i have nothing wrong with the asymettry, it just doesn't look that good, a bit tall it seems and the deck is very box like. appearance doesn't matter in real life space travel but in sci fi you might as well make it look "right". maybe if there is space locate some sort of superweapon inside the hull.
i have nothing wrong with the asymettry, it just doesn't look that good, a bit tall it seems and the deck is very box like. appearance doesn't matter in real life space travel but in sci fi you might as well make it look "right". maybe if there is space locate some sort of superweapon inside the hull.
If everyone who is trying to give me design suggestions would just look the original ships up on Google to get an idea of what they looked like before telling me to take a completely different approach that would basically ignore what I've been working towards... Carriers, especially the early ones, were ugly beasts with the hangar basically built on top of the regular deck and the flight deck slapped on top of that. I've already reduced the height of the flight deck relative to the battleships compared to the real things - parked side by side, a BB's bridge would be at best barely level with the flight deck of the carrier. I made the base hull of the BB a deck taller than the cruiser hull the CV was built from (counting from the horizontal plane), when in real life battleships rode so low in the water that the cruiser was actually taller, and the carriers had another deck added on top before the hangar deck...
My design process basically starts with the navsource.org page for a ship and the thought: How do I make this ship *fly*..?
If everyone who is trying to give me design suggestions would just look the original ships up on Google to get an idea of what they looked like before telling me to take a completely different approach that would basically ignore what I've been working towards... Carriers, especially the early ones, were ugly beasts with the hangar basically built on top of the regular deck and the flight deck slapped on top of that. I've already reduced the height of the flight deck relative to the battleships compared to the real things - parked side by side, a BB's bridge would be at best barely level with the flight deck of the carrier. I made the base hull of the BB a deck taller than the cruiser hull the CV was built from (counting from the horizontal plane), when in real life battleships rode so low in the water that the cruiser was actually taller, and the carriers had another deck added on top before the hangar deck...
My design process basically starts with the navsource.org page for a ship and the thought: How do I make this ship *fly*..?
Please keep that in mind...
I mean you have repeatedly said world war ships in space lol
So people not adhering to that seems like poo poo heads, as youve stated your reference point :P
Started over *again* on the CV-9, but this time I think I've gotten it right:
This time around, I made sure the sides of the hangar deck were parallel *first*, and built the walls in sections with the openings already made. The other side isn't completely done yet, but it shouldn't be much trouble fixing it up properly now that I've done the difficult side. Nearly all of this work can be copied wholesale to the CV-14 mesh, which merely has a different bow section.
much better now, but in space why do you need a long runway? i'm guessing those blue window like parts lead into shuttle bays, nice touch having the pad outside them to land on.
much better now, but in space why do you need a long runway? i'm guessing those blue window like parts lead into shuttle bays, nice touch having the pad outside them to land on.
i would think the flat deck/runway would serve more of estetic then functional purpose in space just to define the class of ship from others
The blue glowy things open directly into the hangar deck, which is colossal. The forward platform was originally (on the real ship) intended for launching aircraft directly from the hangar deck (there's a corresponding opening on the other side, but no platform), but it ended up being used for anti-aircraft guns on most of the ships. The second platform is an elevator, and just behind it is a boat bay like the ones on the BB-61 model.
The flight deck has gravity, which makes it easier to land fighters on it in space, and to handle parking etc. The gravity field can be realigned in sections, so during launches the gravity on the forward end of the deck can be flipped from 1 g vertically to more than 5 g horizontally on just the lanes where fighters are currently launching from, giving a small but useful boost to the initial acceleration.
Added the openings to the starboard side, going to have to work some more on the midships and forward areas tomorrow to add some detail (and move the big opening forward of the island just a tad inboard). I've placed all the topside anti-aircraft guns and directors, I'm only missing the DP twin turrets and the top directors right now. The island needs a bunch of more detail, but it's not all that difficult. Just time consuming. After that, it will be time to go to town on the ventral superstructure, which is completely devoid of defensive guns right now.
Now, it's time for sleep, it's a quarter to four in the morning and I want to get some shuteye before the sun comes up...
I've remodeled the island and added the first round of details (viewports for the bridges and pri-fly, hatches all around, masts and radar); and installed the DP turrets and their directors. I've also lit up the interior with forty point lights, and added shaders to most of the materials. I've also added some hull plating,
It's still nowhere close to done, there's a big open hole at the back of the hangar for exampleand I really need to get started on the air wing, but it's getting easier to see what the end result is going to be like.
