[Black Wolf]

Hi everyone.

It's been pretty quiet on the FL front for awhile, as my life has been super busy (master's degree and a wedding both take up an inordinate amount of time. But that doesn't mean progress has been zero.

Following on from the Ceres and continuing something of a small trend for me, I've been working on bringing a small station from the very earliest days of Freespace modding into the modern era. This time, the GTI Acheron by Robin Varley:

The Acheron was, for a very long time, just about the only small station you could get into FS2, and while it rarely suited my needs back in the day, I almost always found myself using it because, frankly, there was nothing else available. Now that I can do something about the flaws of the station, I've found a niche for it - you'll meet the Acheron serving as a final bastion against the Vasudans, protecting the Delta Serpentis side of the Sol node. They're probably also deployed at a few other key points (Earth and major colony orbit, other significant nodes) but you're restricted to DS in the campaign, so you'r likely to only see it once.

I haven't quite finalised the armaments yet, but by TV War standards, it'll pack a punch, with long range missiles and energy weapons. Without pesky engines to take up space, powerful armaments and large magazines are much more practical.

The crew complement will be minimal - these things will be battle stations through and through, with no superfluous research or dormitory function. If you're onboard, you're onboard to man the guns and keep them shooting, and not much else.

Oh, and a few quick words of general update:

• The Neith is proving to be a real pain to build debris for, which has stopped progress solid on that front. I may have to rethink my approach there.
• I've decided that the sensible thing to do from an asset utilisation perspective is to finish up my Asteroid Refinery to serve as a mining station in the campaign (even though I still would have preferred something with more of an FS1 aesthetic). Progress is moving slowly, but actually pretty steadily, on the textures. I'm not looking forward to poffing it, but debris and LoDs should actually be pretty straightforward, so progress should be expected there in the short term.
• I've been putting off finalising and releasing the Assault Leto for no really good reason. Expect some progress on that front in the next week or two.
• Missions are still more or less nonexistent. Unfortunately, building the fleet, then balancing it, has to come first, and progress is slow with just me making models. On the brightside though, only a couple of ships are actually still in really early/unstarted condition - if anyone could point me towards a ship that would serve as a good quality FS1 looking intersystem transport or Vasudan medium cruiser, I'd be pretty stoked (WiPs included).
  

[mjn.mixael]

Dammit, BW. I use these in BtA... can you finish the HTL in [15 days ago]? Thanks.

Looks really good, though. But I obviously enjoy your models... I used nearly all of them in BtA.

[JCDNWarrior]

Looks great, BW! I'm glad to see the Acheron upgraded like that.

I have to admit, it looks like it should be able to be modular to some extent, in particular the two middle parts. Maybe it's just that I identify your style as modular per definition thanks to your excellent earlier work.

As with everything, keep it up, looking forward to see it completed and ingame.

[starwolf1991]

The GTI Acheron getting the HTL treatment? Oh I remember how I used to adore and want to use this thing a dreadful amount. Glad to see an old favorite being reborn. Having it modular in some form would be interesting too; I have to agree with JCDN on this one. Keen to see how you transform it!

[Nyctaeus]

Woah this one is more ancient than... The Ancients?

Good work BW! It's a really huge improvement.

[Rheyah]

Would it be possible to throw together an optional beam turret for this one if you get the chance?  The Archeron's a unique little station and my kitbash of it has a pair of downscaled Deimos turrets on it.  If its not too much work of course.  I have literally no talent whatsoever at modelling so I can't even hope to do this myself!

[Black Wolf]

There're a few other projects that have jumped to the front of my queue, and unfortunately the Acheron hasn't progressed past what you see here. The model is fully UVed, but the texture hasn't been started yet.  So while throwing some beam cannons on it wouldn't be particularly difficult, it's not something that's going to do anybody much good until the texture and conversion of the current model is completed, and I couldn't even estimate when that might be given my existing project list.

so unfortunately, the best answer ?I can give you is that I'm happy to do it, but it's going to take awhile.

[Rheyah]

Cheers for letting me know anyway Black Wolf.  It's appreciated.  I'll keep using my Acheron kitbash anyway and look forward to replacing it with this when its ready