Turrets on the Orion Blackguard

theraven2378

Given the devs have rotating turrets on the Veridian, when will the Blackguard Flight Deck Cruiser get the rotating turrets?

rattler2

Its probably going to be a while before we see older ships with visible turrets revamped to take advantage of the Veridian turret tech. But I do believe it is on the board of things to do.

Odds are it would require a complete rebuild of the models since the turrets are part of the mesh as they are now.

theraven2378

It feels off when you're shooting all your dakka broadside and the turrets are fixed forwards.

phoenixc

While rotating turrets on the clunky barge would be nice, personally I would prefer they devote the time towards an Orion ship that is missing from the game (except for an NPC seen for a very brief time in the TOS tutorial), namely the Intruder scoutship from TOS or at least some kind of ship with the ancient Orion (pre-fall) ring-and-rotors engine design (or for that matter any Orion ship that is not a carrier since they have enough of those, though the Intruder would be good both for Orion characters in general and TOS fans).

tmassx

Yeah that would be nice, I just doubt the Orion Blackguard is popular enough for the devs to think about a revamp.

spiritborn

theraven2378 wrote: »

Given the devs have rotating turrets on the Veridian, when will the Blackguard Flight Deck Cruiser get the rotating turrets?

The problem is that when the Blackguard was made the turrets were made as integral part of the geo (or at least that's what devs have implied), so it more work then just plugging the target tracking script to the Blackguard as the turrets were modeled in a way that was never meant to rotate.

This essentially means Devs will have to rebuild the turrets and the hull around them to make it so the turrets can rotate and look nice doing so, which probably means a full 100% rewamp of the ship to justify the costs.

theraven2378

Something to ask Thomas Marrone on the next stream he does

rattler2

Its not JUST the Blackguard. All the Orion ships to my knowledge have visible turrets. Its just that the Blackguard's are more prominent.

legendarylycan

Let's actually get all the Orion ships playable before they do the turrets - then they can do them all in one pass. We're still missing the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war.​​

phoenixc

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

Let's actually get all the Orion ships playable before they do the turrets - then they can do them all in one pass. We're still missing the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war.​​

I am not sure which ships those are (perhaps from a different game?), but at the very least getting the rest of the on-screen canon Orion ships into the game would be great. Those are:

• The Interceptor (which STO treats as a fighter but in ENT was shown to be almost the same length as the NX01). It could be implemented as a playable small raider like the similarly-sized B'rel.
• The Intruder scout ship from TOS-R.
• The Wanderer light cruiser (this one could be a problem though as it is jointly owned by FASA and Paramount) that was used in the TNG-era shows several times though never seen except as a wireframe (and upside-down compared to the FASA version).
• They already have Harad-Sar's barge from ENT as the Blackguard carrier in the game.
• The unnamed Orion pirate vessel from TAS that was supposed to be a utility ship that was highly converted and armed for use as a pirate ship. You can see the gantry arms hanging under the ship which were probably used by the pirates for towing or salvaging their prey and may have been the inspiration for the repair slip bolted onto the bottom of the Pakled "frankenship".

A while ago one of the devs mentioned that they would soon be able to use ships from some unspecified other Trek games, so the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war could be possible too. and if so would make a welcome addition to the woefully underrepresented (especially since on the ground Orions seem to outnumber even Klingons in the social areas, so the race is wildly popular) Orion fleet units.

rattler2

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

A while ago one of the devs mentioned that they would soon be able to use ships from some unspecified other Trek games, so the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war could be possible too. and if so would make a welcome addition to the woefully underrepresented (especially since on the ground Orions seem to outnumber even Klingons in the social areas, so the race is wildly popular) Orion fleet units.

I think shadow was referring to the remaining NPC Orion ships that don't have playable variants.

vetteguy904

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

While rotating turrets on the clunky barge would be nice, personally I would prefer they devote the time towards an Orion ship that is missing from the game (except for an NPC seen for a very brief time in the TOS tutorial), namely the Intruder scoutship from TOS or at least some kind of ship with the ancient Orion (pre-fall) ring-and-rotors engine design (or for that matter any Orion ship that is not a carrier since they have enough of those, though the Intruder would be good both for Orion characters in general and TOS fans).

