Yeah, paneling is really tedious work. However, it's definitely worth it because the paneling looks fantastic. I like everything else also, the ship is really coming together nicely. Your diversion is cool too.
nice stuff you have done with the panelling there. the ship is really coming together now, some of the shots on the previous page finally gave a clear impression of a klingon ship with similar surface detailing to those used in the films and series's.
I'm trying to keep it Klingon in appearance while still paying homage to my original background story. I will have to write it up and repost it to refresh everyone's memories. There is more to come, but I'm taking a short (day or two) break to handle some other stuff connected to other hobbies. I'll get back to it shortly however.
Started to work on the wings a little the other day, it opened my eyes to a few things. When I tried to import the knife fighter mesh to set the size of the launch tubes, I discovered just what a mess I had made of the fighter all those years ago, not to mention how much my methods have changed. Fortunately, I was able to fix the issues rather easily; however, the results alerted me to other problems, which I resolved by changing my original plans and that in turn created a much better final product.
Unfortunately, I don't have renders just yet, but to briefly describe the issue, I am now beginning to fully comprehend the immensity of this ship, as well as certain scaling issues I never knew existed in previous models. To elaborate, you guys have seen the size comparisons between the ship and a person and a BOP, the ship is huge, as I want it to be. However, this poses a different issue I had not considered. Because the ship is so large, I never gave much thought to internal capacity, until last night when I began the process of cutting the launch bays.
When properly scaled, the fighters take up a very small portion of the overall launch area. If that does not make sense, let me put it this way, my original concept for the carrier was based on today's naval vessels. Planes leave a carrier from the front and land at the rear, correct; so that was my conceptual idea for this ship. Fighters launch from the leading edge of the wing sections and recover by entering from the trailing edge. With this idea, I have no problem except that when one compares the size of a fighter to the width of a wing section, well, to transfer a returning fighter to a launch bay would require transporting the fighter through an area of the ship that is nearly 200 times longer than the fighter itself; in other words, it would be like taking a YF-22 through Manhattan via the standard streets. Although this is an easy fix as far as the ship is concerned, it presents other problems.
One of those problems is another of my original concept ideas, the outer most wingtip was supposed to be a quick launch/recovery area. In this area, fighters could be launched for battle, brought back in for refueling/rearming/minor repairs and launched again within moments; think of it like a pit stop for fighters. However, even this area is proving to be so large by comparison that the idea may take some serious rethinking.
On the positive side, I have determined that my original calculations for fighter compliment are seriously underestimated. In previous incarnations of the carrier, I simply cut the launch tubes into the walls of the wings and gave each one an individual door because the details were easy to see. Not so with this new ship. In fact, I had to rethink the entire launch bay idea. First, I realized weeks ago that I wanted to cut a shuttle bay into the wing near the neck area, no big deal. After creating this shuttle bay, I discovered it was almost large enough to land a B’rel class BOP, just a few meters short width wise. That was ok because that just meant the shuttle could handle a heavier volume of traffic and that was good since this would be a dedicated bay for receiving cargo ships, etc. However, this also means the shuttle bay is several decks high, about 63 decks, give or take a few decks.
How did I determine this number? Each launch tube is approximately a single deck in height; each launch bay has seven rows of tubes or a total of 67 tubes. The odd rows have 10 tubes and the even rows have nine, so there are four rows of 10 and three rows of nine per each launch bay. In the same space as the shuttle bay, there are four launch bays with three spaces between them the exact same size as a launch bay. Therefore, if a launch bay is about seven decks and there are the equivalent of seven bays in the same space as the shuttle bay, that means there are 49 decks; however, this is just the height of the shuttle bay door, not the upper and lower sections of the shuttle bay, which are both about seven decks each. Therefore add another 14 decks to 49 and there are the 63 decks of the shuttle bay. Yeah, things just got real.
Now, given that each launch bay has a matching storage hangar for the fighters, and that each hangar holds enough fighters to launch five full waves, if each launch bay launches 67 fighters per wave, each hangar holds 335 fighters. At the moment, there are 16 launch bays that I have cut into the inner wing; however, I still have to add more to the outer wing, but do not know how many I’m going to get yet. Additionally, there will be the matching sections on the opposite side of the ship when I complete it, so the current number is automatically considered as doubled. Therefore, in the current 16 hangars, there are a total of 5,360 fighters, which doubled totals 10,720 and that doesn’t include the fighters that would be held in the hangars I have yet to create, which I am sure will at least double the number if not increase it by more than that. Even if the full compliment is close to 30,000 fighters, this is still a drop in the bucket of the amount of space available on this ship in this section alone.
