Disc's of Doom

[Knight26]

Back to the old nose for now, I do plan to redo it a little bit, we will see how it comes out. But I did rescale the underslung MDC for a three barrelled cannon, I think it looks pretty good, but will need to clean it up a bit, thoughts?

[Zentrandude]

sorry to borrow your design but I think it may look better as a heavy weapons platform, a gunship, or a ground assault vechical. the bottom is a turret and the front center gun is an high energy cannon. the 4 side gun's mount its looks bit flakey. but if you did something like that im sure it will look much better than that 5 min job.

[Knight26]

Interesting idea, but not for this one, maybe another craft by that manufacturer.

[Kin]

I like you disc of doom far more better than the previous one. It looks awesome.

The placement of the cannons above next to the cockpit... seems to be a dangerous idea..

Edited February 21, 2005 by Kin

[Knight26]

Update: Couldn't work on the ship long because of the weather and lack of crew support. That has let me however work on this fighter. I completely redid the cockpit and I like how it turned out. I will move the cannon to limit weapons flash as suggested and possibly add a flash guard to it as well. Next I will work on the ventral fins, finish the thruster packs and flesh out the cockpit pod, adding the tub and making the whole seperatable pod.

@kin: someone call the grammar police, could you possibly rewrite that a little more coherently?

[Mechamaniac]

Actually, I kind of like the non-canopied version too.

Looks like it could be a drone or ghost fighter variant.

[Knight26]

Update: I redid the ventral fins, scaling them down 25% and then adding a second fin canted out, I may reshape them and change the angle on them. I also formed the initial cockpit pod and cut out the port for it. I will detail it up with control interefaces, explosive bolts, rocket motors, etc... Thoughts?

[Knight26]

Here is the pod, as for a "ghost" or AI version, there will be some backstory on the AI wars that explains why neither side uses AI controlled weapons platforms, be they fighters, tanks, or capital ships. Some rogue AI craft will show up though from time to time, and they will be seriously mofos.

[Knight26]

Back from the dead, sorry for the lack of updates, real life got in the way, again and again and again, and that doesn't count the hottie that has me all buggered up right now. Anyway not much to report right now, I made the nose gear, and rebuilt the MDCs, their resemblance to a certain anime mech's gunpod is purely intentional, lol. Next on the block I will finish up the main landing gears, recut the cockpit tub, redo and detail the heavy Plasers, probably move them around a little too. I will also redo the ventrals since right now they are just a scaled down dorsal tail. COmments always appreciated.

[Knight26]

And mounted, you can kind of make out the nose gear down there, look familiar to anyone?

Edited March 1, 2005 by Knight26

[Knight26]

Ok, the undercarriage is in, it's basically a simplified version of the F-16's undercarriage without the locking arms. I may or may not add those at a later date, any thoughts? ENjoy the montage.

[Opus]

I think it might look better if you moved the cockpit back a little bit.

Here's an ultra crude drawing to illustrate.

[Knight26]

Interesting idea Opus, probably won't impliment on the Mk1 though, and it looks like it might interfere too much with pilot visibility., besides that the only way to do that now would be to either 1) redo the whole fuselage, or 2) redo the wing, neither of which i want to do right now. I'll play with it when I start on the Mk2 though.

We have achieved design lock all the major components except for the heavy Plasers, which will redone and the detailing effort which will commence after the heavy cannons are redone and the missile packs detailed.

[Knight26]

Ok, no work on the landing gear today, will eventually get back to them though. However, today brought about the redevelopment of the Heavy PLASER cannon, look familiar anyone? ANyway after I mounted it I realized it still will blind the pilot, doh! I have a couple fixes in mind for this: 1) shorten the barrel, it's longer then it needs to be, quite a bit so. 2) Add a flash guard onto the inboard side of the barrel, this will however impinge upon pilot visibility, any comments?

[Knight26]

ANd this shot I thought just came out interesting, I like how I got an unintentional glow in the Plaser barrels.

[Zentrandude]

hmm interesting front view. the cockpit from that angle has a slight A-6 to it.

[Knight26]

Update time: Sorry for the lack there of, been a busy few days. I cranked this update out this evening, can't at work right now since I am in a stupid class. Anyway here are the changes:

1) I redid the vernier thrusters, I'll post a close up later, but they are now circle-bar verniers, similar to on the VF-1, just another Macross nod, lol.

2) I shortened the end barrel segment on the Heavy Plaser by 1 ft, now it is well behind the pilot and still plenty long enough so the blinding problem is all but solved.

No other updates as yet but I may shorten the underslung guns pods, they are a bit long, need to check them against a few others I have first before I make that call to be sure though. I still need to add a few more features before I proceed with the detailing, I can't decide right now if I should go with the old docking ports or adapt the Phantom-4 type to Solaar. The adapting makes more sense, adding commonality, but then I will have to redo the docking claws, no biggie though. So any thoughts on how to proceed?

[Knight26]

Pic 2:

@ZD: I know what mean I got the same impression when I looked at it the first time.

[Knight26]

First go at a registry view, with two small bonus'.

