It's interesting to hear about the history behind the Patrol Boat, pipeline. I always thought it was a pretty neat ship, although the IDA frigate is what made me want to buy Nova.

Alright, I DID promise you guys I'd update once I had new content, so here you go. I churned out yet another ship.

I've been working on this little baby for nearly a month now, and I never did seem to particularly enjoy the design, until I added the physical plate shield on the port side of the vessel. I've found that one of the best tricks I can do to continually expand a design is to create a structure with an inherent design flaw, in this case the exposed conduit piping between the fuselage and the outboard power facilities, and then manufacture a new structure as a patch for the error. In all honesty, the pipes could have just been incorporated into the body of the craft, of the power center of the ship could have been placed closer to the fuselage, but then it'd look very cramped an ultimately too refined. Life is better with mistakes, and this is a prime example of one. If I continued to add "fixes" to these design elements, I could ultimately make the vessel larger than a planet, but I don't exactly have time for that. For entertainment purposes though, it's interesting to note that a collision with the protective plate would result in the primary exterior hull of the ship's engine compartment being torn open, exposing the core to weapons fire. You see what I mean when I say that there is always something worth fixing.

Below is a quick draft of how the ship could appear in Nova, purely an example for size and perception; this is NOT the final product. Remember as well that this is taken directly from my 1440 x 900 screen, and as such the ship may appear exceptionally large if you have a smaller monitor. I haven't tested it as a sprite yet (it hasn't been rendered) and as such it has not been scaled accordingly.

I haven't picked what name this ship will take from the list of EVN-Delphi's ships, but whatever it be, I can safely say the following. It will be a light cruiser. It will carry advanced pulse weaponry, not nichron technology (sorry). It will be somewhat cumbersome with lots of cargo space, leaning slightly toward being a military transport. It will be fun to play with, and I hope it will be viewed as a staple ship once it's complete.

Again, I'll get back to you once I have more for you to nibble on!

This post has been edited by Delphi : 01 June 2008 - 02:44 AM

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that there will be another variant of this vessel with a second starboard reactor assembly, and slightly more powerful weaponry, including a mix of missiles and pulse cannons instead of pure energy weapons like the lighter version.

Oooh. Shiny.

bows in adoration

I want one!

Question: Will the light version be faster? Or just light like beer (absence of alcohol)?

@templar98921, on Jun 1 2008, 01:52 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Oooh. Shiny.

bows in adoration

I want one!

Question: Will the light version be faster? Or just light like beer (absence of alcohol)?

The light version will be slightly faster during acceleration, but the heavy variant will have a higher top speed, simply the result of an entire second engine core. In this case though, be careful to give the ship enough space to slow down, or you'll oft find yourself overshooting your target; all that extra force is still coming through the same little thruster.

Looks very sweet. The angularity of the tool you're using suits large scale vehicles well, I think.

Very impressive, I really like your design aesthetic. I really hope you have the opportunity sometime to pick up a full-fledged modeler, so that you can realize the full range of your repertoire.

@ue_research---development, on Jun 1 2008, 05:10 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Very impressive, I really like your design aesthetic. I really hope you have the opportunity sometime to pick up a full-fledged modeler, so that you can realize the full range of your repertoire.

You may be surprised at the results I have been able to coax out of Bryce so far, using only some fairly basic material textures.

I don't think this image was ever posted in this thread; I have the feeling it died with EV-Nova.net. This was the test-rendering I did of the Versatile Class Shuttle, a sort of "carryall" type of craft.

Also worthy of note is the NDC "megastation" pictured below, created using the same two step process I used for the shuttle (SketchUp to model, Bryce to render).

This post has been edited by Delphi : 01 June 2008 - 06:34 AM

While we're at it, let's get nostalgic, shall we? I'm not sure how many people I ever showed this picture to, but this was the first cruiser I ever modeled with the intention of placing it under the control of the NDC government, long before the prospect of creating a Nova TC was even a glimmer of imagination.

Delphi, those ships are AMAZING!!!

however, they could use a second light underneath, just bright enough to illuminate the bottom.

also, landing and operating lights would be cool. for the bigger ships and station, windows would be awesome.

I remember those ships, just not them looking that good. Oh and that last ships is totally amazing. I am dying of excitment. I think I remember it but still, AWESOME!

Windows on warships are a terrible idea. Glass is nowhere near as strong as the rest of the armour. External, retractable, independantly-shielded cameras are more likely.

Very Halo-esque. Your use of (what appears to be) low-poly modelling would be exceedingly useful for an open-gl rendered game. I'm quite impressed with many of the specific designs, as well. If you could get some paint lines or something similar to appear in Bryce, your two-step process is indeed very effective.

@lnsu, on Jun 1 2008, 11:34 AM, said in EVN - Delphi:

Windows on warships are a terrible idea. Glass is nowhere near as strong as the rest of the armour. External, retractable, independantly-shielded cameras are more likely.

Of course in a world futuristic enough to have faster than light travel and force shields windows are not necessarily made of glass.

You should look around on Ebay or something and see if you can pick up a copy of the student learning edition of Maya. Probably less than $50. Real thing is 6k. I'd offer to send you mine or something, but I don't know where the disks are. You can't really do rendering, as it puts a watermark across it, but you should see how professional modeling programs work.

Wow! I mean wow!

PS: not World of Warcraft! :laugh:

Hey, Delphi, do you know about the landscaping tools in Sketchup? I did a presentation on them recently, and they are really cool, and might be helpful for a ship with soft curves.

Yeah, 0101181920 (I still don't quite know what that means), I've taken a look at the landscaping tools, but to be quite honest, I haven't updated my SketchUp license in quite some time, so I'm still using version 5 by rolling my clock back and disconnecting from the internet every time I want to model.

Seriously, I'll pay real money sometime soon, I swear...

Either way, I've found I'm better at making organic shapes by generating them from scratch, in all honesty. Start with a long rectangular box, start to bend parts, extrude sections, mold those new extrusions in with the rest of the design, and eventually you have... something.

In other news, while cleaning out "My Closet", also known as my "Documents" folder to those who have not renamed the place in which they stash all their electronic trash, I stumbled upon a large number of ship models that are actually damn good. They look REALLY rough up close, but I recently had a bit of an epiphany when I realized that most of Nova's ships are viewed from REALLY FREAKIN' FAR AWAY. I'll use wireframes or something for the shipyard graphics, or maybe technical readouts with diagrams. After all, a ship is more about function when it's this ugly, right?

I've selected two models from the pile that I will certainly be developing further. Here they are in approximate Nova size, as if they were actual rendered sprites, although as I'm sure you can tell, they are not. Trust me, they look a lot better from this distance. You should be thankful.

This first one reminds me a little bit of a B-42 Bomber, and I think that's just the main reason I like it; it's different. I'll be working with this one a bit in order to touch up the central structure and add some model detail to the "wings". With the right amount of additions, I could even make this one of the very cool "Command Cruisers", by placing physical plate shields against the front of either wing. A real ship-wrecker if ever it were to hit your vessel.

I'm honestly not quite sure why this one never made it into production before. It looks fantastic from this zoom level, and as such the same could be expected when rendered and placed into Nova. I think this one will either have to be a Heavy Cruiser or maybe even a Dominant, simply for its sheer size, which I intend to flaunt. Note the massive artillery-style cannons integrated into the bow of the ship. Ooh. Aah.

That second one is amazing! I wish I had your skill! :hector_bird: