3DBattle Carrier (capital ship from a scifi novel I'm writing)

SeanP

It's been a long time since I posted anything new here. I'm currently writing a scifi ebook and I decided to build some of the main ships in 3D and include images of them in the book. The story takes place about 100 years in Earth's future so I decided to stick with the basic shape of today's aircraft carrier, but a lot bigger, meaner and of course in space instead of on the ocean. She's 1 1/2 miles long and 2/3 of a mile wide to scale. I'm currently creating the basic shape of the ship and then I will swing back around and add all kinds of detail. Obviously the purple superstructure is just a placeholder until I can build the real one. Having spent most of my time in the past copying Star Trek models I am finding it challenging to create a whole large ship like this from scratch.

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evil_genius_180

Nice start, I like the design so far.

Stormcloud

i like proper turret configurations and i like that military look - feels like something we might build - but it seems very vulnerable from below - unlike ocean going vessels spaceships have to fight in 3 dimensions

JWWright

Great design.

I wonder if the 'bottom' could also serve as a landing and launch carrier surface, it could service twice as many fighters in a battle...

Do the barrels on the turrets pivot?

SeanP

Thanks evil_genius_180!

Thanks Stormcloud! That's what I was going for since it's in the not too distance future. Yes I am going to arm the sides and the bottom of the hull as well. Still trying to decide what to put down there. I am considering a ball turret setup like the WWII B-17s had.

Thanks JWWright! I thought about having fighters land on the bottom as well, but I decided to use that for the reactors and tech details like the cloaking device, shield generators ...etc. The ship is so big that the huge landing bay in the rear and the flight deck launch bay are plenty big enough to land and launch a wave of fighters at a time. I also had to tell myself that it's different out in space. No gravity outside the ship makes for very short take offs. I am also going to be cutting in elevators and possibly some side bays for shuttles and supply ships as well. Oh and yes the turret barrels will raise to quite an angle and the turrets rotate as well. I need to work on the spacing of the turrets to make sure they can't bang into each other at any time.

SeanP

I came up with a basic ball turret for the bottom of my battle carrier today. Now I'm trying to decide where to place them before I start cutting the recesses into the hull. When finished they will be half buried in the hull like the image of the B-17 below.

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evil_genius_180

Nice job on the turret. :thumb:

SeanP

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

Nice job on the turret. :thumb:

Thanks dude!

SeanP

I just finished cutting the ball turrets into the hull and I cut the entrances to forward landing bays. Next I'm going to start working on the upper superstructure to get rid of the purple place holder and then I'm going to build the engines and the reactor. Then on to the tons of small details.

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evil_genius_180

Nobody can honestly say it's vulnerable from underneath now. It looks good so far.

SeanP

I got back to modeling my carrier this week. I switch off between writing the novel and working on the models. This week I rebuilt the bottom and rear section of the hull and started on the engines. Not sure I'm 100% happy with the engines, but I will keep going and see how they turn out.

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Knight26

SeanP

Hey Knight26,

I wanted a ship that would be easily recognizable as being from Earth in the not too distant future so I went with a more traditional design, a carrier crossed with a battleship, but made for space travel. I wanted the ship to be massive and wide to create impressive images. Like when you see the Executer from the front in Star Wars. I want it to be cool and make a long lasting impression on people from the instant they see it.

As far as not needing the flat top, for space operations the fighters take off from the large bay in the middle of the flight deck and they land in the huge bay above the engines at the back of the ship. However this ship is going to have the ability to enter a planet's atmosphere if needed so I do need a flat top. The ship won't land, but it will hover using anti-gravity technology like the Star Destroyers in Star Wars Rebels. Even in atmosphere I don't need that large of a flight deck just for the fighters, but it does give me a place to land / dock larger ships that won't fit in the fighter bays. Another scenario I came up with is I can sit several hundred fighters on the flat top for instant take off if the carrier is sent into a battle. It could drop out of light speed right in the middle of a fight and launch a massive wave of fighters all at once. It also gives me a place to land a massive number of fighters in a hurry so the carrier can leave very quickly should it need to.

Yes it has gravity plating, the spinning thing doesn't fit in this universe. In this universe people have the technology to fly across the galaxy travelling way faster than the speed of light, we have cloaking tech, shields, incredibly powerful weapons, but we can't keep our boots on the ground? It just doesn't flow. The spinning thing works in scenarios like 2001 ASO or in Avatar, but I'm going for way more advanced technology, but not to the point of ridiculousness like in Star Trek TNG where they fix every problem they encounter by firing a tachyon beam at it. Even if we didn't invent half the technology we could have gotten it from other species we encountered previously.

The beauty of science fiction is we are only limited to our imagination. I came up with several possible scenarios and created a ship to meet those scenarios.

The carrier is actually a secondary "character" in my book(s). I am still designing the main ship which is much smaller and has a crew of 5 or 6.