[Zentrandude]

why not just raise the cockpit so you can have the top lasers as long as you want without it harming the pilot.

[Knight26]

Ok, small update, but I was working for a while to figure out the docking claw arrangement. I finally decided to have them enclosed, with doors that slide open for docking. Every other arrangement made them too large and or complex, this proved to be the best arrangement I could devise. The old claw would not have worked either as the new weapons arrangement would not let it fit. As it is now the claw will have limited room to work, but still has enough working area to allow the claw to function. Tomorrow I will start in on the detailing work, once that is done I will start on the Mark-2 which will feature a new wing and weapons config.

[Knight26]

@ZD: I actually shortened the barrel length to prevent the pilot from getting blinded, the barrel ends about a foot behind the pilot's seat, so the only way he could get blinded is if he was stupid enough to look at the barrel instead of his target. Linked in Canopy polarization is a wonderful thing.

[Knight26]

Small/large update. Look closely you will see a major change to the design. Give up? Basically I redid the fuselage with elliptical cylinders, getting rid of the segementation. It looks much better I think. However some problems have now cropped up that I need to try and fix. 1) the rear engine section no longer wants to attach. and 2) the nose under the cockpit pod as a distinct side chin. I am trying to decide how and what to do about that. I may leave it as is, try to null it out, or take one step further and give intake/exhaust ports there, make it look like and A-6. I have not decide, will play with it this weekend. thoughts?

[Knight26]

under the nose, you can see the lip a little better here.

[Zentrandude]

you would either have to pull the vertex back to smooth it out or if its too much work just delete the offending sides and rebuild the mesh.

if you want it would be great honor if you use the paint scheme and the squads logo.

boomers forever

edit: resized pic

Edited March 11, 2005 by Zentrandude

[Knight26]

AARGGHH!!!! Well after two days of redoing the fuselage to make it rounded instead of segmented, two days to get it as close to perfect as I like I have run into a brick wall, hard. Now I have to make the decision on how to detail this thing. The problem is with the fuselage rounded like this I can't cut in proper panel lines, AUTOCAD for some reason does not like to chamfer any surface that is not circular, any kind of ellipse and it throws a fit. So then I have to fillet it instead, which never looks right, and when i try to put it back together, aarggh, another fit. So now I am at decision time on how to proceed. I may just say the heck with it and do all the details in as part of the texture, or go back to the segmented version, any ideas?

[Knight26]

Thanks for the suggestion Zentran Dude, but I am at wits end on this one, heck I may just scrap the fuselage and restart fresh.

[Knight26]

OK it hit me today at work as I pulled up an older version of the redesign, since that is all I have access to, thank you microsoft, while my main computer is in the shop. Anyway I was playing around with a few ideas on how to redo the fuselage when I came up with something that might just work really well. So I decided to basically scrap what I had done so far and start work on the "non-sol" as I am calling it now. Originally I was going to go for a completely contemporary type design, no disk wing, with a high mounted cockpit. The disk wing crept back in but a high mounted cockpit and somwhat F-16 like fuselage emerged. It will still need a lot of fine tuning and tweaking, but I am think I may go this route the rest of the way through. I might even make it a single engine design, doubtful but could happen at this point. It is still rough at this stage and reusing a lot of components but let me know what you think.

Edited March 15, 2005 by Knight26

[Knight26]

Some more thinking out loud on the non-sol, the single and twin engined versions. The single engine looks like it will have too many issues to go though so I will likely go with the single engined verison, the cockpit is still temporary at this point, thoughts?

[Knight26]

And the twin engine version.

[Opus]

I definately like the two engines better. I think you should move the cockpit back to the center of the craft and jam all of the guns in the nose. With everything upfront it looks too front heavy and awkward. Just my $.02.

[Knight26]

Other then the cockpit and the end of the barrels, there really isn't that much up forward, everything else is pretty much mid or aft mounted.

[Knight26]

Paging Micheal Jackson's Plastic Surgeon:

Well my main computer is still in the shop, but the rework effort continues. The Non-Sol is really starting to grow on me, other then some issues with it that I still have to work out. RIght now I am playing around with the nose and have come up with two new nose concepts for it. THe first is a more pointed/tradtional nose, something I've noticed that few of my designs really have. The second is what I am calling the duck bill nose. I am slightly torn as to which one to go with. If I do go ahead with the non-sol I will refine the basck end, possibly move the docking mounts back there, heck I have redesign the docking arm anyway, and redo the cockpit, It is not sitting well with me right now. I can't decide whether to put the effort into going with a full bubble canopy or making something more like on the new BSG vipers, or even possibly something like on a Cobra, flat lines, but bubbled glass. Suggestions as always are appreciated.

[Knight26]

And the Duck Nose:

[Knight26]

Update:

Well for now I am going with the pointed nose, I think it looks pretty good. I redid the cockpit and kind of like how it turned out. There will be some alteration done to it on the Mk-3 model. I've also reshaped the aft end, I think it came out better and put in the landing gear, had to redesign the mains to make them fit the design. I look forward to everyones comments. Also it looks like the old Solaar will be fading away and this new solaar will take its place. Come on folks, let me hear some feedback.