Looks like the F-22 Raptor is going to have some Competition in the future.
Posted by Da_bang80 (Member # 528) on :
Those pics have been floating around for a couple years now. Although the PAK-FA does look way cooler and sleeker than the F-22.
China's working on their own 5th gen fighter, the Chengdu J-20.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
Da_bang, i'd like to remind you that looks doesnt equal function. Performance matters. (now of course, if those looks actually enhance Performance, then meh).
my concerns is that with our goverment issues with finances, other competive countries will take this as their chance to finally advance militarly against us... and i honestly think thats a probablity, with the type of retards in politics that have harmed us or hope to harm us by benifiting special iterests first before all others (though -they- say or will say otherwise, it's the results that will fuck us over)
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
China is sorta the odd man out with regards to military- a nuclear power that does not intervene militarily to achieve it's goals. (not like the US and NATO do anyway) Oh sure, they have the goods to rain hell on some country, but it's almost a moot point with North Korea also having nukes (or at least atomic weapons) right in their back yard.
And India has nukes. Pakistan. The Galapagos Islands.
Well, everyone, really. Except the Iran, Syria, Libya etc. (and those assholes have other WMD weapons just as terifying).
And therein lies the issue- China can sit back, confident the US will spend whatever resources, borrowed or otherwise, are needed to keep nuclear weapons from the nuts most likely to use them.
And the US and China are in this odd position where the US owes so much money to China that neither wants to step on the other's toes- any war would have the US blow off any debt obligations and the US cant have China call in it's loans so it turns a blind eye to human rights abuses and China's formenting civil war in Africa over metals and resources.
Trade deficits wont get addressed for the same reasons- cant piss off our creditors, so they hose us in an area that could (in part) get us out of debt.
Wait, this was about a plane?!?
Huh.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
If you compare the ten top main battle tanks in the world, and the ten most advanced fighters of 2015, the only difference is the flag on the wing, or what flavor machine gun for the commander's turret.
Edit: Ok so the F-86 Sabre and MiG-15 Faggot were clones already in the 1950's, but my point still stands!
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nim:
Edit: Ok so the F-86 Sabre and MiG-15 Faggot were clones already in the 1950's, but my point still stands!
Not even CLOSE to being alike other than a basic plan form. If you ever get a chance to compare the two at an airshow, the Sabre is significantly larger than the Faggot and the armaments are also fundamentally different as well as the tail structure. Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
That's a very nice photograph! And it just proves my point! To the untrained eye, the size and the tailfin placement is the only difference. Their fuselage, air intakes, wing angle, even their teardrop canopies, are practically identical.
If it wasn't clear in my previous post, I'm only talking of aesthetics and visual impression, not what's under the hood. Of course you should mimic your competitor. If they've come up with trial-and-error findings guaranteeing efficiency, you'd be an idiot not to.
In terms of ship design and sci-fi concepts, however, I like diversity, the Babylon 5 universe coming to mind. Endless variations inspired from animal shapes, renaissance decadence or quaint UFO ideas. Compare that with one of the most tragically wasted design opportunities ever, the total synaptic death that is the Honor Harrington universe. You can talk about efficiency all you want, but fan-art friendly it is not. Unless one is a alternative hobby aid designer? Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nim: In terms of ship design and sci-fi concepts, however, I like diversity, the Babylon 5 universe coming to mind. Endless variations inspired from animal shapes, renaissance decadence or quaint UFO ideas. Compare that with one of the most tragically wasted design opportunities ever, the total synaptic death that is the Honor Harrington universe. You can talk about efficiency all you want, but fan-art friendly it is not.
Dear GOD, that Harrington U is HORRID! Somebody hired a newbie off of Moonlighter.com to do their artwork and got what $129.99 will get you in the art world. I too liked the approach of the B5U to ships though I thought the Agamemnon's were a bit clunky. It certainly made recognition easier.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Recognition is one thing but it's annoying after a while when each species has their own color-coded fleet.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
After all these years, my favorite B5-design is still the Vorlon Dreadnought (without the lollipop hull pattern and yellow color), and Babylon 4. I also like the fact that they kept the ship designs coming all the way up to the end, with that smaller (underutilized) Whitestar variant. The ships of that Gary Cole-spinoff were nice too, although I thought the Excalibur was a bit much, in every sense.
About Honor Harrington, I managed to plow through the first four books without seeing any "official" schematics, and merrily imagined the ships only by the scant descriptions and my own noggin. For a long time I saw Harrington's battlecruiser as a blue and ivory USS Sulaco. Long, tall and thin, lots of side surface. Then I finally saw an "official" line drawing of a Honorverse ship, and this played in my head. The Honorverse ship is the only design I know that looks better in ASCII.
