Valkyrie Inspired Mecha of my own design

[NeoverseOmega]

Ages ago I posted a rough on a Valyrie inspired mecha for a project called Echo Unspeakable, but it got buried behind actual commissions, work, etc.

Finally we have progress!  I THINK the internal joint systems have enough room to work just fine, but I won't know until we can get the 3-D model worked up.  Heh, might take a while as I'm just learning 3-D and while I do have a 3-D printer to work with, I'm not 100% sure it's up for something like this....

Hopefully it won't be another cluster of years before I can report getting farther, but blueprints are I think a worthy update!

[Knight26]

Nice X-36 inspire design.

[NeoverseOmega]

Thanks man! Always thought it was a beautiful design!

 

[Knight26]

So, this is a strange design, it seems like the legs are coming from the intakes, and the engine (single) stays in the core of the craft, exhausting through the crotch.  Is that correct?
The nose and cockpit then fold back Legioss style into the back.
Is there an intake for the engine up near the head, or are you going full Mospeada style, with no actual intake connection?
What are you looking at in terms of weapons?

[NeoverseOmega]

It actually does have a dual intake below the neck of the robot that vents into the central thruster. When part of the back of the leg unfolds it makes an opening for the legs to cover over those vents.  In it's robot mode that would put the intakes between the head and shoulders - they're certainly not big intakes!  Basically when it goes to transform it shoots almost straight up, transforms and uses the ridiculously precise single vector thruster to hover and descend - imitating some of the reeeally old school x-planes that tried to hover and land on a single thruster - heh, I figure if it can handle balancing in robot mode at all, transferring that thought process to the thrusters shouldn't be that huge a stretch! The "lats" of the robot can open up with some thrust vectoring as they attach to the main engine once rotated into place.  

The Oberon can store weapons in the forearm shields and on the larger outer portion of the leg.  Some models will put things like missiles or bombs in those areas, but as the things the Oberon and later Inquisitor models were made to deal with are essentially extra-dimensional animals with differing degrees of hostility (or in some cases human beings who have had parts of their psyche's go extra-dimensional), most of their weapons are more like harpoons, batons, knives, bolos, cables, garrottes etc.  They don't always want to kill what they are going after (if only so they can study it), and minimizing collateral damage in a realm that is often tied to peoples psyches is key. Heh, yeah, like Macross part of the excuse for this design is that the things it fights are usually humanoid to differing degrees (though there is some suggestion that the original design was intended to literally seek out and murder human targets in a way that no human assassin could get away with - these mecha range from small to very small, the originals were literally human sized).

So yeah, definitely a strange design tied to a strange story!  But I will admit part of it also was just to try to do something a little different than the usual dual thruster/leg design and do it in a way that seems at least somewhat feasible.

[pengbuzz]

7 hours ago, NeoverseOmega said:

It actually does have a dual intake below the neck of the robot that vents into the central thruster. When part of the back of the leg unfolds it makes an opening for the legs to cover over those vents.  In it's robot mode that would put the intakes between the head and shoulders - they're certainly not big intakes!  Basically when it goes to transform it shoots almost straight up, transforms and uses the ridiculously precise single vector thruster to hover and descend - imitating some of the reeeally old school x-planes that tried to hover and land on a single thruster - heh, I figure if it can handle balancing in robot mode at all, transferring that thought process to the thrusters shouldn't be that huge a stretch! The "lats" of the robot can open up with some thrust vectoring as they attach to the main engine once rotated into place.  

The Oberon can store weapons in the forearm shields and on the larger outer portion of the leg.  Some models will put things like missiles or bombs in those areas, but as the things the Oberon and later Inquisitor models were made to deal with are essentially extra-dimensional animals with differing degrees of hostility (or in some cases human beings who have had parts of their psyche's go extra-dimensional), most of their weapons are more like harpoons, batons, knives, bolos, cables, garrottes etc.  They don't always want to kill what they are going after (if only so they can study it), and minimizing collateral damage in a realm that is often tied to peoples psyches is key. Heh, yeah, like Macross part of the excuse for this design is that the things it fights are usually humanoid to differing degrees (though there is some suggestion that the original design was intended to literally seek out and murder human targets in a way that no human assassin could get away with - these mecha range from small to very small, the originals were literally human sized).

So yeah, definitely a strange design tied to a strange story!  But I will admit part of it also was just to try to do something a little different than the usual dual thruster/leg design and do it in a way that seems at least somewhat feasible.

Really liking the design and concept here; an unusual and unique take! One question though: I recognize the name Oberon from A Midsummer Night's Dream. Is that the origin of the name?

[NeoverseOmega]

Yup! Hopefully using a Shakespeare reference doesn't come off as too pretentious, it just seemed to fit the idea of things that move into a space different from but overlapping our own.  In Echo Unspeakable there are "Midsummer Night" events periodically, when regions are pulled into higher dimensions and disappear from our reality - most are small and isolated and usually return to our space within about 24 hours (although there have been some permanent losses).  Three units were developed to move in and out of higher dimensional regions (something they refer to as "Edgespace").  As you might have guessed the units are the Oberon, Titania, and Goodfellow. The intent is to prevent the incursion of creatures from Edgespace into our world, to understand and hopefully prevent Midsummer Night events, and of course simply to explore and understand Edgespace and it's inhabitants. Also from a more political perspective, a realm that is shaped by people's psyches might ALSO be able to shape psyches - possibly the psyche of an entire nation for example. The Oberon seems to be the amalgamation of multiple projects, with the humanoid elements beginning as a British project, but the aeronautical and material elements completed by an American company when the original designer moved to the U.S.  The original American design was the Goodfellow, which seems to have achieved a level of sentience and disappeared - in many ways it is living up to it's name and functioning as a kind of trickster.  The USSR made a unit that everyone else calls the Titania although the Soviets themselves referred to it as the 1917 which was the year of revolution. The current Russian government still uses the 1917 for research.

