WC1 Ralari WIP

You missed another important point windows are incredibly useful for: They give a great sense of scale. Without things that give a sense of scale capships look like a blurry mess of textures. One can use other techniques to create a sense of scale, for example armor plating, but for me windows are what is most effective.

Also interesting example, because I think those pictures show why using windows might actually be not that bad of an idea:
What do we see there? We see railings (which happen to be between 85 and 110 cm high usually), we see windows (at least at the bridge) and we see other things we know the size of, for example the cannons (which are between 35 and 42 cm inner diameter on battleships usually, in this case 40.6), smaller guns, or the cranes on the deck and of course people walking around. So we have plenty of possibilities to tell this thing is big. Big things should look big, that is great.

The Bismarck ( some pictures here http://www.tobien.de/bismarck.htm ) and the Yamato have a few windows more, the Yamato even has catapults and so on. So lots of greeble that show their size.
Here's another example of a ship picture, a German Brandenburg-class frigate: http://www.marine-portraits.de/deut...regatten/typ-123-brandenburg-klasse/cover.jpg
How do you tell it is smaller than the Missouri? You can easily see that based on railings and windows, and the helicopter deck. No problem at all.

....but one problem for us. That's because space ships in the WC universe don't have railings or cranes or that kind of stuff on their hulls. And as you point out windows don't make any sense at all on a real star ship, but I'll ignore that argument for now (although I agree with you) because Wing Commander ships seem to have windows quite often.
So we cannot judge the size, except using windows.
Star Wars did it differently, they added random greebles (look at the ISD for example), the more greebles the bigger. Every huge ship has at least one greebled part (or windows) to show how big it is.
 
Hmm. You're absolutely right, windows do appear a lot in WC. It's been ages since I've looked at WC3 ships, and I mistakenly thought that they didn't have all those windows - I actually thought they were mostly added in Saga to boost detail :). Since the windows seem to have been a big feature from WC3 onwards, I withdraw my objection. It makes sense to add windows on the Ralari to give it more common ground with later ships.
 
I think this is actually one of the greatest achievements of WC3 concerning ship design and engine. In WC1 and WC2 some ships were hard to scale.
btw: The Claw Marks Ralari has at least some windows as well (if those are windows). You are right that windows didn't seem to be that present in earlier designs. It may depend on to which others the designs should fit. For the FS2 engine (which Saga kind of defined the WC visual design standard for since it was the first WC project in that engine) this Ralari fits quite well.
....That reminds me that I would also like to see that model with another color on it, WC1 style.
 
Yeah, WC1/2 ships really couldn't be scaled very well, because of the technological limitations. The capships felt small, not even because they lacked detail (they had plenty, but you could only see it in cutscenes), but because they were small. If a WC1/2 capship tried to be as big as a WC3 capship, you'd see pixels the size of half your screen :).
 
The Ralari now has colour! Also, ingame screenshots!
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Awesome, but it might help adding the copperish colour of the WC1/2 designs as well...
 
Great work, it looks really dangerous and cool!
What kind of turrets did you use? Judging by the number it looks a bit weakly armed, except those were double turrets.

Also are the big guns real weapons ingame? Judging by your first picture they are destructable subsystems, but are those weapons? Heavy antimatter guns for example which can only fire in the direction the ship is flying would be great. It would be a real threat to big targets that aren't moving. I see interesting missions that could be built with it then.
 
Kevin send me the ship and I replace the AMG Turret with 2 Salvos into a Single Heavy Neutron Gun or Heavy AMG Gun.
Here some duel pics of a Exeter and the Ralari:
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50:50 The Exeter has one Capshipmissilelauncher and the tripple Heavy Neutron Gun Turret, the Ralari the two Single HNG and two Capshipmissilelauncher. Both have 6 defence Lasers.

And a little test ^^
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Scimitar attack Ralari. I make several tests how the mission look to take out the Ralari. The Scim with one torpedo to take the ship out or more then 4 Scims attack without torpedos. Takes a few minutes to destroy the ship. Alone and with just one Wingman - no go. The defence Turrets destroy in a testmission 3 of 5 Scims. Only Paladin and me survive (badly damaged)

Not at easy like in Wing 1 :D
 
With the Standart armament of the Scims I try it again
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We make it but one fighter lost and the other three damaged.
 
I think that's ok for a destroyer.
During the testing of one of my mod's missions I realized that 4 medium fighters vs. a destroyer isn't something you want to do regularly. I lost 3 of my 4 Dralthis attacking a Southampton, and that's only because I was trying to hide where its turrets couldn't shoot most of the time.
 
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