Development: Waka Ships

[Simon B]

Star Waka Ships Pack
Originally just these two ships ...


Basically - I couldn't sleep.
The OXP is out - comment on where such ships can fit will be welcome. Including a good price and role. Basically they look like iron-ass ships to me... something I said I wouldn't do but ho hum.

I did the original Tuatara as practice for making multi-model ships, and gave it the iguana oxp for something to do. Making a tri-nacelle version haunted my sleep and suddenly I had the design complete in my head.

So at 2am, I'm modeling. I also cut apart my original Tuatara to use the same engines. Even though I'm supposed to be working on the Typhoons.

Now ... if the Tuatara is basically an iguana, the Taniwha must be half-again as tough... er...

It's a little on the tall side - tight fit in the dock? Do I need to shave a meter or so? I guess I'll find out.

Now - the temptation is to use this model to see if I really understand quaternions - thus I could get the two ships, total of 7 models worth, with only three dat files.

Bearing in mind that the iguana has two fwd-mount military lasers...

Stats:
Tuatara:
dimentions: 69x82x11m
speed: 440mLS (originally 550 but...)
capacity: 8+8
armament:
2xfwd laser
4xmissile

Taniwha:
dimentions: 133x70x62
speed: 660mLS (... would have been 550+275=825?)
capacity: 11+12
armament:
3xfwd laser
6xmissile
naval energy unit standard?

* the first number is the amount of space in the main hull. The rest is from stuffing carge in the nacells - 4TC cap each, with a bit of creative welding.

For those who don't know, I'll save you a google. I'm using NZ Maori words -
Waka (WOCK-ah) is a boat or ship.
Tuatara (too-ah-TAR-ah) = NZs living fossel
Taniwha (tanny-FAR)= Dragon - an elemental spirit or genius loci.

Perhaps Star Waka should be Waka Atua? [edit: nope - Rangiwaka]

[technically a Waka is a coastal boat - including the war canoe... designating Rangiwaka kinda makes the entire sky into metaphorical "coastal waters". Which is kinda what starships do. Whatever - sounds like good marketing to me...)]

I've added a bunch of other ships since the original post - enjoy.

[Lestradae]

There is no OXP yet - comment on where such ships can fit will be welcome. Including a good price and role. Basically they look like iron-ass ships to me... something I said I wouldn't do but ho hum.

Like your models!

I`d say, with those stats, the ships might fit into the niches of police or military of the "armed to the teeth" variant foremost, then perhaps really rich people or their bodyguards or politicians, last very successful pirates.

Perhaps for the bigwigs in corporate systems and for the underworld in high-TL anarchy systems?

Can`t sleep either

Cheers

L

[Ark]

Those ships look very similar with some Babylon 5 - Crusader ships
Not that this is necessary a bad think, although I am a little bit reluctant with "imported from other universe" ships.
Nevertheless they look very cool

[DaddyHoggy]

Fantastic ships!

Re:multiple forward lasers - is this implementable yet (NPCs I think yes - but not player ships...)?

[Commander McLane]

Re:multiple forward lasers - is this implementable yet (NPCs I think yes - but not player ships...)?

Exactly as you say.

[Sarin]

well you can get a bit around it by increasing weapon_energy for player variant. Tho the problem will be that it is just one beam.

[Simon B]

Those ships look very similar with some Babylon 5 - Crusader ships
Not that this is necessary a bad think, although I am a little bit reluctant with "imported from other universe" ships.
Nevertheless they look very cool 8)

I know what you mean - though you are thinking of the Excalibur of B5 "Cruisade".



There is a strong B5 influence in my recent designs - arachnid comes from the shadow battlecrabs. In the end, it will be difficult to come up with a ship that does not remind you of something. (Classic Cobra 3 reminded me of the Jupiter 7 from lost in space - the TV series.)

Similarly - the navy ships are too star-trek. Which I was a bit worried abot with these ships - pontoon-mounted nacelles... which is why I've avoided V mounts. However - a ^ shape ends up looking Klingon if I'm not careful.

I've added two more ships to the set - twin and single nacelle versions of the taniwha. They do look a bit klingon <sigh>.

[TGHC]

Brilliant ships, very uber though.

[Simon B]

I have been reading through screeds of discussions about quaternions and how they are painful to use.
[edited out huge post]

Nobody commented - so it's obviously fine.
I found it useful to print a table of sine and cosine-half-angles against full angles for every 5 degrees full angle.

[Simon B]

The initial OXP for the Waka Ships should hit my webite before the end of the week - I've been sidetracked by quaternions too much.