Those are still not the main engines. Also, making them bigger runs into some problems, like obstructing the deck edge elevator and other nastiness...
Also, unlike the cruisers and battleships, remember that these are neither as heavily armed or armored - the hangar deck is one vast empty space (700 meters long, 15 meters tall and 90 meters wide for most of the length - that's double the length and half again the width, give or take, of a real-life Nimitz-class *flight deck*, and the height of a five story building), with mostly hollow walls to boot. Battleships are about twice the mass, which is why they have bigger engines.
I'm currently exploring the wonders of Notepad's search-and-replace as it applies to Lightwave's .LWS files - Lightwave's built-in features for renaming lights and nulls suck rocks when you've got a lot of them to do, and being able to change all occurences of "cv-9" to "cv-10" with Notepad makes for a huge shortcut when you're making copies of ships and want *some* kind of control over the naming scheme when you load up a bunch of ships in the same scene. A small taste of things to come:
While the only difference between these right now are the numbers, I've got the references I need to give each of these their own more or less unique anti-aircraft and sensor suites, which I'll be doing tomorrow. The differences are fairly small for the most part - an extra Oerlikon or Bofors here and there - but the combinations are pretty much unique.
Finally got started on the air wing, thanks in part to your thread, with one of the ur-ideas I had for properly scaled craft for a carrier this big:
This is my version of a torpedo bomber, and essentially it's a B-1 bomber with folding rather than variable sweep wings, and canards rather than a horizontal tail. The torpedo is carried slung under the fuselage between the engine nacelles. Right now, this whole thing is just a basic shape, so I haven't cut any bomb bays or anything yet, but it will most likely have the same three bays as the B-1 for smaller munitions than the fourteen meter long 1066 mm diameter torpedo...
Here's what a full squadron of 18 looks like from a distance. The total complement is supposed to be 90 fighters and bombers, all of which have to fit on the deck, and the torpedo bombers are the biggest of the lot, so I'm fairly sure there's enough room...
Now, what do I do for the fighters, fighter-bombers and dive bombers... any ideas?
very cool and the torpedo bombers really give a sense of scale to the carrier. you will need some fighters and maybe some lighter or heavier bombers, at the moment i can't really give advice on fighter designs because any ideas for the shape i have i need for myself. that said i can still suggest that engines should make up a fairly large part of the fighter, although the nozzles are not necessarily very big. even if you have laser weapons a bomber designed to accelerate up to high speed and release a projectile could still be one of the most damaging attacks used against large ships. a pure space fighter need not be aerodynamic but should have thrusters far from the centre of mass to improve torque from the thrusters, a space/air fighter should be more aerodynamic which might also be the case for your hyperspace craft as you say hyperspace is quite dense. also there may well be lots of components in common which simplifies maintenance and construction.
I tjhink a pretty solid start would be to continue the design-idea from the Lockheed-Martin F-22 Raptor fighter, and the Northorp Grummann B-2 Spirit stealth bomber. Their design is pretty advanced and a theoretical evolution of the design philosophies should lead to some good ideas.
Some theory again, while it's still fresh in my head:
A phase drive is a fairly exotic piece of hardware that allows a torpedo or bomb to bypass shields. This comes at a severe cost though - a phase drive powerful enough to actually propel a warhead at any speed is heavy, and indeed makes up most of the mass of a torpedo; and even the stripped down versions used on space bombs make the weapon completely blind while engaged. They're also sensitive to a lot of things, and by the time you've built a missile powerful enough to carry a torpedo or bomb any meaningful distance and deliver it with any accuracy, you might as well add a cockpit and call it a bomber.
About the only method of guiding a torpedo after launch is pre-programming it to a specific course. Wire guidance is being experimented with, but the requirement that the launch platform stay on the same course until the torpedo impacts is a big problem as the launcher becomes a sitting duck. Space stations are about the only application where this is feasible, as the station would be sitting still regardless.
Aside from bypassing shields, torpedos are tricky to defend against because they're effectively invisible once the drive engages, and they can as mentioned be programmed to maneuver after launch. The few sensors that can pick up a phase shifted object have such a short range as to make no appreciable difference from not seeing it at all - definitely not enough to dodge or fire weapons at it, even if that was effective. The short range and limited speed gives one defense which is viable under most circumstances though - turning tail and running away from it. This does require that you see the launch so you know there's a torpedo strike incoming, though.
