[Skullar]

Slashibashi ! Hows the going ?

[terran_emperor]

Campaign status:

Its going alright, though im having trouble trying to put together a model for the Death Cloud.
Thus my attempts to make the Second battle of the Line a branching battle may scrapped.

Ive been attempting to assemble a frame using the GVI Karnak. as the Central Core, with the Sahr/Polaris Drydock pieces as additional structure. However, ive not been able to merge them into one model. I may just import the individual pieces and assemable the thing in in FRED.

I do need modellers, for other ships quite urgently

Currently, im putting together a series of missions that take place at the beginning of Call to Arms, before the Charon heads to B5.

I also have a small group of missions planned as a sort of prologue to the whole thing. However, this micro campaign will be stand-alone as well.

[maje]

Here's a quick doodle I did on my lunch break.  Don't know if this is what you had in mind for a "Thunderbolt"-inspired Shadow fighter.



[attachment deleted by ninja]

[terran_emperor]

Actually, that is Surpisingly similar to my own design.

Basically, I started with thunderbolt art found at http://efni.org/Thunderbolt.htm and drew spikes over it to make it look shadowish.

the differences are that mine has multiple spikes along the bottom and sides of the main body. Also the the tail-spines split in two near the ned, remniscent of the fins on Starfury/Thunderbolt Engines

Note: For some reason, the stupid like refuses to goe to the correct site and instead goes to a youtube vid

[starlord]

Looks great! Thunbs up!

[terran_emperor]

Yep, Lets go with that design for the EA/Shadow Hybrid fighter.
There is another Black-ops fighter. But that one is a simple reskin of the Thunnderbolt.

[starlord]

Yummy: Me loooves black ops!

[terran_emperor]

Well, Im not saying anything other than most of the plot for Project Crusade revolves around 3 Black-Ops groups im not saying any more than that.
 But, there will be some rather surprising revelations and twist in S4 and S5

[terran_emperor]

Just finished Listing the ships that I need for this. Whist going through, I decided to Cut several ships Such as the Moradi shuttle and Speeder. Some ships i decided i would import from other FS Campaigns rather than try (or rather than ask someone) to model them.

Currently I only need i only need 11 models made. and only three of them are actuall ships
1) Technomage Shuttle
2) Hybrid fighter (Hopefully Maje's design)
3) [Eyes Only] -> Maje has made this model and was in the proccess of getting it in game. Not needed till Crusade year 3 (the 4th campaign)

The remaining models are Scenery, like the Lunar Surface.
4) Surface - Valley
5) Surface - Hills
6) Surface - Mountain region
Various other skins needed for these

Buildings
7-11)See earliar post for details. on the 5 building sizes

The rest of the ships will be reskins and/or TBL/POF Hacks of current TBP ships and other FS ships

[maje]

Theoretically, I see no reason why the EA/Shadow hybrid should get all fubared upon export unlike that other TBP-related model (I'll have to go throughout the Max file and re-set everything up which is going to suck balls.  Especially when said ship needs to be that way for animation code purposes).

[den5]

EA/Shadow hybrid


[Moderator note: URL removed. We already have a Hybrid model in the mod]

Change tbl files to your desire if you want.

[terran_emperor]

Erm. I already know that model. Several missions will make heavy use of it. The hybrids im talking about being mafe are fighters. According to the Script of "to the Ends of the Earth", at one point, the Shadow Hybrid releases fighters which go after the Excalibur. To my knowledge, the script never said whether they were starfuries, Spitfires or hybrids. Now the use of Starfuries would make it obvious who the hybrid belongs to.
Also, Id prefer not to use Spitfires for anything other than with Pure shadow vessels

[-Norbert-]

It wouldn't make much sense either to use Spitfires. After all if those Black Ops EA, or whoever they are, had access to the plans and manufacturing methods of the Shadows they would have made a full-fledges "Spider" instead of the Hybrid, so they surely can't just reproduce the fighters either.

Besides in the Technomage Trilogy Galen scannes a Hybrid (the very one that destroyed the Cerberus) and finds out that basically only the shadow skin, the weapon systems and the "main computer" are shadow technology, with the rest being earth tech.

With "main comptuer" (or "machine component" as the shadows used to call it) I mean of course some poor bastard who's been plugged into the ship and acts as central processor, not even knowing any longer that he is (or rather was) Human once.

[terran_emperor]

Well, untill the hybrid fighter gets made, I will be using Spitfires as place-holder's

[maje]

A quick pic of the model sheet.  I'm thinking that the modeling itself shouldn't be too much of a pain.  Also, the odds of this getting ingame are much better than the Hand Brittlestar.  Quite frankly, there are too many little things about the Brittlestar that are causing havok with bounding boxes, animation code, and the like to warrant continually messing around with it.  That's not to say it won't ever show up, it's just that currently, since I have no use for it, don't expect or bother me to work on it.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[0rph3u5]

about landscapes:
ask around at the forum of the 158th.... maybe even at the forum of the Starfox mod-team

about buildings:
shiv_pl had some in the beta files of his one mod (quite bricky things) ... I'll go ask him for them if you like

[maje]

Here's two renders of a group of EA "Shadowbolt" Star Furies, though I'm more partial to Munin-class which has a historical background in Norse Mythology.  Munin was one of two ravens that sat perched on Odin's shoulders and represented "memory".  The other raven, Hugin, represented "Thought".

I figured the Shadowbolt looks like a crow head from the side view and did a little research into mythological symbolisms for crows in European history.  I figured Munin sounded appropriate for the class designation since the shadowbolt "reminds" people of the Shadows' legacy and that it's associated with a god (the king of Norse Gods, no doubt), is in perfect reference to the Shadows themselves.

[attachment deleted by ninja]

[Flipside]

Always found it a bit weird that Earth, of all the races in B5, seems to be the only one with access to both Shadow and Vorlon tech. The Excalibur is a mixture of Minbari and Vorlon-style technologies, and the Hybrid Cruisers, obviously, were based on Shadow tech.

That said, I never did quite figure out why an EA Captain got assigned to an Alliance vessel in the first place with Excalibur, the ship was supposed to be a Destroyer to help the dwindling numbers of Whitestars, so why wasn't the captain a member of the Rangers? It was the one part of the series that always confused me.

[FUBAR-BDHR]

The rangers always operated in the shadows (behind the scenes not the race) until they were needed like during the Shadow war.  After the Shadow war was over maybe they returned to that way leaving the open operations to the League's various defense forces. 

[Flipside]

I suspect JMS could probably give a reason, it was, obviously, EA that were responsible for the defence of Earth, so maybe the Alliance loaned them their best ship to help, after all, Sheridan had a vested interest in helping his Homeworld, but it still strikes me as kind of like the Centauri asking the Breen to test their newest, most powerful ship for them.

Edit: Admittedly, this was set after the Telepath wars, so any 'official' special ops teams wouldn't work like Black Omega, though you might get a situation similar to the GTI and GTVI.