Look at the pirates. It's been done;)

gah! ya know, the ability to edit post would be real nice.

Garda Flak Frigate

i agree with u on the heavy cruiser but the drone and the flak are both koo ships

the heavy cruiser looks liek a flying brick

My biggest problem with the model designs is not so much the models themselves but the nature of the guns mounted on the things.

The guns are huge and few in number, it makes the whole thing feel like a fighter model that has been increased in size a few times.

The ships have no real feel of SCALE in my opinion. You take anything other than the Cap ships and reduce them in size and it works fine. Kodiaks are larger than the light frigates yet is there really a sense of that in the design other than the fact that the model itself is bigger?

Those guns are just ridiculous in size! Look at the window lights on some of the ships and compare the relative size to the barrels that same ship has mounted. You're telling me in the future human have started mounting barrels that would, in the case of ballistic weapons, load ammo a couple hundred feet in diameter?

The gun sizes increase with the size of the ships which creates an odd sense of scale. I take Star Wars fleets for example: smaller frigates and corvettes mount the same KIND of weaponry (for the most part) as their larger counterparts, just fewer.

I just can't get the varied fleet feel from the aesthetic nature of these ships, they all have a sense that they SHOULD be the same size but aren't to poorly simulate different sizes of ships.

Also, there comes a point where what sounds logical from an in-universe standpoint needs to take a back seat to aesthetic and gameplay appeal.

is anyone going to allow anyone to download that wonderful new garda ship. It looks amazing.

I said "my ideas". I never said they were my designs.


@FalShia
Those screenshots look great! thanks for making my idea a reality.

Should I even TRY?

I'm not much of a fan of some of the ship models in this game. One of the problems I think, particularly with the TEC capitals, is that the window detailing makes them look too small. By the window sizes I wouldn't say that they're much longer than 300 meters. I think if you're going to call something a capital ship it needs to at least break the 1km mark.

Also while they do look functional, 'functional' doesn't necessarily have to mean 'lego blocks'.



That model probably consists of millions of polygons, so there's no way we'd get a ship to look that good in the game, but we could get pretty close with good normal mapping. EVE Online's recent graphics update made good use of normal mapping with nice results, and even some of their smallest ships look bigger than sins capitals because of the texture details



I've not long signed up for this forum and I haven't lurked much, so does anyone know what the limits on model polycount and texture resolution are?

@Irashi
That's a great looking Missle Cruiser. But, IMO the TEC capitals look great. They're beefy, lumbering, and utilitarian in design. They're the set of TEC ships that I think are fantastic they way they are and should be left alone.

The Kol is around 5000+ and the flak frigate around 1500+
Texture sizes seem to vary, Ariel Drone Host uses 1024x1024, the Kol uses 1024x2048.

imo these ships aren't exactly 'ugly' to warrant an official make over patch. But having optional alternatives isn't a bad thing.

I'm not certain, but one large reason the poly count on the ships aren't as massive as some other games, is for the fact the developers made it scaleable, as to allow lower end machines play the game, and play it well, which they've done a remarkable job of.

But i believe the engine is capable of more polygons, but just bare in mind if we did have thousands of polygons, and then if we ended up having large ammounts of ships on the screen it could lag some of the best of pc's, limiting the ammount of people able to play it.

But either way it would be interesting to see what the game could be like with eve level of detail and graphics.

This forum post is not about polycount, or hi-res quality of ships. That has never been my beef. It's been about the art design, and it's been about fixing the ugly units using the textures and model resources of the game to make it as easy as possible.

FalShia has agreed to work with me on creating a model pack. I intend to arrange the pack so the user can pick and choose which models they want to put into their game.

Yes. On ships that ply the stars, ships THAT size, with armor THAT thick, you need massive goddamn shells to do anything. I'm sure whole TEAMS of sweating work crews man each gun to load a shell after each shot.

though maybe they use autoloaders...::shrug::


Sorry to beat a dead horse here. But this is what I call cool design. (Love the Sins Cap Ships design anyhow, I just have a strange connection with these bad boys:)





MMmmm Gothic Class. Look at all those lance batteries! muahahaha







Yeah, look at all the hangers on that bad boy. And dorsal lance batteries.



If you want ugly/war looking...can't get better than that!

Compare a fighter to it and then say that. Frigates are about 3 or 4 times as large as a fighter, then a cruiser is another 3 times as large as a frigate, then capital ships are like 10-15 times as large as a cruiser. Now assuming fighters are about 20 meters... That equals about 1,800 meters(this is using the smaller numbers rather than greatest).

And if you compare them to a reasonably sized planet, they should be thousands of kilometers in length... The relative size of the models is irrelevant because there are no useful reference points in space. When you're actually looking at the ships, the detailing has to give it scale.

Let's look at the TEC light frigate


When you look at it you will notice that the windows seem to give the impression of an appropriate scale, it looks right for it's size.

