I don't see our levy walkers anywhere there.
Blood, Sweat, and Tears (WH40k Design Bureau)
- Thread starter DaLintyGuy
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- Sci-Fi
Our what? We have a Feudal Levy cavalry if that's what you mean. If you refer to the Medium Walkers attachment, in theory that could be exchanged for any Combat Exoskeletons formation, increasing firepower at a very minor cost to tolerating cramped battlefields and of course the fact that it costs Artisanal points instead of just Mass Production.
If you don't see something on there, that's most likely because 1. it's not an exhaustive list, and 2. these are only templates. In reality even two army groups with the same template would likely differ a bit in how many of each army type there are and how each army is equipped (motorized vs. mechanized, for example). We would also retain at least a small part of our ground forces as independent armies in order to retain flexibility - specialist armies that don't firmly fit in anywhere else would likely as not be an example of that, Void Army cores are another example.
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Are we not Calavar, home of Admech radicals and vulgar weapon industries alike?
Our templates SHOULD be full of our specialities! Otherwise, when costumers are buying IG kits ours are going to be passed up for too generic. >=(
Besides, our funky stuff generates things other then defensive value, which is of course influence and clout; Anyone can make a ye old motorised army. In our sub-system? Only WE can make Levy Walkers.
Right, so, here is what I was working on. Bit of a rush job and I am scanning with my phone so I hope that you still get the gist of it.
I talked about changing the turret lay out and I did. What's so good about this? Well the false prow has grooves that you can "hide" or "deposit" the Farstrike lances in. This is mostly for ramming, keeping them 100% safe, and just about any prow weapon benefits from it.
Like so.
Now, I also changed the lay out of the lances here so that they can pivot horizontally even on the horizontal turrets so that they can "fold" safely into the grooves.
Now, I actually like the more Imperial prow that you gave your ship, but I also liked how different the whole chicken half prow made us look.
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That's an interesting design, and I do like the solving the "how does a Firestorm ram things" problem, but I think you're overlooking the accelerator rings there - we'd have to disconnect the barrels from the accelerators to fold them like that, and that seems like a recipe for bad times. Still, that's a solvable problem - something with shutters, maybe?Right, so, here is what I was working on. Bit of a rush job and I am scanning with my phone so I hope that you still get the gist of it.
I talked about changing the turret lay out and I did. What's so good about this? Well the false prow has grooves that you can "hide" or "deposit" the Farstrike lances in. This is mostly for ramming, keeping them 100% safe, and just about any prow weapon benefits from it.
Like so.
Now, I also changed the lay out of the lances here so that they can pivot horizontally even on the horizontal turrets so that they can "fold" safely into the grooves.
Now, I actually like the more Imperial prow that you gave your ship, but I also liked how different the whole chicken half prow made us look.
I don't think you understand what I'm saying about the sight lines. With the original prow, the lances can aim about 35 degrees to port or starboard by twisting in the housing. This gives them a 35 degree arc at the front where both turrets can aim at the same target:
Edit:
Here's a modified version of the chicken prow, side by side with the traditional one.
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That's an interesting design, and I do like the solving the "how does a Firestorm ram things" problem, but I think you're overlooking the accelerator rings there - we'd have to disconnect the barrels from the accelerators to fold them like that, and that seems like a recipe for bad times. Still, that's a solvable problem - something with shutters, maybe?
I don't think you understand what I'm saying about the sight lines. With the original prow, the lances can aim about 35 degrees to port or starboard by twisting in the housing. This gives them a 35 degree arc at the front where both turrets can aim at the same target:
But what happens if I stick a quick and dirty false prow on?
It blocks a big chunk of that overlap. It's actually even worse than that image makes it look, because the firing arcs there are for the center lance, but it's the innermost one that'll limit it. It doesn't affect the region that can be targeted by either turret, but the region that can be hit by both at once is massively reduced. They can still both fire at enemies in the front, but only if the enemy is really, really, directly in front.
Edit:
Here's a modified version of the chicken prow, side by side with the traditional one.
Field of fire is still a little worse than the traditional one - the central ridge I added is low enough that it doesn't make that any worse (except when the guns are heavily depressed), but not squaring off the front hurts. Still about 27.5 degrees of overlap, though. The protruding top face also makes it look less doofy and a little more predatory, I think.
