Black Mamba Assault Carrier WIP Update 4/8

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Hey guys, I'm new here, but I've been following this community and the amazing ships you guys have been cranking out for a few months now.

Anyway, I figured I'd try my hand at ship building, and it turns out I'm enjoying the heck out of it. I'm working on my third actual ship at the moment and I wanted to post it on here to see what the feedback was. I'm still very new to this so any constructive criticism is welcome.

I'm still ironing out the basic shape of the ship, so there's a lot of wedges, pentas, and tetras that still need to be put in, and I'm also a bit unsure about what to do with the bridge.

Update #3:

Started work on the forward hanger, worked on detailing the undersides, and added some more detail to the upper hull/armor.

Spoiler: Forward hanger

Spoiler: Side view 1

Spoiler: Side view 2

Spoiler: Upper hull

Thanks so much everyone for the compliments and suggestions! I'm going to try and resist the urge to spam you guys with updates from here on out :p

 

[ltmauve]

Floating armor/hull, very nice. See if you can preserve that in the final version. Good overall shape. Currently the fact that it's not wedged gives it an interesting texture; you might want to consider only wedging in flat directions (if that makes sense)
The grey lines, keep those or switch them to white. Having lines down the ship brings out their shape and prevents them from looking blobby.
As for an external "bridge" structure maybe put a smaller version of the top shape on their. The overall shape of your ship suggests it should be very flat. Any sensors you want to put around it should either be plates or behind the bridge itself.

One note about the hangers is that they currently seem a) boxy b) dark.
I'd recommend beveling the corners of the interior, swapping out the black with grey, and adding some depth to it. (Lazy way to start this: replace some of the interior walls with mesh showing the system blocks)

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Thanks for the tips! I somehow managed to pull off that floating hull/armor look with one of my earlier ships, so that was a goal of mine from the start. I had not considered skipping the wedging on the angled sections before, so I'll definitely give that a try.

 

[jstenholt]

Very Covenant-esque, and a solid foundation so far. Keep us updated.

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Update 1: Finished shaping the upper portion of the hull, and added some engine intakes near the front of the ship.

Spoiler

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[Peekie30]

Nice! looking really good so far!
Keep it up

 

[ltmauve]

Oh nice.

 

[Keptick]

I definitely like the design! Unless you're not already planning to I'd suggest adding grebbles and small lights in the trenches between your armor plates. It'll make the ship look that much bigger!

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

I definitely like the design! Unless you're not already planning to I'd suggest adding grebbles and small lights in the trenches between your armor plates. It'll make the ship look that much bigger!

Thanks! I was a bit unsure on what to do in those areas, but I think I'll go for the small lights. I was wondering if I could get away with that.

 

[Keptick]

Thanks! I was a bit unsure on what to do in those areas, but I think I'll go for the small lights. I was wondering if I could get away with that.

If done right it'll look absolutely amazing, trust me . If it doesn't work out the first time just refine and improve the design until it does.

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Update #2:

Experimented with some hull detailing. Added systems and beginning interior work.

Spoiler

Spoiler

 

[ltmauve]

Very nice detailing there.

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Very nice detailing there.

Thank you very much! I thought this suited the ship well, glad to see people agree.

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Update 3 - see first post.

 

[NuclearFun]

Thanks so much everyone for the compliments and suggestions! I'm going to try and resist the urge to spam you guys with updates from here on out :p

Keep on spamming, i do not mind if it is that good!

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

I'm having a bit of trouble figuring out what to do about turrets (and I'm terrible at making turrets by the way). I came up with a halfway decent 2000ish mass turret to put on the front of the upper hull right behind the nose of the ship, but anything that size ends up sticking out way over the nose and looks kind of stupid.

I'm wondering if the best option now is to put an even larger, but also very flat turret on the very top level of the hull. The other option is to skip large turrets for the top of the ship entirely. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated, thanks!

