MV-AC Heracles

[Berkut]

heh, very cool guns. The only thing is that the drums look weird imo. The rest of the unit seems relatively high poly, but the drums are textured rather than modelled. Also, did you put ciws over ejection pods? lol

[Meph]

@Tinukedaya: Well, I seriously thought long and hard to decide between ammo drum or belt feed. The problem with the beld feed is that I simply can not visualise a belt feeding system that goes into the main hull and can withstand the speed at which a CIWS rotates. Also, because it's a full 3D environment, the belt has to be able to articulate a full 360° and beyond on the CIWS' 'foot'. And not only that but the guns themselves have a 250°-ish range.
Another thing with belt-fed CIWS is that their mechanics are almost always fully internal and I found the drums to be visually more interesting. And even current day belt-fed ones have their ammo stored locally in the turret (to avoid the belt articulation thing) so they need manual reloading anyways.

@kborak: Sure thing mate, as long as they can pay in rare materials and elements.. A Martian Revolution takes quite a productive war machine to pull off

@Berkut: Here's a pic with a base materials on the drums, perhaps this is more neutral to look at. Keep in mind that I haven't finsihed detailing the guns.
Hehe, and yup, I put those CIWS guns in place of the escape pods, escaping is for civvies! And since most of the top section of the bow is taken up by the hangar, launch tubes and Long Range missile bays I was going to remove them from the texture anyway.

What do you think of the coverage of the CIWS so far guys, be harsh. Is it too much? (keep in mind that I'll add some more to the top of the bow, around the flight deck, some more closer to the front of the bow to cover the launch tubes and sensor arrays) Should I perhaps loose the bottom row of CIWS and keep the escape pods there to give the crew at least some hope of being able to abandon ship?

Take a look at these two cool CIWS. First up is the dutch Goalkeeper, forget those pansy US 20mm pansy-peashooters, the Goalkeeper uses the 30mm Avenger gatling, yeah baby! Yup, the same one as the A-10... The second I kinda stumbled upon by accident is looking way cool. It's an indiginous Turkish design.

YouTube - Goalkeeper CIWS Gun System
YouTube - Turkish Sea Zenith CIWS Weapon

[somacruz145]

Wow it's really looking good I can't even imagine how good will the final textured model look if the missiles cover look as they do right now

[Ice-Dragon]

Love the new missile mate and those new guns are very cool

how many of those CIWS guns will there be on each side?

[Meph]

Cheers guys, I'm detailing them as we speak.

I-D, check out the render a few above, there are soem CIWS put on the hull. But I'm a bit unsure on how many I'll put in total... Some feedback and thoughts are welcome. I don't want to overdo it too much. Current day naval vessels have only a few, even the very big ships, but if you take a look at WW2 era battleships, or even ships like BSG, they're litterally brimming with them. I want to find a good compromise between too little and too much

[Ice-Dragon]

I think you have the right amount of guns at the front of the bow, I'd also add a few more the other side of the curve of the bow to add a little coverage to the aft of the ship just an idea

[Tinukedaya]

I honestly think you have a little too much of them rigth now. I would reduce them to half at least. It will still have a lot coverage.

On the ammo side. I see you point. Another ideas then...

Make an ammo "drum belt" reloading mechanism from the inside. more like rails, it will not be hard connected to the magazine, but only moves the drum in the place in certain position of the turret. That way the turret can rotate it's joints hot and still be able to reload fast
this one would require rework of the chassis i know...

or you can even have the rails ouside the turret constricted bellow its operational arc. to reload, the turret enters an desgnated position, rails protrudes and voila...


I'm not really friend of the reload drones you see . Even if the reloading is possible in only one position of the turret, it will be still faster then drones I think.

[chrono]

The ships in WW2 were called "Warships" for a reason, but they were also static designs adapted to evolving enemies. So if you were to WW2 this design then it would cal for no less than 24+ turrents of different sizes. I'd suggest around 12, with at least 4 of them being large enough to kill assault pods with easy.and being able to engage small to large small ships.

[ClaysGhost]

Originally Posted by Meph

Cheers guys, I'm detailing them as we speak.

I-D, check out the render a few above, there are soem CIWS put on the hull. But I'm a bit unsure on how many I'll put in total... Some feedback and thoughts are welcome. I don't want to overdo it too much. Current day naval vessels have only a few, even the very big ships, but if you take a look at WW2 era battleships, or even ships like BSG, they're litterally brimming with them. I want to find a good compromise between too little and too much

If you don't have a visual preference (really?), then perhaps think about how much you're going to be relying on these weapons for protection (and what you're engaging with them) - how likely do you want it to be that enemy fighters and missiles will get past your fighters to engage the Heracles itself. If it's more a fighter base than a battleship, fewer weapons might be indicated.

If you expect the fighters and the ship to take a more equal share in battles, more weapons will allow the Heracles to engage more targets effectively, as well as ensuring that you can rotate weapons in and out of the firing line to reduce heat buildup (since you're using radiators, the heat build-up from a massive gun firing continuously for tens of seconds is probably something you care about avoiding).

More weapons also provide redundancy since if you engage with the ship as well as the fighters then the ship probably will have to cope with some damage.

[Meph]

Thanks for the plentyful responses guys, they gave me some good food for thought.

@Ice-Dragon: coming up, I'm just slowly working my way aft

@Tinukedaya: Good idea mate, I really like it. I'll probably implement that on another gun as I'm not inclined to start over with this one. I clearly see the practical problems with a reload systems where drones have to go out to replenish them but it does offer some nice story hooks where the ship has a certain 'cooldown' time between hefty battles to restock the CIWS and thus being more vulnerable for a certain amount of time.

@chrono: Splendid idea on the small ship guns. I think I'll make a set to occupy that neat large open hull panel near the front of the bow.

@ClaysGhost: Well, the Heracles is meant to be a Marine assault carrier, primarily transporting a compact rapid response force, deploying them for a blitz assault while providing long range support. I didn't intend it for direct head-on capital ship-to-ship combat since it's based on a civilian design so it will need a good coverage CIWS-wise to protect from incoming fighters and missiles while it pounds any capital ship with the long range rail cannons and -missiles.

And this brings me back to the amount of CIWS. I think that for visual balance I'll remove half of those guns on the hull, it's looking a bit too crowded indeed.
I think I'll remove every other one. On the bottom row I'm considering to leave the empty spaces as escape hatches, as that row is close to the windows below it and thus personel area's.
On the top row, I'll replace every other gun with a missile CIWS system I think, much like the US navy's RAM missiles. And these I'll definately make reloadable from within the hull since that will be an easy mechanism to make. No need for escape hatches on that row because behind those hatches are the generators for the launch cataputls and futher aft you have the big hangar behind them.

Here's the detailing as far as I'm going to take it at this point. I don't want to overdo them since they're small and plentiful on the Heracles. The rest of the detailing I'll bring out with the texturing. I started unwrapping the lot but still a lot of work to be done in that department, for now I took a small break since I felt a stroke of vector-fever or poly-madness kreeping in after looking at my screen too long. But expect some updates soon.