Something big

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-07 02:31pm

Starting a new project. Will be as detailed as my old star destroyer, but using a mixture of Avenger and Devastator-style features

A start:
http://fractalsponge.net/big/3.jpg

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-07-07 02:37pm

That big hangar bay type thing facing forward... is it a hangar bay? Or maybe it's a giant cannon!

I love the hunchback look that the command tower has, on top of all that other superstructure.

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-07 02:44pm

Thinking of putting a secondary control position there, probably the beginning of an axial defense battery also.

[R_H] · Post by **[R_H]** » 2008-07-07 04:18pm

Looks awesome. I like how the rest of the hull isn't smooth, there's raised surfaces. If what I just wrote wasn't all too coherent, I'm talking about the surfaces adjacent to what might be the secondary control position.

Chardok · Post by **Chardok** » 2008-07-07 04:29pm

Hawkwings wrote:That big hangar bay type thing facing forward... is it a hangar bay? Or maybe it's a giant cannon!

How rad would it be if it were a cannon...that fires SURPLUS ACCLAMATORS

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-10 10:13pm

today's work:

Crossroads Inc. · Post by **Crossroads Inc.** » 2008-07-10 10:35pm

Yeah, the Guy in me is looking at the big blunt front of that ship and thinking 'Honking big Cannon, RAR!" although a secondary command position sounds much more practical. I would say i think the fornt is waaay too shapr and pointed, ive always htought the daggerness of some of the big ships is getting excessive, just think of the funds they could save just by choping the tip off a bit

Alan Bolte · Post by **Alan Bolte** » 2008-07-11 05:58am

Very Dark Empire. Looks good.

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-12 12:34am

This is moving along at a good clip. Brought a few mroe terrace rows up today. Also made a turret, which I'll show off more later.

fusion · Post by **fusion** » 2008-07-12 06:54pm

Good as ever. This is going to be one sick machine... I can feel it!

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-12 11:25pm

^wait till you see the armament

Filling in some gaps, more plating.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2008-07-13 01:37am

Is there a "list of doodads" file somewhere on your computer? How do you come up with all those functional-looking things in between the terraces?

Also, what's up with the uneven armor plating? Is that an aesthetic thing?

Kane Starkiller · Post by **Kane Starkiller** » 2008-07-13 08:30am

Awesome work, the level of detail is unbelievable.
What kind of weaponry will it have? I always wanted to see something like Iowa class cannons sprouting from the hull. Not that big in relation to the ship but something you can immediately notice from several ship lengths away and know this thing packs a punch.

Eleventh Century Remnant · Post by **Eleventh Century Remnant** » 2008-07-13 08:29pm

Wow.
And...what are we looking at here, about five or six times the length of an Imperator?
Definitely battleship or battlecruiser, too big for most of the cruisers observed in the distance over Byss, not quite dreadnaught- could this pass as a Procurator or Praetor class? I reckon it could.

In which case, the armament ought to be most impressive.

Vehrec · Post by **Vehrec** » 2008-07-13 09:56pm

I'm going to have to join the call to trim the nose a bit, but this is a damn fine piece of work.

If you wouldn't mind, I'd like to see this thing's excised reactors. It's got plenty of space for some large bulbs in there. Just some spheres set by it for the sake of scale would be good.

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-13 11:53pm

The armament starts to appear.

==========

Using a naive, proportional scale up, this ship is ~20x the volume of an Imperator. ~7km long. The comparison places the ISD to starboard and back of this ship, so makes it look a bit larger than it is. I'm VERY loosely basing it off this silhouette: http://www.theforce.net/swtc/dagger.html#cruiser5, just bigger.

Definitely heavy star cruiser class if Executor and Imperator bookend the range at star dreadnought and flotilla destroyer. Probably would qualify as a battlecruiser or battleship on the Old Republic scale. Not sure if I want to call this Praetor/Procurator or give it a new class name, which would probably be HIMS Warrior or Thunderer if I did.

As for power generation, I'm thinking 30x ISD equivalents, based on 20x ISD volume and greater emphasis on fleet/ship-to-ship engagement. There will be relatively little in the way of hangars or intervention troops. Maybe 24 squadrons worth with a 3 legion formation of stormtroopers, more infantry than heavy vehicles. All of which leaves greater proportional space for power generation, and structural stiffening for a large gun battery and high-powered engines. Plus, stylistically, there will definitely be a very large reactor bulb, and probably a secondary bulb.

I've put some thought into the armament, which starts to appear in these updates. I am using Remnant's 'calibres' of 32 teratons/heavy shot for the heavies on an ISDII, getting ~170 teratons for an ISDI from the heavy guns. I'm calling superheavies in the 200+ teraton range. Based on that, I'm currently plotting out a fit of the following for this ship:

22 400 teraton superheavies in (11 twin mounts)
192 ISDI-class 170 teraton heavies (48 quad mounts) - you can see the first of these turrets in this update
384 40-teraton heavies in octuples (x48) - again, I've put down the first battery of 32.

