Knight26

Man, those designs are whacked out and wrong on so many levels.

They used F-4s in the second one. TopGun has it's great points...Like the flying, real pilots in real jets, the photography of those scenes is incredible. Final Countdown is still a far superior movie.

Top Gun was a POS, the MiG-28 as stated were just F-5E/Fs repainted black with red stars on the tail. That movie is garbage, heck so is Iron Eagle, but at least they used a foreign aircraft as their MiGs, Israeli Kfirs, and even then they just called them Migs, no number. If you want a good 80's navy movie, that is accurate and cool as all get out, rent or buy Final Countdown, that movie is so accurate it is scary, much better then at POS Top Gun.

that's not a bad photochop you did there, the lighting almost makes that painted Macross look like it should be there.

Very nice, I can't wait for the finished product.

Ok, this one is of the hangers. Top row is the launch end, bottom the recovery end. From left to right they are the upper port fighter bay (there are four), the bomber deck, and the dropship deck. It might be hard to see in the pictures but the blue bars on the deck of launch tube are the catapult emitters, floor and ceiling. More powerful ones are along the walls. The fighter bays can launch up to three fighters at once on the catapults, more under own power. The bomber deck only one at a time but it can have two bombers staged together at once, launch one after the other. The drop ship bay can launch two at once, out of two seperate launchers, but has little call to do so. Anyway on the recovery end, the yellow disks are inertial dampner field generators, they slow incoming craft considerably, not quite stopping them, keeps an out of control fighter from crashing badly, and enemy missiles from penetrating at high speed. The blue areas around the entrances and exits are the atmosphere shield generators, each portal except the one the quick reaction squadrons launch out of have two sets of field generators, just in case one fails. All portals then have closing doors just in case of total shield failure. The shields are quite efficient too, each field can stop up to 99.9% of any gasses that attempt to pass through. Field density is 8 per foot, and a typical emitter is five feet in depth, so that is 40 fields per generator. So each shield unit only allows one in 1x10^80 gas molecules through, so the ship does outgas, but not to any noticable degree. One last thing, on the large decks, like the bomber and dropship, the structure up in the ceiling is a storage area, that is where they keep some consumables and a lot of spares. The fighter decks do as well, but not nearly as much so. Oh one last things, where is a good place to buy memory, at a low price?

Update Time: I spent most of the day on this, the hangers are finished, except for a few details that may be changed, including the ceiling structure, catapult textures, and add some support equipment, trucks, weapons trailers, etc... I deleted about ten turrets from the exterior, cleaned up the hull a lot in the process. Now the hull just needs to be "personnalized" for the Wolfsbane, with battle damage, registry tatoos, etc... Thing is I really can't do that right now because, I need to slam another 512MB->1GB of RAM into my system first. The design is starting to make the system seriously lag, too many bits and pieces. Anyway onto the pics, the first is of the exterior of the ship.

Nice, I was wondering if you would ever finish that.

Except for how far the nose sticks out in battroid I like that Perfect Trans one, but I prefer the other one with the swapping groin/nose gear and landing gear wells. It looks more accurate in all modes to me. If that is what Yamato turns out I will be thrilled to no end.

Final approach, the four wing hangers are color coded to help make sure pilots land in the right place, plus the ventral hangers are upside down relative to the rest of the ship to maximize deck space.

Here's a close up of where the quick reaction squadrons launch out off, I may later add doors, but making a door for this openning will be a pain in the you know what.

Ok, another update. I added wing hangers, but upon doing so I realized that I forgot a few details, plus I am having problems getting the atmosphere shield generators textures to cooperate. I will fix that later. I also forgot to add the grappler catapults and the repulsor field generators that serve to slow incoming fighters when they land. Those should be easy to add though. Easier then adding all the doors were. Anyway onto the pictures.

Yeah I am probably going to drop about 6-8 turrets, as for being retractable, no they are not, this is a warship and force projection is a big deal. Imagine being in something like a small cruiser and seeing that big beast baring down on you, all its turrets pointed your way, me, I think I'd surrender. If I saw that same ship with no visible turrets I may try and take my chances. The only ships I have with retracting turrets are smuggler craft and the point defense weapons on large warships.

