Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

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The cockpit looks like it might have been partly inspired by the X-Wing cockpit from the 90s flight sims. Weapon power meters and warhead counter on the top of the dash, power level indicators on the right, big targeting screen in the middle.

 

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I think you do see the more "realistic model" version later in the game on another planet, so it might be police vs military thing

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Good eye! I completely missed that.

 

Jedi Survivor,

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someone ripped the Z-95 model, here's a good look

 

Can definitely see where the X-wing got it's design from.

 

I swear, every time they make a Z-95 model, it looks more and more like a X-Wing.

I mean, the original sketches were darn close, but it was still distinctive.

Now, it looks like they took and X-Wing model and broke off a couple wings. (Which is probably exactly what the CG guys did.)

It's fine, but you can make the Z-95 be it's own thing...it doesn't need to be "prototype X-Wing" from every angle.

 

The 4-engined ones from Legends were worse IMO on the "looking like an only slightly modified X-wing" front.

 

I do love how much it looks like it was inspired by the Fate of the Galaxy Z-95

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It even looks like a Z-95 that was inspired by it!

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I think what makes it look more like an X-Wing are the less noticeable "hump" and the longer nose, which gave the Legends model a more unique and easily recognisable shape. I prefer these engines though.
It could work as either a Z-96 or a more modern Z-95.

 

Indeed.

I am really curious what the Z-96 looks like, but alas, I expect it shall remain a one off reference for the foreseeable future, so this is a fun Z ship in any case.

Meanwhile, in comic news, we finally get a look at some ships of the forever war:

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In the comments DJO mentions we will get a databank on these fighters and the armies in general in the 5th issue.

 

Are there any good theories about what these ships from the Ahsoka trailer might be?





Initially, I got the impression that these shots were from the same ships. But the interior bridge viewport doesn’t match the exterior of those ships. Unless it’s meant to be in the pod that extends at the back.

But it seems more likely that the interior bridge, which is where we also see Thrawn later on, is a new vessel the villains will use, while the three ships shown from outside might be New Republic ships, possibly Mon Cal.

My deluded secret wish is that one or both of these might be Chiss ships. But I doubt we’ll see any Chiss other than Thrawn, so that’s unlikely. Still, I’d love to see some cool new designs if this series ventures into the Unknown Regions.

(And I do hope they don’t keep the Chiss ship design from the Thrawn comics, which was outright copied from an altered version of a ship from the Macross anime series.)

 

About the top ship, I think you are right and it is supposed to be an antagonist ship of some sort. The three ships are apparently identified as New Republic transports if you use closed captions. There is some debate about whether they are just transports or warships (see the discussion a few pages back) as well as the manufacturer. Myself, I hoped they are not Mon Cala as they lack the distinctive blisters I like to see on Mon Cal ships but the real life inspiration of the ships appears to be Mon Cal cruiser concept art from ROTJ (you can see the ship in Art of ROTJ concept art). I think in their current iteration they look different enough from MC cruisers to actually new Galoffree yards ships like the Rebel Transport from ESB (which they also resemble) but scaled up.

Interesting that you mention Chiss ships being shown in the Thrawn comics. I'll have to dig my copies out as I completely forgot seeing them. I'd agree that another case of Marvel artists "borrowing" art from other sources is not a good basis for a new design. Macross, eh. I assume it was a Zentraedi design that was pilfered?

 

@gat-65b
I wish it were closer to a Zentraedi ship, but actually it seems to be traced and adapted from an inverted VF-25 from Macross Fronteir.



I’m not familiar with the Macross series. But I’d seen pictures of Zentraedi ships around since the early days of the internet and remembered really liking them. By comparison, this jet is less exciting as a model. I wonder why the artist for the comics decided to copy that. Did Zahn provide some guidance saying that the ship should look like something out of Macross? That may be unlikely.

But looking at some older descriptions Zahn provided of Chiss military cruisers in Outbound Flight, I do think the more organic look isn't too far off from what he intended. In that book, Zahn describes the Springhawk as being only slightly larger than a Republic cruiser and as "smoothly contoured" as opposed to being "all planes and corners and sharply defined angles," which is how he describes a Chiss non-military spacecraft. Elsewhere in the book I believe the ship is also simply described as being gray. I think the Ascendancy books might have some more description of what the hulls look like, but I cannot find them at the moment.

 

Oh wow, a Vf-25? Was not expecting that (ie. using a fighter as the source). I guess turning it upside it down and lopping off the wings then supersizing it is at least a creative bit of hiding the source. Not a big fan of the end result, but still.

