Wow… Sketchup? really?
That’s amazing, I thought sketchup was literally made for little 3 year old kids to make giant houses with no doors.
How did you do this? o.0
i dont think there is any real limits to any 3d software, just as there are no limits to a paint program. it all depends on what you do with it. i use Maya in school as part of my education, but i still prefer to work in sketchup as everything is alot easier to do once you get the hang of it.
im far from the best sketchup modeler out there, as a quick google image search tells.
Back when I used it, it seemed overly restricted and extremely buggy.
Though I must ask, how exactly does modelling a 2D ship in 3D help? o.0
it doesnt really “help”. arguably, its alot easier to cut and paste sprites in the way that other people do (myself included)
what i get from 3d models is 100% original content that you cant get anywhere else. when im closer to the final release of this, i plan on making the sprites of the 3d models available for people to gut up and use in their own mods. (whoops, i was supposed to keep that a secret for now)
also, i have had the idea of the USSN universe on my mind for years now. it would be difficult for me to be satisfied with the designs if i used someone elses content to make them.
Progress update from this weekend.
first of all i started on what is gonna be the turret base of a large cruiser triple cannon.
here it is next to the Sweeper Destroyer (the largest current ship ingame) and the Razorback Battlecruiser for size comparison.
(as it is classified as a large cruiser weapon, it is meant to go on the large hardpoint ontop of the bridge)
i also made two new frigate weapons. one is a normal double cannon (not sure what to use this for yet. im thinking something in line of a balanced all around weapon or a cheap alternative) and a (WIP) double Gauss cannon.
im probably gonna make a new turretbase for the Gauss. i feel like im starting to overuse this one. (i prefer to start work at multiple models at the same time, so that i get my ideas out while they are still fresh)
other than that, i have collected a bunch sounds that i thought might fit the diferent weapons and modules i have planned.
now i need ideas for models on engines, generators, crewmodules and stuff like that. if anyone has any suggestions on what they could look like, i would appreciate it.
i want to base the USSN tech around theories that are on the board today. so if you know of any futuristic engine or generator ideas, that would be awesome.
Wath the size of the Razorback??? It looks huge! O.O
Generator ===> Fission ; Cold Fusion ; Antimatter.
Engine ===> Impulsion ; Ion stream ; Distortion ; Plasma stream
Weapon ===> Gauss and Mag rails ; Missiles ; LASER ; Sonic (or Implosion in space ^^) ; Plasma “ball”
Crew ===> Who need them? In 20/30 years we will be able to create ship that need only 20-30 people to work, with full automated weaponry who are more effective that the human counterpart!
Defense ===> Reactive armour ; Protective fluid inside the ship that solidifies in contact of space ; Nanite bubble shield ; defensive laser
While I completely agree there (and worry about when they realize they don’t need us), if crew isn’t done right it would make OP in GC campaign and possibly overall balance. If they are mostly automated, try to use some of the downsides of the Great Powers’ automated tech, like high power and higher cost, to make up for low crew requirement.
that base is fine, maybe just edit it. Add some bulk to make it look liek a heavier varient to support a much more powerfull weapon system
as it is right now, the Razorback is exactly 364 meters long. in comparison, the largest military carrier today (Nimitz Class) is 333 meters long.
i have never heard of Cold Fusion before. gonna need to do a quick search and read up on it.
i intended for the USSN to use mainly Ion engines, but since those kind of engines often end up with very little thrust, im thinking about some kind of Ion-impulse hybrid engine.
how would a sonic weapon work in space? dont get me wrong, i love the idea of sonic shockwave weapons, i just dont see a logical way to implement them to space combat.
i have a good reason for the ships to not be very autonomous. since the ussn story revolves around an ancient race of robotic beings, they try to avoid letting the vital systems be AI controlled.
powered reactive armour - check.
about the protective fluid, maybe i can have a module that only adds hitpoints to the ship?
and the nanite bubble shield sounds neat. gonna have to edit the shield effects just to add to the effect.
i just solved that problem myself… what about a canister filled with water that would vaporize when it came in contact with the vacuum of space. when the canister detonates, it blows all the water out in all directions (and the water becomes water vapor) effectively creating a shockwave in space.
im no physics major, so im probably missing out on some technicalities.
Here’s a thought: consider if the protective fluid is strictly a component of the armor. Then mechanically, it would be an armor-repair module with virtually no weight, crew or power requirements, an extremely fast repair rate, and a seriously limited supply.
even better 
though, what i really need now is some idea for the visual representation for all these new modules.
It’s my “corrector”! I didn’t mean Implosion but Impulsion!
You’d be better off using some form or another of fragmentation weapon, preferably using a relatively high-density material for your shrapnel, assuming that you want an area-of-effect type weapon. Examples you might look to for this kind of weapon are grapeshot, canister, and fused artillery shells.