Actually there are smaller point defense turrets by the hanger entrances and exits to all the hanger bays. The main turrets also do have cut out/no fire zones that keep them from shooting the ship. Pretty much ever turrets since WW2 has had some kind of cut out zone, heck on LHA where they have their mairnes stand with Stinger missiles they have a ring that they stand in with two broomsticks that keep them from moving too far.

Ok the exterior is all but finished. I just need to add the external observation bubbles and windows to the flight control spoilers, and the control thrusters all over the place. I can't do much more right now becuase adding all the escape pod hatches put on so many faces that it is lagging the machine. I guess I need to break down and get some more ram. Ok, what was added, those white pads are the sensor clusters, there are about 25 of them. I added the escape pod hatches, there are a lot of those, I lost count and will inventory them later. I also added all the point defense turrets. I also added textures to the whole ship, those may be editted or replaced, but I like it so far. I will start on the hangers tomorrow, model them seperately then insert them, make it easier. As for the number of turrets I have about 6 or 8 I may remove. The old design had 58, if I counted right and this new one has 69. Of course it is late and I am getting crossed eyed so I may have miscounted.

Those are sweet, I love well done glass sculptures like that, have any more in the pipe?

They are Plasma-LASER, PLASER, turrets, later models have a beam capability added, so not too much space is needed below decks. It also has a pair of heavy Plasma Beam cannons, and 20 point defense turrets, minimum of two per hanger bay and engine. I think I may have gone a little overboard on the number of turrets though, need to cut a few, just have to figure out where.

Let's go blow something to hell, yes the Wolfsbane is now armed, not fully but armed. I just have to add the point defense turrets around the hangers and a couple on the engines. After that the other salient features like the sensor arrays, escape pods hatches, and docking points. I will also start on texturing the ship. Haterist: I'm keeping the launch tube on this one, the later replacement will have the side launch tubes instead of the single foward launcher, remember this is to be a rushed design. Also, those big blue pads are the docking areas for larger craft like transports, corvettes, etc...

Actually the flight bays are arranged with the runway down the middle of each bay and the fighters parked on either side. There is plenty of room in front of and behind the parking areas to store the spares and the deck immediately beneath, or above depending on the where it is, is also used for ammo and spares storage. As for other space problems, figure that each deck of the centraul hull has a little over 800,000 square feet of deck space. That and the central hull has over twenty decks if you include the dropship hanger and the raised area at the aft end, twelve of which not quite run the full length of the ship. I will have to do a cross section later. At the end of the first page is a picture of a bomber launching out of the bomber flight deck. All the rest of the craft are probably about a quarter that size, and the interceptor is probably on the order of super hornet scale. The number of fighters and attack craft is feasible, I have fit checked it several times. The reason for such a small craft is easy, these people have been in space for over 1000 yrs, so the development of such small craft is feasible. I will post a picture of the hanger/flight bays with the craft in them later, or near them to give a sense of scale. Something to consider as well, the Saratoga there is the same size as most carriers and they carry a crew of around 5000. So, you're talking a very advanced craft that is probably 20 times its size and only requires another 1000 people to run it. It typically operates with a full battlegroup, with about a dozen ships cruiser sized and up, plus another dozen corvettes. These ships would rarely if ever travel alone, but has enough armament and supplies to care for itself for quite some time. The ship also has plenty of replenishable supplies, including a full farm deck with hydroponically grown foods, and more in the space between the inner and outer hulls. Of course if the hull is breached these areas are immediate exposed to space, but the food is flash frozen. Meat onboard is taken care of by way of rapidly cloned and grown genetically engineered animals that are kept in suspended animation, or not quite absolute 0 storage until needed. TP, what's TP, don't you know how to use the sea-shells, lol. Despite the farm resources the ship does have to resupply regularly to get other consumable items. The ship also has facilities to produce its own fuel, bussard ram scoops, bring in stellar hydrogen to be processed for fueling the ship and fighters. Hope that answers some questions, I'm off to bed, tomorrow we will have weapons.

