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Steamrunner problems.
wunjee
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
The ship's beautiful, but there are some small problems that shouldn't exist on a $25.00 ship.
1) Impulse engines are in the wrong place.
http://shipyard.scifi-art.com/steamrunner_top.jpg
http://techspecs.acalltoduty.com/images/steamrunner/steamrunner-top.gif
They should be on the back of the saucer. The "cut-outs" for them are already there, there's just nothing there..
2) There seems to be a bug with the "camera" being too far back. It makes it turn kind of weird (As if it's front-heavy) and when looking at it in the shipyard, it becomes obvious that the camera pivot point is too far aft.
3) The 1st option under Windows (when you're customizing the ship) removes all of the lifeboats and the windows look stretched and really really bad.
4) It seems badly scaled. It's bigger then an Akira and wider then a Sovereign. David Stipes, DS9 visual effects supervisor, said the Steamrunner was 244 meters long. It should be roughly half the size of an Akira.
5) It doesn't have any floodlights covering the name and registry on either the dorsal or ventral surfaces.
6) It's missing a shuttlebay. It's shuttlebay doors should be on the leading edge of the saucer, similar to the Akira.
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20061019140507/startrek/images/b/be/USS_Appalachia.jpg
7) The phaser strips aren't of uniform width. The dorsal and ventral phaser strips are "Narrower" then the strips on the rear of the saucer (which don't seem to be functional at all) and on the nacelles/deflector pod.
8) The "aztecking" doesn't line up. The lines on the saucer don't line up with the lines on the nacelles, etc.
9) The RCS thrusters (Square models) about half-way down the nacelles look like TRIBBLE. I didn't even know they were supposed to be RCS thrusters until I looked at the ILM render. They're raised (when they shouldn't be), they're positioned badly (look like they were just tacked on) and don't have a texture. They're just kinda' redish-brown and... "bleh"-looking..
10) Some "reflection" on the bussard collector housings would be kind of nice.
11) Lifeboats overlap what appear to be equipment hatches and major seams in the hull. It just looks silly.
The model is pretty nice, but I get the feeling the texturing was rushed. The texturing and mapping looks like it was done by a 10-year-old in MS Paint.
1) Impulse engines are in the wrong place.
http://shipyard.scifi-art.com/steamrunner_top.jpg
http://techspecs.acalltoduty.com/images/steamrunner/steamrunner-top.gif
They should be on the back of the saucer. The "cut-outs" for them are already there, there's just nothing there..
2) There seems to be a bug with the "camera" being too far back. It makes it turn kind of weird (As if it's front-heavy) and when looking at it in the shipyard, it becomes obvious that the camera pivot point is too far aft.
3) The 1st option under Windows (when you're customizing the ship) removes all of the lifeboats and the windows look stretched and really really bad.
4) It seems badly scaled. It's bigger then an Akira and wider then a Sovereign. David Stipes, DS9 visual effects supervisor, said the Steamrunner was 244 meters long. It should be roughly half the size of an Akira.
5) It doesn't have any floodlights covering the name and registry on either the dorsal or ventral surfaces.
6) It's missing a shuttlebay. It's shuttlebay doors should be on the leading edge of the saucer, similar to the Akira.
http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20061019140507/startrek/images/b/be/USS_Appalachia.jpg
7) The phaser strips aren't of uniform width. The dorsal and ventral phaser strips are "Narrower" then the strips on the rear of the saucer (which don't seem to be functional at all) and on the nacelles/deflector pod.
8) The "aztecking" doesn't line up. The lines on the saucer don't line up with the lines on the nacelles, etc.
9) The RCS thrusters (Square models) about half-way down the nacelles look like TRIBBLE. I didn't even know they were supposed to be RCS thrusters until I looked at the ILM render. They're raised (when they shouldn't be), they're positioned badly (look like they were just tacked on) and don't have a texture. They're just kinda' redish-brown and... "bleh"-looking..
10) Some "reflection" on the bussard collector housings would be kind of nice.
11) Lifeboats overlap what appear to be equipment hatches and major seams in the hull. It just looks silly.
The model is pretty nice, but I get the feeling the texturing was rushed. The texturing and mapping looks like it was done by a 10-year-old in MS Paint.
