Sorry for the spam 
It’s essentially how I would have reimagined the Bellerophon, if given the chance. It’s exactly 2014m long, btw…
4 Likes
Seems like it’s lacking some complex-curved plating and interesting angles for a proper Deltan look to it. (currently looks high-tech/low-greeble SFC to my eyes.) Having perfect 4 way symmetry on the engine pods is kind of off-putting too.
Personally, I’d cut the thing in half right in front of the engine pods, then swap the direction the ship’s front is pointing and have that flat face at the back of the top ridge as the ship’s bridge and call it SFC. 
Hmm… I’ll go draw up what I’m talking about…
*Edit, MS-Paint-hackjob:
I not entirely sure I understand the first two parts, but I’ll try to add some more curvature to it while retaining the brute militaristic expression. Perhaps you could show me what you meant?
Also, I did try cutting off the rear section and flip the forward movement direction way back in the begining - It simply didn’t work well for the model to put it midly. I could try with a T-configuration for the rear section (which did look promising), but it will leave me with a pain as to how to do the configuration of the maneuver thrusters. Also the engine pod contains the reverse thrusters. I could leave all of them in the front, but I just think it would be more logical to have as much of it as possible assembled near the reactor.
Anyway… I just guess my style has always been a mixture of SFC and Deltan 
If you take a look at the Deltan Faction Guidline, you’ll see that your design is missing the mark on the “high tech, long slopes, rounded corners” elements of a Deltan design.
Compare your ship to some of the concept art in that doc and I think you’ll understand. It does indeed look like a low detailed/unfinished SFC ship as of right now, like others have pointed out.
I’ll guess I’ll change the description to SFC then. It would be completely back to the drawing board to make it look Deltan by the looks of it. But even then it might be too symetrical to be SFC too?!.. God I wish I had my older capital ship models for reference.
Wow, I can’t believe I missed out on this entire discussion. I saw this when Timmon originally started it, and ignored everything in it since.
I wanted to weigh in on the use of radiators in space, and specifically the radiator in Timmon’s concept.
This is true, but your radiator won’t. Note that the fins on your radiators are parallel to one another:
| | | |
This means that any photons that are radiated by any but the two end fins will simply be re-absorbed by its neighbour:
<--- | <---> | <---> | --->
Instead, radiators in space are designed like so:
/\/\/\/\/\/\
Where each plate is held at an angle no greater than 45 degrees from the horizontal (plates are at no less than 90 degree angles to one another). This means each radiating plate has an unobstructed normal, and photons can radiate out into space without being re-absorbed by the radiator. Space radiators are also extended out on booms, so that photons can be radiated from both surfaces of the plate.
Nice… Does the ends on the ///\ connect, or is there a small gap between them?
I would think they could be, and the angles between the ///\ would be 90 degrees or more.
Well, there’s a small gap between them on modern spacecraft if for no other reason than how they’re made and deployed. They’re usually designed to fold out so that they can be encapsulated during launch. This also makes them modular - if one radiating panel breaks, it can be replaced independently of the rest of the array.
Some ASCII drawings for the fun of it:
“O” Is for the heat transportation (whatever medium is going trough)
Slice side view.
" /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\ /\
" /O \/ O\/O \/ O\/O \/ O\/O \/ O\/O \/ O\/O \/ O\
" | STRUCTURAL BAR TO CONNECT UPER AND LOWER PART
" \ O/\O /\ O/\O /\ O/\O /\ O/\O /\ O/\O /\ O/\O /
" \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/ \/
Top view 1 (straight config):
" ______________________________________________________________
" _____________________________________________________________/ \
" _____________________________________________________________\ /
" _____________________________________________________________/ \
" _____________________________________________________________\ /
" _____________________________________________________________/ \
" _____________________________________________________________\ /
" _____________________________________________________________/ \
" _____________________________________________________________\ /
Top view 2 (angle config):
" \
" \ \
" \ \ \
" \ \ \ \
" \ \ \ \ \
" \ \ \ \ \ \ \
" / / / / / / /
" / / / / /
" / / / /
" / / /
" / /
" /
So this would be correct?
Well, apart from being way too exposed for a warship…
That looks correct to me, and they would need to be exposed anyway.
Not sure why you made the corners the way they are, though.
Donno… to make it looks as if they were individual segments or something 
but it was a dirt quick try anyway so they will eventually look a bit different
Looks correct to me, too. Efficiency could be doubled by having the under-surface exposed as well (say, on a wing or something), but I know that doesn’t really fit with the design you’re playing with.
I still hope that such radiators won’t be simply cosmetic. Heat management gameplay has the potential to have great depth vs complexity ratio, set Battlescape apart from the Space Sim/Shooter concurrence, and radiators glowing depending on the ship’s activity would look great.
2 Likes
At the moment they would be, and most likely for I:B. But, never say never and all… We can certainly see if it makes sense in the context of Battlescape to make heat dissipation relevant.
Yeah, wings will be a bit difficult to implement with that design.
I’m considering adding some smaller pairs at the front section too.
Even then they would still show that a minimum amount of though actually went into the designs, which imo adds a lot to the final overall impression.
Are you still using Google Sketchup? >:\
Yeah… Never quite managed to transfer over to another program. And the one I properly will move over to (solidworks) isn’t good for this type of modelling. But at least it’s the Pro version so I can export it to .3ds