Something big

[fractalsponge1]

@Necronlord:

Don't know his email. Still, I imagine this to be quite a bit more powerful than a Mandator, given the usual 1000 Recusant figure. The mental picture I have of the Mandator is pretty similar to this though, just smaller.

@barricade:

Wait till I've started it - it won't be a bare sphere.

[fractalsponge1]

More details to the spine. Will add some more before plating the area. There will be a lot of centerline-mounted turrets before this is finished.

[fusion]

Are there going to be more turrets lining the brim near the front? (the mediums turbolasers)
Anyways, is your computer starting to be slow yet? or is it OK for now?

Lastly good job on your ship thus far.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I particularly like the look of the terracing on this one. Though what is going to be the purpose of the cliff like front of the main dorsal structure? It looks like an enormous frontal area.

Do you have a name for this class? The Empire could get away with naming it the Fellator and no one would dare laugh for fear of having the thing pointed at them.

[fractalsponge1]

I'm thinking the cliff will be terrace and gun batteries. Not sure yet, that area hasn't been finalized/worked on much at all.

Details (this is sort of becoming a where's waldo experience of updates as the ship is getting bigger...):

[Vehrec]

It's at this size that the scale gets beyond normal human comprehension. You can understand the size of the turrets and the size of the structure they are attached to at the same time, but not both at once without some work. Its difficult to even conceive of something bigger than Manhattan, that is at the same time a warship. As powerful as they are, from this distance it's gun batteries look like toys. For some reason, it's just hard to wrap my head around just how big and powerful this bad boy really is.

[fusion]

It's at this size that the scale gets beyond normal human comprehension. You can understand the size of the turrets and the size of the structure they are attached to at the same time, but not both at once without some work. Its difficult to even conceive of something bigger than Manhattan, that is at the same time a warship. As powerful as they are, from this distance it's gun batteries look like toys. For some reason, it's just hard to wrap my head around just how big and powerful this bad boy really is.

Same here, I just think about the distance from my work to my home, a fairly large distance of 12 miles and 19.2 klicks (about the length of the executor) to help myself wrap myself around... We need some comparison to a supercarrier and to a person to help us realize the true size...

Anyways I noticed that you switch all the turrets on the terrace to the quad barrel from the dual...
So I am hoping that you are getting a new computer very soon now.

[Force Lord]

Hooooooleeeey shit...

Those are some big guns. Lots of big guns.

Fractalsponge, you exceeded yourself big time.

[Crossroads Inc.]

On the subject of scale and putting such an immense ship into some sense of proportion... Id like to request the following..
I would imagine our dear friend Fractal has some real life models in his archive, perhaps something like a Supertanker, or aircraft carrier? Something along those lines should be places above the whole to truly give us a sense of scale.

[fractalsponge1]

Are there going to be more turrets lining the brim near the front? (the mediums turbolasers)

You mean the ISDII scale heavies? Yes, there will be more. I'm doing this ship in patches.

Anyways I noticed that you switch all the turrets on the terrace to the quad barrel from the dual...
So I am hoping that you are getting a new computer very soon now.

Actually I haven't. Currently there is one full "turret island" type batteries of 15 720-teraton twins, and all of the large turrets on the centerline are the same type as well. Complete and in place, assuming symmetry to the starboard side, there are now:

108x 720-teraton heavy turbolasers (54 twin)
480x 240-teraton HTL (120 quad)
672x 40-teraton HTL (84 octuple)
88x quad heavy ion cannon (22 quad)

For a total HTL simulatenous alpha of... ~220000 teratons.

Update (panels, more detail, beginning of the forward part of the center spine



Here's a scale shot for those who are interested. Red bar is 1km:

[fractalsponge1]

[Vehrec]

Wow. Seeing all those guns light off at once would be something else. Although that does pose a question-is this model completely stationary, or could you rotate those guns?

[fractalsponge1]

All of the guns are fully, independently articulated.

[fusion]

The problem with the scale that you put up is that the towers feel like that they are just mere toys, so scale is still hard to imagine. However, there is an extremely inventive video of the enterprise and how it scales:


[edit]: Of course your ship is so much more detailed, so it will definitely look much, much more realistic when giving a person a sense of scale...

[fractalsponge1]

Well, there's only so much you can do at this resolution. Even the fully detailed 8-foot Avenger studio model from TESB wouldn't look very detailed or reasonable if you looked at it from the point of view of a proportionally sized human. You really need to have a smaller model that is much more densely detailed to get that intimate a sense of detail. For that, corvette-sized ships are probably the limit for what I consider a reasonable single mesh (as opposed to a collection of many detailed sets). This is completely different. A meter in the scale shot I posted is about half a pixel. The ship will end up being as detailed (proportionately) as the Bellator model, probably a little more, but nowhere near the density of, say, my corvette or tie fighters or walker.

