Meredeste Watch Scorpion

[Terraniel]

So I thought I'd be brilliant and spend three hours figuring out how to import a ship model from another game. Some of you may recognize this iconic battleship. Longest axis is 400 m. Currently it is little more than a shell, as I intend to paint it using SMEdit, and that hates opening ships with lots of stuff inside for some reason.

I used a gr2->obj converter, then converted the obj into a blueprint using SMEdit. Along the way I also hollowed and "smoothed" the shap. This was a mistake in retrospect, as the smoothing added a lot of junk in places that I didn't want it. I am currently toiling over the hull, attempting to recapture the shapes as they were intended. The lighter coloured sections are parts that I have edited thus far.

You can see how gnarled the hull looks in places here.

More work done in these ones:

 

[Terraniel]

For the curious - this will be the paintjob, although I will be adding details from the hull as well.

 

[Hotspur]

I wanted to make one of these but it sounded too ambitious.

You\'re friggin awesome.

 

[Terraniel]

Cleaning up the hull has taken much longer than I\'d hoped. You can see that I\'ve done a lot more. There are some sections that I am absolutely dreading going over, as rebuilding contours is eye-breaking labour. I\'ve started adding in accent lights. Because of starmade\'s mechanics, I\'ve also had to take some liberties with the turret mounting areas, but I may find a way to fix those yet. She is currently sitting at 19076 mass, which is about 2000 less than I started with. I\'ve cleaned a lot of extraneous blocking out. Shields are at 80946 currently, just to keep my dreadnaught turrets from cutting through my beautiful machine when the pirates decide to hide behind me as I am building. Tons of space inside. I will have to find creative ways to fill it. Or I can just put in power and shields. And more power. Maybe some more shields. Couple guns or something. And of course - JAM. ECM FOR EVERYONE!!!! HAHAHAHAAA

 

[JimmyJamba]

This is incredible. Can\'t wait to see more updated pics.

I\'ve spent a lot of time debating in my head as I clean up SMEdit smoothing on large ships as to whether or not it is better to apply the wedges myself or let SMedit do it and clean up afterwards. Jury is still out on this one for me.... Although it can be messy in certain parts. Simple, long slopes can have wedges placed very quickly with minimal amounts of cleanup. As far as I can tell, it\'s in the middle in terms of time saved vs spent.

I think next time I\'m going to see if the smoothing function will \"honour the selection\" and only smooth small parts of the ship at a time.

 

[Terraniel]

That might be your best option. With a complex model like this, it has literally taken over 25 hours to get this thing as smoothed as it currently is. I also find the wedges tend to add unnecessary bulk to a lot of the ship. I have trimmed over 20 million credits\' worth of hardened blocks off of this thing already. Tbh, if the in-game editor was slightly more functional, it would be much faster to do it in game.

I also had an issue with the symmetry. Getting the core in the center of the ship so I could take advantage of odd-symmetry was a total pain in the butt.

 

[Terraniel]

So I\'ve been busy moving, and haven\'t had a ton of time to work on this ship, but I did get a few things done. I didn\'t like the original color scheme, so I came up with something new. Most of the progress on the hull is in hard to reach spots that are not big, but nasty contours to re-create cleanly. It\'s not super visible. I\'ve also started adding weapon systems, shields, and power systems. No turrets as of yet. I will have to make some deviations from the standard scorpion design in order to get a functional ship. Hope to have the final product in a couple weeks. Then I\'ll post it to the ship list. I\'ll add a link in this topic as well, in case the downvote monkeys drop my post back to page 37. Pics again:



And a teaser of the new colour scheme (not finalized)

 

[Terraniel]

I\'ve finished cleaning up the outside! (Phew) Now on to turrets, weapons, and systems. I\'ve been giving some thought to the interior as well. Pics!





Final count was something like 198,000 blocks replaced. Grey hull indicates what I changed/cleaned. I tried to keep it very close to stock shape.

Paintjob!





Weapon systems are planned as dual amc gatling arrays (currently 34K dps), 6 sets of BBs, 6 KBs, and 4 D1000. Currently power generation is at about 1.2M e/s, with 30M reserves. Thrust is currently adequate at 26K, but may need bolstering as this monster fills up. Shields are 700k, and planned to 3M+. So yeah! Pretty excited about this build! Can\'t wait to share it.

 

[Terraniel]

Here\'s the download link:

http://star-made.org/node/15761

Be sure to rate and let me know what you think!

 

[GROOV3ST3R]

I know it\'s just an import, but it\'s worked out pretty sweet.

I want one ^^ But I want more to be creative enough to actually come up with something like this on my own - and that\'s never going to happen :S