[Water]

This is something I've been working on in the background for a while. It's an attempt to see how a large hangar bay might work and at the same time produce mainhalls using modular components.

It's nowhere near as advanced as mjn.mixael's Galatea mainhall project.

One of the ideas I came up with was a universal fighter tray capable of reconfiguring to accept most of the FS fighters and the Athena light bomber.


Another one was about storage, using a rack method developed for cars. This rack can hold twenty two fighters. Another possibility is to have the trays move instead.


My starting assumption on the racks is that the Bastion mainhall is for fighter launch and recovery with sixteen trays equal to four wings. The rest of the hangar is devoted to other tasks. Placement is subject to change though. Further to the rear we have elevators for the heavies like the Ursa etc. Other areas are assigned to support ships, bombers and weapons. Excuse the mess.



The aim hopefully, is to develop a few mainhalls with this messy Bastion wip being another one.

At a later stage it should be possible to walk around the hangar bay, either in a mini game or in a browser using Unity.

Feedback welcome

[Hippo]

you're my hero

[SypheDMar]

WAY cool.

[Rodo]

Just out of curiosity, do all those fighthers actually fit inside an Orion destroyer?


I've always been complaining about the size of the fighters compared to the capital ships so now you've got something like that I would like to know if my relative size perception is right or wrong


To add some feedback to your work:

I see you are using a grip to move the fighters into that universal fighter tray from their slots, maybe the other idea of turning the racks into universal fighter trays themselves is better, you could use a rail system to move the fighters directly from the racks to the launching position and back without having to wait for the tray itself to be free.

I guess the worst problem with that would be the increase in polycount, but I recon this will not be added in models so that problem can be overlooked.

[The E]

This seems to be intended for static renders only; polycount is not that much of an issue.

[lostllama]

This.... This.... is extremely, extremely cool stuff.

I'm wondering how pilots will board their ships. I've always assumed from [V]'s mainhalls that there might be walkways/gangways running along the walls linking each bay, with ladders attached to them (or elevators perhaps). You've probably got a solution sorted out for that anyway.

[Cobra]

Damn. I was hoping I'd be able to work on the Bastion mainhall too.

[The E]

Why not work on the Aquitaine map?

There's also a certain want for a Solaris or Karuna mainhall....(hint)

[mjn.mixael]

This is pretty cool and more in-depth than what I'm doing! Nice work.

[lostllama]

Hmm, just realised that there are walkways leading to the fighter trays in that modified retail Bastion mainhall shot in the original post. So I guess that's covered already.

[Water]

Just out of curiosity, do all those fighthers actually fit inside an Orion destroyer?

I've always been complaining about the size of the fighters compared to the capital ships so now you've got something like that I would like to know if my relative size perception is right or wrong

I see you are using a grip to move the fighters into that universal fighter tray from their slots, maybe the other idea of turning the racks into universal fighter trays themselves is better, you could use a rail system to move the fighters directly from the racks to the launching position and back without having to wait for the tray itself to be free.

I guess the worst problem with that would be the increase in polycount, but I recon this will not be added in models so that problem can be overlooked.

They did. I had the camera set up incorrectly allowing the trays to be a lot closer to each other. Unfortunately with it fixed, the extra distance between trays adds up, pushing the support ship out the rear. It's something I've got to rework. With the high density racks space isn't a  problem at all. At a later stage is should be possible to do a cutaway of an Orion showing where this stuff fits in.

All the rack trays need to be the universal type as a mixture of fighters will be there at any one time. Poly count only becomes an issue for a realtime walkthrough.

(or elevators perhaps). You've probably got a solution sorted out for that anyway.

Although hard to spot, both the Bastion and FS2 mainhall both show several small  lifts traveling from the main flightdeck to the fighter tray walkways.

Damn. I was hoping I'd be able to work on the Bastion mainhall too.

heh, which version?

This is pretty cool and more in-depth than what I'm doing! Nice work.

Thanks, still a lot of hard work to catch up to you though.

[Vasudan Admiral]

Wow that's so cool - and I love the configurable platforms and the crane arm thing! Awesomely functional.

Have you had any thoughts about what standard fighter retrieval procedures might involve? Like the medusa and ursa can just plonk themselves down, but fighters like the valk, herc and uly can't really do that if they want to be able to take off again without days of repair work. The only landing/taking off we see in FS is in the vasudan mainhall, which doesn't really tell us much about how terrans might do it.

[Water]

Here's what I think could work.

Starting with the fighter trays shown in the Bastion hall.

The fighters launch and land on these trays. The crane picks them up and moves them to the racks. Newly landed fighters get rotated 180 before rack placement. At the bottom of the rack is the maintenance and weapon loading areas. So besides fighter storage,  the racks get to move prepped fighters up, fighters requiring servicing down and at the same time acting as a queueing system.

Thoughts?

[Wanderer]

Hangar... Hanger is something you put your coat to hang on. Or some one who hangs things (or people).

And yes.. It is pretty

[Droid803]

An Orion Hanger hangs Orions.

[Tantalus53]

Another one of my dozens of FS continuity questions answered... Really nice man o_o

[Water]

Hangar... Hanger is something you put your coat to hang on. Or some one who hangs things (or people).

Thanks, completely missed that.

[T-Man]

Gotta say, this is looking impressive. Are you planning to try and scale it to fit the Orion model at some point? I've always wondered how they fit all the fighters into capital ships without taking up all the space, and this project would be great for working that out.

Excellent work. Best of luck with the rest of it!

[Mobius]

This idea is amazing! Looking forward to it.

[Water]

Gotta say, this is looking impressive. Are you planning to try and scale it to fit the Orion model at some point? I've always wondered how they fit all the fighters into capital ships without taking up all the space, and this project would be great for working that out.

It already does (mostly). Part of the reason for the stacked fighters is to save space. I've re-though the layout a bit so some of that's changing.

I'm away for a week so I won't get to touch this again till next weekend.