Oolite Bulletins

great ships

Re-texture and remodeling of the Chrysopelea MK-I:







Provisional story:
Named after the flying snake from the distant planet Earth, this ship is a great all-rounder with passable top speeds and maneuverability. Despite its low energy capacity, it can take some fights, as the powerful heat radiators allow for a fast recharge rate. Besides that, it has four slots for missiles and some space for cargo. These qualities mean that you will encounter this ship from time to time. And not infrequently piloted by a pirate looking for your cargo.
(Maybe someone has a better idea or finds some mistakes, feel free to correct my broken English :)

Download (has also blue, dark gray and white versions)

Wiki

Is also available in the Expansion Manager.

I used the free student version of Substance Painter¹ to make these textures. This program makes it possible to create nice textures, even for people like me, who don't really know what they're doing. You basically can say, "I want this part to look like dirty metal, this part like shiny plastic and this part like painted steel with scratches" and it automatically generates nice textures.

¹ I basically send a certificate of enrollment from my university with all personal information redacted (even the name of the university) and I just got the Substance Painter license for one year, without any hassle ...

On a sidenote, is there a possibility to use transparency in a model? I know transparency is not trivial with sorting triangles and such, but maybe someone found a trick or something.

Looks great.

tsoj wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:51 am

Re-texture and remodeling of the Chrysopelea MK-I:

Provisional story:
Named after the flying snake from the distant planet Earth, this ship is a great all-rounder with passable top speeds and maneuverability. Despite its low energy capacity, it can take some fights, as the powerful heat radiators allow for a fast recharge rate. Besides that, it has six slots for missiles and some space for cargo. These qualities mean that you will encounter this ship from time to time. And not infrequently piloted by a pirate looking for your cargo.
(Maybe someone has a better idea or finds some mistakes, feel free to correct my broken English



I used the free student version of Substance Painter¹ to make these textures. This program makes it possible to create nice textures, even for people like me, who don't really know what they're doing. You basically can say, "I want this part to look like dirty metal, this part like shiny plastic and this part like painted steel with scratches" and it automatically generates nice textures.

First time I saw this ship I though this has to be made by those Sittin-Duck aliens from the 5th element.
The ship has an unique alien duck layout, imho.



Although I do not know of any Duck-a-like aliens in E/oolite.

The substance painter does an interesting job and the supplied textures ( good resolution ) gives it a nice look with the scuffed details,
although I missed an more shiny all metal version.

Perhaps you could start it's own thread or ( let it ) split it off so people can/could post additional retextures...

cbr wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:40 pm

Although I do not know of any Duck-a-like aliens in E/oolite.

'Fat birds' perhaps

Nice ship texture tsoj!

cbr wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 3:40 pm

... although I missed an more shiny all metal version.

Perhaps you could start it's own thread or ( let it ) split it off so people can/could post additional retextures...

I quickly inverted the mask for the paint. It does look okay, but it feels a bit bland without some sort of panels on the metal surface. I tried to create some, but they ended up looking non-satisfactory, so I stuck with the mostly-paint-version when releasing it.

I'm planning to push an update to the expansion manager anyway, changing some small things, so maybe I can add this version. I'll probably would remove some color-version of the original paint, because the green and yellow versions look not very nice anyway, so the size of the OXZ wouldn't increase.

First time I saw this ship I though this has to be made by those Sittin-Duck aliens from the 5th element.

'Fat birds' perhaps

That's actually quite fitting, lol.
I don't know how to split this thread, I guess a mod has to do it, right?

EDIT: if someone wants the substance-painter file, I can send it.

tsoj wrote: ↑Mon Feb 22, 2021 6:23 pm

... the green and yellow versions look not very nice anyway ...

Only because you're not a lobstoid!

tsoj wrote: ↑Mon Feb 15, 2021 3:51 am

Provisional story:
Named after the flying snake from the distant planet Earth, this ship is a great all-rounder with passable top speeds and maneuverability. Despite its low energy capacity, it can take some fights, as the powerful heat radiators allow for a fast recharge rate. Besides that, it has four slots for missiles and some space for cargo. These qualities mean that you will encounter this ship from time to time. And not infrequently piloted by a pirate looking for your cargo.

Heat radiators?

