The occasional builders shipyard

[Elric_de_Melnibone]

Hello and welcome to my thread.
As you may have noticed, I'm a new user on this forum. I just found out about BSF yesterday, and have been tinkering around with the ship builder for the first time. I can't give any estimate on how much time will pass between my last ship and a new one, hence the name 'occasional builder'.

Here is the outcome, and my first ship, not using any tutorials, but balancing it using the Judges you can download in the mini-fleet thread in the main discussion:

The Eredictor Class Heavy Cruiser





C&C is welcome and appreciated.

[Elric_de_Melnibone]

Reserved.

*cough*

Okay, I just double-posted.

[Kaelis]

Hello.

You might want to fix the weapon spam and/or change weapon colors so that they don't stick out so much.

There are also many more sections you can use, read the manual.

[Elric_de_Melnibone]

Hello.

You might want to fix the weapon spam and/or change weapon colors so that they don't stick out so much.

There are also many more sections you can use, read the manual.

Removed the most front vulcan turret and recolored all weapons with a slightly darker tone.



Thanks for the input
But all other turrets will stay, since every turret has a reason to be there chassis-wise. I personally don't consider it spam, and it can't even beat the cruiser damage judge's shield.
As for the sections, I wanted to build something just using the default ones, for starters. This is my first ship after all.

And by the way:
Thanks for all your time and work you put into this little gem of a game!
Kudos to you and all other devs.

[lightstriker]

I personally don't consider it spam, and it can't even beat the cruiser damage judge's shield.

Alright, firstly: Your ships don't HAVE to be balanced to those shields, unless you want them to be ~.~ And which shield? There's more than one for a reason
As well, if that's the case, just up the weapons damage? As kaelis is definitely correct in stating that this ship is very weapon spammy. At least color the weapons to make them stand out less, as the base ship is pretty good

[Elric_de_Melnibone]

Judges.rar\Judges\Damage Judges\Cruiser Class Damage Judge.shp

That's the one.
And maybe I don't understand the definition of 'weapon spammy'
Mind to point out which weapons exactly are spammy?

Shall I make the turrets even darker, since I already reduced the brightness?

And thanks for the compliment about the base - I worked for about 2 hours on the hull.

[BizzarreCoyote]

By spammy, they mean there are too many. Try modding one to do the work of several. That will cut down on the clutter on your ship.

Such as the Nano-matrices. Mod one to do the work of the three you have. Also, stack the deflectors. Move them on top of one another, and it will eliminate a lot of the spam.

I like the hull though.

[ODST]

reduce the number of missile racks on each side from 3 to 2, remove the single autocannons and replace them with double autocannons (one for every two, of course), and get red of the left and right vulcan guns. Mod the remaining ones to maintain firepower. Oh, and set the torpedo facing forward.

[Warrior of Anarchy]

I think that ship is a little small to be carring anywhere near that level of armerments to begin with and as to your ship. I think you need to increase the size and flesh it out a little. Your color scheme I like However.

[Elric_de_Melnibone]

Okay, here's a picture of my ship together with the 2 largest default player-side ships:



As you can see, it's alot bigger than the Athena, and alot longer than the cronus.

The Athena also has THREE turrets on each 'broadside', the same amount of turrets as my ship has on it's 'broadsides'.

It also has TWO turrets on the rear (wings). My ship also has TWO turrets on the rear side.

It also has 2 additional small turrets on each front side. My ship also has 2 small turrets on each front side.

Now take into consideration that both the Athena and Cronus are frigates at best, maybe light cruisers.
My ship is a heavy cruiser/light dreadnought though.
So I think the armament is well justified, with a total of (Not counting flak) 21 turrets.
It is in no way one of the over-the-top dreadnoughts/superships with roughly the same size but around 40-60 overpowered turrets you can find in the database (Seach for Gladiator_Class-Battleship). I didn't even use one Aegis Gen.

And in my humble opinion, a 'broadside' with only two turrets would look out of place and won't fit in. Plain stupid is a better way to describe it.

It's supposed to be a flagship. It's supposed to boast alot of weapons. And in addition, I really tried to give each turret a reason to be there, to make it look in place. If you just ignore the amount of weapons for a minute, and check each turret out, you'll probably see that each turret has a reasonable position. Or maybe not, since this is all just my opinion.

And don't worry about the torpedo launcher - It can rotate 360°.
Most of the deflectors/nanos are designs choices as well. I could have used less, but I think the fit in quite nicely where they are, with the exception of maybe the two deflectors right in the middle. And I saw to it that it won't be overpowered by the sheer amount of deflectors, and modified theirs stats according to that.


As much as I appreciate the input and constructive criticsm, I won't change the turrets. I will delete the deflectors in the middle though.
Thanks again for all your comments

Might be starting another ship in the next days.

[Aederrex]

The shape is pretty good, but it looks fairly flat. try changing the color of the sections along the centerline to something else, even a different shade of grey would help. Maybe lower the nose and tail sections to be below what their attached to as well. when I look at your ship it seems bent up at both ends.

And as an aside, you'll probably want to change your glow color to black, or you get that light orange outlining in the sandbox.

Oh, also, if you absolutely HAVE to have that many weapons, why not layer some in? it makes the ship look MUCH less cluttered if not all the guns are on top of the ship. also helps with the ship not looking so flat.

[Elric_de_Melnibone]

The shape is pretty good, but it looks fairly flat. try changing the color of the sections along the centerline to something else, even a different shade of grey would help. Maybe lower the nose and tail sections to be below what their attached to as well. when I look at your ship it seems bent up at both ends.

And as an aside, you'll probably want to change your glow color to black, or you get that light orange outlining in the sandbox.

Thanks, I'll get on it next time I start the ship builder up

[th15]

I think you've got a shade too many big weapons on the ship, they overpower the shape of the hull.

And I think the red bits would look better if you used multiple doodads placed side by side instead of just one scaled up.

[jwa8402]

Not too many weapons imo, as it gives it a nice 'battleship' look of bristling weapons. But what I would do is cover some of them up so they look more internalized. If you press w while selecting a weapon, it drops to the depth of the section its parented to. Thus you could hide those Missile lauchers so only the tips are sticking out, or the autocannons for that matter. Otherwise a decent showing for a first ship! I really like the red highlights


*Edit* Too lazy to rebuild the thing accurately, but what I meant about weapons was this: http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y201/J ... ple1-1.png
Do you mind if I continue what I built to use in my fleet?

[Wicky_42]

I would layer something over most of the side missile batteries, just leaving their ends showing, a curved block over the bow artillery base, and half cover the rear dual autocannons and front single autocannon broadsides.

I don't think you need to cover every weapon, but partially masking several would clean the ship up nicely and allow you to put effective depth into it.

Also consolidate your modules - the front three could be merged into a three times as effective one on the spine, and the groups of deflectors could be stacked. That said, I think you have far too many deflectors, even for a broadside ship - 8 would make one side completely protected. I count 13 For an interesting fight I would have given it 4 to 6. Can it actually destroy itself as it is?