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	Archive through February 19, 2020	25		02/20 02:31pm

Considering the CA deck plans, the top four strakes are over the crew quarters while the back half of the bottom two are parallel to the batteries and the forward two are weapons crew quarters (the rightmost one crowds the swimming pool) …

Hmmm, idiot question, are the strakes black boxes or do they need access passages??

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 08:53 am: Edit

Stewart: "are the strakes black boxes or do they need access passages?"

That does beg the question: has anyone (SVC) come up with a technobabble explanation for what these things actually are? What tech would require such a feature, given that said tech is universal across all empires?

If I had to guess, I'd say they are either a new 360-deg defensive shielding or some sort of advanced electronic warfare system.


Garth L. Getgen

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 10:29 am: Edit

In the Fed CX topic, SVC stated:

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Quote:

I would say they are a combination of cooling, shield generators, and sensors.

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By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 02:30 pm: Edit

Rats, wrong image

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 02:31 pm: Edit

Chris doesn't like the slab-bottom Lyrans and thought if he ever had a chance of talking me into doing something there the X-ships would be it. I don't like this bulgy bottom thing, but I do want your comments.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 02:33 pm: Edit

Revised Lyran CCX topside. I do like this one but somebody said I'm an idiot so maybe I am wrong.

By Chris Nasipak (Ecs05norway) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 02:56 pm: Edit

Changes to the top view are minor; I've lenghtened the nacelles as one user requested, and redesigned the strakes using hexagonal ends instead of square, borrowing from the option-box greeblies on the Jagdpanther.

The "fat-belly" comes from a proposal I made back when I was first working up the Lyrans. Steve wanted to stick with the flat slabs and I did so, we agreed to thicken it a bit in order to adjust the overall volume and we've just done some minor decoration and that was it. When I wanted something to show this was a major rebuild, not a minor variant, this was what came to mind.

By MarkSHoyle (Bolo) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 03:11 pm: Edit

"Fat-belly" makes it seem you created an X-Tug.....
Without some reasoning behind it, only thing it seems to do is add volume...

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 03:17 pm: Edit

I wonder if it might be something to keep in reserve, as something to perhaps consider for Lyran second-generation X-ships, whatever those end up looking like.

By Tony L. Thomas (Scoutdad) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 04:14 pm: Edit

As a primarily Lyran player, I like the CCX, Mark II.

I've never been a fan of the slab-like bottoms, but since they were designed before I starting buying minis, I learned to live with it and just used them as a canvas for artistic license.

I like the additional volume on the bottoms. It breaks up the flat slab nicely. I vote for keeping them, even if they need to be thinned out just a tad to prevent confusing them with pallets.

By Mark Hutton (Trynda1701) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 04:36 pm: Edit

Perhaps if they are thinner vertically, they could move to the edge of the hull. Would add a little more visual distinction when seen on the gaming table, thus indicating the upgrade more clearly?

Nice work on the other upgrades as well, Chris

By Chris Nasipak (Ecs05norway) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 04:54 pm: Edit

> to prevent confusing them with pallets.
Pallets are - see the existing Tug models -- much, much thicker than these.

> X2 ships
We will not even begin to think about these until the actual module is published, I expect.

> Perhaps if they are thinner vertically, they could move to the edge of the hull

Hmm, possible. They're not that thick now - only a millimeter or so. I'll noodle on it but I want to set this aside for a couple of days and work on some other ships, maybe a Hydran or Orion X-ship.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 05:48 pm: Edit

On the 'fat bottom' - almost looks like a larger fuel deck (question - where does the Lyran store the fuel needed for the engines as the struts to the engines aren't large enough … )

Chris? How many deck were added with that bottom? (g)?

[*Engineer to Artist: You added how many tons to my design before asking if I could do something with it?*] (G)

By F Michael Miller (Fmm) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 08:31 pm: Edit

I like the detail on the bottom. Large sections of "flat" seem wrong on any ship.

By Chris Nasipak (Ecs05norway) on Thursday, February 20, 2020 - 11:07 pm: Edit

> Chris? How many deck were added with that bottom? (g)?

Let's see. At 1/3788 Scale:

The inward-sloping upper hull is 2.7mm high at this scale. The flat-sided "slab" is .9mm. So 3.6mm total.

The lower 'addon' hull is 1.5mm.

Ignoring the strakes, warp nacelles, and pylons, the main hull volume is 3245 mm³.

Each of the two added "bottom" sections is 315 mm³.

That does not mean that the overall hull volume is increased by that much, however, because remember this is ignoring the strakes, nacelles, and pylons, which are quite a bit of space in and of themselves -- each nacelle+pylon on this model is 361 mm³.

So the total volume including pylons, nacelles, and strakes, is about 4.1k mm³, adding the 'belly' takes it to about 4.7 mm³.

