[StratComm]

Originally posted by IceFire
Question: Does the immense number of thrusters cause any sort of problem?  It looks fantastic....just wondering if you've noticed any slowdowns because of that.

And true enough, the Golgotha has not been released.

I have never really had problems with thrusters causing slowdown.  Of course, I have a fairly decent PC (p4, 1.4 Ghz, 128Mb ram, etc) and I have not tested it extensively in combat yet.  I don't see it as a real concern, since the thrusters only number about twice that of a Hecate.

I am about to give up with the textures (I tried Hecate, Deimos, and Aeolus skins on parts, but was dissapointed with the results), though I have darkened down parts of the ship to add contrast.  Unless anyone wants to have a go with textures, I'll leave them be and go on with getting a functional POF out for release.

Thank you all for name suggestions; I think I will go with Archangel, because I created this ship with more of a command ship concept in mind and I think that designation fits.  Sort of like the Super Star Destroyers in Star Wars; they were immensly powerful warships, but they also served as mobile command base for their fleets.

[Su-tehp]

If this is going to be a 6km-long command vessel, then when you name it, I reccommend that you use the GTVA prefix. I.e. you should name your ship as the "GTVA Archangel" rather than calling it the "GTD Archangel." The Colossus was too large to be a destroyer and it had the "GTVA" prefix also.

I remember that several people have made Terran juggernaut-sized mods before and have used the "GTJ" for "Galatic Terran Juggernaut" but I prefer the "GTVA" prefix.

"GTVA Archangel" looks better to me than "GTJ Archangel."

But that's just me. Its your mod, so it's your choice.

Oh, BTW, what kind of weapon is the supercannon? Does it use a special weapon mod, by any chance?

Also, when can we expect this mod for public release?

[StratComm]

Well, my meager attempts to texture this ship have resulted in some minor changes; nothing significant but it is noticable.  Now I'll put it up to the community to decide: which one looks better.  Pics of the models side by side can be found here.  Which one should I finish out?

As for the name, I've gone with GTDn Archangel for the class.  The colossus was meant to be a single ship, and a hybrid of Terran and Vasudan designs, thus the GTVA designation.  The Archangel is supposed to be a bit more mass produced, so it needs a class to go into, GTDn (Galactic Terran Dreadnaught).  The eventual tech description will explain more once I get this thing pathed.

On a side note, I need a shipyard name for the dock model I'm building.  It will have a station attached, and will be a fighter manufacturer as well as the producer of these super-capital ships, so I need it to be a FS-ish shipyard name.

[Silver_Scythe]

v.2 GOOD! now put it up for D/L...
EDIT: Except with 1 thing, find a better tex for the oversized beam
EDIT2: And give it darker textures

[Su-tehp]

I like the Arcangel with the light gray textures; the dark gray one seems too angular and severe somehow. The light gray one seems to flow better. Just my humble opinion.

For your station, how about:

GTI Nirvana

GTI Numenor

GTI Arda

The original Terran installation was named "Arcadia," which (if I remember correctly, is supposed to be some sort of fantastic magical realm), so I thought an installation with the above names would follow the same convention.

If anyone is curious, my favorite name from this list is GTI Arda.

God bless JRR Tolkein!

That reminds me, I should go listen to the Simarillion audiobook I got...

EDIT: Oh, yeah, when will this baby be ready for D/L?

[StratComm]

Actually I was looking for a shipyard name, like the RNI Fleet Yards or something.  I'd use one of the corperations found in the Colossus briefing if they weren't too odd.  The station itself is not something that gets a class name; it is a one of a kind structure.  I'd post a pic of what I have so far if I actually had decent web hosting.

The Archangel will be ready to download as soon as:[list=a]

• pathing is complete
• it has been thuroughly tested (to my satisfaction)
• it's construction yard is complete - this is important since I plan to make the ship actually dock with the station.
• I make a weapon mod to look half decent with the size of the main cannon
[/list=a]
All of that could take a while, given the other things I have to do.  Between the work I'm doing for Inferno, my actual paying job, and finalizing my college plans, I don't have a tremendous amount of free time.

EDIT: on closer observation, I'll probably change the side engines (the hull around them) to the darker hull color.  They are the one part that I don't think fits.

As for the beam turret textures, I actually think what I am currently using is the best possible.  Perhaps not the most "freespacy" but certainly detailed yet large enough to actually cover the dish.

[Black Wolf]

Actually, Arcadia was a land of pastoralism and contentment in Ancient Greek poetry and lierature. As for your company name, How about 'Kabal Industrial Design'? Just off the top of my head...

