PPT Sacrificial Victim

....



Whoa....



The photo-editing is strong with this one! NICELY done!
I can't really comment on the ship itself yet, but the picture is fantastic. Although I do have two critiques to an otherwise so far excellent piece of work. 
1: The writing makes it seem as if the PPT are the bad-guys.
2: Warp travel isn't like jumping to hyperspace, it "warps" space around you, but you still encounter everything that's there. That's why ships posses navigational deflectors, to remove most small debris at speeds exponentially great than the speed of light. So... yeah.

Anyways, this is well written, INCREDIBLY well photo-edited, and appears (so far) to be well built. Good work AA!


Edit: I'll comment on the build itself later, but expect a "too many weapons, too many studs, otherwise gorgeously terrifying" theme.

Well that is certainly a gunboat.

Hmmmm... intriguing... not exactly like your normal ship designs to say the least. As Dino pointed out, excellent editing, your week of gimping certainly paid off. You're also getting quite good at writing. That was quite an interesting story you wrote out there, I'd love to see it fleshed out more.

As for the ship itself... Well, honestly, I can't tell, I need to take a closer look at it. When can we expect an .Lxf?

I'm never entirely sure what to say about ships which have been plastered with weapons, mainly because it's a design philosophy I don't personally agree with. After a while, it goes from considerable firepower to visual clutter.
Then again, that's coming from someone with a penchant for doomsday weapons, so I dunno.

Regardless, props on the GIMP editing - that main pic must have taken a fair bit of tweaking to piece together. Like Jred, I'm interested in taking a look at the lxf.

Funny, you all talk about how long the gimping took, it actually was more of like "how do I want to make the main picture" and trying a thousand ways before I did this. That and life kept me from actively spending time on it. The actual work put into wasn't too long.

But I'm still glad that you like how it turned out, like I said, it took me a while to find a set-up that I thought worked, I tried one with it flying through asteroids and it really didn't work at all.

As for the weapons......yeah, I adhere to kojan's philosophy of "Firepower>Asthetics" Doesn't matter how good you look if you burn instead of pulverizing them even if you're outnumbered. Though I do prefer them to doomsday weapons.

@S-H: Joking aside, do you really think it looks super cluttered? I knew it was weapons heavy for it's size/design, but I wasn't sure about cluttered...

@Jonneh: Thanks, the writing was kinda spur of the moment off of something that arik said in the chat, originally it was just supposed to be a picture of it flying past another Atnlay ship doing whatever in a somewhere sector. I'm glad you like it and that I'm not too rusty at writing.

The ship itself is actually a refit of my PPT Hunter-Killer, which was a much larger version of Dino's/Sloop's Hammerhead class gunboats, I'm really not sure who actually made them, though one person might have made them and the other person made a refit and then I made mine, not entirely sure. Ask dino.

But yes, this is my revamped version of that ship, the name was gona be the thunderhead but then I realized that I had already used that for my refit/gift of Gandalf's Tolkien (my flying spear-head with loads of weapons).

As for the .lxf.....uhh, when I finalyl stop being lazy and upload them all to a file sharing site.....

@Talmid: Thanks.

Wait, boats are smaller than ships, so why are gunboats big capital ships and gunships are small hover-craft like things with guns for anti-vehicle type things??? ....

@Dino: Glad you like it! Replies are as follows:
1. Well, I try to write them as a darker form of good, if you will. Kind like elves; who usually aren't overly friendly with people and especially dwarves and may end up with hostilities breaking out or just always turning a cold shoulder, but in the end they're good and will help against The Big Bad who's out to kill everyone. Technically they're only "good" cause Ant, they're leader in this galaxy, is good friends with the PCG crew, other wise they'ld just keep to themselves and remove whatever became a problem; part of the whole background type thing I keep alluding too but haven't finished writing yet.

Does that make sense or did I just confuse you more?

The Sacrificial Victim also didn't blow up the planet, they just chased the ship into the planet's debris after it attacked one of their mining outposts.

