[Starman01]

Hello folks,

I have saved me this here as a christmas-present for you. Now before you enjoy the shots below, let me just give you the following on the way :

Merry Christmas to all of you from the entire WC-SAGA-Team.  


So here is our final version of my most beloved kilrathi-warship.

Constructed by the Kilrathi after the Battle of Earth, the Frawqirg-class Light Destroyer became the mainstay capital ship in the Kilrathi Fleet. Even though they were generally weakly shielded and armored, its armament made it a valuable escort ship for larger cruisers and carriers, and its torpedoes enabled it to threaten even the largest Confed warship. There is also a small hangar bay to house a shuttle and half-squadron of light fighters. In keeping with the Kilrathi's psychological warfare philosophy, this destroyer class is shaped like a large, serrated claw. Combat reports show that our latest Sheffield-class destroyer is much more then capable of fighting it one-on-one.

[/I]






Here are also some ingame-screenshots of this baby (I made him "friendly" for taking these pictures, normally he will not give you the chance of making some peacefull panorama-shots from him )

[Moonsword]

Uhhhmmm.... knifey.

And no, the Kats generally don't like guys in recon fighters snapping pictures.  Haven't the foggiest why, though...

[TopAce]

I don't know... are all WC Saga ships so simple?
Do not misunderstand me, I like simple models, they take little effort to make and they can serve their purpose very well.

[pyro-manic]

Merry Christmas to you too

Interesting design, this. I like it, but it could use some more polys - it seems a bit too angular at the moment. Some slight chamfering or smoothing or something to break up those hard edges slightly.

[Bobboau]

silly monkeys
hard edges==good

it could use some greebleing but I always say that.

greebleing == more hard edges.


maybe if you took the red painted parts and raised them just a little tiny bit.

[NGTM-1R]

I preferred WC's simple models, in a way: they make more sense. Simpler, blockier = impression of more armor-plating.

[Bobboau]

simple != blocky

[gevatter Lars]

I also like the simple design of WC....its seams more logic not to waste any material on some grablings that don't have any use...special if you are at war and resources are low.
Look at today warships...even they don't have anything that isn't without a purpose...well most of them ^_°

[Moonsword]

I prefer, in some ways, especially for Kilrathi, the styles of the earlier WCs, but these are nice, too.

I just prefer some of the more rounder Kat capships, I guess.

[gevatter Lars]

Well don't know..the WC2 ships where so much out of the line compared to the rest of the ships. Even the WC1 designs where quite blocky on both sides...I allways didn't liked the WC2 Kilrathi design.
But hell what does that matter...they did it that way in the past and we wont change the general style or shape of them...exept some little details we add.

[Moonsword]

*nods*

Probably a good decision.  Otherwise, can you imagine the way some fo the fans (including me, more than likely) would start frothing at the mouth?

[gevatter Lars]

Well from some shots I have seen what some people have done to the ships if they have the freedom...one thing was done by myself *shame on me* ^_^
I was convinced that this is the better way of doing things.

[Marodeur]

Merry Christmas to all

I like the destroyer and i like the kilrathi design with hard edges. It fits better to a race of warriors (in my opinion).


And greetings to gevater lars. I know you from the GS-Forum.

[gevatter Lars]

Wow someone found his way from the Gamestar forum to our small part of the universe ^_^
At least someone from the time where I have tried to convince the GS crew to publish something about WC Saga ^_^

[Bobboau]

well to call it useless assumes you know every mechamical bolt that's going on under the skin, the only reason why modurn aircraft and sea vesles ar so smooth is becase they have to operate in a fluid were drag is a concern, most of the surface of fighter jets is the shape it is simply because of this, is space haveing all this extra skin to make a ship smoother that it otherwise would actualy waists materials, what I would expect on real space only vesles would be lots of facets and details as you build the components and have armor covering them shaped specificly for those peaces but only the peices that needed it and you wouldn't care about covering the many holes between sections that you do on todays ships and planes.
now when I say ships (sea) I am talking about the bottom of them a lot more so than the top, the top of a modern battle ship is a lot more like what I would expect to find in space in terms of what it would look like. with lots of clunky details all over the place. the only thing I can think of that might give some advantage to a ship that had it's surface smoothed over would be that maybe it would reduce the radar (or equivelent) cross section.

now that said there is a certan style a game has, and you don't want to change things too much to make it no longer look like the game. if someone wants to see an example of adding in details that wernt there before while maintaining the style of the origonal, look at my htl herc model (it maintains the FS style of lots of clunky armor upon armor, not sudgesting WCS should follow the paturn shown).

[Lynx]

Ah, finally you released it.

About you people who think it's underdetailed, why do you like the Fenris then? It looks nothing like the other FS ships.

If you look at the Fenris just style-wise it would actually fit better into the WC design line(it has lots of large flat surfaces, a smooth texture without any visible armor plates, and even the HTL model looks largely the same unless viewed from closeup since all the details are just small, like windows and minor tech grating)

And that model has already more polies than the stock FS engine would have allowed. The main reason you thing it'S underdetailed is probably the smooth textures that barely shows any armor plating opposed to the FS textures like that blue Orion plating(which looks like *crap*, if a ship of that size would have that much space between the armor plates it would be in serious trouble), plus you have to thing that the WC ship dimensioning is nothing like in FreeSpace. That destroyer is barely 300m long compared to FS destroyer which span over several kilometers, the largest WC ships are carriers where the biggest are about 960 meters long(with a few exceptions like the Behemoth and the Kilrathi doughnut, ehh dreadnought).

[Akalabeth Angel]

I don't know much about Wing Commander, having only played privateer, but the ship looks cool to me. There's no point making a conversion to a certain universe if you don't capture the flavour of that universe, and the ships are obviously a vital component to this.

    The value of a ship should never be based solely on its number of polygons, what's far more important is its character and the story behind it. And just as important is the missions and the storyline in which it is presented. A cool looking ship is irrelevant if the campaign  it is in really sucks.

[Starman01]

Well, about adding details, see this here for reference. It is as Lynx said, our models look way more smoothed due to the texturing, our "armor-plates" aren't visible.

Old model (Original has not even those turret-podests)


New detailed model :





I think this is detail enough, don't you ?

[Moonsword]

No.  You need to model every rivet on the hull, Starman.

[Lynx]

Implement bump maps and you can have that.