How much more do you need? And how would you motivate the differences within the universe? This is more than just "the same fleet", this is the fruits of a crash build program where the two classes for each type are basically the first and second year's production respectively, and where the navy is screaming for these ships to enter service as fast as possible so they can go fight off the aliens that their allies are beseiged by. Not exactly the best time to make sweeping design changes...
The best I can really do on that front is variations in the minor detailing, which I'm only barely getting started on for the biggest ship (and haven't done at all on the others). Basically the "hook this apparatus up wherever there's room for it" stuff, or "the subcontractor couldn't get the parts to us in time so we substituted with something more or less equivalent that we had on hand". That's where you'll find variations... eventually. :-)
Edit: Aresius, those lights won't be on when the enemy is around, they're there so the crew can see where they're going when they're EVA... :-) The idea is, the first sign the enemy should get is the very bright flash when they're vaporized...
I get the point.
But imagine this: you're on a [insert the name of your desired enemy]-warship, prowling into a solar system from afar to sneak around and not jump right into the orbit blindfolded of what may be there, the space-surveillance officer tells you something about odd readings. The gnarly captain that you are orders him to be more specific and he calls it wandering glowing space-flies, which brings you close to go ballistics and you shout to get visuals. Mainscreen turns on and gives you a black star-view with a blacked-out area (the dark ship which you don't know of) and a line of these lights floating -like in formation- around.
Kinda creepy if you ask me...
Speaking of enemies: I haven't yet managed to make any digital drawings, I guess the packet'o'digi-pen is still somewhere over the ocean. Plus I've just had introduction-week in university...
How much more do you need? And how would you motivate the differences within the universe? This is more than just "the same fleet", this is the fruits of a crash build program where the two classes for each type are basically the first and second year's production respectively, and where the navy is screaming for these ships to enter service as fast as possible so they can go fight off the aliens that their allies are beseiged by. Not exactly the best time to make sweeping design changes...
The best I can really do on that front is variations in the minor detailing, which I'm only barely getting started on for the biggest ship (and haven't done at all on the others). Basically the "hook this apparatus up wherever there's room for it" stuff, or "the subcontractor couldn't get the parts to us in time so we substituted with something more or less equivalent that we had on hand". That's where you'll find variations... eventually. :-)
Edit: Aresius, those lights won't be on when the enemy is around, they're there so the crew can see where they're going when they're EVA... :-) The idea is, the first sign the enemy should get is the very bright flash when they're vaporized...
Cheers,
SP
i didn't realize they were part of a "Story" but now that i understand why they look so similar
OK, been a busy week, spent most of it upgrading my system to Windows 7. Nice OS, but installing all my apps again took *forever*. And I'm still not done, some of my stuff needs a ton of patches (*cough*WoW*cough*) which is a pain in the rear when you're limited to 128k.
I have gotten some minor stuff done on the battleship, though - I fixed the mystery of the missing deck lights (some of the light sources weren't emitting, turns out they'd spawned a micrometer or two behind the reflector...), added light fixtures to a couple of places that didn't have them before (still not done with that, actually); changed the color of the flood lights, and built a few greebles for the foremast. Going to have to work more on those, though.
Bridge area, now with nightlights. :-)
Superstructure overview, also with nightlights on. These two are a couple of days old, not that the differences are all that visible in the dark...
Here's the closer view again, in "daylight". Yardarms have been restyled, a navigational antenna and some visual sensor turrets have been added, and the FCR at the top of the mast has been redone.
Overview again. I've started placing walkways around the superstructure, using the quick-and-dirty way (copy the bottoms of the structures and use the bevel tool...). Not done yet. For reference, the walkways are four meters wide. I'm most likely going to have to redo the lot again, will be adding white edges (I think) to them for added visibility, and/or fluorescent edge lights.
