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 quote:Sound designer Ben Burtt created the distinctive TIE fighter sound effect by combining an elephant call with a car driving on wet pavement. (Burtt is a genius) The TIE Fighter is the essential evil starfighter. It looks like a robotic bat and the design is so simple that you can fill the screen with them to create a sense of overwhelming firepower arrayed against our heroes and still have a legible shot. At the same time, it looks really cool. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_CP4SuoTU Star Wars is very toyetic. Few ideas express this better than the sheer number of TIE Fighter designs, some of which are outright hilarious. TIE Advanced (Star Wars) blob:https://imgur.com/dbdf0b2d-8736-48df-8ae2-906a5f609f90 TIE Bomber (The Empire Strikes Back)    TIE Interceptor (Return of the Jedi)  TIE Phantom (Rebel Assault II, 1995)  TIE Interdictor (Galactic Battlegrounds RTS, 2001)  TIE Aggressor (Star Wars Galaxies, 2004)  TIE Reaper Attack Lander (Rogue One)  TIE Striker (Rogue One)  TIE Brute (Solo) (that segmented section is meant to be a heavy cannon)  TIE Defender (Rebels) (this easily the dumbest one)   TIE Advanced v1 (Star Wars Rebels)   TIE Autofighter (robot piloted, again!) (2019)  TIE Crawler (Choose Your Destiny: A Luke and Leia Adventure, 2018) (yes, someone decided to write in a TIE tank, and of course there's a LEGO model)  
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May 26, 2020 02:41
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Nah gonna have to give dumbest to the Interdictor. I can at least see the outline of the idea with the Defender. The Interdictor is like "well we never cacluate weight onto these anyway so just slap more bomb cannons and be damned how heavy it must be"
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May 26, 2020 03:08
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I actually think TIE Crawlers appeared in Dark Empire first. They showed up in a lot of video games though. and GI Joe Vehicles are totally acceptable, because there has never been a toy line with such rad stuff as that. If i'm ever rich, after getting the USS Flag, I want a Defiant 
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May 26, 2020 03:25
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twistedmentat posted:I actually think TIE Crawlers appeared in Dark Empire first. They showed up in a lot of video games though.
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May 26, 2020 03:34
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Fan of the Battleship Michael from footfall. Aliens invade earth in the mid-1980s and we got to build a spaceship to go take the fight to them. Its an Orion drive so ya stick a bunch of crap on it we have the lift to spare.
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May 26, 2020 04:22
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Mordja posted:Yeah, was just gonna say, I know them from Empire At War. I think maybe he was citing the photo credit years or something, not first appearance. Otherwise most of those are way off. The TIE defender must predate Rebels by at least a decade. The auto fighter was in Rogue Squadron on the N64 (and based on some book or something before that). Meme Poker Party fucked around with this message at 06:20 on May 26, 2020 |
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May 26, 2020 06:15
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Chomp8645 posted:I think maybe he was citing the photo credit years or something, not first appearance. Otherwise most of those are way off. The TIE defender must predate Rebels by at least a decade. The auto fighter was in Rogue Squadron on the N64 (and based on some book or something before that). The TIE autofighter first appeared in Dark Empire (1991-1992), and the TIE defender first showed up in TIE fighter (1994). I think he's listing current canon appearances.
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May 26, 2020 06:26
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It always bothers me that the TIEs should be able to operate like B5’s starfury fighters, with the same manoeuvrability, but don’t at all.
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May 26, 2020 06:35
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Chomp8645 posted:I think maybe he was citing the photo credit years or something, not first appearance. Otherwise most of those are way off. The TIE defender must predate Rebels by at least a decade. The auto fighter was in Rogue Squadron on the N64 (and based on some book or something before that). Impossible. Perhaps the archives are incomplete. (This is what I get for relying on the keen minds at Wookieepedia)
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May 26, 2020 06:43
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As my favorite ships have been shown already I'm going to go with the weird: "Nell" from Battle Beyond the Stars. Also called the boobie ship.   
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May 26, 2020 13:13
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The_Doctor posted:It always bothers me that the TIEs should be able to operate like B5’s starfury fighters, with the same manoeuvrability, but don’t at all. Why? The engines are the red lights on the back. There aren't any maneuvering jets on the panels.
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May 26, 2020 16:37
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I honestly can't think of any Star Wars ships that show a visible method of maneuvering. They can just do it. Star Wars has never given a hoot about the physics of space flight and in fact is actively against using a Newtonian model.
