So...this is a thing I just did in a couple hours...

(whistles, long and slow. Then claps)

Very nice! I liked the tan missile pods, in of them-self, but I think that they were out of place on that fighter. I think they'd be good on a hover gunship or A-10 Warthog type fighter though.

Very nice work. You have considerable skill.

And I didn't mean that the SNOT was gone, just covered with plates.

Again, well done. I like this craft, it looks like a semi-modern/near future design, well done!

Mightyman wrote:Yes, it looks much better without the pod; the one thing is that it needs something in the middle, something between the bomb bay and innermost missile- another, perhaps? IDK, although it looks really cool regaurdless.

Yeah, I just tried to figure something out - didn't work. Anything I've tried just hangs too low.

Maxwell Augustus Damirius wrote:This is one snazzy plane. The angling engines are great, and while a few of the weapons are a tad bulky it still pulls off a speedy, streamlined look very well. Great job!

Yes, I suppose they're bulky, but they're from a bomber design (that I did use on a smaller jet) so I guess that would be part of it. Then again this keeps on looking like a long-range fighter-bomber to me.

Talmid wrote:I have an idea for detailing the wings.  You could paint an entire wing section in a different color, like metallic dark gray or red or blue or green.

That works very nicely, and I did just that, with my signature Earth Blue accent since that seems to be my scheme of things.

Accents:

I might've gotten a bit carried away, though.

Dino27 wrote:(whistles, long and slow. Then claps)

Very nice! I liked the tan missile pods, in of them-self, but I think that they were out of place on that fighter. I think they'd be good on a hover gunship or A-10 Warthog type fighter though.

Very nice work. You have considerable skill.

And I didn't mean that the SNOT was gone, just covered with plates.

Again, well done. I like this craft, it looks like a semi-modern/near future design, well done!

The tan missiles do well on the Badger and even the Coyote, if you'll recall, but in a row. I might try them as a rack/pod setup on the Badger, maybe generate some space so they're all less crowded like PXR kept saying they were... Did anybody understand what he kept saying about that? It still bugs me to this very day...

Thank you for your compliments, Dino.

@Jace: Bout what? I find this payload just fine. Anyway, looks good in earth blue. IK Talmid suggested different colors, but you could use profile bricks, those things with the gaps, and the bricks with knobs to add on stuff without taking away from the overall sleekness of the wings. Anyways, cannons look good!

OK, I understand. bit of a shame, but still really cool anyway.

I don't think you overdid the accents at all; I thought they came out quite nicely.

I like the added color, but I'd personally skip the paint on the outer-side surface of the air intakes/wing section, and just leave the innermost and outermost stripes on each wing, along with the tail color. Anyways, again, NICE work!

PXR wrote:@Jace: Bout what? I find this payload just fine. Anyway, looks good in earth blue. IK Talmid suggested different colors, but you could use profile bricks, those things with the gaps, and the bricks with knobs to add on stuff without taking away from the overall sleekness of the wings. Anyways, cannons look good!

I meant the Badger bomber - you kept saying something or other would hit another warhead when it fired...

But thank you for the other compliments!

Mightyman wrote:OK, I understand. bit of a shame, but still really cool anyway.

I don't think you overdid the accents at all; I thought they came out quite nicely.

Thank you, MM.

Dino27 wrote:I like the added color, but I'd personally skip the paint on the outer-side surface of the air intakes/wing section, and just leave the innermost and outermost stripes on each wing, along with the tail color. Anyways, again, NICE work!  

Funny, I like the middle stripes, since they go all the way from the tail to the nose, whereas the inner ones that go into the engine areas bothered me - the gap was annoying.

I must admit that the fact that they runt he entire length of the craft is aesthetically pleasing.

Very nice! I like the overall shape of the craft very much!

Ooooooh... This is why I need to stick around here more.  


Well, I know this is late, but this, ARC, is absolutely beautiful.

I'll give you my usual critiquing, but it'll be unusually short this time.

-Try switching to just two stripes per side instead of three, like Dino said. Though I agree with you that the innermost stripe is probably the one to go.
-The nose is slightly too pointy for my liking. Maybe try cutting off the antenna and smaller cone pieces, though swapping the whole thing for a more blunt-ish design could work really well too.
-Unlike everyone else, I actually prefer the tannish four-missile wingtip pod you had earlier. And maybe angle it slightly out, so it looks like the wing-mounted missiles some IRL jets have. In fact, my advice would be to try moving the missile armament more farther-out, too.

...And that's it.

But I love it. Absolutely love it.

Lord Admiral Ariklego wrote:Ooooooh... This is why I need to stick around here more.  


Well, I know this is late, but this, ARC, is absolutely beautiful.

I'll give you my usual critiquing, but it'll be unusually short this time.

