Well, pending figuring out what the hell to do with the cockpit of the ship project "Centurion Remodel(or whatever the hell else you think it looks best as)", the Warthog remodel has caught my attention.

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn163/Fediroc/Hog1.jpg

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn163/Fediroc/Hog1A.jpg

Currently at about 700 polys. Including the polywhore that is the gatling.

Modeling isn't done yet, and the eagle-eyed of you might notice that the texturing isn't complete.

A few things internally I'm trying to do differently:

1: One ship, one object.
It'll make UV mapping hell, but should create less support files, and may be easier for anyone wanting to use it for their projects.

2: Lower polys without reducing detail.
More reliance on bumpmaps to achieve detailing. While the centurion came in at about 500 polys less than the Revenant per my limited info, less polys is always a good thing.

3: Modeled detail to be more integrated.
I have a nasty habit not integrating detail, and rather letting it float on primary surfaces, instead of integrating the detail into the surface. The thrusters on the Centurion are a clear example of that.

I likes alot.

Sweet man. I love specialty ships.

Would it be possible to make the gatling less dominant? I realize that it is probably one of if not the most important design factors you have in mind, but it really breaks the lines for me.

The same goes for the winglets, which look a bit like the wings attached to breton helmets to me. However, if you move them to a low-wing position, you might get closer to the BSG Viper/VO Warthog look you apparently want to get away from.

Yeah, the gun is expected to size-down. I'm working on the ass end at the moment, but I'll get to it.

The wings... I need to find a better idea for them. my original idea which I attempted to illustrate was angled armor plates which protected thrusters, but that increased the forward signature to an unacceptable level.

My next concept is a pair of forward-swept wings mounted on the forward fuse, either on the payload-bearing forward "Duckbill", or underneath the cockpit. That may really balance out the visual shape.

(edit, those wings have got to change. i just did applied a smoothing effect to the entire ship, and it looks suspiciously like a hogs head. damn you, subliminal mind)

That is one ugly ship! Like it's namesake I guess.
Oink oink

I like it:)

hmmm i love it but the desing isn't suited for the Warthog
since it looks far too large and would make a much better hornet or atlas

Really? Think it's too large?

-runs off to take some 'shots-

http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn163/Fediroc/hog1B.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn163/Fediroc/compare.jpg
http://i304.photobucket.com/albums/nn163/Fediroc/hogsideortho.jpg

I dunno... By my estimation, it might be a bit shorter. I colored in the cockpit canopy and shaded the possible door location grey to give you an idea of human size. That'd cockpit'd be pretty cramped.

Let me know what you guys think of the scale and the gun revamp. We're still early enough to be able to ditch work and start fresh, or do drastic changes to it.

Size is just fine. I agree, something needs to be done about those winglets. You're right, it really does look like a hog's head! Except it's got nostrils on top of its nose.

For the gatling gun, if you had a more complete case around the gun, and only the tip sticking out (the way the do it in the A-10, for example) it would resolve some polygon issues and make the lines sleeker.

Looks a bit like a bottle on its side to me.

Why oh why do you keep suggesting remodels, instead of new models? It's not like the game has a bagillion ship models and we are out of names. It makes no sense to me why the devs would even want to change things instead of add things. One makes the game more appealing, one leaves it pretty much as it is while consuming developer resources.

How many models of cars are there any way? I know Audi (One manufacture) plans to push its line up to 40 models by 2015.

If this was bigger, and heavier, it could possibly be a single purpose ship that's nose gun shoots those big glowing balls of death that the Teradon fires.

Capital ship bottleneck aggressor perhaps

That would be a cool idea, PsyRa. It could be somewhat slow and lumbering but with decent armor. It would be crap in a duel unless it got the first hit. Also it would be the first player pilotable ship that could be a threat to a cap ship. I bet people hunt queens in it, too; hopefully there'd be enough fast bots to make that hard.

I think it looks good, especially if it was designed for the name. The overall impression I get from it, in terms of function, is of a very maneuverable fighter with poor armor, incredible turbo max speed (would be acceleration, but I've got to keep the fudging in line with how the game fudges on the physics), and high normal speed. The role I see such a craft taking would be a fortress/capship buster- The entire purpose is to get a heavy weapon in range, use it, and withdraw before it can be targeted.

I do feel that putting weapons directly into the ship model is a bad idea. There are simply too many different weapons currently in the game for any one design on a ship to adequately express them. Ideally, the weapon design and the ship design would be separate, allowing for the look of your ship to subtly change when you equip different weapons- or don't have a weapon equipped at all. You can always apply the Kill-O-Zap Gun design philosophy instead- the weapon itself is simply there, but through clever additions of useless parts, it clearly has a Wrong End to be on. Unfortunately, that defeats the low poly count goal.... Tradeoffs, tradeoffs...

I like the nozzles, but they bug me, because in the "official" backstory, these people have moved beyond chemical rockets to gravitic engines. So no need for maneuvering thrusters.

"Why oh why do you keep suggesting remodels, instead of new models?"

Because,

"I like the nozzles, but they bug me, because in the "official" backstory, these people have moved beyond chemical rockets to gravitic engines. So no need for maneuvering thrusters."

I'd rather screw up learning what this universe is all about on a remodel than screw up on a totally original model. Also, it makes people go "No! That won't work because we like this this and this!" Both required for future study.

Damn. So thrusters are no. .. crap. two meshes to re-do.