Post edited by wunjee on
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You must be new here. Every ship has this problem because of how the base hull textures are applied. Unless they go in and edit that out of the texture, it's not going to change.
There is no official canon reference to where the impulse engines are. Both of the images you linked are not canon.
On top of that, even if we did put the impulse engines on the back of the saucer, where those images point to, the impulse engines would exhaust directly into the rear pylons -- engineering so awful it's hard to let it fly. In any case, we never get a close enough shot of the canon version of the ship (as intended by the original creators) to get a good idea of where, exactly, they should be.
2.
Generally, the pivots of cameras are balanced based on the mass & length of the ship, some ships are an exception, and can look strange, due to the strange shape of the ship. The Steamrunner is no exception, it's an oddly balanced ship, feeling heavy in the back, yet having most of it's mass in the saucer.
3.
Odd, I'll look into that. Which version are you using? There are two, the low level & high level.
4.
The low level one is indeed smaller than the higher level retrofit. The higher level retrofit is as close to canon scale (not 244 meters long) as it can be, she's no small ship.
Generally, if no scale is directly mentioned in the show, we go off window size, escape pod size, and bridge section, if applicable.
Being the case, we went with the larger, more reasonable size of ~350 meters. Even at that length, the ship is indeed wider than the Akira.
The scales are guesses, since there is no official IP reference, just soft canon.
5.
That's canon, unfortunately.
6.
That's not entirely true, the only canon reference to the front end is a blurry golden blur of texture. Also, in canon, we see the Steamrunner fire a phaser beam from the front edge of the saucer in a couple of the DS9 battles.
7.
Again, it's kind of canon. The canon model has barely visible phaser strips. It's arguable if some of them are even phaser strips. In any case, they're completely flat on the canon ship, I suppose we took some creative liberty here. As for their lack of function, you might not be using enough beam weapons to utilize them.
8.
This is one of those things we sacrifice for the sake of customization. Every ship has this same "issue"
9.
Still more detailed than the IP model, much like the phasers, creative liberty was taken to make them seem more apparent than they are on the canon ship, which they're hardly visible on, due to being purely a background ship.
10.
Some of the newer ship materials have this effect.
11.
Again, this is one of the things that are sacrificed for the sake of customization, hull materials in this case.
Twitter! STO_JamJamz
I think you should go with floodlights, anyway. You are taking liberty with the phaser strips and it's fine. Floodlights are way too cool to be completely omitted on this little beauty.
I do agree with the OP, though, that the ship feels a little too big, compared to Akiras and Defiants. Not that there is much canon material, of course.
"Sometimes you have to do things that you hate, so you can survive to fight another day."
the considerations for in game functionality need to be remembered though, it cant look like a photo realistic filming model. heres what the filming model actually looks like. that gold up front is just a display error in the model viewer, it never appeared like that on screen- https://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/06/11/alex-jaeger-week-steamrunner-class/
the ship is actually correctly sized, its a lot bigger then people seem to think it is, hope the norway turns up before too long too.
i have had some minor issues with it, but over all im very happy with how it turned out
1)the impulse engines should have been on the body, regardless of exhaust trails. the excelsior refit seems to do alright with its 2 extra engines washed with exhaust.
impulse engines in trek are actually mini warp engines anyway, they can move the ship so fast that they have to generate a subspace field so they arent effected by time dilation. they are just 'geared' to work best at sub light speed.
2) the ventral array, on the bottom, i like the way they were done in ST: legacy like this http://i45.tinypic.com/30k4t4x.jpg
3) the DHC hardpoints, i would have liked them in the nose like the DC hardpoints are
4) instead of an escort thats basically better then a fleet patrol, it should have been a federation vorcha, a maneuverable cruiser that can mount DHCs
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
They're soft-canon, tho, and are more detailed then the ILM model and show things the ILM model doesn't. Mainly because the ILM model was never meant to be seen up close. That's the problem with CGI-only ships. But the soft-canon makes it pretty clear where the engines should be, as does the ingame model. They just aren't there. "Exhaust" never seems to be an issue (Probably because impulse drive is field-based) on ships like the Akira, Galaxy, Excelsior Refit, etc. All of which have impulse manifolds who's "exhaust" would collide with nacelles/nacelle pylons.