Finally, the latest in a long line of experiments with the engine layout, this one brought about by a visit to AâA?A·Aâ§Aâ¬A?Aâ¬A? A°A?A?A?A?A3 Aï¹ARAoA? (a Korean Gundam collector's site). I think I'm on to something here, though I'm not completely satisfied just yet. May end up ditching the current wings entirely. :-)
Taking a few minutes off between parts of the new Wheel of Time audiobook (I'm nine hours into it, out of a projected thirty...) to post a pic of my latest attempt at the engine configuration. I kind of went back to basic, though with some less square shapes to guide me this time. I'm not sure that the crosspiece is the right shape, though I like it a bit better than the faux airfoil shape I used before...
Work continues, as always. Now, to get my other **** together, then it's time for another nine hours of listening... :-)
Grraah. No internet for two days, had to go buy a cellular modem to get back online since my ISP shut me down and are demanding half again the original debt to restore service... Good news is, 2.5 mbit is better than 128 kbit. The bad news is, I'm limited to 5 gigs a month. I still have some small hope to get full service restored (24mbit+36channel cable+phone), but I need to cough up a fortune for that...
Anyways, with nothing better to do I sat down and rebuilt the cruisers again, and then I worked some on the engines and wings of the battleship. Take a look:
Going to be doing quite a bit more to the cruisers now that I've got my references back again (I *hate* being without internet access...). Cheers!
Corrected the layer enumeration of the CA-68 mesh, redid the medium AA battery (now with rings around the turrets, as per the real world ship), and added some directors and one of the radars from my bits library. Also, the bridge was enclosed:
Hm. I see barely differences here, only the tower and a little other things. I find it generally ratrher strange to see ships with basically the same main-gun/secondary-gun configuration, but different looks of superstructure only for the sake of making another class...
Aresius: Not all that strange. IRL, the first class was rushed into service warts and all, the second class is a bugfixed version of the first (simpler to build, easier to navigate internally, more space for electronics, rearranged fire control radars), and the third is the true "next gen" class (faster guns, more and better fire control radars). Keep in mind that there was a bunch of trial and error in working out which components worked best where. The vast majority of the two later classes were cancelled at the end of the war, so only three of each were built compared to fourteen for the first class, but they were probably much better at their designed job.
And of course, I thought it would be cool to build all the related designs just to show evolution in progress, so to speak. The faction building these ships are fighting WWII in space, and making all the same discoveries in the process.
Lu: Thanks! The engine pods will probably evolve further, but they're at least looking like they belong now, which is better than before. The wings are way way basic right now, though...
Had an idea I wanted to test out for the propulsion units, so I stripped off the wings (as usual, they're just disabled) and built some swivel mounted engine pods...
This should allow the main thrusters to be used for maneuvering and decelleration, in addition to just accelleration. The pods fold flat along side the hull in either forward or rear thrust configuration when traveling, depending on whether the ship has "turned over". The only problem with the arrangement that I'm having so far is that the engines look a little too small for the ship...
Cheers
SP
I think this engine configuration shows the most promise. It allows you to maintain a very traditional nautical feel by eliminating those wings and the engine locations there. Have you thought of using a Space Battleship Yamato approach to the engines?
I could also see taking a BSG type engine structure and slinging it on the lower 1/2 of the hull line in the rear 3/4 of the ship. Directional control could be provided by BSG type thruster arrangements.
I like the sleek approach to the ships, but think the 'wings' disrupt the overall shape.
Scoobypower: You're a bit late... :-) those bits were removed a while ago, as part of a consolidation of the mesh. I'm pretty much set on the big side mounted pods for now, but the rest of the wing design isn't final.
I've managed to bring three more ships up to the same state as the others, and moved some stuff around to make sure everything matched properly. I now have the CL-55 Cleveland, CA-68 Baltimore, CL-106 Fargo, CA-122 Oregon City and CA-134 Des Moines done to the point where what's missing is the light AA, the AA directors, boats and air facilities. I still need to build the CL-52 Atlanta, CL-95 Oakland and CL-119 Juneau, which are smaller than the Cleveland/Fargo, but other than those I have pretty much all the "modern" cruisers done. There are a couple of older models I'd like to do as well, but they'll need much more model-specific work done, so they'll wait. Also, I've got two or three classes of battleships.
