[WIP] New Insect ship types.

[Duke of Nukem]

I'm considering making a mini-mod by modeling a new line of ships for the insect species, here is my lineup.

Corvette - Mosquito

Destroyer - Dragonfly (Mosquito Hawk)

Cruiser - Cicaeda

Battleship - This thing?

I'm partial to using missiles and fighter craft with insect races, I like the visual aspect of the swarm. So I tend to use battleships and cruisers as carriers and destroyers and frigates as my main fighting force. My models will reflect this, I'm going to incorporate honeycomb like hanger bays for the larger ships to drive home the swarm aspect.

I'm not 100% on the Cicaeda or monster bug though so if anyone has suggestions for alternatives I would be interested.

Any feedback is appreciated.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

Ive done some preliminary modeling of the main body of the Dragonfly class Destroyer with placeholders for future geometry. Ive replaced the legs with cosmetic turrets and the large red spheres will be where I model the actual turrets. I think I will make the "wings" solar panels since theres really nothing else they could be useful for. The darker purple bit will be the rear section of the destroyer. Im probably going to put several cosmetic turrets down the length of the tail section too since this species would be using numbers + cheap kinetic weapons to outproduce opponents, but they will be smaller so the "legs" still stick out visually.

EDIT: Here is a render of the body, the engines wings everything else is still placeholder for now.

 

[ImpalerWrG]

I think your going too far in making them literally bug shaped ships, it should be more subtle, drop the wings and use elements like antenna out of the bow and an elongated stern to evoke an insect rather then trying to slavishly model an insect. Oh and beetles would make good battleships, no need to limit yourself to only flying insects for inspiration.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

I did add the wings in last minute just to make it look a bit more like a dragonfly, without them you can't really tell that's what I'm going for. I'll remove them and try something else.

 

[longb0w]

overall nice idea, i dont realy like that ship design from vanilla game for insectoids

...

I'm partial to using missiles and fighter craft with insect races, I like the visual aspect of the swarm. So I tend to use battleships and cruisers as carriers and destroyers and frigates as my main fighting force. My models will reflect this, I'm going to incorporate honeycomb like hanger bays for the larger ships to drive home the swarm aspect.

I'm not 100% on the Cicaeda or monster bug though so if anyone has suggestions for alternatives I would be interested.

do u also work on the civilian ships?
Construction Ship - Weaver

Colony - Spawner
Transport -

Cruiser - Mantis,

or

Battleship - Tiamat /Locust

these models are a bit clumsy and from an older game - Conquest Frontier Wars
pls look in the video, for insectoid species Mantis

 

[Vanhal]

Next - human shaped ships for humanoids. How come no SF beside Spaceballs had them, and lots of people always imagine insectoid ships shaped like actual insects?

 

[longb0w]

here some other concept art found from web

 

[Duke of Nukem]

Next - human shaped ships for humanoids. How come no SF beside Spaceballs had them, and lots of people always imagine insectoid ships shaped like actual insects?

Space Dandy did it kinda. All hail the Google empire.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

Here is my antenna variant for the wings, I may go for a standard tech type or i might go more biological with the antenna I havent decided yet.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

do u also work on the civilian ships

I might, I probably won't though at least not anytime soon. For now I'm only planning to do a few ships. I've done lots of modeling and texturing in the past but never with a poly budget or with uvw based textures (I like complex procedural textures, I use them exclusively.) so once I get to the texture phase I'll have a learning curve and 4 ships is all I want to try for now.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

Ive got some work to do optimizing the geometry of the launchers before the model is game ready, but for rendering purposes Ive inset all the tubes for a nice look. The body and the tail are roughly the mesh density Im shooting for. You can see ive segmented the tail, It links in seamlessly with the front structure. That's the main reason i choose to make direct insect analogs because their body segments lend themselves so well to stellaris ship designer.

I'm not sure yet how i want to stylize the engine nacelles yet, I might segment them similarly to the tail but that feels a bit uninspired to me, any thoughts?

Here is a close up of the two segments intersection. The squigly looking line in the shadow under what looks like a butt.

Looks really good with 2x meshsmooth. If poly budget allows ill use this version. Im hoping eventually that the scale and zoom issues in stellaris are fixed, if they are ill definitley go with 2x smooth.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

Ive got two basic mock ups for the engines, #1 doesn't really fit with the rest of the ship so ill probably go with something closer to #2 but im still not really thrilled by the look. I scaled down the launcher turrets some too in #2

Im fairly happy with the look of the engines now, Ive made the face more bulbous and etruded the side panels some so they are more prominent. I think i will go with the segmented insect antenna for the wings. Ill do that next then its optimizations and turret work then ill start texturing.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

Semi-final design for the destroyer. Clocks in at 29.5k triangles as is, I may do some more optimizing. In my mind the mini-turrets are hardpoint PD modules since this species doesn't use shields at all.

Here is the top-down view since thats how the ship will mostly be seen.

 

[Duke of Nukem]

Moving on to the corvette design;

The biology of te mosquito isnt nearly as visually appealing as the dragonfly, so im taking more lisence with this design. The upward facing hind legs will be antenna but more hardened than the destroyer. Im only planning to use missiles on this design (specifically the S+M loadout) so you can see that reflected in the forward facing missile turrets. Ill probably extend the bottom "legs" some more but otherwise im fairly happy with the way this ones looking so far. Thoughts?