Oolite Bulletins

Definitely like that double border. (suspect Disembodied is experimenting in Power-point like myself).
Still not convinced on what should be inside.

Some more experimentation. (Everything is available in SVG format for free.)



I'm not too worried about details disappearing in game. I use my family crest on my cobra, and I think it looks ok.

I've squeezed a little bit more complexity out of my available pool of talent:

What do you guys think about asking Thargoid if we can use variants of his Wild Ships stations and Keeper's spara's textures (but in imperial whiteish) for the stations in HIMSN?

Edit: Sorry Keeper. Fixed now.

Gimi wrote:

What do you guys think about asking Thargoid if we can use variants of his Wild Ships stations and spara's textures (but in imperial whiteish) for the stations in HIMSN?

Sounds good to me - they look pretty spiffy!

Indeed. I was very impressed when I saw those the other night.

Gimi wrote:

What do you guys think about asking Thargoid if we can use variants of his Wild Ships stations and spara's textures (but in imperial whiteish) for the stations in HIMSN?

Have to correct this one. You mean Keeper's textures and shaders. I wish I could produce some thing like that .

As a side note, I think that the modularity of the Kiotas would suit HIMSN quite nicely.

Just to through a curveball into the logo mix (I'm American, so I can use a baseball reference!): A crown might be a bit "racist" in that perhaps not all species are physically capable of wearing one, and/or may not have crowns in their culture. Maybe a design that somehow incorporates the joining of different elements of the different species' bodies -- paw, thorax/pincer, web foot, hand, forked tongue... I dunno. Or just a DNA design in general. Maybe Thargoids, while seemingly insectoid, are built somehow without DNA, whereas all the felines, rodents, lizards, frogs, insects etc. of this Navy are a united force of DNA-constructed life forms... That's a big supposition though.

An interesting curveball, Keeper - a valid point, which I'm inclined to agree with.

As for the remark about decals requiring shaders, well, as all Navy ships would have the decal, it would be put on the diffuse texture itself and not applied as a decal through a shader. We still could add a bonus for shader users -- ship names and serial numbers, or different amounts of mini Thargoid logos on the fighters representing that pilot's kills.

As far as listed species go: Xeer and Birera are both Frog worlds, and Zaeredre is Colonials. Though, given that no world is marked as "mixed species", there is either very little interspecies mixing in colonisation (which feels implausible to me if we're then showing solid cooperation in space) or the listed species is just the one with the largest population and might still be a 15% "minority".

Still, if the founding world was Zaeredre, and the emblem is kept out of tradition, there's certainly room for human-influenced design features. That's a couple of very high-tech worlds in Birera and Zaeredre (which I tend to think of as older and more likely to be mostly single-species; perhaps Xeer is their joint colonisation project?) - in that case perhaps it just needs some amphibian influences to the design too, and not a full multi-species design

(The wings are definitely an imperial symbol, but perhaps a bit too close to those already used for Galcop? Not that the Galcop symbol is particularly multi-species...)

Keeper wrote:

As for the remark about decals requiring shaders, well, as all Navy ships would have the decal, it would be put on the diffuse texture itself and not applied as a decal through a shader. We still could add a bonus for shader users -- ship names and serial numbers, or different amounts of mini Thargoid logos on the fighters representing that pilot's kills.

Well, some time in the future I was hoping (after we get an HIMSN art director in place) to have Command pendants.
That would mean that one ship in each squadron would have an additional logo.
Also, branch insignia. Logistics anaconda would have different markings from an Anaconda missile corvette.
Possibly even squadron and battle group crests.
(But this is easy for me to say since I'm actively outsourcing the hard parts.)

Regarding politically correct symbols.
That is a debate that can go on forever. The idea is to make something that picks up on HIMSN as mentioned just briefly in the original Elite game missions. I personally would want something that associates with "Imperial" and the first thing that comes to mind is a crown or an eagle, both commonly used.

I am certainly open for suggestions, but I'm fairly close to making a strong recommendation for the blue 8-pointed Star with the blue/yellow border. (That is unless something better comes up).

As for what goes in the middle, that is an open question but I think there should be something "Imperial" there.

So if you have suggestions please give some examples.

I actually like the interwoven star that Cody brought up best. It very nicely shows the linear connection between the 8 galaxies and looks, to me, more pleasant than a solid 8-spiked star. The solid variety has, again, to me, too much of a comic look, whether with inset borders or not.

More experimentation:

That perfect octagon within the one on the left is crying out for the right symbol - not too large, though.