The saddest part is that Honerverse ships have more plot-critical and narratively-used ship components than almost any sci-fi universe I know: shield generators, lasers, grasers (sic), point-defense clusters, deployment bays and missile tubes, to name the major ones. Every one of these components could've been used visibly and evocatively, as on a Trek ship (visual impact of the chin-placed quantum torp launcher on the Sovereign class). Instead, the Honorverse artist reduced all those components to individual black dots and pressed them together at the middle of the ship. The only unique detail that distinguishes Honorverse ships from rolled-up newspapers was supposed to be the "hammerhead" bow, mentioned again and again in the novels. They messed that up too, putting tapered blocks or cubes in both ends instead. Maybe they'd never seen a Corellian Corvette, or a hammerhead shark.
quote:Recognition is one thing but it's annoying after a while when each species has their own color-coded fleet.
Yeah, I like ship artists with the ability to have fleet variety with the slightest of unifying traits, not with shoehorned gratuitous design elements for identification purposes. While I like the Vorlons, their Planet Killer hamburger ship was the worst "rushed-out-the-door" job I'd seen up until then.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
^To be fair, IIRC the planet killer was done buy Netter Digital, a company made up of mostly FI's least talented people that Netter poached so it's hardly representative of the quality of the rest of the show.
As for the general aesthetics of the alien ships, I thought they made a good job making the ships distinctive from almost anything else in sci-fi. Plus, the colours were hardly the only distinguishing features, that's just stupid. Even if they were painted boring starfleet grey, you can clearly tell the difference between a Vorlon, Minbari, Centauri, Narn, Shadow and Earth ship design. Likewise what little was seen of the League ships were fairly distinct. I don't think anyone would mistake a Drazi Sunhawk for a Vree saucer.
They even seemed to go to the trouble of showing a technological relationship between Centauri, Earth and Narn ships. It rather subtly reflected how certain technologies passed from the Centauri to the Narn through reverse engineering and from both of them to Earth through trade.
As for the Honorverse ships...yeah I have to say I was greatly disappointed when I saw the official designs. I know the descriptions in the books were fairly precise but I think there was still enough room for a *little* artistic imagination in there somewhere. Not that I'm a huge fan of the books or anything. I honestly found most of the early ones a bit of a slog and for me the title character didn't even begin to get interesting until that one with the pistol duelling.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
The Honorverse stuff seems very drama-queen from what fans have told me and the shp designs killed any interest. But are those really accurate to the descriptions in the novels?
Nim, I'd love to see a design laid out with annotated notes from the novels explaining why it looks like someting other than an adult novelty. Can you maybe sketch up something? Artistic ability is secondary to accuracy here- just give us your notion of the ship's look.
As to B5, I loved Kosh's ship- like a flower, but with purpose. I loved the Earthforce ships too.... but generally hated the Centauri's "look we're Napoleanic!" gag- their ships, their culture, their silly hair...ug.
The Whitestar was pretty bad and the Rxcalibut was so pointless and silly that the script must have called for an "uber-fanboy" design. Which they still failed at miserably.
The constructions ships on B5 were great (the modified Starfury design with arms) and the giant long-range exploration ship was very nicely done as well (forget it's name- it was huge and disappeared for years).
It's something that's always bothered me about B5: we dont really know who designed what! With Trek, we can say "Andy Probery designed the Warbord" but with B5, we cant credit anyone? That's annoying.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
"...we can say 'Andy Probery designed the Warbord'..."
Only you would say that.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
quote:Nim, I'd love to see a design laid out with annotated notes from the novels explaining why it looks like someting other than an adult novelty. Can you maybe sketch up something? Artistic ability is secondary to accuracy here- just give us your notion of the ship's look.
Unexpected, this was. How nice of you to ask, I haven't thought about these things for a long time. I don't have any 3D software but I'll fire up the ol' GUI and throw out a rough sketch. Not sure how much annotation I can add, but I'll put in as much as possible.
To thread starter: I do have an opinion on 5th gen fighters as well, will add tidbit next.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:The Honorverse stuff seems very drama-queen from what fans have told me and the shp designs killed any interest. But are those really accurate to the descriptions in the novels?
They certainly can be melodramatic and the author tends to hit the proverbial historical allegory/technological anachronism nail a little too squarely on the head...plus the title character is almost a textbook "Mary Sue" type.
As for the descriptions...It's been a while but I don't recall the wording, but the impression I was left with was that the author was more interested in droning on and on about the technical specs than giving the reader a vivid mental picture of the things. One can't help but get the impression the man would rather have been writing pen & paper RPG rule books than a sci-fi adventure novel. Even writers like Clarke, Sagan and Asimov managed to convey very technical concepts in a manner that instilled a sense of wonder. So yeah, those diagrams are "consistent" with the descriptions as I recall them, they're just not terribly imaginative.
quote:It's something that's always bothered me about B5: we dont really know who designed what! With Trek, we can say "Andy Probery designed the Warbord" but with B5, we cant credit anyone? That's annoying.