-Try switching to just two stripes per side instead of three, like Dino said. Though I agree with you that the innermost stripe is probably the one to go.
-The nose is slightly too pointy for my liking. Maybe try cutting off the antenna and smaller cone pieces, though swapping the whole thing for a more blunt-ish design could work really well too.
-Unlike everyone else, I actually prefer the tannish four-missile wingtip pod you had earlier. And maybe angle it slightly out, so it looks like the wing-mounted missiles some IRL jets have. In fact, my advice would be to try moving the missile armament more farther-out, too.

...And that's it.

But I love it. Absolutely love it.

Ask and ye (ye especially) shall receive:

Spoiler:

Nice! Great SNOT work with the wings.

You know, if you wanted to keep the tan missiles, instead of having a rack of them on each wing, you could just have one on the very end of each wing. That way you can have more weapons ( ) and the wings still look nice and air-worthy. The blue detailing is great, too.

Lord General Spud wrote:Nice! Great SNOT work with the wings.

You know, if you wanted to keep the tan missiles, instead of having a rack of them on each wing, you could just have one on the very end of each wing. That way you can have more weapons ( ) and the wings still look nice and air-worthy. The blue detailing is great, too.

I am thinking about setting those up under the wing, and overall trying to make the under-wing mounts more modular, and then adding a wingtip mount. So basically it would have ten mounts, plus the dozen SDBs in the internal storage. I kind of like the idea of having racks somewhere, though, kind of like with the Badger, but this is more of a jack-of-all-trades type of F-22 Raptor/F-35 Lightning II fighter so I probably won't go with that.

EDIT:
So, I did some tinkering, and here's what I have right now:

New Combat Fighter:

That is a beautiful fighter, Jace! I love how it progressed as posts went by. You've done an excellent job!

Thank you, Scare! It's not quite where I want it to be, but I think to get it there would require a complete overhaul, and if you all haven't noticed my rate of production is, and always has been, rather slow due to the amount of other responsibilities I have, plus my general lack of proficiency with LDD, and LDD's general lack of cooperation in several regards with either of my laptops.

Nonetheless, I have been contemplating the idea of using AutoCAD to generate wire-frame models of my designs as they develop, if only because that's a program with which I have more time to work and it also works far more reliably. I can also create much more detail and do more than I can with LDD in terms of proportion and shape. That's one of the reasons I've only ever posted like three ships on here - I can't get LEGO bricks to make the shapes I want worth a penny.

Anyway, I do appreciate your compliment.

Say, what's AutoCAD? Is it sort of a CGI designer? If it's free to download and free from ads, I would really be interested in it as I have always wanted to make non-LEGO versions of my ships.

I've been considering that too, ARC. I have to do Computer Science 150 next semester, so I think I'll get into it then. I wish we could graduate from LEGO modelling, it's a nice medium for beginners, but I'd like to get some more realistic models going. xD

But we should definitely try to build them on the same scale; it would be awesome to put them in the same images as the LEGO-modeled ships for comparison, rather than beginning an entirely new scale/style.

Eh... I think I'll stick to LDD, TBH. It's what I'm used to, and it's one of the primary reasons I've stayed. If it is free, I might make something with it, but probably not.

AutoCAD is free, but CPU-intensive. I don't think it's tooooo complicated.

I picked up the basics of AutoCAD pretty quickly, and I'm getting my certification at the end of the school year this year, after working with it for two years. There's some tutorials in the program itself, and plenty online, as well as instruction manuals (more like textbooks) that you can find, too.

I also like the idea of comparing them to LEGO models, though I have no idea what your actual minifig scale is, SD. Someone mentioned that you'd nuked out the maths on that, so I'm assuming that's the scale to which you are referring.

But yeah I'm looking forward to making some nice, proportional, detailed models in AutoCAD. I actually just run it off of an external hard drive dedicated to the program and its files, so I've never had a problem yet.

Our scale is super simple-- 1 meter equals 2 studs. Jred doesn't build on that scale (which is why all of his ships are actually smaller than the models represent), but very nearly everyone else does. MM builds on some crazy scale that I don't understand but is basically the same. xD

By my understanding, everyone used 1:10 studs/meters, except Dino and RMM (who are closer to 1:12) and myself (1:9.5).

I think they MIGHT have been talking about minifig scale?? IDK

Almost everyone used 1 stud = 12.5 meters... but these days most people use 1=10.

Ok, yeah, minifig scale makes more sense. No idea about that (although he did reference my scale, which I believe was a reference to the time we discussed SW/ST tech, which would in turn mean he's referring to ships).

IDK, TBH.

Oh, MINIFIG scale? That's just building so a standard minifig could use the ship. Like building starfighters with minifig-size cockpits. xD

I think that no one has any idea what we're talking about now...

Also your friendly, crazy, forgetful, neighborhood mod is reminding you and himself that we are now very off topic and should continue further off-topic discussions elsewhere. Thank you.