This thread is to give people a feel for what this ship is, and what it going on in the sketch, so that anyone attempting to model it won't have such a helluva time. I only have one sketch. (The artist who did this is currently having a galery openinging today, so for the last month his life as been so full of hassle, and agrivation that it's been impossible for him to get things done. As it is, it will be till over break before I can get any more sketches of this. So, I will make due with what we have, for now.
First, some back story. (SPOILER WARNING: This gives away some of the plot in the first and second chapters of my story. No, it doesn't make it unreadable, but it does give some of it away.) The Reckonin Class Advanced Cruiser was designed from salvaged parts of a very old Grey Cruiser that was found by a Terran Archeology team investigating what appeared to be ruins from an alien race. The League intercepted the transmission describing remains of an organic based ship, and sent the nearest vessel to retrieve that technology. To make a long story short, the League retrived that information, and almost immediately started work on designing and building a ship using it. The entire design and construction of the first ship, The Rekonin occured in only two years. (Actually, the Reckonin was built as the same time as the Archigos II, although no one knew about the Rekonin.)
Since the Reckonin Class is a combination of Grey and League technology, it is really one of the most unique ships in the entire game universe. Most impressively, it still has the trademark Grey MEGA DEATH LAZER. (No, not it's realy name. I don't have an official name for it... it's just the primary weapons used by the Grey. It can destroy an entire planet, if desired. It could also merely raise the temperature of a ships hull a few degrees. It's pretty fine grained. Also, it's nice because the more energy you pump into it, the more energy you get out. It's a near linear scale untill you get up to energies equivilent to about two entire galactic masses being converted, or something like that.) It also has the central core of a Grey ship. See, Grey choose a respected and gifted leader of thier race to intigrate into the ship, and become the Core. The Reckonin class also has a Core, but it's a specially created Genetic match for the ship. (It's a combination of human and Sooni DNA) There is no need for the Core to be anything more than genetic material, so there's no body that's been grown, and then stuck into these things. The genetic material does have to come from outside the ship, however, and it is possible that should the Core ever be destroyed, a new one could be grown, but someone would have to sacrifice themselves inorder for the ship to be completely functional. (It can work without the core, but that is relying too much on it's technology, and makes things rather slow, and difficult, and the primary weapon is unusable.)
Something that needs to be noted is the fact that the Reckonin class is all built by growing components that have been genetically manipulated from the Grey technology they found. It isn't techniocally grey, nor are they grafting parts on from Grey ships; the organic parts are grown around the mechanical parts. This is why it doesn't take very long to create one of these ships. (It can be completely built and tested in three months.)
Ok, enough of that. Now, let's get to what the modelers careabout. Here is the sketch from the site:
The Wings:The first point I would like to illustrate, is the wings. Everyone's been geting them.. well,
wrong. They are thick attatched to the body, and then thin out as you get to the pods. I sat down with the artist and in five minutes cmae up with a general profile of the wings. (Attatched in .3ds format) Here's a couple views:
Perspective:
Top:
Side:
Front:
Now keep in mind, this is just the general shape, to show people that it gets pretty thing, and to show the twist in the win itself. Imagine, if you will, taking a curved piece of paper. hold one end flat, ent then twist the other end ten degrees. That's the kind of shape we're going for. Something I do want to point out, however, is that due to time, and laziness on my part I used a ruff sketch of the profile of the win, but then used a mere oval on the end... looking back at the picture that's not exactly right. Also, the relative dimensions are kinda off, but it gets my point across I think. The best thign to do is really to just open the file up in a modeler, and look at it. (I did it in rhino.. I can put it into a few other formats if nessicary.)
Other Elements:Let's point out a few other other elements, with brief descritons:
Here, on the command center (or 'head' of the ship) circled in red are two turrets. A note on turrets. Most of these turrets have a armor cover that closes over them like an eyelid.. or similiar mechanism.
Here on the neck are two more turrets, or possibly missle launchers.
Aagin, more turrets.
Here, near the primary weapon is even more turrets.
In red, we have more turrets, to help protect the landing bay. In green, we have a subspace engine.
This is the primary weapon. It is mostly organic, with metalic bone protrusions that focus the beam. There are only four of these.
A good number of people wonder what this cutout section of the hull is. In Actuality, it's the escape pods. This is right abother the Crew Quarters, so that it is easy for majority of the crew to escape. There may be escape pods elsewhere, but they aren't fisible through the armor of the ship. (They would have to be revealed by a blow away section of armor, or something.)
This here, is one of the two engines. It is a technilogical part that is cut into, and fitted onto (Well, almost appearing that way) a large section of organic bone like material. If you notice the boarder of whitespace around the engine? I would imagine that is obviously metal. The engine itself is either red, or blue, and glows, obviously.
These are the docking bays. Not only are they docking bay, but fighterbays as well. As soon as I can get a few ruff sketches, I will describe how they work.
This is a ridge of bone that is kinda like a spine to the ship. (Only it doesn't carry nerves; it is part of the cupport structure of the ship) It has metal plates that sit around it, and cover it in places, but for the most part, it's just bone.
This part confuses people. This is a crest of bone that follows from the bone ridge. This isn't a circular section on the back, or anything else. Unfortunately
I don't even have a description of what the pack looks like, so I can't tell you.... yet.
Also, in that last picture, if you look at the edges, you see that there's some bone that covers the actual edge, and extends for a little ways. This happens in other places, and should be the same type of bone as the ridge (I'm imagining a dark, almost coal balcke shiney bone like thing). While this is a simple detail, it should be in the model.
I hope this gives people a good enough idea to start a basic model of it. This is so insanely detailed, that I know you won't want to spend the time to make every little thing you see in the sketch, but the more detailed, the better, We can always drop detail out, if need be.
Let me know if anything else needs to be made clear!