72% dorsal mounted, 28% ventral by throw weight. Total throw weight of heavies, 56.8 petatons. Optimum forward dorsal arc: 38.1 petatons. 64x32 teraton heavies for an ISDII puts out 2.05 petatons, so ~28x the firepower of an ISD's turbolasers.

I'm not counting mediums guns, since they are at a detail resolution where you can't see the gun barrels on the model, but if you count the greeble that I'm using to represent them, there are currently 23 mounts, which I'm going to say are twins of Acclamator-scale 200 gigaton mediums or twin medium ion cannon. At this density, I'm going to project around 400 medium barrels of both types, but I'm not going to count them all on the model. Add another ~80 teratons to the final armament figure.

There will likely be a missile battery and heavy ion cannon of the ISDI type, but those numbers I haven't sketched out yet. Probably looking at ~24-32 heavy ions in quad ball-socket mounts in the trench notches, and some in twin ISDI-style turrets scattered about the hull. That should round out to 30x firepower output of an ISD, same feed to the guns.

The superheavies I'm spreading along mostly axial positions for the best arc. With most of the 170s in batteries similar to an ISD's flank turret lines, but staggered for a better arcs. I'd have considered a "lighter" uniform caliber, but there's actually a limit on the surface area available for turrets on this thing, without making it too fanwank looking. I reckon the quad 170s can be exchanged for twin 400s in roughly the same turret.

Rough layout:

Red for superheavy twins, yellow/green for quad ISDI guns, blue for 4xoctuple 32s like an ISDII.

Again this is based on a conservative, straight-up scaling from an ISD power number by volume. Those numbers could still change.

Whew long post. Looking at the bow structure later. Right now building a repertoire of details that I can use to assemble the rest of the ship.

Havok · Post by **Havok** » 2008-07-14 03:17am

I was gonna ask if this was that Star Destroyer form one of the Dark Empires, but I figured I was just being crazy.

For some reason that particular one has always stuck out in my mind. Weird.

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-14 04:17pm

Always stuck out in my mind too... something about that profile always made it look hulking, brooding, and thoroughly unpleasant if provoked. Sort of like a grizzly grumpily prowling around in the forest. I'm glad I'm going to flesh out the design more now.

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2008-07-14 09:34pm

A very nice looking ship. I'm not sure how "realistic" you're going for with your design, but assuming that the ship's power plant is located underneath the superstructure, those heavy guns seem rather placed far away. All of the star destroyer designs have their heavy weapons located near the base of the superstructure. Otherwise, it looks very Imperial-esque.

Grandmaster Jogurt · Post by **Grandmaster Jogurt** » 2008-07-14 11:04pm

Fire Fly wrote:A very nice looking ship. I'm not sure how "realistic" you're going for with your design, but assuming that the ship's power plant is located underneath the superstructure, those heavy guns seem rather placed far away. All of the star destroyer designs have their heavy weapons located near the base of the superstructure. Otherwise, it looks very Imperial-esque.

The Devastator-type ships also had heavy guns along the mid dorsal ridge, similar to the placement of some of the red guns on this design. They did seem smaller than the guns along the sides, though.

Have you considered adding more sensor domes besides the two on the tower? The Executor had several domes, though it being a command ship might have had something to do with that.

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-15 12:25am

A start to the rest of the ISDI-caliber quads.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2008-07-15 03:08am

If that this is supposed to be so huge, how is there that much fine detail on it visually? I mean, those guns are should be easily be able to fight the Empire State Building in them given the scale you list, to say nothing about clearly visible armor plates.

fractalsponge1 · Post by **fractalsponge1** » 2008-07-15 09:00am

Not quite sure I get your meaning. The detailing is on nearly the same size scale as that of the ISDII studio model, which also has armor plate visible. Of course there's a layer of finer details that is just not practicable to include in a ship this big, but the rest is in line with existing physical models. And, isn't the point of making a detailed 3d mesh of a ship to make it...have lots of detail? You just have to decide at the outset how close you want to be able to zoom on it.

The turrets, btw, are scale to around 50m at the barbette. Not even close to the empire state building

Darth Tanner · Post by **Darth Tanner** » 2008-07-15 01:03pm

Love it. I especially like the central batteries, SW ships don't use them enough in my opinion.

I'm unsure about the forward bulge however, I don't really like the idea of a second command bridge (presuming a copy of the one on top) and if it's going to end up as a fixed forward heavy gun then maybe I can see it working but I'm unsure of the end result, it looks far too big to simply hold defence batteries. With your apparent level of skill however I have little doubt it'll be a thing of beauty anyway.

One quick question, how well do the side turret formations provide forward firing arks. Are the ones at the back sufficiently high up enough to shoot over the forward turrets?

Plus, stylistically, there will definitely be a very large reactor bulb, and probably a secondary bulb.

Kuat doing a bogof deal on hypermatter reactors? Sounds good anyway.

Aquatain · Post by **Aquatain** » 2008-07-15 01:32pm

Please tell me you're gonna make a animated movie with that monster when it's done.