However, as my original plans were to house pilots, cargo bays, and repair facilities in this same section, I do not see this space going to waste, but I will still need to rethink the corridors and such to accommodate the transfer of fighters from the landing bays at the rear of the wings to the hangars in the front of the wings. I’m thinking some form of dedicated transit system that would carry fighters through dedicated corridors/tubes from the rear to the front. However, I am also thinking that this excess space can allow me some additional leeway and each wing would house a factory for producing/repairing these fighters. Of course, now that I have the troop shuttles and the new fighters and other crafts to consider, the shuttle bays will serve in other capacities as well, and the knife fighters won’t be the only fighters launching from the carrier.
Why do I feel like this just became a more daunting build than before?
Finished working on the launch bay/tubes, but decided to see what they would look like with both types of fighters launching from them.
Then I got curious about the fighters and how they compared to each other and to the troop shuttle.
After that, I thought I’d see how they compare to the BOP and the rest of the ship.
I was a bit off on the BOP/shuttle bay comparison, the shuttle bay door is not as big as I thought I had made it, but the other sizing is still accurate. However, I might have my BOP slightly out of scale, I’m going to have to recheck it against my person and see what is what. If it is, then things may still be in need of correcting. I’ll update as soon as I know more.
being a starship not a surface ship you don't need to worry about gravity so the fighters could be launched by thrusters from specialised landing pads on top or opening doors beneath, they could then use their thrusters to slow down upon return and maneuver back into a landing pad(which could then retract into the ship) or upward into the bays they were dropped from. the internal stricture could be organised so that fighters could be serviced either in the bays or in workshops near to the bays handling maybe 10 or 20 bays each. large tunnels in the ship could be set up so that some of the equipment can be moved between places depending on where it is needed. unneccesary space on the ship could always be used for fuel/supplies.
p.s. for such a large ship some monorail tunnel type things seem a good idea, look at the set up's in the volcano base in "007 you only live twice" and scale it up for cargo as well as people.
Some very good ideas, and something to think about. As for the transit system, that's similar to what I was thinking. I was considering antigravity systems similar to those used in TNG for transporting materials around the ship, only on a much larger scale. Perhaps after I finish the exterior, I'll model some interior portions.
I've gotten bored, once again, so I've started another small side project. I'll post pics later as it is still in the preliminary stages.
Took a little break from the carrier, it gets boring working on it all the time, anyway, found inspiration in another John Eaves design. Although his original intent was for a small shuttle or fighter type craft, I made mine an alternate Troop Carrier Shuttle because I wasn’t quite happy with the other one. This is the design that inspired me.
I came up with this, my idea was to incorporate various aspects while still keeping it original. I also wanted to instill the bird of prey aspect in it as well (no not the ship, the animal).
Well, what do you guys think?
I’ll be returning to the carrier and cutting the next set of launch doors in the wing, but until then, enjoy these and discuss them, please.
I've been making slow progress on the carrier, plating is quite a boring chore.
While plating the connecting area between the neck and the front of the wing, I ran into some issues, rebuilt the area about a half dozen times until it looked right, but still not sure if it is. Otherwise, I have added the remaining launch bays and the recovery bays, the outside doors at least. I am at an impasse at the moment, trying to decide what to do next.
However, while I decide, I owe a friend a little favor. I will be taking a short break to model my first ever TOS Enterprise; however, there is a little catch to this one. It is not your typical Connie as it is a spoof of the original, an adults only spoof, if you get my drift. I'm doing it as a joke because my friend is a hardcore Trekkie and ... well it's kind of a long story. Unfortunately, I think it would go against forum rules if I were to post any pics of it here, which is why I will not be doing so. However, if anyone is interested, I will send pics to a private e-mail once it is finished. PM me if interested, but I warn you, it is going to be very adult in nature.