So long story short, yeah, definitely a Midsummer Night's Dream reference!

Edited December 3, 2021 by NeoverseOmega
clean up

[twich]

Very interesting premise. I enjoy your designs and look forward to future postings!

[pengbuzz]

On 12/3/2021 at 7:14 AM, NeoverseOmega said:

Yup! Hopefully using a Shakespeare reference doesn't come off as too pretentious, it just seemed to fit the idea of things that move into a space different from but overlapping our own.  In Echo Unspeakable there are "Midsummer Night" events periodically, when regions are pulled into higher dimensions and disappear from our reality - most are small and isolated and usually return to our space within about 24 hours (although there have been some permanent losses).  Three units were developed to move in and out of higher dimensional regions (something they refer to as "Edgespace").  As you might have guessed the units are the Oberon, Titania, and Goodfellow. The intent is to prevent the incursion of creatures from Edgespace into our world, to understand and hopefully prevent Midsummer Night events, and of course simply to explore and understand Edgespace and it's inhabitants. Also from a more political perspective, a realm that is shaped by people's psyches might ALSO be able to shape psyches - possibly the psyche of an entire nation for example. The Oberon seems to be the amalgamation of multiple projects, with the humanoid elements beginning as a British project, but the aeronautical and material elements completed by an American company when the original designer moved to the U.S.  The original American design was the Goodfellow, which seems to have achieved a level of sentience and disappeared - in many ways it is living up to it's name and functioning as a kind of trickster.  The USSR made a unit that everyone else calls the Titania although the Soviets themselves referred to it as the 1917 which was the year of revolution. The current Russian government still uses the 1917 for research.

So long story short, yeah, definitely a Midsummer Night's Dream reference!

Very impressive story and background on this! I don't consider it "pretentious" to use the classics as a basis for an idea at all!

I will be watching this to see how you further this concept.

[Bolt]

 Very interesting design and intriguing story. I like it 👍

Great job!

[NeoverseOmega]

Thank you guys, I really appreciate it!  Part of me says most good stories have allusions in them, but for better or worse even though I know better there's still the voice of hyper critical college professors in my head describing classical references in fantasy and sci-fi as trying to put gilding on garbage.... 

The bastards thought The Wrath of Khan was pretentious drivel - heathens! LOL!

Seriously though, it's always a tightrope walk  between the criticisms which make you better and ones which hold you back - gravity and balance are b***hes!

Blueprints for the Titania are in the works, but it might be a while since I have other commissions coming in - heh, gotta get paid before I can devote time to the personal projects! I'm not entirely sure it's as appropriate to post here as the mecha designs which are more directly Macross inspired but I've been working on drafts of some of the inhabitants of Edgespace. 

I suppose to be fair, the sheer fact that many of these creatures are somewhat humanoid and is part of the motivation for the mechas HAVING an anthropoid form does kinda reflect Macross.  

Do the little blurbs I give on the images kind of sum up things enough, or does all the internal jargon render this utterly inscrutable?

[pengbuzz]

On 12/23/2021 at 4:27 PM, NeoverseOmega said:

Thank you guys, I really appreciate it!  Part of me says most good stories have allusions in them, but for better or worse even though I know better there's still the voice of hyper critical college professors in my head describing classical references in fantasy and sci-fi as trying to put gilding on garbage.... 

The bastards thought The Wrath of Khan was pretentious drivel - heathens! LOL!

Seriously though, it's always a tightrope walk  between the criticisms which make you better and ones which hold you back - gravity and balance are b***hes!

Blueprints for the Titania are in the works, but it might be a while since I have other commissions coming in - heh, gotta get paid before I can devote time to the personal projects! I'm not entirely sure it's as appropriate to post here as the mecha designs which are more directly Macross inspired but I've been working on drafts of some of the inhabitants of Edgespace. 

I suppose to be fair, the sheer fact that many of these creatures are somewhat humanoid and is part of the motivation for the mechas HAVING an anthropoid form does kinda reflect Macross. 

 

 I understand ya perfectly! lol Seriously though: it can be a royal pain when you have these echoes of your professors bouncing around in your mind, tearing into your ideas. And yeah: on the one hand, they can be helpful tools that remove unneeded "dross" from the story. But be careful that those critical echoes of your former instructors doesn't become like an out-of-control sledgehammer that smashes all that they would find "offensive". Constructive criticism points out things that may work against a project; destructive criticism merely seeks to destroy the project in favor of anything that does not try to innovate.

Remember: these professors may have tenure in college, but how many of them created such spanning works as Star Trek, Star Wars, or Macross?  It's easy to dismiss something as "garbage" when it doesn't meet one's personal criteria in the rarefied air of academia. If they had their way, the previous 3 things would not exist!!!

Anyways...

On 12/23/2021 at 4:27 PM, NeoverseOmega said:

Do the little blurbs I give on the images kind of sum up things enough, or does all the internal jargon render this utterly inscrutable?

Actually, I think your descriptions here are very detailed and fit quite well with these data files! This is already a lot of work put into this!

 

 

 

 

 

[pengbuzz]

Hey, i was just wondering if you made any progress on this concept?