If you really want to know who did what and what the inspirations were then I highly recommend visiting this site. The guy appears to have spoken to most of the major players and has managed to attribute *most* of the designs. In fairness, it was a long time ago and with the rate at which these guys were putting out content it's no wonder that nobody can remember exactly who did what.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
quote:the author was more interested in droning on and on about the technical specs than giving the reader a vivid mental picture of the things.
Reverend hits it on the head. Visual descriptions is Weber's weakest spot, as with a subplot race called Medusans, which I still don't have a stationary mental image for. Weber can't decide himself and in the end basically says, IIRC, "like a praying mantis only humanoid, not insectoid, with four legs and three arms".
While Weber talks about components and sections of his ship archetype in all novels, he can't describe the scale of the parts or their placement and direction. This confusion is clear when looking at the shifting cover art of the first eight books (up until the implementation of the official dildo doctrine):
In all fairness, one of those ships is a fake-merchant vessel built to lure in pirates, but since Weber's ship design is dependent on a specific configuration in order to generate its version of a warp field, it can't deviate to the extent shown in the above picture (the red one).
I'd like to make it clear (to Honorverse fans on Flare) that I am not writing all this as an axejob on David Weber, it's intended as ship- and novel discussion, not bullying.
I'll get my main grievances out of the way first. Weber's political views shine through more than I'd care to. For example, there's a diplomat intent on conflict-aversion and seeking negotiation with a super-judeomuslim militia, and he's portrayed as a snivelling, bleeding-heart idealist only worthy of a haymaker to the face. The plot is written so that armed conflict indeed is the only solution, but although the novel in question was written long before the disputed 2003 Bush invasion, the comparisons in lingo and justifications are unavoidable.
I was personally bothered when Weber had Harrington prove religious diversity and tolerance in the Manticoran Navy by naming 3-4 different faiths held by crewmen on her ship and having one be a Scientologist. In the year 4000. Good grief. I still don't know if Weber is one or not.
He can fall into formula easily, for example having Honor serve her senior staff Old Tillman ale from her personal store once, to get them to relax, and then eight books later, whenever there's a personal guest or it's off-hours, still Old Tillman in a foggy glass.
I once got a weird surprise. In one story, Honor meets a young, muscular First Officer with glasses, a long black ponytail and a goatee. I thought "these are very weird, vain and improper affectations for a senior officer, who's not a villain but a potential romantic interest for Honor?". Then it dawned on me.
Now, they say Tolkien wrote Gandalf as himself, and far be it from me to judge someone who's invented a successful sci-fi universe and (I imagine) would gladly cut off his legs to live there, but, I mean...damn.
But though there are some of these kinks and oddities (a rich, comfy elder statesman from Manticore and a ruthless arms dealer from Haven use the exact same vocabulary, metaphors and swearwords), there are strong saving graces in there too (this is for you, Jason).
First and foremost, you can't write 10+ books about a universe without it getting more substance and content for every publication. He also balances large regions of known space (empires, republics and corporate conglomerates) with large expanses of uncharted territory and "western" frontiers, so you can have varying atmosphere for different stories.
Then there is the fan service. Those moments of juicy ship upgrades, or new ship classes (eaten like ice cream by that nerdy gremlin who lives in your tummy), discoveries of weapon caches in desperate moments, decisive hand-to-hand battles under unfair odds, and those classic crew hostilities that lead to cooperation and nice feelings allround.
The space battles are of course the major drawing point, and they are very varied in scale, weaponry and setting, in the best tradition of Hornblower and Jack Aubrey.
Also, he seems to like cats a lot.
Almost done with that ship sketch.
[ September 26, 2011, 03:27 AM: Message edited by: Fabrux ]
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Visual descriptions is Weber's weakest spot...
ONE of his weak spots, sure. I'd argue that three dimensional characterization and a chronic over dependence on 18th Century allegory are right up there too.
I forget which book it was (and look away now those that don't want to be spoiled) but the bit where she's captured and it looked like they had gon and murdered the cat was the closest I ever came to being interested in Honor as a character.
Usually when a character is that insufferable the author has the narrative sense to set-up a nemesis of equal ability. No such luck. One came close I think but only after his government ended up being on the "good" side after all. I can see why this franchise has never been adapted as a movie or a TV show. Any script writer worth their salt would basically have to start from scratch, lest the audience die of boredom.
..Damn, I really am dumping on this IP aren't I? I mean it's not all bad. I mean I'm not one to slog through anything I'm not enjoying just so I can bitch about it, but it's one of those things that's entertaining enough to read through, but the series accumulates things that niggle away at the back of your mind until you look back and realise how crap some if it really was.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
quote:the bit where she's captured and it looked like they had gon and murdered the cat
Can you ever describe a scenario without making it sound like Fawlty Towers?