This discussion actually brings together a few topics I had been mulling. Namely, I wonder if Star Wars would benefit from having a full-time "mechanical designer" assigned by Lucasfilm to come up with ship designs for the novels and especially the comics. Of course the movies have concept artists for this but I really think the EU could benefit (sort of like what they did for High Republic but on a permanent basis for other projects) I think the background of alot of the comic artists is drawing superheroes and humanoid characters (what with the state of the comic industry) vs dedicated to spacecraft. In anime productions, there is a seperate character designer and a dedicated mechanical designer. The latter are experienced in coming up with military designs for use in the shows (often becoming famous - at least in anime production - and their work recognizable for their styles). These would be artists that come up with designs that are then used by the animation staff rather than being the animators themselves.

I envision something similar with Star Wars - a Lucasfilm designer (drawn from their concept artists perhaps) that comes up with the ship designs dreamed up by the authors and then the comic artist can go ahead and draw it in the pages. Designing ships does not seem to the forte of most of of the comic artists so having a more experienced hand could give us better results (or at least take some of the load of the comic artists that are forced to grab images of other ships from online to repurpose). In a dream world Star Wars would hire Shoji Kamamori (the designer of Macross' famed fightercraft among many other notable anime mecha desings) but I wouldn't expect someone quite so high profile. The hope would be to bring some more pizazz to the EU that has been missing in my opinion in recent years (there are a few ships I like from recent works, mainly in the freighter class but Iargely I haven't been wowed by comic ships the same way some of the screen designs have been able to).

 

That would be pretty cool. It's funny because just earlier today I was reading about how West End Games served a similar purpose for the nascent EU in the late '80s / early '90s. The various sourcebooks provided a cohesive set of guidelines for the various EU authors to follow in creating a universe. And some fans think this is part of what led to those early EU works feeling like they were part of a cohesive universe. I got into the EU a bit after that time, so I definitely came to see some of the more diverse works in the EU as the norm, but I can definitely see how WEG had a strong influence in the EU as a whole by being there at its beginning.

Honestly, for ship design, I'd love it if they were able to simply involve Doug Chiang to a greater degree. I think his designs were consistently fantastic and helped introduce a great deal of new ideas that heavily informed the look of the prequels. I'd be curious to see what more he could bring in terms of exploring different parts of the universe and perhaps being more active in defining what they look like. For example, the painting below is one of my favorites of his; it's an early concept piece for ships that ended up looking quite different in the end product. But you can see that he brings the strong influence of classic science fiction to his work, creating something very cinematic and memorable, and I think that's a pattern throughout all or most of his work.



Plus, Chiang was also involved in creating many illustrations for ships and technology in EU reference books back in the day, so he already had plenty of experience with some of the design work that's less related to the movies. To me, he and Iain McCaig are the closest to being the Ralph McQuarries of the modern era, with McCaig being more of a character/alien artist and Chiang being more of a ship/environment artist.

 

Chiang would be great helping out with more EU (I'm using the term as shorthand for novel/comic stuff not distinguishing between the old EU and canon lit stuff) designs. Like you said, he has EU experience - I think it was only for The Essential Guide for Vehicles and Vessels BUT he did do the designs for the whole book (he did sketches of all the ships and then another artist extrapolated a schematic). Which means he indeed provided the first visual depictions of many ships introduced in the novels. I think he did a good job of it as well.

I do think he's too busy overseeing the on screen stuff these days to contribute in such a role. Which brings up the problem with either him or another designer like I hoped for in my post: return of investment. I think a mechanical designer for the EU would be great but don't know if LFL sees much of a benefit to the bottom line. I think there are a vanishingly small number of people that would be inspired to pick up comics or novels because there are neat ship designs appearing in them. Or drop them because there aren't. So with little profit in it, there probably isn't a realistic hope of such a thing happening, as neat as it is to imagine. In anime, merchandise sales drive investing in neat designs (at least in the mecha genre, which itself has seen better days). I had a longish musing last year in the thread that I don't think LFL believes (I can only assuming rightly so based on their having done market analysis) sales of ship merchandise justifies their focusing too hard on it.