Attention deficit disorder is my middle name... now where was I... ooh shiny!
I'm not even close to finishing the Essex yet, and already I'm starting on another one. I'm not going to make you all guess what it is (the filename would give it away anyway) - this is the beginnings of a Yorktown-class carrier, which gives away my next project. Big hint: the number "6" will be a very prominent feature. Also, I believe more 3D models with that name have been made than any other, but this will be the first one from me.
Like the Essex before it, this one is based primarily on model kit instructions I found at Hobby Search, this time from Tamiya instead of Trumpeter. The Tamiya kit is many years old now, and lacks a bunch of features that the newer Trumpeter kits do, such as a complete-ish hangar deck layout, so this will be a bit trickier to build, but it shouldn't be too hard.
This is my version of a torpedo bomber, and essentially it's a B-1 bomber with folding rather than variable sweep wings, and canards rather than a horizontal tail. The torpedo is carried slung under the fuselage between the engine nacelles. Right now, this whole thing is just a basic shape, so I haven't cut any bomb bays or anything yet, but it will most likely have the same three bays as the B-1 for smaller munitions than the fourteen meter long 1066 mm diameter torpedo...
As someone who's particularly fond of the B-1 (probably since I've been working on them the last 15 years) I like this homage. Very cool. :thumb:
that would make quite a lot of sense actually, not because it could be stealthy (THERE IS NO STEALTH IN SPACE!!) but because the hull of a submarine is designed to withstand extreme forces and offers rather a lot of protection for the crew inside, it is an efficient shape with which to enclose a volume(less surface area needed per unit volume than on normal ships or the average sci fi starship) and no windows. also it would probably be an easy shape to protect against reentry heating.
Juvat: Thanks! I've been wanting to turn a B-1 into a space bomber since I first figured out what size the aircraft would need to be to scale appropriately with the carrier. Making the wings fold rather than swinging was mostly just to make them a little different, and to get the size down so I could fit more of them. I haven't done the math so I can't say for sure what scales to use, but I think you could build my version from a B-1 plastic model and a pair of Super Hornet tailplanes of a larger scale. I don't have the proper kits to do that though (and if I had a 1/32 Super Hornet I wouldn't be stealing parts from it...)
Colbmista: Shhh! That's a secret to everybody!
Spacefighter: There is too stealth in space. At least in hyperspace. (yet another reason why I made it full of gas.) And yeah, a submarine hull would withstand extreme forces. Now where did I specify such an environment...? And no, re-entry heating is not among the problems you'd want a submmarine hull to protect against, there are much easier ways of doing that at the tech level I'm working at.
Been busy with a bunch of small details today:
On the far side of the ship, I've added some aircraft cranes, which I forgot to save the picture of. I've also constructed the hatch covers for all the openings on the hangar deck, though the whole process of animating them so they can open and close properly is escaping me right now. I'll figure it out eventually.
After that, I added some deck markings, which are just slightly luminous so they can be seen even without external lights, and rearranged the elevators so the forward one is much further forward, and the aft one is offset to the side rather than square on the centerline. I also made them four meters wider. I've found a reference picture for what the elevators look like from beneath, which I'll be using when the time comes to build the interior up properly.
Tonight, I spent some time working on the bomber, and added some proper engine nozzles that will open and close just like real jets. I'm pretty satisfied with how that turned out, and the experience will be handy for future projects, so... *go me!*
I also figured out how to make the wings fold using a reference object, though I'm fairly sure the method I came up with is a complete kludge compared to how it's supposed to be done. I really need to sit down and watch all those dratted tutorials I've downloaded. Some day.
After all that, I decided to try adding some lights and stuff to the bomber, and see what a launch scene might look like. The bomber itself needs a lot more details and stuff, but I think that for what I've put into it so far, this image looks pretty decent:
At the very least, you can close your eyes and fill in the rest of the little details and go "yeah...". Or at least I can. Your mileage may vary.
I was unsatisfied with the base geometry of the bomber, so I redid it from scratch. The new pre-subdivision mesh has fewer faces, but a much improved edge flow that results in a smoother-looking model once I turn Catmull and Clark loose on it. The new mesh also has longer and thicker wings, which will use Grumman-style wing folding (the wings fold backwards, with the leading edge downwards). Since I decided on that method, I had some space on top of the fuselage I could use to put in a second set of engine pods, which gives the bomber a more scifi look.