If you were just looking to damage the hull or armor of a vessel, there isn’t really any point to this kind of weapon because it wastes a significant amount of its energy creating the ‘shockwave’ and doesn’t gain anything from it, unlike what would happen in an atmosphere (although some of the game’s battles appear to take place inside a planetary atmosphere, so you might be alright). Solid impactors, or a shell carrying an impactor accelerated via explosives shortly before hitting the target, are more efficient than explosive weapons when there isn’t anything to amplify the explosion.
If you did want to make a ‘sonic’ weapon for your starships, you could consider:
- The crews refer to it as a sonic weapon because of the sounds produced by firing it.
- The crews refer to it as a sonic weapon because it causes resonances in the hull of the target vessel that cause said vessel to ring internally - this can be done, for example, by well-timed heating and cooling of the hull of the target vessel, such as by repeated application of a fast-firing pulse laser.
- The weapon is something that latches onto the hull of the target and begins vibrating or striking the ship, and thus causes distracting noises, and perhaps some damage or impairment to maneuverability.
- ‘Sonic Blaster’ is the trade name registered by the corporation that built it - because ‘Sonic Blaster’ sold better than ‘Starfleet Energy Beam Emitter - 130MW - Mark 15’.
- It might also be known as a ‘sonic’ weapon because the speed of sound in some way or another has some relationship to the speed of the projectile. We use Mach numbers to give the speed of the space shuttle in orbit, yet Mach numbers are multiples of the speed of sound, which in orbital space is about 0.
- Maybe, for some reason, someone made a weapon that temporarily forms an atmosphere in the area of the explosion and then creates sound waves within that atmosphere (extremely wasteful, but it might be doable for short time periods).
- Any other reason you can think of.
That would be because Cold Fusion is bunk. Some scientists thought that they had produced a room-temperature fusion reaction in the 1980s (hence ‘cold fusion’), but no one was ever able to replicate it, nor were the physicists able to demonstrate (or reproduce) it. Current fusion reactors that actually work require much higher temperatures, and current models require more energy to be put into the reactor to maintain the fusion process than comes out of the reaction - with the exception of the giant fusion reactors known as stars. Good luck putting one of those in your starship. Alternatively, you could go for muon-catalyzed fusion, which is at roughly room temperature and also requires more energy to maintain the reaction than is produced by the reaction.
Try looking up ‘self-sealing fuel tanks’ and see what comes up. This is essentially the same concept, and someone might have a picture that you find useful as inspiration for a module icon.
If we’re being literal, Implosion and Sonic weapons wouldn’t work in space due to the lack of a medium in which to form the implosion or the sonic waves, and Impulsion weapons would be greatly hurt by the lack of a medium to carry an impulse (shockwave) to the target - unless by ‘impulsion’ you refer to a weapon that provides an impulse to a target by means of, say, a 15" (38 cm) diameter metal slug. It could potentially work with a significant energy release shortly before impact, and that might be justifiable - as an example, the nuclear bomb-powered x-ray laser, since if you don’t care about being able to use the laser again it doesn’t matter how much energy you feed into it, and that much energy directed at the side of a ship might result in an impulse, though mainly as a result of vaporized armor flying off of the ship.
Now, if we admit the possibility of artificial gravity and “negative gravity” (gravitational repulsion), or if we want to claim very strong magnetic fields, we can get ‘implosion’ weapons that attract things in the area towards the weapon, and ‘impulsion’ weapons that push things out of the area around the weapon - though I don’t know that either is possible in GSB. Or, at any rate, have a ‘logical’ basis with which to describe the operation of the weaponry.
Glad you like the idea. 
The visual representation that jumps to mind for this one in particular would be an armor plate with a cutaway showing the liquid reservoir inside. But maybe that’s just me.
i read all of it and you make some excellent points (i didnt wanna qoute the whole thing cause i would just waste space)
perhaps the “sonic cannon” is just refering to the way the projectile is launched. since there are elements inside the cannon that can carry sounds, a large soundblast is used to fire the projectile. if the weapon is used in atmosphere, you get an aditional soundblast. though all of this seems redundant, as it would just mean another bullet weapon with a new graphic and effect. it doesnt really add anything to the mod gamplay wise.
But it’s so very gratuitously cool.
Just wondering But are you still including the Lonestar fighter that You had in the first version or is that no longer going to be in? I have not spotted a look-a-like in this new version?
funny that you asked. its one of the things i have been working on. im at the stage where im not sure if its done, or if i should add more.
Negative hitpoints don’t work that way!
Having a module with -1000000 HP is the same than one with 0.00001 HP
The only difference is the HP % of the ship in the fleet, this mean that a fighter with a negative health module that completely negate the health of the other module will count as a 0% of the fleet HP no matter how many fighter there is.
Try to avoid fleet with negative health ===> Near Insta Defeat
Edit: I love this design! (Even if a true space fighter don’t need wings XD)