Atlantia-the rework(ignore other one- forgot the poll)

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:07 am

Thanks, Chuck, from the looks of those ships I feel like I have no experience at all in modelling (what is true

)

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Mon Mar 27, 2006 6:10 am

Well, these are people that take a year or two sabattical to do just one ship... But in any case, a lot of it is in the texturing. A lot more of it, if you take full advantage of diffuse, specular, emissive and bumpmapping's benefits.
And there are a lot of textures out there free for download. Blender's website lists a whole bunch...
http://blender.org/cms/Resources.181.0.html#572

chrisdn · Post by **chrisdn** » Tue Mar 28, 2006 5:05 pm

Been out of contact for a few days because of my change of providers. Damn Chuck that ship looks good. One day I'll be able to do that...not. Looks beautiful eh?

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Wed Apr 12, 2006 7:00 am

Wow, that newest model looks nice and clean, chris. You've come a long way in these short months.

æþeling · Post by **æþeling** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 1:34 pm

Just one question:

What's with the wings on the Atlantia? I mean, judging by it's size, it'll never be in an atmosphere of a planet, so why does it need wings?

Besides that, great work.

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:43 pm

Chrisdn likes vessels with aerodynamic look; they can contain many needed stuff and most of all: why not?

æþeling · Post by **æþeling** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 2:51 pm

That's OK, but I always felt VS was going more for the "realistic", utilitarian look of the starships, rather than the Star Trek's artistic starships. And, looking from a utilitarian point of view, the wings serve no purpose, there is no need for an earodynamic shape in space. They also narrow the ideal attack angle, make the visible surface of the ship larger (and the more of it you see, the more of it you can fire at), and are generally a defense weak-point (unless you want to mount some more turrets on them). As for their cargo capacity, it could also be achieved by sinmply increasing the dimensions of the main hull, while the max. visible surface would still be a lot smaller. I seriously doubt the people designing the ship that would have the same role as the Atlantia would choose fancy looks over fonctionality. Remember, it's made to win battles, not beauty contests.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 3:00 pm

This ship is for chrisdn's own mod in the universe he created. He gets to write the rules.

æþeling · Post by **æþeling** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 3:24 pm

Halleck wrote:This ship is for chrisdn's own mod in the universe he created. He gets to write the rules.

Still, I don't see why whoever designed the ship would choose looks over functionality and efficiency. A ship without wings would be a lot more efficient and would stand more chances in a battle (I already described why), not to mention maneuvering in confined spaces like asteroid/mine fields.

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 6:27 pm

The ship is gigantic already; it's like fighting with Clydesdale in VS, so I don't see any real difference with having wings or not.

Halleck · Post by **Halleck** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 8:50 pm

Kangaroo22 wrote:The ship is gigantic already; it's like fighting with Clydesdale in VS, so I don't see any real difference with having wings or not.

Yeah, kind of like deciding whether or not to have an awning on the top of the empire state building. I forget what he's putting in the wings... turrets and hardpoints maybe.

Plus, the society I've read about for his universe seems to be full of asthetes- they may very well value form over function. Lastly, the atlantia is more of an armed exploration craft than a military vessel, or so I recall.

æþeling · Post by **æþeling** » Sat Apr 15, 2006 10:54 pm

Kangaroo22 wrote:The ship is gigantic already; it's like fighting with Clydesdale in VS, so I don't see any real difference with having wings or not.

Imagine looking at atlantia top-down. Huge, isn't it? That's a lot of surface that can get hit.

Now imagine looking at it if it didn't have wings. All of the sudden, there's almost nothing to shoot at, almost 50% less than with wings. And, whether it's a bettleship or an armed exploration craft doesn't matter; judging by the fighter bays and all the turrets, it was made to survive a battle on it's own. Why hinder it's odds with something as pointless as wings?

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 5:22 am

@chrisdn and kangaroo22:
There's new topics in the How To: Modelling section of the Wiki:
http://vegastrike.sourceforge.net/wiki/HowTo#Modelling
BradMick's video on rapid prototyping, ship modelling tutorial links,
and of particular interest to you guys, UV-unwrapping. Enjoy.

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 7:47 am

Ã¦Ã¾eling wrote:Now imagine looking at it if it didn't have wings. All of the sudden, there's almost nothing to shoot at, almost 50% less than with wings. And, whether it's a bettleship or an armed exploration craft doesn't matter; judging by the fighter bays and all the turrets, it was made to survive a battle on it's own. Why hinder it's odds with something as pointless as wings?

I think that if anybody really wanted to destroy Atlantia, that one wouldn't be so stupid and attack head-to-head, where the weapon mounts also are placed. After all in VS you wouldn't attack a Tesla from the front, cause you'd get blasted to bits. And the ship carries a lot of it's own fighters and bombers. So I think it's protected well enough already.

Nice find, Chuck, does anybody know how to translate the terminology used in the tutorials?

