The ship designer is out now in the the alpha 2.0 patch, so when have a that ship designed feel free to post it here and so others can see what kind of cool things you can build with it.
The Huge Hull version.
Here are some of mine. First a bunch of medium hulled frigates and a troop transport followed by large hull cruisers. All of these were inspired by various pictures of scifi ships, series or fanfic. Special thanks to Gauntlet and the endless number of small trinket components he has put forth. I use them liberally to give my ships tiny details.
This one's my first attempt at creating an actually good looking ship with a spinning section. The central ring of that medium scout in my earlier message does not have a spinning section. This one does. I wanted to make a "low tech" early game frigate. You know, one of those "how do we into artificial gravity" -vessels.
Nice ships Rectunator, good job!
Something big. Something even bigger. Something huge! I spent a while making a new huge hulled vessel that works either as a fleet support or a straight up battleship variant for my Republic of Mannerheim Navy.
Next up is one of my large carrier designs. This one is a bit different since I went horizontal instead of vertical. All my ships use tiny parts from Gauntlet03's excellent race mod, so special thanks to him. I'm also uploading the designs I like to Steam workshop, so if you see something you like you can get it there.
This next one is huge. I think this is the best ship I've created so far. I needed a huge centerpiece for my medium fleets so here it is. A combined carrier/battleship -design: the Invictus class dreadnought. This is the only ship class I named in my steam workshop collection.
And these are some small hulled corvettes. Apart from the first one they are a bit old though. I should create some more up to date designs.
Propably my best medium hull up to date. I'm pretty proud of this one. I've uploaded all my designs I like to steam workshop. So if you see something you like, go get it.
Very nice! I like them.... very B5 Warlock...
Also glad to hear someone uses all those trinkets!
Enjoying the new ship parts, especially the tendrils...
*Gasp* The master has noticed me! What parts are those? They look very interesting. Also here's yet another one. I wanted to take that latest medium design even further + I needed a new large hull. ...and then halfway through I remembered the Amarr Abaddon from EVE online and wanted to try out something. I think it turned out fine, even though I'm not happy with the nose. The angled sides together with a pointy nose are a pain in the ass to get right. If you have any pro tips, I'd be happy to hear them.
Those parts are from the Heroes of Star Control DLC.
I sadly don't have tips on those nose designs... I often have the same problem and I just keep fiddling. Sometimes I cheat and put angled armor extensions to cover the joint enough that you don't SEE the issue.
I like the design with the exception of the bottom... I don't like the entirely flat level profile... unless there is a reason for that. I think just some antennae or such would help with that. Just my opinion.
Everytime I see such good ships I start to be depressed, I will never make something as good as this
Still, in my little corner, I keep trying to cook up some designs that (I hope) someone could like. That said, I announce to you that I officially started the work on a new shipset!
For this set I decided again for a structural theme: this time, it's the fact that the ship is composed by two parallel "decks" (a "primary" one and a smaller "secondary" one) interlocked by a joint. The two decks are placed one above the other, sometimes the Primary is higher, sometimes it's lower. Also, to furter distinguish them, the primary is painted in the primary color, will the secondary is painted in the secondary.
The first ships I show you are, of course, the Tiny hulls. However this time there's a difference: due to the particular theme, all the designs I managed to think ended up too similar one another. For this reason, instead of 4 designs, I limited the choice to only 2.
The first is a general one, used by Beam, Kinetic and Missile, the difference being the type of armament installed in the secondary deck below (first Beam, then Kinetic and Missile).
https://ibb.co/h2kXxY9
https://ibb.co/L6YXm7m
https://ibb.co/2NyQzKQ
The second is, of course, the Balance version (in this case, the secondary deck is the upper part of the tail, where the thruster are placed).
https://ibb.co/jyGbBpB
Feel free to comment.
Well I appreciate the compliment! I would bear in mind, if my ships look complicated, its often because I'm using a LOT of custom parts... at this point I have a pretty vast library of parts to call upon for adding complication very quickly. What was new and somewhat challenging with that ship was the "Form" of the vessel. I'll come back to that.
I for one always look forward to seeing your ships. You always put some thought into them and you clearly have passion for it.
I do want to say though, that most of your ships are striking a level of detail just above stock-galciv ships. Your designs are more ... "solid" in that they don't cut corners... everything connects as it should and you seem to take care to have good scaling and components.
But I do think that the basic "Form" of each of your ships is suffering from not using enough parts. Now that could be intentional, perhaps you want to keep things at a certain level of simplicity, but if that isn't the case, I'd recommend putting more effort into matching styles and shapes of parts into each other.
For example, the first screenshot you gave, I like the overall profile, pretty classic Tri-Wing design. The side wings are radically different than the top fin... they are curved, the top is pretty angular. The cockpit is curved (has some clipping going on in the nose-cone) and is jutting out of a square shape. Those inconsistencies in form create dissonance in my opinion and holds the design back.
If the wings are curved, the fin would likely be curved, if on the other hand the main body is square... which is the cockpit hull so rounded? Sometimes changing style and form in a ship or shape can enhance a design, but quite often it detracts and it's really hard to figure that out. I have a whole ship-set I'll be releasing soon that I think fell into this trap BIG TIME. I invested enough in it that I finished it... but I F-ing hate it. Whereas, I also have a new set, where I really successfully married sections of detail with square and flat components, with areas of simplicity with beautiful curves that contrast, and I love it.
Its very difficult to get right and different people have different tastes.
The last screenshot in your post... much better and coherent in my opinion, love it! That's my 2 cents for you. You do great work, so I'm always watching.
Thanks for the suggestions Gauntlet, I really appreciate them!
I reworked a bit the frame and now I think it's better (here is the new Scout option I created)
https://ibb.co/fQd4kRP
The big obstacle in this set is that I decided to use mainly Krynn parts to build it and they have the double problem of too squared shapes and weird textures that make difficult to match them with other parts (maybe only the Snathi work well with them). I'll try to see if I can put together something better for the next tiers.
I agree, that new one is a lot more consistent in design and I think that really helps it come together. Also... yeah... GC3 is weird in that each set of parts can radically look different than each other in material properties or textures... despite the fact that we have settings for that. It would be nice if all the parts were really one universal set of parts, and that they reacted uniformly the same to the material and color settings of the scheme. This way everything would blend together better and we could be more creative. I love a lot of the snathi parts, but they reflect color in a very saturate way compared to others so I need to be careful how I use them.
That's pretty sweet.
Here is my new one. I did a 4 in 1 design to simulate the unit being a fleet of ships.
Have you thought of doing a pirate ship being attacked by a space kraken? With asteroids of course... and then making that an anomaly lol?
No, but now that you said that I think I will make a space kraken as one of the units in this set. That's awesome.
[Liam Neeson Mode on]
Release the Kraken!
[Liam Neeson Mode off]
Ok, jokes aside, nice jobe Helm.
Now, to continue with my new set, here's the Small Hull tier. In this frame, the secondary deck is placed at the bottom of the ship and is equipped with a set of secondary thrusters and a turret (notice its colors reprise the colors of the section - mmm, on a second thought, maybe I should change the basic palette I will use for this set, with this one the difference between the two decks is less visible).
https://ibb.co/yF6DqKB
https://ibb.co/SmKq9vx
https://ibb.co/TK2qTfM
https://ibb.co/gyM4thC
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