Help a newbie out with his first big project?

[Pegasi Delta]

I'm working on my first big ship and I've got a basic hull design down, but I'm having some creative blocks and could use suggestions. Here's my two WIP shots right here. The first is the main hull, and the second is after I added the space for thrusters. I'm going for a Necron style from Warhammer 40,000 with this ship, but at the moment I'm not sure how I want to proceed. If you've got a cool idea or suggestions, it would be most appreciated.

Also, as I said I'm newish to the game, any tips on shield, power, and weapon placement? I thought you could just make a big stack of those blocks and they'd just work, but every ship I download there's some really complex design scheme with shields, power, power storage, and weapons all lined up in certain orders. Anyway, here are the screens.

http://i.imgur.com/cQDIF8T.jpg

 

[Pegasi Delta]

 

[MrFURB]

I will usually look through ship concepts done by others and try to pinpoint what stands out from them. If there\'s a specific theme, texture, or detail I like I will try to incorporate it into my designs, and through twisting those designs I end up wiith my own unique style.

Here\'s a useful website with a ton of inspiring artwork: www.conceptships.blogspot.com

 

[TrevTrevarian]

The complex arrangement of blocks you see is primarily focused on power generation. I have a hard time explaing it, but basically a three dimentional \"L\" or \"T\" is way more efficient than a giant cube. This applies up to 1,000,000 e/sec, at which point any additional generator blocks added are worth the minimum +25 e/sec regardless of arrangement.

Power starge is almost the opposite. It only cares about the number of blocks that are attached to each other, that is, they have contact between faces. so for example, two 1000 block cubes store less power than one 2000 block cube. With power storage shape is irrelevant, only the mass of the grouping matters.

When it comes to weapons, any two blocks of like type that are connected to the same controll computer and have touching faces will be treated as one weapon. So a checkerboard is a lot of active barrels, but they aren\'t as powerful as if you combined all of those blocks into one weapon. There\'s also some power draw issues surrounding that. They\'re visible in one of the more recent changelogs.

Whoo! Anyway, I hope that was helpful! Let me know if you have any questions or need me to clarify something I said. Good luck to you!

 

[Tobonator]

I play dark Eldar, but when ever I play against neurons, I have noticed that there fighter tent to have horizontal crescent moons incorporated into their designs. The large ships also tend to have pyramids near the rear of the ship, and I recon a pyramid would make a cool bridge for your ship. You could also use the brown block to put Egyptian style pictures or scrawl on the side of your ship.

look forwards for some pictures of the finished ship :D

 

[Pegasi Delta]

Thanks for the advice so far everybody, think I\'m getting the hang of this. Can\'t believe I didn\'t think about including the circular pylons or pyramids, I had my head too wrapped around black hull with green backlights and badass necron symbolism. I started over and I\'ve got a lot more ideas for it now. I\'ve still got the original ship I started with, so if anybody has creative design ideas for either one of them I\'d love to hear it.

Anyway, here\'s the new ship, I\'ve only got part of the frame done but I\'m pretty happy with how the front turned out.

 

[Pegasi Delta]

I got excited about the front and did a bunch more work on it.

 

[Pegasi Delta]

Added some armor for the pylons with plenty of room for power, primary weapon systems, and shielding. Designing the hull for the core room next. It\'ll be nice to build some pyramids. Building perfect curves is so time consuming.

 

[Pegasi Delta]

Finished the hull of the core room, AKA that giant pyramid. Next step is connecting it to the passage into the weapons area and adding a little decoration. I\'m still open to design ideas.

 

[Pegasi Delta]

Last update for tonight, I never did get around to connecting the core monolith to the pylon. I was really enjoying the decoration. I\'ve still got a bunch more work to do on that obviously. I do have a question though, is there anything that shines brighter than the green lights, or at least doesn\'t look so blocky? It looks cool from far away but up close it just looks... well blocky. As you can see, I tried a little experiment with combining the green lights with plex beacons on the gauss tower at the top of the monolith and I\'m not at all happy with it.

 

[Pegasi Delta]

I lied, one more update. Did a little more detailing.

 

[xandervm]

looks good so far, i loved playing with the necrons in the warhammer games ( i believe it i played with them in dark crusade).

im really intrested to see how this will turn out

 

[Pegasi Delta]

Just bumping this once before I get back to work. Will update again soon.

 

[Pegasi Delta]

Did the Necron symbol and am pretty happy with it, I hate the way the back lights for it turned out though so I\'m gonna completely start over on that.

 

[I_is_Tinsy]

http://im.bilderkiste.org/5137208324544/reaktor.png

Here\'s a reactor design. MushroomFleet on youtube has some videos about other designs and how to extend them beyond 5x5x5.

 

[Pegasi Delta]

This one is a mashup of just too many different ideas, there\'s not a lot of coherence to me it seems. I\'m gonna start over, but keep this one just incase I get some ideas for it later. Still going with the Necron theme but I\'m gonna make a new thread for the new ship.

 

[bdy2345]

i may be newer to the game than the people your looking for, but ill help if i can, but only if your online enough