Noctis's work Currently Mechanist Fleet (clockwork)

[Noctis]

Alright, first ship in a long time, first ever uploaded here.

the "astrum peregrinus"

not gonna arm it because...well... not really interested in arming ships most of the time. More interested in trying to make something interesting in design and story.

So, The astrum peregrinus here is a Colony ship of sorts which began its life as nothing but a small shuttle. The shuttle (which is the central section of the craft) was the only surviving craft from a massive World ship that, after being caught in an electromagnetic storm was pulled into the gravity well of a dying star. This craft managed to jettison before the ship was crushed under the massive gravity but was left wandering the universe without means of long distance, faster then light travel. The crew did the only thing they could do and set a course for the nearest inhabited world, sent out a distress beacon and waited.

Three generations have passed as the astrum peregrinus drifted through space. The crew reproduced in this time, and as time passed the outer ring sections of the ship were constructed to hold the new passengers. Because of mass generation machinery the crew is never at a loss for food or material so, while they are confined, they live comfortably. One senior crew member was noted to say that, "if the population continues to grow as it has, chances are that by the time we reach an inhabited star system we will be so great as to rival or surpass the ship which we left behind."



Comments, criticism, screaming of praise or telling me my ship is bad and I should feel bad are all welcome.

[Auriak]

Some people dislike having to click on the thumbnails, so maybe you should upload larger images.

On the ship: I like it. The green and dark purple make me think of some kind of glow in the dark sea creature. However it looks a bit fragile, especially with those open spaces at the back where the wings meet. Maybe add a drive pod back there or something?

[Noctis]

anyway, I've noticed a general pattern here of very smooth and uniform ships, which while looking pretty as hell, never really stand out overwhelmingly to me. SO I thought I would try and mix it up a little.

So here's the beginnings of the Amalgamite fleet. The Amalgamites are galactic scavengers, sentient robots that were originally developed to help clean up debris after stellar battles. However, over time they developed greater intelligence then their masters, mostly by absorbing the information in destroyed ships computers and adding it to their over all hivemind. Soon they broke free and set off into the galaxy to make their own path.

Amalgamite ships are quite literally space junk, the remains of other ships welding back together into something new. Despite this their ships are know to be quite tough and reliable. Their weaponry is usually that of mining equipment or any weapons they can salvage and modify. They are generally peaceful, only attacking when provoked. They are however feared because of their habit of appearing just before war ignites. Its still unknown how they can so well predict when and where a new conflict will begin, but they never seem to be at a loss for new parts...

The general idea here was to make ships that, though they look like they're random pieces of space junk, still look good/interesting/cool/descriptive words.

so here we have the Vulture.


The vulture is made to fight like a gladiator or knight, blocking attacks with his shield before turning to use his "sword" or in this case modified mining laser. I'm going to finish the fleet before putting up a download and I may tweek him a little more, make the shield cover less of the front of the craft or have the gun offset a little more.

anyway, same as before, scream obscenities or praises or non related gibberish.

[Noctis]

Some people dislike having to click on the thumbnails, so maybe you should upload larger images.

On the ship: I like it. The green and dark purple make me think of some kind of glow in the dark sea creature. However it looks a bit fragile, especially with those open spaces at the back where the wings meet. Maybe add a drive pod back there or something?

On the fragileness, remember I never designed this as a fighting vessel, its a wanderer, in fact the name is literally Latin for "star drifter/wanderer". I completely understand that indeed, all those ring anchors look weak, but for me, this was the design I was going for.

Thanks for the input

[Caesius]

FYI if you have a half-decent image editing program (NOT Paint) then you should be able to save a .gif with decent compression and little noise for direct posting, especially if you crop the UI which is 160 pixels on a 1024 resolution.

[jwa8402]

The astrum peregrinus has a great shape and even better back story. Fragile is fine, but you could probably fit some of the sections together better...but then in both species salvage and improvisation are critical so that works I guess.

The vulture has a cool concept which I think would work better on a larger scale. If their literally large parts of ships which are being welded, maybe put more work into building several different ships, then tearing off pieces like would happen in battle, then parenting them together... Still the shape is very cool, kinda a shield and spear shape.

keep it up, just add more detail and precision.