(You can't see it in the render, but those engines have opening and closing exhausts like a real jet engine, and I very carefully did *not* mirror the pods when I installed them so the exhaust petals all rotate in the same direction... )
I have pretty much decided to call this the Avenger, and I'm debating whether to add a dorsal gun mount behind the cockpit section (something like the guns on the VF-25 "Typhoon" pack or the YF-29 Durandal from the Macross Frontier movies). The torpedo load will be internal like the original Avenger, using the treaty-prohibited long bomb bay configuration from the B-1B. (I'll have to make a shorter torpedo, but that's not a big deal.)
I'm still thinking on what to do for the rest of the wing. I've got some idea of what to do for the Hellcat (basically, I'll mash up the Avenger with a Flanker, with a bit of Super Hornet and some F-35 thrown in), but the Dauntless, Corsair and Helldiver irritate me a lot right now. No ideas whatsoever, except maybe a variation of that drone design I've been using with the reverse gull wing, for the Corsair...
I gave the Hellcat idea a try, it didn't come out quite the way I thought but it's not *bad* by any means, at least IMO...
That's two down. Not sure if I'll do the Wildcat, if I do it would mainly just be a smaller Hellcat.
(Note that I still have all the landing gear wells and gear hatches and crap to do, these are just roughed out versions to figure out the shape and size of the airframes...)
Looks cool, as always. Like the B-1 look of the Avenger, should be cool to see it with wings folded. (though it seems you forgot to add back in the canards)
That said, I'm not totally sold on canards, think the B1 looks cooler with it's rear-mounted tailplane.
The Hellcat as a plane looks cool. Almost too cool in fact, when I think of the F6F, I think a portly little brawler. A very cool plane, but not the dainty little dart you've done.
Remember that my Hellcat is bigger than a Su-27, though - it only looks dainty compared to the Avenger next to it.
I omitted the canards because I wasn't happy with their design, plus I'm not sure I actually need them right now. We'll see as I continue working on it.
I spent the morning re-doing a few parts, and then started on the landing gear wells and doors. The nose gear is about done now, it has the full set of opening doors and pistons, though I haven't built the hinges or the interior of the nose gear bay. The main gear needs a ton of work, those things are seriously complicated. Actually, this whole business of making landing gear makes me want to just forget making any further basic designs, and just use the Avenger airframe for all the attack and support craft (AWACS, electronic warfare, etc). I've also built the wing fold mechanism:
The original carrier had five squadrons of eighteen aircraft - one squadron of Avengers, two squadrons of Dauntless or Helldiver dive bombers, and two squadrons of fighters. I think I'll be going with three squadrons of 12 Avengers, three squadrons of 12 Hellcats, and one squadron of six each AWACS, ECM and tankers. Something like that.
If you're actually making the realistic main landing gear, good luck! Watching them do gear swings with the B-1 on jacks is still insane to see. I'm thinking it might look good with the SMCS vanes (canards) like they really are. Also, you might consider making a V-tail as the single one looks a bit lonely. A good description of concepts for the B-1 are in some of Dale Brown's books; namely Battle Born.
Posts
Of course, definitions of "right" may vary.
My design process basically starts with the navsource.org page for a ship and the thought: How do I make this ship *fly*..?
Please keep that in mind...
I mean you have repeatedly said world war ships in space lol
So people not adhering to that seems like poo poo heads, as youve stated your reference point :P
This time around, I made sure the sides of the hangar deck were parallel *first*, and built the walls in sections with the openings already made. The other side isn't completely done yet, but it shouldn't be much trouble fixing it up properly now that I've done the difficult side.
The flight deck has gravity, which makes it easier to land fighters on it in space, and to handle parking etc. The gravity field can be realigned in sections, so during launches the gravity on the forward end of the deck can be flipped from 1 g vertically to more than 5 g horizontally on just the lanes where fighters are currently launching from, giving a small but useful boost to the initial acceleration.
Added the openings to the starboard side, going to have to work some more on the midships and forward areas tomorrow to add some detail (and move the big opening forward of the island just a tad inboard). I've placed all the topside anti-aircraft guns and directors, I'm only missing the DP twin turrets and the top directors right now. The island needs a bunch of more detail, but it's not all that difficult. Just time consuming. After that, it will be time to go to town on the ventral superstructure, which is completely devoid of defensive guns right now.
Now, it's time for sleep, it's a quarter to four in the morning and I want to get some shuteye before the sun comes up...