The problem is, tho, that if you're moving it around in the customizer or the shipyard, it doesn't move around what one would generally consider the "middle" of the ship. It's like the center of mass for the camera is too far back. Moving it forward a bit, to the trailing edge of the saucer, would fix it.
The refit. Here's a screenshot.
http://i1128.photobucket.com/albums/m496/wungee/screenshot_2012-12-18-00-11-51_zpsdd64ba9e.jpg
Note--no lifeboats, weird-looking "barcode"-ish windows.
244 meters seems about right for the Steamrunner, tho. That makes it about half the length of an Akira, about 100 meters shorter then an Intrepid, and quite a bit bigger then the Defiant. It's right there in the "light cruiser" scale of things. Slightly larger then a Miranda.
This isn't a big deal, I'm just a purist when it comes to this particular ship. She's always been one of my favorites.
So because the 20 year-old super-low-resolution ILM model that was never designed to be seen up close doesn't have floodlights on the name/registry, something EVERY Federation ship has, the Steamrunner ingame doesn't have them?
We also see the Enterprise-D fire a phaser from it's forward torpedo tube. Doesn't make it right. When we look at the other Alex Jaeger designs, they all have forward shuttlebay doors. Perhaps not in the onscreen ILM model, but again, we're talking 20 years ago on a model that was never designed to be seen up close..
Also note that the gold "blur' on the ILM model happened when someone converted it to Maya, and it wasn't like that originally.
Most Federation ships have phaser strips that are of uniform width because the width of the emitters in the array tends to go hand-in-hand with the power of those phasers, along with the length of the array overall. It'd just look more uniform for the longer dorsal/ventral arrays to be the same width as the shorter strips. It's a 5 second edit in the modeling program that'd make it look a whole lot better.
Perfectly acceptable.
So shouldn't the goal here be to make it as close to perfect as we can since it's no longer a background ship? I could see if it was an NPC-only ship, but it's not. It's a player ship that we're going to spend a lot of time oogling over. Ugly little bits like that kind of ruin the beauty of the whole..
Yeah, I cycled thru the materials and found one with reflections. It looks nice!
Again, perfectly acceptable. I found a material that I liked that didn't have the issue as badly and I like the results.
I hope we can continue this conversation and get this girl looking as good as she deserves to!
I'm in the change the impulse engines crew as well, I'm pretty sure the Akiras impulsers line up with some struts as well, so that shouldn't be much of an issue IMO. (I do agree that it probably has functional issues though). When you look at the original cgi model it definitely feels like they would go there too.
Lights have been an issue for many people in steam runner threads so I think it should get some floods as well.
Asking for this work is kind of unfair, so I will say my usual bit in threads like this and say keep the original version too, there are probably many people silently loving it.
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Twitter:
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I agree that the Ship just feels to big, compared to anything else in game, completely without any canon reference material to start with.
Without pulling any theoretical numbers out of my rear end, the Bridgecake alone is indication enough if you place it near any other Ship that it is at least 2 times too big. *gut feeling*
I agree that Impulse Engines belong on the Saucer, we have never seen them placed anywhere else in the Show on any Ship (unless it had no saucer to start with).
Placing impulse engines on the nacelle struts is a pure Star Trek Online thing, i don't mind it on completely new Ships like the Odyssey, but on the Steamrunner it seems just wrong.
If there are not good enough visuals on the actual video material i think it is ok to go looking further into Models that were sold of those Ships (usually licensed and pretty detailed products) and if those don't exist go looking at Fanmade Versions of the Ship.
After looking at various pictures i'd say it is very well established that the impulse engines go on the Saucer after all, even if it is not so on the original ILM *background* model.
(btw. the Doug Drexler Rendering has skewed textures because he rendered it in the wrong program, there was a quote in his Blog about that...)
a good scale to shoot for:
http://nicholassagan.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/smra_mg_0408.jpg
http://th03.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/i/2011/215/f/f/star_trek_first_contact_fleet_by_adamkop-d43cfcb.jpg
lots of detail you would never find on screen:
http://www.allscaletrek.com/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=292
a non canon render but i like the blue glow on the nacelles (maybe something to make optional?):
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/sexton/steamrunner-class.jpg
+1 impulse engine placement...