Anyway, updated pics:
CL-55 Cleveland (new) (edit2: wrong pic replaced)
CA-68 Baltimore (updated)
CL-106 Fargo (new)
CA-122 Oregon City (updated)
CA-134 Des Moines (new)
All of these pics are taken from the same distance and angle, which should give an idea of the relative size. :-)
Here's the start of the last batch of cruisers, the specialized CL-51 Atlanta-class anti-aircraft cruiser.
The turrets have been rebuilt, and I've replaced all the secondary turrets on the other ships with these new ones. These ships didn't originally have any of the quad anti-aircraft guns, so they're not in the plans I've found. They did have torpedo tubes, though, in sets of four forward of the side turrets. I'll be adding them once I've figured out what I want them to look like. :-)
There are a total of three variants to the design, in all - the second version omitted the side turrets to save weight, and the third lowered the four turrets closest to the center by one deck to improve the balance. I'll be building both, in time... :-)
These renders were all made in Maxwell 2.0, using just the default settings. The only thing that needed any attention was the camera settings in lightwave - you need to set the correct depth of field, otherwise Maxwell will use the default which is 1 meter.
I'm going to need to work some more to make sure all the superstructures are "accurate", then I'm going to start on the details, such as the deck lights I've added to the Montana-class battleship. I'm also going to try and fix up some better light AA guns, the light cruisers had a bunch of them and are looking pretty bare without them right now.
Closer look at CL-51's superstructure, with light and medium AA added:
I'll need to replace the light AA guns later, they're static objects rather than the articulated version at the moment. I've also had complaints about their design, holding off on doing the proper placement procedure until I've figured out the proper look for them.
I've started on the next stage of detailing, beginning with the CL-51 mesh. First, superstructure deck lights:
The lights may be set at too wide an angle right now, I'm not sure. I can fix it later, at any rate. :-) Next up, I *think* (I keep getting sidetracked) will be the masts, and the platforms for the medium AA directors (on the funnels and below the bridge, etc.) I've noticed that the current mesh is actually a bit of a mix of different AA fits of the real CL-51 class. Fixing it good and proper will take a bit of work, not too difficult though. :-)
Hmm yeah, that lighting needs some tweaking as it's looking a bit weird now. I think it might be that double-light setup, have you tried with just single lights? That might look more balanced I think.... And errr, why even have so many lights on a warship at all...?
Well, this is not the ocean on Earth, where guns have a max range of 20-something km. Battles in space could be fought over a distance of thousands of km. A lit ship is the least of one's problems then. ;-)
Though I'm also curious - why deck lights? It's not as if the crew would walk on the deck in space suits to man the guns, hehe.
Well, you'd need them for external repairs etc. There's still a bunch of stuff to be added to the exterior, like access panels, airlocks, torpedo tubes, various firecontrol sensors and the communications gear. None of that is retractable, so it has to be serviced in place... :-)
The lights would obviously be turned off when not needed, but I still need to install them and check that they look correct when lit.
As for the design of the lights, I swiped them from one of the latest modern warship designs, the Dutch Navy's "De Zeven Provincien"-class destroyers. Not sure it uses actual spotlights, though, it may be straight tube lights instead. The images I have were from pretty far off, and focus on the whole ship, rather than the details...
Today's pics:
Repositioned the light sources for each spotlight (thankfully I didn't have to do all of them manually!), and changed the color to a very light blue. Also removed some unneccesary bits of the superstructure and cleaned up the damage to the light setup after myself. And...
...added the platforms and the mast. I also replaced the tiny AA guns with a missile launcher with a distinct RAM heritage. Now to populate the new platforms, add the torpedo tubes, and add some various gunk to the rest of the deck. Or, bring the other ships up to this standard before continuing further. Not sure quite yet.
Hey Sebastian, I don't know if your app supports booleans...
I did a little "workflow" step by step for a few people to check out waaay back.
This might inspire some ideas on detailing your hull with indentations that wont eat up your polycount too much:
My Old Starship Tutorial
Melak: Yeah, there are a few. I wish I could do it with radiosity alone, but that requires ludicrous settings that take forever to render if I want all the lights to show. Someone said I could bake them into the textures, though. I have no idea how to do it, but I'm going to give it a try once I find some instructions. :-)
Magnatude: I'm using Lightwave, which does support booleans. I haven't used them all that much except to drill holes (boolean subtraction), which is messy but fun. :-) Love the style on that battlecruiser...