Wait, why do we have engine thrusters at all then?

Chaos: I checked, adding more of a shroud would increase polys, unless I completely encased the nose. I'll mull over the issue some more, and see if I can come up with a solution. Winglets are being worked on.

PsyRa: I have no idea what the devs are thinking. I can imagine that they'd want to at least update the graphics of current ships so they don't look like they were created on the fly to provide filler for a great game engine.

IRS: Really? I always see slab-sided ships as being more armored than rounded ones. Hard angles, to me, denote resolute protection. Or age. Frequently, both. Personal opinion, this looks to me like a somewhat slow, decently maneuverable, heavily armored nugget(anyone get the reference?). Your opinion is more valuable than mine, so let me know so I can make sure that's how you think. As for the weapon, yeah, it's really damn specific, eh? I'm operating on the notion that eventually your weapon choice will be visualized on your ship.

moldyman: Thanks. I'll look into the thrusters and see if there's some sort of grav booster thing to replace all these damn nozzles.

hehe. Could just call them gravity well projectors, or some such. Less nozzle-y, more like a bump?

Ah, this is the sort of thing I like, digging right down the the base assumptions we all make in design. It's not the angles that make me think poorly armored- it's the exposure of critical elements. The gun, cockpit, and engines all look severely vulnerable. The gun, because there's no under-armor for it that I can see (might just be because no under-image has shown up yet); the cockpit, because it's got so much 'viewport', which is traditionally considered a weak point; the engines, because the thrust-vectoring flaps on the end are completely unarmored (again, this might be rendered completely moot by a gravitic drive replacement, if our collective heads can figure out exactly what that should look like).

To me, "armor" isn't so much an angular element, but a "ooh, this bit is fragile and important, so we'd better cover it up" element. A well-armored ship to me looks rather drab- a flying/floating brick, if you may. If I was designing it, I'd make the gun fully surrounded, reduce the viewport to a few slits, and extend a rear armor "skirt" so it covers the engines up to the start of the projecting flaps. So, I'm agreeing on the principle of slabs = armor, but feel that the current design doesn't have enough slabs -in the right places- to make it truly "armored".

Actually, thinking about it a bit more, both the design as-is and my concept of armor could both be incorporated- the current look could be the standard model, and the one I'm envisioning could be the Mk. whatever (Armored Variant).

On another design issue I see, you might want to make the line defined by the gun go right through the middle of the engines, rather than the angle I see on the side view. Firing the big honkin' gun like that, as is, would keep pushing the ship slightly downward in addition to back, and without an exact match in force directions, it'll make the ship much harder to control and almost impossible to aim past the first few rounds without an absurdly complex series of maneuvering thruster firings.

And on a final note, you're the guy actually doing the hard work, while I'm just another internet critic. You'll never be able to please all the internet critics, as we're subject to contraindicative suggestions on a regular basis. My best suggestions on the matter are to keep plenty of reference pictures of real planes with the desired function at hand, design from an "intended use" standpoint, and keep the basic physical motion and force laws rattling around in active memory.

I think there was a sort of a consensus on why we have turbo thrusters, but not attitude correction thrusters (but I might as well be wrong, and I very possibly am). In any case, here is how I see it:

Ship propulsion is achieved via the use of gravity well creation, which pulls the ship into any given direction. Rotation is achieved by creating two gravity wells at once at opposing 'lever' points of the ship (this is how moment is defined in basic engineering mechanics). That would also allow maintaining the 'thrusters' you already incorporated into your designs, Fediroc.

For superstandard velocities (i.e. anything beyond 75 m/s), newtonian engines are necessary, perhaps highly advanced ion drives. This is where the explanation has to be supported by more than just suspended disbelief because there would be no top speed (obviously). A technobabble kludge would perhaps include the point that the gravity well generator may not be shut off and creates 'drag' once ships reach a certain velocity, because the well lags behind the ship (the generator/projector cannot keep up with the ship's velocity).

In any case, the Warthog remodel just does not look good to me, mostly because of the wings and the 'missing jaw'.

Perhaps scrap this one and start anew?

It doesn't look enough like the warthog. Perhaps the Revenant, though?

I don't really think it fits the whole "warthog" feel.

IRS: I couldn't put it better. Realistically all the ships would be spheres and cubes, but that's boring so it won't do.

ingoguy15: I assume you're joking.

toshiro: Good point, and it brings up a thought I had about the gravity engines and turbo in general. This really belongs in Suggestions, but ok. I think all ships should have Newtonian engines (with fuel and everything), with a top force but no top speed. Turbo would simply act to multiply the current speed and acceleration (theoretically by shrinking the distance needed to get between points) by a number. Turbo drives could be upgraded (with diminishing returns). They would consume power based on mass/speed increase. So two upgrades would be speed increase and efficiency. As soon as turbo is switched off, the speed returns to being multiplied by one. (A new thought that just occurred to me is a weapon that makes a field of reverse turbo, multiplying speeds by less than one.)

Here's why this is relevant to design: We can keep our rocket/jet-looking Newtonian engines, and assume that the gravity based turbo drive is fully contained at the core of the ship, and has no effect on design and is well protected.

One more note: It makes sense that encasing it more increases polys. Since the polys in the gun are all rods, you're just hiding them and not helping anything. Oh, well! Maybe make it a single cylinder with a texture that simulates polys. Not an ideal cheat, but it could look ok.