Let me pre-phase this by saying that I am not so much arguing for a half-and-faux prow so much as playing an advocate; I like the new one well enough.
But....i also like how derpy the old one looks? It has that Tommy Wasau charm going for it.
At any rate, i'd argue that you are not taking in consideration how much the extra slack in a tapered front helps the lances fire to the sides:
Not the best at firing to the front, which admittedly limits its engagement range in the approach, but surely being able to help in the broadsides somewhat mitigate this?
Anyway, your comment about the accelerator rings got me thinking. My conclusion is that the guns can't fire while "folding", but otherwise you would put as much of the lance apparatus outside the actual turret as you could:
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Let me pre-phase this by saying that I am not so much arguing for a half-and-faux prow so much as playing an advocate; I like the new one well enough.
But....i also like how derpy the old one looks? It has that Tommy Wasau charm going for it.
At any rate, i'd argue that you are not taking in consideration how much the extra slack in a tapered front helps the lances fire to the sides:
Not the best at firing to the front, which admittedly limits its engagement range in the approach, but surely being able to help in the broadsides somewhat mitigate this?
Anyway, your comment about the accelerator rings got me thinking. My conclusion is that the guns can't fire while "folding", but otherwise you would put as much of the lance apparatus outside the actual turret as you could:
No, the accelerator rings need to be directly attached to the barrel. Otherwise you're trying to redirect the particle beam after getting it up to full speed, and that's just not a good tradeoff.
As for firing to the sides, it's a real advantage - but it's one gained from angling the front face out, not from the false prow.
Fair enough on the accelerator rings.
Anyway, even the false prow angles to a point as it goes forward, so there is going to be some overlap in the forward firing arc still. Not as much as without the false prow, but enough to still aim without steering the ship.
Savior Multirole (Chonk Ver)
It's an athmospheric fighter too so at the very least shouldn't have aerodynamics features too?I've made another model, this time of the S-1 Savior.
You may wonder why it has a cockpit on the bottom: those aren't cockpits, they're radomes. The actual crew space is behind armor.
Calavar is operating close to it's support base so it might not be as ruggedized as a Thunderbolt or Lightning with an armored but see through canopy to prevent electric issues ranging from mundane failure to the cogitator gaining sentience and trying to eat the pilot.
It's been established that it has a flattened teardrop shape, a lifting body design, and vestigial wings that act primarily as weapons mounts. In theory, someone who knows at least a little about aerospace engineering could probably come up with some adjustments to make that would improve the aerodynamics and make the lifting body, uh, actually work, but that person is not me.
As is becoming the usual, I couldn't help but tinker with it. As always I am an amateur and I am scanning it with my phone. It loses a lot of the fidelity in the transaction. Anyway:
The wings still serves as a weapon mount but they are there mainly for the hovering thrusters.
See I got to thinking and asked myself "what's the best way to keep it from needing to plane?" And then I realised that almost all Imperial air assets hover anyway.
Hence, I thought the Savior being a proper VTOL without the need for antigrav or whatever would be the kind of solution that Calavar would come up with. I moved the lascannons from the wing tips, though, to just above the cockpit, as you will see in a second.
Anyway, I took the liberty of moving the vertical and horizontal thrusters to the engine complex, as you can see, since I thought it would be more aesthetically pleasing to have them bundled together.
As for the "bumps" in the ship? They are both in the top and bottom and they hide the weapon arrays and landing gear respectively.
So the bump in front of the top cockpit is where I moved the lascannons and I figured a rack style missile bay coming out of the chunky middle would be a good way to keep things sleek and dangerous.
The landing gear as drawn is way bigger then it needs to be, admittedly, but I didn't want to run the chance of the phone not scanning them correctly. Anyway, fixed landing gear isn't bad but I was toying with the idea of the secret behind the Saviors multiroleness being having a very flexible internal bays that can be switched for weapons, landing gear or whatever with minimal tooling needed.
Hence, as it's symmetrical shape implies, the top or the bottom can each other at the drop of a hat if need arises.