Sunfire · Post by **Sunfire** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 10:50 am

ok.... first of all... if it had no wings it would look pretty stupid.... (LOOK its a giant cigar! or... pen.... or something more obscene!)

i understand what youre saying about reality.... but in reality the best design for a ship would be a sphere.... the least amount of exposed space, plus the best pressure distribution, plus easiest to defend, plus the list goes on.... but how BORING would that be? every ship is a sphere... everything from fighters to space stations.... all you see are spheres everywhere.... (pretty easy to model too...)

some somewhat to lesser creative ideas for the wings:

has to do with 'jump field' generation.... (tachyons or quantum or whatever

) the ship itself must be able to transport smaller craft flying seperately in the same 'jump'. you need the wings to provide a scaffold for generating the MASSIVE field...

projecting array for the 'psy' ability of flight control (forget the name of the charechter tho.. byrn i think.... but she can 'sense' 40 light years out)

is necissary for navigation through the sub-space corridors (to the crew its instantanious but to flight control its an hour or so...)

hate to say storage space/manufacturing/resource processing/fuel storage but its there...

maybe the engines need a linear 2d path for combustion .9c is a WHOLELOTTA energy for a ship that size....

or in the same vein, the ships sublight drives have a core in each wing and the wings are modular. so that in the case of a 'critical' type event it can be jettisoned (a ship lost ~20,000 people because a core went critical. only ~200 survived... youd think they would design a ship with the ability to jettison the core after that....) plus you could still limp away on one engine....

if i were desiging the ship id probably truncate the wings a bit and make the bridge look less like a star destroyer bridge from star wars.... but ITS NOT MY DESIGN! as it is, it kicks as!!

altho one suggestion i do have is for there to be fighter only bays in the front, top, and sides... if youre going to defend a ship that size and you use fighters to do it, you need to get thet firepower out there and covering all angles as fast as you can.... if nothing else.. then probably on the seam in the sides

if you want a flying cigar in the novel and game that youre creating... then get to making it!

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 12:23 pm

Kangaroo22 wrote:Nice find, Chuck, does anybody know how to translate the terminology used in the tutorials?

Google, Wikipedia, Dictionary, ...

æþeling · Post by **æþeling** » Sun Apr 16, 2006 1:32 pm

Sunfire, that kinda makes sense...thanks for explaining. I kinda agree, it would look boring without wings

(btw, I'm not the guy who voted it's rubish lol)

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 11:23 am

...And it would be necessary for atmospheric flight.

....

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 11:46 am

The ship won't fly in aerospace - way too big.

æþeling · Post by **æþeling** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 2:08 pm

Oblivion wrote:...And it would be necessary for atmospheric flight. ....

If a planet would be big enough to support an atmosphere big enough for atlantia to fly in, it's gravity would be so big even atlantia couldn't fly in it's atmosphere or anywhere relatively close without facing avay from the surface and all engines running on full power. Also, taking off from such a big planet might be difficult. And due to it's immense gravity, there definetely wouldn't be any humans living on it.

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Mon Apr 17, 2006 2:18 pm

That applies to the fact that almost all ships will be made in space stations, not planets. Atlantia is not an exception.

Oblivion · Post by **Oblivion** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 10:25 am

Sorry, thought the "No Wings" idea applied to all the spaceships and not solely on Atlantia. ...and guess I underestimated the Atlantia's size

Kangaroo22:

That applies to the fact that almost all ships will be made in space stations, not planets. Atlantia is not an exception.

and why is that? Playing VS, it seems that docking on planetside spaceports is as easy as docking with spacestations. Shouldn't antigrav and/or better air friction shielding (

I'm nitpicking: Shields can withstand impact of space dust, which is just as hazardous as big asteroids, so why not the atmosphere?) already be invented VS-time?[/quote]

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 2:12 pm

I meant it about Chrisdn's mod "Atlantia - Before the Dawn"

Post by **chuck_starchaser** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:11 pm

Oblivion wrote:Sorry, thought the "No Wings" idea applied to all the spaceships and not solely on Atlantia. ...and guess I underestimated the Atlantia's size

Kangaroo22:
That applies to the fact that almost all ships will be made in space stations, not planets. Atlantia is not an exception.
and why is that? Playing VS, it seems that docking on planetside spaceports is as easy as docking with spacestations. Shouldn't antigrav and/or better air friction shielding ( I'm nitpicking: Shields can withstand impact of space dust, which is just as hazardous as big asteroids, so why not the atmosphere?) already be invented VS-time?

[/quote]

And how exactly do shields work? Just because you can think of something it doesn't mean that, given enough time, it will be invented. Doesn't matter how long scifi writers go on writing about time machines, they will never exist, period. Nor will these force-field kind of "shields" that deflect particles, much less asteroids.

Kangaroo · Post by **Kangaroo** » Tue Apr 18, 2006 3:14 pm

chuck_starchaser wrote:And how exactly do shields work? Just because you can think of something it doesn't mean that, given enough time, it will be invented. Doesn't matter how long scifi writers go on writing about time machines, they will never exist, period. Nor will these force-field kind of "shields" that deflect particles, much less asteroids.

Interesting, I remember that you said that your cargo ship will have shields for protecting all the small parts that you have. Then I thought - wouldn't full power military lasers (not the plasma coils) make excelent long-range weaponry for large ships?

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Atlantia-the rework(ignore other one- forgot the poll)

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