Office of the Admiralty: "Where's that tart flown off to now then? The enemy will be here soon!" *knock-knock* "Send in the prisoner! No, NOT THE BLOODY CAT!" *entire staff enters room, arguing loudly* "Shut up! I said shu-" *violin ditty escalates*
The Tricolore references may get a bit heavyhanded now and then. I half-expected a new stealth cruiser of the Pimpernel class to be built and sent into Haven. But the plot element of "political" officers lent a degree of excitement to the "meanwhile, on havenite cruiser" chapters.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Can you ever describe a scenario without making it sound like Fawlty Towers?
Of course, but only when I make it sound like 'Allo 'Allo! or Open All Hours. *he typed while humming 'Alice Where Art Thou'*
BBC sitcoms are lens through which I view the universe.
Anyway, yeah the Havenite bits should have come with a Frank Welker voiced intro, Superfriends style : "...meanwhile, at the legion of doom..." Seriously, I'm almost certain there was *actual* moustache twirling going on.
[ September 27, 2011, 05:22 PM: Message edited by: Reverend ]
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Those books sonun fuckawful. those coverse (linked) have nice illustrations but some of the very crappiest graphic design I have ever seen- way to completely fuck up a nice cover illustration with bad text and framing!
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Some of the covers are very archetypical "sci fi schlock corner" material, which doesn't necessarily do them justice. What I tried to convey in my posts is that the books do have solid parts and entertainment. Of the three books I've ever thrown into a wall after the last page, none of them were Webers. My main beef has been with the uninspiring, hypersymmetrical ship design, why I called it "one of the most tragic missed opportunities" in sci-fi. Because there's so much built up around them in the narrative.
Speaking of, I'm almost done with my dream schematic now, keep pantyhose on. The ventral view is the bitch of the bunch. Will be done tomorrow.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
So...what were the books that you threw at the wall?
We need a thred for that- Sci Fi that made you hate the book/author/genre!
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Ok, here goes. So this is an amalgamate of my mind's eye view of a Manticoran battlecruiser, during my reading of the first four Honor Harrington-books. My main impression was a ship that was tall and slim, like the Sulaco, had a hammerhead bow and could take a rigorous beating.
HMS Hammer, 600 meters, 400,000 tons. What you must know about Honorverse ships is that their conventional layout favors the broadside, with forward/aft weapons (chase armament) being more sparse. In a prolonged engagement, the ship fires a broadside, then does a barrel roll and empties the other side in the same direction, while the first side reloads. Timed right, the ship can fire side after side in rhythm, in a continuous roll.
Now, seen in animation, that move would look dramatic with an asymmetrical ship, but very boring in the conventional Weber cylinder-ship design, as rolling cylinders don't move at all. The only indication would be small dots flying past. I didn't do a line drawing with arrows on ship sections, because the only arrow here would go to the hangar bay, situated on the belly of the ship. But now you know it's there, so I don't need to draw lines. The missile tubes are the main weapon, with lasers and *grasers (*much more potent energy weapon) finishing off at close range.
Got front and ventral views soon.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Actually, going by the Honorverse's own rules I think a narrow hull makes more sense than a cylinder purely from a tactical stand-point. I may be wrong in some of this (it's been a while) but as I recall the reason for the focus on broadside armament is because of the way the drive system creates a nigh impenetrable shield along the length, with the weak spots along the central axis, hence the minimal "chase" armaments.
With a tall, narrow hull you maximize the surface area you have that's shielded and present only a (relatively) minimal target profile along the axis of thrust.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Yes, Honorverse ships don't have glowing aft-mounted thruster engines like most other franchises. The ship's "impeller drive" generates a forcefield, the impeller wedge, that moves the ship in sublight mode. It's shaped like a clamshell with holes up front, in the back and on the sides. The doctrine usually is to fire your broadside, then roll onto the side and let the topside of your wedge absorb the return fire.
Here is another point where I question Weber's judgement. The impeller wedge, as I would draw it, would extend about two shiplengths in level directions, one shiplength high. Much larger than a Galaxy class shield bubble, but not infeasible. It would be also be a very attractive and grateful aesthetic element to draw in artwork (I will do that next, after ventral view).
But Weber decides that the impeller wedge extends "hundreds of kilometers" in all directions, a figure totally meaningless to the human imagination, as it would make the ship driving the wedge smaller than a grain of sand, in scale. The kind of power needed to generate something like this is unimaginable and pointlessly improbable to the reader, it's a lot to file under "suspension of disbelief".
It's the same with weapon ranges. The common Honorverse laser, the weakest weapon in a warship's arsenal, has an effective range of one million kilometers, according to Weber. The planet Earth is thirteen thousand kilometers wide. The moon is four hundred thousand kilometers from Earth at its farthest point. So is a million kilometers really necessary? Giving even the smallest frigate class ship the gunpower of the Macross SDF-1? If Weber would've said 2000 km for lasers I would've been happy, because that is just enough for planetary bombardment in medium earth orbit. And that's what my imaginary spec card for HMS Hammer would say. You know, if I'd been interested in statistics.