Maybe but it's a damn fine carrier.

vetteguy904

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

Let's actually get all the Orion ships playable before they do the turrets - then they can do them all in one pass. We're still missing the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war.​​

I am not sure which ships those are (perhaps from a different game?), but at the very least getting the rest of the on-screen canon Orion ships into the game would be great. Those are:

• The Interceptor (which STO treats as a fighter but in ENT was shown to be almost the same length as the NX01). It could be implemented as a playable small raider like the similarly-sized B'rel.
• The Intruder scout ship from TOS-R.
• The Wanderer light cruiser (this one could be a problem though as it is jointly owned by FASA and Paramount) that was used in the TNG-era shows several times though never seen except as a wireframe (and upside-down compared to the FASA version).
• They already have Harad-Sar's barge from ENT as the Blackguard carrier in the game.
• The unnamed Orion pirate vessel from TAS that was supposed to be a utility ship that was highly converted and armed for use as a pirate ship. You can see the gantry arms hanging under the ship which were probably used by the pirates for towing or salvaging their prey and may have been the inspiration for the repair slip bolted onto the bottom of the Pakled "frankenship".

A while ago one of the devs mentioned that they would soon be able to use ships from some unspecified other Trek games, so the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war could be possible too. and if so would make a welcome addition to the woefully underrepresented (especially since on the ground Orions seem to outnumber even Klingons in the social areas, so the race is wildly popular) Orion fleet units.

only wildly popular because steel bikinis. if you had to wear KDF armor on the female orions there would be 1/5 of them out there

phoenixc

vetteguy904 wrote: »

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

Let's actually get all the Orion ships playable before they do the turrets - then they can do them all in one pass. We're still missing the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war.​​

I am not sure which ships those are (perhaps from a different game?), but at the very least getting the rest of the on-screen canon Orion ships into the game would be great. Those are:

• The Interceptor (which STO treats as a fighter but in ENT was shown to be almost the same length as the NX01). It could be implemented as a playable small raider like the similarly-sized B'rel.
• The Intruder scout ship from TOS-R.
• The Wanderer light cruiser (this one could be a problem though as it is jointly owned by FASA and Paramount) that was used in the TNG-era shows several times though never seen except as a wireframe (and upside-down compared to the FASA version).
• They already have Harad-Sar's barge from ENT as the Blackguard carrier in the game.
• The unnamed Orion pirate vessel from TAS that was supposed to be a utility ship that was highly converted and armed for use as a pirate ship. You can see the gantry arms hanging under the ship which were probably used by the pirates for towing or salvaging their prey and may have been the inspiration for the repair slip bolted onto the bottom of the Pakled "frankenship".

A while ago one of the devs mentioned that they would soon be able to use ships from some unspecified other Trek games, so the dreadnought, corvette and man-o-war could be possible too. and if so would make a welcome addition to the woefully underrepresented (especially since on the ground Orions seem to outnumber even Klingons in the social areas, so the race is wildly popular) Orion fleet units.

only wildly popular because steel bikinis. if you had to wear KDF armor on the female orions there would be 1/5 of them out there

That visual aspect is certainly big part of it, but also they are the closest to a merchant/pirate subfaction like a lot of people have been asking for. I have seen a lot of Orion females around Drozanna and DS9 wearing parts of the Formal set or Klingon armor and other things, as well as a certain amount of Orion males (often built as variations of The Hulk) so it is not just the bikinis.

For that matter, any faction that has females (which is all of them except the sadly genderlocked one from the Gamma quadrant) can do the bikini thing to some degree by using certain Risan outfits like some of the bikini tops and the "retro" bikini, the TOS Mirror outfit, Andrea's outfit from What Are Little Girls Made Of? and probably other outfit parts if that was the main factor.

tmassx

rattler2 wrote: »

Its probably going to be a while before we see older ships with visible turrets revamped to take advantage of the Veridian turret tech. But I do believe it is on the board of things to do.

Odds are it would require a complete rebuild of the models since the turrets are part of the mesh as they are now.

I don't think it would be that hard to remove the turrets from mesh. You really don't have to do it all over again from scratch.

rattler2

tmassx wrote: »

I don't think it would be that hard to remove the turrets from mesh. You really don't have to do it all over again from scratch.

