New, Shiny Destroyers

The destroyers are the big heavy hitters of your fleet. Their job is to throw out as many punches as possible without being hit themselves

The US ones above are based off of a .50 cal round and an american two-pronged plug, respectively.

The soviet ones below, on the other hand, are meant to look like a vodka bottle (how original) and a nice little Ming dynasty vase. 

Both of these sets of concepts use engines stolen from an earlier piece. 

Capital Ships

Taking a couple of my previous engine designs I thought that I'd try to update the feel of my Capital Ship class.

Riffing heavily off of the main cultures that inspire the two factions I came up with the concepts above. Both of these designs are also based off of some of my earlier capital ship stuff as can be seen below.

Oh, and I though I'd throw this in for good measure. It's just  a side by side comparison of my very early ship class concepts next to my newer ones.

Planets

The game is set in space and planets are an important part of space in my opinion so I though I'd paint a few. Gives me a break from painting ships at least.

Ta-Dah! So the idea is that you have three types: gas giants, terrestrial planets and ice giants. In-game the notion is that control of gas giants is needed for a steady supply of fuel for your faction, terrestrial world are for your colonies and for metallic resources and your ice giants are for reagents to advance your factions technological prowess. 

Shuttles!!

I say shuttles, in-game they are supposed to be the "support frigate" class, but they're meant to look shuttle-like so I just call them shuttles. These frigates are the healer type ship for your fleet, very important for keeping the rest of your fleet up to scratch but very delicate.

The US ones above are very sleek and jet-like. Their CAC counterparts below however are meant to look beefier and more rugged, a couple aren't even really passable as shuttles.

Oh, and the antennae/satellite dish looking things on their noses are their heal beam emitters. They heal other ships by shooting a glowing green beam at them. Gotta love the realism...

   

Engines

Engines, for me, are the most fun part of a spaceship to design. The basis of an engine design can go on to help inform the design of other aspects of a ship. So with this in mind I did exactly what you would think I would do. Do some engine concepts.

My favourite are the second, forth, fifth and ninth but I'm quite proud of all of 'em.

Ship Re-thinking

One need only look at the time stamp for this post to know that I'm bad at this whole update-as-you-go-diary like aspect of blogging. For me it is something that you more so approach with a panicked scurry as the deadline looms. I works for me though, so I won't complain.

Taking on feedback from my presentation before Christmas I though I'd revisit the design of my destroyers to make them more fun and try and inject them with some more thematically-sensible pzazz rather than leave them as boring old cylinders.

      

The result. Gone are the trusses and solar panels and here are large, blimp-esque forms, over-the-top nose cones, nuclear warhead designs, be-engined space rocks and errrr... french fries. They're more fun and humorous and therefore more appropriate for the tone of the game.