[ September 30, 2011, 01:46 AM: Message edited by: Nim ]
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Well actually I'm with him on the weapons ranges front. Space is after all, very very very very...BIG. For one ship to realistically threaten another their reach has to be significant, otherwise a star system would be utterly indefensible.
Still, even with that kind of range, the trick is in getting a bead on the enemy, adjust for light lag and hope he doesn't change course before the beam gets there. Realistically, I think if any enemy can get so close you can see them with the naked eye then you're in a *lot* of trouble.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
quote:Well actually I'm with him on the weapons ranges front. Space is after all, very very very very...BIG. For one ship to realistically threaten another their reach has to be significant, otherwise a star system would be utterly indefensible.
I see what you mean, but I have a threshold for realistic content in sci-fi. I prefer the kind of encounters a Star Destroyer would get into, encounters you could draw as a scene. When it all becomes automated, approximated, beeping dots on a screen, you can just let the computers do all the work and have no humans at all. The Honorverse battles are very tense, exciting and dramatic, and describe the exploding hulk of the enemy (or unfortunate ally) in poetic detail, but knowing that the winner who fired the deciding volley is many worlds away and can't possibly see it happen takes something away from it, for me.
I realize that non-eyeball naval warfare occurred as early as WWII, but if I wanted to make an animation of my HMS Hammer in battle, it would be a Mutara Nebula deal, not Tron-meets-RISK.
The only movie I know of that has broadside-firing sci-fi ships doing battle was "Wing Commander" (1999), and although that movie was very subpar, the one scene where David Suchet takes his capital ship on strafing speed past a Kilrathi cruiser, was the one interesting scene in the movie for me. THAT'S space opera.
Couldn't find the scene on Youtube, but at 0:49 here you see a miniscule part of it. The missiles are even shaped like Weber's official mk.7 missiles. Oh, and at 0:25, Suchet's very pretty capital ship.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
Well are we talking about science fiction or space opera here? They're not necessarily the same thing. To my mind science fiction must be rooted in science, but a space opera is basically fantasy that happens to involve space ships (see Star Wars, and I suppose Trek too to a lesser extent.)
I think modern submarine warfare is more or less analogous to what space combat would really be like and a skilled storyteller can still spin a compelling tale within those restrictions. Indeed, to me, sub-warfare is far more tense and dramatic than a pair of surface ships bludgeoning each other to death with broadside after broadside. It focuses the drama on the people. You don't ever know exactly where the enemy is, just where they've been and at any moment a ship or a barrage of missile or lasers can seemingly appear from nowhere. It's the difference between a boxing match and a game of chess. One is a battle of endurance while the other is a battle of wits.
In the case of Honor Harrington, it was most often the latter. IIRC the dramatic broadsides were usually reserved for the final stroke or when two ships were forced to stick close to a gravity well.
Posted by MinutiaeMan (Member # 444) on :
There are plenty of examples, both good and bad, about what can happen in space combat when you can't see your enemy.
Exhibit A: "Balance of Terror." The two ships didn't have to be in visual range all the time for there to be tense action.
Exhibit B: "Andromeda." The quintessential "beeping dots on the screen" killed a lot of the action, and cutaway shots didn't make up for it. It was the most scientifically accurate, one could argue, but that didn't make it interesting.
Let's face it: modern combat, even/especially in real life, is mostly people staring at computer screens guiding or controlling their weapons at targets dozens, hundreds, or thousands of miles away.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Those are good examples.
quote:Let's face it: modern combat, even/especially in real life, is mostly people staring at computer screens guiding or controlling their weapons at targets dozens, hundreds, or thousands of miles away.
Will do. *indistinct noises* There. Fully faced. Now, let's face away from it again...towards gun cams, ramming speed, capital ship acrobatics, Slim Pickens whooping, and Shaka, when the walls fell.
Reverend:
quote:Well are we talking about science fiction or space opera here? They're not necessarily the same thing.
Nuh-no, still firmly entrenched in sci-fi. When I said "space opera" I was referring to that particular capital ship duel in "Wing Commander", it had good dramatic and aesthetic flare for a straight-to-video astroturd.
I agree, the most memorable battles of the Honorverse involve inspired improvisation or exploiting an opportunity, not just brute force. However, I'd say that both analogies (boxing and chess) are applicable to most Honorverse (and Hornblower) battles, in that both sides take a lot of fat licks before the situation changes or escalates, often through the point-defense margin of error.
No one else could write stuff like "the faltering hulk was sent into oblivion by a storm of bomb-pumped laser fury". Well, I guess several others could, but no one would. *rimshot*
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Ventral view, showing off the hammerhead, and more clearly illustrating the width/height ratio I was talking of before, in comparison with side view. They are both in scale, by the way.
