That sounds like a good idea. Sorry if I made more work for you but it does sound very nice and very well thought out.




I am playing with forced persecutive to make the transport look very bulky. The saucer section is thicker but relatively small compared to the rest to give a look of greater size. This will all come apart in a 2D image to show the building of a station is underway.

just out of curiosity, how big are transports suppoused to be in comparison to, say, a miranda or an excelsior?

Ooh, that sounds like a great idea, Eon! Design linages are always a great thing, and whilst some pople might not like you toying with an established design, the Edward is NOT a canon ship - therefore 99% of people won't mind you changing her design.

As for size, it's not something i've thought about. Gernally, the ships should be big though, because bigger is better for cargo space. I've looked for a size comparison chart, but there aren't any with the Edward because it isn't a canon ship.

Does the size of the ship actualy matter at the moment though? I'm not a modeller so don't understand these things much, but I thought the actual size of the model depended on whatever settings you put in the game later?

In Armada, you can change the size of a ship in the .odf files by just changing a number, eg. 1 1.5 would make the ship 50% bigger.

I think ship size is irelevant cause is easy to scale it up or down

I just made up the official system of scale by ship class. It is tinny, minny, small, not so small, about right, fat, largish, really big, gigantic and off the charts.

I want to give the impression of great size as a transport will turn into a station. For an early transport that is fat class. I guess, as you have said, the devs will scale ships to what looks right as they load the models. It might be interesting, as you suggest, to see and discuss the relative size of ships when we are in alpha or beta testing.

What option do you guys think is best or has this already been decided?

I do not recall that we have a 2D image planed for as seen in the original game on completion of a colonization. I will try to come up with something based on my Colonyship and the people mover ships (the later lacking a 3D model for the game)

sure. still I'm feeling uncomfortable with the idea how big that colony ship must be in-game if roughly 3 billion people should fit into it..?..

I see three possible solutions.

First is that the colony ship represent the transport of infrastructure for construction on the new colony world. The billions of people come during colonization in people mover ships. This could be depicted only in a still 2D image and no peopel mover ships are made as 3D models and are not subject to 3D combat. You see something like this in the original game.

Second is a fleet of ships. This would make for a complicated 3D combat.

The third option I see is to say it is just a game and what you see in the colony ship is just representational. (Kind of option one but without any attempt to rationalize the numbers.)

What option do you guys think is best or has this already been decided?

I do not recall that we have a 2D image planed for as seen in the original game and used on completion of a colonization. I will try to come up with something based on my Colonyship and the people mover ships (the later lacking a 3D model for the game)

the only thing I would amend on botf col. ship handling would be to increase durability of a col. ship which represents a whole fleet. They should hold out longer when having an escort fleet than they did in botf or should have a better chance to retreat (only with sizeable escort!). I agree however on them being easily shot down when left un-escorted. Retreating should not be allowed in this case (or only after some 30-40 combat turns when still alive) since they get quickly caught up in warp and shot at again.

don't think we have to do/change anything on the 3D model scaling-wise however regarding this issue. That only affects the 3D-engine calculation-wise.

So we will stick with just one type of 3D Colonyship model per teck level as in BOTF and us a 2D image to represent the colonization. (the appearance of more ships will be represented here to explain the billions of people?)

So let it be writen so let it be done?

yes I'd say so.

It would be tidious to have to battle against probably a million colony ships (3000 each is a reasonable number I think -> 3 Billion..) in-game lol so let's just go the easy way.

If you want to make a colonization image, then go ahead, Kenneth. Until then though, we can use the one from BOTF - I already uploaded that particular image in the Random Event Images Section. I guess that was a poor choice of name on my part, but there didn't seem any point in creating a new folder for just one image.



I've uploaded your Yorkshire class model to BOTF2.com, Eon.

Oh. OK. That is nice. Keep up the great work. I will stay with filling up the ship list for now so we keep moving in the direction of beta testing.. If there is time late in the project I will make a new image with our ships. With layers you could slide in and out different planets, colonyships, peopel movers and the like.

