Oh sure, but I'm curious what he thought about in his head while designing it. It's a major feature (almost the ship's primary characteristic) and it informs many of his other decisions; I'm curiuos what he decided it was 'for' when making the model.

I believe that the design for this star destroyer is based on this pic, so it's there just because. I guess in this case, the design came before the reason for the design, which must be explained later.

Also, in this picture, are the bow torpedo tubes clear of obstructions?

@phogn: DAMN. Fixed it. Now there are 6 tubes bearing forward, for a total of 108 tubes currently. Pah.

As for the central spine, there were two different lines of thought for the design. One was what would look good and interesting. The second, admittedly later, was what it was all for . So, the above discussion is informed by the visual design, and the purpose and function then fed back into new visual elements.

The spine was always, in my head, going to be part cityscape terrace detail and armor. Once I decided to go full fleet combat, it was a a case of striking a visual balance between making the ship look massive and armored, and have some externally usable spaces for something interesting. I figure, actually, that all the terrace space on the Imperator design and this are likely to be somewhat armored internally, though not as thickly as the non-terraced areas, depending on the space available, and the needs of the external equipment for connections to the interior of the ship. I'm thinking there's a bulkhead that separates the soft external sensor and accommodation structure from what, as far as I am planning it, a set of fuel tanks and equipment for the primary reactor itself.

The reactor will not be spherical - likely a cylinder with rounded caps. Based on what fits the structure on the initial visual concept. So shoot me :p.



~1.8e8 m3, by scientific eyeballing.

Damn, that's a big reactor! And you have a secondary!

I'm aware of the source, but you can't go dropping shit around on a giant arrowhead without having some idea in your head of what the giant flange on the top is for. It gives some pretty serious tradoffs and basically makes the front upper surface of the arrowhead nigh-useless for it's 'focus fire' role.

Fractal, are you going with an extension of the inner 'generic starship volume', or is it part of the more complex power system you have with the two powercores? Much more of the lower half of the volume appears to be occupied than on an ISD, with much of it being power spheres that take up much of the upper volume too, so is this your interpretation of the giant nose it's got?

Point conceded - would be an unsupportable way of doing things if I were actually a starship designer working from scratch. The space usage I have for it in my head now are a series of fuel silos for the reactor, and at the back, the vertical extensions for the main reactor just underneath,which, actually, is a very natural place to put main power trunking, seeing as it's right in the middle between main reactor, the main battery, and the engine block. The front end is going to have a giant armored bulkhead separating the engineering spaces from the control and sensor positions duplicated from the bridge at the very front.

Actually the spine itself does not constrict the side-mounded HTL batteries very much. Firing forward, the point at which all the side mounted turrets can cross is about 2km off the bow, which is not a very big blind spot (and this is only for the aft-most mounted turret), and probably tactically irrelevant for HTL function (what's the minimum safe detonation distance for an HTL bolt anyway?) Firing over the spine at the other side - well, a side mounted battery is likely not to be asked to fire over the shoulder.

But to ramble on a bit - the natural "ideal" arrangement of a dagger ship's guns would probably be all centerline mounted. Actually, it's so obvious that it's odd how little it's actually seen, except perhaps with this monstrosity:

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Scythefront.jpg
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Image:Pe ... r_SotG.jpg

Apart from that ship being monstrously ugly, and alternatives starting to look like space battleship yamato, in-universe reasons - what could those be?

Convenient division by battery group? Seems silly when it can all be handled remotely anyway, though it might make the systems more reliable to have battery command near the turrets its linked too. Still, not a good enough reason.

Dangers of concentration of armament? Perhaps too many capacitors grouped together are an issue once you start taking real damage beyond the shields - capacitor power for the main armament blowing off together internally from a penetrating TL shot is not likely to be nice. Perhaps more credible.

Physical stress? HTL are going to have a huge amount of recoil, and the structure surrounding them is going to have to be specifically braced to take them. Having the entire main battery together might place yield an inefficient distribution of stresses on the ship.

So, some windows:

The second shot should have been so that the windows were on the shaded side, but forgot. Not like they would show up on the side with the key-light anyway, not at this range.

That spine box could be just a massive stores bay for extended, long-range ops. Tons of extra food, fuel, water purification, raw bulk supplies, and perhaps even a small factory for assembling new TIE fighter replacements (kinda "Pegasus"-like, from nBSG) while on long-range, extended-length missions into the Unknown Regions, or scouting outside the rim of the Galaxy. The ability to self-replenish in limited amounts would give this hellacious staying power.

I dub this 'A Day at the Office'. It looks like a huge spacegoing office block. With turbolasers.

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This ties in neatly with the historical role of the cruiser, as this vessel appears to be.

Once you are done, you are going to provide us with some bloody massive pictures right?

Anyways I do like that rational for the "cannon mount"...

Also the manufacturing block in the spine could also build more of the torps. After all, they are large...

Well, either that or declutter the nose a bit

I don't really understand the rationale for self-manufacturing in a fleet combat ship. I'm doing my best to strip out the surface engineering and random materials that the ISD carries. Whatever the facility on board is going to churn out is minuscule to what a dockyard or shipyard will be able to provide, and this is not really for long-haul patrols; more like, go in, kill the problem, go back home.

But anyway, in honor of my recent upgrade from a dual core2 6600 to a quad core 6600, I am rendering out large shots of everything to date. Here you go. Windows in the trench, and all of the terraces now. Next up, probably hangars.

That last pic is so fucking awesome. I love how you can almost immediately see the goddamn huge cannons.

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It reminds me of the unidentified Star Dreadnoughts that were not Executor-class swarming around Byss.

If an onboard factory doesn't jive for you, I'd say go with lots & lots of missile stores... and maybe a backup reactor so that even if things go bad in the engine room, you can still pump energy to the gun batteries.

I just realized that the reactor looks like an aspirin size of a star destroyer!

Keep it coming...

P.S. how much did you pay for the quad core?

So, in between olympics on tv, some work on the hangars. This is one of the tie fighter-launching hangars. There's going to be a longer one for dropships and such, and some smaller ones for shuttles and the like. They will all be in this style though. 2x3m thick external blast doors on this. The others will also be close-able.

Playing with the dirtshader, trying a blue-white window color, and moving on to the main hangar. Also a shot with the bays for one side of the ship together. Visible rack space for 126 heavy fighters the size of a tie bomber of tie defender; would be more for regular sized fighters. Also the rack system will extend into the ship, hence the big access doors behind the visible rack slots. Upgrading fighter complement to 6 wings, given the amount of space actually available.

I'd throw in a hanger dedicated to the Assault Gunboat and it's cousins. Slightly different racks to hold them, or alternatively you can just put them on the floor. Of course the fighters are so small as to be barely visible, even this close to the bay.

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Commander of the MFS Darwinian Selection Method (sexual)

The racks should be able to accommodate assault gunboats. I've designed them to be able to slide side to side to accommodate different width fighter classes. The only thing that will change is the docking claw that links the rack to the fighter, and, for a really big fighter, the number you can launch simultaneously abreast at once. And as you mentioned, really an assault gunboat makes more sense being launched from the deck anyway, in which case you can have a very large deck park in these hangars.

This is the hangar setup with the handling racks setup. This shot is looking aft.

Really amazing work. It's interesting how a little color (window lights, force-field strip glow, etc.) really brings the ship to life and makes it all the more realistic-looking.

I love those huge external doors! They look great. Can you include a shot of them closed?

Once I get a new computer, I am going to download the 3D file and fly through it. It is just amazing!