Tonights work has mostly involved the superstructure of the CL-55 mesh. I found some old notes on the AA battery of that class and how it evolved over the course of the war, and my previous version had way more than it should have, even if I was depicting a very late war ship. So I removed the lot and started fresh. I'm going to have to do some more versions depicting the mods these ships received during refits, but that's a later story. For now, I just need to get the superstructures right once and for all... :-)
edit:
Here's the CA-68 (Baltimore) heavy cruiser updated to more or less the same standard as the CL-55 (Cleveland) above, mostly by pasting in the same superstructure and editing it to reflect the fairly subtle differences. Still missing a few of the light AA platforms, and I haven't put in the guns/missile launchers that go on them, but they're coming eventually. :-)
They *should* look nasty. They are, after all, based on some of the most successful and iconic ships of WWII, which was the last time warships actually fought each other. At least as real engagements.
On the topic of butts, though, what do I do about this one:
The real things had a seaplane catapult on each side, and a big sliding hangar hatch in the middle of the deck. I'm contemplating doing the same, but I haven't figured out what the scout planes to go with the catapults would have to look like, so I don't know what the catapult needs to look like either....
Oh well, I'll figure something out. Cheers for now,
I ran a search on google to see the most common seaplane-catapults and I have to admit: You'd not find an equivalent to that capable of being invented for spaceships. I mean even with the advance to weight-propelled capatults like on the Enterprise and other more mordern aircraft-carriers, you'd have to make a tubular hangar something like BSG had them, these launchtubes since that's the only reasonable thing in space (or you have to make a retractable tube so the pilot can enter in the ship and the be transported outside, but that's risky in a battle situation, being shot while still being deployed).
And a hangar hatch, well, you can do a vertical land (wich again in the far future may be possible, considering that we have VLO planes already, like the British Harrier), but all else is senseless.
So I'd rather say, make none and devise a specialised carrier-class. Considering that it's in the far future, I'd reason they would rather make something like a mix of various forms. Admittedly, battleships are outdated and cruisers, destroyers and frigates are nowadays only doing escort-service as retinue to the carriers, but heck, space is a new terrain, so why not, I'd not be too surprised if you'd even make a Space-Bismarck.
Since space-fight can either be like StarTrek, with only capital ships against eachother and fighters as distracting cannon-fodder, or like StarWars, with fighters as main means to inflict damage and capital ships to deliver fatal blows, I believe with the current tech of carriers and super-carriers evolved into the future, we're closer on a StarWars style, so I'd go for making separate carrier-classes.
Maybe differing by size. Smallers ones that only have one or two launch tubes or tracks and a very limited number of fighters only for escort duty, something escort carriers, then the average carrier that has some tubes/tracks and a well average number of fighters and some bombers as patrol and skirmish carriers and then real big baddies with several tubes/tracks and a large compliment of attack fighters, defensive interceptors and bombers for attack-runs for the major battles.
Good points, though I'm still hoping to figure out a good way to do seaplane-catapult analogues if only to make sure these things are completely equivalent of the originals... :-)
Frankly, I like the style of the seaplane catapults found on WWII warships, and I have at least a couple of ideas for how to work them in naturally. The first is rather simple - an uninhabited scout craft needs no provisions for boarding while on the catapult, if it needs servicing you return it to the hangar. The second involves building a boarding tunnel into the catapult, with the docking collar on the bottom of the scout craft. Since all the other details are roughly 300% linear scale compared to the real-world ships, the catapults ought to easily be big enough for that.
(for reference, the inside rim of the "machine gun tubs" are a meter tall, and the darker area that marks the "flight deck" is 75 meters long by 45 meters wide at the widest and 25 meters at the narrowest, on the heavy cruiser. It's about 10% less on the general purpose light cruisers, and the CLAAs don't embark scout craft, only shuttles).