In this particular shot it's patrolling the Plomeek Nebula.
The contours, they're just really eye-pleasing.
Posted by Reverend (Member # 335) on :
quote:Originally posted by MinutiaeMan: There are plenty of examples, both good and bad, about what can happen in space combat when you can't see your enemy.
Exhibit A: "Balance of Terror." The two ships didn't have to be in visual range all the time for there to be tense action.
Exhibit B: "Andromeda." The quintessential "beeping dots on the screen" killed a lot of the action, and cutaway shots didn't make up for it. It was the most scientifically accurate, one could argue, but that didn't make it interesting.
Let's face it: modern combat, even/especially in real life, is mostly people staring at computer screens guiding or controlling their weapons at targets dozens, hundreds, or thousands of miles away.
^ Andromeda probably isn't the best example as (if memory serves) they did both the tedious blinky lights thing and the silly Star Wars style up-close nonsense. Not the only inconsistency it had as it was rather a crap after all and of course it's not the method, it's the execution. Balance of Terror on the other hand was almost a 1:1 submarine drama analogue, right down the the Romulan set design.
Still, I'd go so far as to say that you don't even need to look to modern combat for examples of long distance combat drama. Master and Commander might be a good example. Most of the film the enemy doesn't get any closer than the horizon and a lot of the tension is in looking at maps, charts and predicting where the enemy will be. Dramatically it's no different than using sonar, radar, telescopes or EM/IR sensors.
quote:Originally posted by Nim: Thank you Mars! That is the opposite of dildo. This mission is succeeding.
It's certainly better than the vacuum cleaner attachments that pass for the official designs. If it were me though I'd maker the hammerheads larger and have the aft "fins" be a mirror image of the front.
Also, I'm not sure if the bridge (assuming that's what it is) would be exposed like that. I may be misremembering but I think there's a mention somewhere of the bridge and/or CIC being placed deeper within the hull. IIRC the rules of the Honorverse aren't like Star Trek where an unshielded ship wouldn't last ten seconds against a serious barrage but can take multiple hits and still continue to function. The only thing that needs to be away from the hull like that would be the sensor/comm arrays and those node wotsits (I forget the name) that have something to do with the drive system.
Actually, it might be fun to dust off Paint Shop Pro myself and see what I can come up with. Is there anywhere that has a half decent description of what one of these ships are supposed to look like? Just so I know the parameters.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
quote:If it were me though I'd maker the hammerheads larger and have the aft "fins" be a mirror image of the front.
I experimented a lot, if the hammerheads are larger, it makes the ship look smaller. The same way a knife-handle is usually 50% of overall knife-length, but only 15-20% of a sword. Also, the attitude of the bow changed the larger the hammerhead got.
I can show you the 10+ variations I made on hammerhead-size, orientation and configuration, but one inescapable fact was that making the aft fins identical to the front and pointing backwards <---> made the sense of direction of the ship too ambiguous, or made it look like a Nebulon-B frigate. Having them point the same way <---< disrupted the visual integrity. In this case the hammerheads have no aero/hydrodynamical value but helps with impeller-wedge dispersion. Also why I mounted no weapons on them. :.)
quote:Also, I'm not sure if the bridge (assuming that's what it is) would be exposed like that.
Here's the Nike. I believe the bridge is what's shown on top. Regardless, even the thickest superdreadnought hulls got pierced like wet toilet-paper by point-blank shots from "bomb-pumped laser" missiles. More than once were Honor's CIC or bridge penetrated or open to space, and holes occasionally were cut, Borg-style, clean through the hull from side to side (taking the brig with it in one case, holding an unfortunate a-hole).
I've never said that my HMS Hammer is the be-all-end-all design for the Honorverse, which "Weber should've used if he'd had half a brain", just the one I preferred when reading and idealizing. I don't feel I'm THAT off in my views, though. It's not like that one Star Wars book cover which had a Jedi shooting Forced Lightning like it was laser-pointers.
Aside from trying to draw the essence of the ship that formed in my head ten years ago, I wanted to have something that conveyed momentum, confidence and density, with some space for man-o-war/battleship romantic elegance, as best I could. Ship aesthetics has two extremes in each end, artistic and practical. The Andromeda ship in Andromeda and the Minbari cruiser is at the "excessively sculpted or animal-mimicking" extreme, to me. The Nostromo, Leonov and Honorverse ships are "crude industrial pragmatism".
I only had two aims, balance between inspirational sources and also assymetry, giving you something your eyes could grab onto, unlike just a long cylinder. I actually had a longer list of "mustn't look like"s than "kinda look like"s, especially with the nose.