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May 26, 2020 16:45
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Chomp8645 posted:I honestly can't think of any Star Wars ships that show a visible method of maneuvering. They can just do it. Star Wars has never given a hoot about the physics of space flight and in fact is actively against using a Newtonian model. The Rebel Assault games, especially Rebel Assault II (where the TIE Phantom comes from) explain or at least imply through showing that when it comes to the TIE Fighter it is held aloft in an atmosphere by sheer speed alone and using its solar panels as giant rigid air foils to help steer it. There’s still no indication of exactly how it actually achieves angular momentum, but I appreciated that it at least got halfway there compared to other Star Wars media.
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May 26, 2020 17:29
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The mainline movies have made it clear that star destroyers can sustain atmospheric flight, which I am led to believe by a rudimentary study of physics is not a good idea. I absolutely do not worry about physics in Star Wars. Haha TIE go VRRAHHH
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May 26, 2020 17:47
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It might be kind of hokey, but I like the circular engine design from NSEA Protector in Galaxy Quest
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May 26, 2020 19:10
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I've always loved that the Protector's design is basically the inverse of a Federation ship: two big disc-shaped engines in the back versus a big disc in front and two stick engines in the back.
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May 26, 2020 19:29
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So I would like to talk about Infinite Space, the DS game, and all the cool ships from it. Its a DS game from 2009, so things look kinda poo poo in motion, but there is a lot of personality to some of these ships. It really helps that ships are all in scale with each other, so thing like an early plot event where your converted freighter runs into the not-Yamato/not-Arcadia you feel absolutely tiny and weak, which is exactly what you are. Pictured, the Space Russia battleship Borodino, one of the best ships in the first half of the game, measuring 800mx240mx140m, meeting a Space Celt Belenus, a 2250x760x640 battleship that shows you just how much the stakes are going to rise. Sadly, there aren't even many screenshots on the web, and I only found a few artbook pages, but even so you can start to see how each of the like 10 different nations have their own style of ships, and in game-play the types are very distinct as well, for instance  The Flagship/capital city of the Space Celts, a 16 km long battleship attached to basically a space colony, with a weapon that can destroy entire planets if they aren't worth the Emperor's time. It looks like the empire's insignia as well, just for style points. On the other hand we have  Uh, Space undefined South American nation. Being the a nation who has been in a civil war for a long time, and being the only nation that really uses mass drivers, you can see how they use a long, sloped body design that would, theoretically, help deflect solid shots from other ships from the same nation. Sadly I caouldn't find an image of the ship from this nation that has four railguns the length of the entire ship, mounted like the ones in the top corers there, or the ship that is basically just four armor panels reaching out into space that other ships can use for cover. When you try to use these ships they have hilariously high armor for when you get them (like chapter 2/3 of 13 or so in part 2), easily equal to the very endgame ships, balanced by having inaccurate railguns that can't be upgraded, and only having modest customization potential. I would just like to share a few of the other ships from the game, from the art book, with quick descriptions of what they are supposed to do.  Top to bottom, all from what is basically Space Italy; The Nahab, a cheap and quick torpedo ship, not even a destroyer The Minerva, which is visually confusing, but only the spike in the center is the ship. The four spikes around it are all missiles, though in gameplay they never detach. The Speleologo, a prospector ship that hopes you don't need the massive amounts of funds it and its luxury transport ship group are carrying. These ones are poo poo, and the third isn't even playable, but they tend to have decent gun layouts you can switch for something better, and lots and lots of room for customization to get past their poo poo stats.  The Navarra, the flagship of the Space South America nation's government. Looks kind of like a Star Destroyer and a Mass Effect ship had a baby, there are only like 3 other ships in the game that can match or beat its armor, one being aforementioned mobile cover ship. The Absoluta, from the Borg but friendly faction. Fairly fragile, and its guns suck, but it is by far the most broken ship in the game, since using one as your flagship makes all your ships tap dance through incoming fire and lets you pretty much ignore enemy formation bonuses to evasion and just shoot whatever you want first. Fun note, while most ships around this price need a crew of like 800 to 1200, all the automation with the ship means you only need a crew of 150 with this one.  Space German Battleships the Spohr and the Kreusser, the prototype for the new flagship and the old flagship that got wrecked when it charged the Space American battle lines. These guys have pretty good stats and moderate customization, and their main weapons are lasers that use gravity lenses to get to higher than light speed. These weapons are almost always outclassed by the time you can buy the ships, but its neat flavor. Sadly there isn't a lot of screenshots or art of most of the ships from the game, which is a shame. Most of the rest of what I found is more Space Germany and Space Italy, so I can't really show off what other nations ships look like. I will probably come back later with an MS Paint drawing of one of my favorite concepts for a ship in the game though. Also gotta love how they sell that the area you spend part 1 in is a shithole with old tech; when you get to part 2 the first Destroyer you get access to has better stats overall than the Battleships you had access to in part 1.
