posted
Don�t know about the shuttle, a little too angular in the rear and bottom for my taste, but man, I love the ship
-------------------- "The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity´s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something." Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"
Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
i also thought of side entrances but they can't go from top to bottom cause the lower part of the shuttle is full with engines (bussards, warp coils and M/A-reactor). so that side entrance would be almost the same as the back one. hmmz maybe a grid ramp will do but it'll look kinda agly i think. a retractable ramp would be neat i think (and easy to model )
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Registered: Nov 2002
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Snork
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posted
Cool Shuttle. How about making the rear entrance hinge at the bottom to form a ramp (like in ST:V)?
Also how about adding some small wings, like the ones in Enterprise or the Argo from Nemesis? They might balance out the design a bit.
posted
A low tech solution would to attach a swing-down ladder to back edge of little platform behind the door. It's stowed up against the door and swings down for use.
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Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
A wide-beam emitter placed under the door, projecting a 45� null-grav helter-skelter.
What is that other ship the shuttle belongs to? Any info? It looks so gray and unaesthetic it could be an even more dedicated warship than the Defiant. No holodecks or stuff, just the essentials. I like it!
-------------------- "I'm nigh-invulnerable when I'm blasting!" Mel Gibson, X-Men
Registered: Aug 1999
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posted
i'm gonna think about the suggestions. thanks but it won't have any wings, i wanted to look it just like that.
that ship, well, it's just there so that the image ain't that empty with only the shuttle. i must've made something wrong in the post production. that's how it should look like:
the ship is quite blue actually. it's a small science vessel, not larger than 160 meters. i doubt that shuttle will fit into the shuttle bay, cause the shuttle is 11 meters long the ship it's intended for is way larger (around 870 meters)
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artist for space regents online strategy game
Registered: Nov 2002
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posted
It looks good, but I'd place the phaser strip above the windshield (so as not to obscure the pilot's view with phaser blasts). ...and I'd add prominent RCS thrusters to the nose and aft. Lastly I'd round the hard corners at the shuttle's fore-to give it that TNG/DS9 rea design ethic. Hell of a start.
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Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
I'm not sure I understand how placing the strip above the window would create less of a blast than placing it below. The strip itself won't be within the pilot's field of view in either case, and any "muzzle flash" in a normal combat situation where you fire more or less forward would blind you no matter where it came from. And having the weapons roughly on the "waterline" of the craft looks good and balanced to me.
The engine grilles are in a grave danger of getting Foreign Object Damage down there. Perhaps you could have some sort of a protective plate that swings in front of the blue grilles when the craft approaches the ground? That plate could also include the ladder needed to access the rear door...
Also, the narrow base of the craft makes it look as it would tip over. Which it won't, since all the weight is down there in the machinery compartment. But it still looks funny. How to make the bottom look heavier? Perhaps the blue engine grilles could be surrounded by all sorts of "associated features", like the rings just behind the ramscoops in standard nacelles. Or the grilles could spill over to the sides a bit.
There could also be the barest hint of landing gear, some sort of a "traction surface" or something...
posted
Having the phaser strip over the windshield would provide a firing arc or the ships dorsal side without the beam crossing the piulot's field of view. As on a Danube class Runabout the side mounted phaser strips can fire forward as well. If this is a troop delivery vechile, I's add a phaser strip to the dorsal side as well.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Actually, if this is a pre-TNG craft (like that cool proto-Nova on the background), I'd remove strip phaser armament altogether. And if it's post-TNG, I'd indeed give it moving wings and other idiotic transformer features...
posted
I very much like the slight Constitution homage with the impulse engine forward circular thingy. and I love the underslung "we don' need no stinkin' nacelles" warp drive.
You might consider making the inset area around the impulse units that a darker color, perhaps even an almost-black gray . . . if nothing else, it would hide any exhaust scoring that might occur, if that's even really a concern. Or, you might even consider 'greeblies' in that area, but that does depend on the era, of course. Generally, random acts of innards-exposure occur in the post-TNG era, or right around TMP.
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