That is, ships don't drive enough Star Wars sales versus other streams for them to care too much. Doesn't mean some artist won't come up with a neat ship here or there, just that it won't be a priority at all (ie.I won't expect any comic editor to ever reject a piece of art because the ship design is lackluster). Contrast that with something like Gundam which are in part commercials for their models or Warhammer 40k whose novels in part serve to get people excited about buying miniatures. Even Star Trek is more heavily into monetizing space ships (as merchandise or a driver of fan engagement with the franchise). It is sometimes hard for me to reconcile in my head because they are such a big part of the appeal for me, but ships don't have nearly as much importance to most of the Star Wars fandom. Having said all this, we can only hope that (new) Chiss designs DO appear on screen in Ahsoka as I have little faith of them showing up in art anytime soon otherwise (upside down anime starfighters notwithstanding)

 

Honestly, yeah, I feel like that's one of the basic unspoken assumptions this thread has always been built on: to the majority of fans (especially, I suspect, more modern ones), the space battle aspects are not "the" leading draw of Star Wars - and to the extent that they are it's starfighter fans who are the majority, not the capital ship aficionados this thread is dominated by.

 

I think they are different ships. I also think the 3 ships pictured may be some sort of supply convoy and not warships.

I had not heard that before. But looking at the pics I can see it. However I do not necessarily think it is a bad this. It is not like he is trying to put a VF-25 in and say it is something else entirely. He is simply taking the silhouette and filling in other details to make the Chiss ship.

In some ways like the artist who does spaceships out of every day objects.

 

They do look somewhat small, I agree.

I was looking for other ships from the EU that might make a good visual basis for Chiss military craft, and I stumbled on concept art from the old Jedi Starfighter video game of the Sabaoth destroyers. I think this look fits the descriptions from the books fairly decently, and it also ties somewhat to the design of the Chiss Clawcrafts from the EU.

 

Really? As a kid, the space battles were definitely the highlight of Star Wars and Star Trek for me, and to some extent they still are.

 

I have said many times...I want a movie that the focus is a space battle. Do some set up at the beginning but pretty much 45 minutes to an hour of uninterrupted space combat that shows capital ship vs capital ship, fighters dogfighting in between and around them and into the bridge and other sections showing the crew doing their thing.

 

I mean, that's partially why I put in the parenthesis, because I'm in your boat but I also grew up with the OT specifically. I think there was a shift with the prequels to general audiences regarding the most essential action sequence in a Star Wars work to be stuff with Jedi and lightsabers.

 

I was trying to find pictures of the Rebel dropship from the cancelled First Assault game, and saw it pointed out on twitter last Januray that the design actually did show up in The Book of Boba Fett, I don't remember it being pointed out here.

 

So to follow up, HRA 5 came out with that databank

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Sadly no specific model names for the ships, beyond a mention of corellian devilfighters without indicating which ships are devilfighters and which are the older models mentioned.

E'ronoh goes hard for the scorpian theme, putting little claws and tails on their ships. Especially interesting since I believe it has been established they buy their ships off world rather than making their own. Cosmetic modifications perhaps?

Eiram ships are said to be amphibious and based off of local sealife, which makes sense.

Both sides seem to also use little saucer shaped ships, though it is hard to make out any details about their design or use.

Tangential to this thread, but we also get a look at the two sides ground forces: not just infantry but walkers as well, though again it is hard to make out details in the walker's designs. I love the looks of both side's infantry - Eiram going for kind of an "Atlantis" look while E'ronoh is more "Desert Punk"

That was something that was really nice about the original essential guide to vehicles, giving visuals to all kinds of vehicles that had only existed in descriptions before, which in turn made them more memorable to fanbases and writers alike, helping the designs get some traction. Alas, it is really hard to imagine anything like that being made now a days, so many designs from the movies and show already available to easily fill up multiple reference or rpg books without having to shed any light on new designs.

I have to agree, especially since a lot of my early star wars fandom was tied into the x-wing games, and rogue squadron games and comics. Though, I suppose that does bring up the comment that in star wars at least, the focus is usually on the fighters. Even in return of the jedi, the capital ships mostly floated in the background while the cameras focused on the fighters. It isn't until ROTS that we get capital ships clearly engaging each other, and even then the larger spacebattle is mostly backdrop for the rescue mission. It is definitely different than star trek or babylon 5 or legend of the galactic heros or something, where the focus is on the capital ships and fighters are either non-existent or are infrequently used battle filler.

That would be cool.

Honestly, even a show episode or arc that focused on a spacebattle in the same vain as the Galaxy Rangers episode Armada or some of the Exosquad episodes. Like, there are plenty of spacebattles in rebels and tcw but...I dunno, it isn't quite the same.

Ah, very cool. I definitely wouldn't mind seeing that design in more places.

Though the rebel dropship from lego force awakens has charm as well:


Actually, it has a fair number of interesting designs I would love to see un-legofied:

 

You do see it from behind in Shattered Empire, I think
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Rebel_Alliance_Transport