 

[Dragleones]

Since its a more carrier oriented ship i would suggest to go without too big turrets. In combat against similar sized threats you should be fin with front weapons. Since turrets also are rather vulnerable they are better at fighting smaller sized targets and defending your blind-spots.

I would recommand to put a bunch of small (dim=9^3 up to 19^3) cannon-cannon (as pd), beam-cannon with stopeffect (insanely annoying for smaller ships), missile-beam (pretty much general purpose turret) and such, sunken (not completly) into the trench between the armor plates.
Just so they don't stick out too much and fit well into the overall design. In addition to that the turrets will even have some cover.

A turret on top might destroy the "clean" feeling of the shiphull, but might aswell work. Just try around a bit and you will see what fits best to the picture of the finished ship in your mind.^^

If you really want big turrets you can also try to cut some parts of the armor plates to put turrets under/behind it.


For turret design: Its often a good idea to make them a bit more compact and not too long. Again just try/mess around. You often come up with good design just by repeating to put together some random blocks.

For the overall ship design: I love it.
The clean armor plates work well with the "messy" trench, while the patterns inside the trenches neither too messy nor to boring. The black/purple color composition looks awesome and definitly stands out from the standard grey/icecrystal designs.^^
Just the blue lights on the hangar entrance sticks out a bit too much. If this isn't intentional i would suggest to "dig" them a bit more in.

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Since its a more carrier oriented ship i would suggest to go without too big turrets. In combat against similar sized threats you should be fin with front weapons. Since turrets also are rather vulnerable they are better at fighting smaller sized targets and defending your blind-spots.

I would recommand to put a bunch of small (dim=9^3 up to 19^3) cannon-cannon (as pd), beam-cannon with stopeffect (insanely annoying for smaller ships), missile-beam (pretty much general purpose turret) and such, sunken (not completly) into the trench between the armor plates.
Just so they don't stick out too much and fit well into the overall design. In addition to that the turrets will even have some cover.

A turret on top might destroy the "clean" feeling of the shiphull, but might aswell work. Just try around a bit and you will see what fits best to the picture of the finished ship in your mind.^^

If you really want big turrets you can also try to cut some parts of the armor plates to put turrets under/behind it.


For turret design: Its often a good idea to make them a bit more compact and not too long. Again just try/mess around. You often come up with good design just by repeating to put together some random blocks.

For the overall ship design: I love it.
The clean armor plates work well with the "messy" trench, while the patterns inside the trenches neither too messy nor to boring. The black/purple color composition looks awesome and definitly stands out from the standard grey/icecrystal designs.^^
Just the blue lights on the hangar entrance sticks out a bit too much. If this isn't intentional i would suggest to "dig" them a bit more in.

Thank you very much! I actually had not considered putting smaller turrets inside the trenches, but now that you mentioned it I really like that idea! I've been working on a medium sized 1200 or so mass turret that I think will work pretty well on the front of the ship, but other than that I plan to leave the rest of armor plates in their current state.

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Update 3/29:

It's been a busy week, so not too much work was done but I figured it was enough for another update. Added a 1300 mass sniper turret to the nose of ship, and added a number of overdrive and stop gatling turrets that are partially hidden to try to preserve the sleek look of the upper hull. Continued my detailing efforts as well.

Spoiler: Sniper Turret

Spoiler: Anti-Fighter Turrets

Spoiler: More Detailing!

 

[IAbsoluteZeroI]

Update 4/1:

Currently working on what I consider to be the most difficult part of the project - coming up with a name that fits the ship.
Spent quite a bit of time working out the general shape and design of the engines. In addition, the majority of systems are now in place, and the current stats stand at:

Mass: 269,000
Length: 601 m
Height: 58 m
Width: 315 m
Power: 452 million (10 mil e/s)
Shields: 66 million (1,337,000 s/s)

Spoiler: Engines

There's still plenty of work to be done, but it's coming along nicely now.