Something big

[Abacus]

I'm loving the paneling.

[Weedle McHairybug]

Pretty good work on the Preying Mantis ship WIPs. I've never played Old Republic, and right now I'm probably too busy to play it anyways, but I must admit it looks pretty good.

BTW, Ansel? I have a few questions regarding your various projects:

First of all, regarding your project relating to Anon Cruiser 1, am I correct in assuming you designated the class name for the cruiser "Urbanus"? The link for the images said that it was called "Urbanus" (like this one for example: http://fractalsponge.net/urbanus/u1.jpg)

Second of all, regarding the Wrath/Assertor-Class Star Dreadnought: I know that you said in Star Wars Insider that it was basically entirely made up by you, but I must ask: Did you take at least a little of its design from one of the Executor's concept arts/the depiction of the Executor from the Arcade version of The Empire Strikes Back's opening? Only asking because I couldn't help but notice that it shared a few similarities, particularly on the port side.

http://vignette2.wikia.nocookie.net/sta ... 0803192701

http://fractalsponge.net/wp/wp-content/ ... ath233.jpg

In any case, good job.

[Visionist]

Glad to have rediscovered this page. I joined years ago then lost touch with all things Star Wars, until seeing TFA in December.

Latest ship reminds me a little of Slave I with its landing gear... Firespray Class I think that's called. Ever considered doing a Subjugator Ansal? That ship especially deserves the Fractal treatment.

An ICS review online recently set me thinking; if weapons right down to the guns on Slave I are putting-out Kiloton level power, how are scenes like Obi Wan's "blast this is why I hate flying" explained? He's paractically hit several times and shouldn't he be toast?

[Purple]

The MkN was my second ever model. It's no good :p

My textures are largely procedural. I'm so bad at texturing that you definitely don't want tips from me. Modeling I can help with.

Wait... so all those tiny little black lines are actually polygons on the model?

[Captain Seafort]

An ICS review online recently set me thinking; if weapons right down to the guns on Slave I are putting-out Kiloton level power, how are scenes like Obi Wan's "blast this is why I hate flying" explained? He's paractically hit several times and shouldn't he be toast?

Simple - his fighter's shields were capable of resisting kT-scale firepower.

[Visionist]

It raises interesting questions about the nature of shield dissipation. R4 is nearly hit but the damage is a localized scar to the hull plating. Did the Slave 1's guns overload the shields which allowed a small amount of "firepower" to enter and strike Obi Wan's ship, not enough to vaporize it but enough to be a problem? The Queen's ship in Episode 1 faced the same situation during the escape from Naboo. In that case the Federation ships seemed to be "picking off" droids from the Naboo cruiser's hull to take the Queen alive maybe.

[fractalsponge1]

I think of SW shields as kevlar - tightly hugging and able to prevent full penetration (up to total failure). But energy is transmitted through nonetheless. So an XW's shields are designed to hug the R2 unit, but a partial bleed-through of energy can still damage what the shield mostly protected during a near-penetrating hit.

The panels are all geometry - you could lift them off individually (in 3D space) if you wanted.

The name Urbanus is a placeholder, comes from ECR's Hull 721 fic.

The Assertor draws from a lot of designs. However I never looked at the TESB concepts directly when I designed it.

No plans to do the Subjugator - unless commissioned

[Crossroads Inc.]

Ahoy Ansal.

As some one who enjoys the smaller to medium sized ships.
What are your thoughts on some of the non imperial medium ships?
One like the Action-V?
Or the Marauder Corvette?

[Weedle McHairybug]

Okay, thanks for answering my questions (and hope that "Urbanus" ship [that's my personal nickname for it due to it being a placeholder until it gets an actual name] gets completed in the future).

I'm a very huge fan of several of your ships, not to mention several of the Star Wars ships and vehicles (in all honesty, I'm mainly a fan of the technology of Star Wars rather than the Force), so I'm very interested in your work on them.

Might as well ask this much: I know you're rather attached to your Executor model since it was your first ever Star Wars 3D model, but do you suppose there's any chance you'll make an update for the Executor model? I'm actually a pretty huge fan of that Star Dreadnought model due to the amount of detail, and am a bit sad that we don't really get any closeups of the city scapes (probably the closest we'll ever get to an actual in-depth look is the Executor missions in Rogue Squadron III).

A render of that Executor concept art ship that was later used in the Atari arcade version of Empire Strikes Back would be pretty nice as well (after all, the Praetor Mark II-class Battlecruiser thing you made, while directly based on Giel's flagship, was itself derived from a concept art for the Executor, so why not?), but hey, no big loss if you don't wish to do it.

Hope to see more of your work.

EDIT: One last thing, actually: I noticed that on your scroll by on your official site that the FSCV is not among the completed ships on there. Might ask well, is there any reason why it's not? Not that I necessarily have a big problem with it being there, I just find it odd that it's not on there despite it being completed.

[Weedle McHairybug]

*Might as well ask, is there any reason why it's not? (the edit periods are way too short IMO).