If you're going to rig a model to have moving turrets, might as well do a full revamp to bring those models up to current quality standards.

spiritborn

tmassx wrote: »

rattler2 wrote: »

Its probably going to be a while before we see older ships with visible turrets revamped to take advantage of the Veridian turret tech. But I do believe it is on the board of things to do.

Odds are it would require a complete rebuild of the models since the turrets are part of the mesh as they are now.

I don't think it would be that hard to remove the turrets from mesh. You really don't have to do it all over again from scratch.

Have you actually worked with 3D models or is this just feeling you have based on nothing.

The Mesh as it stands now was not build with rotating turrets in mind so it's not a case of "cut here". way 3D models work isn't always as simple as you think.

legendarylycan

If turreting in STO is even slightly like it is in any of the C&C games from Generals onward or Empire at War...converting a non-turret model to a turreted one is going to be a massive pain for whoever gets stuck with the job.​​

spiritborn

legendarylycan#5411 wrote: »

If turreting in STO is even slightly like it is in any of the C&C games from Generals onward or Empire at War...converting a non-turret model to a turreted one is going to be a massive pain for whoever gets stuck with the job.​​

That's why I asked what experience the person saying "it shouldn't be too hard" has with 3D models since depending on how moving turrets are build in STO it can be a real pain just from a modelling point of view.

phoenixc

Even if there is some easy way to just cut the turrets off and replace them with standalone turrets it would cause problems with aligning the texture map (for the visible graphics skin) on the mesh. It would literally be easier to rebuild from scratch than to 'fix' the current model.

spiritborn

phoenixc#0738 wrote: »

Even if there is some easy way to just cut the turrets off and replace them with standalone turrets it would cause problems with aligning the texture map (for the visible graphics skin) on the mesh. It would literally be easier to rebuild from scratch than to 'fix' the current model.

and there's a fact that "replace them with standalone turrets" would mean 100% rebuild of those turrets anyway as the current version isn't build for move in any shape or form. It's not just the turret turning but barrels have adjust too and the current model just can't do that even if you cut the turret away from the ship mesh there's most likely nothing beyond what you see currently in the mesh and it's all a single solid mesh not 2-3 parts for it move correctly as the turrets would have to be able to adjust independently from the body of the turret.

rattler2

Indeed. So in the end it would just make sense to revamp the whole model and bring it up to the current quality standards. Other than the Blackguard, the playable Orion ships are all Game Launch Era quality.

legendarylycan

All the remaining non-playable ones are 2003 quality too - same with every other non-playable ship that doesn't have a playable version or was otherwise touched up on at some point (like the Borg ships).​​

spiritborn

Well it boils down to the fact that rewamping 3D models isn't as quick or easy as people love to assume it is. there's no "add detail" button that adds correct kind of details into the model.

Honestly I've been thinking of trying to "rewamp" the generic alien craft they use as target in some shots as a "fan update" just to see how long it would actually take, but I've not found good shots of the craft to use as basis (plus I got my own projects in the works too and those take priority).

phoenixc

spiritborn wrote: »

Well it boils down to the fact that rewamping 3D models isn't as quick or easy as people love to assume it is. there's no "add detail" button that adds correct kind of details into the model.

Honestly I've been thinking of trying to "rewamp" the generic alien craft they use as target in some shots as a "fan update" just to see how long it would actually take, but I've not found good shots of the craft to use as basis (plus I got my own projects in the works too and those take priority).

There are a number of different ones that could be the one you are talking about, most of which are not well documented. However, there the "Type 2" battleship that is used for various things (including the Deferi battleship) and has some nicely detailed shots on this page:

https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Deferi_Battleship

spiritborn

It's not that one, the one I'm speaking had kind of a trident shape with center prong being much longer then the side ones.

https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Cruiser this was the ship I was referring to

phoenixc

spiritborn wrote: »

It's not that one, the one I'm speaking had kind of a trident shape with center prong being much longer then the side ones.

https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Alien_Cruiser this was the ship I was referring to

True, that one is another that would probably look good with a quality pass. There are a few more shots of it on this page:
https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Acamarian_Cruiser

It is missing a bottom view but at that low quality level there is probably nothing surprising under there and could probably be extrapolated from the top and well enough.

rattler2

I wouldn't mind seeing the Promellian Battlecruiser added to the game. But that's a subject for another thread.