Well, I made the cockpit a happy little egg-shaped ball for a reason. Modern aircraft are assembled with a variety of components with different manufacturer names stenciled on them, but you don't see that because the aerodynamic skin is made by a single manufacturer in most cases.

However, since the components can be more readily visible in space, I attempt to make obviously separate components visually different. You can notice that the paint for the engine pods look different than the rest of the craft, even though the paint is the same. Why? Different materials, perhaps. I originally had the blue chevrons peeling off more and in a different fashion as well until my girlfriend peered over my shoulder and said they looked "Ugly". That was enough to make me change it with upmost haste.

Yes, you guys give nonconstructive criticism=me for the most part ignore you.
Girlfriend gives nonconstructive criticism=me change quickly.

It has to be this way for reasons I hope are obvious. :P

I believe my criticism was constructive. You said "I've been sufficiently distracted from the Centurion(and it's rather annoying cockpit issue; I feel there is something wrong with it, but can't think up a better design". I shared my suggestions on that specific issue.

Whoa, dude, I wasn't referring to you. I was pointing to my previous post, and making a joke about how my girls criticism sucks.

Your input has been awesome. Hell, your last message was nothing BUT your opinion on the mesh itself, and how you think it'd look better.

I just filled you in on my(probably flawed) consideration of it.

I think a fin would fill it nice, but I have to make the fin 1, not poly intensive, 2, not really noticeable, unless you guys like the japanese style of spaceships.

One of my wings windows is the Centurion, and I have a sketchpad full of altering cockpit designs(one of them looks great, but I can't make the model look right to save my life)

So, any chance we can all forward our suggestions to your girlfriend, and she can make them to you?

Instead of a fin, maybe put sensory equipment or weapons underneath and protruding forward from the cockpit. Also maybe make it slightly longer and square off the back and either top or bottom just a bit. I think a subtle difference would go a long way. Also make it slightly bigger in relation to the wings.

As for flight sims, I haven't played one since Hellcats Over the Pacific, whose engine was later evolved into the one for A-10 Attack! Yes, my favorite flight simulator was a Mac-only game from seventeen years ago. I think each plane model had something like five polygons, proving that gameplay is vastly more important than graphics, though it is graphics that initially makes most people interested. Gameplay keeps them. Too bad that doesn't run in OSX.

Heh, my girl is actually rather interested in this thread for some odd reason. She thinks I need to be rid of the cockpit altogether.

I think you're on to something with the weapons coming from the front of the ship. A friend of mine also has the idea that the reason it sticks out so damn much is because there is no bumpmap like the rest of the ship, so no minute details. He points out the TIE fighter from SW fame as an example of a cockpit ball(god that sounds awful) that still comes off as detailed and fitting with a boxy rest of the craft.

I was also thinking of a thruster pack at the rear of the cockpit, and even experimented with placement of it at one point. Alas, it increased the polygons an obscene amount(the thrusters make up about a third of the polys as is at this point). But it looked good, and provided quite a bit of visual balancing.

I think I might have an idea that just came to mind which will provide thrusters(that hopefully look better than the ones on there now), enlongate and detail the craft. Must sketch.

I just did a mental count(that's when you know it's good) and if my memory serves, the hellcats in HOtP had 28 polygons. Hellcats was a fun game, for sure.

Of course, back then such graphics drew people in and the gameplay kept them talking about it seventeen years later. :P I distinctly remembering how much an improvement the A-10 Attack! graphics were over HOtP. Then game the glide version of F/A-18... the rest is history. Ahh, what was possible with a Quadra 700, a CH Pro stick, and a Radius Tilt monitor.

I think all the fighters should be remote-control robots. That would make the lack of permanent death plausible, and would make sense. In the future, if you could choose between sending your best pilot out in a ship that's likely to be destroyed despite his skill, plus you have to install life support, worry about a cockpit, and limit the maneuverability of the thing so you don't kill your pilot with g-forces, or having that same pilot fly a fighter by remote from a nearby cap ship at relatively low risk, what would you do?

