[RELEASE] Iron Raven

[Eric Walch]

It's also quite a bit similar in appearance to the bioSphere, which—as a notice—doesn't seem to be documented anywhere, or available from anywhere, be it Oosat1, Oosat2, or the Wiki.

Have you searched also in this forum. Just watch out, some of the stuff Sabre has put here is only half finished so don't put it on the wiki without testing.

[Commander McLane]

It's also quite a bit similar in appearance to the bioSphere, which—as a notice—doesn't seem to be documented anywhere, or available from anywhere, be it Oosat1, Oosat2, or the Wiki.

Have you searched also in this forum. Just watch out, some of the stuff Sabre has put here is only half finished so don't put it on the wiki without testing.

As a matter of fact, I have. But I searched for "biosphere", which brought no result.

So, thanks for enlightening me!

[Smivs]

At some point I'll need to put some ships together for the Sirius Defence Force. I've already used my Saleza stuff in other missions so either I'll try repainting some vipers or I might cast some other OXP ships in the role. If anyone has ideas for candidates let me know.

Hi Ramirez, I've been thinking about your Defence Force ships. I was actually thinking an Asp variant might be a good choice...fast, tough and well armed. These could have a corporate colour scheme and maybe a Police-style flashing light-bar.
I don't know if that's the sort of thing you had in mind, but I am currently between OXPs and would be happy to develop this idea further for you...maybe prepare the texture/emission map, and have a look at adapting the Asp shipdata.plist to add the flashers. They may need an AI as well, but this could be heavily drawn from the Police AIs already in use.
Let me know if you're interested.

[Dave McRoss]

Hi Ramirez, I'm feeling rather inspired by your project, so I made this image. If you want you can use if for a Sirius Executive.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

[Ramirez]

Thanks Dave, that's one Sirius exec I wouldn't like to cross!

Thanks Smivs, an asp sounds just right. For the corporate colours I'm heading towards simple black and white - I was also considering modifying Selezen's SWAT Viper as I thought that looked quite cool.

Here are some of the badges I've done so far, which you could try making use of.

SDF badge (simplified, original png)



This might look better done as a greyscale then overlaid onto metal, e.g.:



Or to keep things simple, here's the png of the Sirius Corp logo:



(note that Eurostyle seems to be Sirius' corporate font)

As well as fighters like the asp I could do with a large cruiser and also some kind of landing craft/dropship. No prizes for guessing that these will all be involved in a big fight at some point!

[Smivs]

Thanks Smivs, an asp sounds just right. For the corporate colours I'm heading towards simple black and white -

OK I'll have a look. My first thought was that the colour Black rings alarm-bells as space is kinda black as well, so if we want to see them (visible deterrent ?) they might end up white with black, if you see what I mean.
Logos are nice.
If RL and the weekend don't get in the way I'll try and have something to see in a day or so...maybe a 'proof or concept' image or something.

[Smivs]

Had a bit more time than I thought.
I was right about the Black and White colour scheme being a hard one to work with. Basically I roughed out an Asp with the colour scheme and flew it around a bit to see how it looked. Bottom line is it looks to be various shades of grey...the B&W are not obvious under most lighting conditions.
Anyway, below are a few screenshots from various angles. This is just a 'Proof of Concept' for the colour scheme, and not a finished item. It will look much better with a bit more dressing and logos etc, but I just wanted you to see how the B&W works and to check if you like the colour layout which is basically black body with white sides. The very angular nature of the Asp really limits what you can do.
What do you think so far?

[Commander McLane]

Indeed, to me it doesn't look black and white at all, rather dark grey and light grey.

Still, I like it.

[Ramirez]

Shades of grey are equally as good - in fact that's an apt description for how Sirius operates! Visibility is an issue of course so if need be you could go with a plain grey with some black stripes. Looking good so far, though.

[Smivs]

More progress. I think I got a bit hung up on the 'greyness issue' yesterday which left me sounding a bit negative, but I have developed the Asp a bit more now.
I was able to make the white a bit more white and by playing around with the shininess and specular-colour in the shipdata.plist I have got much closer to the look I was after.
I've also now added logos and the flashing light-bar (it doesn't flash yet), and done a proper emission map for it.
I think it's looking pretty good so far, and am now wondering whether some spotlighting to pick-out some of the logos might be in order, but I don't want to over-do things.
Thoughts and comments always welcome.



I'm thinking of this as an Asp Mk III (or maybe an Asp Defender, something like that), so amongst other things have added a second missile slot. I was thinking quite tough, so beefed-up shields and weapons, but maybe no Hyperspace capability. Ramirez, what role exactly did you have in mind for this? I'm working on Station Security for the home system...will they need to travel further afield to other systems? Just keen to get the balance right...I don't want to keep adding features without any sacrifices.

[Ramirez]

Looking good. Maybe for this particular ship just the black and white shield logos are enough - the gold and white one can be reserved for more formal occasions. I like the Sirius Corp logo on the nose - it fits quite nicely on the asp.

A ship like the Asp would be used by the SDF to escort convoys or to defend various Sirius assets, so it can rely on other larger ships to provide a hyperspace capability. For example, I'm using Arexack Heretic's Armoured Transport in one scenario and because it's an important delivery the SDF has assigned some extra escort cover.

The big premise of the mission is that the SDF is secretly building up a long-range fleet, so it will probably have bought some hyperspace-capable ships and modified them to suit their needs.

[Smivs]

Maybe for this particular ship just the black and white shield logos are enough -

Your wish is my command....



Does look a bit cleaner, doesn't it?

[caracal]

Feel free to adopt the Nuit if you want, no one else has shown interest yet. back plot is that they're available for sale from II so it's logically possible your group bought one.

Just a note, KW ... I quite like the Nuit, and have hacked up a version that adds them as the main station for high-tech corporate systems, which seemed in keeping with the backstory. So there's at least some interest!

[Killer Wolf]

ah sweet
stick a link up ssomewhere.

[Smivs]

Hi Ramirez,
I think I've pretty much done all I can with the Asp now.
I'll PM you this evening to let you know in detail what I've acheived and to see where you want to go from here.

Keen to see them in action I generated a few as viper-interceptor replacements and took a pot-shot at a station Below are a couple of the screenshots I took, including quite a nice front view that shows the light-bar off well.