[Fry_Day]

Thruster glows are done wrong in FS2, so there's an additional memory access for each pixel in the thruster glow, and if you're close to the thrusters, there's a whole lot of pixels, and if you have a gfx card that doesn't have fast memory (Like my GeForce2 MX), you'll get serious slowdowns (Anyone tried being in a propylon chamber in morrowind with a GeForce2MX? You get like 2FPS because of the particle effects)

[StratComm]

I repeat, this is a model release.  Follow this link to get the GTDn Archangel, both light and dark versions, pof'd, pathed, and tabled:
http://www.geocities.com/cek_83/archangel_download.html.  Don't ever use this ship without the "beam free-all" sexp.

Oh, could I request a sticky for this?

[Vasudan Admiral]

WOW! one heck of a whalop in that thing-70 turrets!?!? most of em are anti fighter, but still, if you get the front beam into align with any cap-ship, you won't need to worry about looters raiding the hulk. sizzel sizzel pop pop.
i once tried making an event where a cap-ship BFRed shoots the player. i tried every maneuver i know in the fastest ship i had at the time. it nailed be first time, every time. probably because the beam was so thick. if you have a fire beam event, there is no excape. and with that super blue......ow.

[StratComm]

Hey, you try attacking something with 50 anti-fighter beams in a fighter or bomber.  

With the exception of the primary cannon, this ship is intended to be a second generation Colossus; the AAAf replaces the lasers because cap ship lasers seem especially useless, and there is a slight reduction in the number of lateral cannons the Archangel mounts.  However, the LRBBlue and BBlue are far more powerful than people think.  BFBlue was too powerful, though I think I included the code so you could change the weapons out to augment the Archangel's destructive power.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

The irony of this being that about 2 hours ago i was thinking about finding a modder who could make me a drydock, i would call it of all things......drydock.  For those who don't know, a drydock is a magor ship refurbishing facility.  I'll keep a watch for this one.

[Black Wolf]

The Ganymede is a drydock, and already in FS2 (but I can't remember it ever being used in the main campaign, so it's understandable if you missed it).

Other than that, you can get the Polaris,which is fairly old, but still ok, from the Volitionwatch Archives, or if you don't mind if your dyrdock's really, really big, I think the Inferno team have the Atlantis up for download. (though that's one hell of a huge drydock, something like 50 kms)

http://www.3dactionplanet.com/hlp/hosted/inferno/atlantis.htm

[ShadowWolf_IH]

Thanks Blackwolf.  Much appreciated.

[Vasudan Admiral]

i tried redoing the atlantis, it looked much better (added turrets, new pieces, another docking claw, a tiny rear fighter exit, etc), but you could fly straight through about 85% of the model for some reason i couldn't figure out. i had also shrunk it down to a managable size. the apocalypse now fits neatly in the huge dock and the colossus in the smaller one.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

so where i can get the atlantis redo?

[StratComm]

I have (almost complete) a drydock for my ship.  The atlantis probably suffers from the polies being too large, as I have had similar problems on some of my ships.  I think that if all vertices are off screen when you should collide with the ship/station, you pass through it instead.

Now, to return this to the original topic,

Download my ship @ http://www.geocities.com/cek_83/archangel_download.html

[Hawkeye]

Well, this is my first post, so I´ll try to do it right....

StratComm, I've downloaded your GTDn Archangel and it is great!!

But, I´m having some trouble:

1- I´ve activated the beam weaponry (beam-free-all event) and added the blue beams to the weapons.tbl, but the only beam that actually fire during mission is the principal one, so, when an enemy ship engage the Archangel from the side, it simple do noting until it is destroyed  
Is this a known problem, due to the development stage of the Archangel or there´s some way to fix it?

2- Once the Archangel fire another beam weapon, but it was from a turret in the upper side of it, it didn´t look very good, because the turret remain straight up, and the beam emerges perpendicular to it.

That´s it, hope you don´t mind, the model is great and I hope you can tell me how to fix that problem.

[Vasudan Admiral]

for the atlantis redo, i never posted it (don't even know how to post pics :wink: )
i'll try downsizingit so the colossus fits in the big dock. mabey it'll work.
for the ship, is that the same file as the first one i got? or is it the final update?
for the beams,
1 i've had the same trouble with the apocalypse. it just refused to fire any of it's 70 turrets. mabey it needs a fire beam sexp in the mission.
2 again i've had the same trouble, but it was when i was trying 45 degree turrets instead of straight up. the only other thing i can think of is the field of view, although someone else will have to figure that out.

[ShadowWolf_IH]

you may want to try adding the free turret sexp as well as free beam, both "all" of course.  It seems to do something in my missions.