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_eiWa9tjWi80/S2hM9o9dnfI/AAAAAAAAA-I/Yz6jdJ3Z9ck/s400/Steamrunner_painted_2.jpg
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_eiWa9tjWi80/S2hM911HURI/AAAAAAAAA-Q/CR2GDoREGk8/s1600-h/Steamrunner_painted_1.jpg
Steamrunner - Dominion Wars (another licensed product)
http://www.mobygames.com/images/shots/l/126635-star-trek-deep-space-nine-dominion-wars-windows-screenshot.jpg
Star Trek - Armada 2 model:
http://gaming.trekcore.com/armada2/shipsandstations/fedsteamrunner.jpg
registry number is lit here (and it looks good!):
http://galaxy_modeling.tripod.com/starcraft_models_steamrunner.jpg
Resin Kit by Starcraft (probably licensed and includes impulse engines)
http://employees.csbsju.edu/rsorensen/modelcitizen/workbench/STrek/M08_FC/IMG_5683.JPG
http://employees.csbsju.edu/rsorensen/modelcitizen/workbench/STrek/M08_FC/Steamrunner/kit_data.html
if that isn't enough material to convince you to change the impulse engines and re-evaluate the scale... *shrug* i did all that i can to help here.
Bought the thing of steam, looked at it, wasn't impressed *not using it as is*, not the first ship in STO i bought and then didn't use.
I have a vested interest in this ship, since I plan on flying it for an extremely long time, and I'd only like to say this once.
First off, I'm extremely glad the Steamrunner is in the game. I have wanted it in the game since launch. I waited (almost) three years for this ship, and I want it to be worth my wait.
The windows/lifeboat texture thing is correct. It would appear there is a bug, since the ship seems to have been intended to have the orange ovular-shaped windows (the kind I wanted to use, actually). The bridge area itself has this window scheme, but the rest of the ship has the long blue barcode-like windows that really don't look appropriate or aesthetically pleasing.
I also echo sentiments that if you're basing canon off of a low-resolution CGI model that's barely seen, and never up close -- to go to the original designer's works as to what was intended compared to what was on-screen. You're already improving the ship design for STO, you might as well at least try to aim for what the original designer had in mind.
That said, I'll now completely contradict myself by saying that I prefer the impulse engines on the nacelle pylons. Namely because I agree that impulse engine wash over the pylons isn't that aesthetically pleasing. That's one key reason I didn't like playing the Galaxy-X or the Excelsior Retrofit (Enterprise-B version). The impulse engine trails into the pylons or nacelles just don't look right.
Personally, I think ships in STO should take a page from the 2009 release of TOS on blu-ray. Blu-ray gave the viewer the option to see things in their original effects, or using 'enhanced effects' generated by the 2006 remastering of TOS using modern-day technology. While it didn't give klingons ridges (even though Roddenberry originally wanted them to), it did improve special effects and ship designs like the S.S. Botany Bay, which was now appropriately damaged by the extremely long time it spent in space, and was more visually accurate to Spock's description of the Botany Bay being scarred with meteorite impacts, and had a docking port on the conning tower at the insistance of a NASA engineer who said a ship built in the 1990's would have a similar port to dock with the International Space Station.
Improve ship designs based on what was intended, while allowing the 'original' design for die-hard purists who prefer their Steamrunner design based off low-resolution CGI from 20 years ago. The Excelsior and Excelsior Retrofit is the closest this idea has come to in STO (given the various impulse engine and warp nacelle options).
The ship name and registry having a floodlight would be really nice, though.
Of course, that might also open the gates to improving other canon ship designs. Namely the Nebula having appropriate impulse engines (for example). I don't buy (and never did buy) the designer's excuse that the Nebula didn't 'need' impulse engines because technology had improved so much. I think he was just covering his rear-end to defend the fact that maybe he forgot to add them to begin with and didn't want to be caught looking stupid in front of Trek fans. So he made up the whole 'The Nebula is so advanced, it no longer needs traditional impulse engines!' excuse.
