[Arculis]

I've had this one finished for a while, but I'd planned to make it a set of two, one with missiles and one without. I haven't gotten around to making the one with missiles, so I thought I'd throw this one on the forum and see what people thought of it in the mean time.

GTF Epimetheus A

Click the link to see pictures.

A few things to note about the GTF Epimetheus A are that its really small. Its designed to be basically a cockpit and guns strapped onto a powerful engine. Yeah, not the most original concept, but that's what it is. Its primary purpose is to take out incoming bombs, which, while I haven't actually tested that, I suspect it will do pretty well considering how fast it is. While its very fast and very small, making it a pain in the butt to take down, it does have several disadvantages too. It has weak shielding and hull, it only supports one primary weapon with two mounts, and it does not have any secondary weapon support. The lack of a secondary weapon can cause an annoying error message in FRED, but I haven't had any other problems with it besides that. This ship should be used exclusively for defensive roles. I tested 4 Myrmidons against 16 Epimetheus A fighters, and the Epimtheus fighters got creamed without doing hardly any damage to the Myrmidons. If you can not outrun or outmeneuver missiles in the Epimetheus, you're as good as dead. Still, they're cheap to make, and should be fairly effective at eliminating enemy bombs, especially if used in decent numbers.

The planned Epimetheus B will sport some missile packs, which should allow it to at least hold its own against typical fighters, at a cost to menueverability.

[Deepblue]

Tiny, but rather cool.

[Taristin]

The only problem I have with it, is that the ship is just slightly larger than the cocpit of the herc, and since the cocpit is supposed to be the size of a Terran, it'd have to either be a child's space vessel, or a drone.

[Arculis]

I don't know where you got the idea that the herc's cockpit is supposed to be the size of a Terran, but if you'd bothered to do some measurements like the weirdo at this site did, you'd find out that the cockpit of the Epimetheus, while rather snug, is slightly roomier than your average car's driver seat.

(I modified the comparisons picture so you can see how the pilot fits.)

[Bobboau]

you'r pilot is too small, I made similar size comparasons, they are floating around here somewere

[Trivial Psychic]

Looks TVWP era.

[Arculis]

I don't see how I could miscalculate this. Assuming the average human is 6 feet tall, that's about 2 meters. So on a 10 pixel per meter scale, that means a human is 20 pixels tall. I calculated the sizes of the ships using Model Viewer. Taking an outline screenshot of the ship and pasting the rendered version over the hull, resizing it to however many meters it says times 10 in pixels, then removing the thruster plumes from the graphic. So the scale should be exact.

I just did the calculations again. Although I discovered that the Epimetheus was a bit undersized (88 instead of 110 pixels), the herc was still accurate. Also, there's a slight difference between the results from ModelViewer and the truespace2 table files.

Oh, and the Epimetheus should be 11 meters long, not 12 But oh well. I made two size comparisons that show the difference between modelviewer sizes and truespace table file sizes.

[mikhael]

I wonder if Narol has noticed this yet.

[Bobboau]

that herc is 13 meters wide 11 tall and 23 long, prety much the exact same as it is listed in model view

[Ferret]

You'ld have trouble fitting that into the garage.

[Arculis]

According to all the sources/measurements I can find, the Herc is between 20 and 21.5 meters. But I'd rather see some numbers on the little man, since the size of the herc is not whats up for debate.

(As a side note, the pilot of the Epimetheus is expected to actually sit down.)

[karajorma]

It's a wickle baby ship. Ahhhhh.

I like it. The ship is 11m long so I don't think we're going to have a problem fitting a person into the cockpit somehow

[Terawatt_99]

i'm just going to launch myself into the middle of this, since i know very little about scaling, except that hercs are small, orions are big...

anyways, here's my question: in the intro for the original freespace, isn't the cockpit for the herc supposed to be for two people?  because there's the guy who's freaking out, and isn't his copilot who's sitting behind him dead?

i'm going to fire up the intro video i've got and see if i can get a screenshot...

edit: ok, i can't, but anyways, my point is that the herc's cockpit is f-ing huge...

[Nico]

It's an apollo, not an herc, in the FS1 intro

[karajorma]

Originally posted by Terawatt_99
anyways, here's my question: in the intro for the original freespace, isn't the cockpit for the herc supposed to be for two people?  because there's the guy who's freaking out, and isn't his copilot who's sitting behind him dead?

I'm assuming you mean apollo not herc.

The general concensus is that what we saw in the FS1 intro was a two-man bomber varient of the apollo (often called the apollyon).

[kasperl]

this seems a nice terran Dragon variant.

what era is it made for? the texes just scream SOC/GTVI to me, and it seems very specialist. If the B version could strap a single heavy warhead (Cyclops/Large EMP/Large Disruptor) this could be a good surgical it&run/it&die bomber. a C version could be stealth recon.
edit: give it a large, LS type thruster flare.

[Fractux]

I like it

[c914]

nice small ( isn't to small  ) ship. Should be some kind of cyvil one person transport or police ship:nod:

[kasperl]

oh yes, if you decide not to make it SOC special, you could indeed make it a private runabout/speed boat for the ultra rich thingy.

police vessel, well, perhaps, but I don't see any police forces using anything top-of-the-line, I'd expect some old appolo's and valkery's, perhaps a Uly or two.

[Havock]

herc is about 20/25 meters long.

nice small zippy ship u made there.
Still think it should have room for some secondary payload.
at least dumbfires, EMP and oh well, think of something.