Anyway, I'll update the carrier as more becomes available.
i hope you've got a funny innuendo tag line for the spoof... plenty of ways one could mes around with classic lines.
if you're having difficulties with parts of the model upload some pictures and someone may be able to suggest something, panelling is laborious but worth it.
i hope you've got a funny innuendo tag line for the spoof... plenty of ways one could mes around with classic lines.
if you're having difficulties with parts of the model upload some pictures and someone may be able to suggest something, panelling is laborious but worth it.
Well, to tell the truth, it isn't as bad as I imagined it might turn out; in fact, it's much "cleaner" than I thought t would be, but I still won't risk posting it here because it just takes a little knowledge and imagination to realize exactly what I substituted for each portion of the ship. Mind you, it is low poly, very little detail, and just enough to recognize it as the Enterprise. However, upon closer inspection, there is enough to also recognize that something is a bit off.
As I said, it's a little joke for a friend and a long story.
I should have some more pics of the carrier in the next few days.
Added some windows to the neck section and created the wingtip guns. Because Klingons like to “pull the trigger” themselves, each gun is independently manned and operated, you’ll notice a small window in the second to the last picture; this is the command and control area for each gun. They can move on the X and Z axes, but do not rotate on the Y axis; however, each barrel can also be aimed separately from the others to allow for more targeting opportunities.
The last picture shows the recovery bay doors; I am considering modeling one of the recovery bays with the door open to give an ideal of what it would look like for a pilot coming in for a landing. As for now though, I am still working on the weapons and other details, just not sure where to go next. Anyways, as I said, enjoy.
Looking good. I like the gun design and the paneling is looking great. Windows aren't necessary for gun aiming in Star Trek, they use computer displays and sensors for that. (a Bird of Prey doesn't even have any windows) Though, I guess the windows could work as a backup if those systems fail.
Yeah, but we're talking Klingons, they enjoy watching a good fight as much as being in one. That's why there's an observation/drinking lounge at the bottom of the head. While the warriors are fighting, their families can watch the battle, sing some fighting songs, and drink to their victory. It was originally going to be on the tail, under the engineering section, facing the rear; however, I realized that was a bad location and it created a conflict with the new BOP hangar.
The idea I had about this being more of a "city ship" or "colony ship" became more evident when I realized the true size of the ship. Yes, there will be thousands of warriors on the ship, but given what I learned about how ships are built and why in the Klingon culture, it became more obvious that I was on the right track. Ships this size would be commissioned by either a very high ruling house or several high ranking houses. The house, it's family or families, w
Unless of course they're reinforced with force fields.
Of course don't forget, the windows in this century are transparent Aluminum or other similar metal, so not as weak as glass.
Thanks spacefighter.
interestinly there is already such a thing as transparent aluminium - called corundum (saphire and ruby basically) though its technically aluminium oxide - not sure about its tensile strength but probably harder than aluminium ( not nesseraily a good things ) anyway just though i would share
do kinda like the idea of a ten forward type klingon bar on a ship so they can watch battles lol
a tip for putting in windows, avoid there serious effect on hull integrity by placing them in a specialised compartment. i'll explain further...
placing windows on a starship is likely to be unnecessary however, you seem to have good reasons for them so the best thing to do would be have most of the hull within a number of fully separated compartments, all rooms onboard with windows would be included in a separate compartment so even if the windows were breached it would kill those in that compartment at the time but for the rest of the ship it would be no different as on the inner side of the window compartments would be the main armour and hull. i was thinking about this for a while as when i get onto a frigate i am planning to model i was going to have a small tower with an observation deck but sealed off from the rest of the hull, this windowed deck would only be used as a control station during docking and would usually be uncrewed and sealed off. the important stuff like the main bridge and the engineering sections are all deep within the main armoured hull.
that way you can have your klingon bar for watching battles but if it is breached only those in there at the time would be killed and the ship could continue to function.
Spacefighter, for the most part, this is how it works. The windows currently in place are there for observation purposes mostly. The exceptions being the amphitheater, the main bridge, and the lounge. However, the bridge is reinforced with dual layers and set back deeper into the hull. The amphitheater is normally closed off except when in use, which it is never in use during battle. Speaking of which, most windows would be sealed off behind blast doors during battle anyway, the exceptions being the lounge and certain observation areas that must remain open, and even these are embedded into the hull of the ship.
