These are what I came up with (note that the pulse guns represent the dread's sidewinders)...
From top left to botton right they are...
Study model 1: The original design, which I whipped up in about five minutes. As you can see, the design has several flaws. In particular, the two deflected sections on the side are rendered almost completely superfluous. It also has a somewhat annoyingly 'Klingon' appearence to it...
Study model 2: I modified the original design, and came up with study model number 2. This one's side defelcted sections are far more useful, and the ship itself, I think, looks a lot better than the original design did.
Study model 3: When play testing study model 2, one the things I noticed was the relative vulnerability of the rounded sections to the left and right of the core (the ones just behind the side deflected sections). They aren't critical to the deflected sections in front of them like the slightly exposed rectagular sections on the 'Terran' alien dreadnought are, but as of study model 2, it meant that two of the ship's ageises were rather vulnerable...
So I decided to move the two ageises in question. Rather than have two ageises mounted on each rounded section to the rear of the core, though, I instead decided to add a third section to mount the two ageises.
Study model 4: I spilt the section I added in for study model three into 2 alien wing sections. This makes the agesises more protected and (I think) also looks better.
This design is roughly the same size and was, as of study model 2, pretty much as though as the 'Terran' alien dreadnought we have now. I'm thinking my design changes for study models 3 and 4 might actually make it a little tougher than the current dreadnought.
See, on the current dreadnought, there are two rectangular sections, just behind the side deflected sections that were slightly vulnerable and could be blown off once the dreadnought's wings were destroyed, eliminating the side deflected sections in the process. On my design, however, the side deflected sections are connected not to the sections behind them, but to the sections ajacent to them, those being the ones that house this dreadnought's demeters.
This means that the usual one-on-one strategy of blowing the two vulnerable rectangular sections off is not viable on this version of hte dreadnought. I would speculate that it would be harder for a ship to win one-on-one with this version of the dreadnought and that, as such, out flanking the ship would become more necessary.
Now, I don't expect TH to take my design concepts on board, but I would like his, and other people's opinions on the design. What do you think of it?
By the way, if you'd like to try it out, I've packaged up all four study models into one handy little zip file, though each one is also avaliable seperately in the custom ship database...
http://www.wyrdysm.com/battleshipsforev ... models.zip
)