[fractalsponge1]

FSCV should be completed...I list the finished ones with the tag "Gallery" on my site.

Executor concept art - I think I may do one eventually, but the super big ships have gotten a bit tedious lately. I think eventually there will be a 3-4km ship (or several), and maybe a 6-8km battleship though. And some carrier - maybe a Giel variant?

As for Executor updates, I can see it as one of two options:
1) a clean low-poly version that will only work for distance shots
2) a balls-out 300 million polygon no-holds barred computer killer
...someday.

Mantis is basically done. Partially-articulated docking system:

[Weedle McHairybug]

Pretty good job on the Preying Mantis, and it's nice to see it's almost done. The detailing's pretty impressive.

So far as the Executor concept art, since the original version of the Executor was initially 8 km instead of the ginormous 19 km, you could go for that, or maybe 13,469 meters maximum, since that's the estimate posed for the Executor by Pablo Hidalgo for this article here: http://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars- ... asurements That's of course if you decide to make it. But hey, feel free to take a break on big ships for now, and I agree designing them is tedious (heck, I nearly gave up on Legos permanently due to a design flaw relating to magnets in the Star Destroyer Lego model, the large one, not the playset model, so I can sympathize there.).

As far as Executor updates, go for both options if you want. Personally, being a guy who really loves details, I would probably go for the computer-killer option, although perspective shots work very well also, especially if one wishes to include a massive fleet. But hey, I'm willing to wait right there.

Regarding the FSCV, I think I should have clarified. I was meaning that scroller option at the top of the opening page of your site. You know, the one that goes Orthos > Chi > Scimitar > TIE Avenger > Altor > Allegiance > Bellator > Customs Corvette standard > Imperator > Lambda > Procursator > Secutor > Vigil > TIE Hunter > TIE Interceptor > TIE Fighter > TIE/D Defender > TIE Bomber > Skipray > Starwing > Assertor/Wrath > Juggernaut > AT-SE > Droideka > AT-SP > Praetor [Mark II] > TIE Advanced > USMC Infinity > Fulgor > Intersector > Missile Boat > Kontos > Broadsword > Customs Corvette Militarized > Validusia > Underway Replenishment > BDZ > Consolidator > Delta > Interdictor Star Destroyer > Vindicator > Kandosii > Starfighter scaling > lather, rinse, and repeat. The FSCV is definitely in your gallery page, but the scrollby option has it being absent. Sorry for the miscommunication. I know that the FSCV was in the gallery option itself, I was referring specifically to the scrollby on the site.

Speaking of your future updates, though, particularly the Giel variant of a carrier, it has been a while since you worked on the Imperial Star Carrier project (you know, this one: http://fractalsponge.net/carrier/7.jpg; http://fractalsponge.net/carrier/4_small.jpg / http://fractalsponge.net/images/carrier_med.jpg). No rush, but, I, possibly the rest of us as well, would like to see it completed in the near future. Don't know if that's the Giel variant or not, because the Giel variant resembles the Praetor Mk. II class battlecruiser in design.

[fractalsponge1]

The existing carrier project is sorta orphaned at the moment. My guess is if I picked it up again there would be some major changes to the structure. I will definitely do a fleet carrier at some point though. Giel's carrier would be a straightforward modification of the Praetor, but the size involved means the detailing effort required would be immense - more than most single ships, and likely almost doubling the polygon count.

Messing about with making a minivan look cool:

[23 November 1939]

Very nice. Something about it makes the DX-9 seem far more logical as a development of the LAAT/i doctrine - a Black Hawk vs. a Huey (real-world, of course, it pre-dates the Prequels, but symmetry is nice).

[Crossroads Inc.]

Im sorry but the comment "I'm making a mini van look cool" made me chuckle quite a bit.
Love the lines on it! Huzzah for more small support craft!

[Lord Revan]

Looks like a better looking version of the Stormtrooper transport from the X-wing game series, sadly the the orginal design was one of the ugliest ships in the game and it really did look like wheeless minivan with engines strapped to it.

[fractalsponge1]

Look what I've been working on. This is hardly WIP#1. This project began in 2009 as a fast fleet carrier. It stalled in 2010 and I've been desultorily adding material to it in fits since. I pulled it out of hibernation recently, fixed a lot of bugs, gave it a new coat of paint and to my surprise it holds up rather well. Some touch ups required to the existing "finished" areas, but the majority of the remaining work is setting up the ventral hangars and finishing the engines.

The ventral hangar layout can now take Chi-class landing ships (which obviously did not exist in 2010), in addition to some AT-SP sized dropships. The total hangar capacity is smaller than the Consolidator/Evakmar despite this ship being bigger but the requirements of armament and acceleration for fleet work dramatically reduces storage volume. A Consolidator with ground force vehicles swapped out for fighters can handle as many as this ship can, if not more, but would be much less survivable.

I'd say carriage is something like a full fighter Command (4 Groups of 6 Wings). Space for two divisions of troops, plus some space for heavy armor that ISDs wouldn't be able to carry, but not a huge number when compared to an assault carrier like the Consolidator.