Now, I've really only put in half the components that make out a Honorverse ship in my design, simply because you guys wouldn't care if there were 2x4 phased gravitic arrays included or not, and because the ones who would care (Honorverse fans here on Flare) probably are more interested in sacks with doorknobs in them and my home adress.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nim: [QUOTE]Now, I've really only put in half the components that make out a Honorverse ship in my design, simply because you guys wouldn't care if there were 2x4 phased gravitic arrays included or not, and because the ones who would care (Honorverse fans here on Flare) probably are more interested in sacks with doorknobs in them and my home adress.
Dont be silly- it's nothing but the best for you, Nim. Socks with D-Cell batteries all the way: you'll last longer that way between beatings.
I really so like what you've come up with there but I'd make some tweaks and I have a few questions:
First, I'd spread the weapons out a bit- never a good idea to clump everything together if you dont have to- do they not have area of effect weapons like Nukes? you'd think such a weapon would wipe out tightly clustered weapons all at once.
Are the hammerhead and fin structures part of the drive system? They desperately need some detail to both give a sense of scale and so they dont look like wings/fins. I kinda hate pointless aerodynamics of spaceships.
So...in combat, this thing rolls over like a baker's rolling pin? (your design less so than the dildo versions, thankfully). You mentioned that the dorsal/vental aspect are sorta super shielded by the drive, right? You'd think they'd rev up to speed, change the ship's attitude so the shielded aspect faced their enemy on approach and only then broadside roll thingie.
No need for "crossing the T" manuvers in space, after all.
Maybe add some weaponry on long boom arms to cover the shielded aspect- and of those get blown off, it's no big deal (thins assuming the weaponry is smallish compared to the ship's overall size, whhich seems to be the case for there to be so much of it in that narrow hull).
Personally, I favor that "Nebulon" version as maybe a nice companion cruiser.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
I'm glad you like it, you're the reason it's even here. :.)
Got a front view coming up, might add some comparison ships from other universes, too.
quote:First, I'd spread the weapons out a bit- never a good idea to clump everything together if you dont have to- do they not have area of effect weapons like Nukes?
I've played around with spreading the armament out more, but putting side-firing stuff in the stern interrupted with the chase armament, and side-weapons in the nose felt like it made the visual shape of the entire nose ambiguous. If you look at the side view, you'll see the nose is thicker at the top, where it meets the hammerhead. That's the impeller generator. It gets clearer in the upcoming front view (you'll also get more detail on the hammerhead there).
Honestly, I could easily have crammed in 200 launchers on each side, but that would A: have looked like a terminal case of "fanboyism", trying to build a ship that is mightier than all official designs, and B:, made the ship an over-pierced honeycomb, looking crushable like a taco. So I applied the "kill your darlings" approach and limited the weapons-bays to an area with thicker walls and close proximity to the centralized forward/aft ammunition rooms.
About the missiles themselves, there are two warheads: nuclear missiles are the inferior version, each Honorverse ship only carries a low, necessary complement of them for practical purposes. The main warhead in battle uses a technology called "bomb-pumped laser" (yeah, suck on that bonbon for a while :.) Weber never elaborates on how the device works, not even the encyclopedias define them, but just using conjecture, the warhead detonates and this kinetic energy behaves like photonic energy and shoots out through a sort of gravitic lens housing ball, firing between ten to a hundred beams in all directions in the detonation zone, lacerating the target (the impact zones don't explode, though). There was a weapon in "Command&Conquer: Red Alert 2" that did this, IIRC.
Anyway, this means that missiles fired close together in clusters have a higher effect and hit score tally, so ships in the Honorverse pack their launcher tubes together. It also helps in emulating the look of cannon groups in sail-era warships, which is never a bad thing.
quote:Are the hammerhead and fin structures part of the drive system? I kinda hate pointless aerodynamics of spaceships.
I do too, almost as much as animal shapes. The hammerheads are part of the impeller drive system, though. They act both like tuning forks and negative-charge magnets, no aero/hydrodynamic properties. Why I kept the back pair straight was because I could, because it was 10% more unexpected, and because I love this.
When I was young'un, a JAS-39 Gripen crashed into a park before my eyes, in a swedish air show. Five minutes after that, a camouflage-colored CH-46 Sea Knight swooped in, scanned for the pilot, filmed the wreckage and the extent of the forest fire, while doing an extremely tight 90-degree turn, laying completely on its side and showing me its belly. It was the most awesome thing I'd ever seen, and aside from the giant rotors, the aft wing housing was the only thing my eyes could lock onto. So short, massive side pylons always held a feeling of power, authority and resolve, to me.
quote:No need for "crossing the T" manuvers in space, after all.
What a funny coincedence, at first I thought you'd read up on Weber there. Actually, "crossing the T" is standard O.P. in Honorverse battles, so there is in deed still need for it. :.)
Seriously, you should read just the first book, still my fav. It's short, intense and gratifying naval-wise.
quote:Maybe add some weaponry on long boom arms to cover the shielded aspect
Interesting, could you elaborate? Placed where?
