Need some help with an exterior

So, Im working on a little challenge project ive been wanting to do for quite sometime. Using one of my ships, i want to take it and make it look like its sustained heavy battle damage, but keep it fully functioning without affecting its performance *to* much.

Heres the skeleton i have
And heres the ship that originally gave me the idea.

El_Poulpy said:

my first thought is to build an empty shell and shoot it a little to damage it. I never did that, so make a test in a small scale.

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i tried that, the result where nice enough, but i guess the frame just wasnt finished or i did to much damage. gonna try again when i have the current builds frame done.

Brokengauge said:

If you can find "the lost Shangri la" station, I think it's derelict delta, its got some simulated damage. Maybe some of that would be good to emulate?

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forgot about that, ill see if i can find one in my current game!

Brokengauge said:

Damn. I forgot too, see if you can get a hold of the scavenger frigate, since it's supposed to be a salvaged trade guild frigate they shot to pieces and put back together. Maybe there's some stuff there for ideas.

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Agghhhhhhhhhhhh need to make a new world i see.

EDIT: thank you for that idea, i didnt even know about it since ive been using my build world for so long xD Thing will help a lot for when i get around to detailing this ship :D

Lord_Greyscale said:

And, you'll allso need to decide just how "fully functional" you'll be willing to accept.

Full, 100% functionality? Yeah, it'll have to look like it got hammered, then patched.

Something closer to 80% overall, but the weapons work fine? (those that aren't missing outright?) you can have great gaping holes in the ship at that level, you just have to be tricky with how you route the main gun around the damage.

It is a very fun thing to do. I did it once to an NX-01 (theoretical 5th season), and making some of the colossal craters look partly repaired was a ball.
(running the power structure through places it had never been meant to go was even more fun, both sarcastic and real)

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Ive pretty much settled on fully functional, i realized i can have the outer skin look heavily damage without affecting the performance... minus its armor which, considering i want this as a ship that hastily refitted by pirates, isnt a problem.

Will end up with two versions of this ship, one for my faction, and one imma give the scavengers in mah single player game when AI is a little better

Wrathserker said:

What if you made armor plating ontop of the ship hull to create depth, then add cracks and holes to that plating.
Afterwards just shoot the rims of the holes carefully with beams (i found them the most precise and controllable for this stuff.) this way the actual hull is still intact and the armor plating preferrably made of simple hull will provide the look without any major impact on the ships integrity.

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That also is a good idea, though...id have to be overly careful when doing that.

Update on the hull as it stands

Gonna end up with two separate versions anyways, so ill keep your idea in mind for sure when i get around the ruined version :D

Brokengauge said:

That shell is coming along nicely. It looks pretty consistent with your other stuff so far, so it should fit right in.

What kind of ship are you intending it to be?

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An utter troll.
The thing is massive, and decently armored(at least more so than the predecessor its based off of), and incredibly light as well. Its gonna go fast(maybe shoulda painted it red...)


Truthfully and no joke, its gonna be a much bigger version of ASM's reaver, not meant for extended combat, but able to hold its own for a short time if need be. If it doesnt outright destroy whatever its targeting. S'also going to be my first ship meant for more PVP duties, so im going to be doing extensive weapons testing first(for the faction variant).

Thadius Faran said:

Gonna see how the turrets come out.

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I cant wait either, but, imma be waiting for dat system update first