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May 28, 2020 02:54
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Wow I thought I was the only one who ever played that game. Looking back at it the game must have really been a passion project because the devs nerded the hell out on it. If I'm counting right theres over a hundred different ships you can buy IIRC all with their own unique designs and looking at the concept artwork most of them are waaayyy too detailed for original DS 3D graphics, it's completely insane. What I found really cool is how you customized your ships, each one had a different shaped/sized internal layout grid and you'd arrange tetris-like blocks of rooms/components within it. There was a color corded logic to it too, you couldn't just put like an engine block in the middle of the ship. Fighter hangars had to be touching the edge on your launch bays, ect. As you played you unlocked new components and higher level versions of old components, but the different level components each had different sizes/shapes for each level so even if a Level 3 Fire Control Room is the best, you might opt for a Level 1 or 2 because that fits best with your design because it's a T shape instead of a 4x4 block or whatever.   If I remember right, my favorite ship from the game was the Skoryy destroyer, and I rolled a pair of them in my fleet from act 1 all the way to the end of the game just because I thought they looked really cool:  The plot was also space opera as hell from what I remember. The game starts out in the Small Magellanic Cloud, with it and the Large Magellanic Cloud being the known universe for it's inhabitants. The SMC is a 3rd world backwater, with the LMC being home to the big super powers. The main plot of the first half of the game involves you becoming a space mercenary and eventually trying to rally the bickering warring nations of the SMC to prepare for the arrival of a mysterious extra-galactic fleet incoming from Andromeda which fails miserably. The invaders turn out to be humans from a vast intergalactic empire of unimaginable size, and their expeditionary force outnumbers you to a ridiculous extent and all of their ships are way bigger and badder than anything anyone's ever seen before. They conquer the SMC in like a day, and the nations of the LMC barely manage to stall out their own impending doom but only at a great cost. The second half of the game is set 10 years later, with you trying to fight off the Empire's invasion of the LMC and Liberate the SMC. At the very end the game goes off into trippy sci-fi, with discovering the universe is a computer simulation being run by aliens who are deleting people/things from the timeline, so you travel to the long abandoned and forgotten Sol system to blow up their access gateway into the universe.  Ashsaber posted:Sadly there isn't a lot of screenshots or art of most of the ships from the game, which is a shame. Most of the rest of what I found is more Space Germany and Space Italy, so I can't really show off what other nations ships look like. I will probably come back later with an MS Paint drawing of one of my favorite concepts for a ship in the game though. I did manage to find what looks like a scan of the art book which makes me wish I could read it! I wasn't able to find the one (Japanese I think) fan-site which existed a decade ago and had screenshots and stats of all the ships, its probably lost to time now. 
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May 28, 2020 14:01
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I remember playing Infinite Space, it's not an easy game but it had amazing details as you outlined.
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May 28, 2020 14:16
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reading this thread lead to me trying out Babylon 5 for the first time first episode was pleasantly surprising but whoa is the CGI jarring for someone without nostalgia
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May 31, 2020 09:27
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TheAardvark posted:reading this thread lead to me trying out Babylon 5 for the first time I just watched the first ep too! The CGI looks like some PlayStation 1 game.
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May 31, 2020 09:32
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The_Doctor posted:I just watched the first ep too! The CGI looks like some PlayStation 1 game. Trying to get through those scenes by mostly closing my eyes and thinking really hard lol I like that it seems to be pretty serious, otherwise, and makes a few Adult Jokes. I liked the alien with the separate atmosphere too, I thought having that kind of alien would be beyond the show but pleasantly surprised. Let me know if you end up deciding to watch more. I might make a "first watch" thread.
