StarDestroyer.Net BBS

Nice. You did well positioning those turrets where the rear ones can fire over the tops of the ones in front. Is this ship designed for atmosphere entry and planetary battlefield support as well as deep-space anti-ship work? If so, I'd extend the rear part of the hull out into wings that follow the line made by the rear part of the indents, and put short wide-chord fins on the engine covers, top and bottom. I'd also extend the bow antenna into a fin, like your other ships. I'll rough up an idea of what I'm talking about after work.

I'm not a big fan of the center engines being recessed so deeply; I'd pull that out to add more internal volume.

I took the rear protrusions off and added more weapons (and ions):

Grahf: Seeker Of Power wrote:I took the rear protrusions off and added more weapons (and ions):

Hmm... I think something has to be done using the area where the protusions where, it just looks a little to empty now. Maybe leaving the base of the protrusions but limiting the height and length so that the section still flows from the main body without being as overblown as they originally where.

Einhander Sn0m4n wrote: I'm not a big fan of the center engines being recessed so deeply; I'd pull that out to add more internal volume.

As a counterpoint I'd like to offer my two cents in firm support of the recessed main engines, I really like how they worked out with the rest of the design. It took a while to realize why, but I think it is because it reminds me of the rear profile in a fighter jet. Since many modern fighters (like the YF23, F22, F35, etc) all have fairly recessed exhaust nozzles.

Also something that I've been noticing, your original gun designs seemed like they could only rotate left/right, but not up/down, which would obviously result in very limited targeting possibilities. Luckily your new redesign of the guns pretty much fixed this since the vertical slit that the gun barrel reside in now gives the impression that they can be articulated up/down as well.

Which brings us to your newly added ion cannons, which also seems like they can only move side to side, but not vertically at all. Basically I think they ought to look a little more like this:



Only with big honking guns instead of telescopes obviously. To reduce the amount of detail you'd need to add perhaps just slightly recess the area in which the gun is going to move vertically. After all the real life observatories have sliding covers to guard the opening against rain, so it figures your guns will have sliding armor plates to cover the opening from incoming fire.

P.s.
Love where you placed the forward hangars. When looking at the first renderings of the model I instantly though that would've been a nice place for hangars. Then as I clicked trough to the next pages I noticed you agreed with me

What is not shown with the hangars is that large doors come from either side to close the hangar off for protection.

Updated my big bad model and added in a Venator for size comparison. Used Photoshop to sex it up a bit. Let me know what you think:

Damn, how are you making those smooth spheres. You use sketch-up right? I can't figure out how to make them without the grid.

Grahf: Seeker Of Power wrote:Updated my big bad model and added in a Venator for size comparison. Used Photoshop to sex it up a bit. Let me know what you think:

I suggest toning down the background a bit. It's rather busy-looking and I think the focus should be on the ships. There are so many bright stars and other astronomical features that it's a bit distracting. Reduce the density or at least the brightness of the star field and I think it will be much improved.

Working on fully arming the Big Bad:

Just some pics on the ships of the smaller variety:

New Design I have been working on:

Looks fast, perhaps not so manueverable, but fast. What's the scale? I'm picturing it as a bomber to go with your fighter.

Grahf: Seeker Of Power wrote:New Design I have been working on:

<pictures>

Wow that looks awesome. A question though, what is the opening in the front supposed to be, a weapon of some sort (i.e. following the A10 Warthog school of tough), or is it a retrograde thruster for braking (which could potentially make it a very maneuverable craft)?

I'm thinking it's most likely the main cannon since all the other thrusters are white, but you never know.

It's about 100-150 meters long. And yes, the thing in the front is a main cannon of some sort.

Grahf have you played Orbiter space flight sim? If you are familiar with it you could put your ships in Orbiter in no time and get a chance to fly them.

I like that new one Grahf. Very sleek and aggressive looking. Some sort of heavy interceptor perhaps.

I guess I imagined it as I very high speed/high acceleration sort of hunter killer. Large main cannon meant to take out single large targets very quickly and get out equally as fast.

Wow Grahf, these are some really amazing ships you've got there

Keep up the awsome work!

So, I decided I would try my hand at something more complex. Something with curves. I have always liked this design:

The command ship from Gall Force, the Akonkaguya..





This is my own sketch I did of it with some of my own touches:



And finally, my 3d version which is sort-of a mix of the two.....this is only an initial build, more detail to come:

How the fuck do you do all those curves!? O.o

The best way to do it is to mess around with the Follow Me tool, and the Smooth/Soften Edges command.