[spartan_0214]

Well, I guess there's nothing too terribly private in this post, so here's what I had on the internal forum so far:

A-Wing:  Mostly completed by Turambar

Corellian Corvette:  Hi-Poly model being made by Turambar, still in mesh stage

Corellian Gunship:  In the works by Black Wolf

ISD, VSD, other similar destroyers:  being made by brandx0, still in mesh stage

Escape Pod:  I'm doing what I can --Chief

Bulk Freighter:  Karma's old mesh being textured by Black Wolf

Container:  From Bulk Freighter, probably also being done by Black Wolf

TIEs:  Current models from KARMA are probably the nicest old stock we have, but are currently being redone by Topgun

Gallofree transport:  bs403 is reportedly working on this

X-Wing, Z-95:  either Turambar or Brandx0 wants it after their current models

Dreadnaught:  Turambar has shown interest in this one

Mon Cal Cruiser:  a liberty (winged) style being made by broadbean supposedly




Other ships still needed:

B-Wing
Y-Wing
More Freighters and containers
Starbases
Lambda Shuttle
Nebulon B Frigate
Combat Utility Vehicle
T-Wing
R-41
Gunboat
Assault Transport
Escort Carrier
YT-1300
YT-2400
Death Star
Super Star Destroyer
Eclipse Star Destroyer
Death Star 2
Mines
Non-ISD style destroyers
Slave 1

Wait, are you guys keeping the story to the Rebellion? If so, :raspberry: ; if not. . . I wonder....

[Black Wolf]

Got bored during the downtime...

The poly errors on the panels are the result of shoddy construction techniques

actually, it was the way I converted it to cob, I used the OLD way of doing it and not Vasudan Admiral's way.

I feel 

you see, the only way I could have fixed it was if I RE-BUILT it. there is no way to get it back from cob to blender.

I meant the poly errors on my TIE, not yours

[Topgun]

never mind then.

[chief1983]

I believe for the moment we were going to be focusing on the Original Trilogy, and possibly post-rebellion EU, since there's not a lot of recent games to tap that area, and the staff is more interested in it than the new trilogy.

[Topgun]

about the y-wing, the turret on top of the cockpit, will it be a gun point or an AI turret?

[chief1983]

Right, my bad, forgot about that question.  It should be a AI turret I believe.  Should make things interesting.

[TopAce]

Why won't our current TIE Defender do? I tested it ingame, and it looks great.

[Tyrian]

Right, my bad, forgot about that question.  It should be a AI turret I believe.  Should make things interesting.

But isn't that turret a pair of ion cannons fixed forward?

[chief1983]

Ok I was thinking there was another turret, I might have been thinking about the Lambda shuttle or something.  I think the decision for ai turret or player firepoint was still undecided.  As far as the games have had it before, I think it tends to be a locked forward ion cannon, but I'd like to know if there are any OT or EU canon references that say it is, or has to be one way or the other.

[Scourge of Ages]

By my interpretation, the Y-Wing was a two-seater craft. When there were two people, the "copilot" would man the ion turret, when there was only the pilot, the ion turret would be fixed foreward or possible aimable seperately by the pilot via whatever interface.
I believe in the book X-Wing: Starfighters of Adumar, Wes Janson (I think) was referred to as a skilled tail gunner, possibly in snowspeeders or Y-Wings.
Btw, thats a great book for referring to tail-gunning. Not pictures or anything, just referring to it.

[brandx0]

From the Star Wars Wiki (Edited for fluff):

There were two common designs during the height of the Galactic Civil War, as well as other less common variants.

BTL-S3 Y-wing
The BTL-S3 was a two-man strike fighter. The weapons systems officer typically operated the ion cannon turret when needed.

BTL-A4 Y-wing
The BTL-S3 was supplanted in most services by the BTL-A4, which was crewed by a single person. The ion cannon turret was typically locked forwards in this design, although some pilots chose to lock it facing aft for extra cover. In addition, this variant boasted much greater endurance (as much as three times greater) over its earlier predecessor, but was penalized with less powerful shields and loss of accuracy in the ion cannon.

[chief1983]

We could possibly include both versions, on a mission where for some reason, we want the pilot to have a copilot, for dialogue and stuff, and the ai could control the turret then, and other times we just have the single seater version with guns locked forward.  I think it'd be interesting to pursue.  We'd need cockpits that reflect both the single and two-seater versions.

[brandx0]

Yeah, actually expanding on that I'd love for us to make minor modifications to some of our models and flesh out different variants of the fighters.  FS2 would have us believe that whenever we have a niche that isn't filled we just make a new fighter, instead of upgrading or modifying a current one.  Star Wars, however, in the EU has a number of variants of certain fighters.

[chief1983]

Well that's also because FS2, being a game, wanted to wow us with new ships, and get the awe factor.  In the real world, we know that's not always true, as the military constantly makes different variants of a tried and true design, which Lucas was aware of at one point.  Basing his ship combat on WWII tactics, I think the influence for variants also stems from that.  Look at the Spitfire, there were probably over a dozen production variants and at least as many that never quite made it to production.  Many parts of the Star Wars universe show similar traits for reusing the old, until you get to the new trilogy of course, where they didn't even bother using the old at all.  I'm of course referring to the lack of all previously imagined Old Republic era starships, and instead how Lucas decided to create all new ones.  /rant

[Black Wolf]

Fixed the poly errors by redoing the panels and resized the cockpit. Just need to do the engines now before I can release it.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[chief1983]

Maybe it's just the angle, but now the panels look pretty thick.  But I'm definitely happy with the cockpit to panel size ratio now.

edited for spelling

[Black Wolf]

Panels shrunk to 65% width and I did the engines. Once I've confirmed that it's going to be OK the way it's built (i.e. as a series of separate objects rather than one unified mesh - which I'm really hoping will be OK, because booleaning it together will probably mess it up and cost a lot of polies) I'll release it for someone to UV and texture.

5208 Polies BTW

[attachment deleted by admin]

[Black Wolf]

This is the TIE as it exists now. VA tells me that a few intersections shouldn't cause major problems, so I'm posting this version for final approval before I fiddle around attatching everything and minimizing the intersections it does have so as to make UVing/texturing easier. If anyone wants to volunteer to UV or texture it, now would be an awesome time to do so.

[attachment deleted by admin]

[chief1983]

The panels look a lot better now.  I think it looks great, although a couple of things.  I'm curious what the poly count is probably going to finish as, because if there's room for a little more detail, I think seeing it used on the ball would be great, like the ingress/egress hatch for instance.  It has some rather large portions of detail on the models that I'd love to see in the mesh as opposed to just the texture.  But if the count is already getting too high don't worry about it.  The other thing, the ion drive exhausts seem a tad long.  Keep up the good work.

[spartan_0214]

Great, only I have one problem with it: Where are the aft Ion Drive exhaust ports?