Ok, more progress tonight, I should have all the armor "islands" now, but may add more to the viper area up front, the wide blue area. Tomorrow I will start on adding the weapons and other salient features like additional sensors, docking points etc... Also those blue areas on the fighter hangers are tentitively being used as corvette and transport docks. They also have cargo lifts. The cargo bays are accessed directly from the flight bays so I may add cargo bay doors later anyway, but we will see, since there really is no need. I appreciate all the suggestions and look forward to your future comments. I'm also going to add a couple observation bubbles and start texturing it tomorrow, also I decided not to cut the roof out of the front of the bomber launch area. Lynx, in regards to the number of strike craft it carries. A Tacit Class carrier carries a compliment of: 20 bombers (1 squadron/wing [bSC, Bomber, Space Carrier]) 26 attack craft (2 squadrons [ASC, Attack, Space Carrier]) 65 interceptor/heavy fighters (5 squadrons [iSC, Intercept, Space Carrier]) 312 medium/superiority fighters (24 squadrons [FSC, Fighter, Space Carrier]) 39 light/recon fighters (3 squadrons [FSC and RSC, Recon, Space Carrier]) 13 dropships (varying type) (1 Squadron [DSC, Dropship, Space Carrier]) 30 shuttles (even mix exo and trans-atm) (1 squadron [sSC, Shuttle, Space Carrier]) So that is a grand total of 505 craft, plus smaller auxillaries, work pods, escape ships, etc... Depending on where they launch from, launch is either, under own power, or using grappler beams to throw them out of the ship. And, becuase I know it will come up it has a crew compliment of just under 6000 including marines and civilian staff. Officers can even have family members onboard as long as both parents serve aboard ship in either a military or civlian function. And, the Tacit Class is not even the largest carrier in space, the GF Barker class are larger and carry more craft, and confed has one or two classes larger then the Tacits. However, after even 100 yrs in service the Tacits are still one of the most advanced class of ship in space, and are coveted not only because of their capability but the material they are made of. Ok, I've written enough for now, on to the pictures.

I think its been established that by making removable landing gear and some small swap parts, like the groin piece and front landing gear bay then making a good YF-19 is possible. So I would go for that, that or a much large scale needed to have the oragami mechanism in the legs and crotch needed.

picture? of me? that can't be done. i don't have any pictures of me. the last one i took was on 11/26/99 which was the exact date my state ID was issued. i don't take pictures because it only turns into evidence. but thanks for the offer. LOL, ok how about a ship then, I'll name one after you in the books, what class of ship do you prefer and on which side, Good guys, bad guys, worse guys, or neutral?

ACtually I like the cube or sphere design as well for ships, very efficient and practical. The reason this is designed the way it is is mostly due to the traditions of the races involved in buidlign them. I try to give every race its own ship style. This one is built by a company named ASF, which has a good grounding in nautical and aviation designs and so by tradition those aspects carry over. THe Lodrans tend to have ships that look a bit more like sea life in overall outline, just far blockier. Their ships also all started out as submersibles, but aafter they went into sspace they ditched most if not all the aerodynamic features keeping only the basic outlines. The Drashig ships all look like backwards beatles, and many other races go with the morre blocky designs. The only ships I actually put aerodynamic considerations into are the actual trans or endo atmospheric craft, fighters, bomber, dropships, light corvettes and such. Also you can call them wings as that is what I typically call them, though like I said before they are that way only by name, not by function. Also, this is for my books, I design the ships so that I stay consistant in their descriptions and because I just like to, so a little for $h!ts and giggles yeah. Oh and haterist since you got the earlier question right, if you send me your picture I can render you in scene with any of the craft you like.

Linx just about hit it on the head for why this ship has "wings" and while they are referred to as wings, it is also explicitly stated that they are not lift producing devices and that the ship is not intended for atmospheric operations. Except maybe in extreme emergency like crash landings into the ocean.

Made a little progress last night, plan to do more this afternoon and evening. I am considering maybe chopping out the foward most portion of the launch deck to give it a more open look. Once I get the major surface islands down I will start on the turrtes, sensors, observation domes, etc... Also to add a sense of scale I threw in an old Saratoga model I pulled off the net some time ago. I'm thinking of adding a corvette docking pad somewhere, just need to find an area large enough. As for bulking up the central rear vertically I am a little reluctant to do that at this time, but we will see what happens.