Who makes it? Where are they based? Are they reptiloid or avian? Are they part of/working with Cowell & MgRath or Skrounk All-Stars Limited? Any interesting points about accessories (bird baths/shrines to the Witchspace lobster/lifeboats fitted as standard) or design (cargo hold uses new version of Tichy cargo-mate/roosting rails fitted in the cabins made from Bemearean Walnut)? Was the designer a fanatic womaniser who had to flee GalCop? And do the heat radiators turn the bridge into a sauna (effects on cabin temp on HUD)?

Cholmondely wrote: ↑Wed Mar 24, 2021 7:48 am

?

The Chrysopelea MK-I has been designed by the state-owned Design Bureau for Advanced and Fulfilling Technology on Erlage. It is to date the only ship ever produced by said company. Today the manufacturing is optimized and the resulting product cheap enough to compete with other ships in Galaxy 1. But the development and the first years of series production have been such a burden on the state treasury that the birds of Erlage collectively decided to never try something like this again.
The design is generally similar to existing ships. The one thing that stands out (other than the weird look) are the strong heat radiation systems. They allow to not only fit a single heat radiator or maybe two, but up to twelve units. If you fit a capable heat radiator, you can easily reach an energy recharge rate of over 4.5 E/s. Some also argue that a good heat radiator improves laser beam efficiency though there is no hard data that supports this claim.
Theoretically, you could fit any heat radiator that supports the de facto standard heat radiator interface specification HeRa-1-8836. If you buy a new Chrysopelea MK-I it will be fitted with twelve advanced CactusWren A-1000 (which are also produced on Erlage, though the company CactusWren isn't directly associated with the government). You could also use some reptiloid radiators, but they do not perform well for a demanding ship like the Chrysopelea MK-I, as they rely exclusively on passive heat management.
If you decide to keep the wonderful engineering solution by CactusWren you don't need to worry about any excess heat on the bridge or anywhere else where you would want to reside on the ship. You only have to be careful in case you install an extra passenger cabin. If it is too close to a heat radiator, your passengers might start to grumble around (though some reptiloids like the heat, so you have to decide on a case to case basis).
The Chrysopelea MK-I has been designed to make a profit, and to maximize potential buyers the interior decoration is kept very simple to not offend anyone. You have the option to order very bird-friendly furnishing (mainly using Erlageian tree wood), though it might get quite expensive if you're not ordering from a fat bird or frog inhabited planet.
In recent years the Chrysopelea MK-I is unfortunately seen often in hands of pirates. The official stance of the Erlageian government is that they only sell to background-checked individuals. While that might be true, there are quite a few contracts between the Design Bureau for Advanced and Fulfilling Technology and the government of Aerater. The state of Aerater is basically just a proxy for several pirate groups in Bivea from where pirates from the whole galaxy get their shiny new Chrysopelea MK-I, probably already fitted with state-of-the-art beam lasers and all four missile slots loaded.

Wonderful! So much more interesting than the countless stubs littered all over the wiki. Thank you for taking the trouble. If you are happy putting it on your Chrysopelea wiki page, I can take care of the pages for Erlage and other systems you mentioned (unless you have other ideas for inclusion there!).

And if you have any good ideas about how the Heat Radiators interact with the Extra Energy Units, we can feed that into the EEU & Energy Banks pages too.

If it helps, there is some discussion of mechanics on the Engine page, some possibly related theory on the Hyperspace page, and some stuff in Cim's Ship's Manual (in his Ship's Library.oxp) where he discusses the parts of the Cobra.

Also: https://bb.oolite.space/viewtopic.ph ... 53#p274653 How does my Cobra's energy supply work? Theories of Dybal, Stranger (I labelled it as mine, I'm afraid), NiteOwl & Disembodied (resembles Cim's).

BlauJ wrote: ↑Sun Mar 04, 2012 9:58 pm

I have nothing as cool as an array, nor as big. But I just recently felt the joy of shooting up a ship I'd made in game.

It was reallly rather fun, out it popped out of the darkness bight white and easy to spot/shoot, I let it fly around (i knew it didn't have any weapons) then I blew it to pieces. I now have ambitions to make them spawn cargo crates that have to be shot up before they yield cargo pods

Before I got chance to do this or even work out how to I thought maybe I should make something with a solar sail.
So then I started this:


Starting this last night was really rather timely because after putting my son in sunday school thinking how I would make a solar wind helped the sermon pass.

I have to say that making pretend spaceships is a terriebly addictive thing, it should come with health warnings. You are very bad people - frankly I'm glad the wiki's down today because at least I can get some work done....

Did anything ever come of this?

NB: also on Flickr here