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May 31, 2020 09:39
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TheAardvark posted:Trying to get through those scenes by mostly closing my eyes and thinking really hard lol Sure! I’ve seen a few episodes of the show years ago, mostly seasons 1-3 I think, but not end to end.
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May 31, 2020 09:50
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The_Doctor posted:Sure! I’ve seen a few episodes of the show years ago, mostly seasons 1-3 I think, but not end to end. I posted a thread: https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3925635&pagenumber=1&perpage=40
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May 31, 2020 10:39
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Bogus Adventure posted:It might be kind of hokey, but I like the circular engine design from NSEA Protector in Galaxy Quest Just hope you don't need to get from one engine to the other quickly. This isn't so much about the outside as it is the inside but I've always liked the Nostalgia for Infinity from the Revelation Space series. I like the idea of a really old spaceship that's just gotten weird over the ages.
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May 31, 2020 15:06
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The_Doctor posted:I just watched the first ep too! The CGI looks like some PlayStation 1 game. lol it's been a minute since you've played a PS1 game
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May 31, 2020 17:16
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Oh poo poo, nobody really beat me to The Expanse which is the best sci-fi show on television since the BSG reboot. Just leaps and bounds above Star Trek, with some really incredible grounded ship design that actually makes some attempt to follow the laws of physics.  The Rocinante is a Martian-designed light torpedo frigate with a ton of miniguns strapped to it, it also manages to grow a railgun later on in the series. Great manuverability, and the design of the interiors is really great stuff as well - just incredibly well thought out, especially considering how much time is spent with the camera on the inside of this thing. You can watch a spoiler-rific five minute battle of it here, great use of CGI and attention to detail: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rc-H5qahQhs My favorite part is the bullets ripping through this poor little tin can. Really shows just how dangerous space combat would be in the future.  Then you have the Amun-Ra class stealth frigates which are featured in the show at a few points. Really cool sort of jagged design with the ability to launch troops and a bigass railgun on the front - it reminds me of like a humpback whale or something, just really nasty all around.  The Arboghast is a flying saucer style science ship that gets completely obliterated in one of the most unique ways possible in a science show. Mainly featuring this just to show the variety of ships in The Expanse.    Here's some random civilian ships - I really love the bizarre asymmetrical design with all the shipping crates strapped to it. The best part of the ship designs in The Expanse is how utilitarian it all is - no glamour, just whatever will get the job done for each specific type of ship.  Another great example of this is The Canterbury which is an ice mining ship that collects water for the asteroid belt colonies - the giant suction duct on the front which leads into the main hold is really awesome - again with the whale metaphors.  The Donnager is a Martian-made destroyer, and gently caress, do I love this baby. Look at this fuckin' behemoth, it looks like it was constructed solely as an insult to God and His Creation - loaded for fuckin' bear with dual ultra-heavy railguns, 14 torpedo tubes, 59 point-defense-cannons, and a hangar bay for 8 support ships. It's practically a flying death fortress.  The Nauvoo... and this is where the story gets weird... was originally a generational ship for the Mormons to leave the solar system and find a new home in a far off star system. One of the greatest parts of The Expanse is how this ship gets adapted and refitted from it's original purpose into multiple new mission specific configurations over the course of the show, so I won't spoil it for you. The interior of this thing is sick as hell too, covered in weird Mormon artwork and stuff with some really beautiful giant interiors.  Imagine living the rest of your life on that. Wowzers.  Last but not least, one of my personal favorites - The Razorback - a spoiled rich brat's racing ship, with basically nothing but a cockpit and a bigass engine strapped to the back of it. Really amazing experiment of "what's the least amount of ship we need to make a functional ship" here, also with major Homeworld vibes. Later on this loveboat gets some serious action in, so definitely do watch The Expanse when you get the chance. Taintrunner fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Jun 1, 2020 |
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Jun 1, 2020 12:48
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Taintrunner posted:Oh poo poo, nobody really beat me to The Expanse which is the best sci-fi show on television since the BSG reboot. Just leaps and bounds above Star Trek, with some really incredible grounded ship design that actually makes some attempt to follow the laws of physics.