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The landing gear on my version is retractable; it's a simple fold-in design. I just didn't take any shots from the bottom to show the seams for the shutters it retracts through. As for a reversible hull, I don't think that's really practical. Bays notwithstanding, we'd also have to invert the crew space and a lot of the internal machinery. (Also, I'm pretty sure lifting body designs need to be asymmetrical to work properly, even if I don't understand any of the specifics.)As is becoming the usual, I couldn't help but tinker with it. As always I am an amateur and I am scanning it with my phone. It loses a lot of the fidelity in the transaction. Anyway:
The wings still serves as a weapon mount but they are there mainly for the hovering thrusters.
See I got to thinking and asked myself "what's the best way to keep it from needing to plane?" And then I realised that almost all Imperial air assets hover anyway.
Hence, I thought the Savior being a proper VTOL without the need for antigrav or whatever would be the kind of solution that Calavar would come up with. I moved the lascannons from the wing tips, though, to just above the cockpit, as you will see in a second.
Anyway, I took the liberty of moving the vertical and horizontal thrusters to the engine complex, as you can see, since I thought it would be more aesthetically pleasing to have them bundled together.
As for the "bumps" in the ship? They are both in the top and bottom and they hide the weapon arrays and landing gear respectively.
So the bump in front of the top cockpit is where I moved the lascannons and I figured a rack style missile bay coming out of the chunky middle would be a good way to keep things sleek and dangerous.
The landing gear as drawn is way bigger then it needs to be, admittedly, but I didn't want to run the chance of the phone not scanning them correctly. Anyway, fixed landing gear isn't bad but I was toying with the idea of the secret behind the Saviors multiroleness being having a very flexible internal bays that can be switched for weapons, landing gear or whatever with minimal tooling needed.
Hence, as it's symmetrical shape implies, the top or the bottom can each other at the drop of a hat if need arises.
I like the popup weapons, but they contradict established canon: the lascannons are attached to the wings, and the missiles on external clamps on the upper surface. Might have to save that for the S-2.
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Aren't the maneuvering thrusters already on the engine complex? As for making them swivel, I'm not sure there's space for their (assumed) internal components to not bump into each other. It would definitely be good for maneuverability, though.
- Location
- Seattle, Washington
Why not stick them on the top? The field of fire is better up there, since with the shape of the prow, lances on the top can fire down but lances on the bottom can't fire up. Even with a larger spinal lance, the rounded underside of the main hull would make the top a better choice.
Is sleekness what we want here though? The current Saviour proposals would fit in as a fighter in a modern earth context, but in 40k they honestly almost look eldar more than they look imperial. Maybe if the hull instead had a flat hexagonal crossection with wide flat sides up and down and blunt wedges to the side, with the front transitioning into another, more pointed wedge? All the edges could have visible, slightly protruding trusses running along them, a sort of semi-monocoque thing with the bracing not completely internal, to further reinforce the rough, chunky imperial aesthetic.
As you don't use the standard Imperial materials for armor, including Adamantium and the higher grades of plasteel, you are not limited to the flat panes of armor that all Imperial-standard war machines use. Of course, that means that yours aren't as good as them, but it does give you license to make your own aesthetic.
- Location
- Florida
Why would we do that? We're currently alone here for all intents and purposes and really don't need to conform to imperial aesthetic when it comes to fighters. Ships yes, but fighters? No. Plus the Savior is meant to fight both in space and in atmosphere, so all that stuff you want for the aesthetic would just cause unnecessary issues for it's primary purpose.
The thing is already a tear drop, so the next step would be to smooth everything into its general silhouette.
It wouldn't be impossible to make things blocky though.
Hmmmm, as soon as I get home i'll see if anything can be done to make look more like the brutalist approach that the imperium takes with its fighters. See if it jives at all.
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We can, yes. And in the long run, that's propably what's going to happen. But in-quest, all our guys are descended from imperial culture, self-identify as imperial, are used to imperial aesthetic, and their technology is based on imperial tech and design philosophy. Why would they suddenly decide to completly abandon the imperial look for something radically different, instead of starting from the imperial aesthetic and adopting it to suit their needs, evolving it into something new and original steadily, but also very gradually?
As for the aerodynamics, presumably people have found ways to deal with that. The galaxy does partially run on the rule of cool, after all.
Another approach might be a faceted teardrop shape like the gemstone cut, come to think.
"Even a brick will fly with enough thrust."
Update should be out tomorrow. Incidentally, I also start a swing shift tomorrow so that may have some effect on future updates. We'll see.