As for the state of fighter weaponry, I envision it to be somewhere in between the extremes you mention, and evolving. Not yet the dominant weapon due to slowness of the fighters and missiles, but gaining in importance. Sort of like in the beginning of WWII... :-)
Posts
The best I can really do on that front is variations in the minor detailing, which I'm only barely getting started on for the biggest ship (and haven't done at all on the others). Basically the "hook this apparatus up wherever there's room for it" stuff, or "the subcontractor couldn't get the parts to us in time so we substituted with something more or less equivalent that we had on hand". That's where you'll find variations... eventually. :-)
Edit: Aresius, those lights won't be on when the enemy is around, they're there so the crew can see where they're going when they're EVA... :-) The idea is, the first sign the enemy should get is the very bright flash when they're vaporized...
Cheers,
SP
But imagine this: you're on a [insert the name of your desired enemy]-warship, prowling into a solar system from afar to sneak around and not jump right into the orbit blindfolded of what may be there, the space-surveillance officer tells you something about odd readings. The gnarly captain that you are orders him to be more specific and he calls it wandering glowing space-flies, which brings you close to go ballistics and you shout to get visuals. Mainscreen turns on and gives you a black star-view with a blacked-out area (the dark ship which you don't know of) and a line of these lights floating -like in formation- around.
Kinda creepy if you ask me...
Speaking of enemies: I haven't yet managed to make any digital drawings, I guess the packet'o'digi-pen is still somewhere over the ocean. Plus I've just had introduction-week in university...
i didn't realize they were part of a "Story" but now that i understand why they look so similar
I have gotten some minor stuff done on the battleship, though - I fixed the mystery of the missing deck lights (some of the light sources weren't emitting, turns out they'd spawned a micrometer or two behind the reflector...), added light fixtures to a couple of places that didn't have them before (still not done with that, actually); changed the color of the flood lights, and built a few greebles for the foremast. Going to have to work more on those, though.
Bridge area, now with nightlights. :-)
Superstructure overview, also with nightlights on. These two are a couple of days old, not that the differences are all that visible in the dark...
Here's the closer view again, in "daylight". Yardarms have been restyled, a navigational antenna and some visual sensor turrets have been added, and the FCR at the top of the mast has been redone.
Overview again. I've started placing walkways around the superstructure, using the quick-and-dirty way (copy the bottoms of the structures and use the bevel tool...). Not done yet. For reference, the walkways are four meters wide. I'm most likely going to have to redo the lot again, will be adding white edges (I think) to them for added visibility, and/or fluorescent edge lights.
Finally, the latest in a long line of experiments with the engine layout, this one brought about by a visit to AâA?A·Aâ§Aâ¬A?Aâ¬A? A°A?A?A?A?A3 Aï¹ARAoA? (a Korean Gundam collector's site). I think I'm on to something here, though I'm not completely satisfied just yet. May end up ditching the current wings entirely. :-)
Cheers for now,
SP
Taking a few minutes off between parts of the new Wheel of Time audiobook (I'm nine hours into it, out of a projected thirty...) to post a pic of my latest attempt at the engine configuration. I kind of went back to basic, though with some less square shapes to guide me this time. I'm not sure that the crosspiece is the right shape, though I like it a bit better than the faux airfoil shape I used before...
Work continues, as always. Now, to get my other **** together, then it's time for another nine hours of listening... :-)
SP
Say, Winch. Mind checking out my Terran Colonial Battlefleet thread?
Anyways, with nothing better to do I sat down and rebuilt the cruisers again, and then I worked some on the engines and wings of the battleship. Take a look:
Going to be doing quite a bit more to the cruisers now that I've got my references back again (I *hate* being without internet access...). Cheers!
SP
Polygon count at this point is about 92k.
Cheers,
SP
Based on the real-world Baltimore-class (CA-68). (see Baltimore class cruiser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)
Heavy cruiser Flight II:
Based on the Oregon City-class (CA-122). (See Oregon City class cruiser - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia).
Flight III, based on the Des Moines-class (CA-134) is coming soonish...
SP
And of course, I thought it would be cool to build all the related designs just to show evolution in progress, so to speak. The faction building these ships are fighting WWII in space, and making all the same discoveries in the process.
