Ulysses Class Liberty Carrier

[Gamazson]

First off a Disclaimer. YES, I know that the liberty carrier has been Yue Fei's pet project. This design is NOT meant to be flown by players. I am working on a system, and I want to put a dockable carrier in it, but I find that the current designs are lacking detail to be proper bases. (Their unique textures also makes them stick out like a sore thumb against other liberty designs)

Yue and I differ somewhat on design philosophy for liberty. His models are slightly blockier and are trying to hint towards liberty going stealth with their ships. I however believe we should dive deeper into the art deco inspired elements of vanilla liberty craft. This is what my current work in progress for the Ulysses class looks like.



Since I have not started the engines yet please look at this piece of developer concept art and envision the engine from that freighter connected to the back.

http://www.freelancerfans.freesite.org/l_freighter.jpg

With the bow I wanted emulate the profile of popular art deco renderings of an ocean liner. I also wanted to pronounce the axe head for artistic effect, and to provide cover for a docking bay that I had originally planed to go on the underside.

http://paris.blog.lemonde.fr/files/w_cassa...1.thumbnail.jpg

The conning tower was supposed to look like the Chrysler Building in New York, but I chopped down the top to reduce the height of the ship, and to give a better impression of a control tower.

The deck is angled to pay homage to modern aircraft carriers. That deck is intended for recovery, not launch. If a carrier must make a retreat, you want to recover as many fighters as possible and they will be traveling at tremendous speed to wards the ships. In such cases I believe a runway is safer than charging an open port and hoping you slow down in time to avoid hitting a wall.

The area directly under the runway on the command tower side has the four launch tubes. The opposite side with the tower that looks a tad Gothic has normal docking bays on either side. In the future I hope to have an open bay directly underneath where a gunship sized vessel can dock with the carrier.

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Unfortunately this design has some issues. The angle deck makes it asymmetrical, which is making it tough to visually balance the ship. I have tried moving the comm tower around. Right now I like it where it is because the right side looks very well put together.

Another issue is that the top of the ship is still very squared and pretty plain. The bottom is also still lacking detail. (And I have yet to start the engines)

I have been working on this for the last 4-5 days straight, and I need to take a break on it because I am starting to become frustrated. I'll be putting "on the shelf" for a while and come back too it when my mind is cleared and my eyes are fresh. In the mean time feel free to offer your individual perspectives.

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AKA Nexus

[tansytansey]

First link is broken.

As for the model, which program are you using? Because the ship looks horrible in those view ports. It's not the quality of the model, it's the quality of the lines that makes it look bad.

My first impression is that it doesn't look Libertonian at all. The bridge shares no resemblance to other Liberty ships and it appears to be far too short, like it's had the engine cut off it's rear.

My recommendation would be to have the Liberty Dreadnought open in milkshape while you build, and look at the style. The Liberty capital ships are very detailed ships, something that you can't really comprehend until you observe it closely.

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[Shagohad]

Carrier? Or the President's personal flagship? It looks too flashy. Liberty builds their ships for purpose, not looks. It's just too extravagant.

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"THE HULL HAS BEEN BREACHED AND THE SCIENCE IS LEAKING OUT!"

[Cyberanson]

It looks like a mashup of some Kusari Destroyer and a Democritus Yacht somehow. I would suggest to fix the front section of this ship, because the only Libertonian ships which as like a similarity is the Dreadnought with its knife-like front.

And I like the idea of the start ramp, like on a aircraft carrier.

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[frozen]

First link is broken.

As for the model, which program are you using? Because the ship looks horrible in those view ports. It's not the quality of the model, it's the quality of the lines that makes it look bad.

seems to be google sketch up. a very simple program, you can build stuff in it fast, but not one i'd personally use to build any 3d models in.

Carrier? Or the President's personal flagship? It looks too flashy. Liberty builds their ships for purpose, not looks. It's just too extravagant.

if you read, this model is meant to be a unique base, not flown by any player. so taking that into consideration, im pretty sure a bit of flashiness isn't a bad thing.

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I'm looking forward to see how you balance the model, keeping the asymmetrical shape. since this is going to be a unique base model instead of a player flown model, i reccomend looking at some fl bases. if you see closely, you'll see how the window sections are done. basically, certain sections have are created by inset + extrude tool to create a sort of "gap" between the window area and hull, while in other places, there are heavily inset'd and extruded areas giving a smooth rise out from the model, similar to a slope.

you could implement that all over the model. also, in terms of size of the model, if you implement alot of windows, you can justify this model to be slightly bigger than most models we have in fl (say, about the same size/slightly bigger than a barge? its a base, it aint going nowhere).

you could try to build the bridge in layers, that will give mass to the model and help with the general look. at the moment, where the "chrysler building" bit is, it just seems to abruptly rise from the model, which strikes me as rather weird, tbh.

another very obvious thing would be to include a rather large and prominent liberty symbol, to add more detail, and perhaps for a model like this, custom turrets + placements may be in order? perhaps 3 large siege style triple barrelled turrets, while there are smaller (standard turret mounts) for the current turrets that disco has for now?

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[ophidian]

I liked the idea. If we cannot make carriers that move, we can make carriers that sit still.

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[Turkish]

This may sound like a simple sugegstion, but right now the ship is too short and squat. Extending the forward section by even as little as 20% can drastically improve visual balance.

Otherwise follow the already suggested advice, and try texturing sections to see how the model receives them. It can make or break the model really.

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I have a fetish for all things Norse.

[reavengitair]

Overall, its actually really good. But what I'm interested in is...

How big would it be compared to... say... a liberty dreadnaught?

[Turkish]

I would assume with the Dreadnought counting as a primary battleship, this would fall into the super capitol ship region of design. More of a statement and symbol of Libertonian engineering and might than anything else.

So, big as the current carrier I think. Consider though the practicality of base to ship size ration.

Waits for Ben to comment.

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I have a fetish for all things Norse.

[schlurbi]

Looks like Star Wars.

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"Who is it doing this synthetic type of alpha beta psychedelic funkin'?"