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

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

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.

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


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

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?

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.

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.

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).

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.

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

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

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.

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?

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.