[I_E_Maverick]

so, the model is now pretty finished, at least LOD0. it stands at 16kpolys. i did a little photo zoom show, to show the size of that thing, i hope you like it.







edit-lvlshotted pictures:)

[Sigma957]

Thats is one huge mother

[Azrael15]

In Valen's name! It launches cruisers like fighters!

[aipz]

In Valens name! It carries 34 of them...
and each of them is comparable to a Sharlin or Warlock class ship...

[IPAndrews]

Hey the Drakh Mothership looks really nice now. How the hell did you do that? . As for Drakh Cruisers coming out of launch tubes? That's just scary.

[Megadoomer]

That looks great. I think that's the finale of my Drakh campaign sorted.

[aipz]

With that ship you can easily conquer a planet system or two...

[Sigma957]

Until the Excalibur comes along and pops it one.

[I_E_Maverick]

thanks for the nice comments
@IPAndrews: i did it a little bit different this time from my other models, this time i used splines, they were much more efficient in this case.

btw, i thought of doing an interior for this ship too for some cool missions. i thought of fighters that hve to fly into the ship to destroy it because imo you could not destroy such a large ship in a conventional way.
any ideas of how the interior should look like? i thought of some production areas for cruisers and fighters, a big generator room or anything like that.

last but not least: give a big thank you to Trivial Psychic for either great ref pics and great help in finding this shape which is a lot better then my first attempt! it is funny how the shape changed from my first try at this ship

[Megadoomer]

If you could that really would be a great ending mission for the campaign I'm developing.

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

It looks fantastic, definately your best work on TBP so far (and that's saying quite a lot). I've got only two minor complaints:

1. The texture seems to hold up pretty well even when close to the hull, but when seen from a distance it does look quite repetitive. Maybe a good shinemap could make all the difference?

2. I never thought I'd say this, as I'm the one who always is demanding higher polycounts, but 16k is a lot of polys. I hope it won't have a huge impact on the fps rate.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Lt.Cannonfodder
It looks fantastic, definately your best work on TBP so far

I think so too. It's gorgeous and I don't even like the ship .

Originally posted by Lt.Cannonfodder
but 16k is a lot of polys. I hope it won't have a huge impact on the fps rate.

I had noticed that. Babylon 5's 9k polys can have a negative impact on game speed with mid range GFX cards. So a 16k ship will definitely have an impact. Although this ship uses far less textures than B5 which helps the card somewhat. So I wouldn't want to guess if the impact will be as bad or worse than that of B5. It may depend on how many other polys the card is shifting at the time.

[Primus]

AAAAAH!

Sorry about that, but that is just so awesome model!

Maverick. You are my hero.

[I_E_Maverick]

ok, after talking to IPAndrews i optimized some stuff and the polycount now is at 11452 polys. more i cant do without loosing the shape.
@canonfodder: polys should be ok now for you and nice that i finally did a model that had too high polycount, i never thought that possible. anyway, the texture is one 1024 procedural that i did. there is no shinemap so far, just some material settings. i will try to add more detail with that.

@Megadoomer: develop the mission i build the model. i just need to know what you really need for the interior, like what the mission will be about, some kind of star wars final mission with the deathstar or anythin different.

so a different question, any ideas on weapons? i talked with TP on that and had the idea to not give it any weapons, as it carries so much cruisers and fighters. but what do you think?

btw, here is the reduced version

[Primus]

For the weapons, perhaps some short-range turrets?

[I_E_Maverick]

problem with that would be where to place them. i mean if you start covering the ship with short range turrets then the polycounts will be enormous

[IPAndrews]

In reality even a carrier ship will have a few weapons for point defence. This though is a game. As I see it we have 3 approaches.

Three approaches:

1) Arrogance. The Drakh believe they don't need turrets because their ship is so frickin' huge and carries so many other ships. Personally I don't buy it. Somehow is doesn't seem fitting of the Drakh.

2) Few turrets / long range / more polys per turret. Maybe 10 - 20 turrets with 7.5-15km AAA weapons. So you can use less of them to cover this huge ship. Allows you to use more polys per turret.

3) More turrets / short range / less polys per turret. 50-75 turrets with standard AAA weapons all over the ship. You would have to be really really poly efficient with each turret though.

Also it's probably worth looking into subobject LODs as implemented by Bobboau to see whether it's worth using that code to avoid drawing low poly objects like turrets. My own guess would be the distance calculations and code execution overhead probably would outweigh avoiding drawing a low poly turret. Ask him anyway see what he says.

[Lt.Cannonfodder]

Not really, if you make each turret 20 polys or so.

EDIT: Damn it IP, this post was supposed to come after Maverick's

[Fury]

I'd suggest giving it 12 turrets. 2 in each side, 2 in front and back. Weapons in those 12 turrets can be changed even while in-mission, so it won't be a problem for a mission designer to switch from a anti-cap ship weapon to anti-fighter weapon when necessary.

[IPAndrews]

Originally posted by Mr. Fury
Weapons in those 12 turrets can be changed even while in-mission

We have a weapon change sexp?