Let's face it, the main attraction of BSF is building your own ships. Share them! If you need help, check the Shipmaker Info & Help forum a little ways down.
After finding out about BSF and downloading it. Dedicating copious hours to how it works, I finally came up with something that resembled a ship!
Im submitting it to you guys to see what you think and possibly to get help the structure of the ship and what sprites i could download to better improve on the design and make it one sexy ship!
At the moment im designing ships for my Nationstates FT nation The Celestial Confederacy of the Arch Planets And this design is meant to be of the Frontier Class Destroyer. Archian Warships are generally heavily armed and slow designed to take on opponents bigger than themselves.
Anyways little back story out of the way here is the ship i have produced your thoughts are welcome and any advise would be much appreciated!
firstly you should never mix section styles. download horsemonster's detailed weapons pack and use those for the turrets. you should also hide the thrusters by setting their alpha to 0. the ship underneath however looks quite good. the sectionwork is nice and the colours aren't bad either. you could try depth shading, where you colour the sections lower down in the ship darker colours to add more contrast and bring out the shape of the ship more. the red sections in the centre could definatley do with this
As first ships go, it is a very good attempt.
I am also new and by no means have the right to tell you what works and what dosent, but I definately agree with vidboi, in that you shouldn't really be using stock weapons on a ship using custom sections.
Highly reccomend going to this thread: viewtopic.php?f=23&t=4770 and downloading the detailed weapons pack.
To your question, in the ED2 tab, you can define both a custom weapon sprite as well as a custom bullet sprite.
To add to Vidboi's comment, you can also use Se7en's weapon sprites; some people still do and they look alright. As for the thrusters, you can set the alpha to 0, but some people also set their depth below a covering section by selecting the engine and hitting "w". Just make sure that you the cover is above the engine's parent and that you don't mirror after doing this. SM doesn't like mirroring after depthing weapons and modules.
Don't mean to step on Vid's toes, I just want newcomers to know all the options so we don't end up with a dozen people making the exact same ships.
Thanks for the help guys I downloaded the BSF Ship maker that had all the customer content (or atleast most of it) included Unfortunately I couldn't edit my old design with it so i decided to make a new ship. I think this one looks a little like the Noaha Destroyers from Nexus the Jupiter Incident
What do you guys think? I tried my bed at the shading and all jazz.
Currently this ship is meant to be an indirect fire missile destroyer with 3x ConvMirv Launchers andx 5 Machine-guns for PD. Your thoughts Please.
Now that is a pretty fine looking ship. I like the sleek design, and the shading seems pretty solid. My only nitpick is the choice of sections at the rear. As is, the rearmost sections look a bit stuck on, like an afterthought. I think you need to change the large turbine section or do away with everything aft of it. Just my 2 cents though.
Kiltric wrote:Now that is a pretty fine looking ship. I like the sleek design, and the shading seems pretty solid. My only nitpick is the choice of sections at the rear. As is, the rearmost sections look a bit stuck on, like an afterthought. I think you need to change the large turbine section or do away with everything aft of it. Just my 2 cents though.
Much Appreciated, im currently working on a Capitol ship for my FT RP nation, known as the Agamemnon Class Battleship flag Ship and all round heavy hitter of the fleet! Ill post it hear once im done
Hmm, not bad for being new to shipbuilding, but I shall do a little nitpicking. In both ships there appear to be a few alignment errors in the mirroring, and the first ship has a few mirrored sections overlapping. Other than that, not too bad.
Right okay here we go finally finished my Battleship! in game its kinda indestructible atm so ive still got a bit of stats fiddling to do but other than that this ship aesthetically wise is finished.
Let me know what you think.
P.S i am aware the colours of some sections are a bit off but when I opened the ship file up today it had reverted some of the colours back to the default colour, and I have been able to replicate the Original colour I used yet.
Sorry but this is bad, I find all of these ships bad, the're all rectangles, BORING!
But, alas, the real problem with the battleship is that it looks like a penis.
I think the induction of "LOL" "OMG" and "<3" into the Oxford English Dictionary is a sign of the End Times. Only, instead of a rider on a pale horse, it'll be a gibberish-spewing spastic in a monster truck named "The Dildozer".
Ignore Kittenpillar, he has an appointment with Freud. Theres a number of problems with the battleship obviously but the first thing that screams at me is the spamming of that one section along the sides. Mix it up a bit with other sections like that one and it will start to look better. Also mix the grey throughout the rest of the ship like you did at the rear; the single color is boring. I like the big turrets your trying to make but your doing it wrong. There are tri-gun turrets available, I suggest you use those.
I like your first 2 ships but i agree with jwa you spammed alot of the same section. Also for terms of colour you should check out
Silver Winged Seraphs ships because they have perfect colouring.
Kiltric wrote:To your question, in the ED2 tab, you can define both a custom weapon sprite as well as a custom bullet sprite.
To add to Vidboi's comment, you can also use Se7en's weapon sprites; some people still do and they look alright. As for the thrusters, you can set the alpha to 0, but some people also set their depth below a covering section by selecting the engine and hitting "w". Just make sure that you the cover is above the engine's parent and that you don't mirror after doing this. SM doesn't like mirroring after depthing weapons and modules.
Don't mean to step on Vid's toes, I just want newcomers to know all the options so we don't end up with a dozen people making the exact same ships.
Thank you very much, the body and aesthetics of my first ship design complete, this is the only play I could find this information. Now to dig around for gun sprites that look organic.
Just a question though 