For those wondering about a runway in space, remember the Wing Commander saga, especailly the film. They also had a long runway...
I've remodeled the island and added the first round of details (viewports for the bridges and pri-fly, hatches all around, masts and radar); and installed the DP turrets and their directors. I've also lit up the interior with forty point lights, and added shaders to most of the materials. I've also added some hull plating,
It's still nowhere close to done, there's a big open hole at the back of the hangar for exampleand I really need to get started on the air wing, but it's getting easier to see what the end result is going to be like.
Back to the grindstone I go...
Also, unlike the cruisers and battleships, remember that these are neither as heavily armed or armored - the hangar deck is one vast empty space (700 meters long, 15 meters tall and 90 meters wide for most of the length - that's double the length and half again the width, give or take, of a real-life Nimitz-class *flight deck*, and the height of a five story building), with mostly hollow walls to boot. Battleships are about twice the mass, which is why they have bigger engines.
I'm currently exploring the wonders of Notepad's search-and-replace as it applies to Lightwave's .LWS files - Lightwave's built-in features for renaming lights and nulls suck rocks when you've got a lot of them to do, and being able to change all occurences of "cv-9" to "cv-10" with Notepad makes for a huge shortcut when you're making copies of ships and want *some* kind of control over the naming scheme when you load up a bunch of ships in the same scene. A small taste of things to come:
While the only difference between these right now are the numbers, I've got the references I need to give each of these their own more or less unique anti-aircraft and sensor suites, which I'll be doing tomorrow. The differences are fairly small for the most part - an extra Oerlikon or Bofors here and there - but the combinations are pretty much unique.
Finally got started on the air wing, thanks in part to your thread, with one of the ur-ideas I had for properly scaled craft for a carrier this big:
This is my version of a torpedo bomber, and essentially it's a B-1 bomber with folding rather than variable sweep wings, and canards rather than a horizontal tail. The torpedo is carried slung under the fuselage between the engine nacelles. Right now, this whole thing is just a basic shape, so I haven't cut any bomb bays or anything yet, but it will most likely have the same three bays as the B-1 for smaller munitions than the fourteen meter long 1066 mm diameter torpedo...
Here's what a full squadron of 18 looks like from a distance. The total complement is supposed to be 90 fighters and bombers, all of which have to fit on the deck, and the torpedo bombers are the biggest of the lot, so I'm fairly sure there's enough room...
Now, what do I do for the fighters, fighter-bombers and dive bombers... any ideas?
A phase drive is a fairly exotic piece of hardware that allows a torpedo or bomb to bypass shields. This comes at a severe cost though - a phase drive powerful enough to actually propel a warhead at any speed is heavy, and indeed makes up most of the mass of a torpedo; and even the stripped down versions used on space bombs make the weapon completely blind while engaged. They're also sensitive to a lot of things, and by the time you've built a missile powerful enough to carry a torpedo or bomb any meaningful distance and deliver it with any accuracy, you might as well add a cockpit and call it a bomber.
About the only method of guiding a torpedo after launch is pre-programming it to a specific course. Wire guidance is being experimented with, but the requirement that the launch platform stay on the same course until the torpedo impacts is a big problem as the launcher becomes a sitting duck. Space stations are about the only application where this is feasible, as the station would be sitting still regardless.
Aside from bypassing shields, torpedos are tricky to defend against because they're effectively invisible once the drive engages, and they can as mentioned be programmed to maneuver after launch. The few sensors that can pick up a phase shifted object have such a short range as to make no appreciable difference from not seeing it at all - definitely not enough to dodge or fire weapons at it, even if that was effective. The short range and limited speed gives one defense which is viable under most circumstances though - turning tail and running away from it. This does require that you see the launch so you know there's a torpedo strike incoming, though.
I'm not even close to finishing the Essex yet, and already I'm starting on another one. I'm not going to make you all guess what it is (the filename would give it away anyway) - this is the beginnings of a Yorktown-class carrier, which gives away my next project. Big hint: the number "6" will be a very prominent feature. Also, I believe more 3D models with that name have been made than any other, but this will be the first one from me.
Like the Essex before it, this one is based primarily on model kit instructions I found at Hobby Search, this time from Tamiya instead of Trumpeter. The Tamiya kit is many years old now, and lacks a bunch of features that the newer Trumpeter kits do, such as a complete-ish hangar deck layout, so this will be a bit trickier to build, but it shouldn't be too hard.
