Frigate possibilities for Epic and I-War

Hello everyone. I need some ideas.

I'm currently working on a frigate for Cormorant's I-War mod, and Epic and anyone else who wants one ('cause you can never have too many friggin frigates )

Specs say it should borrow from both the Dreadnaught corvette and the Bastille destroyer's shapes.

Here's a couple of screenies of what I'm working on. It's just the very, very basic shape. Creating the front went very nicely... and then the rear of the craft just kinda blew up in my face. I'm really unhappy with the tail section. Don't know what I'm going to do with it yet, but won't allow it to survive the next round of tweaking.

Scale View:
http://images.snapfish.com/338%3A%3B46%3B23232%7Ffp47%3Dot%3E2328%3D%3C2%3C%3D8%3A8%3DXROQDF%3E2323466356846ot1lsi


Front Bottom View:
http://images.snapfish.com/338%3A%3B46%3B23232%7Ffp3%3B%3Dot%3E2328%3D%3C2%3C%3D8%3A8%3DXROQDF%3E2323466354%3B98ot1lsi
* Not all polygons filled in yet.


Front Top View:
http://images.snapfish.com/338%3A%3B46%3B23232%7Ffp8%3Enu%3D3237%3E%3B3%3B%3E7%3B7%3EWSNRCG%3D323255726595%3Cnu0mrj
* Not all polygons filled in yet.

Any ideas? The Dreadnaught-style thrusters don't fit very well... makes the damn thing resemble an airplane. What do you think Cormorant?

Personally, I like the front. It's the rear of the ship I could live without. Any comments welcome.




No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

Shane,

Nice work! Here's my two cents, for whatever they're worth:

Front end: pull the 'wings' in abit tighter, making it a little stubbier laterally. Possibly even make the presence of the collider ring more evident (rounder somehow). Add something bulbous or lumpy to the wing protrusions to accomodate PBC housings and their gimbals (would be cool if there were two fore and two aft on each side). I also like the overall shape and 'tone' of the front end.

Aft: thicken the 'fuselage' out considerably (alot, almost to the thickness of the dreadnaught engine heatsink array) and give it a little more height. Tone the thruster pack down so it's almost continuous with the thickness of the main body (making it look more internally contained like the destroyers engines, and less sticky outy, like the corvette's). Then add a couple of medium sized vertically aligned heat sink plates (or thrust deflectors) on either side of the main engines, just enough to hint at, or evoke the dreadnaught's butt end, but not enough to look like you're mimicking it in larger scale.

Anyway, try playing with some of those dimensions abit and see how it looks.


--
Hot4Darmat

Heyho,

I go with Hot4's suggesions - a little sleeker shape would be fine. the thrusters and the connection to the main body would look better if they were almost identically thick. I could also imagine a wider, flat tail section with two dome-shaped thruster arrays, similiar to the thruster arrays of the original I-War fuel carrier, or the on I-War 1's pirate corvette.
As the guns are concerned - I wouldn't go with more than one forwards and one aft PBC on each side. It's a matter of combat balance:
I have played around with a ship setup with two gatling PBCs facing forward as main weapons (the model already seems to hint at them so far [8D] ), and two PBC's on each pylon. The ship shouldn't be able to outgun a destroyer.
The setup just mentioned doesn't make the frigate too powerful as plain firepower is concerned. But gatling PBCs as main weapons to engage huge targets, and an alomst 360°-PBC coverage for self-defence, combined with enough thruster power to keep a certain distance from a destroyer, all makes the ship a powerful attack ship if used tactically, but vulnerable against small fleets of smaller, agile attack vessels.
---

Thank you gentlemen. Sounds like good advice. I'll get to work on it this afternoon.

I could also imagine a wider, flat tail section with two dome-shaped thruster arrays, similiar to the thruster arrays of the original I-War fuel carrier...

Is the I-War fuel carrier similar to the fuel carriers in EoC? If not, could you post a screen shot of the rear of it?

I'll post the changes tonight.

Cheers

No confusion; just wrong or right ... Only Solutions

how about we add a different kind of engine? I would LOVE to see a frog mines engine enlarged to this scale, the cutter corvette's ones are bugged up and crappy, but the frog-miners ones are perfect. perhaps giving this ship a V shape and sticking the two frogminer-style engines half way down the wings woud be good, could have the dock-port where the current engine is. Frigates would be used for cargo-transport too, an engine right ont he back would make this difficult.

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310

(edit function not working)

how about we add a different kind of engine? I would LOVE to see a frog mines engine enlarged to this scale, the cutter corvette's ones are bugged up and crappy, but the frog-miners ones are perfect. perhaps giving this ship a V shape and sticking the two frogminer-style engines half way down the wings woud be good, could have the dock-port where the current engine is. Frigates would be used for cargo-transport too, an engine right ont he back would make this difficult.

2nd suggestion would be to take a radically different route. how about the corperate capital class ship / cutter shape. more cigar and tubular than flat-disk.

Jwk...comander of =HEMP HUNGRY MONKEY=
www.i-war2.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=310