> I like the detail on the bottom. Large sections of "flat" seem wrong on any ship.

Same here. This is why I prefer the Aztec versions of these, along with Feds and Klinks as well.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 12:29 am: Edit

I recommend a pair of strakes on the bottom as well. Since they don't have to pair with the upper hull, there is no reason to add four. But adding a pair, one on each side, would probably help balance things top to bottom.

Just a thought.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 09:31 am: Edit

I like how the bottom looks in general just curious about the forward area, the blue (and I know they don’t come in color) reminds me of a glass bottom boat. Should there be some texturing in the blue areas?

I was also thinking about the different empires and strakes, what if some of them had less strakes but they were 1.5x to 2.0x the length. Maybe the Lyran or Hydran with their long line style ships (front to back, with large stretch’s of smooth hull plating) would use this more? (I kind of thought too late that maybe the Tholians tech would have them do this slightly different but I don’t mind what has been come up with)

As for the X2 module I will hope when it comes out strakes are less visible or invisible being the engineers figured out a way it will be more incorporated into the tech / design. We’ll be waiting to see though it sounds like these X1 beauties sparked the appetite of the people and sales wise the iron will be hot.

By Steven Zamboni (Szamboni) on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 12:01 pm: Edit

The flat bottom is to make it easier to glue the second ship in place.

Trimarans were just the warm-up lap...

By Charles Chapel (Ctchapel) on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 04:18 pm: Edit

Just thinking, the CC has an elongated center, should this get that feature as well or are we going to call this a CAX?

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 07:39 pm: Edit

Chris, I meant ship decks but the numbers come out to 14m (prob closer to 13.75) but that is 4 decks with armor plating and some fuel/water/air storage. The extra bottom is another deck which adds roughly 25% to cost (four deck are now five) but this is an extensive refit so maybe this is additional crew quarters or something …

My last line (Eng/Art) was not idle chatter …

By Chris Nasipak (Ecs05norway) on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 08:42 pm: Edit

> Just thinking, the CC has an elongated center, should this get that feature as well or are we going to call this a CAX?

Well, there are two Command Cruisers in the Lyran stable. There's the Bengal Tiger (R11.30) which is visually indistinguishable from a standard Tiger, and then there's the Java Tiger (R11.51) "Heavy Command Cruiser" which has the expanded center section.

According to the MSSB, the Java Tiger replaced all Tiger and Bengal Tiger production in Y175.

According to the same book, the CCX (R11.201) was based on the Bengal Tiger explicitly. There is no currently-in-print X-Java-Tiger.

If Steve wants to change that and base the CCX on the Java Tiger, I'm all for it, but the current text is explicitly Not It.

> Chris, I meant ship decks but....
@Stewart, thank you for clarifying that and running the numbers. (I have to wonder about some of those measurements, though, isn't the FedCA saucer section supposed to be 8-10 decks thick at the center?)

> The flat bottom is to make it easier to glue the second ship in place.

Unfortunately they never managed to get that to work with ships larger than the Frigate, but they started doing it in the Y-era, so by this point nobody notices, everyone "knows" that Lyran frigates are fat little buggers.

> I like how the bottom looks in general just curious about the forward area, the blue (and I know they don’t come in color) reminds me of a glass bottom boat. Should there be some texturing in the blue areas?

The idea in my head when doing that was that they would serve the same function as the TV Ship's deflector dish.

> I was also thinking about the different empires and strakes, what if some of them had less strakes but they were 1.5x to 2.0x the length.

I like this idea a lot.

> Without some reasoning behind it, only thing it seems to do is add volume...

Ignoring the nacelles (which have already had an appropriate increase in size), the CCX has 14% more system boxes than the CA. An increase in volume seems entirely appropriate.

(I would draw correlations to the different sizes of the TV ship and the Movie Ship, but that's a whole 'nother thing.)

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 06:23 pm: Edit

After much thought I have rejected the pregnant guppy designs (bottom bulges). Lyrans have flat bottoms. Adding the bulges inflates the hull volume beyond all recognition, something no other X-ship does. Please send new renders with flat bottoms (like non-X lyrans; other than strakes sticking down).

By A David Merritt (Adm) on Thursday, April 09, 2020 - 07:03 pm: Edit

Ah man, the free range buffets are gone.

By Chris Nasipak (Ecs05norway) on Monday, April 13, 2020 - 12:19 am: Edit

Welp, Himself has spoken. I'll have to do some other stuff with it. Got a few ideas, sent one in to see what Himself thinks.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, May 12, 2020 - 06:13 pm: Edit

Did we ever get revised renders here? I don't remember if we released this a week ago or if it got kicked to 1 June.

By Chris Nasipak (Ecs05norway) on Wednesday, May 13, 2020 - 02:16 am: Edit

I know I sent a revision render, I'll resend it.