Now let's look at it with the Marza Dreadnought


The windows on the frigate are a smudge of light in comparison to the apparantly massive windows on the dreadnought. Either the dreadnought is as big as it's meant to be and the windows are out of scale, or the windows are the right size and the drednought is out of scale, either way it doesn't look right, and on it's own the capship will appear smaller than it is supposed to. That's my point

For the record I quite like the design of the drednought I just though I'd use it to illustrate the point I was trying to make.

What the hell do windows have to do with anything? and it quite easy to get good comparisons YOU just illustrated MY point.

And if you don't know what I'm talking about... then what the hell is this?

And btw theres a fighter bay right underneath that marza so I know perfectly well the scale of these things.

I think we also need to consider additional elements in military design, utility is not the only aspect in building an effective fighting force.

While it makes sense for TEC to have a collection of oddities, being torn from civilian ranks, we must also remember that a few of the ships are entirely military. The carriers are a good example of this.

In addition to pure utility, warships have often employed psychological elements in their design.

Take a ship, give it utility, then give it a frightening or overwhelming appearance and you can win a battle without firing a shot. This would be the case more with battleships and things that fight in the front lines, for example. I feel that the Kodiaks should be in this category.

Now obviously we would have to consider, if we wish to stay in-universe, that the TEC has only recently begun warfare and that said warfare has entirely been directed against a single "species" (though technically still human). This in mind psychological elements of ship design would have to be tailored towards these enemies. If we really wanted to be anal about it we'd have to consider what the advent or vasari would find frightening or intimidating or whatnot.

Aesthetic appeal is not just for show, it can have a very real effect on military operations.

Sorry shoulda used the quote, not really used to using forums yet.

I was refering to the post about the eve ships and graphics.

Windows give us a sense of relative scale, assuming that windows are the same size which they should be. Honestly, having different sized windows doesn't just not make sense from a structural, economic, and defensive standpoint, it's simply ridiculous.

since we can say that planet scale is out of whack compared to ships, we have to find some other static aspect on which to compare them. Windows provide this and, obviously, they feel a bit off. If you reduced the size of the marza and increased the size of the Light Frigate you'd see what this causes: there's really no sense of scale OTHER THAN model size built into the ship designs. Bulkiness does not equal sense of scale.

And just because a hanger exists doesn't mean it is a good reference point for scale. While both windows and hangers can vary in size, I think hangers can vary in size to a considerably greater degree and up to a point (the point being where they can't hold at least one fighter)

Lots of factors can contribute to hanger size: maybe the hanger is meant to launch a single fighter at a time, the rest being stored in some internal platform like naval carriers. Really, the variables are too many to seriously consider the presence of a hanger as a factor in scale reference.

Under the screenshot of a Kodiak I wrote "Looks like a bus, but at least it hits like one too". Hehe, yeah, TEC ships look funny. THEY ARE SUPPOSED TO. They are trade, cargo and tourist vessels hastily armored, armed and sent into combat by the dozens, and they sure look the part. Make them longer so they look more ship-like? Umm.. why? They're not ships, they're space vessels. I should refer you to Atomic Rocket so you can learn some science.
Yes, you just saw me playing the Science! card. No, I don't feel bad about it.

Science doesn't equal war.

Look at a Japanese Mempo and tell me that freakin' mask was meant to stop a blade rather than simply scare the hell out of the enemy.

Look at a WWII Battleship and tell me they were actually worthwhile outside of their majestic look, proud naval background, and intimidation and morale factor.

It's not all about what is most efficient. Efficiency and utility are great for science, but this isn't science. This is war. War carries with it a few extra variables.

And yes yes I know, converted civilian ships etc. etc. The point is not all of the ships are converted and, even in light of the conversion, TEC techs would be dumb as hell to ignore psychological elements in warfare.

Also keep in mind this universe canon is hardly fleshed out.



Not ALL of the TEC ships are converted from civilian tech.

The TEC is supposed to have had 10 years to get their rich industrial asses into gear and get behind a proper war effort, in the game you do actually build these things from raw materials, it would make sense to build something that was designed for making war if that's what you want it to do. I think any civilization that just straps armour plates to a ship and sends it up against purpose built warships is going to get steamrolled, as is probably what would have happened when the Vasari showed up. Also I think the only thing you can reasonably convert a cargoship into is a carrier, which is what some of the first carriers were in WWII

And while you may refer to atomic rocket which deals with realistic space combat, epic close range starwars/babylon5/stargate/BSG nice looking fleet battles aren't realistic. This game's only connection to space is in theme alone, the behavior of the ships is far more akin to bluewater craft.

Seeing as how some people seem to like the existing ships, why not make another factions with different (better) ship designs instead of replacing the TEC ships entirely?

A new race would need extensive code work, balancing etc... I would much prefer to provide alternative choices for people who wants them. I think these models should be released individually so that people can pick which ones they want. I wouldn't want to force everything on them, after all aesthetic beauty is in the eye of the beholder no?.

Besides, this way it won't disrupt online play or game balance. In theory it should work much like those 'skin packs' you see for other games.

New drone host is done, will do Javelis next

This whole argument based on window size is ridiculous! It DOES NOT present an accurate scaling system while the actual models do here I'll import them and kill this argument(your hopeless if you want to argue after that).


Here we are case closed.