[Starman01]

Hello folks,

I posted this already at sectorgame (because I couldn't wait to show it to the public), so a few people might know this already  

While playing freespace and encountering the sentry guns, I always thought "WTF..." when seeing those sentryguns.. They were IMO totally  useless and unbalanced. Let me show you my thoughts here :

Normal gunbases in Freespace are extremly weak und under-armed. They are wiped out instantly and had no real defense (good weapons, armor or even shields, this also includes the 4-gunned shivan one (forgot it's name right now)

Why should a goverment invest money in such useless installations (you  know how expensive even small military stuff is already nowadays), so I thought these things  should be changed to something more logical and effective, but shouldn't be to overpowered too..

And this "overpowered" brings me to the second point I don't like about freespace's sentryguns, the Mjolnir RBC. We all see it's incredible fire-power, and it's rather tiny hull. If that wouldn't be bad enough, it has also rotating parts, which certainly use up some room for the mechanical equipment. So I must really ask, where should this thing house a power-plant strong enough to power such a beam. (but don't take my opinion here to start another scientific discussion, at least it is just MY opinion)

Now, I think those beams can  be only carried and powered by capital ships and their reactor cores.  Because of this, at least in "my" freespace-world I completly ignore anti-cap-, and even anti-fighter beams on sentry guns (maybe I will make an ancient one with two AA-Beams, but less other weaponry, we will see about that).

So, this is enough about my thoughts into the following models, I just wanted to explain myself. Now I want to show them to the public to get some feedback (but I hope the critic will not be too hard, because I like those things like they are now )

One more thing, I'm not sure if the names are already used, so they might be subject to change. Also, I think the Shortage "SG" doesn't fit to them anymore, rather make it "ASG = Advanced Sentry Gun" or "GB = Gunbase".

When I write about laser-turrets, I also think about giving them some "terran-turret"-variants (fighter lasers would be to weak for these installations), and the vasudan pulse laser should be "small bolt"-variant of the vasudan turret, using the swarm flag to fire two bolts at once (I like that feature  ) Besides their armament, they are all shielded, which gives them enough offensive and defensive-capabilities. Note that the armament is a little race-specific, but I also tried to balance them out between each other in their summary firepower.

If you wonder about their size, I made this because of the thoughts mentioned above. If there are that many turrets to supply, you will need room for power-plants and other technical stuff.

There is a lot of work for me at WC-Saga, but as soon as I will find the time, I will finish the models with debris and LOD and will then release them for public use. Also I created some minor modified vasudan and shivan-maps for this models, which can be better used for texture-tilling.

1) The Terran Variant   (2500 Polygons) (Recycled version of my very first working FS2-Model)


2) The Vasudan-One (my personal favorite, even if it was the hardest to build an texture). (also 2500 Polygons)


3) Finally, the shivan one (maybe some Shivan-Megafunk-turrets on the centerpods ? ) (3500 Polygons)

[Lynx]

Yay Starman. Though I'd suggest retexing the Terran one it looks too WCish with all the textures from us.[BTW Check the internal I need something]

[Starman01]

Correct about the first one, but I'm also your opinion that the  visual hullplates are rather unrealistic (but it looks cool on  vasudan and shivan), so I tried some of our textures.

About the internal : I'm coming, I'm coming, old man is no train"

[Anaz]

awesome. I love the vasudan's quad flak turrets. One suggestion though, on the inside faces of the turret (the part where it would rotate around) use something other than the default hull plates. Perhaps put a border on one of the more "greebled" textures, or just use one of the more interesting texies.

[Col. Fishguts]

The Vasudan one is A1-supar

[c914]

Vasudan gun platform is best:yes:  
Toorets on all of platforms look very good

[Starman01]

Hm, I expected some more feedback from you guys outthere on HLP

Is anyone interested at all in those models ? If not, I can save me a lot of work making debris and lods for them, and release them in my own campaign when it comes out (2010 or so)

[karajorma]

Already said I liked them on SectorGame.

[Getter Robo G]

Finally some kickass sentry guns!

Hey Starman,

  If ok with you I might like to browse my "little" texture library and screw around till I find one I think would jazz up the main hull a bit (like a paneled bright metal sheen, chromish maybe?) I think the dull brushed grey look takes away from it.?

[Styxx]

Damn, how did I miss this? Great work, specially on the Vasudan one - and welcome to the highlights!



The Terran one could use a bit more work, though. And the Vasudan one, though it looks great now, would look even better with some "ribbing" on the flat portions on the wings.

[Martinus]

[color=66ff00]Nice one but there's only one spacefaring vessel you can call a Gunstar.

Vasudan one kicks neck.
[/color]

[Lynx]

Congrats on your highlight, Starman.

[Starman01]

Wow, this is nearly too much honor, but thanks a lot

About the terran-textures, I think I agree with you guys that it could use some other textures. Any suggestions is welcome (my map-libary is more for WC-Models, which the terran-one proves).

About the ribbing on the vasudan, I'm not fully sure I translate this right for myself. Do you mean, I should add more structures where now the red-technical texture is set ? (After all, this model
was a real pain, I'm not sure how many further booleans Truespace will allow me on this model).

