometry based on the UV, and applies a morpher modifier
3) Lay out (highly subdivided) pattern on top, apply skinwrap modifier and link to the morpher (can take turbosmoothed plane and boolean it out of the pattern, without edge cleanup to get this pattern, or shapemerge). Cleanup vertices with VertexCleaner script (will retain corner vertices and clean almost everything else that's extraneous)
4) unmorph the guide geo
5) Profit

SUPER FAST, but only if you subdivide the pattern properly (add many segments around difficult bends). It is very similar in principle to the old "boolean extruded pattern from hull form" method, except that it dramatically speeds up the layout. If you sudivide the pattern enough, you don't just extrude and bevel after morph, and you're basically done.

As for "advanced" Mon Cals, I've never quite gotten around the scale issues. Viscount is 17km, Mediator is "half" but variously half length to something closer to an Allegiance. And Strident, no clue. Wtf? Hard to make sense of it all. But it's all legends now, so I guess the sky is the limit for what you want to imagine until some semblance of order returns to the EU.