As someone who's particularly fond of the B-1 (probably since I've been working on them the last 15 years) I like this homage. Very cool. :thumb:
Colbmista: Shhh! That's a secret to everybody!
Spacefighter: There is too stealth in space. At least in hyperspace. (yet another reason why I made it full of gas.)
Been busy with a bunch of small details today:
On the far side of the ship, I've added some aircraft cranes, which I forgot to save the picture of. I've also constructed the hatch covers for all the openings on the hangar deck, though the whole process of animating them so they can open and close properly is escaping me right now. I'll figure it out eventually.
After that, I added some deck markings, which are just slightly luminous so they can be seen even without external lights, and rearranged the elevators so the forward one is much further forward, and the aft one is offset to the side rather than square on the centerline. I also made them four meters wider. I've found a reference picture for what the elevators look like from beneath, which I'll be using when the time comes to build the interior up properly.
Tonight, I spent some time working on the bomber, and added some proper engine nozzles that will open and close just like real jets. I'm pretty satisfied with how that turned out, and the experience will be handy for future projects, so... *go me!*
I also figured out how to make the wings fold using a reference object, though I'm fairly sure the method I came up with is a complete kludge compared to how it's supposed to be done. I really need to sit down and watch all those dratted tutorials I've downloaded. Some day.
After all that, I decided to try adding some lights and stuff to the bomber, and see what a launch scene might look like. The bomber itself needs a lot more details and stuff, but I think that for what I've put into it so far, this image looks pretty decent:
At the very least, you can close your eyes and fill in the rest of the little details and go "yeah...". Or at least I can. Your mileage may vary.
I was unsatisfied with the base geometry of the bomber, so I redid it from scratch. The new pre-subdivision mesh has fewer faces, but a much improved edge flow that results in a smoother-looking model once I turn Catmull and Clark loose on it. The new mesh also has longer and thicker wings, which will use Grumman-style wing folding (the wings fold backwards, with the leading edge downwards). Since I decided on that method, I had some space on top of the fuselage I could use to put in a second set of engine pods, which gives the bomber a more scifi look.
(You can't see it in the render, but those engines have opening and closing exhausts like a real jet engine, and I very carefully did *not* mirror the pods when I installed them so the exhaust petals all rotate in the same direction...
I have pretty much decided to call this the Avenger, and I'm debating whether to add a dorsal gun mount behind the cockpit section (something like the guns on the VF-25 "Typhoon" pack or the YF-29 Durandal from the Macross Frontier movies). The torpedo load will be internal like the original Avenger, using the treaty-prohibited long bomb bay configuration from the B-1B. (I'll have to make a shorter torpedo, but that's not a big deal.)
I'm still thinking on what to do for the rest of the wing. I've got some idea of what to do for the Hellcat (basically, I'll mash up the Avenger with a Flanker, with a bit of Super Hornet and some F-35 thrown in), but the Dauntless, Corsair and Helldiver irritate me a lot right now. No ideas whatsoever, except maybe a variation of that drone design I've been using with the reverse gull wing, for the Corsair...
That's two down.
(Note that I still have all the landing gear wells and gear hatches and crap to do, these are just roughed out versions to figure out the shape and size of the airframes...)
That said, I'm not totally sold on canards, think the B1 looks cooler with it's rear-mounted tailplane.
The Hellcat as a plane looks cool. Almost too cool in fact, when I think of the F6F, I think a portly little brawler. A very cool plane, but not the dainty little dart you've done.
I omitted the canards because I wasn't happy with their design, plus I'm not sure I actually need them right now. We'll see as I continue working on it.
I spent the morning re-doing a few parts, and then started on the landing gear wells and doors. The nose gear is about done now, it has the full set of opening doors and pistons, though I haven't built the hinges or the interior of the nose gear bay. The main gear needs a ton of work, those things are seriously complicated. Actually, this whole business of making landing gear makes me want to just forget making any further basic designs, and just use the Avenger airframe for all the attack and support craft (AWACS, electronic warfare, etc). I've also built the wing fold mechanism:
The original carrier had five squadrons of eighteen aircraft - one squadron of Avengers, two squadrons of Dauntless or Helldiver dive bombers, and two squadrons of fighters. I think I'll be going with three squadrons of 12 Avengers, three squadrons of 12 Hellcats, and one squadron of six each AWACS, ECM and tankers. Something like that.
Cheers for now!