About the names, they are subject to change of course, escpecialy the "gunstar" . Though "ammut" fits right good,  this is supposed to be an egypthic hybrid-goddess between a scorpion and something else, I do not remember very clear right now (I surfed some egyptic-tales-website for this). Same goes for the Erebos. It stands for "darkness", but I don't like the sound of this name, does not sound evil enough.

Again, suggestions are welcome.

[Getter Robo G]

How about Gunslinger (Meg has a point!)

[Ghostavo]

Nice stuff ... the shivan sentry shape reminds me of something... not sure what... weird...

[Sandwich]

Overall: Hell, yeah!

(Hopefully) Constructive Criticism:

Terran: I'd think that less bright textures would be more logical - perhaps drop the caution wasp-striped textures for something resembling exposed machinery?

Another point - consider the placement of the turrets on the 4 arms. Placing them further out along the arms would seem to make more sense to me. Having the arms stick out beyond the turrets' position just seems to be offering a larger target.

Also: Are you on ICQ/MSN/whatever? I've a few more ideas you may want to make into a seperate model as opposed to incorporating them into a current one.

Vasudan: I agree with Anaz... the inside faces of the "mandibles" at the end of each arm - the parts enveloping the turrets themselves - should have a different, machine-like texture. Same with the "inner" faces of each turret - i.e. the "slots" that each barrel is situated it. And perhaps use a different glow texture for the inner hollow section... something green, perhaps?

Additionally, the largish central pods that have the flak cannons mounted on them don't seem to be very Vasudanish to me. I think that Vasudan design tends more towards the flowing organic (which the main body of the platform demonstrates quite well). Perhaps instead of "pods", you could just bring the central portion of the platform up (and down) into a severe - but smoothly transitioned - bulge. Add some vertical ribs from the bulge's "north pole" down to the arms, or something like that to supply more detail, and you'd have a winner.

Shivan: Kinda hard to make out the geometry, but the one thing I do see is the arms. Particularly, the part where they split in 2 and then rejoin. A cross-section of those arms would be square - top, bottom, inner side, outward side. But look at the Shivan Comm Node - all it's "arms" are (IIRC) triangular - or perhaps diamond-shaped. The flat-sided arms look too Terran IMHO.

[StratComm]

Not to be a pessimist, the turrets look great and all, but do those turrets actually work as they are intended?  Multipart turrets, in my experience, are very picky and require a lot of assumptions to be true to behave as you would expect them to.  Of those, barrels rotating on an axis not directly above or below the turret's center of rotation (which your model seems to cover just fine) and all fireing point normals being both radially outward from the barrel's rotation axis and pure y (vertical), meaning that the only truely supported configuration would be a row of barrels in line like on all the "normal" multiparts.  While they will still work if either of these conditions is violated, they will either look very strange when rotating or not track properly.  Of course it's been a while since I actually tried other configurations, so I could be mistaken here.

[Lynx]

Heh, if there's one person who knows how multipart turrets have to be done it's Starman, he converted over 20+ capships for WCSaga already and all of them feature multi-part turrets exclusively. The only thing with the turrets is probably that they only fire from one barrel, but that's a code thing and shows why the turret code sucks so hard that black holes can't escape it.

[Starman01]

Ok, this are some serious points I have to think about.

1) The turrets :  The entire models can be converted, so can the turrets, I already checked that. Ignore the turret-position in the renders, for the real model I have to point them all straight up and in one direction, that is sure, otherwise rotation will be screwed up.

The shivan-one and the flak-turret can become a problem though, because the turret-arms are not alligned along the y, but the x-axis (or the same way around, depends how you set the axis in truespace). But I don't see any problems with them, they should work fine.

What definitly works is the missile-turret, we already have one of that kind in WC-SAGA, and it rotates exactly on it's mounting point.

The terran-base will get an overwork (as I said, it is my very first model I made ) The turrets are placed more inside because of the models geometry (which is a little bad visible due to the texture), and more on the outside the podests have not enough space.

Vasudan : I was also thinking about a special texture for the mantible-inside, but I had nothing at hand, which I thought it would fit in. Suggestions ?

But I would rather keep the red-texture, If I choose a green one, there is no big difference to the hull anymore (and I tried blue and yellow, and it sucked (btw, I'm colourblind (red+green), no kidding )

I also think about something for the inside of the laserturret, maybe just a dark texture.

I can't see the picture before my inner eye, what you guys mean about the structure under the flak-turrets. I know this one is a little to blocky and symetric, but I had no other idea at hand.
What I had in mind was,  since there are 6 faces combining in the center, I merged a six-sided-object in the center. When I now glue a rather round part on it, there will be some place in the model where a hard-break will be visible.


Shivan : I will try changing the arms and give them a shaper edge on the in- and outside. ( But I will keep the two-split arms). About the geometry, it may be a little hard visible, but the centerpart has a reactor-like structure, with 8 big armor-plates on the mainhull covering the inside.

(Making shield-meshes for these bases will be hard though). I will
try to improve the models (but give me some more insight), but you must give me some time, cause I'm hard at work

[Starman01]

(edit) If you have any suggestions, just post 'em here or mail them to me at [email protected]

Getting me on ICQ is not easy at all, and I have no other chat-progs.