The Hiigaran destroyer from HW2 had turrets, was boxy and rugged looking, but it still had an appealing design. "Ugly" can have a menacing appeal; see for example the A-10 Warthog. Large and clunky can look great, e.g., Star Destroyer, Sulaco.

In contrast, the Kodiak and other TEC ships look goofy. They lack a sense of proportion and design that make other, similarly themed ships look good, the Sulaco being an excellent example.

I have to say, the Imperial craft in Battlefleet Gothic (the Warhammer 40K space battle system) have my favorite look when it comes to gritty warmaking hellraisers.

Not sure what that has to do with anything as I'm sure TEC won't get a re-design to look similar...

But if they ARE civi craft...why so ugly? Why are civies jetting around on crapcraft? Shouldn't they be the ones with pretty ships? Okay, so make the ship look like a pretty thing with armor and weapons implanted. ::shrug::

Maybe the Kodiak was a garbage hauler?

People should look at the beta and pre-beta screen shots. They redesigned the ships several times at least (thankfully). The early designs were horribly bad. However some designs I still don't think got enough time. Kodiak in particular. The drone ship, while I don't like it's aesthetic (space snail ftw!) was obviously designed that way very intentionally and that a snail or sea critter of some sort was the inspiration.

There is no reason that someone couldn't do a redesign of some ships. Obviously Iron Clad/Stardock isn't going to do it because it cost a pretty penny to pay someone to do a redesign.

I'm all for ship mods done by talented people. Bring em on!

The Sulaco and Homeworld designs were done by some of the highest paid people in their professions. I don't think a company like Iron Clad or Stardock would even consider hiring such expensive talent. Contrary to what people believe, art is hard work and the best designers are very expensive in this industry. All the best designs you ever salivated over were probably done by someone who is a top tier designer in the industry. There is a reason why smaller companies art assets are never quite as good as the stuff you see in AAA titles.

Add my vote to redesign the kodiak

Artists are highly paid? When did that happen?

Alright, whipped up 4 basic change ideas. I'm not going to spend anymore time on them than I already have.

what do you think?

Defence Vessel Reverted the tail to have a sleek look and feel.

Aegis Drone Ship This ship was the most work as it was quite possibly the ugliest spaceship I have ever seen in a video game. My warped redesign retains the sleek feeling the Advent should have.

Garda Flak Looked like a dumb rowboat before. Now, it's a space faring vessel which still retains it's civilian origins. Note: added autocannons doesn't mean it should have higher damage output. leave the specs as they are.

Kodiak Cruiser It used to be a floating tank brick. Now, it's a badass warship yet still retaining the fat brick idea. A dorsal cannon makes more sense to imply the cannon is not a turret, but a fixed forward weapon.


Look at that, 4 simple changes. and every ship is already improved. No massive remodelings, no intensive retexturings. DONE.

ok, one more becuase I'm on a roll.

Javelis LRM The sloped neck of the Javelis was completely unecessary and lacked any obvious reason why anyone (civilian or military) would design it to have one. when designing Alien ships you can get get away with such minor oddities (see, Defence Vessel, Aegis Drones, Purge Vessel, etc) because it's an alien culture. When designing a human space race you have to retain a sense of believability that we, in our future, would build such a thing.

i really like the advent designs, and the flak is nice as well...

kodiak still looks like something that just jumped off a railtrack... and btw, what you did is a ventral gun, not a dorsal one.

There is a 100% chance that Iron Clad and StarDock WONT make a patch because of a few ships that a few people think look bad(and fewer still are those who agree on all the ships that need changing).

@Staticstarter: Hey man, rly cool designs you got there. I know a thing or two about 3DSMax and is quite interested in helping out.



Still trying to figure out the hardpoints atm..

The Aeria Drone Host looked better in the original version. It was supposed to be 'in your face' from the start, with the round thing in front being the rotary hangar and the round thing in the back being the drone factory that takes over 2 minutes just to put together a simple bomber squadron. The 'head' was supposed to be the control room from which the ship was piloted and drones were controlled. But this 'redesigned' one is just plain bulbous.

The Garda Flak looks like a dumb rowboat because it is a dumb rowboat with some guns bolted on. The original design was perfectly fine, but this redesign is better.

The Defense Vessel has been severely improved. It was hideous before. The Kodiak has also been improved.

As for the Javelis, it was perfectly fine before and the original look was better.

Also, the Advent ARE humans. Both the TEC and Advent are human civilizations in this game. They with different goals, different cultures, different outlooks, and different ethics, but they have the same history for 500k years of human existence, splitting off only in the last millennium and returning for vengeance in the game.