Why have pilots at all? That would be because they have better reasoning skills and creativity than an AI, at the cost of slower reflexes and less ability to multitask. The pilots would have to be nearby, so the signal delay wouldn't be severe. Maybe characters could permanently die if they die in a cap ship or station that is destroyed? To rebase your home station you'd have to either hitch a ride on a cap ship or charter a passenger ship (from which you could control your fighter as an escort, but if the passenger ship blows up your fighter is drifting and you're dead). This would add a lot of depth and a new option for play style (passenger transport in addition to miner, pirate, etc.) and a new exciting element of risk to the game. And you could get rid of the nonsensical cockpit, ball or otherwise.

Once again I've turned something into a suggestions forum topic.

Personally, in a universe with grav drives and likely inertia-negating seat warmers, I'd -much- rather have pilots. Yeah, humans don't have the reflexes, the intuitive mathmatics needed for perfect accuracy, or perfect memories full of every space combat discipline taught in known space. So what, at least I don't have to worry about squadrons of fighters being cut off from communications, and therefore being rendered useless junk, or worry about AI viruses that will lead to the subjugation of mankind under a steel gauntlet.

Fediroc, are you by any chance a long-time Mac user?

I wouldn't have weapons protrude from the ship, but instead have them concealed in the fuselage (much like the Browning MGs in Spitfire wings).

As for ship control, I always thought we had semi-sentient AI-supported flight (think GitS: SAC 2nd Gig, first ep).

I did own a long line of macs. Starting with a IIsi, then a Quadra 700, then on to a 1st revision iMac. That iMac, post modification, proved to be what set off my modeling gene when I came into possession of a copy of Specular Infini-D 4.5. At that point, I was already a longtime fan of Escape Velocity, and was eagerly awaiting Nova, for that matter.

I'm still waiting for someone to capture all that was possible in EV(and more), and wrap in in a 3D interface. Part of the big reason I'm here - hoping this will fit the bill.

While I'm no longer a Mac user(custom-building computers with ease lured me in), I still harbor an old-school Mac users abject hatred for Microsoft.

As for melding components into the ship, be them weapons, sensors, or personal vibrator holding compartments, the major concept behind modern aircraft manufacture is aerodynamics.

We don't need to worry about aerodynamics.

Quote (Fediroc): "As for melding components into the ship, be them weapons, sensors, or personal vibrator holding compartments, the major concept behind modern aircraft manufacture is aerodynamics.

We don't need to worry about aerodynamics."

No, but protection and cooling. I would think that a spaceship would require an internal cooling cycle, which would be facilitated if the objects to be cooled were incorporated into the ship, sicne you can transfer the heat to a centralized heat dissipator instead of having to have heatsinks all over the ship.

Well, protection must be balanced with mission-modularity. Our complete payloads /must/ be modular in nature, as it is a fair deal simpler to to have a mount point for a weapon package externally than it would be to have an internal mount point and manufacture dozens of armor plates specifically designed to allow for a certain weapon. Otherwise, the weapon manufacturer would be forced to manufacture it's own kits, and that leads to all kinds of compatibility issues.

This doesn't even take into account variants and the like.

I feel that cooling will always be the great divider between hard sci-fi and semi-hard or opera sci-fi. Look at the great designs incorporated into Attack Vector. The amount of effort that goes into discarding of waste heat on their designs.

Dealing with heat in the Vendetta universe is harsh. While we could integrate and call the armor as a whole the heat sink, armor in this universe gets absolutely -battered-. Between your average space debris and the frequency that armor gets beat on by weapons, along with the harsh climate of ion storms(just look at it, tell me that doesn't cause the squadrons paint team headaches?), I'm not sure if that's the best course of action.

Personally, I'm a fan of a single heatsink that converts the heat to the visible light spectrum, and is exhausted towards the rear.

Yes, that would make sense in that we have constant light emission from the rear. The problem is just that it would still require some sort of black body heat radiator to dissipate the remaining amount of heat from the heat->light transformation, but meh :)

This is where we need to suspend our disbelief again.

Heat is another one of those suggestions I made way back as something to be dealt with and could be a damage type. I'll justify this post here since putting the heat sink in the model is on-topic I guess.... If we can heat up 'roids, why can't we heat up ships? Imagine this:

To destroy an enemy nation's cap ship you just need to blow it up. But theoretically that wouldn't suit pirates very well. What if there was a large cap-ship-ish cargo ship, and you attacked it with a squadron of fighters with something like mining beams? Beams have extremely long ranges, and if you could accurately target a ship from, say, 5000m (only because that's maximum targeting range currently), and, battery permitting, keep a constant beam on the ship? The cabin and electronics would heat up to the point of killing the crew or disabling the ship or both. The escorts would have to be very quick to locate the pirates and engage them, since as soon as they take evasive action the beams are no longer a threat. The better a ship's heat handling system, the longer it would take to fatally wound the ship, and the faster it can recover. Maybe heat sinking doesn't even work at all in an ion storm, since you'd be transferring heat into hotter surroundings?