[Alerik the Fortunate]

I love this one. It looks like herds of turbolasers sweeping majestically across the plains...
The greater degree of inclination of the main surfaces due to the greater depth relative to an Executor seems to give your forward facing guns much better coverage. Doesn't the forward surface of the ventral reactor bulb seem a little vulnerable, though?

[Big Orange]

Why the heck didn't the Empire deploy two or three of these buggers and then mash apart the entire Rebel Fleet with a single combined salvo?!

[fusion]

Why the heck didn't the Empire deploy two or three of these buggers and then mash apart the entire Rebel Fleet with a single combined salvo?!

They kinda did... Vader's fleet... Also there is that very, very big Viscount-class Star Defender... that was supposedly there, so I guess not really... Also you have to remember the shields in Star Wars can defend a ship for days against a similarly footed vessel, so you would need a supremely more powerful ship to one shot kill a ship... So, in the short no.

[fractalsponge1]

Why the heck didn't the Empire deploy two or three of these buggers and then mash apart the entire Rebel Fleet with a single combined salvo?!

They kinda did... Vader's fleet... Also there is that very, very big Viscount-class Star Defender... that was supposedly there, so I guess not really... Also you have to remember the shields in Star Wars can defend a ship for days against a similarly footed vessel, so you would need a supremely more powerful ship to one shot kill a ship... So, in the short no.

Where do you get days? According to the AOTC ICS, the shield heat dissipation rate for the Acclamator is only 1/3 the potential reactor power. But there's nothing about how much energy the shield can absorb before it needs to vent heat.

As for one-salvo kills, one imagine it's going to be very rare, or only happen with massively outmatched opponents. Unless local burn-through of shields is common, and/or shields can't store that much heat before going down completely.

The Viscount is a New Republic ship, by the way...and quite late in the chronology. No idea what it's capable of, except that it's meant to counter large Imperial warships. By volume, it's certainly Executor-equivalent, at the very least. I'm thinking this dreadnought is probably also fairly late, would have drawn on the ideas for the Sovereign and Eclipse, possibly a "mass"-production equivalent of the latter without such a large siege weapon and Palpy-special additions, geared for conventional total war against a galactic-scale opposing New Republic.

[fusion]

Where do you get days? According to the AOTC ICS, the shield heat dissipation rate for the Acclamator is only 1/3 the potential reactor power. But there's nothing about how much energy the shield can absorb before it needs to vent heat.

Not sure, I just remember that some trusted forum members talking about it... However, it is something that was said in the passing... So no idea.
Anyways, is the ship going to get any more detailed, or will you have to get a new comp before you can continue?

[fractalsponge1]

No idea about the calcs, of course, but two comparable ships being able to alpha each other for days seems a bit out of whack. It'd be impossible to decide anything by single-ship action. It shouldn't be hard to stalemate, depending on hit frequencies though; two acclamators only need a hit rate of 33% for that...

This ship will continue, as I will be building my new computer soon...

[fractalsponge1]

New computer arrived and built. 2x xeon 5520 and 12gb of ddr3. Which means I can just barely load the mesh (actually the mesh takes a little over 5gb to load, more to render, which might explain which it was such a bitch to handle on my old machine, which only had 6gb of ram). I'm getting some significantly faster render times on some of these...like 3-4x boost for comparable renders.

Some more trench and details to celebrate:

[Raesene]

Awesome as usual
I especially like the tail fin

With your new machine, you really, really ought to do a new version of the Executor...

The ion cannon row gives some substance to the comment of the Lusankya's captain (I know, different class) when exclaiming "We have more ion cannons than this ship [an ISD] has guns !"

[fractalsponge1]

Well, after this an executor doesn't really have the same pull on my to-do list as it used to

Actually only the ball turrets in the notches are quad ion. The ball turrets between the notches are quad ball 240s, matching the small battery island on the hull surface.

And here are the *correct* links

[Coyote]

Damn, good work still. I just spent part of an afternoon going through this thread and getting caught up. Damn you for making the "assault gunboat" into a vehicle I actually think looks cool! I had a good, solid dislike for that vessel all worked up!

Seriously, you need a new thread. This one is getting "HUEG" as Shroom would say.

Also, for a note, I think the smaller, lighter ships --frigates on down-- are actually more sexy than the big hulking ubermightysooper-dooperbattleshipkampfwagenflotteshiffen type stuff. The ability to deploy, and creatively use, massed smaller maneuver forces is far superior for tactical and strategic flexibility. That Customs corvette is, actually, my favorite of your designs, followed by the fleet tender.

Plus there's the story angle. Those smaller ships, out on patrol in the backwater, are where eager young officers get their first real taste of command. They have the chance to actually know or at least recognise all their crewers, meet regularly with their department chiefs, and build bonds that will last years later when they've all moved on and gathered some rank. Young officers can indulge in a learning curve, maybe even a little more independence, and make bold decisions that can make or break careers-- and maybe bring them under the wing (or into the ire) of established, older officers.

Yessir, smaller ships and junior commands are where the real plot points are.