Hope someone can change the look of the TEC ships, as exclusive TEC player, are the ugliest vessels ever. A more Homeworld look will be amazing!

in real life long ships would be harder and take longer to turn due to inertia so you would have it short and lick a volvo (a flying brick) but the defence vessel looks good now

Sorry to question, but why would a longer ship have more inertia? Is it necessarily more massive? They might be harder to turn, but because of the large radius, but not due to inertia, right? Or am I speaking through my left kidney?

Is there any way to just re-skin the vessels? Like grab the Star Destroyer models from a mod and use them to replace the graphic of whatever ship you don't like? Or is there coding involved?

Wrong image and forum code grab the direct link and use the tags (insert bracket)img(insert bracket) (insert bracket)/img(insert bracket)

Here look:

@Bertl
Thanks for the correction. It's Ventral, not dorsal. Don't know marine biology terminology!

@Bubb9
I agree, Ironclad will not waste time/money on this. unless it's for an expansion pack to sell. This is a shout out to you guys, the game's mod community, to take the inititive and remodel them. I see all this talk about Star Wars, Star Trek, Gundam, blah, blah, etc. Why take on such a huge mod project (which would take months or a year to complete) when these model can be simply and easily corrected?

@FalShia
Feel free to use my ideas if you want. Just give me cred. reuse the original mesh as much as you can and the existing textures. That will cut down the remodeling time.

@PeskyFly
Ask the TEC if the Advent are human. One could argue they are not and they are genetic monsters. I would imagine the Advent would hate to be called human- as humans are inferior. Gorilla's and Humans are related gorilla's still aren't classified as human. It's semantics, anyways...

@Fear100
The laws of physics have never been realistically applied in video games. There's no friction in space, so objects move indefinitely until they collide with an object. Spacecraft don't come to a full stop unless retro thrusters are fired. The point is, the general concensus in sci-fi is large capital ships are lumbering and slow to turn, whereas fighters are fast and agile. I wouldn't be to concerned with things like inertia and mass.

Artists with talent and who have a business sense are highly paid. Most "artists" in the purest sense of the word are flakes, or don't want to "sell out" (yet, they want money. how does that work?) These types also don't know how to network or have the skills to make connections to the business world. Those are the artists that are poor.

I think the textures need more work than anything. But for the record, i think all of the ships are well-made and reflect what their jobs are. yes, even that Kodiak tank thing. Besides, having them less pretty is better for your frame-rate during those big-ass fleet battles. I am sure we would all be pissed if Stardock pulled a crytek and made everything too pretty for anyone to run, so lets all just be happy that the game is as pretty as it is while running as good as it does.

yeah but nobody's talking about technical prettiness, just discussing the merits/demerits of the designs themselves. An appealing design philosophy requires no additional system overhead, as in - there's no reason why the models or textures need be more complicated, just different. - take the same number of assets and rearrange them.

And yeah, Ironclad hits some home runs with the Sova and the Kol, but whiffed on the ships mentioned above. Especially the Kodiak. Its not ugly, its simplistic and cute, like a cheap toy gathering dust under your little brother's bed.

Static Starter's 'quick revisions are in some cases far better than the stock designs. Since Sins' models are understandably low poly and relatively simple - maybe some great alternative models'll crop up soon.

Nice work there Static starter on the tec stuff. Though I'm not sure about changing the neck on the LRM ship. Don't forget that silhouettes of a design is important.




Either you know nothing about the reality of skilled artists or you are a bitter no talent hack. Try bringing your skill up and getting some business sense and you won't have to be so surprised that skill makes money.

lets see...

Local graphic designer here makes $60 an hour. He isn't even at the upper skill level for his profession.

Animators, concept designers, and 3d cg artist make about $50,000-$200,000 a year depending on skill level, experience and how in demand they are. If your a newb you'll start out around 50k a year in the states. If your experienced you can make much much more.

So 50k isn't exactly highly paid, but I would think of $100,000 or more a year as highly paid. If your single that's more money than you know what to do with. Also your pay scale depends on who you work for. Little crap shack game company probably isn't going to give you more than 50k a year at best. EA, Rockstar, ILM, Dreamworks, Pixar etc... will easily net you top tier paying positions. The folks at Weta during the Lotr days and later were making a pretty penny. So it depends but overall, yes artist do make good money. If you are a deluded college student who went through a crappy art program and didn't put the time into your work like the way someone who's studying to be a doctor does then yeah...your going to be sorely disappointed.

PS: Freelance/contract work can net you even more money. I netted myself $500 for six hours of work when a local designer needed to outsource some extra work.

LOL
it's not really your designs, you've cut and pasted sections of someone elses work.

Hrmm.. we can't use thumbnails on this forums? A little warped but okay, i'll tray again.

Garda Flak Frigate
[http://img247.imageshack.us/img247/5231/screenshot0copyht1.jpg][/img]