2. Yeah I'll have to fix that.

3. Yes, lots of weapons. As for studs, I usually don't cover up my studs, often I don't find that it detracts from it's beauty too much, but that's me. If I put plates all over it then it begins to look choppy and bad as the plates don't go well with the different angles or other various pieces to make for a smooth build. So like where the wing curves into the middle I'ld then just have a random rectangle on top of it distracting from the curve of the wing.

The Hammerhead was mine, I can't recall if Sloop made a refit or not. 

I kind of have to agree with S-H... too many weapons... everywhere... overkill to the point of looking like, well, a less mature build, honestly. I have trouble seeing the excellent design of the ship itself because it's obscured by enough weapons for two-three ships. On more careful inspection, I find myself really liking the hull, at least as best I can tell past all that firepower.


1: Makes sense. And I got that they didn't blow up the planet; the story just made it sound like the crew of the Jeweled Cane weren't really bad-guys, but were being chased and destroyed by this monster ship. It is nevertheless excellent writing in my book, though. 
2:  
3: I can see where a lot of the studs can't be covered without either messing up the design aesthetic, or having to plan to deal with ahead of time. Usually more of the former. But the studs on the nacelles for example, just aren't personally my thing. 

So, overall, my conclusion is: you've got a great ship with simply amazing photo-editing, but with a few too many weapons tacked-on to the hull. I'm sure part of it is just that I am in many ways an aesthetics, but functional aesthetics, builder, as I am used to building Federation style ships.

Hmm, maybe it comes from working with it too much, you lose the first impression, but I really odn't think there are too many weapons, two turrets, plus two on the bottom, per wing, missiles in the middle with a handful of turrets (just four on top), and then a couple more turrets. I guess I could take them off the back, or make the bolt turrets beam turrets, but then you lose fire power. I think originally I did have them as just beam turrets.

1. And yes, they where being chased by a monster and I did try to make the story pity them a bit, but they are still pirates.

But thankyou both for your honest critique of the build, I'll try to avoid that next time. I think if I fleshed the wing out a bit to where it didn't look like the turret was so big on it maybe.....I'll just have to try better on the next one.

BTW, which of my older ships that I'm revamping (which is, like, all of them) do you want to see next?

I have to agree in the thinking that in this case the number of weapons makes the overall design...less impressive if not less than impressive. And keep in mind, this me saying that, then again when was the last ship I built for myself?

In particular I'm looking at the missile tubes on the warp nacelles. The nacelles' placement themselves, for me, is odd, but sticking what amounts to a giant missile pod under them that is almost as large just seems...I daresay juvenile. Maybe having some laid on the bottom and top - that would look cool, actually - but as it is the way that general area is set up seems...wrong to me.

And I concur that these sort of things aren't meant to look pretty, they're meant to destroy things in a brutally efficient manner. But there does come a point where the ability to mount a high number of weapons conflicts with the practicality of mounting that high a number of weapons in terms of design an engineering. This is just a gunboat - the crew on that ship has to be on the higher end for a ship larger than itself and then some, even with high levels of automation, to maintain all of those, as well as individual weapon crews in case centralized control is knocked out.

In conclusion of my mini-essay, I'll also agree with everyone that the photo editing and story are both of high quality.

@Jace: If you don't like the missiles on the nacclles then I probably shouldn't post my PPT Skater (old ship that I never really intended to post, though I might re-do it as a civilian private ship ala privatejet-like type thing.)

And given the general consensus about the ship, I have come up with a decent in-story explanation for it's removal, once I build a better gunboat.

Although, while it looks like there's alot of weapons, there really aren't. Just 19 turrets, missiles, and a main cannon-thingy. I bet if I took out just the bolt turrets it wouldn't look so cluttered. But ah well, whatever, there I go justifying my ship again.

Anywho, using an in-story reason to get rid of it wouldn't be all that bad either, as PPT ships aren't supposed to look too much like the federation's ships anyways. Again, I just have to build a better gunboat first.

Well, interesting ship here.