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Jun 1, 2020 13:46
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So I've had some thoughts regarding starships and I want to know what you all think re: starship livery. First and foremost; is it functional in any way in space? Obviously for the most part you'd be stupid far apart so you'd never see another ship out a window. But with sensors being a thing, would a vessel be able to render a picture of another vessel with such fine granularity to identify things such as color, markings, really much beyond general shape and mass and velocity? I suppose this could be taken into account with livery choices, for instance a target ship that wants to project a certain "color" would in fact bounce back sensor data the scanning ship would interpret and render as official livery color. The ship needn't even be painted in reality, but painted as a data concept. So, I dunno, just wondering what you think. Worth painting a starship? Lighting it and sticking big decals and words on the outside? Or an exercise in stellar vanity?
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Jun 1, 2020 18:04
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Mordja posted:You just posted a picture of a Kushan heavy cruiser. Right??! Farmer Crack-rear end posted:i get hell of homeworld vibes off the roci
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Jun 2, 2020 05:01
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hell, here's the big Kushan heavy:
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Jun 2, 2020 05:05
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Brawnfire posted:So I've had some thoughts regarding starships and I want to know what you all think re: starship livery. Ships gotta stop sometime right? Livery might only be seen in port or while in orbit etc.
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Jun 2, 2020 07:22
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Mordja posted:You just posted a picture of a Kushan heavy cruiser. If you read my post to the end I make a reference to Homeworld vibes in the ship design. Brawnfire posted:So I've had some thoughts regarding starships and I want to know what you all think re: starship livery. Have you ever heard of morale patches? Or better yet, do you think the pilots and crew inside a B-17 bomber spent a good amount of time poking their head out the window to look at the big tiddy ginger babe on the nose of their murderplane? It's something to give the pilots and crew comfort and a sense of bravado, more than anything. Taintrunner fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Jun 2, 2020 |
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Jun 2, 2020 10:34
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Taintrunner posted:If you read my post to the end I make a reference to Homeworld vibes in the ship design. But I mean, planes operate at a visible distance for the most part. If the pilot can't see it, other pilots probably could especially earlier in aviation history. Plus, numerous visual markings on a plane were for the benefit of identification by other planes, ships, and ground-based spotters. Starships would very, very rarely be in visible range of another starship and indeed in Star Trek they often scan and hail vessels that would look like a speck of light out of the viewscreen. The magnification on those for "visual range" must be insane. Bucnasti posted:Ships gotta stop sometime right? Livery might only be seen in port or while in orbit etc. I can definitely see allowances for drydock purposes, having a viewport with a vantage point on the logo so you can slap a bottle of champagne up against it.
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Jun 2, 2020 23:14
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One cool thing about Expanse Ships is they're built like a building, not a ship. The decks go vertical rather than horizontal because their gravity is generated by thrust.
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Jun 3, 2020 04:34
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I think you'll all find that go faster stripes greatly enhance any vehicle's speed
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Jun 3, 2020 06:43
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ever since i was a lil' hubcap and found them in my school library ive had a love for the terran trade authority books and their very foss-esque spaceships   
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Jun 4, 2020 00:51
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free hubcaps posted:ever since i was a lil' hubcap and found them in my school library ive had a love for the terran trade authority books and their very foss-esque spaceships I was thinking about this today! I had the one that was called Space Wreck, and it was just nothing but Foss painted ship porn. Mine was misprinted and missed 6 or so pages. My favorite was the rotting spider walker in some dead alien city. Holy poo poo Amazon has it for 100bux. I wonder if my copy is still with my parents.
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Jun 4, 2020 03:20
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twistedmentat posted:I was thinking about this today! I had the one that was called Space Wreck, and it was just nothing but Foss painted ship porn. Mine was misprinted and missed 6 or so pages. My favorite was the rotting spider walker in some dead alien city. I found a copy of that one recently in a used book store in a tiny tourist town for about 7 dollarydoos. I have never been so sure about a purchase in my life.
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Jun 4, 2020 13:43
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free hubcaps posted:ever since i was a lil' hubcap and found them in my school library ive had a love for the terran trade authority books and their very foss-esque spaceships One of the things I low key loved about the TTA books was how they intentionally didn’t give a poo poo about scale, like that first image. So you can’t tell if that’s a full on cruiser-sized ship and those astronauts are loving gigantic, or if they’re regular-sized people and that’s just a space sled that looks like it should be a full on battle cruiser. There’s one, I remember, that has like a giant three-headed dog looming in the background behind a ship on a planet and it looks hilarious. Also for those who don’t know, the TTA books inspired the visual look of the Homeworld games. nine-gear crow fucked around with this message at 21:51 on Jun 4, 2020 |
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Jun 4, 2020 21:47
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