Also, let me be clear that my weapon artwork is only symbolical, grasers don't fire through triangle-holes in the hull, it was just so you guys could tell them apart, like on a blueprint. They can be made to look much cooler, protruding a bit through metal-frame mounts, but that level of detail would turn this 16-hour job into a 60-hour job. I'd have to do windows too.
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Ok, I will create a new thread for this "Alternative Honorverse" ship business. I have some new stuff I want to show you guys, but I don't want Wizartist Two to get more disappointing "non-fighter jet" post notifications, I think he's been through enough as it is.
With that in mind, here's what I meant in my first post in the thread. Here are the current operational or developing fifth-gen stealth jets in the world, in roughly chronological order:
Now, try to guess what point I'm trying to make here.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Jets....Starships....Just different uses of oxygen for propulsion....
I thought I read somewhere that the Russian Mig was out of the picture? The KF-X kind of reminds me of the Saab Viggen. As for the J-20, I'm hoping they are of the same quality as all the Texsport import crap we get from China.
Posted by Cartman (Member # 256) on :
"... try to guess what point I'm trying to make here"
R U perhaps saying the aerodynamics and mathematics of supercruising stealth-fighter aircraft dictate that their fuselage/wing shape is constrained to a certain small set of visually similar configurations?? Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Yours was the second response in the sequence, earning me fifteen Quatloos in this tier. The saturated-energy cupolas I could part with, knowing how much your kind depends on them, for insulation, fuel and clothing. Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Wait a minute - I know you. I remember that name, it's been passed down generations. Impossible. You're one of...THEM!
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I want that South Korean Fighter for X-Mas this year.
Nim, I'll cue that first nove into my endless Book Que O' Doom (I should be up to it by year's end).
Start that thread...or maybe it's time to open the rusty door of the Designs & Creativity forum and make the thread an All Flarite design thread wherein we post our designs from novels or whatever.
Also, seeng images of cookies first thing in the morning is just...wrong. Now I need to add chcocolate chips I my omlette...
mmmm...choc-embryo-licous. (your word of the day: use it in a conversation at work)
Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
WizartistII: Aah, Viggen. I remember the first time I saw one of those, I was 5 or 6 years old and they had one parked with camouflage nets close to the finish line of a rally track, as SAAB was a main sponsor (Stig Blomquist, in his immortal Audi Quattro, was in that race), and my dad took me and my brother with him, his company co-sponsored one of the teams. Me and my bro walked up and touched the jet and it loomed like a space shuttle over us, two little spuds.
Jason: I heard your comment re: my throwaway nebulon-sketch, I'm working on a companion class to the Hammer now, it'll debut in the new thread.
I'll definitely make the thread in the D&C forum, but it's prolly best if they are kept dedicated. A single thread for flareite ship designs would get a bit jumbled, and artists couldn't talk about their specific thing very freely after four more contribs have come up. Would be like a little duck pond.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Nim I always thought the Viggen and the Draken were the coolest looking aircraft when I was a kid. Of course, I always wanted the U.S. to build the SCAMP. Posted by Nim (Member # 205) on :
Nice one, Delta wing to the max. Yes, the Draken's always been a seductive design to me, I got a surprise when watching Nicolas Cage's "Firebirds" and seeing one as an enemy jet, first time I'd seen one on film.
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
quote:Originally posted by Nim: Thank you Mars! That is the opposite of dildo. This mission is succeeding.
The Concordia is a pretty badass design but I always thought that the Tigers Claw was such a well put together ship as well. Almost like a battleship/carrier in space.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Meh- looks too much like an aircraft carrier- very Starblazers. They need a version with the catapults and hangars on the ventral side- twice the capacity for a minimal artificial variable gravity variation.
Posted by shikaru808 (Member # 2080) on :
Then you're probably gonna hate this design. I actually like the carrier look of it and I think they translated it well into a "space navy" form.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
The fourth carrier of the crosseyed fleet, made eco-friendly from packed compost. Following the standard practice of camoflguing spaceships as paper models.
Eye-watering textures aside, it's not terrible- just very plain with no real detail or thought in the design- Do craft take off and land from the same bay? That's going to be one space-collision after another.
Do the fins make it go faster?
That big block one up top- is that the on-board Supermax prison or something?
But hey- nice big skylight. Should help with those clustraphobic crewmen.
It's a flying box with two sub towers on one side. As a bonus, it's nice and dark in color, so those thrilling landings against the blackness of space.
Huh. I could almost see it as a good space prison design.
Posted by Pensive's Wetness (Member # 1203) on :
i've always been partial to ships from Macross myself (but have a special place in my heart for Star Blazers vessels from The Comet Empire) ARMDGitmoUraga though they have too many black holes to make them remotely believable...
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
![[Smile]](smile.gif)