When it comes to the whole issue of weapon count and how it looks, I'd generally lean more with the others' viewpoints. I have three pet peeves when it comes to armament, specifically:
1. Cluttering the surface with an overabundance of guns to a point where it makes the ship look ugly.
2. Making them disproportionately large so that you can "fit details" for your weapons. I STRONGLY prefer making all my weapons to their accurate scale, even if that's so small that I can only represent it with a single stud (or even not at all). This also helps with keeping a model uncluttered, thankfully.
3. Adding more weaponry than a ship could actually use. Just because you've got the surface area to cram loads of guns on a ship doesn't mean your ship has the available interior space to fit the systems to power it, the magazines for missiles and projectile weapons, and the extra crew quarters for gunners.

...However, I'd actually say this doesn't look too bad. I'm a total sucker for missile boats like this that can spam endless volleys of missiles out the front, so the missile tubes are acceptable, and the gun count isn't necessarily "cluttered" compared to a good many other ships I've seen before (though obviously I can't say whether the ship could mount them all).

I also like the sort of "manta ray" shape the main hull has. Gives it a very menacing look.


Buuut... I do have some criticisms.

To begin with, I don't think the horseshoe-shaped section that the warp nacelles (or whatever they are in Atnlay tech) looks good in the slightest. It's ugly, very blocky and doesn't blend well with the ship, and even if we're talking practicality over form I'll point out that a propulsion system that's so off-axis would not work well.

That's my biggest disappointment with the ship by far. Other than that... well, it's kind of studdy, and while I don't have an easy solution for much of it (the hull's shape almost requires the stud-topped wing plates), some smooth plates or a little SNOT work might help to make it more visually-appealing. Especially on the tops of the warp thrusters/nacelles/whatevers.
And as to the weapons, cutting down on maybe 2-4 of the bigger turrets would help. And maybe reworking the missile tubes to be a bit cleaner too.


Lastly, as to the story, to clarify that the Sacrificial Victim is actually the goodguy (which WAS hard to discern from the story ), what if you added a third section from the viewpoint of the Sacrificial Victim's captain?

@arik: Those are my weapons to (almost) accurate scale, the only weapons small enough to not show are the anti-air guns and the torpedo launchers.

Thanks for your critque, I'm going to start work on a replacement gunboat in the semi-near future.

Commander Ant wrote:@Jace: If you don't like the missiles on the nacclles then I probably shouldn't post my PPT Skater (old ship that I never really intended to post, though I might re-do it as a civilian private ship ala privatejet-like type thing.)

And given the general consensus about the ship, I have come up with a decent in-story explanation for it's removal, once I build a better gunboat.

Although, while it looks like there's alot of weapons, there really aren't. Just 19 turrets, missiles, and a main cannon-thingy. I bet if I took out just the bolt turrets it wouldn't look so cluttered. But ah well, whatever, there I go justifying my ship again.

Anywho, using an in-story reason to get rid of it wouldn't be all that bad either, as PPT ships aren't supposed to look too much like the federation's ships anyways. Again, I just have to build a better gunboat first.

No, like I said it's the way they're mounted I don't like. That, and like Arik said (and I somehow missed) how the nacelles themselves are mounted on the ship. Nor am I saying it's too many for realism, but the visual aspect of it makes it look like there are.

I look forward to what you come up with in the future, though.

The original design of the ship came from dino, he made a much smaller cleaner ship than I have up there.

I have to think of a good gunboat platform first.  Maybe just a flying stick, with weapons from end to end. Kinda like a B-2, but not angled and with alot more guns.

Nah....

As about everyone knows, very many of my end-of-the-CL era ships, particularly Star Fighters, absolutely bristle with weaponry. So really I don't mind an overabundance of weapons, though nowadays I just make long rows of torpedo tubes and that's it. Maybe building a ship with smaller, less protruding, and less detailed weapons would accomplish two things:

1. A "clean" enough look.
2. Lots and lots of weapons!

Like look here.

Spoiler:

I use the flat tile with the vents atop to symbolize torpedo tubes. Maybe make a line of these between two layers of ship and have a torpedo tube line.

I think Arik said everything I wanted to say, but was too polite to.

@jonneh: Ok, Glad to know that atleast Arik can be straight forward about it.

@talmid: yeah but those weapons are so smaaaaaalll. I must have bigger weapons!