[Nyctaeus]

Actually aside from "Rule of Cool", there are two very important artistic reasons: Visual identification and creative direction. Hecate is certainly not utilitarian design, but she is hella memorable by her unique design. As for creative direction: There are several different schools of asset design. Some designers want realism, focus on technical aspects etc. so their ships will look believable as space warships, but design in this case is secondary. FS is actually very close to second pole of this scale, and it's: creativity. FS is almost completely focused on unique style of warships and artistic aspect of asset design.

It is a matter of taste and general direction of overall mood of the game. FS is certainly not focused on realism in general, both in physics, lore and visual aspect. For this reason, I don't feel an urgent need to justify the "elephant ears" of Hecate or other non-utilitarian elements, because they all contribute to the design and artistic direction in general. For the same reason, smoothness or blockyness of ships is completely irrelevant, but overanalyzing is not always a bad thing :].

[Nightmare]

Oh yeah, the Iceni is basically an Orion in a Deimos box. It's nuts. I wonder how would groups made out of mixed ships like that fare.

If they're deployed properly they certainly could deal tons of damage. But with the Iceni missing everything breaks down to the Hecates bombers to take down large stuff but the bombs in FS2 arent powerful enough to damage anything larger than destroyers, so it kinda collapses.

[Mito [PL]]

"Everything within destroyer size" is still a lot. I've always wondered how much would Hecate's direct engagement force be if the bombers were something more realistically threatening, like UEF ones.

[Nightmare]

"Everything within destroyer size" is still a lot. I've always wondered how much would Hecate's direct engagement force be if the bombers were something more realistically threatening, like UEF ones.

There were 2 FS2 missions where you fight against the NTF in Gamma Draconis; even without the Mjolnirs the Orion and a bunch of Corvettes would've been blown up by Artemis wings, in the next mission another Orion is killed within mins so it's actually not a hypothetical scenario; it doesn't matter at the end because 80 Saths is just too much.

[Nyctaeus]

I believe a single Hecate is enough to kill an Orion mostly because her fighter and bomber compliment. Orion has only 16 turrets, 5 are beams and 4 are useless Terran Huge Turret. It's barely capable of defending itself and has to rely on fighter compliment, but Hecate outmatches the Orion is this regard. When strikecraft from Hecate deal with Orion's escort and kill main beams, Hecate may jump for the finishing blow.

But actually FS2 never truly shows the full potential of Hecate. Unless our fighters counts. If Alpha 1 and all of our squadrons counts, Aquitaine has the best kill record in whole GTVA. That's what I liked in the last version of Warzone. One of fan-made missions that really shows that Hecate can shine.

In fact Hecate was direct inspiration for GTCa Hera we released with Col.Hornet few weeks ago. This thing can kill Saths with her superbombers. Hecate can kill any target of similar tonnage on the same principle.

[0rph3u5]

The Hecate is good centrepiece for a dogfight arena.

[Colonol Dekker]

All this talk makes me miss rebel intercept 

[Mito [PL]]

Well looks like the Hecate won't be a good dogfight arena centerpiece anymore, as every pilot will just float around and look at the textures and details

[Nightmare]

Well looks like the Hecate won't be a good dogfight arena centerpiece anymore, as every pilot will just float around and look at the textures and details

Pretty much this. Demon is nice to dogfight around, albeit for how long..

[Commander Zane]

This is going to look even more beautiful when textured. The Hecate is on the top of my favorite capital ship models from the days of FS2's initial release.

[Nyctaeus]

P3D link in first post updated with 98%-ready mesh.

[Nightmare]

Such a lovely thing <3

Yet here's 1 thing I just don't like: The antennas on the Hecate ears might be small but they change the feeling of the whole model and look entirely non-FS to me. They certainly fit on a UEF/UEF-GTVA hybrid, but not on a "Vasudanized" Terran ship.

[niffiwan]

looks awesome! 

[Colonol Dekker]

Nice hangar 👌👌👍👍

[Nightmare]

Nice hangar 👌👌👍👍

That's nice too, haven't even noticed that

[Nyctaeus]

Nice hangar 👌👌👍👍

That's nice too, haven't even noticed that

Nemesis-style. I was never a fan of modelled hangarbays finding them as clusters of polygons that contributes almost nothing to overall look, so I decided to implement just entrance. Large door leads to elevator to second floor, while smaller, front-facing one is entrance to actual hangar space.

The space inside front part is surprisingly limited, while Hecate is known from large hangars. Making the hangar storeyed seems to be the only explanation for me.

As for antennae, we decided with Hades to add some functionality to "elephant ears". I think about them as large, armored sensor arrays. They are literally Hecate's "ears".

[Nightmare]

Isn't it possible to have these antenna stuff around the ears as seperate submodel like the spikes on the Moloch?

Besides that I suppose the the main hangar isn't the only one, as the player launches from the "side-ears", not the main hangar.

[Nyctaeus]

Both will be separate detailboxes, so you can remove them if you want so badly but weathering and texture finish will remain. No, I won't make separate texture variant just because your taste is bad

[Nightmare]

Well if it's a seperate detailbox I'm OK with that.

[Nyctaeus]

A WiP? Or two ?