However, since we are on the subject, given your explanation, it would seem that many starships do not hold to this idea. Almost every Federation ship has windows all over it, their bridges are at one of the most vulnerable of spots on the ship, and few, if any, take your points into consideration. Not that they are not good points.
Then again, look at certain other sci-fi ships, The Yamamoto has a bridge that is at the top of a stalk, has a huge window, and is highly vulnerable to attack. Star Destroyers are much the same as well. Even the original Galactica's bridge had a huge window and was located at the front of the ship. In fact, the Galactica had windows all over it, it was just very hard to see them in most shots.
However, the new Galactica does appear to take your points into consideration because its C&C is buried deep in the ship, it has very few windows on its outer hull, and has an outer layer of armor plating over a ribbed structure to allow the armor to take the brunt of an impact while protecting the inner hull.
worst thing about federation ships is, they make the bridge vulnerable by sticking i up on top of the saucer yet they don't then take advantage of this position but rather still use screens that would work just as well in a bridge at the very centre of the ship. and i swear that the original series galactica had it's bridge deep inside, i never noticed the window during that series.
Actually, on the BGS-TOS, I noticed the "bridge" windown in every spot. I put them in quotation marks because it's only alledgedly the bridge window according to schematics. Personally, I think that the BSG-TOS had the bridge deep inside the ship just as Nu-BSG....
They sometimes zoomed into that part of the "head" section of the ship when they were transitioning from space shots to the bridge, so that's probably where the assertion comes in that the big window there is the bridge window. And, since the ship has very few windows, it's a safe bet to say that's what it is.
They sometimes zoomed into that part of the "head" section of the ship when they were transitioning from space shots to the bridge, so that's probably where the assertion comes in that the big window there is the bridge window. And, since the ship has very few windows, it's a safe bet to say that's what it is.
i always thought that was the observation gallery, i remember(perhaps the memory is a false one) seeing no images of a window in the internal shots of the galacticas bridge(original or modern series) but i do remember a scene where starbuck and someone else were admiring the view from a room onboard(it seemed as if the room in question was open to everyone to go in and gaze outside). having a bridge on the yamato spaceship will only shorten the time it takes to go the same way as the original yamato...
In several episodes of BSG-TOS Adama orders the blast shields of the bridge closed, they show the doors closing and you can clearly see space from inside the bridge.
Posts
Unfortunately, I don't have renders just yet, but to briefly describe the issue, I am now beginning to fully comprehend the immensity of this ship, as well as certain scaling issues I never knew existed in previous models. To elaborate, you guys have seen the size comparisons between the ship and a person and a BOP, the ship is huge, as I want it to be. However, this poses a different issue I had not considered. Because the ship is so large, I never gave much thought to internal capacity, until last night when I began the process of cutting the launch bays.
When properly scaled, the fighters take up a very small portion of the overall launch area. If that does not make sense, let me put it this way, my original concept for the carrier was based on today's naval vessels. Planes leave a carrier from the front and land at the rear, correct; so that was my conceptual idea for this ship. Fighters launch from the leading edge of the wing sections and recover by entering from the trailing edge. With this idea, I have no problem except that when one compares the size of a fighter to the width of a wing section, well, to transfer a returning fighter to a launch bay would require transporting the fighter through an area of the ship that is nearly 200 times longer than the fighter itself; in other words, it would be like taking a YF-22 through Manhattan via the standard streets. Although this is an easy fix as far as the ship is concerned, it presents other problems.
One of those problems is another of my original concept ideas, the outer most wingtip was supposed to be a quick launch/recovery area. In this area, fighters could be launched for battle, brought back in for refueling/rearming/minor repairs and launched again within moments; think of it like a pit stop for fighters. However, even this area is proving to be so large by comparison that the idea may take some serious rethinking.
On the positive side, I have determined that my original calculations for fighter compliment are seriously underestimated. In previous incarnations of the carrier, I simply cut the launch tubes into the walls of the wings and gave each one an individual door because the details were easy to see. Not so with this new ship. In fact, I had to rethink the entire launch bay idea. First, I realized weeks ago that I wanted to cut a shuttle bay into the wing near the neck area, no big deal. After creating this shuttle bay, I discovered it was almost large enough to land a B’rel class BOP, just a few meters short width wise. That was ok because that just meant the shuttle could handle a heavier volume of traffic and that was good since this would be a dedicated bay for receiving cargo ships, etc. However, this also means the shuttle bay is several decks high, about 63 decks, give or take a few decks.