[Noctis]

"FYI if you have a half-decent image editing program (NOT Paint) then you should be able to save a .gif with decent compression and little noise for direct posting, especially if you crop the UI which is 160 pixels on a 1024 resolution."

Just using the screenshots straight from the program itself. I'll crop them if you wish but over all that seems rather nit-picky in general to bother worrying about. I will do it though.

"The astrum peregrinus has a great shape and even better back story. Fragile is fine, but you could probably fit some of the sections together better...but then in both species salvage and improvisation are critical so that works I guess.

The vulture has a cool concept which I think would work better on a larger scale. If their literally large parts of ships which are being welded, maybe put more work into building several different ships, then tearing off pieces like would happen in battle, then parenting them together... Still the shape is very cool, kinda a shield and spear shape.

keep it up, just add more detail and precision."

Oh don't worry, in the larger ships it will be much more evident.


thankies for the c&c again

[Caesius]

I didn't know BSF had an option to save as .png... in any case, it sucks; have it save as .bmp and then open up the screen in any other image editing program (The GIMP for instance) and save it as .png or .gif. If you choose to crop it (as you should), there should be a "canvas size" option somewhere, and you can just tell it to crop the right part by 160 pixels. It's probably a lot different in GIMP, but I use Photoshop and have to go to Image > Canvas Size > click on the left arrow (to tell it that any canvas size editing should happen to the right side), check "Relative," change units to pixels, and enter -160 as the width. I then go to File > Save for Web and select .gif.

[Noctis]

Alright, next in the series and a little higher up the food chain is the Lockjaw, known to be rather unstable with its exposed reactors (those glowing things on top) and to be dangerous with its modified beam cutter cannon. The cannon is its most powerful weapon of course but it has a back up of two small shot but large clip blasters, mostly for dealing with small, annoying craft.

[Arcalane]

FYI if you have a half-decent image editing program (NOT Paint) then you should be able to save a .gif with decent compression and little noise for direct posting, especially if you crop the UI which is 160 pixels on a 1024 resolution.

'cept you should use png, not gif, because gif loves to murder colours and you get something that looks even worse than jpgs.

[Gkug]

Hmm, the lockjaw looks quite frail, and in my opinion you should add one or two blasters to where the engines are, as the ships seems to have a very limited firing arc.

[Caesius]

FYI if you have a half-decent image editing program (NOT Paint) then you should be able to save a .gif with decent compression and little noise for direct posting, especially if you crop the UI which is 160 pixels on a 1024 resolution.

'cept you should use png, not gif, because gif loves to murder colours and you get something that looks even worse than jpgs.

Not in my experience.


Compare:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v195/ ... een035.gif

^That's a .gif. 152KB.


http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v195/ ... een030.png

^And that's a .png. 379KB.


It probably depends a lot on the image program you use (Paint for example has the worst .gif and .jpg artifacts ever), as well as the image itself. .gif should be used for images with only a few colors and defined lines, .jpg should be used with photos and most screenshots, and .png is the middle ground. He should try .gifs first, and if they look like shit, then he should use .png. Of course most people don't care too much about bandwidth, but it saves me a few seconds on upload and download.

[Noctis]

This one is kinda silly looking but its just part of the series and kinda required.

The wandering maw is basically the part collector, grabbing up parts as it stalks the battle fields. Upon capturing a part any still functioning weapon or system of that debris comes under the Maw's control. It only has a single gun of its own but can become very dangerous depending on the parts it's carrying.

[Noctis]

Hmm, the lockjaw looks quite frail, and in my opinion you should add one or two blasters to where the engines are, as the ships seems to have a very limited firing arc.

all the amalgamite ships have limits like that. Rape cannon means small aiming window, heavy shield means you can't attack while you're blocking.

I want these ships to have strengths and weaknesses. The forum is overrun with invincible superships with a thousand guns and impenetrable shields. But you'll see, as they get bigger they get much stronger and more dangerous

[Arcalane]

The forum is overrun with invincible superships with a thousand guns and impenetrable shields.

Nice exaggeration.

Most of those 'invincible superships' were or are balanced to an entirely different scale, so comparing them to stock ships is like comparing apples to oranges.