That's an interesting suggestion. I'm not sure if I'd want to incorporate heat management into the combat regimen, though. Might feel too much like MechWarrior. :D

That said, all of the designs ever posted here would realistically heat up and boil the passengers in fairly short order.

I've never played Mech Warrior, so I don't know. I doubt this game could ever feel like a ground combat game. People always complain that things like this would make things too complicated and scare away noobs, but I don't think so. Heat beam weapons would be useless in a duel, since they require constant contact with the target. They'd be an anti-capship weapon.

Kind of what makes me think about this kind of combat is pretty much anything by Larry Niven, who is one of my favorite hard sci-fi authors, and who also had the idea of four general purpose starship hulls that are blank slates to be customized.

Side note, I also found this game because I was searching for something to relieve the disappointment of EV-Nova, with it's nonsense storylines and the missed opportunities of true 3D and multiplayer capability. It's not nearly as replayable as they say, but the ship designs (the human ones at least) sure are cool. I love my Mod Starbridge! (Manticore is way cool, too.)

EV was never, ever meant to be 'true' 3D, PC, and ASW has continually stated that. I don't know if EVN would have been better if it had been made into 3D, I think it'd have turned vaporware.
As for the storylines, they are just too repetitive and slightly removed from actual gameplay.

No, at the end of the day I am glad EVN was not 3D. Yes, the storylines are senseless. I thought all the Escape Velocity storylines were senseless.

No, it was the perfect cap on a great game series, and I'm glad they never made it 3D. I played the 3D demo that Matt(I think it was Matt...) put together, and realized that for Escape Velocity to be 3D, it'd have to be something other than Escape Velocity.

As far as complex weapons, we only need to look towards the rampant success of EVE-Online to see what complexities do for a game of such scale.

Personally, I don't beleive EVE is complex -enough- to warrant it's popularity, and am eagerly awaiting something better.

I apologize is this was previously brought up, but jets are a form of exhaust vent, utilized for propulsion. They can look identical; your models need not be altered to accommodate the jet-less ships in the backstory, though you may consider redesigning them to resemble a structure primarily designed to remove heat as opposed to provide propulsion.

Fediroc said "Yeah, humans don't have the reflexes, the intuitive mathmatics needed for perfect accuracy, or perfect memories full of every space combat discipline taught in known space." The Backstory says "The Serco implemented a completely cybernetic system, as opposed to a manual Itani pilot interface, allowing their test pilots to jack directly into the ship control systems. With this virtually thought-based piloting system, they could perform incredible maneuvers with very fast reaction times". Additionally, I presume Itani monks might have talents nearing that or surpassing computer accuracy. (Some jobs such as Cymbal Making require a human intellect to guide the machines.) I believe that humans are capable of feats that require astounding calculations to render, such as you visualizing the room around you in top-notch graphics. Humans rely not, necessarily, on integers to perform some feats that machines achieve through strictly calculation.

Miharu said "A cube would be just as effective as a sphere or cone or pretty much anything else". An object rotates uniquely depending on its shape. Rotation is required for accurate tracking. A spheroid of the same mass as an ellipsoid may turn easier, however, the ellipsoid may present a smaller profile when facing a single target. I think shape, and therefor structure will play a role in mechanics, regardless of the presence of atmosphere.

Your ship looks like a Ragnarok. =)

Yeah, I know, people keep saying it looks more like a rag. I think once I get around to the rag, I'll pull this model out and modify it to be a Rag.

It's somewhat interesting: I was looking at a ship I did about, oh, four years ago. It was really popular at the time, but I felt that my software at the time wasn't up to the task of creating what I had in mind without a huge investment of time.

Now, with different software, I realized that re-creating that design would be simpler, and that the design would fit in with the Itani feel very well.

Screenshot soon, currently busy trying to get smoothed polycount down.

Anyone know how many polys the Valk weighs in at?

A billion.