How did I determine this number? Each launch tube is approximately a single deck in height; each launch bay has seven rows of tubes or a total of 67 tubes. The odd rows have 10 tubes and the even rows have nine, so there are four rows of 10 and three rows of nine per each launch bay. In the same space as the shuttle bay, there are four launch bays with three spaces between them the exact same size as a launch bay. Therefore, if a launch bay is about seven decks and there are the equivalent of seven bays in the same space as the shuttle bay, that means there are 49 decks; however, this is just the height of the shuttle bay door, not the upper and lower sections of the shuttle bay, which are both about seven decks each. Therefore add another 14 decks to 49 and there are the 63 decks of the shuttle bay. Yeah, things just got real.
Now, given that each launch bay has a matching storage hangar for the fighters, and that each hangar holds enough fighters to launch five full waves, if each launch bay launches 67 fighters per wave, each hangar holds 335 fighters. At the moment, there are 16 launch bays that I have cut into the inner wing; however, I still have to add more to the outer wing, but do not know how many I’m going to get yet. Additionally, there will be the matching sections on the opposite side of the ship when I complete it, so the current number is automatically considered as doubled. Therefore, in the current 16 hangars, there are a total of 5,360 fighters, which doubled totals 10,720 and that doesn’t include the fighters that would be held in the hangars I have yet to create, which I am sure will at least double the number if not increase it by more than that. Even if the full compliment is close to 30,000 fighters, this is still a drop in the bucket of the amount of space available on this ship in this section alone.
However, as my original plans were to house pilots, cargo bays, and repair facilities in this same section, I do not see this space going to waste, but I will still need to rethink the corridors and such to accommodate the transfer of fighters from the landing bays at the rear of the wings to the hangars in the front of the wings. I’m thinking some form of dedicated transit system that would carry fighters through dedicated corridors/tubes from the rear to the front. However, I am also thinking that this excess space can allow me some additional leeway and each wing would house a factory for producing/repairing these fighters. Of course, now that I have the troop shuttles and the new fighters and other crafts to consider, the shuttle bays will serve in other capacities as well, and the knife fighters won’t be the only fighters launching from the carrier.
Why do I feel like this just became a more daunting build than before?
Then I got curious about the fighters and how they compared to each other and to the troop shuttle.
After that, I thought I’d see how they compare to the BOP and the rest of the ship.
I was a bit off on the BOP/shuttle bay comparison, the shuttle bay door is not as big as I thought I had made it, but the other sizing is still accurate. However, I might have my BOP slightly out of scale, I’m going to have to recheck it against my person and see what is what. If it is, then things may still be in need of correcting. I’ll update as soon as I know more.
p.s. for such a large ship some monorail tunnel type things seem a good idea, look at the set up's in the volcano base in "007 you only live twice" and scale it up for cargo as well as people.
I've gotten bored, once again, so I've started another small side project. I'll post pics later as it is still in the preliminary stages.
I came up with this, my idea was to incorporate various aspects while still keeping it original. I also wanted to instill the bird of prey aspect in it as well (no not the ship, the animal).
Well, what do you guys think?
I’ll be returning to the carrier and cutting the next set of launch doors in the wing, but until then, enjoy these and discuss them, please.
While plating the connecting area between the neck and the front of the wing, I ran into some issues, rebuilt the area about a half dozen times until it looked right, but still not sure if it is. Otherwise, I have added the remaining launch bays and the recovery bays, the outside doors at least. I am at an impasse at the moment, trying to decide what to do next.
However, while I decide, I owe a friend a little favor. I will be taking a short break to model my first ever TOS Enterprise; however, there is a little catch to this one. It is not your typical Connie as it is a spoof of the original, an adults only spoof, if you get my drift. I'm doing it as a joke because my friend is a hardcore Trekkie and ... well it's kind of a long story. Unfortunately, I think it would go against forum rules if I were to post any pics of it here, which is why I will not be doing so. However, if anyone is interested, I will send pics to a private e-mail once it is finished. PM me if interested, but I warn you, it is going to be very adult in nature.
