Hola, tis another FNG... with a tale of three ships

MShadowy · Post by **MShadowy** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 12:56 am

Once upon a time (that is to say, last week), I found myself doing as I often do when bereft of purpose - browsing the /tg/ forums at 4chan. "Oh god," I can hear you thinking, "where is he going with this?"

Well, while I was wasting time, some Anon posted a tantalizing screenshot of battleships exploding alongside the message "Does anyone on /tg/ still play BF?"

"What the hell is BF?" I wondered. "I must acquire this game!"

Fortunately the Anon was helpful and I soon found myself with BSF on hand. Here the tale really begins, because it was about this time I started screwing around with the ship maker. This soon bore fruit, in the form of three ships; I'd designed them around the idea of them being enhancements to the basic starter fleet.

The three ships were the Cerulean, a fast attack cruiser,

The Glatisant, a heavy vanguard ship,

And the Massif, which really was just an experiment to figure out triggers but ended up being an awesome artillery frigate regardless.

And for these three, the story could have ended there. I had no intention of making people aware of their existence; they were simply drabbles and of no real import.

But then, while browsing this forum looking for further documentation regarding the ship makers features, I came across EriErin's Knights of the Baseline Frequency... and suddenly...

Inspiration!

As the KoBF were retoolings of the base ships, which my ships were intended to be complements for, I suddenly found myself with an intense desire to do some retooling of my own. I downloaded and disassembled the KoBF ships to figure out how they had been made, and then proceeded to crudely ape EriErin's style.

My sincere apologies, by the way. Hopefully the Knights can forgive my trespass, as I provide them with these Kai variants of the above ships:

The Cerulean, now a full on Battlecruiser:

A Cerulean class BCV during combat trials.

The Glatisant, now 20% more impregnable:

"... but the big guns never tire."

And the Massif, now distinctly resembling Big Core:

A Massif class Artillery Frigate reaches out to touch someone.

Kinda wondering if I should post these though; I'm worried that they may be too close to EriErin's style, and so I'd prefer to be able to backpedal (furiously I might add) if offense is taken.

In any case, please feel free to comment on this/mercilessly rip me to pieces/etc. Also, I have the vague inkling that these vessels may be a touch overpowered in comparison to their KoBF counterparts, the Glatisant in particular.

maarten · Post by **maarten** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 1:01 am

F*CK
Those are even better ships then Erin's(gonna get flamed for this) They really look good with those custom sprites. Great job and yet again a noob exeets the expectations.
The other ships are pretty cool aswell and would fit in with vanilla content.
Anyways I really really really like those ships based on the Erin sprites.
I want more of those, and every second without new ones is a second wasted.

MelvinVm · Post by **MelvinVm** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 1:08 am

Let's just say he copied it, exactly the same color scheme, etc.
The ships need better general shapes.
These are not better than eri's, completely.

The Glatisant, Aegis whoring, stop it.

Post by **Arcalane** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 1:15 am

4 is not whoring.

Excessive given the placement yes, but not really whoring.

As for the ships, eh. I'm not really a fan of Eri's redux style,

MShadowy · Post by **MShadowy** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 1:18 am

Well I did say they were intended as complements to the KoBF project, so it's natural for there to be a resemblance -- and that's probably more pronounced because I took Erin's stuff apart in order to figure out how it was made.

And as for the Aegis whoring, uh, okay. Can fix.

Kanosint · Post by **Kanosint** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 3:07 am

Hmmm, wouldn't call it Aegis Whoring... The colour's still ugly Aegis, though...

Still, I must say I only like the Aegis ship and the Massif... The others are not BAD, but they're rather bland or just two KotBF ships pasted together.

Not a bad start, still. Experiment a bit, find a stile to claim, and you'll get big, I think...

Shogoll · Post by **Shogoll** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 7:40 pm

The first three ships are boring, bland and mediocre. There is nothing that sets them apart from anything else; they're sort of average bordering on bad, and that aegis color is abysmal. Granted you designed them to be additions of sorts to the original BSF fleet, but they're still incredibly dull.

On the other hand, the Kai remakes are sextacular. However the fact that your original ships looked so much worse then the remakes with the custom sections makes me ponder if you actually have any skill or artistic taste, or whether the custom sections just make everything indiscriminately awesome.

Verminator · Post by **Verminator** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 8:15 pm

I love your aegis ship, even if it looks a little too invincible.

DAikum · Post by **DAikum** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 8:44 pm

Looks like an oversized Peitho unit to me ... And unless it has 360 shielding ontop of deflectors, it can be beaten >=3

Post by **Arcalane** » Sat Apr 18, 2009 9:46 pm

Shogoll wrote:The first three ships are boring, bland and mediocre. There is nothing that sets them apart from anything else; they're sort of average bordering on bad, and that aegis color is abysmal. Granted you designed them to be additions of sorts to the original BSF fleet, but they're still incredibly dull.

On the other hand, the Kai remakes are sextacular. However the fact that your original ships looked so much worse then the remakes with the custom sections makes me ponder if you actually have any skill or artistic taste, or whether the custom sections just make everything indiscriminately awesome.

I think of the first three, the Glatisant is the only one which really has any merit, though the Massif isn't too bad either.

Otherwise yeah, I'm inclined to say that the custom sections are definitely picking up some of the slack.

MShadowy · Post by **MShadowy** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 9:15 am

Well, in an effort to improve upon my efforts, I decided to see if increasing the number of parts available would be helpful.

The problem I found myself facing was that few of the default sprites really looked much like the KoBF ones... so, I made my own. Personally, I think it is an improvement, but I dunno.

The re-re-imagined Cerulean, which it seems was the worst looking of the lot.

Better? My gut tells me "Maybe."

bl3d4 · Post by **bl3d4** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 11:19 am

The new Cerulean looks much beefier....
I like.

By the way, could you move the Glatisant's Aegis Deflectors to a more vulnerable place. Might be quite difficult to reach them since they are so close to the core...

SHAD0Wdump · Post by **SHAD0Wdump** » Sun Apr 19, 2009 12:17 pm

Definitely approve of the new Cerulean.

MShadowy · Post by **MShadowy** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 2:17 am

bl3d4 wrote:By the way, could you move the Glatisant's Aegis Deflectors to a more vulnerable place. Might be quite difficult to reach them since they are so close to the core...

Sure.

Considering the response the ship got, I realized that it might be a good idea to introduce more gaps and vulnerabilities -- though maybe I overdid it? Naaaah...

And yes, yet more variety in sprites. I'd like to at least double the number of them in this style.

Now not nearly so horribly imbalanced, the Glatisant... again.

Edit: I should also note that I'm almost certainly not going to go at the Massif again -- I really like it as is, and it seems unnecessary.

SHAD0Wdump · Post by **SHAD0Wdump** » Mon Apr 20, 2009 7:23 am

Niiice. Really like the new design.The green struck me a little odd,but only slightly.