Lu: Thanks! The engine pods will probably evolve further, but they're at least looking like they belong now, which is better than before. The wings are way way basic right now, though...
Cheers,
SP
I think this engine configuration shows the most promise. It allows you to maintain a very traditional nautical feel by eliminating those wings and the engine locations there. Have you thought of using a Space Battleship Yamato approach to the engines?
I could also see taking a BSG type engine structure and slinging it on the lower 1/2 of the hull line in the rear 3/4 of the ship. Directional control could be provided by BSG type thruster arrangements.
I like the sleek approach to the ships, but think the 'wings' disrupt the overall shape.
I've managed to bring three more ships up to the same state as the others, and moved some stuff around to make sure everything matched properly. I now have the CL-55 Cleveland, CA-68 Baltimore, CL-106 Fargo, CA-122 Oregon City and CA-134 Des Moines done to the point where what's missing is the light AA, the AA directors, boats and air facilities. I still need to build the CL-52 Atlanta, CL-95 Oakland and CL-119 Juneau, which are smaller than the Cleveland/Fargo, but other than those I have pretty much all the "modern" cruisers done. There are a couple of older models I'd like to do as well, but they'll need much more model-specific work done, so they'll wait. Also, I've got two or three classes of battleships.
Anyway, updated pics:
CL-55 Cleveland (new) (edit2: wrong pic replaced)
CA-68 Baltimore (updated)
CL-106 Fargo (new)
CA-122 Oregon City (updated)
CA-134 Des Moines (new)
All of these pics are taken from the same distance and angle, which should give an idea of the relative size. :-)
Cheers,
SP
The turrets have been rebuilt, and I've replaced all the secondary turrets on the other ships with these new ones. These ships didn't originally have any of the quad anti-aircraft guns, so they're not in the plans I've found. They did have torpedo tubes, though, in sets of four forward of the side turrets. I'll be adding them once I've figured out what I want them to look like. :-)
There are a total of three variants to the design, in all - the second version omitted the side turrets to save weight, and the third lowered the four turrets closest to the center by one deck to improve the balance. I'll be building both, in time... :-)
Cheers!
SP
These renders were all made in Maxwell 2.0, using just the default settings. The only thing that needed any attention was the camera settings in lightwave - you need to set the correct depth of field, otherwise Maxwell will use the default which is 1 meter.
I'm going to need to work some more to make sure all the superstructures are "accurate", then I'm going to start on the details, such as the deck lights I've added to the Montana-class battleship. I'm also going to try and fix up some better light AA guns, the light cruisers had a bunch of them and are looking pretty bare without them right now.
More later,
SP
I'll need to replace the light AA guns later, they're static objects rather than the articulated version at the moment. I've also had complaints about their design, holding off on doing the proper placement procedure until I've figured out the proper look for them.
More later,
SP
The lights may be set at too wide an angle right now, I'm not sure. I can fix it later, at any rate. :-) Next up, I *think* (I keep getting sidetracked) will be the masts, and the platforms for the medium AA directors (on the funnels and below the bridge, etc.) I've noticed that the current mesh is actually a bit of a mix of different AA fits of the real CL-51 class. Fixing it good and proper will take a bit of work, not too difficult though. :-)
Cheers for now,
SP
Though I'm also curious - why deck lights? It's not as if the crew would walk on the deck in space suits to man the guns, hehe.
The lights would obviously be turned off when not needed, but I still need to install them and check that they look correct when lit.
As for the design of the lights, I swiped them from one of the latest modern warship designs, the Dutch Navy's "De Zeven Provincien"-class destroyers. Not sure it uses actual spotlights, though, it may be straight tube lights instead. The images I have were from pretty far off, and focus on the whole ship, rather than the details...
Today's pics:
Repositioned the light sources for each spotlight (thankfully I didn't have to do all of them manually!), and changed the color to a very light blue. Also removed some unneccesary bits of the superstructure and cleaned up the damage to the light setup after myself. And...