SeanP

I have been writing quite a bit for the last 3 or 4 weeks so I decided to take a break this week and work on my carrier. I finished fleshing out the shape and I rebuilt the engines. Now it's time to start adding thousands of tiny details and make it look real. I am hoping to get it to the level of detail that a star destroyer has. However next week I need to get back to writing.

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evil_genius_180

It's looking great. I look forward to the details.

SeanP

evil_genius_180 wrote: »

It's looking great. I look forward to the details.

Thanks evil_genius_180! 😀

Knight26

The design is definitely coming along, there are some great details going in.

SeanP

Knight26 wrote: »

The design is definitely coming along, there are some great details going in.

Thanks Knight26!
I'm working on smaller gun emplacements that will litter the superstructure and the edge of the flight deck when finished.

SeanP

I have been doing a lot of writing and my book is almost finished. I have the last three chapters written out in point form so now I just need to type them in so I'm hoping to have the book finished in two weeks. Then I will take a week for editing and tweaking before I prep it for publishing. I am going to be creating my own book cover as well as inserting images of the most featured ships, one being this carrier and the other being a smaller cruiser that I am still designing. I needed a break from writing last night so I decided to work on the carrier some more. I have finalized the shape of the island and started adding detail. Obviously I still have a ton of detail to add yet, but once the book is finished I will be dedicating a lot of time to finishing this carrier and modeling the cruiser. It amazes me how long it takes to add some of these details. I honestly don't know how fractalsponge can do them so quickly.

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Aresius

Heh, the amount of guns would make most WW2-battleships blush.......

SeanP

I took a break from writing this week - with only one chapter left to write until the book is finished. I worked on my carrier a little bit adding lots of little details on one section of the island and redesigning the one sensor array.

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SeanP

So I finished writing my book on Tuesday. Not bad for my first book - 227 pages 57,579 words before editing. Now I need to get this carrier finished and a few other models for the cover art. I started adding more detail, but decided not to get too crazy with the very fine details because you just won't see it on the book cover as it will ultimately be a fairly small image. I added the city blocks and windows in the trench around the flight deck, I added the maneuvering thrusters and I added a whole bunch of medium sized turrets - still adding to those.

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SeanP

Been modeling like crazy for the past few days and added a lot of detail - still lots more to add. Trying to get this thing finished ASAP so I can move on to building the ship that the main character commands. I will add the lighting, maps and special effects afterwards. Anybody have any suggestions for a main hull texture? I'm having difficulty coming up with an idea for it. What I envision for the book is the carrier is going to be on the back cover with a couple of planets - one will be a ringed planet and the back drop will be a multi colored nebula. The main character's ship will be on the front cover with Earth in the background.

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SeanP

Added a whole bunch of small quad mini gun turrets all over the superstructure, a bunch of windows on the island and more details on the island itself. This thing is purely a warship, there's no mistaking that with the number of guns it has.

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SeanP

Closeup of the superstructure. Had an idea about an armor plating that will make the superstructure look more modern and rounded. Going to try it out in the next couple of days and will post a picture if it works out.

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Knight26

The island right now looks very much like the CVN-65 Enterprise, and great googley moogley that's a butt ton of turrets? Half those turrets will have almost zero field of fire because they are too close to the ones beside them, the dynamic fire zone cutouts will be insane. I used to work on shipboard self defense systems and I can tell you those are way too crammed in there, you could do with far fewer. Also, the underdeck hardware will all be pretty cramped, be it projectiles or energy weapons.

Also, way too many windows on the island structure, might as well paint a giant "shoot here" sign on there.

SeanP

You make some good points, I will reduce the number of turrets. The number of windows will probably go down as I add my new armor idea, if it works out. Thanks.

SeanP

Removed a bunch of guns and the windows on the island. My armor idea didn't work so I started modelling "tech paneling" to add simple detail. My goal is to get the modelling done in the coming week, then after that add some image maps for more detail, light it and render it in a scene. Then on to the main character's cruiser.

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Knight26

Nice, you have some great details on the design. Still not sold on the overall design. Keeping a spaceborne carrier married to a wet navy design just compromises it a great deal, unless there is some reason to do so. In my own books I have two classes of space carriers that can land and serve as wet navy carriers, but most do not allowing more freedom of design.

SeanP

Yeah, but that's the beauty of science fiction we can make up whatever we want, it's our world and doesn't all have to make sense. We can pick apart any movie if you want to. Ever taken a good look at a Star Destroyer? Kinda silly that its surfaces are all angled in all directions. Makes for very strange deck configurations inside. And just look at the Enterprise - very flimsy design if you take an impartial look at it. The designers all had their reasons or visions for building their ships the way they did and so do I as I'm sure you did as well.

evil_genius_180

Looking great, Sean. :thumb:

Yeah, since nobody can actually make interstellar vessels, designs are only limited by one's imagination. It's easy to say this or that won't work, when in reality we don't know what would work in building an interstellar vessel. The technology used can be whatever we want, because it's all made up anyway.

I one time had the idea to write fiction about space pirates using something that looked like the massive sailing ships of old (only with covered decks and the sails were solar sails.) Why? Because I thought it would look cool.