Anyway, I'll update the carrier as more becomes available.
if you're having difficulties with parts of the model upload some pictures and someone may be able to suggest something, panelling is laborious but worth it.
Yes, it is. And, the bigger the area you have to plate, the more boring it is.
Well, to tell the truth, it isn't as bad as I imagined it might turn out; in fact, it's much "cleaner" than I thought t would be, but I still won't risk posting it here because it just takes a little knowledge and imagination to realize exactly what I substituted for each portion of the ship. Mind you, it is low poly, very little detail, and just enough to recognize it as the Enterprise. However, upon closer inspection, there is enough to also recognize that something is a bit off.
As I said, it's a little joke for a friend and a long story.
I should have some more pics of the carrier in the next few days.
Added some windows to the neck section and created the wingtip guns. Because Klingons like to “pull the trigger” themselves, each gun is independently manned and operated, you’ll notice a small window in the second to the last picture; this is the command and control area for each gun. They can move on the X and Z axes, but do not rotate on the Y axis; however, each barrel can also be aimed separately from the others to allow for more targeting opportunities.
The last picture shows the recovery bay doors; I am considering modeling one of the recovery bays with the door open to give an ideal of what it would look like for a pilot coming in for a landing. As for now though, I am still working on the weapons and other details, just not sure where to go next. Anyways, as I said, enjoy.
The idea I had about this being more of a "city ship" or "colony ship" became more evident when I realized the true size of the ship. Yes, there will be thousands of warriors on the ship, but given what I learned about how ships are built and why in the Klingon culture, it became more obvious that I was on the right track. Ships this size would be commissioned by either a very high ruling house or several high ranking houses. The house, it's family or families, w
Unless of course they're reinforced with force fields.
Of course don't forget, the windows in this century are transparent Aluminum or other similar metal, so not as weak as glass.
Thanks spacefighter.
interestinly there is already such a thing as transparent aluminium - called corundum (saphire and ruby basically) though its technically aluminium oxide - not sure about its tensile strength but probably harder than aluminium ( not nesseraily a good things ) anyway just though i would share
do kinda like the idea of a ten forward type klingon bar on a ship so they can watch battles lol
placing windows on a starship is likely to be unnecessary however, you seem to have good reasons for them so the best thing to do would be have most of the hull within a number of fully separated compartments, all rooms onboard with windows would be included in a separate compartment so even if the windows were breached it would kill those in that compartment at the time but for the rest of the ship it would be no different as on the inner side of the window compartments would be the main armour and hull. i was thinking about this for a while as when i get onto a frigate i am planning to model i was going to have a small tower with an observation deck but sealed off from the rest of the hull, this windowed deck would only be used as a control station during docking and would usually be uncrewed and sealed off. the important stuff like the main bridge and the engineering sections are all deep within the main armoured hull.
that way you can have your klingon bar for watching battles but if it is breached only those in there at the time would be killed and the ship could continue to function.
However, since we are on the subject, given your explanation, it would seem that many starships do not hold to this idea. Almost every Federation ship has windows all over it, their bridges are at one of the most vulnerable of spots on the ship, and few, if any, take your points into consideration. Not that they are not good points.
Then again, look at certain other sci-fi ships, The Yamamoto has a bridge that is at the top of a stalk, has a huge window, and is highly vulnerable to attack. Star Destroyers are much the same as well. Even the original Galactica's bridge had a huge window and was located at the front of the ship. In fact, the Galactica had windows all over it, it was just very hard to see them in most shots.
However, the new Galactica does appear to take your points into consideration because its C&C is buried deep in the ship, it has very few windows on its outer hull, and has an outer layer of armor plating over a ribbed structure to allow the armor to take the brunt of an impact while protecting the inner hull.
i always thought that was the observation gallery, i remember(perhaps the memory is a false one) seeing no images of a window in the internal shots of the galacticas bridge(original or modern series) but i do remember a scene where starbuck and someone else were admiring the view from a room onboard(it seemed as if the room in question was open to everyone to go in and gaze outside). having a bridge on the yamato spaceship will only shorten the time it takes to go the same way as the original yamato...
http://www.hulu.com/watch/13286
About 17 minutes into this episode, you can see the blast doors closing behind Adama and the Cylon raiders outside of the ship.