[Raesene]

A blast from the past - but a good one.

What kind of guns did you put on top ? the ISD-II octuples ?

[Weedle McHairybug]

Nice to see you're back on the Star Carrier again. And interesting details on the ship, as well. A question regarding its size, though. I know from both your comments as well as some old WIPs that it's definitely bigger than both the Consolidator-class Corps dropship and an ISD, but can you peg an estimated size for it?

A bit of a sidenote, but I find it to be slightly ironic that the carrier-type ships for the Imperial Navy are smaller than the dreadnoughts/battleships, often barely being at battlecruiser level, when in real life, the opposite is true, that the carriers are more likely to dwarf even dreadnoughts (certainly the supercarriers such as the Nimitz-class.).

Also, nice work adding the FSCV to the scroll-by on your homepage.

And that Stormtrooper transport looks good (though I must admit, it almost looks like that Imperial LAAT/i variant from earlier, at least the bridge does).

PS, is the Coronet ship completed? Just wondering, since I haven't seen anything on it since you first showed the image (and it certainly isn't on your website, either). Or that X70 thing for that matter.

[Eternal_Freedom]

I like that design for the carrier, but th forked/double hull design never made sense to me, as your ship's frame is going to be weaker (from having a bloody great hole in in) and a good portion of your hangers are completely exposed if approached bow-on. I know it has shields but we've seen that ships have to lower, or at least open a hole in their shields to launch fighters before, so it strikes me as a vrey dangerous design choice.

[Captain Seafort]

A bit of a sidenote, but I find it to be slightly ironic that the carrier-type ships for the Imperial Navy are smaller than the dreadnoughts/battleships, often barely being at battlecruiser level, when in real life, the opposite is true, that the carriers are more likely to dwarf even dreadnoughts (certainly the supercarriers such as the Nimitz-class.).

Carriers being smaller than capital ships is actually true to their real life equivalents. Look at a few carriers and their contemporary capital ships:

Illustrious - 23,000 tons/KGV - 35,000 tons
Implacable - 32,000 tons/Lion (planned) - 49,000 tons
Shokaku - 32,000 tons/Yamato - 72,000 tons
Essex - 31,000 tons/Iowa - 45,000 tons
Midway - 45,000 tons/Montana (planned) - 63,000 tons
Graf Zeppelin - 34,000 tons/Bismarck - 42,000 tons

Of these, Graf Zeppelin might be dismissed as a first attempt and Illustrious/KGV as treaty-limited, but the others are all post-treaty ships designed against a background of long experience, and they're all a lot smaller than their contemporary battleships. True, modern carriers are a lot bigger, but there are no contemporary capital ships to compare them against.

[Weedle McHairybug]

A bit of a sidenote, but I find it to be slightly ironic that the carrier-type ships for the Imperial Navy are smaller than the dreadnoughts/battleships, often barely being at battlecruiser level, when in real life, the opposite is true, that the carriers are more likely to dwarf even dreadnoughts (certainly the supercarriers such as the Nimitz-class.).

Carriers being smaller than capital ships is actually true to their real life equivalents. Look at a few carriers and their contemporary capital ships:

Illustrious - 23,000 tons/KGV - 35,000 tons
Implacable - 32,000 tons/Lion (planned) - 49,000 tons
Shokaku - 32,000 tons/Yamato - 72,000 tons
Essex - 31,000 tons/Iowa - 45,000 tons
Midway - 45,000 tons/Montana (planned) - 63,000 tons
Graf Zeppelin - 34,000 tons/Bismarck - 42,000 tons

Of these, Graf Zeppelin might be dismissed as a first attempt and Illustrious/KGV as treaty-limited, but the others are all post-treaty ships designed against a background of long experience, and they're all a lot smaller than their contemporary battleships. True, modern carriers are a lot bigger, but there are no contemporary capital ships to compare them against.

I guess you've got a point there, especially when most of Star Wars was mostly based on World War II, with traces of the Vietnam War in there (I'm thinking of Return of the Jedi with that last bit (facepalm).).

[23 November 1939]

Glad to see the fleet carrier again. I know it isn't a pure Giel carrier, or the fanon Relentless, but she is fun.

[Weedle McHairybug]

Glad to see the fleet carrier again. I know it isn't a pure Giel carrier, or the fanon Relentless, but she is fun.

Yeah, that reminds me, what IS the Relentless anyway? I heard it mentioned in comparison to this in that 3D Projects thread in Sci-fi Meshes, but I don't know what it was referring to (and since I'm not a member of Sci-fi Meshes, it's not like I could ask the user what they meant anyway). I tried looking it up on Wookieepedia, but I couldn't get any dice on it.

Post where it was mentioned: http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/show ... post604876

[23 November 1939]

Relentless was IMPS - The Relentless. Short fan-films, centered on a fleet carrier of the same name. Two episodes produced. Third episode has been in production for... years. Frankly, I think most fans have given up any expectation of seeing any new content. I believe there is a website, and the second episode appears to be on YouTube - just search "IMPS the Relentless."