So as to keep the numbers up per people mover ships we will limit passengers to one checked bag and one carry on. Meals, pillows and the toilet are an extra charge.

We could say that what the colony ship brings to the new world is a factory complex. It would not bring the people. They come later when the world is ready for them. With a factory complex you can then both terraform and consume local raw material to support habitation. This would include building housing and farms and schools and fan based computer games. The people come later when this complex can meet their basic needs locally. Shipping everything from the home world would not be a viable colonization in our games. Think of it as a build a factory on this planet ship. We could even call it a colonization factory ship. It is similar to the build a base in space transport in some respects.

does the image of the transport you need have to be 270x225 or 200x150? (asking because Malvoisin wrote the latter scale in a previous post)

The 2D image that goes into the image library on SharePoint for each ship should be in 270 x 225 .png file type with a transparent background.

http://www.botf2.com/Image%20Library/Fo ... tion&View={2EAB3CAC-2EF3-4EA6-85DB-87B0D9B58BA0}

SharePoint thumbnail images add in a white background.

I'll be able to scale it down to 200x150 for our needs, eon

Bleh, I'll just make two images, one for the sharepoint web and one for you Malvoisin, I'm feeling generous (?)


(ok I just had a wonderful night, too much alcohol and laughter, please bare with me )

Yorkshire (270x225) PNG:
http://img174.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 70xlq5.png
Yorkshire (200x150) PNG:
http://img261.imageshack.us/my.php?imag ... 00xet8.png

Also, here is a sample of how the Transport II is coming along. The texture will most likely contribute to the idea of a hybrid between the I and III.

Will there be different versions of the stations constructed by these transports according to the upgrade of ship class?

Very nice looking ships. The evolution of ships looks good and will add to game play. I look forward to seeing them game ready on Share Point.

Considering the number of ships it will take to get to something like a beta test I have put the 2D images of Transports (in the process of constructing stations) on hold for now. My main efforts are at getting enough ships game ready on Share Point to make testing possible.

Having those 2D construction images will really add to the final game but I just do not want to take the time away from the ship list at this point in development.

This is my graduation present to Mike Strobel - The Federation Transport I.

Umm...WOW!

Big changes over the last pics, Kenneth. I'll update the post. Actually i've been a bit lazy lately and need to make a few updates...

Hell yeah, my own ship. Man your stations, beeeeeitch .

I've added in the ships to the thread now, Kenneth. Sorry for the delay with your colony ship.

I've started uploading the ship images to BOTF2.com. I figured it would be better to have the images all in one place rather than spread around here-there-and-everywhere. It's also safer for the images coz there is less chance of losing individual images.

I haven't finished uploading all the images - i'm about half way through the federation at the moment. The images are all of varying quality, size, camera angles, etc. Some are untextured or incomplete, whilst some are renders whilst others are taken direct from modeling software.

I'm going to be PM'ing the contributors of "missing" or incomplete models over the next few days as well, so keep your eyes open for some more updates - both in models, and images.

Thanks for the followup with the other model builders. That will be great. There is enough on the list that I can find unclaimed ships to build for now. The time will come though when we need to go back over the list and see what really has been completed and what is so much vaporware.



I see the next orphan ship on the list is the Federation SURVEYOR I
-Icarus Class TECH 0. Let me clam this as my next project. This well be more along the lines of what you see in the original BOTF. I will try not to go off the deep end with this design.

It looks like Fireball already did this Surveyor II that looks like the original game ship.





I need to make one that looks like Star Trek TOS and pre to this later generation ship.

Kind of like this

Kenneth you are genuine shipmaker!

This is nude model of Acamrian fighter I hope is worth something

Its really great that things seem to be picking up since Christmas, feels like a real buzz.

Keep up the good work

Regards Wolfe

Yeah, especially after that downtime near the end of winter. These forums were dead for a few weeks, now they're alive and kicking again .

Few extra hands would be great!!

@Matress sign me up for acmarian warship