...added the platforms and the mast. I also replaced the tiny AA guns with a missile launcher with a distinct RAM heritage. Now to populate the new platforms, add the torpedo tubes, and add some various gunk to the rest of the deck. Or, bring the other ships up to this standard before continuing further. Not sure quite yet.
Cheers,
SP
Nice
I did a little "workflow" step by step for a few people to check out waaay back.
This might inspire some ideas on detailing your hull with indentations that wont eat up your polycount too much:
My Old Starship Tutorial
Edit: and Another as referenced in the above link! (shows more boolean steps)
Since we kinda do the same style of ships. Any Q's about it just message me.
Magnatude: I'm using Lightwave, which does support booleans. I haven't used them all that much except to drill holes (boolean subtraction), which is messy but fun. :-) Love the style on that battlecruiser...
Tonights work has mostly involved the superstructure of the CL-55 mesh. I found some old notes on the AA battery of that class and how it evolved over the course of the war, and my previous version had way more than it should have, even if I was depicting a very late war ship. So I removed the lot and started fresh. I'm going to have to do some more versions depicting the mods these ships received during refits, but that's a later story. For now, I just need to get the superstructures right once and for all... :-)
edit:
Here's the CA-68 (Baltimore) heavy cruiser updated to more or less the same standard as the CL-55 (Cleveland) above, mostly by pasting in the same superstructure and editing it to reflect the fairly subtle differences. Still missing a few of the light AA platforms, and I haven't put in the guns/missile launchers that go on them, but they're coming eventually. :-)
SP
THey still look nasty. :flippy:
In the sense of butt-kicking-your-enemy.
On the topic of butts, though, what do I do about this one:
The real things had a seaplane catapult on each side, and a big sliding hangar hatch in the middle of the deck. I'm contemplating doing the same, but I haven't figured out what the scout planes to go with the catapults would have to look like, so I don't know what the catapult needs to look like either....
Oh well, I'll figure something out. Cheers for now,
SP
And a hangar hatch, well, you can do a vertical land (wich again in the far future may be possible, considering that we have VLO planes already, like the British Harrier), but all else is senseless.
So I'd rather say, make none and devise a specialised carrier-class. Considering that it's in the far future, I'd reason they would rather make something like a mix of various forms. Admittedly, battleships are outdated and cruisers, destroyers and frigates are nowadays only doing escort-service as retinue to the carriers, but heck, space is a new terrain, so why not, I'd not be too surprised if you'd even make a Space-Bismarck.
Since space-fight can either be like StarTrek, with only capital ships against eachother and fighters as distracting cannon-fodder, or like StarWars, with fighters as main means to inflict damage and capital ships to deliver fatal blows, I believe with the current tech of carriers and super-carriers evolved into the future, we're closer on a StarWars style, so I'd go for making separate carrier-classes.
Maybe differing by size. Smallers ones that only have one or two launch tubes or tracks and a very limited number of fighters only for escort duty, something escort carriers, then the average carrier that has some tubes/tracks and a well average number of fighters and some bombers as patrol and skirmish carriers and then real big baddies with several tubes/tracks and a large compliment of attack fighters, defensive interceptors and bombers for attack-runs for the major battles.
Frankly, I like the style of the seaplane catapults found on WWII warships, and I have at least a couple of ideas for how to work them in naturally. The first is rather simple - an uninhabited scout craft needs no provisions for boarding while on the catapult, if it needs servicing you return it to the hangar. The second involves building a boarding tunnel into the catapult, with the docking collar on the bottom of the scout craft. Since all the other details are roughly 300% linear scale compared to the real-world ships, the catapults ought to easily be big enough for that.
(for reference, the inside rim of the "machine gun tubs" are a meter tall, and the darker area that marks the "flight deck" is 75 meters long by 45 meters wide at the widest and 25 meters at the narrowest, on the heavy cruiser. It's about 10% less on the general purpose light cruisers, and the CLAAs don't embark scout craft, only shuttles).
As for the state of fighter weaponry, I envision it to be somewhere in between the extremes you mention, and evolving. Not yet the dominant weapon due to slowness of the fighters and missiles, but gaining in importance. Sort of like in the beginning of WWII... :-)
Cheers,
SP