And I do agree the Steamrunner seems a bit too big. But I've more or less thrown in the towel when it comes to getting some sensible scaling in the game. The only thing that Cryptic budged on was the scaling of the DS9 exterior model, and I'm willing to take that as my only victory. There is too much contradictory evidence in the movies, shows, and a lot of other media on what ship is what size and what dimension. That's the reasoning Cryptic has fallen back on, and as much as I'd like to disagree with them -- it's a pretty solid excuse. If you make an exception for one thing, you have to make an exception for everything. Scaling was very contradictory in the shows and movies.
If you're going to decide what to base ship/station scales off of, put all possible reasons on post-it notes, put them on a dart board, then throw a dart at it, and you pick whatever post-it note the dart hits -- it had might as well be window-size. It's just as solid a reason as anything else.
Designers make mistakes. It's normal. It happens in real life architecture and design, it happens in movie-making, it happens in video games and STO.
Oh man, I'd forgotten we didn't have the Norway. But yeah, I'm a fan of that scale tbh, although the 'obscenely huge' version is amusing enough.
Commanding Officer: Captain Pyotr Ramonovich Amosov
Dedication Plaque: "Nil Intentatum Reliquit"
I mean, how is it even possible to put the impulse engines there? The deflector pylon struts are a couple meters thick at the very most, and yet we see most MSDs showing impulse generators to be multiple decks tall..Even on smaller ships like the Nova, the impulse generators are 2 decks tall.
Even on an Intrepid, which is the only canon ship I can think of with the impulse generators on the nacelle struts, are on really thick nacelle struts and even then the impulse generators are housed in "bulges" on the struts..
On top of that, crew passages and deflector power/control are all going through the struts too. Way too busy IMO.
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Makes such a difference to the model.
"I walked away from the last great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time, no space. Just me!"
Who IS that dashing fellow?
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Twitter:
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Sums up all that needs to be said.
cryptic you need to give this guy a job, he's got the right idea
MY FLEET:http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=498091
So, modeler-dude, we seem to have a general consensus on quite a few things here.
1) Impulse engines should be on the saucer.
2) It needs floodlights on the registry.
Can we please have this changed? We're not asking for major remodeling work here since the engines are already modeled into the saucer, just textured wrong. All it'd take is some texture work for both of the above, and it'd make a lot of people really happy!
I think Star Trek Legacy had the best updated design of the Steamrunner class without losing any of the details from the ILM (industrial light and magic) model:
"I walked away from the last great Time War. I marked the passing of the Time Lords. I saw the birth of the universe and watched as time ran out, moment by moment, until nothing remained. No time, no space. Just me!"
Misinformation at best, hyperbole most definately, blatant and vulgar lie at worst.
The devs have fixed cosmetic changes with ships in STO numerous times. Go look through the history of patch notes, and you will find bullet points in various ones regarding these cosmetic changes. The Sovereign was virtually overhauled into being very near canon compared to the half-done effort at launch. The Galaxy was changed numerous times, including window placement after thorough research by extraordinary OCD Trek fans. And that's just off the top of my head.
Slam CapnLogan if you must, but it was because of his diligence and his hard work that many of these fixes were made with canon ships in the game. If you think graphics issues were never changed in STO, you should rewind the clock and look at STO at Season 1 and the canon ships then.
Dial down the vitriole and bring fact-based logic into a fight instead of emotion-based logic, please.
Funny, I was impressed at just how well he responded to every point! How was he being defensive? Not trying to start something, just curious. As for the ship itself, I think its an interesting design ... reminds me of the NX Enterprise. Is it worth the purchase price and if so, how come there aren't more of them flying around?
Akira was also drastically remodeled. Originally, at launch, it didn't have the saucer trailing edge engines, the "turbochargers" on the catamarans were textured, not modeled, and a whole lot of other problems.
Twitter! STO_JamJamz
http://employees.csbsju.edu/rsorensen/modelcitizen/workbench/STrek/M08_FC/IMG_5683.JPG
I too am in favor of the "impulse engines on saucer". Every single fan-depiction, and every version of the Steamrunner in games (besides STO), show the impulse engines on the saucer. You even have the cut-outs on the model. So why not have the impulse engines on the saucer? Makes no sense whatsoever to put them in the pylons.