I STILL have been unable to get an oxp working in openstep format!!! I'm missing something important here.

Ships are:

Taniwha Tahi - iron-ass cruiser
Taniwha Rua - light cruiser
Taniwha Turu - destroyer

Tuatara - frigate/scout

Weta - fighter/courier

Thinking of including some of my previous designs in this bunch, under Maori Names...

Hiriwa Manu (Silver Flyer - a winged shuttle)
Pereki whakakopa (Flying Brick - transport)

namu (sandfly - nee krait)
naeroa (mosquito - nee Mamba)
naonao (midge - nee Sidewinder)
tātaka (beetle - nee Adder)
kapokapowai (dragonfly - nee Gecko)
weta (weta - nee Asp)

Which would produce 12 ships in the Waka Ariki stable.
Perhaps dedicate to Hine-nui-te-po - Goddess of night-time and dreams.

Meantime, I probably have time to upload a pic. Oh what the hell - if I can do that, I can upload the oxp - enjoy.

http://www.hbclinux.net.nz/oolite/waka.oxp.tar.gz


Note - the lasers do not shoot from the correct place... how to change the bounding box?

[pagroove]

Hey Simon:

Nice ships!
Good idea to use Maori names. Reminds me of my visit tho NZ four years ago!

[Commander McLane]

The developers are still busy on the laser-positions bug. It is going to be solved in one of the next releases.

[Simon B]

Ahhh... you misunderstand ... I got the arachnid weapons to fire from the main body (player) or out the nacelles (npc) OK - even though I could not get a weapon-offset, the lasers seemed to fire from each model's (0,0,0) - passing through the surface.

Looking at the pic above, the weapons seem to be firing well-in-front of this spot.

HOWEVER - as this sort of thing comes under a bugfix, I'll leave it alone.

Looking again though - perhaps the weapons are coming from the expected spot - which should be about half-way up the wing.

The OXP gets updated tonight (NZDT)
Includes double and single-nacelle versions of the Taniwha - they are more affordable and less powerful. Also the Tuatara, and a custom missile model... I was hoping to steal Griffs combat drone code.

All models with full shader effects.

I have now seen several of them in the game... I gave the smaller ones an escort role as if they were accompanying a very rich merchant. But I think I'll have to provide a trader for this!

I should be able to transfer the small ships later in the week. The temptation is to re-skin them...

[Simon B]

The waka.oxp has been updated - and includes many more ships ;) There is some clumsy re-skinning on some of the designs - new skins are welcome. I can supply blanks (white with edges drawn in) for those who want them.

[Simon B]

Weta - fighter/courier

Thinking of including some of my previous designs in this bunch, under Maori Names...

Hiriwa Manu (Silver Flyer - a winged shuttle)
Pereki whakakopa (Flying Brick - transport)

namu (sandfly - nee krait)
naeroa (mosquito - nee Mamba)
naonao (midge - nee Sidewinder)
tātaka (beetle - nee Adder)
kapokapowai (dragonfly - nee Gecko)
weta (weta - nee Asp)

Some of these ships have "special" models coming.

Weta has a chopped version - I basically cut away the original housing for the engines and exhaust, then did seperate madels for the STL drives, injectors, and added an exposed torus drive (spins and flashes). There are hotrod touches with various decorative pipes.

Namu has got spikier, significant hull mods, otherwise the same basic treatment. It is not supposed to be witchspace-capable, so, I left off the injectors and the torus. The engine is smaller as well - but this is the smallest of the ships.

Naeroa is getting the same treatment - using two of the Namu engines. It's bigger, after all.

I'm unsure if these should replace the previous designs as advanced models, with advanced stats (I'm calling them FeA editions to run them alongside for now.)

I'll try and get some pics for you in a bit. Lets see ... here goes:

The above was taken from the port side of the Namu FeA I was testing... the yellowy ship is the Namu (police version - but I got the scanclass wrong, now fixed). You can see the yellow flashers on the wingtips - I changed them for pure-white under the wings - which works better.

This ship is supposed to be a rival for the griff-krait ;) but it's got a way to go. What do you think?

The other two are top and bottom views of the Weta FeA (npc only - the player version has but one gun mounted to stick out the nose at (x,y)=(0,0)) so you can see the engine detail and the witchdrive effect. The purple glow changes size and shape out of sync with the blue torus spin.

A licencing note - the weta logo on the Weta is from Weta Digital as a homage. I should point out that it is, otherwise, a trademark.

I'll have to make another thread for these - also I need to study more how to get those metallic effects. However - I'm a bit sanguine about it... npc ships will mostly be seen too far away for such detail to show up.